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IMO,
7 Billion people currently living on earth, and 100 of millions who lived before us and however many millions that will come after us, cannot come up with the answer to these two questions
1 - What would you consider as a proof/evidence of God?
2 - And how will you validate that evidence by using all the collective scientific knowledge of all humanity?
You can't!
If bring a never seen before bird or sea creature or an animal to you, and claim that it's a horse, you will have the means and knowledge to visibly inspect the creature and or, if you like, you can take it's biopsy or blood sample to see if it's a horse or not?
If a God comes in front of you and claim that I am a God, how are you going to verify? Take him to a lab and get an X-ray done? Take blood samples? Do an MRI on him?
And say if you do all that, and results are something that were not observed by science before, would that mean this entity is God? How will you know?
Or you can ask him, remove all misery from earth in a heartbeat, or turn this water glass into wine. And boom!! it happens.
How would you validate that it was done by God and how would you explain the scientific method that turned water into wine?
If you are able to scientifically explain how water was turned into wine then you don't need God because this is something that you could do it too. God wouldn't be any better bigger or more powerful than you.
If you can scientifically explain how all misery from earth was removed in a heart beat then you don't need God because you can do it by yourself.
But if you can't scientifically explain how water turned into wine and how earth misery was removed then you are not asking for evidence, you are asking God to perform miracles for you. Which is an oxymoron for a person who demands evidence.
If no evidence, it doesn't exist, remember? A miracle is not a valid and repeatable scientific evidence.
Hmm, how interesting.
Because, you see, many Christians fall afoul of the things you've just stated.
You're kinda-sorta right in what you're saying -- but the same must also apply to Christians (or any other type of believer) as well.
I watched a priest on the popular astronomy documentary called Universe say the following: "Even if there are numerous universes, you still need a transcendant being to create the first universe and set the laws of physics into motion. That would be God."
Meanwhile, I'm growling at the television thinking, "No ... all you've done is argue that a transcendent being is needed to kickstart the laws of physics. WHY does that transcendant being *have* to be God? Oh right ... confirmation bias. I forgot."
Yeah, this priest skipped a step. Proving that the universe is intelligently designed does NOT prove that *your* God and *your* religion is true. Jumping from "transcendant being" to "Yahweh/Jehovah" is being intellectually dishonest.
In the same vain, you'll hear Christians all the time claim to have been the recipient of some miracle or another -- surviving a car crash, receiving an unexpected financial boom, the mysterious curing of a disease ... and naturally they immediately claim, "God did it!"
Well, you've just outlined a bunch of reasons why, even with evidence, how we could still claim that it wasn't God or that we don't really need God, etc. etc.
And you would be correct. Which then "begs the question," how do these Christians know that these miracles -- or that the Creator of the Universe -- was God? In truth, I don't think they *can* know. All they're really doing is plugging that which they know, their cultural biases, into a big unknown blank.
Even assuming (and this is a massive assumption the size of Betelgeuse) that a miracle did, in fact, take place, there is no evidence whatsoever that the miracle was caused by God. The problem is that these people were inculcated to believe in one particular God to the exclusion of all others -- even non-divine beings that might have superpowers akin to that of a god are completely off the table because all they know is, well, the Biblegod or the Qurangod or the Torahgod.
Thus it has to be admitted that the evidence chain that you described in your post applies equally to Christians -- they *should* be as critical as we are regarding who or what caused these supernatural experiences. Instead, they make unsubstantiated and ungrounded leaps of logic just so they can attribute everything to, conveniently enough, the God they just so happen to believe in.
Again, if God provides the proof of YOUR liking then what's the point of life?
Look at the scenario.
A person is born, God provides him the proof of this person's liking. He now has no choice but to live a life as per how God wants him to live. He lives 80 odd years, dies and goes to paradise.
God repeats this process 7 Billion times with the current world population, and 100 and millions of times with those who lived before us, and who will come after us.... all for what?
What would be the point of this cookie cutter factory?
Why can't God just create humans and send them straight to Paradise? What's the point of this life?
This is what I find truly sad about religion.
The idea that without God ... or too much God in this case ... there isn't a point to life or even all life or even a point to the universe itself.
The point of life is whatever you decide it to be. It's sad that you need some outside source, some boss or dictator, to TELL you want the point of your life is.
It's almost as if you're afraid of having to decide what that point is all by yourself.
In fact, what is both sad and a bit twisted is that you're essentially saying that there's no point to life unless some people go to heaven and live happy, blissful afterlives and other people go to hell where they are tortured for eternity. You're essentially saying that your happiness in paradise would be pointless unless some people are being tortured in hell. Perhaps you don't mean it that way, but that *is* what you said.
The way I see it -- why *not* create everyone so that we all go to heaven? I just don't buy into this "God doesn't want robots" nonsense because, let's face it, all of the ridiculous rules we're supposed to obey makes us pretty much robots anyway if we actually obeyed them all. The fact that we MUST sin and perpetually beg for forgiveness is also a form of forced behavior i.e. being a robot. Plus, we'd be robots in heaven, as well, due to the very narrow pathway we supposedly have to walk just to get there. By the time we're done jumping through all of his hoops, we'd end up being robotic conformists with very little variation between one person and the next.
