Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
With what we know of our universe and the laws that govern it. How can people believe in a entity that exists outside those laws. How do people believe in something without a shred of proof?
I have a number of problems with religion in general, but I'm also open to it in a way.
I guess my single biggest problem with religion in general (and especially Christianity in this context) is that I honestly do not see what it is that makes God so great. Yes this can be a very beautiful world that we live in, but it can also be a very terrible world. The things I see happening in the world appear to me to be caused by people, the environment, or simply dumb luck. And in none of those factors do I see any sort of benevolent being at work. It's all very chaotic, and I'm not saying chaotic as in the "Satanist" idea of violent chaos, but merely things happening as the wills of millions of individuals working with and/or against each other. I guess from reading much of the Old Testament and seeing how much influence the so-called God had in that time, and then comparing that with today's world, I just don't see any correlation. So that for me is a huge blow against Christianity's credibility.
In fact, while I find the teachings of Christ in the NT to be very advanced for their day, I find the OT completely full of ridiculous things too numerous to go into detail about here.
I also don't understand the whole concept behind Jesus Christ being sacrificed to save the world. As I understand it, God sent his son (who was technically also himself, right?) to spread the word of his own glory, and then had him killed in order to save the Earth? So he was using his son (that is, himself) as a sacrifice to save the world? That doesn't really compute with me. Could someone please clarify?
And the whole concept behind original sin is also a huge puzzlement for me. If humans are prone to stray away from the supposed light, but we are also created by a creator, then doesn't the problem lie with the creator? I understand that a whole list of analogies could be drawn up to disprove me, such as a car being built by human hands ending up with problems of its own due to normal wear. But this isn't a car-builder or, shall I say, a watchmaker, or anything else; this is a supposedly all-powerful being. Why then are people so flawed if they are created by an all-knowing being?
Therefore, I'll admit I kind of cringe every time someone says how God is good and God is great and all that. Much of it seems to me to be very...mindless, I kind of want to say, though I don't mean to sound that confrontational.
I believe there's also a passage in the OT, though I don't remember exactly where, that says something to the effect of God realizing his errors and vowing never again to smite life from the Earth (as he did with Sodom and Gomorrah, and in the Great Flood). Well that doesn't sound like an all-powerful, all-wise, omnipotent Being to me. If true, that sounds like a very human being with immense power, who makes mistakes all the time. If nature was created via intelligent design, then the intelligence behind it was not perfect. Yes, the mysteries and phenomena in genetics are truly wondrous, but people are still born handicapped, and still born mentally deficient in some way, and even still-born period. I don't mean to sound like a pessimist who always looks at the bad, but many Christians to me seem to always look at the good and act like the bad doesn't exist (many, but not all, of course). Hell, there are hurricanes and earthquakes and tornadoes and all manner of natural phenomena that cause great losses of life. At the same time, there are beautiful sunsets and winters and summers and everything else.
I guess I'm just rambling, but my biggest problem really is why should I have to worship something that I feel isn't really worthy of worship? God is a great idea, but I'm nto sure how much I trust it in practicality. Thoughts?
Rambling is good. A structured argument is fine, but just tossing ideas around is good, too.
In fact, you nail a lot of points. You first show that the Problem of evil is a real worry for the believer. The theist arguments are clever though they do not really stack up unless one plays the 'God knows what He is doing' card. Plus the 'It is good if God does it' card and the three card trick of 'who are you to criticise..'.
But that theists have lost that argument does not matter. The point is that it doesn't persuade a lot of believers. They look at the OT God and wonder where the hell he has got to. The only hand of God we see is in disasters and tragedies and the one child saved from a heap or dead or the angel statue standing in a heap of rubble that was a church doesn't persuade the questioner that God does know what he is doing.
The next point is that the much vaunted moral superiority of the Gospel teachings is often open to question. In fact, they are no more advanced than many other philosophies in Greece (of course it was Hellenes who wrote the gospels) India or for that matter, China. The thread on 'he who does not hate..' points this up. That the apologists for the NT as a moral code have not really had the best of that argument is not the point. It is that theist explanations of divided families, cursed fig -trees, drowned herds of swine and Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida cursed with destruction (even though they'd given Jesus a pretty good reception) does not overcome the niggling feeling that something isn't right, there.
The odd one about God sacrificing himself to himself to find a way around the rules he's put in place himself is a nice one, too. It's an atheist favourite and I can assure you that the only responses have been frankly reinventing God at super speed in order to make him somehow powerless to change His own rules. What I call 'theology on the hoof' and so blasphemous a thing to do that I I truly am coming to believe that these people are more interested in winning the argument than honouring God and I come to believe that they don't actually believe in God, but more in their own street - cred.
However, this is about a believer with nagging doubts. Yes, as with the Noah story, the flaw in that is that it was not neccessary. Unless God doesn't know how things are going to turn out, he should, of course, started with Noah and the flood wouldn't have been neccessary. Of course, there are arguments from it was neccessary that Adam and the fall should happen and on the other side, the OT contains a lot of Myth, but still, the real point is that it doesn't seem to add up.
Your last point is rather penetrating and, though it seems that most believers (sorta) don't get that far, it may be more common that it appears.
This God both the OT and New T and the one supposedly looking over us all, doesn't seem to be that great or admirable after all. Like I have said before, the point isn't that God is bad, but that the god of the Bible is a man - made invention and doesn't actually exist. That is the whole point of the argument. Biblegod (1) does not exist. The claims of the church are false and religion is invalid.
(1) I am obliged to point out that this 'God does not exist' atheist conclusion is related only to the God of the Bible and all the other personal gods.
