Atheism and Theism

[Swango1980]

Sorry, you’re saying that god couldn’t have told man not to enslave other human beings? God told man all sorts of stupid stuff they couldn’t do so I’m afraid that doesn’t wash with me at all.

Don’t wear clothes made of mixed fabrics, don’t plant two kinds of seeds on the same vineyard, don’t eat shellfish, no trimming the sides of your beard or hair, death penalty if you work on a Sunday, don’t touch a woman when she’s on her period, don’t eat pork, no hunchbacks or dwarfs allowed to become a priest….I could go on.

These are all things that the god of the bible told man he was or wasn’t allowed to do. But you’re telling me that in the case of keeping other human beings as slaves, he kept silent because he wanted man to have free will?!?

Sorry, like I said, it doesn’t wash.

(And he didn’t even stay silent on slavery. He specifically told man how to keep slaves, where to get them from, how much they could beat them and how to cheat to get them to remain as slaves for their whole lives).

God is happy to tell people what to do and what not do do based on the general moral codes of the population at any given point in history.

So, if the Bible was written today as the word of God, by an author in Western Society, then I'm sure he'd be very happy to tell us all that Slavery is bad. But, it was written many centuries ago, so God decided to withhold that information, and actually infer the opposite. So, he either exists but is more worried about selling his book than telling us the truth (thus just telling us what we want to hear), or he didn't exist and humans just wrote the book based on their own morality

 

[Don Barzini]

Your choice…

Btw…if you have no belief in a God then you can have no belief in the truth or otherwise of your closing bit in parenthesis.

ETA - I'm not going to get into any sort of theological debate about the existence of my God or not - I'm happy with the faith that I have that it helps me have the life that I have and that life enables me to help and support others - especially at their times of need.

Agreed. That particular point is made against the concept that the god people choose to believe in is all-loving.

ETA bit. That’s cool. I have no problem with people believing what they want, I do like a debate though!

 

[Neilds]

Talk to God and it is called praying. However, using the defence that God told you to do it is usually not a good thing to do

 

[Don Barzini]

I believe that's why its called "Faith" Its based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.

Plenty of people are willing to argue that they have proof of god. None of them successfully, of course.

 

[Sid Rixon IV]

God is happy to tell people what to do and what not do do based on the general moral codes of the population at any given point in history.

So, if the Bible was written today as the word of God, by an author in Western Society, then I'm sure he'd be very happy to tell us all that Slavery is bad. But, it was written many centuries ago, so God decided to withhold that information, and actually infer the opposite. So, he either exists but is more worried about selling his book than telling us the truth (thus just telling us what we want to hear), or he didn't exist and humans just wrote the book based on their own morality

Just be happy you haven't attended a signing.

 

[Voyager EMH]

Plenty of people are willing to argue that they have proof of god. None of them successfully, of course.

I remember the comedian, Dave Allen, saying that someone once said to him, "I have seen and spoken to God. She's black."

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

I remember the comedian, Dave Allen, saying that someone once said to him, "I have seen and spoken to God. She's black."

He also signed off saying ‘may your God go with you’ and so recognising that different people have different gods…perhaps not though all of the spiritual variety (as he put down his glass of Jamesons )

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Plenty of people are willing to argue that they have proof of god. None of them successfully, of course.

Likewise, many people can testify to the importance to them of having a faith in a God through the hope, strength, direction and purpose that faith gives them and in the life that they live

 

[Don Barzini]

Likewise, many people can testify to the importance to them of having a faith in a God through the hope, strength, direction and purpose that faith gives them and in the life that they live

Indeed, and as I've acknowledged, that's cool.

 

[rulefan]

These are all things that the god of the bible told man he was or wasn’t allowed to do.

I didn't know that the bible was written by anybody's god.

 

[Imurg]

Plenty of people are willing to argue that they have proof of god. None of them successfully, of course.

The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish."Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that something so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.


The Babel fish talking to Arthur Dent

"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.' 'But, says Man, the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' 'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and vanishes in a puff of logic. 'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing."Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid from making a small fortune when he used it as the theme of his best-selling book, Well That About Wraps It Up For God."Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

 

[Swinglowandslow]

If the God of my understanding deliberately created humankind as different from all other creatures in that humankind knows good and evil and has free will to choose what he does, then that same God could not at the same time tell humankind that it had to do one thing or the other - that decision could only be left to humankind. That we have made some very bad and terrible choices over time - often given interpretations to fit their will of what others had written down as best they understood things - well I would say (of course I would) that my God would despair at our sin and bad decisions but then help us to work to remediate the bad outcomes of what we have done. Anyway - that's how my God works for me.

First….stop this nonsense about “ my God”. If there is a God , he is what he is.
He does not conform with your definition or anyone else’s.

