i think that this response sounds rather emotional. nothing is supernatural, only undefined...not understood. there's no such thing as magic. god is not magic. it is simply undefined. prayer does work for me. i don't understand the science behind it, but it has worked just dandy for me. morality is man-made bullshit. you're right, god is not moral, and i admire and emulate that, and i wish that more people would too (judgemental bastards). i have faith in things that i possess evidence of...that i have experienced evidence of. i have faith in what i have experienced. real things. just like science does. and apocalyptic myths may not benefit mankind, but who says that's the point? the fact that we're destroying the planet and each other in the name of greed, lust, gluttony, and sloth is not a myth. wake up.
The God Denying Method
- Thread starter Sin
- Start date
i think that this response sounds rather emotional. nothing is supernatural, only undefined...not understood. there's no such thing as magic. god is not magic. it is simply undefined. prayer does work for me. i don't understand the science behind it, but it has worked just dandy for me. morality is man-made bullshit. you're right, god is not moral, and i admire and emulate that, and i wish that more people would too (judgemental bastards). i have faith in things that i possess evidence of...that i have experienced evidence of. i have faith in what i have experienced. real things. just like science does. and apocalyptic myths may not benefit mankind, but who says that's the point? the fact that we're destroying the planet and each other in the name of greed, lust, gluttony, and sloth is not a myth. wake up.
Dark junk was created to fix the errors found between current physics and what is observed.
Dark junk is proof positive the physics of mankind are wrong!
Otherwise, they would have predicted the matter/energy before the observations!
get over it
or
show me i am wrong (anyone)
kind of what choice enables; the ability to learn from trial and error and record what was learned
in many ways, i agree
but like in religion some rules many will not break (2LoT) because some believe in the infallibility
of course, as knowledg evolved, new material evidence can over take beliefs and 'laws'
God is a word mankind created; nothing is taken from existence by any label.
But both teams (science/theology) must follow the same rules of integrity and fallibility in order to progress.
spidergoat,
Not at all.
The fact that you see God in this localised sense shows that you are not
disputing "God", but the God which is believed in by the Judeo/Islamic/Christian people.
Show me where God says "i am the god of the people of a certain, region, or race.
If you believe that the material world had a begining, then you believe in the supernatural.
How can you honestly know that, when all you would do is try to
come up with a rational explanation of someones claim?
Your thinking is, if it can be rationaly explained, then there is no
need to infer God.
But the truth is you don't actually know, even though you will use
the explanation of your choice to increase justication of your denial.
Notice that again your atheism is only comes into play as a response
to something.
What does it matter whether God is moral or not?
Is the universe moral?
Is science moral?
Is death moral?
You may have contradictory evidence to the specific person or institute
you refer to.
But you have no idea as to what is true or false when it comes
to actual God.
If you deny God, you deny on your own basis.
Again these are responses to theists.
You deny God on the basis of not agreeing with the theists, not because you
deny actual God.
If you deny actual God, then you do so of your own volition, not because of lack of evidence.
Atheism is not a lack of belief in religion, it is in God.
Again you give your actual motive away.
Religion does not have to be about God.
A good example of this is in the NT where Jesus becomes vexed with
the religious heirachy of the day.
I'm not calling you liars, but I believe there are untruths, and dishonesty, in
the summing up process. I believe ultimately, you don't want to believe in
God, and you try to justify it with shaky reasoning, with outward credibility.
That's not a sound reason.
You don't know whether God exists or not.
And if God exists, then you are not separate from him, so to deny him
would be no different than to deny your father is your father.
That is irrational.
Either you believe in God, or you deny God.
The other position, "God does not exist" is somewhat foolish.
The agnostic position is an intellectual one, but never nevertheless
is based on denial.
jan.
Not at all.
The fact that you see God in this localised sense shows that you are not
disputing "God", but the God which is believed in by the Judeo/Islamic/Christian people.
Show me where God says "i am the god of the people of a certain, region, or race.
If you believe that the material world had a begining, then you believe in the supernatural.
How can you honestly know that, when all you would do is try to
come up with a rational explanation of someones claim?
Your thinking is, if it can be rationaly explained, then there is no
need to infer God.
But the truth is you don't actually know, even though you will use
the explanation of your choice to increase justication of your denial.
Notice that again your atheism is only comes into play as a response
to something.
What does it matter whether God is moral or not?
Is the universe moral?
Is science moral?
Is death moral?
You may have contradictory evidence to the specific person or institute
you refer to.
But you have no idea as to what is true or false when it comes
to actual God.
If you deny God, you deny on your own basis.
Again these are responses to theists.
You deny God on the basis of not agreeing with the theists, not because you
deny actual God.
If you deny actual God, then you do so of your own volition, not because of lack of evidence.
Atheism is not a lack of belief in religion, it is in God.
