i admire your efforts but you really aint answer my question. i disagree with your ASSUMPTIONS  about an all powerful being. it shows nothing. and as for "not knowing", there leaves huge hole for the possibility of a god. you will never know. you can never answer where anything started from. you can't. it will never make sense. nice try tho.

 

now i gotta go to work

 

bye 

Pardon my vulgarity, but this is the real answer.

I would say, "You arrogant, self centered fuckwad! You fucking sadistic son of a bitch! How the fuck could you possibly expect me to feel guilty for not believing in the most fucked up, illogical piece of shit anybody had ever written and claimed to be true? You are the most awful creature in the universe, and I would rather experience your fucked up, psycopathic version of retribution than give you even the slightest bit of pleasure. Fuck you you fucking prick."

Yes. This is true. And if he exists as described, than he is the most awful and evil creature imaginable.

That's also true. But, if that god exists, then it is literally impossible to know anything because logic and reason cannot be trusted for anything. It would even destroy the axiom of existence. If god can do anything, he could also make us think we exist when we don't! Philosophy, science, and everything that we believe tells us about the universe would be utterly useless.

There are a lot of people, who you have called weak, who are actually open-minded, and accept the possibility that they might be wrong. They're able to notice that everyone who follows Islam is just as convinced that they're right. It occurs to them that there's a possibility neither side is right!

These people examine things rationally, and sometimes they are able to get past the fear of losing their religion. Sometimes, the brainwashing of their childhood didn't stick.

I've already explained this to you. If an illogical god exists, then it is literally impossible to know anything about anything -- including whether god exists! If logic doesn't work, then even knowing that the illogical god exists wouldn't be certain, because it would take logic to realize that illogic sometimes works!

Um.. yes. Pretty much all of us have had that in our first philosophy class.

Descartes' argument falls apart upon further examination. His method of starting with the axiom of existence was sound, but the ontological argument has been refuted since about ten minutes after the next competent philosopher read it.

Furthermore, dualism has been completely refuted by modern science. Consciousness is a product of natural phenomena, and though we cannot explain all aspects of consciousness yet, we can demonstrate that dualism is false.

I'm not a cosmologist, so I'm not going to attempt to answer this. Deludedgod, one of the mods here, has written several essays explaining in detail the current theories. You can find his essays HERE. It's heavy science. That's what you're asking for. Now, are you going to read the essays?

Here's an interesting thought for you. Let's do a side by side comparison of everything that we've learned using the scientific method, and everything that we've learned using divine revelation.

Science: Well, just look around you. Computers, medicine, clothes, candles, cat food, prisms, space shuttles, telescopes, x-ray machines, skin cream, fishing hooks, vibrating dildos, books, televisions, 409 spray cleaner, the banana, immersion blenders, nuts and bolts, wankle rotary engines, windmills, THX Surround Sound, plastic, aspirin, Velvet Elvis, passports, lava lamps, compact discs, IPods, beer, spears, Colt 45 revolvers, boots, cataract surgery, agrigulture, domestication of animals...

Divine Revelation:

 

 

 

...

 

You see, religion has "claimed" many things through divine revelation. For instance:

The earth is flat.

The earth rests on a tortoise.

The earth stands on pillars (You've read that in your very own bible!)

The sky is solid, and the stars are hanging from it like Christmas tree lights.

The earth is 6000 years old.

Man was created out of dirt.

Rabbits chew cud.

A great dragon was killed by a rival god, and from her dead body, the ocean was formed.

The thing is, everything that religion has claimed about cosmology has been proven wrong. How did we do that? We used science.

I recommend that you expand your philosophical horizons a bit. Descartes is what they give you in your first class to show you how modern philosophy began. We've made a lot of progress since then.

And you're qualified to say that it's a science how?

Are you a scientist? How arrogant of you to suggest that with your little poly-sci half education that you're more qualified than 99% of the scientists in the world, who dismiss intelligent design as having no science!

We aren't sure. Neither are you.

That's because we don't know for sure. One of the theories we have now might turn out to be true, but we're not going to claim that we have the answer when we are not certain. That's the territory of preachers.

Through observation, experiment, and mathematics, just like it has answered every other question it's answered.

