Why do you believe in god?
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loserinasuit wrote...
Im going to ask you a few questions that will also confuse the hell outta youif god doesn't exist then why has his name been passed down for so long?
why has the bible which was created long ago still written to this day?
I wonder why the bible has space reserved for passages that detail how to treat slaves, women, and animals (particularly how to go about sacrificing them), etc. but doesn't say a single thing about treatment/cures for diseases such as cancer and AIDS, predict current technology (internet/computers), or say anything about current events.
If a book written centuries ago was able to say "and one day, God will verily make the internet a place for ye man to prosper and use," I would be singing a different tune.
You should look up religion's influence on the brain. I particularly recommend the writing of the neuroscientist Oliver Sacks . And anyway, natural selection led us to favor people who believed in faith (esp. our own) and helped them survive and reproduce. To do this day, people still value social interaction and even marriages with people who have similar religious beliefs. It's not so surprising that religious thoughts still lead to the activation of particular regions of the brain and the release of neurotransmitters and neurohormones that lead to sensations of euphoria and connectedness.
Religion and music combined serve as a particularly powerful duo-- check out "This is your brain on music: the science of human obsession" by Levitin.
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StaticChange wrote...
The absence of one thing cannot be taken to be proof of another. Religion, at its very core, embodies faith - the blind belief in that which is unproven and unverifiable - where every answer to every question and every doubt is equally meaningless. And it is not that this way of faith is even a terrible thing, but it cannot be called a good thing either. In truth it can only be called a senseless thing. To believe with conviction in religion, or indeed anything for which you cannot verify, is to gamble your beliefs.
The wisest course, whenever you don't know the answer to something, is to believe that you don't know the answer. Atheists are certain there is no god, and everyone else is certain there is, and no one knows anything for sure, but somehow they are all so certain...
To me, I think the existence of god is unlikely, especially as detailed by any of the traditional religions. I find it humorous especially how people who profess to follow these religions blur the vision of god as depicted in their religion with western ideologies, how everyone assumes this god is purely benevolent. People mold their religion to fill in the gaps of what they do and don't know, they rework it time and again so that their beliefs that are unverifiable mesh properly with those that are, so that at the end of the day they can feel like they still have an answer for everything.
Maybe god does exist. Maybe he really does care. Maybe he really doesn't. Maybe he is benevolent, maybe he is evil, and maybe he was always just a dream born of wishful thinking. I base my moral code on the exchange of respect and strive always to do what is right by the ideologies of my society - and I believe in what makes sense and what is verifiable. And I know that if god really does exist, and that if he really does care, then it wont make a difference to him if I prayed to him on Sundays. And if he does exist, but doesn't care? Then I really don't either.
Somewhat unrelated, but I wanted to let you know that I always appreciate your posts, SC. Thanks for your sprinkles of intelligence and insight.
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I swear to God i've said this so many times but can a Mod just sticky one of these threads.
Firstly, It is the believer who has the burden of proof. Secondly, Every single arguement(that I can think off from the top of my head) for God's existance so far have pretty much been debunked by logic.It's up to theists to get new arguements.
Firstly, It is the believer who has the burden of proof. Secondly, Every single arguement(that I can think off from the top of my head) for God's existance so far have pretty much been debunked by logic.It's up to theists to get new arguements.
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thegreatnobody wrote...
Like in the later part of the Book of Job in the Bible, God challenges Job, a human who complains about his loss, to seek the control of nature that is like His, or do the unimaginable like a God would.The book of Job is a horrible book really.
It embodies one of the core-reasons why I hate religion in general: dominance.
Beings ruling over others. Enforcing their rules, punishing those who don't obey and rewarding those that do.
The subtext of this entire story, and yes I've read it, is god throwing a hissy fit over someone doubting him even the tiniest bit, after this person has had his entire family die, his fortune taken from him and his body rotten with various unknown diseases. The claims god makes and the pieces of proof he requests of Job are fucking insane. One of the demands even insinuates that the sun moves around the earth. Which is proof enough that the entire story is made up by the fanboys of the time, just like the gospel of Matthew.
The entire story tells us only that we should blindly accept those in power and not question them. Those who do will be tortured, those who don't are rewarded. And we're supposed to consider this as perfectly normal. It tells us we are supposed to live as beings ruled by an other.
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Hmmm another thread about god, well i do believe god for all the good thing he has done to me, and i blame all the bad thing to God.
God is god it's up to you either you believe God or not, either way all human will return to the earth anyway. A huge portion of my friend is religious so i can't do much, but i hang out around atheist a lot so i'm not bother by it to much.
God is god it's up to you either you believe God or not, either way all human will return to the earth anyway. A huge portion of my friend is religious so i can't do much, but i hang out around atheist a lot so i'm not bother by it to much.