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The problem is the possibility still exists that the god of Abraham does exist and was simply misunderstood or misconstrued by the prophets and authors of the Bible. It is clear that much of the mythology and theology of the Bible was taken from earlier and neighboring cultures. And it is clear that logically the god of Abraham cannot have some mutually exclusive traits. But, the possibility still exists, however remote and unlikely, that the god of Abraham exists, just not as the writers of the Bible portrayed him.
By such an horrendously dishonest twisting of words. Let me demonstrate. The 3 little pigs COULD be a true story - this seems absurd, "but, the possibility still exists, however remote and unlikely."
In order for the abrahamic god to exist, EVERYTHING we know about the universe would have to be wrong.
Now, if you are talking about a deistic position, then you would be correct, and there may be a deity that has not revealed itself.
[quote=Gplex;18015363]By such an horrendously dishonest twisting of words. Let me demonstrate. The 3 little pigs COULD be a true story - this seems absurd, "but, the possibility still exists, however remote and unlikely."
In order for the abrahamic god to exist, EVERYTHING we know about the universe would have to be wrong.
[quote]
No, it is not a "dishonest twisting of words"; it is brutally honestly in adknowledging the limits of what is knowable.
I acknowledge that the God of the Bible exactly as it is portrayed cannot exist. But, it is possible that the god of Abraham does exist if the authors of the Bible got some of that god's attributes wrong. This would be possible without "EVERYTHING we know about the universe [having] to be wrong".
i forgot to mention that this is not an attack on atheism,im just curious in why you are absolutly positivly sure in your own minds that God dosent exist
The whole god thing makes no more sense than does the easter bunny, leprechans, peter pan, or Paul Bunyan. It is just not a believeable story. If this god thingy were real, there would be proof of its' existence, the mythology of the buybull does not have the ring of truth. It makes a fair kids story but certainly nothing I would give 10% to. As a rule, I hear better con jobs on the street corner.
It is insufferable to have to listen to Christians rave on and on and expect proof for non belief, and it is insufferable to have Christians tell those of us who do have a different belief that we are wrong because they have the only truth....
Christianity is hardly provable.....
Religious beliefs are based on faith which is never provable......
I think the want for proof for non belief is because many atheists seem so absolutely sure that God doesn't exist. They may say from their mouths that they just don't think God exists but the way that they so smugly look down on, ridicule, and maintain that anyone who believes in God is weak minded and unable to grasp the deep things of science gives away what many of them truly feel inside. That is that they are extra sure that God does not exist.
Often times people say that just because a lot of people believe something, that does not make it true. I would like to add that just because a lot of people believe something does not make it false. Real genuine truth is outside of an uninfluenced by the number of people who believe it. Still the more people who believe something, the more tests of validity that something will have to go through. It's much easier to convince one person that water's natural color is orange than billions of people. Some of these tests will be worth nothing and mean nothing. But to discount the accounts of many intelligent people (familiar with science and all) who have experienced the supernatural regardless of means to reproduce or not is pretty bold. It is not enough to explain it away as a coincidence every time.
Why is it mostly believers who experience "evidence" for God? I can tell you that faith is not the absolutely blind following of something with no evidence. Anyway, either they already have God stuck in their mind and then attribute every little thing out of the ordinary to God or faith makes a person more susceptible to being in the path of the supernatural. For example regarding the God of Abraham. The Bible says that He comes near to those who draw near to Him and that those who wish to find Him will find Him when they search with all their heart. Seeking and being receptive sounds like a prerequisite. On the other hand according to the Bible a devil exists. There can't be a God without a devil if the Bible is to be believed. If a person already does not believe in God, it would be counterproductive to the devil's interests to reveal himself and say here I am! The less people who believe, the better. If he did reveal himself people would think umm wow, if this manifestation of evil supernatural is reality then the other side must exist as well.
Finally if the Bible is to be believed there will come a time when the supernatural will be rampant and out in the open plain as day. At that point the question will no longer be whether it exists or not.
.............so sure that God dosent exist??,i mean apart from that you think its unlikely,or apart from having bad religious experiences,,, because if anyone says anything about the existence of God,you all seem so sure that its just fairytales or spaghetti monsters and stuff,loads of things may be unliklely but that dont mean that its immpossible???
For the simple reason that believing in the impossible is well just impossible to the reasoning mind of anyone with the clarity of thought to be an atheist.
I can watch movies, or read books about leprechauns or gnomes or any other fanciful character, but reason prevents me from giving the concept it is anything but the product of someone else's imagination any validity. It can be entertaining, but to make any life choices based on it is just plain silly.
i don't quite know how to express my viewpoint accurately sometimes......and because we each can see only via our own consciousness, i have found that my participation on message boards allows for more (personal) purpose when i remain in lurk mode. i just repped chango, due to recognition that he/she has expressed a viewpoint that seems very close to my own.
lol i also loved that quip by chickenchaser....which god are we talking about here, the one i don't believe in or the one you don't?
