Whats so good about religion?

[Neoteny]

PROVE God doesn't exist. Then talk. Else, you are no true scientist.

To be a REAL scientist means to acknowledge the possibility of that which you are incapable of comprehending or even disbelieve.

Also: elitism. And false presumptions, which also invalidates your comment above.

[Napoleon Ier]

plus if God was cool, England would win at cricket sometimes.

There was a highlight on Sportscenter today after the fifteen seconds of footy that blew my mind. I was like, "what the f*ck sport is this?!" Turns out it was cricket.

Ahh...cricket. I was forced to play it at my prep school. So I read the whole of Charles Dicken's Hard Times before half-term when I was in the pavillion or meant to be fielding.

[greenoaks]

plus if God was cool, England would win at cricket sometimes.

There was a highlight on Sportscenter today after the fifteen seconds of footy that blew my mind. I was like, "what the f*ck sport is this?!" Turns out it was cricket.

Ahh...cricket. I was forced to play it at my prep school. So I read the whole of Charles Dicken's Hard Times before half-term when I was in the pavillion or meant to be fielding.

did you consider yourself a batter, slip fielder, fast bowler or spin ?

[suggs]

Oh please, with that logic, you might as well believe in the flying spaghetti monster, or a tooth fairy! Yeah, atleast she is a bit true considering she comes in and gives you some money and takes your loose tooth under your pillow!

PROVE God doesn't exist. Then talk. Else, you are no true scientist.

To be a REAL scientist means to acknowledge the possibility of that which you are incapable of comprehending or even disbelieve.[/quote]


BANGS HEAD AGAINST KEYBOARD then realises thats ineffective method of comm.
*sigh* of course no can prove that god doesnt exist. Its theoretically possible.
I cant prove that unicorns dont exist either-perhaps there is a little Uni near the centre of the earth-and if he ever finds his way to the surface, i'll be first down to the confession box.
So i cant prove that unicorns dont exist.
But i dont believe in them.
Why not?
Because there is NO evidence that unicorns exist.
Like wise with God.
Theres no evidence that he exists, AT ALL, so it seems a damned silly thing to believe in.

Whereas, i do believ that England will win a cricket match before i croak, cos there is old black and white TV footage of them winning

[SnakeySnakey]

PROVE God doesn't exist. Then talk. Else, you are no true scientist.

To be a REAL scientist means to acknowledge the possibility of that which you are incapable of comprehending or even disbelieve.

Day by day scientists are finding the truth about what makes the universe... the universe. And its not some imaginary man who decided to go all out on his huge canvas of nothingness. If I cant prove that god doenst exist, then you cant prove that anything else which is not real doesnt exist. A griffin? A Unicorn? A dragon? These dont exist, but they have some shape and form. So if you prove that any of those don't exist, then Ill prove to you god doesnt exist. Your logic is flawed, as your beliefs.

[WidowMakers]

Scientism is the faith that science has no boundaries, that in due time all human problems and all aspects of human endeavor will be dealt and solved by science alone.

Since there is no way to prove what we can know or what we will know or that everything is knowable, believing that science can prove, explain or answer everything is a step of faith in itself.

WM

[OnlyAmbrose]

You make it sound like science and religion are mutually exclusive.

[Napoleon Ier]

Indeed...in order to be a Scientist, you must have a degree of faith in inducive a posteriori reasoning...problem of induction, eh? Eementary, my dear Watson...

[PLAYER57832]

PROVE God doesn't exist. Then talk. Else, you are no true scientist.

To be a REAL scientist means to acknowledge the possibility of that which you are incapable of comprehending or even disbelieve.

Day by day scientists are finding the truth about what makes the universe... the universe. And its not some imaginary man who decided to go all out on his huge canvas of nothingness. If I cant prove that god doenst exist, then you cant prove that anything else which is not real doesnt exist. A griffin? A Unicorn? A dragon? These dont exist, but they have some shape and form. So if you prove that any of those don't exist, then Ill prove to you god doesnt exist. Your logic is flawed, as your beliefs.