Again you give your actual motive away.
Religion does not have to be about God.
A good example of this is in the NT where Jesus becomes vexed with
the religious heirachy of the day.
I'm not calling you liars, but I believe there are untruths, and dishonesty, in
the summing up process. I believe ultimately, you don't want to believe in
God, and you try to justify it with shaky reasoning, with outward credibility.
That's not a sound reason.
You don't know whether God exists or not.
And if God exists, then you are not separate from him, so to deny him
would be no different than to deny your father is your father.
That is irrational.
Either you believe in God, or you deny God.
The other position, "God does not exist" is somewhat foolish.
The agnostic position is an intellectual one, but never nevertheless
is based on denial.
jan.
please explain..
ok..hehe..may that be so..
why did you choose not to believe in him then??
hah..and you laugh about the circular reasoning of the bible testimony..
what happened to that clock or chicken that could be orbiting the sun?? is it because it is not picked up by any satellites that it does not exist??
do you have all the knowledge in the world, skin walker?
do you have half of it?
(o~ff course this is with the neglect of the neglect in the term "absence" to all the books which are the "evidence" religions are based upon..it's like:- "absence of my understanding to evidence is evidence of the absence of what the evidence is trying to prove"..put simply..if i don't get it then it isn't there)
please explain..
ok..hehe..may that be so..
why did you choose not to believe in him then??
hah..and you laugh about the circular reasoning of the bible testimony..
what happened to that clock or chicken that could be orbiting the sun?? is it because it is not picked up by any satellites that it does not exist??
do you have all the knowledge in the world, skin walker?
do you have half of it?
(o~ff course this is with the neglect of the neglect in the term "absence" to all the books which are the "evidence" religions are based upon..it's like:- "absence of my understanding to evidence is evidence of the absence of what the evidence is trying to prove"..put simply..if i don't get it then it isn't there)
You're kind of proving their point for them, friend. You are speaking, clearly (and this is no insult to you) from a position of ignorance. More often than not, the one defending faith is the lesser of the two intellects. This is not a coincidence.
uh, gee, friend..how are you different than your description of me??
tell me why am i ignorant..
and if it is not coincidence..then what is it? and be sure not to appear the one with less intellect when you answer that question..
Not to speak for SG, but in actuality, that is a completely sound reason.
Moreover, it's a wholly rational reason.
Therefore, if there is no god, then no one actually denies a god. If one believes that there is a god and choses to deny that god, does this create a double delusion? Or does the second delusion cancel the first? Interesting.
The above paragraph is why there are millions if not billions of gods in the universe, each unique to the person who creates their own definition and justifications for what they believe. Out of curiosity, Lori, why do you believe the things above that you do? What premises exist to you that, together, arrive at the conclusion(s) above?
An argument from ignorance. In other words, you're saying that, because you don't know, no one else can either. Not now or in the future. Congratulations on the logical fallacy.
Or, perhaps he's thinking the lack of an immediate rational explanation doesn't necessarily imply a supernatural one.
Just because you appeal to arguments from ignorance doesn't necessitate that the rest of us must. Nor does choosing not to accept your claim of god (or Lori's; or Bishadi's; or Scifes'; etc. -each more or less different from each other) automatically imply that there is a "denial." According to your own words above, in order to deny, one must first "know." You seem to be claiming that SG "knows" there is a god (and not just any god, but your particular definition of a god) but denies it. Truly a fascinating proposition!
Is not atheism as a response to the silly, superstitious claims of the believer sufficient? If a billion people suddenly became believers in fairies to the extent that fairyology was desired to be taught in public school and the "Fairy Creed" was posted as stone monuments on public buildings, I'd proudly admit to being an afairiest in response.
Perhaps it matters little to you, but it matters very much to the millions who assert that all morality is derived from their god and without belief in it one cannot be moral.
This is a nonsensical statement. It has no meaning.
It seems, then, that you've created a strawman. Is it just easier for you to argue that your superstitious claims are part of reality if you first create a set of false premises that atheists "know there is a god" but just deny it because they're selfish? The reality is that most atheists (I suspect SG is one of them) don't "deny" a god they "know exists," rather they simply don't see good enough reason to believe in the superstitious and supernatural claims of those that assert one or more gods exist.
That's not a sound reason.[/QUOTE]
It's completely sound. And cogent. What follows from you, however, is not sound.
It is, indeed, irrational, but I suspect we have differing opinions of what subject the pronoun "it" substitutes for. You created three premises which conclude with "that is irrational." The first premise is that SG doesn't know whether or not a god exists. A sound premise. The second premise, assuming that if a god does exist, SG must be "not separate from him" doesn't follow. You can't get from the first to the second. Moreover, there are an infinite number of gods that could exist with an infinite number of qualities. To state otherwise is to admit to subscribing to one's own personal delusion of what a god should be.
