The Problem with Belief in God

[Epic Beard Man]

Well I told you for example, god.

Then if you believe in the survivability of the consciousness i.e. the soul then how is that you do not believe in that since God has authored all that exists in this universe and beyond?

 

[osgart]

I have a beautiful vision of God, but its a letdown because i know it aint real.

But i have proofs i believe in for things beyond material existence. That even if they arent true, i have fulfillment in my truth. I come alive at it.

When you are close to death you start thinking of these things. I had a stroke, and ever since then ive been agnostically driven toward a higher power.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

It is probably deception. You see what you want to see and hear what you want to hear and believe what seems convenient.

That could be with anything, religion included. I dont see a problem with belief in god, but if its a deception, do you all really believe in god or a set of events, experiences, and conclusions of what you want god to be?

 

[blü 2]

The debate between the belief and lack of and rejection of creator will not cease until evidence is found for the existence of such a being.

In this context 'creator' generally indicates a sentient purposeful being with sufficient power to design the universe according to [his] wish and bring it into being.

Further, it doesn't generally include a superscientist. If God were instead regarded as a superscientist, then believers would act rationally and so systematically try to explore the superscience involved so that humans could use it.

Instead, God is regarded as able to do anything [he] likes with a twitch of [his] will.

So it seems to me that while t2he argument is usually presented as the gap between creation by engineer and creation by natural process, it's simultaneously, and I think more fundamentally, the gap between magic and science.

(By magic I mean the power to alter reality independently of the rules of physics, particularly by wishing.)

Those that reject the possibility of a creator cannot disprove that such a creator exists as one cannot find evidence for something that does not exist (proving a false positive) And the only way to determine that there is no such god in existence would be that no evidence that supports the belief in god be found.

If God is not superscientist but supernatural (outside of nature, outside of objective reality) then [he]'s imaginary. The only place where such a god can exist is in imagination: there's no such place in reality as 'outside reality'.

And this is underlined by the total absence of a definition of God / a god that would allow us to determine whether any real candidate was indeed God / a god or not.

And why churches don't have departments researching and experimenting on how to perform miracles. And why no government spends money preparing to defend against an attack by supernatural beings. It's as though everyone both knows and doesn't know that God has no other existence than as a flexible and fuzzy concept in individual brains, with no real counterpart.

Those that reserve their belief until evidence is found, will continue to wait.

Until a satisfactory definition of a real god is provided, I have no idea what real entity I'm supposed to be waiting for. And so far, no one has told me.

 

[Shushersbedamned]

Then if you believe in the survivability of the consciousness i.e. the soul then how is that you do not believe in that since God has authored all that exists in this universe and beyond?

What?

 

[Shushersbedamned]

That could be with anything, religion included. I dont see a problem with belief in god, but if its a deception, do you all really believe in god or a set of events, experiences, and conclusions of what you want god to be?

Don't see a difference.

 

[Epic Beard Man]

What?

Ok maybe I misunderstood you. I said only when we die then, we will know God exist, but until then we will continue to discuss the existence or non-existence of God to infinity.

Then you said "I do not believe in that."

So I'm confused are you saying we wont know God's existence after death, or are you saying you don't believe we will discuss this debate til infinity?

 

[Shushersbedamned]

Ok maybe I misunderstood you. I said only when we die then, we will know God exist, but until then we will continue to discuss the existence or non-existence of God to infinity.

Then you said "I do not believe in that."

So I'm confused are you saying we wont know God's existence after death, or are you saying you don't believe we will discuss this debate til infinity?

We don't know if we know about god's existence if we died a thousand times.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Don't see a difference.

Do you believe god is real or a product of imagination based on what you want to see even though it doesnt exist?

 

[Shushersbedamned]

Do you believe god is real or a product of imagination based on what you want to see even though it doesnt exist?

I'm not sure that there is a difference. There is no proper evidence to that my belief exists anymore than there is to that god exists.

 

[Epic Beard Man]

We don't know if we know about god's existence if we died a thousand times.

