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Sounds like you have opened up your mind and heart to come to a personal understanding. That is very good to see in people instead of blindly following the thiest/atheist heard. I’ve always found that being sincere and open minded when thinking about these things is the best way to come to a rational decision.Wow, it's amazing to see this thread has fourteen years behind it with people regularly contributing. Glad to have found this thread. I personally believe there is something beyond ourselves. I can't explain it nor am I even close to having answers. I am not religious but I truly believe deep within there is something beyond us. And just as any atheist can use critical thinking skills to invalidate the existence of a higher power the same can be done with nonexistence. We have no means to prove either.
I for one find a belief in something beyond myself to be highly personal. I don't expect to persuade others into believing or disbelieving what is true for me. At one point in my life I was so fed up and disappointment in God and was certain there wasn't one. But through personal exploration and not even actively looking I firmly believe I achieved a sense of knowingness and discovery through some deep meditative practices that put me back on track. I'll spare all the details with those experiences. But suffice it to say, God is limitless and everywhere. God is not some white haired, Caucasian male casting judgment while sitting on some gilded throne nor does God have a human form. I can't even use masculine or feminine pronouns because doing so imposes limitation on a supreme being. I feel extraordinarily blessed to have acquired this.
Dr William Lane Craig has some wonderful info that pretty much rebukes every one of your objections to Christianity. Check him out. You will find it interesting.Reading the bible is the fastest way to destroy the Christian and Jewish religion, reading the Koran is the fastest way to a full frontal lobotomy. 1700 bible verses of barbarity, genocide, slavery, murder, sex slavery, child slavery, cutting your wifes hand off and showing her no pity, stoning your daughter and son to death for any number of offenses, even a priest induced abortion when a women is suspected of having relations while her husband is away.
No more fucked up collection of writings than this colossal pile of fly covered dog shit we call the bible.
Even if Yahweh was real, and we know he's not because we can clearly see where this myth was created and what canon it came from, it would be embarrassing as a thinking person to ever worship this made up evil sick sadistic creature. When Christians are called out for this, they say "you can't question God", I can only assume these people are the type that like to tie little kittens in a sack and beat them with a ball bat.
As for Jesus, if he existed and I doubt he ever existed at least by what the gospels tell, he would be just a man that was bat shit crazy, couldn't keep his mouth shut, so the Romans had to spank his fanny and hang him on a board.
The bullshit of him dying so he could forgive us from himself. You want to talk about circular reasoning. Why wouldn't you just forgive someone or just not care. If my son or daughter denied me, I wouldn't burn them, torture them, or do anything else to them. I'd just go on with my life and let them live theirs.
Then we have the concept of hell, a Persian Zoroastrianism invention that was absent from the old testament, but was injected into the new testment to warn the people that god means business this time.
It's very simple. There's a video on Youtube of Chinese cooking dogs alive, hanging them up and using a torch to cook them while they screech out and scream in mind blowing levels of sadistic torture, they throw them in boiling vats of oil alive, cut their legs off while they're alive screaming with meat cleavers. This is what Hell is supposed to be. Fuck anything that would do that to any person or animal that can feel pain. That's not something you worship, that's someone you fucking kill and erase from existence.
As for the rest of everything religion provides, it promises everything and delivers absolutely nothing, it's worse than that, it causes people to hate one another, wars, to kill each other, to oppress each other, to limit their creativity and turn off their ability to think for themselves. It has taught humanity to imprison his own mind and reject all that is completely natural, to actually go against what any living organism wants, and that is death so they can go to heaven. There is no animal that I know of that wants to die. When I watch African specials, I see animals always running for their lives, doing their best to stay alive, I've never seen a group of them standing around praying that a lion would come along so they can pass onto the next world. How humans allowed this idea to creep into their heads is scary.
Of course the last thing is what Christianity did to the world, it turned mankind into a blubbering crybaby mess, it taught him to get on his knees and start crying like a little baby to this creature of middle east.
I think Nietzsche's Will to Power is probably the best attack on this way of thinking. Don't pray, if you want something, get up and fucking do it.
Dr William Lane Craig has some wonderful info that pretty much rebukes every one of your objections to Christianity. Check him out. You will find it interesting.
Edit: Nietzsche was at least honest to admit that if there is no God then life is utterly pointless. He pretty much went mad with his conclusions. Makes you wonder if such a life is worth living.
I found that debate to be anything other than an embarrassment for Craig. Also, it is the scientists who haven’t kept up with philosophers, not the philosophers who haven’t kept up with the scientists. Carroll displayed that fault incredibly well when it came to much of the philosophical part of that debate.William Lane Craig is a joke. I've been an atheist for 40+ years. Watched many debates with Craig. Sean Carroll Ripped him a new ass when he debated an actual physicist with a very high IQ. Craig didn't know what to do when he was standing next to a theoretical physicist, he knew he was holding a lousy hand and didn't have the courage to bow out and admit that he has been a fraud his entire life.
