Messages

SSH: I think there is no God.
...
I define myself as a skeptic, which is, and in danger to make a mistake (I am not going to wiki) a person who asks evidences to believe in something, and believes on them at the point where those evidences are enough for him.

So you believe there is no God. Which must mean you have enough evidence that there is no God. This is different from not seeing enough evidence that there is a God.

For example, take a cat  in a box with a poison released on a random event. I might say that I believe the cat is still alive (analogous to "There is a God"). You might say you believe the cat is dead (analgous to "There is no God"). The "I don't believe in God" (which is NOT what you said) would be saying that you don't know if the cat is dead or alive. Do you see the difference? You maybe said that you take both stances in your last post, and I want to be clear where you're coming from. KhrisMUC: I don't care what your stance is but Nacho's is relevant to my part in this discussion so please don't ask me not to discuss this! I'm not trying to label but to understand.

That' s because someone brought the words "Agnostic" and "Atheist" to the discussion, which I don' t really understant or differenciate... A Skeptic does question everything.

So are you saying that you do not believe that there is no god?

Indeed, paolo. I don't think anyone would try and claim the Da Vinci Code as a Christian game...

Would you say that Dawkins has an active believe that there's no easter bunny? It's just semantics anyway.

There's no such thing as a Dawkins anyway.

If atheist parents indoctrinate their kids that there is no god, they didn't really understand what atheism is (or rather: should be) about: about being a skeptic, about questioning everything. The "ideal" atheist hands them a biology book and the Bible when they're like, 15, and lets them make up their mind themselves. Not every atheist sees it that way, another reason why there shouldn't be a label like that for a person who doesn't believe in a god (people who don't e.g. bungee-jump aren't called "non-bungee-jumpers", right?).

Well, you get "strong" atheism when people believe there isn't a God and "weak" atheism where people don't believe there is a god. Most atheists are the former but argue from the point of the latter because its easier.

Come on, seriously, where else do kids get religious ideas from other than the people that raise them (parents, relatives, school, church)? I'm talking about the average believing teenager here, nothing else.

So hang on, you're changing your argument to be that 99% or more of Christian teenagers get their religion from either parents, relatives, school or church. Well, DUH! Hang on, I've got another stunning revelation here: 99% or more of all teenagers ENTIRE KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE is based on relatives, school, parents and (possibly) church.

How many "atheistic raised" become believers. Very few. Even the example you posted is the example of a man who was raised in a religious family.

Yes, but to be fair, how many people in their 30s have 2 atheist parents? Not that many, I bet. And I notice that you're pulling the old Christian trick of "Ah, but he wasn't  REAL athiest"

And surely atheist parents indoctrinate their kids that there's no God just as much. In fact, 99% of them do (to do a Khris ). So I don't think "without parental intervention" is fair, also.

Now here's something to discuss: why do my finger keep insisting on spelling atheist athiest?

Undoubtedly there will be some tendency for children of parents of religion X to follow that religion, just as they also tend to follow career paths, but I think there's also a tendency for teenagers to rebel against whatever their parents try and push on them, no matter what it is.  Of course, Khris's number of 99% is completely pulled out of thin air and I doubt there's any reliable statistics available on it, especially given the huge number of "nominal" Christians who don't do anything except Christmas and Easter services.

Its interesting how easily Khris dismisses a guy's testimony. And if you want to talk about going from one belief to another, here's an athiest to Christian testimony.

SSH was bred in captivity.

Yes, I was bread in captivity. It's yeast the way I was raised! I needed a good roll model. Don't pitta me for it. It might make me quite croissant.   


Nacho, my mother is a Deaconess and my father ran the Sunday School for ages. Now you can leap out and say "ahahaha - you proved my point".

And of course multiple interpretations of anything doesn't invalidate it. As I proved before but you missed the point.

I am quite sure that, the most religious the education was, the most "degree of believing we have"

But of course most countries in the world have large quantities of religious people in them (especially Spain). Therefore saying "Ahah, most religious people have a religious parent" doesn't prove anything as its actually quite hard to NOT have religious parents. I could just as well say "How many atheists do you know with atheist parents?" Very few? Well, that must prove that having atheist parents makes you religious. Correspondence in numbers does not prove causality. For someone who worships science, you don't seem to know much about the scientific method.

As for different interpretations invalidating the source, the orbits of the planets were interpreted by Newton into Newton's laws. Then Einstein came along an interpreted them differently. The motions of the planets must be invalid! Someone tell Saturn to stop moving in such a stupid way!

Or another analogy: Judges and juries keep interpreting the US constitution in different ways in different states. The whole constitution must be invalid and hence the USA reverts to a British colony...

SSH: And much more Christians converting to Muslims as well... Do we go now into "The Religion with most converssions" or "The religion with most followers" win? Then, I think Christianism is definitelly losing (Catholisicsm already did):

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article3653800.ece

Well, Islam becoming the worlds largest religion doesn't mean its getting more converts, necessarily. It may be that more Christians are becoming agnostic, etc. Anyway, the point of those testimonies was to show that it is possible to believe something other than you were brought up with. Khris seemed to be saying that only people with Christian parents became Christians which is patently false. The fact that Christians convert too also proves this point.

Why don't we stay on topic and a few believers start telling us why they chose to believe in God, if they DID choose consciously, at a mature age, that is. What I'd like to hear from the other believers is whether they think they'd still believe in their god if they were raised in another environment (an African tribe, or a Muslim/Hindustan country), and if not, why not?