You really need to read the essay refuting the ontological argument. You're speaking from ignorance. Why don't you read all those essays I linked for you, and if you still don't understand it, come back and ask us, and we'll try to explain it more. I'm not going to type out the explanation here because it's already been done, and I don't feel like giving you your own personal explanation. I've shown you exactly where the answers are. Go read.

 

Christians, jews and muslims can't be tollerent twords gays and lesbians because their holy book condemns it. The can never learn tollerance to something that is considered a sin by divine right.

I'm glad that it's not my being too smart that is putting you off. I'm not sure what sarcasm you're talking about though. Aside from this post all my questions and comments have been quite serious. If you really don't feel like you are capable of responding though I can't force you.

Good luck in your studies. Perhaps when you complete them you will be capable of addressing the problems pointed out in your arguments.

Take your time, Focusedoc.  We're not here to rush you.  We want you to take as much time as you need to think about what we say and respond adequately.

I hope you're not considering me among those who you say are "attacking you."  I'm attacking your beliefs, to be sure.  They're silly, and I can prove it.  But I hope you have realized that if you're willing to engage in meaningful dialog, we're going to be respectful.

 My job as a moderator includes making sure that nobody treats you unfairly.  I can assure you that if anybody does that, I will deal with it.  If you're here to learn, you will be treated respectfully.  Of that, you have my assurance.

 

Well, I've done my best, and it's clear that you have no interest in learning anything.

Maybe some theists with a more open mind have been watching this thread and can recognize how terrified you are of questioning your god.

Perhaps there's a reason for that fear.  Maybe you know deep down that if you question it, you might have to give up your god?

I dunno.  That's the way it was for me when I was a Christian, anyway.

 

i dont know if you were ever a christian. you were a christian by practice but what a real christian is, is a person who is in love with god. not cause of what they hear about him but because they know him personally. you spend time with him and he speaks with you. you experienced him in a real way in your life. many people say they are christians becuase they go to church, pray before they eat, and read the bible. many do it out of fear of going to hell cause they dont actually understand what it REALLY means to be a christian. we take on christs name and call ourselves christians. we share in him as a family. so how can you say you were a christian, by that definition and then say you questioned god. the most real things about god are in your intimate relationship with him, that so called christians have never had. if you were like me, and had this, no matter what people tell you, you cannot doubt god. simply because you knew him personally. you never got personal with god. you never experienced him. you never knew him dude. you were never a christian. you were nominally but not actually.

That's very convenient for you, isn't it.  No matter what I say, you've got a set answer that removes your responsibility to answer the real question.

You're right.  I spent two decades of my life just thinking that I was a Christian.  God didn't bother to let me know that this or that little bit of dogma was keeping me out of the "true faith."  Or, maybe he didn't feel like mentioning to me that my particular rationale for believing in him wasn't the right one.

You don't have to question god because you've decided that he's illogical, so you can't question him.

You don't have to believe I was a Christian because you've decided that all true Christians stay Christians -- because otherwise you'd have to question something.

You don't have to question whether there are natural explanations for things that seemed miraculous to you -- because you've decided they were miracles.

You are one of the most closed minded people that has come to this site, and I don't say that lightly.  I pity you.

 

Saying "God cares" is not an explanation. The elf probably cares too. You're just dancing around the question instead of approaching it honestly. This offers no more reason to take God seriously than it does the elf.

which is funny because you haven't given a good reason why God makes more sense than the elf.

Still going on about how god cares and wants a relationship?

It's still not a good reason for believing it.

Continue.

All other god concepts aside from yours are tyrannical? Well that just smacks of ignorance left and right.

A rose by any other name is still a rose.

A tyrant by any other name is still a tyrant.

I don't see it as a rule book. I see it as a work of fiction---a piece of mythology the same way I see "The Odyssey" or "Oedepus Rex". It might have some cute moral concepts embroidered into it, but so do Aesop's Fables. It's just an obsolete piece of history. Cool to study, stupid to take seriously.

Turning them into salt, drowning them in worldwide floods, dropping oceans on top of them, commanding them to kill their own children, giving them permission to treat women like cattle, killing babies, and so on and so forth.

Your reaction is probably something like "well you're purposely emphasizing all of that stuff to make him look bad." No, I'm just demonstrating that YOU are purposely emphasizing the OTHER things to make him look good. Atheists like to call it "cherry-picking".

