The Existence of God

Everyone take a look at the logic used here. This is what atheists have to offer the world of science and philosophy. When someone makes an attempt to simplify a belief or way of thinking, the atheist simply reduces the argument to something absurd, giving the illusion that the point made was so silly it just collapses on itself. If an atheist has to resort to these backhanded tactics to "win" an argument/debate, then...as Swan says..."suits me," but it should not go unnoticed.

As valiant as your effort is Cub, don't give points to the opposing side of the debate in an effort to reach a common ground. There are very few places in the Christian Bible and the Torah where it should not be taken literally. It is silly for us to speculate on its validity when we cannot acquire evidence either supporting or refuting its possibility. It is important to remain objective on subject matter that can not be proven. By giving in to the logic behind the people that for the most part believe Truth is relative, you are gaining nothing and losing everything.

And to those that mentioned you cannot apply science to the bible, let me share with you a common argument. Science consists of five knowable categories. These are: Time, Force, Action, Space, and Matter. Genesis 1:1 states: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Now where could science be applied to that one sentence of the Bible. Lets break it down....
1)Time: "In the beginning [of time]"
2)Force: God logically is a Force.
3)Action: created
4+5)Space and Matter: "Heavens and the Earth"

So contrary to popular belief, yes, science and the Bible can mix. However, it is important to remain objective as many atheists and theists refuse to do.

 

You're wrong. "Science" can be anything you want it to be; what science is, is looking at the world objectively and seeing what most makes sense based on what we know, and so its theories are often changed to fit reality. The Bible is an exact story that refuses to accept anything other than itself as true even when over time more plausible things such as evolution begin to gradually disprove it.

Elver146

First off, where did you get 90% from? The percentage of Christians in the world is about 33%, or 2.1 billion. The vast majority of the world used to believe that the world was flat. Were they right?

 

The heavens are made out of matter? Where are they then?

I would like to point out. This is ONE sentence that you broke down. Its not that hard to find a sentence that you can say has all of those aspects in it. You can not mix the bible and science together in the sense that, you can not prove that the things in the bible really happened... Thats one understanding of that.

 

the most recent and proparly done studies have showed that prayer does not help recovery unless the patients are praying which means the placebo effect

god came to us 2000 years ago proved that he was real and then left not to return until the last days.

 

He's referring to the United States statistics.

 

Not what the Bible says.

Placebo effect?
So there IS no real help, it's all in your head?
So WHY do you, as a Christian, pray?
You ARE the one who wanted a sythe prayer group.

Funny, your Bible calls God many names, yet you do not.
Interesting you do not follow an aspect of your belief, even though your belief says you must follow EVERY aspect to the best of your ability, yet it is YOUR choice to not call him a name.
You choose to disrespect one part of the Bible, and you disrespect all of it, according to every Theological teacher I have ever had.

I do know what you mean, but as stated before, those "My gut tells me it's true" feeling almost always fail in the end.

The emotion you have for your belief impresses me, however; even though I am atheist.

 

not everything that the bible says is true

i mean jesus said to pray and nothing would be impossible

it also says that god made the planet in 6 days lmao

obv. some things arent true

i recently changed my mind about praying

 

I am actually an agnostic leaning towards the side of there being no God. While there is a possibility of there being a God, I don't believe there is one because the scientific world holds more sway for me.

I'm simply pointing out where you failed by using satire:

You're comparing the Bible to fiction and noting the similarities. Sure, what I stated was ad absurdum, but it was also sarcastic. I'll try to make it obvious in the future, but text isn't an ideal way to convey spoken emotion.

I don't believe the Bible should be taken as evidence of a God. Sure, some of the events may have truly happened, and I am not going to refute that many historians believe that it is historically accurate, but I'm also not dismissing the notion that it has likely been skewed over time and word of mouth, considering that the most recent accounts of people such as Yeshua (Jesus) were written some thirty or more years post-mortem.

I'm not going to try and refute the existence of a God for a couple of reasons, to name two:
1) To provide evidence for the non-existence of something is a fallacy. Prove to me that psychic pink ravens don't exist.
2) I simply don't know. What I mainly debate for is to see people's reasons for believing. It annoys me when people can't explain their beliefs properly, or have no valid reason for believing. Blind faith is irrational, to remain rational one must have a valid reason.

I'm not dismissing the possibility of a God, I simply disbelieve the existence of one.

I'm not dismissing the possibility that God may have created science and so on, either. On the other hand, it is quite possible.

I never said science and the bible couldn't mix.

 

I agree with you completely. Well said!

 

I believe there is a God for the following reasons:
Ghosts,Demons,and the creation of the universe.
Why?
Ghost are spirits that didn't leave earth science proves ghost exist spirts are part of God.
Demons are from hell which are Satan's "slaves" if there isn't good there can't be bad.
Creation of the universe is very controversial,Science states that a huge explosion created matter space and time,but how did it happen?It couldn't have always been there since people say "God can't have always been here."
But then it disproves the scientific theory of before the big bang theory.