First, I am not asking you to share my beliefs. You are welcome to your own. I am saying that to criticize my beliefs without being able to disprove them is not only unscientific it is extremely narrow-minded.

You are correct that we cannot absolutely prove that unicorns don't exist, but as more of the world is canvased and photographed and studied, it becomes less and less likely that such a large animal could exist. Also we can track their origin fairly well. Belief in God, on the other hand, has persisted as long as there has been humanity.

As a matter of fact, there was a large study not so long ago ... okay, it was probably before you were born, but anyway ... The GAIA project. A number of scientists began as athiests and then decided that such complexity was most reasonable in the fact of God. NOT "proof". but very far from your assertion that "science is constantly disproving God". Similar things happen in all fields.

Are there many who believe science evidences a lack of God ? ... of course, but to refuse to acknowledge the many that feel the opposite ... that many believe science affirms the existance of God, is to deny one of the most basic tenets of science .. that if you cannot disprove it, it might be true.

OR, to quote Einstein, when you remove the impossible, all that remains .. no matter how improbable, is the truth.

One of those possible truths is God.

But, I think the real question is why my believing in a God is so offensive to you. I don't say you have to think as I, but you seem to think the rest of the world HAS to think like you..... THAT is pretty egotistical.

[PLAYER57832]

PROVE God doesn't exist. Then talk. Else, you are no true scientist.

To be a REAL scientist means to acknowledge the possibility of that which you are incapable of comprehending or even disbelieve.

Also: elitism. And false presumptions, which also invalidates your comment above.

Not quite. Elitism is assuming you know the truth that others don't. I don't expect you to share my beliefs. You, however, seem to think the rest of the world has to think like you. THAT is elitism!

[greenoaks]

You are correct that we cannot absolutely prove that unicorns don't exist, but as more of the world is canvased and photographed and studied, it becomes less and less likely that such a large animal could exist. Also we can track their origin fairly well. Belief in God, on the other hand, has persisted as long as there has been humanity.

i thought belief in gods has been around for a long time, not a belief in God. and before people believed in gods didn't they believe in things like nature spirits & sprites.

within the aboriginal belief of the Dreamtime your God does not exist and as their beliefs have been around longer than anyone elses would that mean they are correct ?

[PLAYER57832]

You are correct that we cannot absolutely prove that unicorns don't exist, but as more of the world is canvased and photographed and studied, it becomes less and less likely that such a large animal could exist. Also we can track their origin fairly well. Belief in God, on the other hand, has persisted as long as there has been humanity.

i thought belief in gods has been around for a long time, not a belief in God. and before people believed in gods didn't they believe in things like nature spirits & sprites.

within the aboriginal belief of the Dreamtime your God does not exist and as their beliefs have been around longer than anyone elses would that mean they are correct ?

You are correct, and that was a poor statemnet/ analogy. Our understanding of God has evolved and yes, to some people that means believing God doesn't exist. The only issue I have with that is the assertion that anyone who thinks differently is, well not really thinking.

What I should have said is that proving God is more like proving that you love someone. You can provide all the evidence you wish, but if the other person doesn't wish to believe, they won't. And, if a person wishes, only the slimmest of evidence will "prove" to that person they are in love. I believe in God mostly because I know deep inside myself that God exists. Can I prove it? No, of course not. I can provide evidence, but nothing that would convince you.

I can't prove love, or even necessarily describe why I love, either. I can say that I thought I understood love when I was home with my parents and siblings ... but I was wrong. Then I thought I understood a lot more when I got married. When I had my children, though, then I found whole new dimensions to love that I almost couldn't even imagine before. It is something no parent can explain, yet most parents share and feel.

If you limit your perception of what could be to what is absolutely proveable or definable by science, then you have narrowed your vision to exlude many possible answers, not just the potential that God might exist. The truly scientific mind works because it is open to all possibilities. Science, in its conception, is often as much art as it is drugery.

How is it that Pasteur thought to heat milk, to use heat to kill bacteria? Is it because he was thinking of what he knew ... or is it because he had allowed himself to explore and consider that there might be other answers out there.