i suspect i'm an agnostic atheist compared the group on the right, and an agnostic theist compared to the group on the left. it seems its a matter of relativity, this 'beleif/disbeleif in god' thing. for me, the answer to does god exist or not exist is a 'both and neither' thing.....but if asked to expand on that viewpoint further......??? for me, truth is found in the paradox itself, and proving or even believing in one absolute or another is missing the value and purpose of the exploration/excavation. i can be a little more specific and say that i don't believe in god as a deity, entity, personification of spiritual ideals...that sort of thing.
i'm much more interested in how/what value and purpose others extract from their own viewpoints/beliefs and how/why they apply that (subjective of course) 'value' to their everyday lives, how they interact with others, what their priorities are, where they place their focus of attention, their capacity to see how/how not worldly 'things' enslave their consciousness etc etc. whether atheist, theist, deist, agnostic etc is a matter that so many people make of primary importance, and is usually a jumping off point for judgmental and reactive projections and tendencies that disallows potentiality and impersonal and honest interaction.
i have noticed there are a number of people (here and every message board i've been to) that seem to operate consistently in a cycle of condescension/appeasement. which is nothing more than a mask that hides profound ignorance and contempt, and has nothing to do with whether they believe in god or not. there are people who practice their faith with humility, sincerity and selfless desire for surrender, there are those that practice their faith with arrogant ambition and aggressive desire for acquisition. there are many people who leave their faith behind but take with them grateful, loving compassion, and there are others who leave their faith and carry anger, ridicule, intolerance and bitterness with them.
i dunno about all this god stuff.....except it's these kinds of manifestations of faith/disbelief that matter to me, not one's faith/disbelief in and of itself.
For me, it all boils down to proof. We can all claim a variety of things exist but it doesn't mean they do. The thing that has always bothered me about 99% of the traditional notions of "God" is that he's completely intangible. Want to examine the evidence for the existence of heaven, God, etc...? Too bad, you see, this fella resides in this place called the supernatural realm that you just can't touch, see, smell, hear, or taste. Want some scientific, courtroom evidence of his existence? Yeah, we're sorry about that too because you can't sense supernatural so you can't test for it.
So then it all boils down to this one little book written two-thousand years ago by some illiterate desert shepherds who still thought the Earth was flat, and that rubbing goat turds on wounds would help the healing process. And that book has been propagated by the most power-hungry, maniacal lunatics all throughout history. Books like Deuteronomy were written by psychotic tyrants who wanted something more "formal" to persecute almost every member of his society. Even to this day, preachers with bad haircuts all across the country (and world) spit out fire, condemnation, stupidity, and hate all based on this one little book.
Of course, if I want to seek out God it's highly recommended I go see one of these blathering idiots with the bad haircuts who might request I give him my first born child (for sexual purposes) or just a small fraction of my hard-earned income. 17% is good. If I choose not to seek out God through one of these oft sexually-repressed, frequent child molesting extortionists, I run the risk of being "out of spiritual tune" with the "truth." Perhaps I should also mention that the "truth" for many a religious person has so many strange similarities to unconscious personality projections that it's uncanny. Besides, I'm sure the child-molesting extortionists have a pretty good handle on the concept of divine morality and are in the proper position to explain to me the truth.
But, if I do seek out God, it's gotta be on this level that always puts the human mind in a precariously flawed judgmental situation. I either have to be lying on my death bed riddled with chemo, or I have a bullet lodged in my frontal lobes and I see "the light." Maybe once I've murdered or raped a few people, been to prison, and found Jesus (probably in one of the prison cells based on the monstrous things people tend to ascribe to him) I could claim that I sought and found God.
Crikey! How could I have forgotten the literal interpretations which produce massive ignorance and stupidity across the world? How dare I not believe (or even hold tangible to teach in science class) the "fact" that the world is 6000 years old, that Adam and Eve were really the first humans, and that a 450 year old codger built a friggin' boat the size of the Titanic to hold a zoo full of animal crap?
I should be fair and say that all that is just the bloviated rhetoric compounded, infused, and inflated around one psychotic, completely mendacious celestial dictator in that of the Christian God. I would have to write thousands of pages to go through each and every ridiculous aspect of various deities and religions to explain my non-belief in each and every one of them. However, they'd all be very similar to what I just wrote above so I think you can use this as a pretty good template.
Believing in god is like believing you'll win the Powerball and Megamillions lotteries in the same week.
Is it possible to do so? Sure, it's not mathematically impossible. But the chances that you will are infinitesimal. The likelihood that god exists IMO are extremely small. The likelihood if a creator does somehow exist and one of our religious sects have it right are infinitesimal.
I ask: Why do you need religion? I don't believe in sin. I don't believe that anyone or anything would want or reward blind unquestioning devotion.
For me, it all boils down to proof. We can all claim a variety of things exist but it doesn't mean they do. The thing that has always bothered me about 99% of the traditional notions of "God" is that he's completely intangible. Want to examine the evidence for the existence of heaven, God, etc...? Too bad, you see, this fella resides in this place called the supernatural realm that you just can't touch, see, smell, hear, or taste. Want some scientific, courtroom evidence of his existence? Yeah, we're sorry about that too because you can't sense supernatural so you can't test for it.
