I have proof.

There are many occasions in the Bible where God makes it clear you must believe before you can see.

Btw LVGambler, i am off your boat.

I wouldn't say that all believers are ******ed. That's not the case at all imo. There are people who are intelligent who believe in God, a god, gods, whatever.. but the way they incorporate their beliefs into their daily lives is drastically different than your average "Gunth".

And this proves what exactly?

It's called an exaggeration, and I already said it was in a previous post. Work on reading comprehension and basic logic skills

All religion is man made. All early civilizations created them as myths, as a way to try to understand the world & themselves at a time when knowledge & self awareness were in their infancy. Many of these myths are beautiful examples of early man seeking understanding.

We see creation myths or religion in middle east, europe, south & north america, asia, australia, africa etc. This tells us a lot about man, as the first living thing on this planet to realise his mortality, and his need to feel safe in the face of certain death and nothing about some imagined deity!

As for why people still believe in our more sophisticated society, as opposed to more backward society hundreds or thousands of years ago. Well deep down everyone is still terrified of death, and hanging on to belief in afterlife, or some imagined paternal creator/provider, provides people with comfort, they are in some way constructing a belief system which makes the obvious fact we are doomed to death more bearable.

Well that's it folks. Ilovedonks has cleared it all up for us. We can shut down this forum now.

Wrap it up / forum !!

He actually kind of did though

He did sum it up rather well.

ty les, ty secondc

+1

Don't forget the evolutionary benefits of religion tho ... otherwise it would never have survived and blossomed as it did.

I do not believe in the spontaneous generation of matter in an absolute nothing environment. I believe an absolute nothing environment existed at some point in history. I think the big bang theory backs up the absolute nothing environment concept, but I may be wrong about that.

Based on these beliefs, I feel that something supernatural is responsible for creating the origin and I label this supernatural phenomena "God."

mind blowing.. logic itt. wp ilovedonks (ilovethedonkstoobtw)

Some people call it "a tree" fwiw. You call it God.

So who created this supernatural phenomena then? Something even more complex? I don't understand why your answer to "what created the universe" is "something even more complex"

It's obvious how religion came about...2000 years when they knew even less than we do, they formed stories about god and supernatural powers. These fairy tales are known as religion.

As we can see, there are plenty of crazies around even today...so imagine just how many there were 2000+ years ago. Combine that with the question "how the **** did we get here?" and you have religion

The question should be the opposite: how can anyone not believe who is intelligent?

Clever.

Well ask yourself why so few people make it to the top of Maslow's pyramid and have a detrimental affect on others by their failure.

The pace of life today would keep anyone from noticing there's a gaping hole in their pyramid.

Why do you need something responsible for creating the origin, and then abruptly back down from these requirements when it comes to needing something responsible for creating the creator?

So you're ridiculing people who make exaggerated claims by making exaggerated claims. Gotcha.

God doesn't need a creator because God doesn't need a creator.

Reading comprehension...

C'mon, Lestat, don't feed the troll.

No one is suggesting that, though. I don't know of any atheist or evolutionist who argues that matter came from nothingness, or that life came from nothingness. That's what theists argue, actually -- that life magically came from nothingness, and the magic is called "God". The error, in my opinion, is in assuming that there ever was a nothingness in the first place.

Yep, you are wrong about that.

Okay. You're welcome to believe whatever you like, of course.

I just don't understand why so many theists persist in getting into debates when they're coming from a position of faith, not of reason. Hey, if your faith convinces you to be a better person, or comforts you, then great. But if you can't prove it, then why even engage rationalists about it at all? When cornered about proof, theists typically say, "You have to believe it in order to see it". Well, that simply isn't how reason works -- reasonable people believe after proof, not before proof. And if you value faith over reason, that's fine, but why try to be both faithful and rational at the same time when it simply isn't possible? Why even debate rationalists?

That's why I say that there are two types of people in this world*..

Those who say "Oh, ok!"

And those who say "Huh? WTF?"

The difference is one side relies on faith and the other relies on logic.


*And no, I don't think that there are [literally] only two types of people.