Also, this business about we were created with a free will, and thus things are what they are because of that.
Ask any designer, or engineer. If you designed something, e.g airplane, locomotives, whatever, and before creating it and putting it into service, you had the gift of knowing the future, and you therefore ( unlike human designers) knew that it would kill, maim, cause disease, and pain and all sorts of terrible suffering , would you press the “Start” button?
No, you wouldn’t, Amost all humans wouldn’t
Would a loving ,compassionate , all powerful, perfect being?
No, of course not.
Conclusion……….There isn’t one.

Epicurus put it more succinctly than this…..and he was right.

Finally.. the big question is not” Why,” it is “Why not ?”
If the objective is that we, mankind, live in Bliss in Heaven for eternity , why didn’t we find ourselves there from the outset?
Why not have that scenario , and only that , created ? Period!

 

[Hobbit]

First….stop this nonsense about “ my God”. If there is a God , he is what he is.
He does not conform with your definition or anyone else’s.

Also, this business about we were created with a free will, and thus things are what they are because of that.
Ask any designer, or engineer. If you designed something, e.g airplane, locomotives, whatever, and before creating it and putting it into service, you had the gift of knowing the future, and you therefore ( unlike human designers) knew that it would kill, maim, cause disease, and pain and all sorts of terrible suffering , would you press the “Start” button?
No, you wouldn’t, Amost all humans wouldn’t
Would a loving ,compassionate , all powerful, perfect being?
No, of course not.
Conclusion……….There isn’t one.

Epicurus put it more succinctly than this…..and he was right.

Finally.. the big question is not” Why,” it is “Why not ?”
If the objective is that we, mankind, live in Bliss in Heaven for eternity , why didn’t we find ourselves there from the outset?
Why not have that scenario , and only that , created ? Period!

Your second paragraph in which you conclude, “No you wouldn’t almost all humans wouldn’t…”

How many humans work in the arms industries knowing how destructive their products are?

As to the wider debate, is there isn’t there, what I can’t, ultimately, disprove I’m open minded to either option.

 

[chico]

I am a true believer and a gambler. If I'm wrong but if I'm right

 

[Sid Rixon IV]

Simpleton here - who has two Gideons Bibles, both nicked from hotels, out of genuine curiosity (but years apart).
You know when you read a book and get to a point where you think "Oh, I've missed something." and you thumb back to see what you missed?
Well, Adam and Eve were created by God and they had Cain and Abel (and Seth?).
Cain slew Abel.
God banished him to the "Land of Nod".
Cain took a wife and sired Enoch.
So:
1. How did God let Cain know he had a free transfer back in the day?
2 Who gave Caine directions to the Land of Nod (which sounds strikingly similar to The Night Garden - if you have grandkids you'll understand).
3 Where did these women in The Land of Nod come from?

 

[Fade and Die]

Simpleton here - who has two Gideons Bibles, both nicked from hotels, out of genuine curiosity (but years apart).
You know when you read a book and get to a point where you think "Oh, I've missed something." and you thumb back to see what you missed?
Well, Adam and Eve were created by God and they had Cain and Abel (and Seth?).
Cain slew Abel.
God banished him to the "Land of Nod".
Cain took a wife and sired Enoch.
So:
1. How did God let Cain know he had a free transfer back in the day?
2 Who gave Caine directions to the Land of Nod (which sounds strikingly similar to The Night Garden - if you have grandkids you'll understand).
3 Where did these women in The Land of Nod come from?

I’m afraid there was only one woman in all of creation and it was Eve!

 

[Voyager EMH]

A work of the imagination
A factual historical account

Every action described by Homer in The Iliad and The Odyssey. What do you want to believe?

Believe every word of it to be true and you have faith and have embraced Homer religion.

Take whatever you like to be possible/probable/likely/unlikely.
Its a good story none the less.

This is how I read religious texts and doctrines. Fictional works of the imagination, but some interesting comments on the human condition.

 

[Deleted member 18645]

There are multiple religions in the world today and throughout history and various sub-versions of them beneath that. They cannot all be right even though they all claim to be. So it can safely be assumed they are all wrong.
In the scientific world we live in, there has not been a single piece of proof ever that any of these religious characters ever existed.
And in the last few hundred years, some of the worst atrocities have been carried out in the name of religion.

If people want to believe in them, that is their right.

The same as it is my right to believe it's all a load of ......

 

[bobmac]

Some need proof before they believe something.
Other people will believe in something until someone disproves it.
Faith.
If you have proof, you don't need faith.
The difference is, non-believers don't knock on doors and stand on street corners ready to try and convert believers.

Some say you should do your research before criticizing religions, that may not be good advice as you don't have to scratch too far before you often find the problem....
Money....Tax free money.

 

[louise_a]

Why are so many who profess to be Christians in their beliefs, so un Christian in their actions?