Do you believe in God?

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Well... I would refer you to those videos I linked as well as the entirety of my content in this thread... but really this one video pretty much sums it up... if you really do want to know what I believe, Alan says it far more eloquently than I can.

That's exactly what I thought your interpretation was. There is no evidence of this existing, and you have no proof to support your claims. This ideological view is insanity in my opinion.

What is "this?"

I'm not sure that I can agree with this. I think you have a point when it comes to the gleefully sociopathic (Daesh, the WBC, etc.), but there are quite a few people in the world who seem like they're fundamentally decent and would be a lot better off without their beliefs.

Missionaries who build hospitals but still go out to vote for state constitution amendments against same-sex marriage, people who protest in front of abortion clinics and make an already difficult decision worse, and quite a few parents who break down crying when they find out that their children are gender/sexual minorities don't fit into the same category as outright psychopaths. Some of them later leave at least the religion that they used to hold, and then feel a lot of guilt about their past actions. Saying that religion is bad is an overly broad statement, but some religious beliefs can definitely make you a worse person.

Yes, but not all people who are religious have those beliefs. Those who follow their hearts and find that aligning with their religion often interpret their religion for their own. I have religious friends who plan on sex outside of marriage and support gay rights. I know a practicing Catholic who supports abortion.

By defending the religious, I mean I defend the right to believe in God and anything that doesn't go against my morality. They are not obligated to follow my morality, but instead I will oppose them on certain issues and obviously appreciate those of them that stand with me. Either way, I will defend the underlying belief as inherently neutral, with the application being good or bad.

So, I think people can have some beliefs of their religion and not others. People follow with their hearts first and last most of the time.

Personally I like Nietzsche.
Because on the one hand he rejects traditional religion, on the other hand there are semi-religious ideas in his work, upgrading traditional religion to rational standards. So that you do not have to chose between believing in God yes or no. Some people say he wrote his book "Thus spoke Zarathustra" as sort of fifth gospel. (some say he also had ASD, mere speculation though)

I'm a bit worried to bore you with Nietzsche, but as a fan, I cannot resist to mention something (and since others put videos in their post, perhaps it does not matter too much? if so, let it know):
- Nietzsche talks about experiencing a great day or a great moment as if it were better than paradise;
- He comes up with the idea of the eternal recurrence, suggesting that our salvation and damnation is linked with an infinite and immutable decree, but not a decree by God.
- He puts man for a test, just as believers are put for a test in traditional religion. In this case: are you going to be active, to fulfill your own goals or dreams (so that you can experience your great moment), or do you chose a laissez fair mentality (because everything is already predetermined in an eternal recurrence of the same)
- thereby creating a situation wherein the individual will cannot possibly chose
- thereby creating a situation where another will then can assume control
- identifying this as "the will to power", sort of universal power, not a traditional kind of God, but still special; not a God that can create anything out of scratch, but still showing some determination, desire, will, in universe, so that life can emerge, culture, though with lot of effort, and with a result that is very fragile

quote="NoahYates"What would evidence of God look like for you?

He would know.

Why Three? Why not a Perfect Number?

How about The Father, The Mother, The Brother, The Cousin and The Uncle???

Author, Actor, Spectator

Religious beliefs definitely don't make most people awful. In fact, I'm sure that they help some people hold to their personal morality by giving them a sense of being accountable. I'm just not that sure that most people will follow their hearts when it comes to morality if the religious beliefs tell them something radically different. Sometimes, that can even go in a completely tragic direction, as when a homosexual, bisexual, or transgender person believes that they themselves are evil for their orientation or gender status, or when some women see themselves as less valuable because of their sex.

I'm sure that it's a lot more common for a person's views to be shaped by their personality, but the two unfortunately aren't always congruent.

How did you watch a 40 min video in 10 mins?

I love Nietzsche as well, even as a theist. He is someone who's philosophy represents the honest logical out-working of what it means for God to not exist. I actually very much enjoy his very early work where he was heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, yet more optimistic... not yet convinced atheism is true, and actually gives very interesting ideas about the nature of God... including the very author, actor, and spectator metaphor that I do. Nietzsche understood better than most the importance of God.

The reason why there's very little persuasion on this topic, as far as I can tell, is that the evidence is almost exclusively experiential. It doesn't abrogate the laws of physics. It can seemingly side-step what we think of as causality but these sidesteps are indifferentiable from coincidence.

Really what you have at the end of the day are some people who've experienced the unexplainable in such a way where they're forced to accept their experiences as valid versus those who haven't. For those who haven't all they have any confidence looking to generally is what's been vetted by peer review and anything that sounds unusual typically gets passed off as a type of con-artistry that they won't have enough information to debunk and even if they did they'd spend the rest of their lives digging through it if they had any need to disprove all of it. Accordingly people take rather shabby heuristics by feel, call them truth, and when it's the materialist side of the wall demanding material proof - there is none. Understandably if it were all con-artistry it would mean that they could waste their whole lives bogged down in it and never find the bottom, that might be true if all they had was one-off personal anecdotes and so-called religious miracles to look through but that really isn't the case. They also seem to have very little confidence in their ability to parse things that aren't vetted for them perfectly by establishment-friendly experts.

I really prefer to leave the atheists and agnostics alone because I understand that, when I was where they were at, there would be no argumentative evidence I'd be able to provide that would really have been enough to drive a bolt through all of my doubts. Perhaps some of my reading recommendations might have really opened my eyes at the time but I have to admit, that would only apply to me running into a younger version of my self in the same kind of mindset and logical problems that I was trying to parse.

About the only time where I think atheist and antitheists get off the rails is calling belief a mental illness. If it were high-pressure evangelism I'd agree that they're looking at something of a cultural disease at a minimum, but as far as belief itself and in particular the more mystic directions - they simply have no clue what they're on about and sadly, in the case of belief, they take their antitheism in this case as making them pinnacles of expertise on the topic (ie. claiming that by knowing that it's all bunk that they know more than anyone who'd believe it). That's not really logic so much as ideologue comfort food.

AspE, throughout this thread, strong evidence; albeit, circumstantial have been provided.