This was my third featured thread
Strong opposition towards any particular belief?
now I am finding myself becoming pagan and a satanist.
I stand at a fork in the road. Do I take the left hand path or the right hand path?
I am convinced there is no objective evidence for God. I don’t care...
IMO
What people believe affects the decisions they make as citizens. Whether or not you agree, religious beliefs affect others in society who do not hold those beliefs. For a non-believer, those beliefs are based on an imaginary entity created by ancient peoples with far less understanding of...
I suggest your control group is the estimated 15% of humans not "wired for God" and these will be most likely atheists.
Slavery was a very real phenomenon that was part of the Americas, and especially the Confederate South. This required assumptions and beliefs about inferior races. So these...
Yeesh, can't even presuppose without kicking and screaming? Tell you what. Get me a control group, and I will provide you results.
My control group requires a species that DID NOT EVER have 10,000s of years of religiosity to shape their entire social structure. I'll wait.
I don't know why it...
Then spirit is a material process. A mind is a set of functions that living brains perform, and that all happens as a material process.
That theory is hypothetical, so not a very good example. It's not widely accepted. Let's note that this theory still utilizes material of the universe, and...
There's no doubt that mixed in with religion are some wonderful ideas, questions, and answers about life, and methods of maximizing the emotional, spiritual/mystic experience. I just think we need to jettison the first century world view, superstition, anthropomorphic God, and overall silliness...
I agree that an all-powerful and all-knowing God is unsmashable. Also, I agree that there is nothing to smash if God is imaginary.
There is an entire branch of Philosophy that deals with existence (existentialism). In that, it becomes apparent that we can't really be sure that we exist.
So...
That was how I started. Assuming that God was real, then when I got serious about my faith, I did some investigation and discovered that no one appeared to know what they were talking about. Lots and lots of experts on what other people have said about God, but nothing else.
I am sure that it...
Re the ontological and epistemological aspects of the question, you’re absolutely right. So, let’s tackle it. Bahá’í epistemology first. I’ve addressed this before. We only “know” about God from our own limited understandings. Even then, our conceptions will be the products of either what each...
Okay. Kinda vague. But sure.
While there are metaphysical elements to this claim, it is not merely metaphysical. When you assert that your god exists and can interact with reality, you are making an ontological claim. You are also implicitly making an epistemological claim about your ability...
World Religion Map
Click on the religion map when you get to the website (above), and you will see where the various religions reside.
You can see a tiny dot where Jews are predominant. So, it is rather difficult to believe the Nazis, and radical Islamics who blame them for controlling and...
No, people with no god belief who recognize the limits of knowledge and the inability to rule gods out (and therefore haven't) are defining the word atheism in a way that includes them. Nothing sinister or dishonest there, as you imply. No effort to make defending atheism easier (atheists need...
So the Christian god is NOT omnipotent? And not benevolent? Then as Epicurus is said to have said, Why call [him] God? [He]'s just another cab on the religion rank.
But the bible states plainly that God tells lies ─ as I may have mentioned before:
1 Kings 22:23 Now, therefore, behold, the Lord...
As I said, "God is a jerk", but he has given me many signs far greater than a broken clock being right twice a day.
I could not be an atheist if I tried.
Roughly 90% of the world believes in Supernatural entities.
Many of them make the ultimate sacrifice for those beliefs. You don't...
Do you really think being "right" is what matters?
"When a superior man hears of the Tao,
he immediately begins to embody it.
When an average man hears of the Tao,
he half believes it, half doubts it.
When a foolish man hears of the Tao,
he laughs out loud.
If he didn't laugh,
it wouldn't be...
Genuine laugh out loud! Comforting imaginary friends explains it perfectly well. Of course, one group may have got it right (it's not impossible) but that makes the others wrong. It's also possible that there's something there that they've all misinterpreted, but I see no reason at all to take...
I think religious folks have targeted me because of my mental health issues as someone who is easy to witness too because hey I don't have many friends. Jon has social anxiety and other mental factors I won't go into. Talking to him I have got the same impression about him.
He says Christians...