Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Of course, the Bible, the Quran, just about every holy book.
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There is no evidence for God, so why do you believe?
- Thread starter an anarchist
- Start date
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Really? Did you compare them to the number that God failed?
What you are guilty of here is confirmation bias. You are only looking at the positive cases and ignoring the negative ones.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
God never fails. People fail to rely on him however. Relying on yourself is a recipe for disaster.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
If he exists he fails constantly. He failed in the Garden of Eden myth, he failed in the Noah's Ark myth, that was probably his greatest failure You are lucky that it is a myth. He is an endless tale of fail.
ElishaElijah
Return
Sounds like success to me:
“Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.” And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.””
Revelation 21:1-8 NKJV
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
You mean the book that appears to be written by a meth head? And all of that is make believe. That is what they pretend is going to happen.
ElishaElijah
Return
You sound like you’re losing it a bit.
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
Maybe it's a placebo effect but fine if it works for you.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Not at all. Have you read Revelation? The person that wrote that was not mentally sound. And I was not the only one. That was almost not included in the Bible. Are you aware that the Bible was put together by the Catholic church starting at around the beginning of the 3rd century CE and ending around the 5th century.
joelr
Well-Known Member
There are zero examples of this proof.
We have an entire universe of natural laws creating all sorts of amazing things. All by themselves. Where do the laws come from? We don't know. There may be endless types of multiverses, universes with all possible variations of the physical laws? Quantum mechanics seems to be a deep part. of nature, in QM everything is about probabilities. Meaning if anything can happen then given enough time it will happen. So if here are endless universes then QM predicts all variables will eventually happen. We find ourselves in the one universe that can support life. So a consciousness creator is not needed.
Even then some type of creative force doesn't need consciousness in the sense it would be considered a personal God. Astrophysicists are something of the experts on this, Sean Carroll has a lecture completely debunking any ideas about a creator.
Proof? The borrowed Mesopotamian myths or the later Persian and Hellenistic borrowings? The Persians were first with a world savior (virgin born to human parents), God vs devil, Revelation, the devil as Gods enemy. So would they also have proof of divine authorship? What about the Greeks who started the dying/rising savior demigod myth? Or the Greeks who told the Hebrews about how souls can be redeemed and go to heaven and bad people go to hell?
only in Hellenistic times (after c. 330 BCE) did Jews begin to adopt the Greek idea that it would be a place of punishment for misdeeds, and that the righteous would enjoy an afterlife in heaven
Sang Meyng Lee,
Adjunct Professor at San Francisco Theological Seminary, Pasadena; since 2008, Professor of New Testament and Dean of Academic Affairs at Presbyterian Theological Seminary in America, Santa Fe Springs,
Prayer studies have demonstrated prayer does not work. But anecdotal stories about life changing powers of religion are found in Islam and Hinduism FAR more frequently that Christianity.
"I love Lord Krishna so much.I keep crying the whole day as I remember him a lot and crave for him. I am 13 years old.What does it mean?"
"
I have the same feelings for Krishna. The first word I spoke was Maa and the second was Kichna..and right from my young age, I used to tell everyone that I'm gonna marry Kichna when I grow up.
Nothing has changed. I'm 18 and my love for him has only increased and crossed all boundaries. My heart and soul is Krishna and I'm full of Krishna."
"
Crying for Him only means that He does not want you to forget Him. He says in the Bhagavad Gita that a human being’s memory comes from Him.
You might want to read Chapter 12 of Bhagavad Gita (Bhakti Yoga) and follow it throughout your life.
I am 24 now and made the mistake of forgetting Him for many years. Being a student of Science, I started questioning if He really existed or not. One year back, He showed me that He indeed exists. I would request you not to make the same mistake as me. Bhagavad Gita will be your guide for your life.
When I wasn't devoted to Him, I had been to Guruvayoor once a...."
So it's clear the activities of people who "believe" they belong to God change. In Hinduism, Islam and all religions. Doesn't mean any of them are actually true.
Like the "actual epidemic of child rape and molestation" that was discovered in the 1980's among priests who serve God? But even if you want to focus on the people who have had positive change.
Great, let's start looking at all the members of Islam and Hinduism who's lives have radically changed for the better by serving Allah or Lord Krishna.
Islam changed my life for ever, Christian converts to Islam
I started to pray whenever I heard the beautiful sounds of the Adhan, the call to prayer, reverberating throughout the city. I read the entire Qur’an, word for word. I changed my lifestyle and gave up clubs and alcohol drinking, channeling my energy toward a more positive purpose, a master’s degree in education. I spent my free time doing volunteer work and I formed a group of Muslim women friends.
On Christmas Day I read Surah Maryam and watched an online documentary about Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him). As I went about my day, I was overcome by a strong feeling that I was ready to accept Islam. I contacted my friend who was excited at my resolution and came over in the evening. He explained the process of accepting Islam, asking over and over if I was ready for something that would be a complete overhaul of my life. Suddenly I felt unsure and decided to sleep over it. As I got into bed, I felt again that I was ready and so I quickly prayed the Shahadah. A deep sense of relief came over me, and I went to sleep.
