The Existence of God

@Yanny:

For the last 2000 years, Christianity has been the biggest burden upon science in Earth’s history. Judaism was never big enough to impede science. Islam greatly advanced all sciences as we know them today. Until the Christians took over, the Greeks were at the pinacle of science and philopsophy. The Chineese were able to develope countless things (Gunpowder) with the help of their religion.

However, the Christians have hampered science everywhere. It was the Christians who almost ended Western Science as a practice in the Dark Ages (except for Alchemists). Any new idea of science was immediately deemed herecy and the people behind it were punished. Anyone with the slightest experimental curiosity was accused of witchcraft.

Significant Scientific advances have only come when the Church fell from power.

and i’d say that since the beginning of time Jerks have been the biggest impediment upon everything good in the world’s history - whether they claim to be Christians (i.e. using the church as a political structure), communists, capitalists, Americans, Hindus, Visigoths, Huns, Mongols, and beer-drinkers. It was the church’s power that gave some the impetus and ability to hinder science, not its basic beliefs and teachings (not if they are Christ-based).

My parents were catholic, therefore i am. This, in my mind, makes one no more a Christian than being born in a chicken hatch makes one a hen or a rooster. At the same time, it is a reason for being religious. It also likely applies to atheism.

Horrible reason. If it were this way, half the south would own slaves and the other half would be slaves. There would never be any change in the world. If one was going to choose a religion, they would most likely choose their parents religion because of the biasness of their parents.

2. A person is touched in the greatest possible way by a loving caring God. They realize that they may have their sins forgiven and have a relationship with God. They are compelled to Christianity because of feelings of love and acceptance. If this happened with atheism, i’d be very curious if this person realized what atheism meant.

I’m not here for argueing with Atheism. However, I am argueing against any established religion. Your going to gain a lot more satisfaction with friends and family then spending time praying to some false deity. Established Religion is nothing more than another power struggle in the world. True Religion, like us Agnostics, comes from within.

3. It is the en vogue thing to do. Similar with atheism.

Glad I’m not either.

4. It makes sense to them - also similar with atheism.

It only makes sense because of a preconceived bias which has been drilled into their minds since birth. Parents are the real problem here, brainwashing their kids into believing a false religion.

5. They are mentally disturbed individuals.

That works I guess…

IMO, a person becomes a Christian (a bible following, Christ loving Christian) via number 2 - not 1, 3, or 4 simply by definition. One does not become an atheist by this method, or as i said there is something wrong with them and/or their definitions

One becomes a Non-Believer by common sense and an understanding of history. Religion has always been and will always be the most deadly, horrible, driving force in the world. Those who look to within, and learn to depend upon humans and not gods, are ones who truely prosper. People were caught dead in Pompeii when Mt. Vesuvius erupted because they sat down to pray to their gods. The smart “Athiests” got out alive.

hyperbole much? religion has been the source of as much good as bad in the world. Also it has been abused by power-seekers, as has so much else that is good in the world
and its uncommon sense that drives us to believe in something. common sense is useful for other things.

All good things that Religion has claimed it has done was actually done by good-hearted people who looked into themselves and decided to help their fellow man. They would have done it with or without the Church. However, those who used to Church to corrupt the minds of millions could not of done it without the influence and control of the Church.

5. They are mentally disturbed individuals.

Those who suffer from schizophrenia often speak with god, see god, and think that they are god’s special prophet. Then they take pills (lithium?). In fact in some culture they are highly considerated because of their ability of shaman, to speak with spirits and for their visions.

@F_alk:

Well, we have watched moths turning from white to black and back. I mentioned it somewhere earlier in this thread.

Wasn’t that found to be a hoax?

No, it’s been documented and proved to be true. :)

Just that no one becomes and atheist because of callings from a higher power . . . . 8)

@Yanny:

I’m not here for argueing with Atheism. However, I am argueing against any established religion. Your going to gain a lot more satisfaction with friends and family then spending time praying to some false deity. Established Religion is nothing more than another power struggle in the world. True Religion, like us Agnostics, comes from within.

That all depends on what religion you follow and what that religion teaches you. Your statement is arguing against religions that you dont know much about, Yanny. Please make statements that apply to things you are sure of.

