Does God Exist?

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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by B4E » Sat Dec 29, 2012 12:26 am

I knew someone would eventually use the 'I went to a faith school and by the age of 4/5/6/7/8/9/10 I was like 'this is ****' bollocks <awe>
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Cal
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Cal » Sat Dec 29, 2012 12:32 am

B4E wrote:I knew someone would eventually use the 'I went to a faith school and by the age of 4/5/6/7/8/9/10 I was like 'this is ****' bollocks <awe>
I'm sorry for offering my perspective. You offered yours with the being raised in a similar environment and believing, which is worse. <gent>

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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Lidl » Sat Dec 29, 2012 12:35 am

So Cal you're basically saying that every single theist is an imbecile? <scratch>
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by B4E » Sat Dec 29, 2012 12:36 am

Cal wrote:
B4E wrote:I knew someone would eventually use the 'I went to a faith school and by the age of 4/5/6/7/8/9/10 I was like 'this is ****' bollocks <awe>
I'm sorry for offering my perspective.
You make some good points (and I will reply to one or two), but the amount of people who say this with a smug look on their face as though just because they decided to reject what they were taught, they are clever (which is funny in itself) is pathetic. It astounds me, it really does. Especially when they start being condescending about it.
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Cal » Sat Dec 29, 2012 12:38 am

Livin' Davide Loca wrote:So Cal you're basically saying that every single theist is an imbecile? <scratch>
I'm just being equally dismissive for the point of countering his post. What makes being raised in a religious family and believing acceptable, but a similar upbringing and not believing bollocks?

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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Ramone » Sat Dec 29, 2012 12:39 am

If God exists he is a massive cronut.
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Lidl » Sat Dec 29, 2012 12:42 am

Cal wrote:
Livin' Davide Loca wrote:So Cal you're basically saying that every single theist is an imbecile? <scratch>
I'm just being equally dismissive for the point of countering his post. What makes being raised in a religious family and believing acceptable, but a similar upbringing and not believing bollocks?
I was referring to what you said in your reply to his massive post, not sure if you are <scratch>

I'm not saying that either is more acceptable than the other. Believe what you want, just don't be a condescending prick about it <ok>
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by B4E » Sat Dec 29, 2012 12:42 am

Cal wrote:
Livin' Davide Loca wrote:So Cal you're basically saying that every single theist is an imbecile? <scratch>
I'm just being equally dismissive for the point of countering his post. What makes being raised in a religious family and believing acceptable, but a similar upbringing and not believing bollocks?
Because you believe what you are told up until a certain age <ok>

And I never said it was acceptable, he asked me why do I believe in that God, so I provided the answer that came to my head.
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Dr. Bishop » Sat Dec 29, 2012 12:49 am

"My family is a mix of Irish Catholic and Church of England, I was sent to a Roman Catholic primary school, and by the age of 8 or so I was already questioning how on Earth anyone could believe this rubbish. I guess I just don't understand people who didn't go through that and just happily sat there and were spoon-fed that tripe because they didn't think to see if there was a more logical option."

It may be your opinion, but you could have put it in less condescending terms <scratch>
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Cal » Sat Dec 29, 2012 1:01 am

Voluptuous Vuckic wrote:"My family is a mix of Irish Catholic and Church of England, I was sent to a Roman Catholic primary school, and by the age of 8 or so I was already questioning how on Earth anyone could believe this rubbish. I guess I just don't understand people who didn't go through that and just happily sat there and were spoon-fed that tripe because they didn't think to see if there was a more logical option."

It may be your opinion, but you could have put it in less condescending terms <scratch>
I wouldn't say it's necessarily condescending, I'm not intentionally implying superiority. Perhaps I could have used more apologetic terms, but then it wouldn't be an accurate reflection of my thoughts; I genuinely questioned how people could believe what I perceived to be a load of nonsense.

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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by The Situation » Sat Dec 29, 2012 1:14 am

I think the real problem here is the word god, which is such a loaded term.

