Do you believe in God?

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4. People have long questioned their religions and used them to self-advocate or advocate for equality, (ex. abolition, some missionary work, Sikh principles for example speak of religious freedom and gender equality.)

In conclusion, while I admit religion may be fake, it serves a vital purpose and I will defend the religious at all costs while explaining my own doubts...

It's certainly true religion has been used for good ends....I doubt many would try to refute that statement.

But just as religion has been used for good ends it has also been used extensively for personal and political reasons.

And since it is in the news so much let me point to the ISIS version of Islam as a religion being used to accomplish the most vile things imaginable....and all in obedience to their "merciful" god. This line of thought could be used to point out different religions and their corrupt leaders since we started written recordings. Perhaps the "vital purpose" you mention is no longer viable?? How would you describe to ISIS the reasons why their belief, religion, and god are different and not legitimate; is their belief not those of many religions?

Will you "defend the religious at all costs" if their religion includes whipping "evil" children with electrical cords or any of the other vile things done in the name of religion?

It turns out it isn't a "religion" you must defend, but the practice as well....not as easy a job unfortunately.

If there is no evidence of God, when one should expect to find it, it's reasonable to reject the hypothesis.

What would evidence of God look like for you?

We have to deal with the problem of Evil Epicurus proposed this riddle
God either can eliminate or it can't God either wills to eliminate evil or it doesn't. That is four combinations. Lets look at them.

God wills to eliminate evil but it can't. That means God is not ominipotent.
God does not will to eliminate evil but it can eliminate evil. That means God is malicious.
God neither can eliminate evil nor does it will to eliminate evil. Then why bother with God?
God can eliminate evil AND God wills to eliminate evil. So why is there evil in the world?

Just a little something for the new people in this thread... these breif films provide a few sketches of arguments for God's existence. Personally, I allow these types of thought experiments as lines of evidence.

I defend the religious' right to be religious, not to follow their religion to the point that it interferes with their concrete life.

Then they must be stopped.

But the majority are decent and functional people. The psycho religious are psychos first and then religious. If they weren't religious, they'd be psycho atheists.

So if God exists why does he exist. What is the reason or cause for its existence.

By the say the increase in entropy is NOT absolute. It is statistically probable. But Poincare proved that a random statistical ensemble will become ordered one in every great while. The probability is small but not zero. See Poincare recurrence theorem.

The arguments invoking design are uniformly bogus. A liquid heating up is in random motion and it generations hexagonal Bernar cells as it goes into convection. Random processes can generate order. Hence the existence of order does in imply determinate causation.

Last edited by BaalChatzaf on 01 May 2016, 5:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There is no subjective evidence of god. By that I mean physical evidence that he as a being exists. One could argue that "what evidence is there than he doesn't exist?", but this is a nonsensical argument, because you can say the same about talking lizards and dragons.

There is physical evidence that supports certain parts of the Bible, but absolutely none that supports the existence of a "supreme being".

Is God analogous to talking lizards or dragons?

Quite literally, yes. It is a mythical being that we have no evidence to support.

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Good manners and good sense existed long before religions arose. Humans have manage to regulate their behavior within families, clans and communities without deities. The good old Golden Rules does not need a god to command it or recommend it.

Or short of rejecting, realize there is not need to assert it. There are two kinds of atheisms.

Kind 1. Does not believe in the existence of God because of insufficient evidence.
Kind 2. Denies the existence of God outright. This position is not supportable unless one can show assuming the existence of God leads to a logical contradiction.

Okay, then our definitions of God do not line up. I do not believe in your concept of God either.

What is your concept of god then?

Videos one and two can be turned around to apply to God. God is something, as such, who created God, and why did God exist? I reject the notion that God is without the same laws as us should He have created us: My parents created me, and are of the same stuff I am.

Video three is interesting, but this is unlikely, not impossible. In any of the other scenarios in which nothing exists, we would not be around to perceive our own nonexistence. In the scenario in which we do exist, we perceive our existence.

Finally, I am a fan of... *waits for boos* The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins sucks, but his work is interesting. In this, he gives several examples of altruism, but most importantly states that we are all genes trying to propagate independently, and want to help our genes. This does not just mean family, but extends to all carriers of our genes, including cats, and even plants. Empathy, the heart of morality, is evolutionary. In addition, the most productive society which benefits all is ruled by a sense of order and morality, which is why we are born with such.