The last premise is that the god that doesn't follow (the god of non sequiturs?) cannot be denied. This, too, doesn't follow since the chain is already utterly and terribly broken.
If you're sticking to your definition of "deny" to date, this is, then, complete and utter bullshit. And no different from me saying you either believe in fairies or you deny them. This is demonstrative of the strawman you're trying, but failing, to construct.
I'm happy to believe in whatever god you do should good enough reason be presented. No one, to date, has provided such reason.
Given the significance and extraordinary claims associated with the gods of humanity, one would expect to see evidence. The evidence isn't there. Therefore, it is evidence that such an extraordinary being is non-existent. Particularly when compared and contrasted with the evidence that does exist which includes, but is not limited to, contradictory and irrational religious doctrines, human propensity to insert deities, superstitions, and the supernatural in prosaic and even mundane events of the natural world, the thousands of gods (many of which contradict one-another) humanity has subscribed to in history and prehistory, etc.
This is an argument from ignorance. Not knowing how something works in no way necessitates the existence of [insert your particular notion of god].
But science, not our emotional needs- tell us that the supernatural does not exist. If God isn't defined, then the concept is rather worthless. I think modern religious people try to avoid admitting that the God of Abraham (the most common conception of God) IS rather well defined in religious texts. Since science does not support this defined God, people try to maintain their desire for belief by adopting more nebulous ideas about him.lori said:
I do not deny that prayer can provide personal satisfaction of a psychological nature, but it certainly has no discernible physical effects when studied using legitimate scientific methods. Scientific methods have a long track history of producing trustworthy results, as opposed to faith, which has a long history of being wrong. The phenomenon of selective attention to those events that fit with our prayers, and ignoring events that don't fit, explains why people erroneously believe that prayer works. Plenty of religious people in places of drought prayed for rain, prayed for food, and died in absolute misery anyway. If this is how God works, he is not worthy of any kind of worship.lori said:
No, science does not place faith in personal subjective experiences, that is the whole point of it.lori said:
We would not be destroying the world if most people felt that this life were the only one. We are destroying the world because most people thing this life is just a trial for the afterlife, which is eternal and thus more real. For evidence of this we need look no further than the Bush administration, which was driven by faith and was responsible for eliminating science from public policy, distorting revealed science, eroding environmental regulations, and engaging in optional wars in the mistaken belief that we need not answer to the rest of mankind for our actions.lori said:
This is how science works. Your statement is supportive of the scientific method, which modifies it's premises when new facts come to light. Observation drives our understanding of physics, not some metaphysical idea about ultimate Truth. How would science predict the need for galaxies to contain greater mass if they had not observed how they behave? The science was not wrong, it was merely incomplete. It is incomplete even now, and yet it is the best way yet discovered by mankind to reveal the nature of the universe around us.
I certainly am. What God are you talking about?jan said:
I do not believe the material world, which is all that appears to exist, had a beginning.jan said:
Yes.jan said:
If my explanation is the most rational one, there is no compelling reason for any rational person to believe otherwise. There are many irrational reasons for accepting absurd explanations for things, which shows that religion is irrational, which is all I'm saying. Absolute truth is irrelevant, all we can do is make models that accurately describe observation.jan said:
I'm not sure what point you are trying make with this statement. Atheism is a response to ideas about God and the supernatural. If religion didn't exist, atheism wouldn't be recognized as anything special, since everyone would be one.jan said:
The value of believing in God is said to be that He provides a moral framework for living. If God is immoral, then he's a bad example for humanity. If he is amoral, then why worship it?jan said:
No.jan said:
No, but people can be.jan said:
No, nor is it immoral, it's just a fact of life.jan said:
I can only deny the Gods as described to me. Failing to describe the God one believes in is not an attribute of any major theistic religion that I know of. I can only suspect that this would be part of someone's attempt to evade criticism.jan said:
Theists invented the idea, which I deny on a rational basis. If there is an "actual" God that, for instance, exists outside of time and is not described by any religion, then, although it might do no particular harm to believe in it, it also makes no demands on us, is not required to explain anything, and can be dismissed as merely wishful thinking.jan said:
I suppose there can be atheistic religions, where the religion does not make any supernatural claims, and only serves as a guide to living, but I would probably call that a philosophy instead. I don't have a problem with philosophies, they usually do not command belief based on faith.jan said:
Can you point out the dishonesty? Can you point out the "shaky" reasoning? As a child I admit that I did want to believe in magic, in God(s), in ESP, and I was ultimately disappointed that they all turned out to be unreal, but I have since learned that acceptance of our true situation on this planet is the most mature attitude, and the most constructive to humanity. What you cannot seem to admit is that you want to believe in an irrational idea even though there is no evidence for it. The best you can say is that it's a phenomenon about which no evidence can be acquired.jan said:
I am beginning to think that sound reasons do not matter to you. If the existence of God were obvious, like gravity, it would indeed be irrational to deny it. However, it is not obvious. If God doesn't exist, than it's right and proper to deny it.jan said:
I deny the God that most religions describe. If there is some other metaphysical descriptions that are unfalsifiable, they also make no demands on our behavior. Believing in such things would be as foolish as believing that the center of some distant asteroid is made of pancakes. I cannot prove that it isn't, but neither is there any compelling reason to believe such. Yes, my position is based on denial. I deny that there is any reason to believe in unreasonable things. In fact, I propose that such beliefs are ultimately harmful to mankind. We exist in a situation where rationality is of utmost importance. With a population of over 6 billion and the capability of nuclear weapons to destroy most of the life on this planet, acceptance of mythology as truth based on nothing more than faith can and will result in our extinction as a species.jan said:
It depends. Some might define the actions of a god or gods as that which deviates from the behaviour and appearance the universe in a significant way. Whereas others might posit that the actions of a god or gods is expressed in the everyday behaviour of existence. There is no hard and fast for defining that.
