Belief systems poll

[strijder20]

Yes, love me or go to hell. It's simple. God created you and put you on this Earth as a test to see if you loved Him. You should, given that He created you and a whole lot of other things in nature to show that He loved you, including other humans. Love for love is only right. Fail to reciprocate love, and YOU'RE the evil one, not God by any means.

What religion are you following? Some kind of radical split-off of the Abrahamitic religions?

 

[Traitorfish]

If I put part of my post in bold, it must be true.

 

[Borachio]

Not necessarily. Also CAPITAL LETTERS, "quotation" and exclamation marks!!!?

 

[Traitorfish]

His kung fu is indeed powerful.

What evidence is there that supports the lack of God? Because there is no divine intervention? Why must a God interfere with our lives? Is there no God because there is physics? Why must a God be the one pulling all the strings like a puppet master?

There's a ton of evidence to suggest that an Earth-based religion is false, but on the topic of a higher being itself, no, there is no evidence whatsoever.

That relies on the assumption that factual claims can be handled individual, proven or disproven one by one. Nobody has proven or disproven the existence of God, so it remains undecided. But there's good reason to think that science develops through successive paradigms, not just the progressive accumulations of fact-nuggets, so the question is also whether there can be imagined a tenable paradigm which places God within a modern scientific understanding of the universe. That isn't self-evident, and the obvious get-out, locating God outside of the terms of the scientific paradigm, is really just special pleading, a claim that "yes, but this idea is too special to have to work with others".

That isn't to say that one couldn't develop such a paradigm. I'm sceptical, but I wouldn't rule it out. But it requires quite a lot of headwork, a lot more than "you can't prove he doesn't exist!".

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, as hinted before, you cannot prove people won't shoot you from some unknown sniper-nest in a nearby apartment building, but you still are better off trusting it is highly unlikely to happen. Likewise you cannot base your life on the belief a god does exist, but this says nothing much about there existing a god or not.

Again only specific gods, fleshed-out in long texts, can be more open to certain arguments in regards to them existing (and even they cannot entirely be known not to exist). Non-specific gods are just impossible to argue about, and one can just hint at various thought-systems which may include them

 

[Borachio]

But wait. Many people do base their lives on a belief in the existence of God, don't they?

 

[Kyriakos]

^ I suppose so. In my view it is not (evidently) a good thing to do.

However in some cases it can be beneficial. Some people lead very difficult lives anyway

 

[Traitorfish]

Not evidently a good thing to do, or evidently not a good thing to do? Not meaning to quibble grammar, just unsure of your exact meaning. (I probably agree with it either way, tbh.)

 

[Borachio]

All those monks and nuns seem to hold a belief in God pretty central to their lives.

Though it never appealed to me to live that way, I'd have thought the majority of them think it a good thing.

 

[Kyriakos]

Not evidently a good thing to do, or evidently not a good thing to do? Not meaning to quibble grammar, just unsure of your exact meaning. (I probably agree with it either way, tbh.)

Nice

I meant the first, "not evidently a good thing to do", since i was thinking that it may still be good, either if that god exists, a god needs this belief so as to help etc, or if the person needs to believe so as to make his time here a bit more livable.

 

[El_Machinae]

However in some cases it can be beneficial.

Oh, there are many, many types of faith that I think would end up being a net positive. In a relative sense, anyway. It might not be perfectly ideal, and may even prevent someone from reaching a perfectly ideal philosophy. But, I think that since reaching a perfectly ideal philosophy is unlikely, it's a fair compromise.

 

[Kyriakos]

Oh, there are many, many types of faith that I think would end up being a net positive. In a relative sense, anyway. It might not be perfectly ideal, and may even prevent someone from reaching a perfectly ideal philosophy. But, I think that since reaching a perfectly ideal philosophy is unlikely, it's a fair compromise.

Which is why i firmly believe that the people who actually base their 'well-being' on their faith, should be protected from unwarranted attacks to that faith (which is not the same as the church; the church often is very corrupt, but religious belief rarely seems to be purely a corrupt effect, or at least a consciously corrupt effect).

 

[El_Machinae]

Legally protected, you mean? Culturally protected?

 

[Kyriakos]

Legally protected, you mean? Culturally protected?

Both. The latter is not easy to maintain, of course, but it seems to be eroding in a very fast pace in current times.

I suppose most christians are of the older generations, and most of those are tending to have their faith as a main part of their life. So to expose them to mockery that is now going on all over most of the west, is not the best of stances, philanthropically-speaking.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Sad to see Krogan go

Me too, I'd love to hear what evident signs in nature this fool has failed to notice.

Especially since I have been paying attention as well.

 

[Akka]

But wait. Many people do base their lives on a belief in the existence of God, don't they?

Yeah, well...
=>

Human psychology is the best proof of god's nonexistence, when you realize that all the psychological defense systems are uncanningly alike religion, and the latter provide for the exact same needs than the former.

 

[Gucumatz]

Me too, I'd love to hear what evident signs in nature this fool has failed to notice.

Especially since I have been paying attention as well.

I am not sure I have held this argument with you before, but people who believe in God take the rules of physics, biology, etc. to all be signs behind a divine "order". What I and others have argued is that we do see signs of a higher power not just in the rules [which are far too static] but in degrees of randomness - like the big bang theory.

Going back to the origins of the Big Bang Theory, it was often accused of being a creationist tool by its opponents (including Einstein) but its math was technically sound by the priest and later Vatican official Lemaitre. Degrees of tiny microscopic variation, aka part of chaos theory, are responsible for the minuscule alterations that caused certain primordial substances to jump from points A -> B. Tracing everything back to the big bang theory you see these random variances and they themselves create a framework, a map if you will. Lemaitre's "Big Bang Theory" was accused of being creationist because partly of these somewhat unexplained variances [which further research since the early 20th century has shown are probably even more abundant in effect than first proposed and since then the Big Bang has become a mainstream idea] made him and others believe this "randomness" or "chaos" and the "primordial atom" from which we can trace things to are logical examples of a higher power at work - especially considering if the "primordial atom" was at one point in a relative stasis or neutral balance, some degree of variance, tension, or force would have had to cause it to reach the next stage. It becomes harder to trace these chaotic variances the closer we get in time to now because of rolling forces started eons ago.

Just a way of looking at it of course but easily possible to determine these as mathematical signs.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I personal think that the big bang theory is wrong. It may be an explanation for what we observe, but I find it doubtful it is actually the correct explanation. And ha! It increasingly isn't, as this dark matter mambo jambo demonstrates.

 

[Gucumatz]

Although I think Lemaitre would have been even more pleased with the ideas regarding Dark Matter due to its variability and movement. In fact it would probably would have been a boon to his theological teachings if Lemaitre were still alive today.

 

[Borachio]

I don't get all this god business in the big questions. For me, if it's anywhere, it's in the everyday and particular little things that I see and hear.

Still, this way madness lies.