The great and all powerful religion thread!

[Blind Guardian]

Just posting this for Mr Da"6000 years of Earthly life"kryn
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sciencea...World's-oldest-tree-discovered-in-Sweden.html

Gnight!

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

That is quite simply an evil atheist lie.

 

[cookiecutter]

I don't know if it bothers me, but it is a valid point. I do not know what I would be like if I was born somewhere else. But I figure that's God's to deal with. It may sound like a cop-out, but what else can I do?

But I am fully convinced that one religion is true while others are not, or that no religion is true. I believe there is truth. There is a way things are. We talk and talk about all these things, and all the while there is a truth that some or all of us are missing. Do you agree with what I have said so far?

I think I do. It seems really obvious that either one religion is true or none of them are. I think the "none of them are" option is the most reasonable. You believe Christianity is the truth for a variety of reasons. Do you think it is the most reasonable or is it just the one you chanced to have learned?

I'll continue my Bible quoting with an interesting case of God deciding that he screwed up when creating man (even though he's supposedly perfect?), and that he has to kill off nearly everyone to fix his mistake.

There has long been theological debate whether imperfections in the universe are either part of God's plan or evidence against his perfection. Leibniz had arguments with Newtonians about this after the theory of gravity made God have to hold the stars apart all the time.

But God's existence and nature is a theoretically scientific hypothesis, which is in principle falsifiable, because a universe with a God would be much different than one without.

Someone's been reading the God Delusion.

...according to one line of thought, out of like...a fucking lot. I personally don't buy that.

Here's the way I see it. If God exists, especially in the way describes in most religions, then he has an perceptible effect on the universe. If he has a perceptible effect on the universe, then he can be studied by science because that's what science does. If he does not have a perceptible effect on the universe than a universe without god is indiscernible from a universe with god. Arguably then there is no difference between the two and there might as well be no god.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Yeah I know how it goes. I don't see it as possible for science to interface with god.

 

[cookiecutter]

go to hell

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

 

[Cythraul]

Here's how I look at it. If God knows our futures, we have no free will. He knows exactly what we will do. Now, some people argue that he has no control over us individually; he just knows what choices we will make. However, knowing literally everything (and thus knowing what choices people will make) prohibits an individual's free will, because their fate is already written in stone before it has even been enacted. Even if God only knows what choices we will make, it stands to reason that those choices have already been made, thus how he knows we will make them. We could not change those decisions, because then God would not actually know our futures. The same applies for himself; God knowing his own future is a logical impossibility, because he would know all his choices before he made them, but would be powerless to alter those decisions. Thus, he is not omniscient. I know it's a very circular point to argue, but it just makes no logical sense.

Consider the following two claims:

(1) It is necessarily the case that if God knows that X will happen, then X will happen.

(2) It is necessarily the case that if God knows that X will happen then X happens necessarily.

Claim (1) seems perfectly acceptable, while claim (2) seems to me at least questionable. Furthermore, I do not see how you would get from (1) to (2).

Or consider the following scenario. Suppose I want Alter to be punched in the face. Further suppose that I know you would like to punch Alter in the face and that at some point you will have an opportunity to do so. Suppose that, knowing this, I implant a device in your brain which works in the following way: If you are in the presence of Alter and are on the verge of deciding not to punch him, the device intervenes and causes you to punch him in the face. However, if you decide to punch Alter in the face all on your own, the device does nothing at all. In this case it seems that I can know that you will inevitably punch Alter in the face, and that you will not be able to do otherwise. But intuitively it seems that you could still make a choice to punch Alter in the face. So if the example has the consequence I suppose it does, you can freely choose to do X even if you could not have done otherwise and somebody knows you will do X.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Indeed, or, like I said earlier, just because God knows you'll do something doesn't mean you aren't doing it of your own accord. Punching Alter in the face is just awesome though. I don't see how anyone could choose not to.

 

[Vimana]

In the past there were many things we thought could never be proven or disproved.

Exactly. Over time we have never found out that anything was caused by God or anything supernatural. What we have found out is that things that we thought were supernatural aren't. The theist argument now is "science hasn't explained the beginning of the unvierse good enough so God exists."

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Over millenia, we've discovered that things we thought were supernatural aren't. Kickass. Science cannot ever interface with god. They're mutually incompatible.

 

[skeptik]

Because, you know, science studies the natural world.

 

[Zephyrus]

Over millenia, we've discovered that things we thought were supernatural aren't. Kickass. Science cannot ever interface with god. They're mutually incompatible.

You just contradicted yourself. God is just as supernatural as all those other phenomena which have been proven to be natural.

As I see it, God only exists as a psychological phenomenon, the first meme.

 

[skeptik]

He didn't say God wasn't supernatural. He said that those things which we once believed to be supernatural we now believe are natural, because we've been able to observe them scientifically. But because God is supernatural, we can't observe him scientifically. Or if we can, then he is not God, insofar as our understanding of him necessitates that he is supernatural. If there is a God, it is impossible for science to determine it.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Thanks Matt, that's basically how I see it, and that's why I think most anti-theists do a bad job explaining exactly why they don't believe in God.

 

[Zephyrus]

Then it's not worth speculating His existence if we're inclined to equate the supernatural with irrelevance.

 

[skeptik]

That's what cookiecutter has been arguing since he started posting here, among others such as myself.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

No, supernatural things are not immediately irrelevant, especially in the realm of supernatural phenomena. It's just that science doesn't claim to study supernatural things and therefore human science can't really approach the idea of god without having major problems. Just like the idea of god defies pretty much every kind of human logic ever. The idea of a god is relevant to our existence, supernatural or not. Science just is not the right vehicle to go about being an atheist by, purely anyway. It seems to me that saying "there's no evidence for god so he doesn't exist" is just a reaffirmation of held beliefs which stem from deeper. The concept of god is inherently beyond logic, reason, science. He's a dude in the sky just kind of sitting there, he's omniscient, etc. There's no way science can touch that. We're only human.

 

[Rhombus]

No, supernatural things are not immediately irrelevant, especially in the realm of supernatural phenomena. It's just that science doesn't claim to study supernatural things and therefore human science can't really approach the idea of god without having major problems. Just like the idea of god defies pretty much every kind of human logic ever. The idea of a god is relevant to our existence, supernatural or not. Science just is not the right vehicle to go about being an atheist by, purely anyway. It seems to me that saying "there's no evidence for god so he doesn't exist" is just a reaffirmation of held beliefs which stem from deeper. The concept of god is inherently beyond logic, reason, science. He's a dude in the sky just kind of sitting there, he's omniscient, etc. There's no way science can touch that. We're only human.

I agree with a fair amount of what you're saying, and to point out something that is fairly obvious. The point you brought up about no evidence of god is the exact same way that Theists point out that because you can't necessarily disprove god that he exists. I also believe that it's fairly trivial because most Theists choose their beliefs and will not change no matter how much you debate the ideals of religion with them. I am completely okay with this as long as they choose not to force their beliefs on to me. I realize that some people who believe in religion do this, but it is unfair to say that all religious people go around forcing their ways of life down our throats.

Just my $0.02

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Well, I'm a hard atheist anyway but pretty much only because to me, god does not exist. It's deeper than that but there's no real reason to explain it.

 

[cookiecutter]

That's what cookiecutter has been arguing since he started posting here, among others such as myself.