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Quite frankly, people can be a drag deal with. Gossiping, backbiting, bickering over petty nonsense, people peddling their Pampered Chef, Jamberry, Plexus, etc; at least at work I'm being paid to smile and nod and endure it. I have seriously lost count of the number of churches where we are warned who we "need to watch out for". The last thing I want to do on my free time, at church no less, is to watch my back."They seem like nice people". Meh, they're all nice people until you get to know them. The only reason I can see people putting up with it is because they need that sense of belonging and community. Sit home and watch Charles or Andy Stanley in your pajamas if you need church so bad; no one bothers you and you skip the Sunday Morning Shakedown (ie. collection plate).
Last edited by Ginge McFantaPants; 08-29-2016 at 07:02 AM..
Either way, it's a win, IMO. Fewer people brainwashed by power-hungry religious leaders.
And increases in violence and suicide as more people are generally depressed, unhappy with life, and have no hope when things go wrong. I don't call that a win. One thing I've learned from going to church is that EVERYONE has struggles and no amount of science or technology can bring happiness in life.
^ Actually a lower quality of life is POSITIVELY correlated with religiously, not negatively as you pretend here.
And science and technology has brought happiness to peoples lives, and continues to do so. Especially, but not limited to, the alleviating of life debilitating medical conditions. We are even curing deafness and blindness and lack of limbs with our technology now.
And things like the "Cosmic Perspective" on the universe does bring scientific happiness to many people. Even the joy of pursuing science itself has brought many happiness.
So, pretty much everything you have just said here is patently and almost exactly 100% false.
And increases in violence and suicide as more people are generally depressed, unhappy with life, and have no hope when things go wrong. I don't call that a win. One thing I've learned from going to church is that EVERYONE has struggles and no amount of science or technology can bring happiness in life.
And increases in violence and suicide as more people are generally depressed, unhappy with life, and have no hope when things go wrong. I don't call that a win.
I was once like you, Jeff: psychologically dependent on conservative Christianity. I really thought I had nothing to live for other than the religion.
Religion is called The Opiate of the Masses for a reason. Marx was more right than he knew.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
One thing I've learned from going to church is that EVERYONE has struggles and no amount of science or technology can bring happiness in life.
That's probably true, given the kind of churches you attend and the kinds of people who attend said churches. Birds of the feather flock together.
Perhaps you would be better phrasing it "You have zero 100% conclusive proof that it is imaginary".
But the evidence pointing towards a god or gods being imaginary abounds. There is lots of it. Up to, and including, real time examples of such imagination at work. Cargo Cults would be a great example.
And in the realms of psychology and biology we have all the evidence of the things that would strongly leave us with a propensity to imagine there is a god.
And in fact the old adage "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is only true at the extreme end of pedantry. The complete lack of ANY evidence for a god, especially from you, is indeed SOME evidence towards there being no god at all.
So yes, we have no evidence AT ALL there is a god, but plenty of evidence of people imagining them and plenty of evidence for things that CAUSE people to imagine them. So your statement is simply quite false there Jeff.
Further when we get into the specifics of any one god, such as YOUR god, we have plenty of evidence that that god is imaginary. Merely by definition. Dan Barker in a debate with Kyle Butt laid out the biblical contradictions that by definition mean that that particular god could not exist. That does not mean, as you would be quick to point out, that NO god exists. But it does mean there is evidence YOUR god does not exist. Because the contradictions mean it COULD not exist. Similar to how I can say there is no such thing as a married Bachelor.
For example you might call your god all knowing and all powerful. Yet I can argue that your god is incapable of suffering true grief like humans can. Therefore your god is limited. Therefore your god does not exist as you defined it. QED.
You have ZERO, I repeat ZERO evidence that God is imaginary.
You also have ZERO evidence that the following things are imaginary:
The Giant Extradimensional Space Crabs
The Flying Spaghetti Monster
The Invisible Pink Unicorn
The All Powerful Sky Hamster
The Tooth Fairy
The Easter Bunny
The All Powerful Burrito Creature
Santa Claus
Leprechauns
Allah
Thor
Ra
Odin
Ahura Mazda
Zeus
Super Man
Batman
The All Knowing Cheese Monster that Lives in the Center of the Moon
The Matrix
Russell's Teapot
Alf (I kill me!)
The Yip Yip Aliens from Sesame Street
Oscar the Grouch
Middle Earth
Et Cetera.
You have ZERO, I repeat ZERO evidence that God is imaginary.
I have to disagree with both your claims here, that a decline in church attendance is to be blamed for a (claimed) increase in violence, never mind the old accusation of a hopeless life without an Imaginary friend.
Which is the second thing. There is a heap of evidence that the claims of Christanity are without any merit. This means that what they claim is real and true is, on all evidence, not. That means 'imaginary'.
What evidence you got that it isn't?
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