I question the intelligence of anyone who has to make a constant effort to tell everyone how intelligent they are.

No, I think there's a god because he's far more progressive than us.

Too bad people have such a hard time keeping up with him.

Read the beatitudes. Isn't Jesus Christ preaching pacifism?

But are we pacifists today? No.

Gandhi was a pacifist and his assassin killed him because he didn't believe in absolutist non-violence.

Quote: "Godse was against Gandhi's personal teachings of extreme or absolutist non violence. He thought that such non-violent ideology would lead to Hindus losing the will to fight against other religions, which he saw as a matter of self-defense, and thereby becoming permanently enslaved. This has been said to be one of the major reasons behind his decision to kill Gandhi."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathuram_Godse

It would seem some people are naturally disposed towards confrontation as a good in and of itself or as a means to an end. So the human race today as a whole hasn't progressed as far socially and morally as Jesus did 2,000 years ago.

Your crazy is showing.

Rly?

You posted this.

So God exists, because Jesus had good morals? Yes, Jesus was a great person, but people are capable of morals without any influence from God. Some of the world's greatest people today are non-Christain or Athiest.

The human race has progressed radically since 2000 years ago. You think the level of hate and discrimination today is close to what it was even 50 yrs ago? Imagine being a minority or lower class 2000 years ago....

The world is learning and progressing, it is you who have fallen behind.

I would argue that it's not that clear if he really was a great person if he existed. He never addressed the clearly immoral laws he instilled on people in the old testament(if you believe JESUS and YAHWEH are the same beings). That alone makes me skeptical if he really was a great person, if I take into consideration that he agreed with the old barbaric laws of stoning people to death for silly rules or seeing nothing wrong with slavery and owning people, I definitely don't find him to be a great person, an average American seems to have greater understanding on how to be a great person than the Jesus from the bible.

The world hasn't progressed nearly enough.

By now everyone should be a pacifist but you don't dare because you'd be dead and only the violent crazies would be left.

I think there's invisible helper dragons because they're much more helpful then us. Splenda LOGIC!

speak for yourself.

Who is we? Some people are pacificists, some are not. That doesn't prove anything.

Pacifism has been preached well before Jesus. Absolutely nothing revolutionary there.

Who cares. This has nothing to do with the question of the existence of God. Do you just decide what you want to write about, open a random question and pretend you're going to answer it and then switch to whatever is on your mind at the moment?

Jesus didn't progress more socially or morally just because he gave a sermon. This normally would go without saying and one can point to others who have said similar things... but what would the point be?

I await your non-sequitor.

perhaps you can provide us a simple to read timeline of how far the world should progress year by year.

Please explain how you determined exactly when in time everyone should be pacifists and why.

I agree with you completely, just giving Spkendour the benefit so I could go on and make my point.

So God exists because there are a greedy people in the world today?

As far as basic human rights are concerned, we're progressing at a rapid pace, so how long until we're good enough for God to come out and say, "That was what I wanted out of you guys all along...Finally!"

Edit: I'll respond for you.

God has a plan for us all that Jesus knew back then but is still way ahead of our time. Only the spiritually aware can begin to interpret God's secret message cause it's so advanced. (Insert Bible verse)

No reason to argue further.

I don't believe in argued conversions.

I just present what I know. I can't control if your weighing apparatus is skewed or not to be able to evaluate the truth.

God speaks against philosophy as a means of understanding his Gospel. Paul says he's not the God of the philosophers.

I think God's aware of the little games we like to play with the scale of measurement in our own heads.

You can ask for evidence all day if you ask me.

But you haven't proved that your own head (your own weighing instrument) is good enough to weigh the evidence accurately.

People on here didn't even know the emotions on here were rational until I checked into it and Jung said as much.

They assumed emotions were irrational because it suited their own preconceived notions.

"You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you." Deut. 25:15

-Cause no one in their right mind would convert for logical reasons?

-By weighting apparatus, do you mean slew of scientific evidence and all rational thought?

-So God is setting it up so that all rationality and evidence makes it appear that he does not exist....

-Yeah, I've asked repeatedly for evidence outside Biblical verses, or the concept that God is too advanced for us.

-My brain isn't a "weighting instrument"--Nor are theoretical physics.

-No, we assumed you are irrational because of the scattered and non-sensical way in which you debate. No one cares about your emotions. Besides, even if all your emotions tell you that God must exist, it could easily be that you want him to exist so bad you've convinced yourself of it. Or the emotion you think is God is the same emotion we all have, you just choose to think of it as "God."

...

It has been known for at least 2.5k of years that there is only God.

@ Splendour

So in sum:

-God is subjective so he can't be proven.
-Emotions are the link we have to God, but we cannot measure or explain it.
-We can't truly trust anything we perceive because our brains could be unbalanced.

Emotions are important, but what emotion (other than your tie to God) cannot be explained rationally? Further, what other element of the Universe cannot be explained rationally? (Or at least on a scientific path to discovery)

Has your brain, which is apparently balanced differently than mine, figured out why or how God exists, for certain? Please enlighten...

p.s. I wasn't trying to get personal at all, was just explaining why people accuse you of being irrational.