Let me approach it from a different angle, to play devil’s advocate if you will. I’ll use an analogy of the basis for most conspiracy theories, where the minority in power somehow try to control and coerce the less privileged, sometimes this may actually be the case but it’s not done deliberately. The rich want to stay rich, there is no contract or doctrine which they all agree to sign, they merely just know what’s best for them and the situation sort of occurs due to instinct.

This could be the same with universe, there is some sort of implied order, there is no physical entity or even entity at all controlling/creating the universe consciously….. It just happens, just like a clock hand moves each second.

The universe seems to have rules i.e. gravity, so there is undoubtedly some sort of order…it isn’t just a big jumble of atoms that randomly change every second, these atoms act in certain ways in certain situations. What creates this order? Observing the universe it probably isn’t conscious like the god described in religion; in fact if it was conscious and could make choices, then it could make the wrong choice, meaning the universe wouldn’t survive the length it has, as infinity is a long time not to make at least one wrong decision.

There’s no way we can express this vastness of order in our language so we just call it god which gets misinterpreted, warped and its true meaning lost.

In short if there was a conscious god I don’t think we would be alive now, the only way the universe lasts this long is if things just happen like clockwork without choice from a higher being, but there is undoubtedly some sort of order/structure that seems to control the universe in a very indirect and unconscious way, is this ‘God?

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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by skalpel » Sat Dec 29, 2012 10:14 am

Dismissing Cal's long and well written post by picking on one line and saying " <awe> I knew somebody would say this bollocks" is pretty condescending if you ask me. But bickering will obviously get us nowhere so I'll drop this here <gent>.

Anyway..
B4E wrote:Why did he pick a 'illiterate and extremely uneducated' part of the world? Just like now, the educated people who think they already have ideas of what and how would maybe resist and reject the God, and how things would of changed if one part of the world simply rejected God.
So what you're saying is that intelligent people are closed minded and stupid, while unintelligent people are open minded and clever? <****> And you're also suggesting that the world has improved because of Abrahamic religion?

The rest of your post I can't really respond to because it's guesswork which isn't useful for debating. Facts have to be established, otherwise we could sit here all day letting our imaginations run away. To take one example: You say that god's motives for creating humanity are unclear to you; but you don't even have any proof that god created humanity, nor any proof that he even exists. No wonder his motives are unclear. It's like being told by lots of people that somebody murdered their wife, and despite there being no proof that this person murdered their wife and no proof that the person even exists, you still start to speculate their motive. It's guesswork built upon conjecture.

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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Amnesiac » Sat Dec 29, 2012 10:43 pm

Sorry if this has already been asked.
B4E wrote:His motives for creating us is unclear for me. Maybe he wanted to experiment on free will? I don't know. I refuse to believe that Earth is the only thing he concentrates on. Maybe he's staging the largest Age Of Empires game known to anything. Ever. (Your point is very hard to counter, it's one of those things nobody has an universial answer to).
So, by not understanding his motives, how do you know that God is good or evil?

Also, whilst I'm at it, something has always puzzled me about what the modern world considers 'popular' religions, why is God always portrayed as being very like man, with human emotions and temperament? It just seems very odd that a 'higher being' would be very human like in their actions when they would, at the same, be very different from ourselves.

Cue Skalpel to tear this apart because somehow the questions will be inaccurate <roll>

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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Tsi » Sat Dec 29, 2012 11:09 pm

Ammy wrote:Sorry if this has already been asked.
B4E wrote:His motives for creating us is unclear for me. Maybe he wanted to experiment on free will? I don't know. I refuse to believe that Earth is the only thing he concentrates on. Maybe he's staging the largest Age Of Empires game known to anything. Ever. (Your point is very hard to counter, it's one of those things nobody has an universial answer to).
So, by not understanding his motives, how do you know that God is good or evil?

Also, whilst I'm at it, something has always puzzled me about what the modern world considers 'popular' religions, why is God always portrayed as being very like man, with human emotions and temperament? It just seems very odd that a 'higher being' would be very human like in their actions when they would, at the same, be very different from ourselves.

Cue Skalpel to tear this apart because somehow the questions will be inaccurate <roll>
god is a alien who hangs out on the dark side of the moon eating pink wafer bars and injecting jif :bandit:

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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Cal » Sat Dec 29, 2012 11:26 pm

The Secret Ingredient wrote:
Ammy wrote:Sorry if this has already been asked.