How many individuals saw bacteria failing to "take" in a dish with some mold and simply pitched the whole mess before Penniciline was discovered as the first real antibiotic medicine. In more modern times, how much was medicine and science put back because so many insisted on completely dismissing the "backward" use of herbs and other techniques in native peoples? Only very recently has science finally decided to go back and study these people and their methods as more than just "curiosities" .. as real potential cures for all kinds of illnesses.

Also, though sometimes the scientists find a ceremony surrounding the use of a substance or technique is completely irrelevant... and sometimes there is something in that ceremony or technique that is the key to making the thing work.

I am not trying and will not try to convince you to believe in God. I am simply suggesting that your assertion that anyone who does believe, who does think God exists ... is basically not thinking .. I am suggesting that assertion is incorrect.

[MeDeFe]

Bad analogy again, I'm afraid. Being in love leads to some very distinctive, measurable changes in the chemistry factory that is the human body. Being in love is scientifically provable.
Describing the feeling on the other hand... you might be on to something there. That's definitely hard.

But regarding this idea that god is somehow outside of what science can prove. How is that even supposed to be possible? If god exists, as a sentient being, somehow inside this universe and can perceive people's prayers and respond to them and influence the world to occasionally make a prayer come true, he (she? it?) is definitely a measurable entity that can be analysed. If god is somehow outside the universe and can still do all the aforementioned things, there must be a link between "inside" and "outside" the universe, that link would be analysable. If there is no such link and god exists outside our universe I fail to see how god could possibly interact with it, unless it's magic of course (aka "he just does, don't ask, it's god you're talking about").

[mr. incrediball]

snakeysnake is one of those people who make me slightly ashamed to be an athiest.

also, giving god a sex is one of the most stupid things ever. can gods reproduce? (well, the greeks thought they did) but since most religions believe gods can't reproduce, whats the point of giving them a sex?

[Joodoo]

No offense to anyone here, but I think religion is one of those things... you know when you make a mistake (like a huge one?), and you're afraid someone won't forgive you? Well, when you believe in a religion, usually a god in the religion will forgive you if you do something (usually good) that would contribute to someone or some group.

[MR. Nate]

MeDeFe, God is Spirit, meaning non corporeal entity. He has and does impact the known universe in two ways; naturally and supernaturally. Because he is non corporeal and simply wills change, the cause of the change is either perceptible through events He has preordained, or it is not perceptible. If it is, then that's God impacting the universe "naturally" he set up natural phenomena to accomplish his will. If there is no perceptible reason for what occurs, we call that "supernatural"

If He impacts it through the laws of nature, you'll reject it was Him. You'll say "See, it's a natural phenomena, it wasn't God." If He impacts it supernaturally, you'll appeal to the inability to "prove" it, or the onward march of science. "Well, only believers saw it, and it only happened for a moment, I don't think it happened" or "I'm sure one day we'll understand how that occurred, but right now we don't have enough data."

So really, God has only one choice to prove his existence to you: Kill you. Since he's merciful, He's not going to do that, he wants you to accept him first. So you wait instead for God to strike your computer with lightning the moment you type something blasphemous (which you will explain away if it ever happens in reality) and go on claiming about how He can't exist.

Also, for a more Biblical approach, Colossians states that not only did Christ create everything, but He causes it to continue to exist.

[Dancing Mustard]

can gods reproduce?

Yes.
But not if they use proper contraception, or if they do it up the bum-bum.

[MeDeFe]

@ Nate

So god is somehow not at all a physical being, right? He's something completely different and not reducible to elementary physical particles like quarks for example? Don't you feel you might be postulating a little much there? A substance that hasn't been discovered and is completely different from the physical world we know and interact with. Yet, although this substance is different and not physical it has perceptible effects on the physical world.

You know, it sounds beautiful, it really does, but it does nothing to explain. Instead of saying "matter behaves in this way and has the following properties that we know of" as a physicalist might, you say "matter behaves this way because this non-matter we call god makes it do so", but you offer nothing to explain how this non-matter influences matter, what this non-matter is, what properties it has, and where it came from if it was able to create matter at the beginning of the universe. You open up a sackful of new questions which do not need to be asked.