hey everyone, I appreciate that you all take the time to post your thoughts on this issue and I'd like to present some examples of the Judeo-Christian God that I'm not sure many christians know about and I'd like to hear their responses in particular, the first one is 2 Kings 2: 23-25
23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. 25 And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.
Before I'm accused of taking this out of context, as I know is a favorite charge of theists, the story is quite well contained. Within the rest of the book of kings, God has a nasty temper and kills many men by raining hell fire on them when they try to attack his messenger. I'd like to point out that these youths slaughtered by the two she-bears were absolutely not threatening Elisha's well-being in any manner. They were kids of a town known to be pagan, thus they would find whatever he had to say foolish because Elisha was not of them. So they say bald head and this offends the man of god so egregiously that he calls an ursine apocalypse to slay them (btw, what were these kids? legless torsos that they couldnt flee while the first of them were torn up??) Essentially, the problem lies with God's pandering to Elisha's petty insecurities and effectively denying these 42 souls salvation, which, if Elisha would've taken their childish talk lightly and spoke the truth of God to them, they could be saved. If anyone claims to have truth, they ought to be able to manifest it someway, somehow.He then coldly continues on his way... As the story goes, I was a christian...until I read the Bible.
How is this merciful? How is this the love? (1 John 4:8)
23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. 25 And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.
Before I'm accused of taking this out of context, as I know is a favorite charge of theists, the story is quite well contained. Within the rest of the book of kings, God has a nasty temper and kills many men by raining hell fire on them when they try to attack his messenger. I'd like to point out that these youths slaughtered by the two she-bears were absolutely not threatening Elisha's well-being in any manner. They were kids of a town known to be pagan, thus they would find whatever he had to say foolish because Elisha was not of them. So they say bald head and this offends the man of god so egregiously that he calls an ursine apocalypse to slay them (btw, what were these kids? legless torsos that they couldnt flee while the first of them were torn up??) Essentially, the problem lies with God's pandering to Elisha's petty insecurities and effectively denying these 42 souls salvation, which, if Elisha would've taken their childish talk lightly and spoke the truth of God to them, they could be saved. If anyone claims to have truth, they ought to be able to manifest it someway, somehow.He then coldly continues on his way... As the story goes, I was a christian...until I read the Bible.
How is this merciful? How is this the love? (1 John 4:8)
Last edited:
The truth is the God of love and compassion arose with the cult of Jesus and not before.
God is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. A holy triumvirate being that is collectively immutable. Regardless of chronology, this God is just as bound to being love as any part of him. In either case, the verse holds "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." It is God, not Jesus they refer to, the same God of the OT. The question stands.
John, Ch.1 Vs. 4, that's the new testament. The trinity is a 3rd century invention. This passage is not inconsistent with the powerful, vengeful, and jealous God that the Jews worshiped.
Yes, you are quite right. I think I know what you mean to convey with your differentiation between the OT and the NT conceptions of God...OT God is jealous and bellicose, wrathful and fearsome, while Jesus is quite the antithesis; meek, amicable, loving. While there is an apparent difference in their respective demeanors I can assure you that Christians hold that God is unchanging. What he was in the OT is the same God he is during the NT. The verse speaks of God directly in either case, not the god-man Jesus. Placement in the NT is irrelevant to God having to be love. Again, He is immutable (unless he's talking with Moses, he might change his mind every now and again, that Moses, so wise he counsels God on whom he should or should not massacre, but thats a different story...
spidergoat,
To you God does NOT exist.
There can be no denial.
jan.
To you God does NOT exist.
There can be no denial.
jan.
What does that mean?
If something does not truly exist for you, then there is nothing to deny.
What you are denying is religion.
jan.