So, by not understanding his motives, how do you know that God is good or evil?

Also, whilst I'm at it, something has always puzzled me about what the modern world considers 'popular' religions, why is God always portrayed as being very like man, with human emotions and temperament? It just seems very odd that a 'higher being' would be very human like in their actions when they would, at the same, be very different from ourselves.

Cue Skalpel to tear this apart because somehow the questions will be inaccurate <roll>
god is a alien who hangs out on the dark side of the moon eating pink wafer bars and injecting jif :bandit:
I guess that explains the re-branding of the cleaning product to Cif. Wouldn't want that coursing through your veins.

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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by DDuc » Sun Dec 30, 2012 1:06 pm

The way I see it, we can't even begin to try and understand how and why we're here. If the answer was presented upon us, it would probably be like giving an ant a calculator. I see it in the sense that making any assumptions about the world we live in is unwise, whether it be the assumption that there's an all powerful deity or that the universe came to being 'just because'.
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by skalpel » Sun Dec 30, 2012 1:23 pm

DavideDuck wrote:The way I see it, we can't even begin to try and understand how and why we're here. If the answer was presented upon us, it would probably be like giving an ant a calculator. I see it in the sense that making any assumptions about the world we live in is unwise, whether it be the assumption that there's an all powerful deity or that the universe came to being 'just because'.
We'll get there eventually; if you presented quantum mechanics to the inventor of the wheel, it'd be like giving an ant a calculator. You're right, making assumptions is a bad idea. Instead we should gradually build up a solid understanding of the universe through reason and evidence, standing on the shoulders of the work of our ancestors. It is what we have done successfully for millennia, it's what has led us to this privileged age, and it's what stands directly at odds with belief in a god.

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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by DDuc » Sun Dec 30, 2012 4:03 pm

skalpel wrote:
DavideDuck wrote:The way I see it, we can't even begin to try and understand how and why we're here. If the answer was presented upon us, it would probably be like giving an ant a calculator. I see it in the sense that making any assumptions about the world we live in is unwise, whether it be the assumption that there's an all powerful deity or that the universe came to being 'just because'.
We'll get there eventually; if you presented quantum mechanics to the inventor of the wheel, it'd be like giving an ant a calculator. You're right, making assumptions is a bad idea. Instead we should gradually build up a solid understanding of the universe through reason and evidence, standing on the shoulders of the work of our ancestors. It is what we have done successfully for millennia, it's what has led us to this privileged age, and it's what stands directly at odds with belief in a god.
Do you really think we'll reach that point though? What exactly is "there"? Do you mean total understanding of the meaning of life? Am I asking too many questions?

I think it's an optimistic thought since the human race could easily wipe itself out before we even reach that point. Yet again, that's me making assumptions. My opinion of the future is as worthless and as void as the opinion of somebody living 500 years ago who would of speculated with the same interest.
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by skalpel » Sun Dec 30, 2012 7:45 pm

"There" and the concept of "getting there" is an indeterminable intellectual goal that basically represents our species knowing everything, and wanting to know everything which is what humans have been aiming for since before we were even sapiens. If it had somehow been decided permanently, tens of thousands of years ago, that there is no point in trying to figure out anything to do with life and the cosmos, then we would not be sat here now talking on computers. If we weren't extinct, then we'd be sat in caves shivering, procreating and eating whatever injured animal happened to stroll by with our bare hands. If we somehow stopped giving a damn about learning everything right now because "f*** it, we'll never figure it out", then we'd be in the beginnings of a dark age. We have to strive to learn more, always, and the belief that we will arrive at a goal is central to this, regardless of what it is or when it will happen.

Apologies if that made no sense, I'm tired as hell but wanted to answer today <roll>.

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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Cal » Sun Dec 30, 2012 7:58 pm

Listened to this last night/this morning, not strictly on the subject of the existence of God, but some interesting stuff on a genetic link to being prone to religious belief, and the history of Christmas. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pfv8r" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; 30 minutes is too short to get into any depth though :(

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