Probabilities of God's existence debate

[velkyn]

Went to bed. Sorry for no reply. Ad a long day

We all do that.  And I am sorry to hear about your grandmother.  So, would you want a one-on-one discussion?

[Strawman]

I do mean YHWH, and just because you know of some immoralities and errors in the bible, doesn't mean he doesn't exist. For we know the nature of people, and people were those who wrote the bible, all of them Jews, which were compared to a whore by God himself, therefore, any errors and evil claims related to God are most likely related to Jewish people contaminating the word of God.

Then what use is the Bible if it's been "contaminated"? Would it not make sense to burn the tarnished Bible and wait for God to reveal himself again in this age of global communication where such forgery would be almost impossible to repeat?

Why would God reveal himself to people he knew would alter his words? Wouldn't he have expected that? Would he not speak to them in a way that would account for their dishonesty and produce his intended message in spite of their alterations? Or did the Jews outsmart God?

I find the idea of God calling someone a whore highly amusing!

[velkyn]

good points, strawman, though I think the only way to even get close to preventing forgeries, from humans or aliens  would be to have this god inscribe its message on the cliffs of Dover and that doesn't eliminate the possbility.   

[B_w_m]

I’d like to start by pointing at revelations in the bible; most of them have been proven to become true. So, if anyone would like to shed some light on this, like “maybe all those prophecies have been manipulated after they actually happened” either way, I think WWII allowed Jews to return to their holly land, which is something pretty much unique in history, for we know (as an example) American natives will never recover their land.

Not one bible "prophecy" has come true in any way shape or form. People just "think" that they have because of the media. Just like the media and TV try to bring Kim Kardashian into our existence, it does so with the bible as well. Things seem to be increasing these days only because the world is more "connected" now because of technology and we now know about things on a larger scale. The media influences the world and the world view. . . They show things the way that they want to show them. But the world is the same as it's always been, there has always been violence, earthquakes, gays, prostitutes, lying, cheating, adultery, etc. The same is for the Jews as well. They are influenced by the same "prophecies," because of the world view. I don't think I'm explaining this right...

Let me say this. If I told a little kid, say, my nephew that in the future, if the house is clean, and he moves into the garage of his house, that I will give him a million dollars, then I can bet you anything that at some point in the future, despite fights with his mother and father, he will at some point try to clean the house and live in his garage.

The Jews are only trying to do "their" part on the world scale because they think it's what they "have" to do because it is written so. They are just as delusional as the rest of the bible

[nogodsforme]

^^^^That's right. Jewish people who thought that there was a prophecy about them having a country were inspired to fight to get a country. As we know, history is written by the winners. If the Jews had failed to convince the Brits and the US and the UN to support them, they would have failed to establish Israel. But they succeeded, so, of course people point to the "fulfilled prophecy".

Thousands of people go to sleep and dream that they are going to win the big lottery, so they buy a lottery ticket. The person who does win thinks it was a psychic prophecy come true. The 99% who had the same psychic dream but did not win forgets they even had such a dream....

[ann]

I have a question that I have to put into writing before I start thinking of others.

I was listening to a song called "Lights" by Ellie Goulding that just came out. This song has a beautiful ethereal feel to it, You would never know this song is about a girl feeling completely alone and lost. When the "lights" are shone on her, it makes her feel like when she felt the safeness of her childhood at home.

People took it up to write their own meanings, some claiming she's talking about her brother and sister that passed away, others say the "lights" are God being there with her and with his omnipresence always being there with her. Of course, I realize all the meanings are everyone's own subjective views on life, religion.

But it really made me think:

Is God an imaginary humanized, yet omniscient entity that is omnipresent in our human lives to make us feel like we are not along and we should follow "His" ways because he's always there watching? Is God a curtain to hide the fact that we are completely alone?

[Brakeman]

Is God an imaginary humanized, yet omniscient entity that is omnipresent in our human lives to make us feel like we are not along and we should follow "His" ways because he's always there watching? Is God a curtain to hide the fact that we are completely alone?