Did you just say that? That's so arrogant and ignorant. Your religion requires you (or allows you) to do things that another religion would think was bizarre or possibly even silly.

Consider the following: In our country it's rude to NOT look someone in the eye when speaking to them or being spoken to by them. In other traditions, it's rude if you DO make eye contact. It's more polite to look away.

Consider the following: In current tradition, man and woman are equal in all respects except gender (or at least are thought about in that way). In older Christian tradition (yes, that includes yours), when women were married, they were literally understood to be owned by the man. Not just his wife. Not just subservient to him in a respectful, pretty kind of way. The man literally owned her in the way that he owned a new couch.

Has it ever occured to you that they don't MIND wearing cloth over their faces? Just like you never think about why you make eye contact instead of NOT making eye contact, they just wear cloth over their faces because that's the world they live in. It's likely that most of them never even think about it.

Stop putting yourself and your religion at the center of the world and the world will look like a much better place. You're probably not inclined to think so, but trust me: It does.

And the fact that they ALL do this has never seemed suspicious to you?

Oh, but yours is the RIGHT one. Because god cares and the other gods don't. Right. Forgot. Sorry.

Well, some of them have tried before, and then some Christians got angry and killed them. Not saying you would, but hey. These are things you have to consider.

Go to the middle east and I'm sure someone would be more than happy to tell you about Allah. You just live in a nation where most people are Christian.

Yeah, but I know that gunshots actually exist. I've heard them. I've seen them. I've FIRED A GUN. Claiming that you were trying to save me from a gunshot---which I would have heard and could verify for myself---is not the same as claiming that you are saving me from incineration in Hell (Christianity), a flood of fire and magma (Zoroastrianism), or the gaze of Sauron (Lord of the Rings).

This is why I have decided that analogies no longer count as explanations. I refuse to let Christians use them when they debate me because they almost invariably fail to use them correctly. 

 

I think it's you who fails to understand him. I think you BELIEVE you understand him, but you don't.

I grew up in a Christian household. I deconverted sometime between my Junior/Senior year in high school. I used to be in a praise band! Go figure!

What does that mean exactly? I hear Christians say this incredibly often, and it occurs to me that these are probably often used as prescriptive answers.

what do you know about him?

what has he done for you that qualifies him as your "best friend"?

Only because you want to.

Zoroaster created before he did.

Curious that you know this with so much certainty. How so?

Nope. 

Is this supposed to make him sound less like a tyrant? If God really wanted to separate the sinners from the non-sinners, or just the sinners from himself, why did he have to create Hell for them?

Here's a possibility: the non-sinning god-believers go to heaven and get an eternal reward. The sinful skeptics just die and cease to exist. Separation accomplished!

Here's another possiblity: the non-sinning god-believers go to heaven and get an eternal reward. The sinful skeptics go to another place far away that does not involve fire and torture. Maybe it's just really boring there. Maybe they all just get thrown into a huge, empty warehouse for all eternity. What's the point of all the fire and torture?

Answer: Your god is not love. 

 

Thanks for agreeing.

See you at the next poor defense of your faith. =) 

Dude, the voices in your head aren't God. They have pills for that.

Yeah, but a lot of converts say self-invalidating shit, like, "I used to be an evolutionist...," meaning they don't really get the idea that science and religion aren't just two tribal identifiers in competition on similar grounds.

no you have been curious about the knowledge of. but not knowing him personally. very different. if i study beyonces life and i think i know her, i dont know her personally.





he does give us some of himself clearly. he suggests to be somebody to us. he doesn't suggest to be some remarkable being. he has given us his form. thats jesus is. our connection to god.





i answered this already, that was in the old the testament. when jesus came, he came to reconcile us with god the father. he stopped doing that after jesus came. he was wrathful and after jesus came, he was peace. the prince of peace.





no one is trying to take your purse promising there is a bomb inside tho. your example doesn't have real meaning. i dont get it, sorry. christians dont try to take your bag to save you from a bomb. even if you said a gay persons right to marriage or womens right to choose, it still wouldn't fit that model. no one is saying that at all. its not the same.





i said we dont get him fully clearly because he is our creator. not that we dont know a thing about him. if we admitted we didn't, we wouldnt have a religion.