So then it all boils down to this one little book written two-thousand years ago by some illiterate desert shepherds who still thought the Earth was flat, and that rubbing goat turds on wounds would help the healing process. And that book has been propagated by the most power-hungry, maniacal lunatics all throughout history. Books like Deuteronomy were written by psychotic tyrants who wanted something more "formal" to persecute almost every member of his society. Even to this day, preachers with bad haircuts all across the country (and world) spit out fire, condemnation, stupidity, and hate all based on this one little book.
Of course, if I want to seek out God it's highly recommended I go see one of these blathering idiots with the bad haircuts who might request I give him my first born child (for sexual purposes) or just a small fraction of my hard-earned income. 17% is good. If I choose not to seek out God through one of these oft sexually-repressed, frequent child molesting extortionists, I run the risk of being "out of spiritual tune" with the "truth." Perhaps I should also mention that the "truth" for many a religious person has so many strange similarities to unconscious personality projections that it's uncanny. Besides, I'm sure the child-molesting extortionists have a pretty good handle on the concept of divine morality and are in the proper position to explain to me the truth.
But, if I do seek out God, it's gotta be on this level that always puts the human mind in a precariously flawed judgmental situation. I either have to be lying on my death bed riddled with chemo, or I have a bullet lodged in my frontal lobes and I see "the light." Maybe once I've murdered or raped a few people, been to prison, and found Jesus (probably in one of the prison cells based on the monstrous things people tend to ascribe to him) I could claim that I sought and found God.
Crikey! How could I have forgotten the literal interpretations which produce massive ignorance and stupidity across the world? How dare I not believe (or even hold tangible to teach in science class) the "fact" that the world is 6000 years old, that Adam and Eve were really the first humans, and that a 450 year old codger built a friggin' boat the size of the Titanic to hold a zoo full of animal crap?
I should be fair and say that all that is just the bloviated rhetoric compounded, infused, and inflated around one psychotic, completely mendacious celestial dictator in that of the Christian God. I would have to write thousands of pages to go through each and every ridiculous aspect of various deities and religions to explain my non-belief in each and every one of them. However, they'd all be very similar to what I just wrote above so I think you can use this as a pretty good template.
Still thought the earth was flat huh? Isaiah 40 says that He sits above the circle of the earth.
Anyway, that one little book that was written two thousand years ago is the beginning of a relationship with God not the end. You can’t con people forever and get away with it, a religion could not work if all it was about was following what a book says but not actually experiencing anything. The experience is what it’s all about. So in the mind of a religious person, the book is like a pathway that enables one to find out what God is about but the ensuing experience almost retrospectively validates the book to be true and trustworthy. Like coming to a sign that says clap 5 times, do a ***, and punch the wall if you want cookies. You might think that the sign is lying and there’s no way it’s possible that performing this foolishness will produce cookies but if you follow the sign and get cookies you realize that the sign was telling the truth regardless of how strange it seemed. You then find yourself more willing to trust what it says the next time. It says to taste and see that the Lord is good, not to believe without any evidence (even if the evidence is different from what we are used to)
As for the bad haircuts, and fire spitting power hungry lunatics, it’s true that religion has its fanatics, has its problems. One of the best ways to destroy something if you cannot destroy it outright is to pervert it and destroy people’s trust in it. All you have to do is compare the message of the Bible to the child molester, televangelist, prosperity preachers and the discrepancy becomes evident, that the power of religion is being used as a vehicle for greed, power and all that the book itself warns against. Perpetrators of nonsense never want to tell a lie so big that it’s obvious what their intentions are but mix a little bit of truth with a little bit of lie and you have a wonderful recipe for confusion.
Still thought the earth was flat huh? Isaiah 40 says that He sits above the circle of the earth.
Anyway, that one little book that was written two thousand years ago is the beginning of a relationship with God not the end. You can’t con people forever and get away with it, a religion could not work if all it was about was following what a book says but not actually experiencing anything. The experience is what it’s all about. So in the mind of a religious person, the book is like a pathway that enables one to find out what God is about but the ensuing experience almost retrospectively validates the book to be true and trustworthy. Like coming to a sign that says clap 5 times, do a ***, and punch the wall if you want cookies. You might think that the sign is lying and there’s no way it’s possible that performing this foolishness will produce cookies but if you follow the sign and get cookies you realize that the sign was telling the truth regardless of how strange it seemed. You then find yourself more willing to trust what it says the next time. It says to taste and see that the Lord is good, not to believe without any evidence (even if the evidence is different from what we are used to)
As for the bad haircuts, and fire spitting power hungry lunatics, it’s true that religion has its fanatics, has its problems. One of the best ways to destroy something if you cannot destroy it outright is to pervert it and destroy people’s trust in it. All you have to do is compare the message of the Bible to the child molester, televangelist, prosperity preachers and the discrepancy becomes evident, that the power of religion is being used as a vehicle for greed, power and all that the book itself warns against. Perpetrators of nonsense never want to tell a lie so big that it’s obvious what their intentions are but mix a little bit of truth with a little bit of lie and you have a wonderful recipe for confusion.
Sure you can. Hinduism predates Christianity. Both religions can't be right. Someone is getting the wool pulled over their collective eyes.
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