He's not watching as he doesn't exist, of course. What is loneliness? It is an innate safety mechanism for herd animals, of which man is a member. We feel sad when we aren't around our "herd" because of our drop in trickle dopamine, the chemical in our brains that makes us happy. Like it or not, we are organic robots, we feel how our nervous system program tells us to. If you doubt this, try a few mind altering drugs.(once)

Woesome songs ply our repressed memories to evoke emotion and nudge our brain to cease it's maintenance levels of dopamine, thus we get teary and sad and sometimes suicidal. Simple biochemistry.

[Petey]

Is God an imaginary humanized, yet omniscient entity that is omnipresent in our human lives to make us feel like we are not along and we should follow "His" ways because he's always there watching? Is God a curtain to hide the fact that we are completely alone?

Yes to both.  God is many different things to many different people, but when you strip away all of the dogma, apologetics, rituals, and mental gymnastics, it always boils down to god functioning as a comfort/safety device.  See also Star Stuff's signature, where "security blanket" or "passifier" can be substituted for "imaginary friend".

[jeremy0]

I’d like to start by pointing at revelations in the bible; most of them have been proven to become true. So, if anyone would like to shed some light on this, like “maybe all those prophecies have been manipulated after they actually happened” either way, I think WWII allowed Jews to return to their holly land, which is something pretty much unique in history, for we know (as an example) American natives will never recover their land.

Not one bible "prophecy" has come true in any way shape or form. <snip>

The only prophecies that have become true are the ones in your head.  It is the same as praying, fortune-telling, or being a prophetic sleuth...

I had a spat where people were always saying - 'but the prophecies in the bible are all becoming true..' and then I thought - but the prophecies in the bible^[1] are nothing more than a fallacy.  It speaks generally enough so it applies to something at some point in time.

For example - music.  Music is meant to apply to the individual listening - so they can 'relate' to the music.  This is our understanding of rocknroll... It does so by being generic and unspecific.  The bible, Dave Matthews, and that dude that used to speak to spirits are affectively no different from eachother..

^{[1] See Revelation..  and it's false applications from everyone in recent history..}

[sheri817]

hello lucifer, what do u think about god? brakeman? strawman? anyone?

[One Above All]

hello lucifer, what do u think about god? brakeman? strawman? anyone?

Which god?

[sheri817]

idk, any? i dont really know much about religion, i never studied it

[One Above All]

idk, any?

I'm an atheist. Guess.
If you want more, you're gonna have to be specific.

[sheri817]

im just curious, and i can't really believe in anything unless i have proof

[Historicity]

Kymer, is that you?

[sheri817]

im guessing that an athiest doesn't believe in any gods or religion?

[rev45]

idk, any?

That's quite a big question considering just how many have been invented throughout history.
http://www.rationalresponders.com/a_big_list_of_gods_but_nowhere_near_all_of_them

[sheri817]

who is kymer? any yes rev 45 that is why i put any

[sheri817]

some people believe in just god, some god and jesus, some god jesus and satan etc??

[monkeymind]

im guessing that an athiest doesn't believe in any gods or religion?

What's an atheist?


And what does belief have to do with it?

[Omen]

im guessing that an athiest doesn't believe in any gods or religion?

Atheism is not a belief system in and unto itself.   More generically it is the lack of a belief in a god or gods.  Religion by definition is a belief in the supernatural, a belief in a god is a religion.  A 'god' has no self evident meaning, it is meaningless without the subjective attributes assigned to it within the context of whatever religious belief one is claiming.  God labels and religious beliefs are one and the same.

[rayoflight]

Faith in God is blind faith.  Yet wouldn't the world be infinitely better if he made himself clearly known?  For instance, during the Superbowl, a cloudy hand comes down from the Heavens and points to the center of the field.  Jesus appears.  100% absolute TV coverage, 100,000 in-person witnesses - no disputes.  Then a booming voice says "I an real, I am here.  Always have been, always will be.  Christianity - as you call it - is in fact the only true religion.  No other Gods ever existed.  Goodbye".  Then the cloud hand scoops up Jesus and he's whisked away into the clouds.

I'm not begging for someone to poke a hole in how this happened.  The point of this example is to assume 100% proof happens.

100% of Christains would say "told you so" and live their lives in 100% identical fashion to the way they already lived.  It's simply a "told you so" moment for them.  It may be a celebratory moment for them - but it changes nothing.  Proof or no proof - they are basically unchanged.

Yet all Christains hope to sign up more Christains.  That job just got a lot easier.  True good - which most Christains do (helping others, building houses for the needy) - suddenly - there's much more help.