 

i hate when people do that. it makes athiests look like such idiots, you wouldnt be able to see god even if he was real...

honestly, if a random guy told you he spoke to god, you really wouldnt believe him, now, would you? thats what i thought. the point is, most people only believe in god because that is how they were brought up. their parents say "BELIEVE IN GOD OR BURN IN HELL" from age 2 and so they believe it.

either way, athiesm is gaining power in the world, a matter of time until we dont have to deal with this....many of the more educated really feel they dont have time for religion (i live in one of the top 100 us school districts, so yeah, it is more educated :noworry: )

show me the evidence of ghosts and demons. no idiot ghost chasing reality shows or exocists, something unbiased...
as for the creation of the universe, there is a key word your missing.
"theory"
if you actually knew anything about your opponent, you'd realize theory implies that they aren't sure. they think thats what happened, and they can create a model of the universe back to 1^-37 (or is it 35? i forget) second after creation...but honestly, they just aren't sure. tests support it, they havnt found anything major to disprove it yet, observations of the universe and the reactions within it support it, but in the end, they just don't truly know.

which leads to another topic, slightly off on a tangent, but nonetheless. i've always been against religions because they refuse to admit their faults. what they say is right end of conversation. however, atheism evolves, the side of science evolves with new information. you always know exactly what you're getting.

absolutely brilliant. lmao, i loled when i saw "psychic pink ravens"

 

Do you think that only unintelligent or uninformed people believe in God?

I agree with you on that ghost stuff.
With the Big Bang, the question is the cause of it. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"=Big Bang. Could God not be the cause of it?

Then you say, "What caused God?".
Either God could have always existed or the universe always existed are the two options. I believe that a "greater power" always existing is more believable then our universe always existing.

 

yea im %100 sure that theres a god


This post received an infraction for ignoring the stickies. Please read them here: http://sythe.org/showthread.php?t=607302

 

The bible can be anything it wants to be.

The bible has been translated thousands of times throughout history, what makes you so sure that it hasn't been translated incorrectly or modified in any way?

Explain.

OK on to your next little segment. The world was "flat" until science improved and knowledge expanded enough to realize that the earth was not flat, nor perfectly round.

I read a few posts up, thought I would address them!

in the bible, it says they were building a tower to reach the heavens, which wouldnt be possible because they would just get too high and wouldnt be able to breathe anymore... but anyway, god got scared because they could have made it to heaven so he split us up across the earth and had us speak in different languages so the project couldnt be completed. which is not true either because we have evidence that life on earth started in the middle-east and worked its way on throughout the rest of the world.

 

I think having a Faith, Religion, or even a Belief is just something people look for when they are in need of hope. Or are going through hard times. Me personally, I just live life and not give a mother fuck about a higher being or power.

 

Does anyone know at all? There is no way to prove that there is a God, but there is also no reason to doubt the existence of God because there is no sufficient proof that he does not exist. Here is what I think. Do we honestly know anything about the past? Are rocks that people find really 'proof' that there were all of the ancient Egyptian civilization or anything of the sort? Is there any way to prove that we evolved from a primitive being, other than saying we look like apes? Surely if you can not believe in God because it is 'illogical', then how can you let yourself believe in science, which most of the so called "laws" that we have today, are created off of theories. For all we know, there is no way, and never will be, a way to prove or disprove the existence of God. Thus, bringing me to my decision of declaring myself agnostic.

 

Eh, not really. I think more that a lot of people haven't really asked enough questions about their religion though.

Sure he could be.

But, I am just as likely to be the cause of it. Do you have any reason or evidence that God may have caused it aside from the Bible saying it?

Well having God exist is adding an extra step into the order of how things began - why do that without evidence?

To my mind, it seems far more likely that all matter has always existed rather than an omnipotent omniscient being that created everything has always existed.

 

I didn't mean to offend anybody, I just thought of it as an interesting debate.

There are numerous religions around the world. But, there can't be more one God. Only one religion can have a solution to our problems. Yet again, NOT TO OFFEND ANYBODY, Jesus or Mohammad could have just been crazy in the head, with wacky ideas.

What do you think?

 

If you say ONE thing isn't true, you HAVE to say ALL of it is not true.

If you believe in God, then you HAVE to believe there are no ghosts, as it says in the bible there is NO in between.
You live, you die, after you die you go STRAIGHT to heaven, NO in between, NO ghosts.

Demons are angels fallen from heaven during the war with Michael, so you wouldn't be able to tell the difference in an angel or a demon if you saw one of each next to each other.

 

How is that even relevant? In this thread we're talking about the version of the bible that most people read and respect-how are we supposed to debate over a version that may or may not exist? Sure, things have been mistranslated, but the bible CLEARLY states that God exists, and this thread is to argue about THAT. And I don't think THAT is true. Why? No evidence, whatsoever.