Why faith is an impossible argument

[Sava]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
"In a fox-hole, there are no atheists".

Bank on it.

You're wrong, but when has that stopped you before?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Lincoln
It is interesting how much af mans logic has been proved wrong over the years. One who relies on logic alone rests on shifting sand.

Yes, faith helps us reinforce this sand with water.

[Dinner]

My God is better then your God and I will keep blowing up buildings until you agree.


Signed: OBL

[Sava]

Originally posted by Oerdin
My God is better then your God and I will keep blowing up buildings until you agree.


Signed: George W. Bush

[Zero]

Originally posted by Sava


in an attempt to be serious... I don't think that God would hold disbelief against anyone. If God wanted, surely God could present concrete proof of existence. One has to wonder about the mental health of a God that would create intelligent life and then penalize it for not believing without providing any evidence. If God is like that, then I wouldn't want to worship such a psychopath anyhow.

This catch-22 of sorts is one of the reasons I tend to think Judeo-Christianity is wrong. If God exists, no human knows what to expect. I can't tell you what's right, just what doesn't make sense. Most religions don't. And it's disturbing that so many people base their beliefs and actions on something that makes little sense.

actually, ur wrong. If you are God, you are fully capable of creating a sentient being with ability to make a choice. And at the same time penalize u for not believing in him.

Dude the man is god. U cant tell him what not to do.

I'd do the same. If I had a craving for beings to worship me, Id create them with free will, so that they can choose to love me, instead of programming them to do so. And dispose of others that choose the other outcome.

[St Leo]

"As a teenager I was a committed Christian. It was in my background. I used to work for the school chapel, in fact. Then one day when I was about eighteen I was walking down the street when I heard a street evangelist and, dutifully, stopped to listen. As I listened it began to be borne in on me that he was talking complete nonsense, and that I had better have a bit of a think about it.
[...] In the years I'd spent learning history, physics, Latin, math, I'd learnt (the hard way) something about standards of argument, standards of proof, standards of logic, etc. In fact we had just been learning how to spot the different types of logical fallacy, and it suddenly became apparent to me that these standards simply didn't seem to apply in religious matters. In religious education we were asked to listen respectfully to arguments that, if they had been put forward in support of a view of, say, why the Corn Laws came to be abolished when they were, would have been laughed at as silly and childish and – in terms of logic and proof – just plain wrong."

- Douglas Adams, interview

[Cruddy]

That's how theologians earn their bread - by actually giving arguments for reliogious beliefs.

Evangelists earn their bread by taking it from the guillable.

[St Leo]

" What astonished me [...] was the realization that the arguments in favor of religious ideas were so feeble and silly next to the robust arguments of something as interpretive and opinionated as history. In fact they were embarrassingly childish. They were never subject to the kind of outright challenge which was the normal stock in trade of any other area of intellectual endeavor whatsoever. Why not? Because they wouldn't stand up to it. So I became an Agnostic. And I thought and thought and thought. But I just did not have enough to go on, so I didn't really come to any resolution. I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn't know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe, and everything to put in its place. But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins's books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker, and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."

- Douglas Adams, interview

[Guest]

Amen to that...
The Blind Watchmaker is a great Book


Douglas Adams will be remembered

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
"In a fox-hole, there are no atheists".

Bank on it.

Snooze. I think there has just been a run on your bank. It's now finished.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Zero


actually, ur wrong. If you are God, you are fully capable of creating a sentient being with ability to make a choice. And at the same time penalize u for not believing in him.

Dude the man is god. U cant tell him what not to do.

I'd do the same. If I had a craving for beings to worship me, Id create them with free will, so that they can choose to love me, instead of programming them to do so. And dispose of others that choose the other outcome.

I didn't say program, I said provide evidence.

[Sava]

Good article UR

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Zero
actually, ur wrong. If you are God, you are fully capable of creating a sentient being with ability to make a choice. And at the same time penalize u for not believing in him.

God is not the same as an omnipotent being. Your conception of a god is largely influenced by Christianity.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Zero
we rely on faith more than we think we do.

"Faith" is ill defined. What does it entail?

[Hot Mustard]

While atheists don't have faith in a supernatural being, they operate on faith just as much as any other human being. Otherwise they'd all be solipsists.

One of my favourite jokes: Solipsists of the world unite!