And this non-matter "spirit" supposedly forms a sentient being of practically unimaginable complexity if the attributes generally ascribed to it are correct (omnipotence, omniscience, telepathy and whatnot), and it just is, it didn't have to come from somewhere, it's always been there and it has made everything else. Period. Then we humans supposedly also partly consist of "spirit", it's not as if we haven't found this substance yet because it isn't anywhere in the vicinity, no we partly consist of it. It's what we think of as being our "true self", something sentient that remains of us after the body is rotting away in the ground. It's in and all around us but noone has ever been able to even offer an indication that it exists.
Once you start thinking about it, dualism is something so far-fetched that I don't see how anyone could ever have come up with it, except that someone obviously did.

[Napoleon Ier]

There was a highlight on Sportscenter today after the fifteen seconds of footy that blew my mind. I was like, "what the f*ck sport is this?!" Turns out it was cricket.

Ahh...cricket. I was forced to play it at my prep school. So I read the whole of Charles Dicken's Hard Times before half-term when I was in the pavillion or meant to be fielding.

did you consider yourself a batter, slip fielder, fast bowler or spin ?

I was so shit I once bowled the ball into the wrong net during practice. We'll put it that way, shall we?

[PLAYER57832]

@ Nate

So god is somehow not at all a physical being, right? He's something completely different and not reducible to elementary physical particles like quarks for example? Don't you feel you might be postulating a little much there? A substance that hasn't been discovered and is completely different from the physical world we know and interact with. Yet, although this substance is different and not physical it has perceptible effects on the physical world.

You know, it sounds beautiful, it really does, but it does nothing to explain. Instead of saying "matter behaves in this way and has the following properties that we know of" as a physicalist might, you say "matter behaves this way because this non-matter we call god makes it do so", but you offer nothing to explain how this non-matter influences matter, what this non-matter is, what properties it has, and where it came from if it was able to create matter at the beginning of the universe. You open up a sackful of new questions which do not need to be asked.

And this non-matter "spirit" supposedly forms a sentient being of practically unimaginable complexity if the attributes generally ascribed to it are correct (omnipotence, omniscience, telepathy and whatnot), and it just is, it didn't have to come from somewhere, it's always been there and it has made everything else. Period. Then we humans supposedly also partly consist of "spirit", it's not as if we haven't found this substance yet because it isn't anywhere in the vicinity, no we partly consist of it. It's what we think of as being our "true self", something sentient that remains of us after the body is rotting away in the ground. It's in and all around us but noone has ever been able to even offer an indication that it exists.
Once you start thinking about it, dualism is something so far-fetched that I don't see how anyone could ever have come up with it, except that someone obviously did.

Let's put it this way. A few years ago, one of my friends was involved with early quantum physics research. One day, he came over obviously very distraught. I asked what was wrong, especting to hear a friend had died, his research grant had been cut ... just about anything but what I heard.

He told me "reality does not exist".

I asked him to explain. He did... too technical to bother with here , but basically, (a VERY rough explanation, simplified to the point of almost being inaccurate), at the quantum, or sub atomic level, things operate very, very differently than in the leve at which we see, here and feel. It is quite possible to say that "reality does not exist".

My response? Of course reality "exists" ... it just isn't what you thought it to be. "Reality", is by definition what exists, what is ... In many ways, this is a matter of semantics. I would not, do not have the technical ability to actually dispute his claims, what my friend was saying. However, looking at God is something like looking at quantum physics as opposed to, say biology or sociology or more traditional physics.

To someone who believes, God IS ... more or less period. Exactly what that means can and does change. Who God is, what God represents and how God functions in the world do not change, but our understanding of these things change greatly in time.

A few hundred years ago, folks were burnt at the stake or excommunicated for suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun, not the reverse. Today, only the most uneducated would make such an assertion. Christianity, belief in God persist, but our perception of what that means has changed.

Similarly, it was not so long ago that the greatest scientists insisted that microbes arose through spontaneous generatioin. It took the advent of swan-necked glasswear, the invention of microscopes, etc. for science to evolve.