A postulated First cause or creator unpersonalised in man's image is another matter altogether. Atheists do NOT say 'that deist sortagod does not exist' as we have no way of knowing. The evidence and arguments that such a being does or must exist is not compelling, but, re. the personalised man - made gods we are most definitely able to say 'They do not exist'.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 01-16-2011 at 06:43 AM..
My only issue with any religion is when people use that religion to govern the lives of those around them instead of just themselves. I do not care what anyone believes until they try to have it effect me and mine. I am not referring to talking about their beliefs, since that would violate free speech, what I am talking about is when they use their particular beliefs to make governmental laws that apply to everyone.
What are the biggest problems/questions people have about Christianity?
Well, since you asked, my most pressing question, for me a real conundrum --- I really do not understand how anyone could actually believe that stuff.
Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot:
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.
If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time"
Yes. I have to repeat - this is the essentail fallacy that goes through all Theist apologetics. The widespread belief in an unverified deity which is then postulated as a given which can never really be disproved since it isn't small, like the teapot, but it is invisible and works is such Myserious ways that its workings are indistinguishable from the way it would work if there was no such deity at all.
Yes. I have to repeat - this is the essentail fallacy that goes through all Theist apologetics. The widespread belief in an unverified deity which is then postulated as a given which can never really be disproved since it isn't small, like the teapot, but it is invisible and works is such Myserious ways that its workings are indistinguishable from the way it would work if there was no such deity at all.
The essential fallacy is thinking there is something outside reality itself that must be proved. There is no such thing as "the way it would work if there was no such deity at all." NOTHING would work in any way shape or form without God as the substrate. You admittedly and repeatedly have shown yourself unable to understand this . . . even when Gaylenwoof laid it out for you in atheistic terms.
Yes. I have to repeat - this is the essentail fallacy that goes through all Theist apologetics. The widespread belief in an unverified deity which is then postulated as a given which can never really be disproved since it isn't small, like the teapot, but it is invisible and works is such Myserious ways that its workings are indistinguishable from the way it would work if there was no such deity at all.
The biggest problem people have and the biggest question are two different matters.
Problem....fear
Question...why
Are your viewpoints in this thread including the fact that we are only human, there are billions of us, before us ect and would be rather different in many ways than a God..?
The reason I'm asking is from time to time I learn of idea's which hold a possibility that a God of some sort may exist ...and at the same time assert that Christianity would be an impossibility.
How can this be..? Are you informing your possible God that he cannot have a part of himself show us that we are basically a little slow on being charitable..? Whats going on here.
Speaking from the other side of the void (so to speak), as a believing Christian, I find that my opinions on all matters are often discounted because I am "one of those...". I have experienced situations where people were greatly interested in my input on many matters until they found out I'm a Christian, beyond which point my opinion didn't count.
The biggest problem people have and the biggest question are two different matters.
Problem....fear
Question...why
Are your viewpoints in this thread including the fact that we are only human, there are billions of us, before us ect and would be rather different in many ways than a God..?
Yes, if I follow your train of thought correctly. I make allowances for the limits of human perception.
Quote:
The reason I'm asking is from time to time I learn of idea's which hold a possibility that a God of some sort may exist ...and at the same time assert that Christianity would be an impossibility.
I agree. 'god' of some sort is a possibility, though only one out of many. In fact the limits of human perception are (arguably) the only reason why 'god' is the possibility booted around so much.
The personal gods of man -made religions are pretty much out of the picture.
Quote:
How can this be..? Are you informing your possible God that he cannot have a part of himself show us that we are basically a little slow on being charitable..? Whats going on here.
A possible 'god' is not a 'he'. It is an It. I can assure you that, all my life I have been shown parts of this supposed god (who now looks very much like Biblegod) and it turns out to be down to our limited perception more than anything else. The result is that there is no real evidence that what is going on in the universe is anything we should (IMV) call 'god'.
I caught a very interesting TV programme on reality. In a popular way, it encapsulated the current thoughts on 'reality'. I must say I was expecting, every time we came up against something mysterious or puzzling, someone would mention 'god' but, rather thankfully, nobody did.
Perhaps Hawking is right and God Is Not Neccer-sarry.
The most shocking thing was the discovery that observing a proton diverging into two entities stops it happening. This has been used to throw doubt on science (observing the test alters it) but it didn't seem to be that. Rather comfortingly, this illusion of matter has reality in that it is reliably predictable and the indeterminacy only relates to atomic activity. The implication is that other realities are splitting off into other time lines. But that doesn't have anything to do with us.
What wasn't mentioned (since they didn't mention 'god') was Einstein's remark 'You really think the moon stops existing when we don't look at it?' and Bohr responding 'How do you know it doesn't?'
That would normally be a fallacy of introducing logical entities without good reason. But the burden of proof is met. There IS good reason to suppose that indeterminacy is real. I don't see that it extends to the moon winking out if no -one is looking at it, just a moon we don't see diverging into another dimension every nanosecond.
But we do have the proton NOT diverging every time we take a peek. Or rather, it doesn't diverge every time we don't take a peek. And, as Linus said, 'The theological implications alone are staggering.'
You may have heard the conundrum about whether a tree is there if no -one is around to observe it. Or the moon. The god - believer answers: 'There IS always someone around to observe it - God.' The moon is always there (arguably) whether we observe it or not, because god (or God) is always there observing it.
But, if that were the case, there would always be an observer (god) of the proton, so it would never diverge. Indeterminacy argues that the only observer of a diverging particle is us. There is no other observing entity.
So, (I just had to get that idea down) while there are some arguments for 'god' (first cause, even of powered nothingness - zones of comfort) there seems for the first time some argument which disproves any constant cosmic observing mind, whether sortagod or any of the personal gods.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 01-18-2011 at 04:35 AM..
Reason: 'burden of proof is met' rather than 'accepted'.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