@EmuGod:

@Yanny:

I’m not here for argueing with Atheism. However, I am argueing against any established religion. Your going to gain a lot more satisfaction with friends and family then spending time praying to some false deity. Established Religion is nothing more than another power struggle in the world. True Religion, like us Agnostics, comes from within.

That all depends on what religion you follow and what that religion teaches you. Your statement is arguing against religions that you dont know much about, Yanny. Please make statements that apply to things you are sure of.

true true related.

I maintain that every single religion in the world was created by power hungary, evil people, who created it as a tool to control the masses. Today it is used as a driving political force, and is used to control the masses. We’d be a lot better off if people would be rational.

I’m not saying there is no higher power. I believe there is something out there. But that doesn’t mean some old child molesters know whats out there either. We’re all human, and we can’t come back to life and reveal whats really out there. Worshipping a false deity, created thousands of years ago, only serves to hurt mankind. Religion is too controlling to be the least bit benevolent.

All good things that Religion has claimed it has done was actually done by good-hearted people who looked into themselves and decided to help their fellow man. They would have done it with or without the Church. However, those who used to Church to corrupt the minds of millions could not of done it without the influence and control of the Church.

Your problems here seem to be with the “Church.” In my opinion, that “church” has been corrupted. I do not believe that it is true Christianity, but I do think that there are true Christians among the laity, maybe even in the clergy, but that’s a stretch for my mind. Anyway, you don’t know if the were just “good-hearted people” plain and simple or if they were Christians who were good-hearted people. Christians used to be known for their generosity, and local churches for their willingness to help. Unfortunately, this ministry has gone south for the most part, which explains some of the skepticism.

If one was going to choose a religion, they would most likely choose their parents religion because of the biasness of their parents.

and I wonder how much of your philosophy comes from your parents. at some point, every relatively mature young adult will learn to think for him/herself (although in these days i think the number of mature young adults is declining). everyone has to choose. i have thought this through, and i’ve come to my decision. it seems you’ve come to yours (though sometimes you sound sort of bitter which makes me wonder what circumstances caused you to make your decision). only one of us has even a remote chaing of changing opinions, and i can guarantee you it isn’t going to be me.

I’m not here for argueing with Atheism. However, I am argueing against any established religion. Your going to gain a lot more satisfaction with friends and family then spending time praying to some false deity. Established Religion is nothing more than another power struggle in the world. True Religion, like us Agnostics, comes from within.

fine, i’m against established religion too. that’s when one belief is imposed on the entire country, not when Christians get some form of leadership. that’s not establishing a religion. i think you’re just being paranoid.

It only makes sense because of a preconceived bias which has been drilled into their minds since birth. Parents are the real problem here, brainwashing their kids into believing a false religion.

which means your parents/guardians/caretakers are the “real problem~~” too, since they’ve raised you with some sort of preconceived bias.

One becomes a Non-Believer by common sense and an understanding of history. Religion has always been and will always be the most deadly, horrible, driving force in the world. Those who look to within, and learn to depend upon humans and not gods, are ones who truely prosper. People were caught dead in Pompeii when Mt. Vesuvius erupted because they sat down to pray to their gods. The smart “Athiests” got out alive.

really? “the most deadly, horrible, driving force in the world”? it’s more like misguided religious people, or ones who just used a religion as their vehicle to mislead thousands, millions of people. i’m sorry you have such a cynical view. believe it or not, there are some good, real Christians out there. and how do you know the ones who got out were atheists? try not to make unfounded assertions. unless you do have something that says that they said they were atheists?

“Jesus” could have told them, some brilliant scientist like Thales prove the earth was not flat. I think it show us how “human” the bible is, if we look how much it look like a normal book of the time, not a book inspired by an higher being. It just seem like a book of stories, like those about how Zeus rape Hera or those about Belenos… I can understant that when you are christians it seem otherwise, but with a little objectivity, is the book so special ?

Jesus’ goal wasn’t to prove/disprove science. His goal was to come and die on the cross, and rise again the third day to forgive the sins of those who accept His gift. And that is why the book is so special. Jesus is the only God recorded who humbled Himself by coming to earth as a mere man, and subjecting Himself to death on a cross, which is a horrible way to die.