And I *certainly* don't buy into this nonsense that people *must* go to hell for some bizarre reason.
Once you throw God's omniscience into the mix, it becomes even more insane. Why would God create souls he *knows* will never come to him and thus damn themselves to eternal torment? That's pretty malicious on God's part.
In addition, he could just say, "Okay, John Smith will live his life in this particular way, he'll have these particular experiences thereby creating a personality and a pattern of behavior that looks like this. Therefore, I'll just create John Smith's soul as he *would* be if he had lived his 80 or so years on earth, but I'll just skip that part and send him directly to heaven." He could do that with everyone -- and simply not make the souls that he knows will displease him. That's not creating robots since every soul will still behave and act just as it would have if that soul had spent its time on earth.
At any rate, I really do feel bad for people who think God is the only thing that gives the universe and life any meaning. I suppose that's one of the reasons why I'm so adamantly against these religions that demand a God comes first before our fellow human beings. That one tenet has caused so much destruction, and I'm not just talking about wars. Just this past month my own step-family was literally torn apart because one of their sons came out of the closet. Because of this horrible religious indoctrination, the parents won't speak to or even enter the home of the gay son now, and because of this nasty behavior, the entire family is taking sides and vowing not to have anything more to do with each other. Gee, thanks, religion, I appreciate that.
Why are the parents behaving this way? Well, because they think by shunning their own gay son, they are pleasing that wicked entity known as Yahweh. See what I mean? So ... is THAT the point of life? To judge others and punish them when they fail to live up to our religious expectations? Is the point to life to please this "god" to such an extent that whole families have to end up feuding with each other, creating havok and destruction everywhere?
I think I can find much better ways of spending my time, much better and more meaningful reasons to live. This is why I keep saying again and again how both Christianity and Islam have failed *utterly* at bringing about love and compassion -- instead, it has done just the opposite.
Islam kept the knowledge of the Greeks during the time Christians thought it blastermous.
Yes, and then the Ottoman Empire* shut it down as a means of control with the help of religious leaders ro the point that many "Islamic" countries are still in or just emerging from their own "dark ages.'
*I'm always confusing the Ottomans with the Byzantines.
God or no God, If you are living a certain way out of FEAR of a God, you are doing it wrong.
I would like to believe the majority of people do the best they can regardless of believing in some sugar-daddy god...
Exactly! Living a certain way out of fear of a God or fear of a hell is not healthy. A person who lives their live with fear as a motivation, will not truly enjoy life or feel genuine love.
I can say that if any God ever asked my to take my son up a mountain, drive a knife through his heart, and burn him as a sacrifice (Abraham/Isaac story), I would tell that god to go to hell! In other words, I would not and do not let a third person being come between my personal relationships with family and friends.
I guess it still stands as unrefuted by the stalwart defenders of religion.
I write long posts because I actually make points, defend those points, and dilligently explain why I subscribe to those points.
What you did was ... well ... juvenile.
Thanks for playing.
If an argument is based on "some historians" to make a point and convince others, then a counter argument could be "some PHD scientists and biologists" say that man did not com from Chimp. Does that sound convincing?
If an argument is based on "some historians" to make a point and convince others, then a counter argument could be "some PHD scientists and biologists" say that man did not com from Chimp. Does that sound convincing?
I didn't need to read rest of your post.
Yes, you didn't read the rest of my post.
If you had, you would have realized that the rest of my post wasn't based on "some historians." It was based on facts -- not only were they facts, they were headlines pulled right out of the news on the very day I wrote the post. The *only* part of my post that relied on "some historians" is the part about landing on the moon in 1100 A.D. What, did you honestly think my ENTIRE post was about landing on the moon? Get your head out of your nether regions and THINK for once instead of running scared from my words like a squealing schoolgirl who just saw a toad.
Moderator cut: deleted
Last edited by june 7th; 05-29-2017 at 12:14 PM..
Reason: Insulting to other member.
Again, if God provides the proof of YOUR liking then what's the point of life?
Look at the scenario.
A person is born, God provides him the proof of this person's liking. He now has no choice but to live a life as per how God wants him to live. He lives 80 odd years, dies and goes to paradise.
God repeats this process 7 Billion times with the current world population, and 100 and millions of times with those who lived before us, and who will come after us.... all for what?
What would be the point of this cookie cutter factory?
Why can't God just create humans and send them straight to Paradise? What's the point of this life?
Given the proposed Omni- powers of god, what is the point of life?
Why does god go through the charade of life as a sorting mechanism for afterlife? God knows what each person will do, given innate personality and environment. Nature AND nurture if you will. A god could simply create people directly into the afterlife, complete with memories of what their life would have been.
From the point of view of individual humans, we would remember our lives and suffer reward or punishment as god's whim dictates. From god's point of view, the exact same results are accomplished. Why bother with a creation opinion the first place?
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