That makes absolutely no sense to me. But I'm really tired and not trying to understand. Hey you believe how you believe.

 

[David T]

Yeah. The star trek episode also has a political message (as many do). Both sides fighting with each other (racism-black/white) even though they both the same type of being. Makes you wonder what unseen and small biases that blind us to and make us treat others unlike they want to be treated.

Yes it does. I actually liked that one and lots of times it seems to me that at times with all the debates we get lost in the trees and lose sight of the forest so to speak. We all do actually just some of us occasionally take a deep breath and think oh man I was dumb, we are dumb. Lol

 

[Jumi]

The debate between the belief and lack of and rejection of creator will not cease until evidence is found for the existence of such a being.

So you're limiting what you see as a problem to those who believe in creator gods?

And believers simply do not need evidence, and use the lack of evidence of a god as evidence for the possibility of a god. Or make the blind assumption that there is one, because we haven't found evidence yet, the old "I don't know therefore god." What I would coin gnostic ignorance.

I don't know, therefore creator god. I don't know, therefore not creator god. Two sides of a coin, both quite not worth the currency if you look at it from outside that debate.

Some state they personally know their god, that they know it exists, why don't they share this knowledge and end the debate, the death and wholesale slaughter done in the name of different gods? Are they so selfish that they must to keep their god to themselves? And when asked to explain many say it is a feeling.

If only life were as simplistic as you wish.

Feelings from my limited understanding are just releases of chemicals in the brain, so is god a chemical

That's a rather limited idea of human biology. Sure we can reduce our body to chemicals, it's all that we see right? Being born is also just chemicals connecting together and dying the same thing. Even the warmth we feel from the sun is just chemicals reacting to the heat.

I don't deny the possibility that such a being exists, but I am confident that all the iterations of such a being that humans have talked about, those that we have documentation and stories about and those lost in our relatively short history are wrong. There are too many loop holes and obvious gaps in knowledge and understanding of our own existence and what exists around us for such inspiration to be "divine" That such a being would impart some of it's infinite knowledge upon us, only for us to document it, only to find later through our own devices that that given knowledge is incorrect.

You're thinking of literalist believers in various scriptures and making a generalization on that. As this theist and I believe all knowledge is such that we have to work for it, it won't fall from the sky and tell you to wear green underwear.

In my opinion divine knowledge that has been proven demonstrably false, is not divine, it is the wild conjuring of the imagination when presented with a reality those that experienced it at the time did not understand and created an answer to appease the masses.

Indeed knowledge proven wrong is not knowledge. But would you say a textbook on chemistry was false if a group of people made a religion out of it?

Creating an answer not founded in reality is a dangerous path that I think leads to the retardation of progress. These fabricated answers to the questions about the unknown served their purpose for a time until we had the capability to seek the answers for ourselves, But these crutches have been used for far too long and and we have been crippled by leaning on them for far too long.

You've been to the first aid ward in a foreign land and see a lot of crutches so you believe all of them have the same doctor and diagnosis.

Humanity has only very recently began to take its first steps on its own. And hopefully we will continue to rehabilitate our species. And discard these temporary solutions to the unknown. Imagine a world where everyone is invested in seeking the concrete truth and not squabbling as we have been doing for thousands of years over the name of a creator that has yet to have been discovered.

We've been taking steps on our own as long as we've existed.

 

[outlawState]

Feelings from my limited understanding are just releases of chemicals in the brain, so is god a chemical?

For you, it is likely. It doesn't appear that you possess the necessary degree of connection with absolute reality for it to be any other way.

I don't deny the possibility that such a being exists, but I am confident that all the iterations of such a being that humans have talked about, those that we have documentation and stories about and those lost in our relatively short history are wrong. There are too many loop holes and obvious gaps in knowledge and understanding of our own existence and what exists around us for such inspiration to be "divine" That such a being would impart some of it's infinite knowledge upon us, only for us to document it, only to find later through our own devices that that given knowledge is incorrect.