Christian (And Jewish/Islaamic) Religious theory is no different from Norse, Hindu, Greek, Egyptian, Chineese, or Aztecian lore.

Quote:
there is a difference. you could give some evidence for this instead of offering nothing but a dogmatic statement. you get into some doctrinal differences here, but i know you don’t want to talk about that.

Go ahead, explain

Aztecs, Greeks, and Egyptians had many different Gods. Christianity has only one. The Hindus believe that man is a deity himself, and that one is always trying to achieve the highest state of perfection/godhood. Christianity says that man is not God and will never be perfect until the Christian is taken to Heaven and given a new body. Truthfully, I don’t know much about the Norse. I’m not sure if they had many gods or a belief in a self-deity.

That’s about it. I spend far more time on this one than any other forum, and I’d rather debate/form my view on political threads than on this one any longer. Let me reiterate that there is no way to prove, per se, that God exists. Not in a scientific way where it’s tangibly, visiby, etc. observable. And, again, even if I did convince you that there is a God you would not necessarily believe the Bible. I’ll keep reading till this one peters out. Maybe I’ll say something short later. Frankly, I need a few more years of education to really hold my own in this one. Or maybe get some of my friends to sign up. That probably isn’t gonna happen though. This year is way too busy.~~

Germans (Norse) had lots of gods… Wuotan (Odin), Tyr, Loki… and very interesting stories about dwarfs… also stories with gods dying. In our mythology, Fenrir, a giant wolf, “will” kill Wuotan in Ragnarok (apocalyps), all gods knew they would die someday, it’s the core of ancient germanic philosophy; destiny. And there is a godess called “Hel”, sound familiar ?

I don’t know very much about egyptian mythology, but as far as i know they had lots of gods, but were mostly venerating only one. Ra… or Amon before (maybe after Ra i don’t remember). Judaism (and consequently Christianism) is based partially on egyptian mythology, so maybe EmuGod or Cryptic know more about it than i do.

which means your parents/guardians/caretakers are the “real problem~~” too, since they’ve raised you with some sort of preconceived bias.

Exept if they teach you to doupt, to question and to argue.~~

I wonder how Christianity would be viewed today if it were NOT made the official religion in Rome by Constantine. Think of it, remove the political aspects of the Vatican over the past 1700 years. What a different world we would have. No Crusades or the Inquisition; that would be just the beginning. Christianity would probably struggled for existence like Judaism, searching for identity and a country. Historical impact is difficult to speculate…

Explain to me how being a Monotheist deity makes God more creditable than these polytheistic deities. God is supposed to be omnipotent, which seems to me a hell of a lot less realistic than a hundred vulnerable gods.

@Field:

I wonder how Christianity would be viewed today if it were NOT made the official religion in Rome by Constantine. Think of it, remove the political aspects of the Vatican over the past 1700 years. What a different world we would have. No Crusades or the Inquisition; that would be just the beginning. Christianity would probably struggled for existence like Judaism, searching for identity and a country. Historical impact is difficult to speculate…

that’s something i wonder about too. It seems to me to be viewed (at least in Canada) as something of a curiousity by other people (Canada being a big salad of culture and religion) rather than a faith to be taken seriously by any other than close/strict adherents.
I look at the Mennonites as an example of this - for 4 centuries we have moved around the globe, searching for a place to call our home. Our identity is somewhat mixed - some view us as an ethnic group, others as a religious one. We’ve suffered varying amounts of persecution in our history until as recently as WWII when our people opted for non-killing service and were jailed for it.
Is this different from what Christ prophesied, or called for us? I don’t believe so. Christ warned us that true followers would take up their own cross in following Him. People would hate us, call us by nasty names, and even kill us. This unpleasant reality was circumvented by Constantine in 303 ad to one degree. At the same time, Christians who tried to live by the bible - who tried to live by Jesus teachings were themselves persecuted by the church. I’ve written a few papers on this, and The Martyr’s Mirror is a history of anabaptists and other believers who tried to live strictly by New Testament teaching and found themselves in opposition to the mainstream “religion” where they were persecuted (killed in ways that we can not even accuse foreign national gov’ts of today). At the same time, there is a curious paradoxical irony in this. If the church had a history of only good things - only good people were involved in it, political motivation had no place, etc. then rather than being shunned by so many people, would it not be more popular, finding a place in the mainstream?
Maybe the church’s err in the past has actually helped to separate people with true Christian ideals from the mainstream by being unpopular and holding fast to their true beliefs?? Today it is easy to be a Mennonite in Winnipeg. We make up close to 1/10 of the population, we have a good reputation in all fields of business, law, medicine, science, etc. and have an excellent rep for charitible work. It’s nice in that we don’t have to worry about being persecuted for our beliefs, however with increasing secular humanism it is getting harder to stand by them without being labelled.
But FM - volumes could be written about your question with or without regards to my little communittee.

