Well, at least the feeling is mutual. 

Maybe there is a point that connects science to a god or technologically superior being. But if there is, I can pretty well guarantee that everyone's ideas about the whole thing are completely wrong. Either way, there's nothing to prove your case. My case doesn't need proof, but it has stacks of it anyway.

Huh?

Peoples beliefs are not my concern. Their attempts at forcing that belief onto others that discard it is my concern. And you didn't really answer my questions.

So let me get this straight. You're admitting there may not be a god, and that you need something to have caused everything, hence your belief? As for giving god a chance, I did that. In a way I still am. Anytime he wants to say hi I'll be here.

Oxymoron. Not only has it NOT furthered human advancement, it's crippled it. 

I'm going to assume that you meant might, not mind. In which case, why? History proves my point.

Maybe not, but I don't believe in any god whatsoever. Not a pantheon, not a single, nothing.

Again I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Nope. In fact, his mere existance would strip me of it. And I don't hate any god. They'd have to exist for me to have any feelings for them at all. 

I'm attacking every view of god. At least until everyone shuts up about their delusions and keeps them to themselves.

Thanks for the kind welcome to the board and analysis of my post todangst 

I'm honored to add the Rational Responders Icon and link to my "Less Than Human" blog site 

That is a poor attitude that maintains the status quo of ignorance and indoctrination. SCIENCE has been debunking myth consistantly for well over 100 years. There are right answers and wrong answers to how things work and religion is nothing more than filling in the blanks with myth.

Considering the state this planet is in now more than ever it is up to religious people of all labels to question themselves and question their religious leaders.

No one is suggesting forcing anyone to do anything. But it is because of lack of introspection and self examination and it is because of blind following that the answers that are there are not seen.

I think life is far too important to leave it up to myth. I think humanity can do better than sky daddy wars. I think humans have a natural "disire" to want to do good and do right. Where it gets screwed up is lack of questioning combinded with ignorance and lack of education along with indoctrination.

If all religion was was a favorite golfer, or favorite tennis player or sports team, and no one died over it, I wouldnt care. But since we can prove that the earth was not made in six days and you wont get 72 virgins it is the duty of rational people to dispell myths. 

"No one can prove" should mean, "You wont convince everyone".

We do have reality on our side and I wont mince words about that. 

Whether your idea of God violates anything is largely irrelevant and there's no reason to prove God isn't anything you decide to define it by? Why not just believe that love is love, and it's a human emotion that has certain effects on our lives? Calling it God just unnecessarily complicates things. Your God seems to basically be a generic, touchy-feely happy deistic god. When you muddle the definition of God to the point that all it does is replace the name for something else, what's the point anymore?

I think I'll start calling my penis, God. You can't prove it's not God, and I can prove it exists. It's helped bring love and happiness to many people. Girls even call it by name when they're in its presence, "Oh God! Oh God! YES! YES!!" Sound logical? Prove me wrong.

For the record, love and other emotions and the physical effects most certainly can be shown and tested by science and medicine through measuring the release of chemicals by the body and the electrical activity in the brain. But that's just not a very romantic way of looking at it.

 

The God I believe in is everything. Absolutely everything. You, me, electricity, time, up and down,{edit:insert word:science:here} (human emotions I wouldn't be too sure, for human emotions are just that, human. This is another topic of debate, but for all intents and purposes, human emotions and nature[other then the primal, animalistic nature] is not God because God didn't have a factor in the development of such emotions. Thus, human religion, being a human emotion, and idea, is not God)



It's attributes is that it is everything.


I have no evidence.


But hey there is no real evidence that black holes exist, or quark matter, or magnetic monopoles, yet 8 billion dollars will be and has been put forth towards a device, the Hadron Particle Collidor, which ultimately might create a black hole, killing us all. But hey, who really gives a shit? In the name of science!!



So lets see...thank you for the history lesson on why Brenda's having a baby at 13 years old, IN THIS DAY AND AGE. Yes, capslock.



Bearded man in a sky... yup, what a concept, a God that is just like me and you! Asshat...