Very very few - worldwide - could go against this event.  Other religions might still claim it to be a battle of the Gods - and claim their's still existed but just hasn't shown himself yet - but it would be a very quick battle.  All other religions would fold. 

The world - now knowing sin would truly be punished and faith would truly be rewarded - would join together.  World peace.

How does blind faith strengthen anything?  Does God say "well, you believed in me when there was no proof.  But this other guy, he only believes in me now that he's seen me.  That's minus one for you, buddy."  Nope - not the way The Bible reads.

People "see the light" all the time.  Some even have experiences they deem as actual proof - which is when they turn Christain?  Are they minus one?

[GodlessHeathen]

People "see the light" all the time.  Some even have experiences they deem as actual proof - which is when they turn Christain?  Are they minus one?

What about those of us, like myself, who fervently believed when we were Christians and "saw the light" of atheism? Never "really" believed in the first place?

[nogodsforme]

^^^That is what the Christians who come here tell us. If you do not believe now, well, you never really believed.

I was taught the JW beliefs from birth and knew no other way to be, until I started asking questions that poked unfillable logical holes in the religion at about age ten. I tried to hang onto religious belief for the next couple decades. But once rational thinking takes hold, it is very hard to shake loose.

Since I am now an atheist, I was "never really a Christian". Like I was just faking it all the years I was religious? Fake praying, fake bible study, fake church attendance, fake evangelizing other people, fake being hassled for adhering to a really strict faith?[1]
 
Well, I don't know what else to call it, because if JW's are not religious, nobody is. During my childhood, I did not know anything but the Christian religion. And no religion is able to hold up against plain old logic and common sense.

1.	If we former Christians were all faking it, religious people should be in a panic because there are tons of people around them, future atheists, pretending to be Christians right now!

[meconopsilo]

hmmm...gods definately not real. i can put my life on that.

[meconopsilo]

what light is it that these people see..scientifiacally speaking i understand that we all see light unless blind. religously you aint seen a thing bc there is no "light" to see. and as your attourney i advise you to go get the little brown bottle from my shaving kit.

[meconopsilo]

a god can only be as real as the self makes it out to be. yet when the individual feels the self as agod now thats a different story. nietsche. lol. i dont like the concept of jesus bc its stupid. oh dude cmon lets write a book about a faggot hippy and finally place his corpse on a stick. yeah ! grat idea. WTF ??? who let them into the ergot infected bread again ???

[cybr]

Didn't it also say He would return within a generation of the Jews going home?  I think a generation has come and gone.  Like Nostradamus...much of the bible is worked and reworked to meet your needs.  Like a few years back when some group thought the bible was coded and could be read with a computer.  My opinion is that there were many god/man sects at that time among the Romans.  None were meant to be taken as historical.  Gnostic (finding the meaning of life stuff) was what they were all about.  But Rome came apart, the church filled the void, books were destroyed and the Dark Ages came about.  All of a sudden we have Jesus as a real person.  The rest is history.

There is no proof for a sky daddy.  Just watching religious people should be proof of that alone.

70 is written concerning Tyre... 

http://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=seventy+tyre&qs_version=NIV

20 Joshua and Jeremiah...

http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/index.php?search=twenty%20years&version1=NIV&searchtype=all&limit=none&wholewordsonly=no&startnumber=51

40 Egypt...

http://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=forty+egypt&qs_version=NIV

1948 + 70

1948 + 60

2018 - 2008.

1948 + 50 = 1998 = 666 The Talents given to Solomon for The Temple Building {for The Body is The Temple} x 3.

+ 23 Jeremiah.

1948 + 3 - 70 = 1881 { for the time of the introduction of certain inventions including electricity was coming with Ampere, Faraday, Ohm, Tesla...} - 70 = 1811...

+ ~10


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Civil_War

Don quixote...

1908 Russia 'Comet'

WWI

1914 - 1918 ~4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War

WWII

1939 - 1945 ~6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWII

Public introduction of Atomic energy ...

1945 - 1908 = 37;  + 3 concerning Egypt... + 5...

1953 - 40 = 1913

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt

2011 - 1953 = 58... - 40 - 18 {6+6+6}

[Zankuu]

cybr, I can't decipher your post. What is it you're trying to explain?