@Yanny:

Explain to me how being a Monotheist deity makes God more creditable than these polytheistic deities. God is supposed to be omnipotent, which seems to me a hell of a lot less realistic than a hundred vulnerable gods.

i believe he was simply stating a difference between Christianity from other religions. Maybe there is a polytheistic pantheon of deities. Regardless, Christians worship the “one true God” the “I am”, the God of the Israelites. I’m sure that he has other names in other cultures - even polytheistic ones.
Credibility is not a consideration when becoming a Christian. One might well become Bahai when “choosing” a religion if it came to simple credibility. It is what this monotheistic deity does in the lives and hearts of Its people that matters - not if he is realistic beyond what is necessary to provoke a need and desire to have a relationship with this God.

CC, I understand what you are saying. However, Diferent said Christian beliefs are fundamentally different from the beliefs of every other religion I named, and therefore they are true.

It’s nice in that we don’t have to worry about being persecuted for our beliefs, however with increasing secular humanism it is getting harder to stand by them without being labelled.

Hey, Secular Humanism is an high ideals. Anyway it’s just increasing in university, you are not seeing lots of secular humanist in the street. And even if they were in power, secular humanist would not get revenge on christians other than with logic and words, at least i wish, otherwise… they are not secular humanist.

i believe he was simply stating a difference between Christianity from other religions. Maybe there is a polytheistic pantheon of deities.

You are not a monotheist if you believe there is more than one true god.

CC, I understand what you are saying. However, Diferent said Christian beliefs are fundamentally different from the beliefs of every other religion I named, and therefore they are true.

There is also something typical, Christians (and jews, and muslims) often seem to believe that as they are sometime oppressed; they are in the god way, they are “martyr”, just like those palestinians kamikaze…

@FinsterniS:

Germans (Norse) had lots of gods… Wuotan (Odin), Tyr, Loki… and very interesting stories about dwarfs… also stories with gods dying. In our mythology, Fenrir, a giant wolf, “will” kill Wuotan in Ragnarok (apocalyps), all gods knew they would die someday, it’s the core of ancient germanic philosophy; destiny. And there is a godess called “Hel”, sound familiar ?

I don’t know very much about egyptian mythology, but as far as i know they had lots of gods, but were mostly venerating only one. Ra… or Amon before (maybe after Ra i don’t remember). Judaism (and consequently Christianism) is based partially on egyptian mythology, so maybe EmuGod or Cryptic know more about it than i do.

which means your parents/guardians/caretakers are the “real problem~~” too, since they’ve raised you with some sort of preconceived bias.

Exept if they teach you to doupt, to question and to argue.

I don’t think Judaism has any bases in Egyptian mythology from what I’ve studied. It developed in a time where all religions were polytheistic and it is very different from them. But I have nto studied Egyptian mythology in detail. Unlike Yanny’s statements that all religions were started as a way to gain ower and ctonrol the masses, Judaism was not. If it were, then surely there would be missionary work, but in fact missionary work is outlawed. Judaism began many new changes to the ancient world. A good book to read about what Judaism brought into the world is “The Gifts of the Jews” by Thomas Cahill, a Christian. There are some similarities between some things in Judaism and Babylonian laws, but that is most likely due to the 70 year exile there. These things include a similarity in the name of the day of rest, which in Judaism is once a week and in Babylon was once a month and the use of the same solar-lunar hybrid calendar. But Judaism still is quite different from ancient Babylon and ancient Egypt.

As for Christianity, I’m not sure but it may have picked some thngs up from Ancient Rome. CC, could you shed some light on this?~~