In my opinion divine knowledge that has been proven demonstrably false, is not divine, it is the wild conjuring of the imagination when presented with a reality those that experienced it at the time did not understand and created an answer to appease the masses.

Demonstrably false. The masses did not need appeasing when the divine was revealed, as there was no such thing as democracy. Or if the masses needed palliatives to ease their everyday sufferings, they were fobbed off with ritual prostitution in the form of Asherahs & Astartes etc, and gods devoted to the same, Tammuz myths, the Queen of Heavan and the Babylonian trinity. i.e. Babylon. Yet a function of the bible is to prove that the Babylonian system of harlot religion that the masses delight in is false.

So in that sense, there is truth in the bible, in that it appears to deride the same pagan religious systems that you also have no faith in.

Creating an answer not founded in reality is a dangerous path that I think leads to the retardation of progress. These fabricated answers to the questions about the unknown served their purpose for a time until we had the capability to seek the answers for ourselves, But these crutches have been used for far too long and and we have been crippled by leaning on them for far too long.

Humanity has only very recently began to take its first steps on its own. And hopefully we will continue to rehabilitate our species. And discard these temporary solutions to the unknown. Imagine a world where everyone is invested in seeking the concrete truth and not squabbling as we have been doing for thousands of years over the name of a creator that has yet to have been discovered.

On the contrary. humanity is returning at a rapid rate to the Babylonian system, incorporating such "concrete truths" as men being equal to women. Lol!

The real religion, the one which connects with human reality, appears to be completely unknown to you. That is your epistemological problem, not a fault of the divine, as the divine has clearly imposed limits to knowing the divine that mandate a certain "attitude" of respect as a sine non qua - a respect that you evidently do not possess, and probably never will possess.

 

[Cacotopia]

@Jumi the argument here is that everyone has their own belief or non belief, and it's a waste of time trying to convince each other otherwise. I don't want there to be a reality where we live and there is only agreement. Such a world i cannot fathom to possibly exist. where a population as diverse as ours can be fully accepting of each other in all of our differences.

@outlawState what are you babbling about other than attempting to be mildly insulting. Where do I talk about democracy, Babylon, "harlot religion", and equal rights, stay on topic man. The I lack the mental capacity to understand and never will, gtfo.


The argument of god, no gods is moot. It won't end. If god does not exist, no proof of god's non-existence will be found, and no proof found is ammunition for a theist to say god is out there somewhere. It's circular and meaningless.

 

[Jumi]

@Jumi the argument here is that everyone has their own belief or non belief, and it's a waste of time trying to convince each other otherwise. I don't want there to be a reality where we live and there is only agreement. Such a world i cannot fathom to possibly exist. where a population as diverse as ours can be fully accepting of each other in all of our differences.

That to me seems very different from the OP you wrote. Of course it's a waste of time to try to convince people.

 

[outlawState]

The I lack the mental capacity to understand and never will, gtfo.

Eh? I said it was God who prevented those who don't respect him from understanding. Don't like it, then blaspheme him. Your "gtfo" is taken to be directed towards God's own principle. I'll let him respond to it.


Mk 4;12 "'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!"

 

[Thaif]

ask believers not me. You can't find evidence of something that doesn't exist. It's insanity.

A bit like life on other planets.

 

[Cacotopia]

the vastness of space includes the possibility of life elsewhere. The presence of water elsewhere further suggests a greater possibility of the existence of life elsewhere. None has yet been found but the search continues. Scientists and thinkers never stated there was life somewhere other than our planet and are now searching to back up the claim. That is the difference. The question and search before the conclusion, not the conclusion and the search to confirm the conclusion. It corrupts the journey to seek the answer by excluding all except the one you seek.

 

[Cacotopia]

Eh? I said it was God who prevented those who don't respect him from understanding. Don't like it, then blaspheme him. Your "gtfo" is taken to be directed towards God's own principle. I'll let him respond to it.


Mk 4;12 "'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!"

Made to never understand, as an object to be kicked by those that do. Sounds great.