they do. maybe not you but i see F^ god t shirts all the time. i know many atheists that think if he did exist he would suck. blasphemers on your challege cursed god. i work in manhattan where new york atheists are so liberal and atheist yet curse god. someone on this forum did saying if he met god , he would curse him out. i said if you believed he exists, you would curse him.





your parents love for you but if you did wrong, i'm sure they would send you off to jail or a nut house. parents do that all the time. if your not behaving, they punish you. some parents are strange and when their child does something wrong, they don't react. parents like that raise rotten kids.



besides, god is also our friend. he OFFERs you the chance to love him. if you are deliberately choosing not to be with him, why should he force you too for eternity. he is a gentleman and does not force himself.
{MOD FIXED - please learn how to use quote functions}

Let's use the example you give, since you keep coming back to gays.

You say to a gay person "being gay is wrong, you need to stop"

He says "why?"

You say "because you'll go to hell"

He says "what? why would you say that"

You say "just trust me"

You see, being gay is the bag, you want to take that away (saying it's wrong) becuase they will suffer forever if they don't (the bomb). The person has never seen or heard the bomb and has no reason to believe that it's there, you just want that person to take it on your word. The analogy seems quite apt.

How can you be sure that you know anything about him if he is capable of doing anything to trick you?

This is very confusing. First you're saying that god is tricking everyone into thinking he is not there (i.e. 2+2=5), but you're also saying that you know god. So how do you know that he isn't tricking you? Don't you admit that he could? So how do you know that god isn't a unicorn that is tricking you into thinking he's jesus? Surely this is something that god could do, right?

Why does god torment people by not allowing them to understand or know him?

To say that an atheist curses god would be a contradiction. Atheists do not believe in god, so how can you curse something that doesn't exist. If someone says "i'm an atheist, but i really do curse god" then that person must believe in god, and so isn't atheist. It's still possible to say "i curse god" without beliving in god, but then the statement doesn't really have any meaning.

The person on this forum you are referring to said that if god were real he would curse at him, yes, but that's not quite the same thing. I don't know if you read his entire post, but he would be angry because god punishes people for doing things that they have no reason to believe are wrong. He doesn't believe god exists though, and so he doesn't curse him now.

I certainly do not curse god. Since there is no god to curse, why would I waste my time? If I believed he existed I probably wouldn't either, since that would be a silly thing to do.

If I did something wrong, and my parents sent me away, they would still visit me. They would still want to make sure that I was as comfortable and happy as I could be. They would still want me to come home as soon as I possibly could. God does none of those things, and therefore he must love me less.

I see. So a gentleman is someone who offers you candy at gunpoint and shoots you when you refuse? Maybe I would curse your god if he were real, since he just gets worse and worse.

It is pretty obvious that the typical attempt at claiming a person was never really Christian is a desperation move by quite a few Christians to be able to discount anything that the skeptic says. So confusing are statements like "I believed and then through studying stopped believing" to these Christians that they would rather nip the concept at the source than to deal with the possibility that something so “shallow” as purposeful studying could be the cause of one to walk away from their god. The same goes for citations of authors who were once Christians and are now atheists. They could never have really been theists if they are saying these things now, so goes the implications in their weary minds.

For so many believers, the crux of belief is always based on feeling one’s way through whatever a conflict is emotionally, philosophically, and (for an alarming number of stupid people) scientifically charged. "I feel that God wants me to study biology at university" is a completely valid claim in a theist's mind, just as “I knelt down and prayed that god would reveal himself to me” works when “witnessing” first person episodes about how one came to god. The process is so utterly self gratifying that anything else seems too much effort in the end, which is certainly the case for Focusedoc.

The feelings are the crux, not any discovery based on knowledge or circumspection about the real world or why we humans have this base level need to feel protected by a higher source, a paternal figure who can make things better or at least protect us from the big bad unknown danger. In fact, further investigation after a witnessing episode by a Christian or any other theist is typically not required. After someone makes a proclamation of god belief based on feelings the flock froths at the mouth, speaks in tongues, or otherwise engages in group hugs while passing a box of tissues around. Then it’s the next guy’s turn ad infinitum every bloody week for the rest of your life.