Summary's off but I'll be off the board for awhile. Don't know when I'll be back.

People should be careful of charging people with irrationality because they don't show their thinking with a logical method.

Intuition can sometimes be faster and more accurate.

Studies and claims

Dismissing the notion that intuitive impulses arise supernaturally, one is left to assume they originate with the many innate human senses. Remnants of perception, such as a movement occurring out of the "corner of your eye" or subtle sound that would normally be ignored as background noise, could occur simultaneously. While these events could be filtered as irrelevant by the mind, their coincidental synchronicity could lead to a sudden assumptions about one's surroundings, such as the feeling of being watched or followed.

Intuitive abilities were quantitatively tested at Yale University in the 1970s. While studying nonverbal communication, researchers noted that some subjects were able to read nonverbal facial cues before reinforcement occurred.[28] In employing a similar design, they noted that highly intuitive subjects made decisions quickly but could not identify their rationale. Their level of accuracy, however, did not differ from that of nonintuitive subjects.[29]

Law enforcement officers often claim to observe suspects and immediately "know" that they possess a weapon or illicit narcotic substances. Often unable to articulate why they reacted or what prompted them at the time of the event, they sometimes retrospectively can plot their actions based upon what had been clear and present danger signals. Such examples liken intuition to "gut feelings" and when viable illustrate preconscious activity.


Intuition is a combination of historical (empirical) data, deep and heightened observation and an ability to cut through the thickness of surface reality. Intuition is like a slow motion machine that captures data instantaneously and hits you like a ton of bricks. Intuition is a knowing, a sensing that is beyond the conscious understanding — a gut feeling. Intuition is not pseudo-science.
– Abella Arthur

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition_(knowledge)

Intuition is powerful but can always be explained. It is our subconscious brain at work, there's a book called Blink by Malcolm Galdwell about it. But our subconcious works by piecing together bits of information we've accumulated and processing them very rapidly to give us an instinctual impression. How could you subconsciously, or intuitively, just know God exists? You've haven't had any experiences with any actual or fake Gods, or an alternate life, so you have no frame of reference to intuitively know there's a God. The police man "knew" the person had narcotics, because of all the experiences he's had with people holding them. He subconsciously picked up on physical cues or perhaps even a vibe which combined with his conscious thought to tell him, "these people might be holding narcotics." Notice I said "might", because there have probably been several times where the police man's intuition didn't pan out.

You can run from the forum, but you can't run from the truth.

What an impertinent thing to say.

I'm going out of town and don't expect to be near a computer. I've been here 7 years and atheist thinking has never broken me once.

I spent a lot of time studying the problem of atheism to solve it but I'm bored with it now. Boredom's always been my driving existential angst. Once it sets in it's time to move onto something else.

But you can try explaining how any human mind is fit to evaluate "evidence" accurately.

I think God's set it up so every person can weigh and respond in his own way. If you want to artificially insert science that's your prejudice playing you.

God's older than the scientific method by a good bit and He can grant revelations.

It's not just my mind evaluating the evidence. Physics has solved much of the universe, and perhaps even it's creation. (the big bang theory is still a theory) You act like math and science are tilted by our predisposition, which is exactly the opposite of ehat these fields represent. All scientific theory is supported with laws and equations, which have no giant gaps in logic. I think something like 1% of these physicists think it was necessary for us to have had a creator. On the other hand, the creation of the bible by man and out creation of the idea of God is extremely easy to explain. That's why many Gods and religions have been created, but only one law of relativity.

But I agree, we likely won't advance this debate any further since you seem to have reached the standard, last line of theist defense. Which is essentially, "I just know, okay."

Did the universe just create itself according to precise mathmatical formulas or is that just variance?

All matter that exists today was in a small point, nearly infinitely dense. This point eventually blew and spread all over the universe. There are ways they can tell everything came from one point and is still spreading further apart, they also have a good idea how long ago this was and there is even an echo from this bang in space that can still be detected.

This is still technically a theory, but it's at least on the right path, as all new evidence continues to support it.

He he...Jung says we can know.

Do you know the whole future and everything about your spouse when you get married?

Is it necessary to know everything to make an informed decision or just certain essential things?

We're not making a science discovery y'know. We're making a relationship with God and just like in any good relationship trust (faith) is the main element.

I'll put all the stuff aside which is specific to the Christian God, and pretend you are just a general theist...

If there is a God, and he was responsible for all the matter and elements and particles and galaxies, the path to his discovery would still be through science and diagnosis of all that is around us.

It's becoming more clear that your belief in God fills an emotional void. This is the reason a lot of people believe, and I think it's actually a decent reason and can be good for a lot of people.

As far as all the Biblical stuff goes, and belief in a specifically Christian God, and that Jesus was sent from heaven, and Adam and Eve................

Where did all the matter in the universe come from and how did it come to be in one point?