All ideas evolve and change. The limits to understanding God are the limits of the human mind. As our knowledge grows, our understanding of science AND of God grow. I don't know and honestly don't truly care if science ever will prove the existance of God. I DO know that both faith and reason are methods of understanding.

McDeFe suggested that my analogy to love was incorrect because you can measure certain physical indicators. Those factors exist, but are actually only indicators that love might be present, not proof, scientifically. Other things can and do cause those reactions. The only real "proof" is the person's descrition, perception. These perceptions change with age, experience and other factors. Ask a moonstruck teenager how he or she knows they are in love and you get a very, very different answer from the answer an older adult will give. Ask a parent and the factors described are yet again different.

A Christian sees "indicators" of God all around -- in the light in a child's eye, in the birth of a young calf. Are these real proof? Not in the scientific sense. Many of these things can be reduced to simple chemical explanations. BUT, in all of these things ... particularly love, there is something there that is undefinable, unproveable, almost unknowable... at least in the scientific sense.

No one has yet figured out how to reliably create love. You cannot convince someone to love another person, not really. You cannot really and truly PROVE that you love someone. Die for them? Could be, but aside from being a bit extreme, even that is a matter of interpretation. Some people consider suicide to be honorable... others the most cowardly of acts. This can be debated endlessly, but that, too, just proves my point ... that love is variable and not truly definable in an empiracle sense.

So, too, is it with God. I can talk about my belief. I certainly will teach that belief to my child, but, ultimately, it is a choice, a thought ... something that happens within ourselves. Churches differ on exactly how that happens and why. This isn't quite the place to talk about that, nor am I the one to do it. Religiously, I am not an expert in anything but my own personal beliefs.

If you don't wish to believe in God ... there is little I can do to convince you. I will talk about it, as a matter of discussion, but don't expect to convince anyone to my way of thinking. I DO, however, expect to get a basic tolerance and understanding.

When someone claims that "only and ignorant person would think ...." anything not completely proveable, completely concrete ... they show their own ignorance and close-mindedness. They diminish themselves, not me. Though in the real world, they can certain cause others a great deal of trouble! (and I make no excuse for religious types who are intolerant , either ... in fact, if anything I might criticize them a bit more, particularly those who are Christian, because I feel I have the right as a believer, as a fellow Christian).

Oh, and since I mentioned McDeFe, let me be clear that I do not put you in that category. Agreement is not necessary, only tolerance and admission of my/our right to think other than you. You have shown that, McDeFe (and others, of course). Thank you.

[The1exile]

You, however, seem to think the rest of the world has to think like you. THAT is elitism!

Of course not, it's just the old saying, "you can either agree with me or be wrong".

[Snorri1234]

You, however, seem to think the rest of the world has to think like you. THAT is elitism!

Of course not, it's just the old saying, "you can either agree with me or be wrong".

[tzor]

Im so glad Im an atheist, cause that way my true sciences can obliterate your false pipe-dreams of a so called god.

Sorry I'm late to the party but I really have to laugh at this.

You see, you really are no scientist.

Science is the process of observation and deduction. We observe, we make models and predictions and we test those models and predictions with more observations. What cannot be observed simply cannot be deduced.

What is the physics within a black hole? Cannot be observed and thus cannot be deduced. We can speculate, but that is moving away from science.

What is the physics of a parallel universe which is neither intersecting our own universe nor impacting it in any awy? Again we cannot observe thus we cannot deduce!

Science cannot prove a negative. Science cannot reasonably prove anything; it can only be geneally assured at what it proposes may be reasonably correct as far as they can tell. It can only create two sets, what we believe we know and what we don't know.

Thus in a proper view of science, since we cannot observe a god or gods and since we cannot make deductions about him or her or them we cannot know anything scietifically about it.

At most science can neither prove nor disprove a god or gods, therefore using science alone one can only be at best agnostic. Crossing the line over to either side means you are no longer using true science alone.

[SnakeySnakey]

Sorry, all Im reading is that people who defend religion are not even confident of their own answers.

Good day, sirs.

[tzor]

Good day, sirs.

Good day to you as well.