And as for being a J.C. fan, I mean, I really appreciate you pretty much putting me in the lucky 2 million, when in all actuality by that Christian view of the world, I am definately going to be..hmm probably the 6th level of Dante's Inferno. Maybe 5?


---------------Hold on now J.C. fan. How do you know your got your diety right? 4 billion people believe that Allah and not Jesus got it right?--------------

How did you know what my diety was anyways , before you straight fowardly asked what exactly it was? Oh wait, thats right, you made an ASSUMPTION about my beliefs. J.C. fan...haha, I like that term.

Aye, if memory serves correct, an unstable black hole was accidently formed with a similar, yet much smaller, particle collidor. The Hadron however might create a stable black hole. And the fact is, no matter how much mathematics one might use, a black hole is still a black hole...in which case, we really don't have much of a clue on what could happen.

Though, if a stable black hole was to form, as unlikely as that is, I can only anticipate that we will gain a much more complete knowledge of the world, in which case...I don't know, I guess I'm left fairly speechless on such an amazing event.

--------Actually, it's a fairly simple matter to prove that God does not exist.



    Prove it then. I am readily available to give up a belief in a higher being if you can give logic, reason, and PHYSICAL evidence that God does not exist. It's so easy, then do that. Because those three criterium is precisely what you all are asking me to put forth to prove the existense of God.

My God is founded in logic and reason, yet it is my own logic and reason, and no other man can share that, for my God is precisely that, my idea of God. I have no evidence to show that MY God exists. Therefor, yes, by your standards, I do lack logic, reason, evidence, and my entire structure of what might be is entirely based upon faith.

Prove it. Give me your logic and reason on why God does not exist. And please, don't just repeat what has been said so many times on these boards about how I can't prove it. Thats not logic and reasoning, thats just putting the burden of proof upon me. So, you seem to have this simple matter of reasoning, logic, and proof... Give me something fresh on the matter. Then, be so bold, and point out, hell, even possible evidence on why God does not exist.

---------The problem is that theists do not accept such proofs -- or any proofs, for that matter.

Oh really? I accept plenty of proofs, because they are just that, PROOF of actual existence of laws of nature. Simple matter, eh? Then do it. Give me this so called proof, and as a theist in the now, I will give up my faith for you have given such proof to fully dislodge my ideas based in illogic and unreasoning. Oh, and my lack of evidence.

Physical evidence is irrelevent because of how the 'proof' works.
The argument starts with a definition of God, which will be slightly different to each theist. There are two forms of argument that I'm aware of:

Strong Atheist Argument
The strong atheist tries to show that your definition of God (or any other supernatural being) is incoherent and/or meaningless.
Incoherence is when a definition is self contradictory and/or inconsistent with itself. For instance, a 'circle with corners' is an incoherent concept as a circle should not have corners by definition. This means that 'circle with corners' doesn't refer to a shape like 'square with corners' or 'triangle with corners' does and is meaningless in this context.
However, a concept could be meaningless without being incoherent. If I was to talk of a 'Juit' and you were to ask me what it was, if all I could tell you was that it was like nothing you've ever heard of then what would be left? The God concept can be like this. They can tell you that God isn't of this world and is beyond your comprehension but what does that leave left for God to 'be'. At the least our language is not capable of description so all attempts to talk about God will be false and meaningless.  

Agnostic Atheist Argument
The Agnostic atheist starts with the definition of supernatural, (i.e. transcendent, outside space-time etc) and then points out that all of our concepts are spacio-temporal. Even 'existence' is a spacio-temporal concept. This means that anything we say about such a being will be false so we should remain silent on the matter.

Most of us are Agnostic Atheists to the general idea of a supernatural being and Strong Atheists to the Christian God that we see as incoherent. We might be wrong and the arguments are always debatable but I think they'll stand the test of time. Give them a go - see if you can find a flaw in them.

Brian37, 

"You need to give up your crybaby attitude that we are out to take your bibles away from you or out to shut down you churches by force."