That anyone could ever walk away from this cultish behavior would have to be because this person never really felt the truth to begin with, a monstrously presumptuous position to hold by any reasonable standards. That people change their minds about Santa Claus or the tooth fairy in the same way is lost on them, in fact so much so that they will refuse to accept the comparison of something so obviously childish with their god who is clearly adult so they say. What was it Focusedoc said of these examples, that they were humorous? Yet she knows all too well that she stopped believing in the former myths for the same reasons atheists don’t believe, or more importantly in this case, stopped believing in her god using the same cognitive process that has led her to this conclusion. This acceptance is too close to home I think, and for that reason she will more than likely hang on to this notion for as long as she can, maybe forever.

There is no repeatability requirement to witnessing or references to the perennial “Jesus take the wheel” kind of thinking. For that reason, all forms of theism are just as intellectually bankrupt as the others. An atheist can say this with no special pleading required, any monotheist holding to their own god concept over others cannot do the same. This fact is painfully obvious to anyone giving a modicum of honest effort to see the implications. As a defense strategy perhaps, or a stick in the mud act of denial, these stalwart theists use the tool they can gerrymander as a reasonable out; their god has personally told them that he is real and all the others are fake. All one needs as a theist it seems is the belief justification to be qualified on feelings and then connected to whichever god is convenient to make the entire process valid in their eyes. And then they can hide behind this idea, or better, bury their heads in it, when faced with the lack of any kind of measured intelligence in coming to that conclusion. It would be funny if it were not for the fact that it is still so prevalent. This is why many theists simply ignore contradictory evidence about gods in general. "They feel him this way and I feel him that way" is all that is needed to make reconciliations in these theists’ minds. That feelings is what binds their justifications and not facts will forever be lost on the most gullibly inflicted, like they are on Focusedoc and her ostrich-like approach to these questions.

I wonder how valid her political science professors would rate her justifications of say the way in which the Iraq war will eventually end. Is it enough for her premise to be that “I feel” the US will win and pull out in two years? I doubt even she would give this answer much credence given all the unknown elements in this conflict. Yet, when it comes to her god construct (one no doubt shoveled down her throat when she was younger), she spouts equally nonsensical crap post after post.

I liken this brainwashing to the type of trickery done in a Saturday evening stage performance of Peter Pan. At the end when Tinkerbell is dying, the cast members beg all the children to simply believe in fairies, less Tinkerbell die of her imagined injuries. Then with some lights and a well rehearsed magic show, Tinkerbell tinkles her way back to life and all is good. The greatest of ironies in this example in my mind is the one we see when we scan the audience of adults smiling at the process that has taken hold of their children. They know all too well that it is lights and sound and a neatly crafted display of smoke and mirrors. They also know that as neat as the show is for their children now, they will eventually get that it was all for fun, a bit of play on the imagination of a child. Knowing this and understanding these implications, these same parents, in party with what has to be the biggest scam ever created by humanity, will get up the next morning, dress themselves and their kids in their Sunday best, and then go and watch another stage performance just as reminiscent of smoke and mirrors as the night before. And the parents buy it hook, line, and sinker!

I pity these people, I really do. To willingly tie your future intelligence and worldview and the future of your children’s intelligence and worldview to a belief in a celestial Tinkerbell is sad indeed. That the process is so endemic and pervasive that it annually sacrifices people like Focusedoc to recalled witnessing episodes, disjointed and mind numbing displays of poor thinking skills, and ineffectually abusive behavior, is all the more reason why we have to keep up this fight.

For Tinkerbell’s, sake, I implore us all to keep up the fight!

Cheers!

[b]Magilum[b],

 

       I appreciate that you hold to the credo that non-judgemental approcahes to those caught in the sticky web of theism are the way to go. I do respect that stance in those who have the wherewithal to keep to that line.

 

       I used to myself but have come to expect the same in return before I will give a person that level of respect. If they are unwilling to demonstrate that they have a desire to honor this process themselves, then frankly speaking the heavy hand is what they shall get inasmuch as I am able to disseminate it.

 

       When I go too far (this happens enough for sure) I get called on my language by both atheists and theists. When I have crossed the line, I like to think that I am honest enough to admit it.

 

       If only Focusedoc were willing to do the same.

 

       I agree that emotions are the driving force to much of what happens in these exchanges, and that would certainly include mine as well at specific times. I've enjoyed your leveled posts for what it is worth. You are certainly more patient than I am.

 

       Cheers!