How anyone can think Craig has solved the problem is beyond me. The kalam cosmological argument and his use of embarrassing syllogisms that rely on deductive reasoning have and are completely worthless in the world of science. Aristotle might have been cutting edge in his day, but his day has passed.
Craig claims to be a philosopher, but he's done absolutely nothing in the world of philosophy, his career has been built trying to explaining "his" God into existence using word salad and of course completely flawed deductive reasoning.
As for having no purpose without God. Well life can be viewed as having no "one" purpose, but you have this life and you might as well enjoy it if you can. Thinking that life sucks and is pointless if you don't have a magical sky daddy is a personal opinion. If you want to piss your life away by believing that, then you can, I just wouldn't expect others to follow.
Just like my dog doesn't view his life as having some over arching purpose other than getting some tasty food and a belly rub, humans have slightly more sophisticated wants and needs, but it doesn't need to include anything supernatural, most people just want a decent life and when they die they die.
I found that debate to be anything other than an embarrassment for Craig. Also, it is the scientists who haven’t kept up with philosophers, not the philosophers who haven’t kept up with the scientists. Carroll displayed that fault incredibly well when it came to much of the philosophical part of that debate.
I find his cosmological argument to be very sound, and supported by the BGV theorem, but I also can tell by your anger that you would not be satisfied. Hope you find some piece.
I’ll answer these by paragraph:The kinds of arguments WLC presents are the kind that only work for those that want to be convinced.
The bottom line is you can't argue the supernatural into existence. No matter how vast your vocabulary. No matter how deep you want to go down the rabbit hole you still have "Absolutely" nothing to show for it.
If all of your evidence sits on the hearsay of bronze aged goat herders, I'm sorry, but you couldn't present that in the court of law nor would you waste a single minute making these arguments in a peer reviewed accredited academic setting unless you don't mind being laughed off the stage.
If you knew nothing of god, were brought up in a setting where you were trained to use the scientific method, would you really expect to be convinced by WLC? It's only because you were raised in a society where religion is shoved down our throats and injected into all matters that many people succumb to this constant repetitive propaganda until it becomes habit.
If you grew up on an island with a small clan and none of you knew anything about religion at all, how would you expect to arrive at the same conclusions and same religion as that which dominates any number of cultures.
Christianity, Islam, Judaism spread because they have texts to follow. There's a reason people are animist because there's no text telling you what to think and how to act. If you completely erased all traces of these scriptures and erased them from the memory of mankind, how would you arrive at the same religions that we have now, you wouldn't.
Anyone who pretends to know the right answer to this and many of our beliefs are wrong or close minded. We can only guess at the purpose of life. Until this is proven we are all guessing at what is right and what is wrong. Be open minded people.I will end this by saying that most people believe in God.
Most people believe in the war on drugs, they believe incarceration and punitive life destroying punishment that lasts until the day you die, some would even like an afterlife full of pain and misery for these people as well.
Even though both of these views have lots of support by the over whelming majority, the evidence shows very strongly they're both wrong.
It's a tragedy that we can't wake up people to the immeasurable harm, pain and suffering we cause when we hold to beliefs that can't be supported with evidence.
Anyone who pretends to know the right answer to this and many of our beliefs are wrong or close minded. We can only guess at the purpose of life. Until this is proven we are all guessing at what is right and what is wrong. Be open minded people.
You miss the point.Ravi Zacharias is a scam artist that profits from gullible Christians.
Lenox argues from a position of authority based on his academic achievements, but what has he proven?
Philosophy that is used to prove God exists has crept into the apologists world fairly recently. 20 years ago you never really heard these arguments, then all the sudden we have amateur philosophers popping up that learn a specialized vocabulary unique to philosophy so they can create a word salad that confuses and hides the fact that they still have no proof.
Philosophy is just words, even Lenox with his mathematics achievements is just numbers, a language invented by man.
Where's the actual god/gods/God, present the actual God, show us the GOD, don't just present us words on a page or in a speech or a specialized language that few have learned, pull the curtain back and put on full display this creature we call God.
It's a simple request.....put up or shut up.
You miss the point.
How arrogant and naive to think you and only you knows the answer. Everyone should believe and buy into what you think. Because you and only you are right.
Nah, you just take almost every single post to evangelize how there ISN’T a God and your disdain for religion. It’s annoying as crap how you turn everything into an anti-religion post. Granted, this specific thread is fine, but you’re really no different, yet you think you are.I've never stood on a street corner with a megaphone like a crazy man preaching the gospel.
Thank you, that is my case and point in a bit shell. Just another guy that knows better then anyone else.Nah, you just take almost every single post to evangelize how there ISN’T a God and your disdain for religion. It’s annoying as crap how you turn everything into an anti-religion post. Granted, this specific thread is fine, but you’re really no different, yet you think you are.