 Most interesting.  The churches thing, no problem, but...the assertion about Bibles could be debated.  After all, aren't these guys (the RRS) gearing up for a Bible "recycling" project?  In my e-mail conversations with Sapient I have not yet been satisfied as to the full details of this venture.  It is most unfortunate that the conversation was stopped by Mr. Sapient before I could get enough information. 

 

God created man, gave him free will to make decisions for himself, and then punishes him to eternal damnation for making the wrong decisions.   I know he supposedly works in mysterious ways, but this is beyond mysterious, it's plainly spiteful and mean.

 --  Kirbert

kemono,

Santa Claus does exist.  A Christian man who helped out the poor did exist.  He has been refered too as St. Nick.  Maybe you should use another example.

 

 I couldn't help, but smirk at this comment.

 

You beg the question by assuming the "Bible" has been proven 'false' (on what grounds and by what do you mean false?). There are several factors and views attached to the documents that form the "Bible". So I really don't understand where you're coming from here.

 And what made me smirk was the comment that the "laws of physics have disproved God as well...", as though Natural limitations apply to a transcendant Being outside of the Universe.

 Funny. Thank you for the enlightening lecture.

 

No. I merely stated that he was begging the question and I asked him by what he meant by it being proven 'false' and making "the Bible" out to be one single falsifiable document.

Certainly. I never said he didn't. You should avoid jumping the gun.

Under your interpretations, perhaps. Elsewhere I would beg to differ.

By what means? Philisophically or by empirical evidence alone?

Oh really? How confident we are...especially since one is not so keen in reading what I wrote properly.

 

Temper temper

 

 

 

He stated that the Bible was false with no grounds whatsoever. To do so alone is to beg the question. I then gave him the benefit of the doubt by asking by which grounds he finds the Bible to be false. He merely said "The Bible is false" without giving any reasons to justify said claim.

 So while you can try and catch me in a contradiction you should develope some better and more discerning reading comphrehension skills.

 And when you say under any "sane interpretation" you are poisoning the well; not only this, but completely simplifying the issue by that mere example. For instance, the moon certainly does "emit light" in the sense that it gives off light to the natural observer. Scientifically this is false, but in no way does it refute the author's observations or the way he described (or was described to) for the audience. One of the general problems among the 'literal' readers of the Bible and their objectors (you coming into example) is their inability to comprehend author's thought processes behind a given texts or their intentions; usually succumbing to reading the literature as either a manual or a scientific textbook. The entire interpretation regarding the "four corners of the earth" comes to mind.

Though I could be wrong...but I'd like to see a better reply other than "Only sane interpretations..."

 And please, enlighten us with your 'pure deduction'.

 

And as far as I know I cannot tell if there are limitations beyond the natural realm since I am unable to observe or comprehend them; however, it would be an appeal to ignorance to suggests they do not exists or do exists on that basis alone. Furthermore, I have not pleaded my God into "incoherance", as while I may have objected to the laws of physics going against God I did not say that God is not entirely incoherant or appealed to God being limited to the Supernatural realm alone and unable to communicate within the Natural realm.  Simply because a being is not limited to such laws, does not mean that a Being cannot function within or outside those laws. There is no logical justification for your claim that we have no grounds to discuss such a thing.

 It would be like I stating that we have no grounds to discuss the existance of historical figures that we have not yet unearthed their remains. If I cannot see God, have yet to be spoken to by Him, etc. etc. this does not mean that He has not left footnotes within the Natural realm and nor does it disqualify His existence because we only have these footnotes; just as we do not disqualify the existence of histortical figures on the basis of only having them recorded.

 

Again, you beg the question. You're assuming I have not done so(I have, thousands of times), simply because it's not in this topic. I don't repeat every post I've ever made every time I make a new one. Your assumptions are irrelevant.

 

Let me ask you this. Do you believe in the devil? Do you believe the devil has free wil? Hasn't the devil been in the presence of god? If the devil can manage to have free will after have absoulte knowledge of his existance then your argument just went down the toilet. FLUSH!

 

James 2:19 You believe there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that -and shudder.