Well, googling can easily turn up testimonies of christian converts from islam, Hindu, etc.

The important difference is that there's tons of evidence that a deep emotional bond we call love exists (even if it's just a chemical reaction of some kind), as opposed to zero evidence that a god exists.

I've already explained how there is evidence. You need to perhaps understand what the word evidence means, as you are confusing it with proof.

In my book, believing in whatever deity you chose is fine, as long as you don't live life differently because of it.

So as long as I don't talk about it, go to church, pray or spend any time thinking or reading about theology its OK with you. Nice to see this tolerance you have come to the fore.

It all breaks down to Pascal's Wager, which is flawed in many ways. Look it up.

I'm sure I'd heard about it before you were even born. You're assuming very bad faith on the part of all believers on the basis of what, exactly?

I'd like to remind everyone that the current bible was put together by people. Many centuries ago, church leaders got together and decided what's going to be in the book and what isn't.

And an all-powerful god would be completely unable to influence that in any way, of course.

What I'd like to hear from the other believers is whether they think they'd still believe in their god if they were raised in another environment (an African tribe, or a Muslim/Hindustan country), and if not, why not?

Whatever people say is in answer to this likely to be biased and supposition anyway. It's easy to say "Yes, of course I would still believe". Its easy to imagine a situation where one could meet a missionary or see TV or something. Its easy to imagine a situation where that never happened, too.

Oh sorry, I thought you'd drawn it from scratch. My apologies. My mistake. Mea culpa, etc. I thought you were using your superior artistic abilities as an unfair advantage but I was wrong. My hands are up.

According to what we know about physics, Universe was created from a infinitelly small spot of infinite density and infinite gravity. It' s a physical inditermination, which means that physic laws do not exist there. It is an indetermination that was the beginning of time, and created our physic laws, which means that, if anything existed before that t-1, it was totally erased.

So, even if there was a God in the Big Bang, he was killed. Which means that he had no control over nothing from t=0, so, even what we thing if "IT" must be false, since he was not there to inspire us.

And because I know that the earth was not created in 6 days. And because I know all animals were created at the same time along those 6 days. Because I know (Or "all evindences tell me that..." if you preffer, and you can apply it to all the "I knows" you see here) that some other animals were extinted before the actual ones. Because I know that man was not created by mud, but by history of evolution.

Well, all this is based on the concept that if you look at the current state of the universe (or biology, in the case of evolution) and look how it has changed since mankind has been measuring these things reliably (lets say a few hundred years to be on the generous side of the term "reliably") and then keep extrapolating from that backwards through time indefinitely. This makes some HUGE assumptions: that everything has always behaved the same way physically, that there isn't some huge external effect that is making things look like this but that earth is in some localised anomaly, etc., etc. But lets ride with those too at the moment. If there was a God capable of making that singularity that exploded in the big bang, why couldn't he have made every particle have the correct velocity and position AS IF that had happened some time before but actually hadn't? And why couldn't that have happened 600 years ago or whatever. Or with evolution, why couldn't he make it look as if there's been millions of years of evolution, but he made it look like that 6000 (or 34 as far as I'm concerned ) years ago?

I'm not saying that this did or didn't happen like that and of course it leaves the question of WHY do it like that, but  the point is that Christians believe in an all-powerful God, so deciding that X or Y is far fetched is missing the point.

Saying it is irrational is not stupid. Saying that 2+2=5 is irrational and saying 2+2 is not equal to 5 is not. You can' t use the "respect my beliefs" argument here.

Actually, 2+2=4 is PROVABLE from first principles, based on work by Bertrand Russell. You are unable to PROVE or DISPROVE the existence of anything metaphysical. They are hardly comparable. Love is irrational, but I bet everyone here believes in it. The story of Oscar Schindler is irrational, but I believe it. Irrationality is a STUPID reason to dismiss something.

if you want a paragraph telling you can not masturbate, you will find it, if you want  a paragraph saying that you may not marry people of your same gender, you can do it... But if you want to find paragraphs saying JUST THE OPPOSITE, you will find them

Where?

Actually, not, Stupot. I said that the facts are stupid. I never said that literalists are stupids

In the same way that saying "Your mother sells herself" isn't saying she's a whore, she just does whorey stuff.

No, it isn' t... But it' s ok.

Thanks for clearing that up. Now you've decreed, I realise how wrong I was.

Preciselly... Read your post again, and if you can' t see something weird in "I really don't understand why its hard to believe in a talking snake" discussion is over.

Ah, if we're going to quote partial sentences to try and make the other people look stupid:

throw me to the lions

If you insist!

Actually, not, Stupot. I said that the facts are stupid. I never said that literalists are stupids

In the same way that saying "Your mother sells herself" isn't saying she's a whore, she just does whorey stuff.

And as you say, we've all already unanimously agreed (even the Christians among us) that the bible is NOT meant to be taken literally... and that's because we are not stupid.

I don't think I agreed that. I really don't understand why its hard to believe in a talking snake, for example, if you believe in an invisible, omnipotent, omniscient God. Now, I don't think its necessary for the whole Bible to be taken literally, but that doesn't mean there's any reason why an omnipotent God couldn't have done things just as it says. Of course, this is predicated on the belief in an omnipotent God so I don't expect atheists to understand.

Awesome, Progz but not really a photoshopping...

To be honest, I'm astounded this still works. 

Yay, the four seasons: Sorceress, Slinky, Summer and Emo!