The next day I felt a little scared and unsure if I had done the right thing. I was overwhelmed by questions in my mind about how I would carry out the responsibilities of being a good Muslim, how would people I knew react at my decision to abandon the religion and culture of my family. I decided the best thing to do was to take things one day at a time, and start by only telling people who I knew would support me. I shared with my closest Muslim friends and was touched by their happiness and offers of help and encouragement. I felt a sense of peace and contentment. I knew I was doing what was meant for me and that Allah would bless my efforts. And I prepared to start the New Year, on a straight, new path.
Islam changed my life for ever
So all religions have all of your anecdotal stories also. Demonstrating that these changes are not from an outside force but are psychological in nature. The lifestyle changes are equally easy to understand. None of this proves Islam is true and it doesn't prove Christianity either.
Sheldon
Veteran Member
Reality has always been electrified with entities whose auras are baptized in freedom. Throughout history, humans have been interacting with the infinite via superpositions of possibilities.
Sheldon
Veteran Member
You clearly did not understand it at all, as this response demonstrates, since you have not addressed it at all. It's this simple, are you able to grasp or understand why an unevidenced biased anecdotal claim for personal experience related to a third party is meaningless?
Lets try a hypothetical example, I prayed and the Aztec God of gluttony spoke to me, and she said your beliefs are a delusion from the devil.
Now leave aside how the person making the claim feels about the belief, and ask yourself what that claim means to you. It's unfalsifiable, untestable, and unevidenced, just like yours.
No wait, you can test it for yourself, abandon your delusion, and pray to the Aztec deity of gluttony, then you will know the truth, but you must believe it is possible first. If you start from a position where you are suggestible, or hold an a priori bias in favour of that belief, then of course you can believe anything. Again the method is so unreliable it enables people to believe in wildly different religions and deities.
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Sheldon
Veteran Member
Neither of them are theory, though one is a scientific theory, and like most creationist you don't seem to know that there is a substantial and very significant difference. More to the point neither of them are subjective beliefs, unless you think the shape of the earth is influenced by personal opinion.
Another straw man, I have on innumerable occasions explained that the word proof is a misnomer in a scientific context. It's usually theists like yourself who use it as some sort of absolute. Just as you are doing here, by incorrectly assuming that an objective fact has to be an absolute, rather than something that is known to be true because it is supported by overwhelming objective evidence. As opposed to your theistic beliefs, which you cannot support with any falsifiable testable or objective evidence.
Subjective and objective are not binary states for claims or ideas, they are a scale. At one end you have nothing but subjective opinion, like your belief, at the other a weight of objective evidence that is beyond any reasonable or rational denial, like species evolution.
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Sheldon
Veteran Member
Nice false equivalence fallacy. You are of course using a version of Paley's watchmaker fallacy. Complexity does not indicate design, objective evidence and the fact they never occur in nature are what indicate design. All you have offered is unevidenced assumption, logical fallacies, like the claim that complexity indicates design, which then needs a special pleading fallacy to immediately ringfence an even more complex creator deity from this made up rule. Or the false dichotomy fallacy that we have only two choices, that everything is here by chance, or a an unevidenced deity using inexplicable magic did it.
Yes and the computer you are using is also just the result of blind chance, I suppose. The world is billions of times more complex than your computer.
Random events can produce complexity, this is an objective fact, since among other examples species evolution demonstrates it to be the case.
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Sheldon
Veteran Member
Actually I cautioned @ElishaElijah about subjecting his beliefs to the critical scrutiny of debate. I will reiterate, if anyone's subjective beliefs are more important to them as an emotional crutch, than critically arriving at a truth they might find unpalatable, then I would advise them not to subject those beliefs to the critical scrutiny of public debate.
Sheldon
Veteran Member
Use critical thinking to subject beliefs and claims to rational and critical scrutiny? Why does a deity not do that since it is more efficacious at arriving at objective facts, than blind faith? That should give any open minded person pause I would think.
Sheldon
Veteran Member
Bias tends to validate itself over and over in just this way. The bible read objectively is probably more likely to lead to atheism than any other book. Well perhaps the Quran and the book or Mormon are contenders as well.
Sheldon
Veteran Member
Indeed, and your posts relentlessly using no true Scotsman fallacies, like a chicken farm producing eggs.
Sheldon
Veteran Member
While ignoring the even larger numbers of people whose lives are claimed to have been changed, by belief in different deities and religions. Hard to imagine how anyone can not see such obvious bias, but then that seems to be in the nature of bias.
Sheldon
Veteran Member
He's also ignoring the identically successful (by his metric) and much larger number of cases, that use belief in very different deities and religions. So the deity and religion are demonstrably irrelevant to this process, obviously.