Journal, Diary, & Blogging / GOD

But does God age? Every other living thing does so I think it is a legitimate question.

I don’t think God ages because there is no God (just evolution). But if he did exist would he age? I think he would have to since everything else does.

I also think that when you say ‘nobody thinks that God ages’ you are wrong. Believers in God might not, because it will shatter their belief. But people who think that evolution makes sense ask questions of the concept of God beccause they want answers and because they want to show that believers are just that: they believe. Faith does not question and is a shield that cannot be penetrated by logic. Which is a great excuse for believers because it means nobody can disprove the existence of God.

God is created by manm just like the ideas of Heaven and Hell. The real Heaven and Hell is on Earth. But there is no afterlife – why should there be? We are born and we die – just like lions and ants and every other living thing. That’s how it works.

You say you found it tedious. Fair enough. But I guess you found it tedious because you believe in God and therefore see anyone questionning your faith as tedious – no?

BTW This is not a piece of literature! You are missing the point.

Well, I understand what you are saying, because most uneducated atheists think that way, but your random and unfounded accusations against theists is really astoundingly ignorant. Have you ever heard of Alvin Plantinga and reformed epistemology? It has already been proven through logic that religious belief is of equal standing to naturalist belief. You also act like evolution is somehow opposed to religious belief, when in fact many Christians affirm evolution. You feel like faith is against logic somehow, but the vast majority of your beliefs function the same way as religious belief do. You do not have logical proof or even profound evidence for your belief that other human beings have consciousness. You also do not have logical proof that macro evolution has occurred, although it seems likely. You also on a more extensive level have absolutely no grounding whatsoever about your atheist beliefs that the theist does not have himself.

As a side note, nobody thinks God ages, because the definition of God throughout human history has pretty much always been the most power conceivable being that is actual. If you start defining God as a finite being who is weak in some way, then you are no longer talking about a “God” in the same way that over 90% of people on earth believe in. If you want God to age, fine, but that isn’t God in the traditional sense anymore, it is just a creature with perhaps higher intelligence than humans. feel free to email me at fcanepa05@georgefox.edu if you want to keep talking, I don’t check urbis too often.

Faith IS against the scientific idea of logic because faith relies on belief. Belief is something that can not be opened up for questionning – if you believe in fairies they exist, full stop. And that is not logical!

I’m not a biologist so have no proof of evolution other than what I see with my own eyes. But if people who live in a cold climate have fair skin and people who live in a hot climat have dark or black skin, then that’s proof enough.

I don’t think 90% people believe in God.

No, I think you are missing the logic of the Abrahamic Theists. It is not that they think something exists; it exists. It is that a long time ago some men were imaginative, in a self deceitful manner, and decided to copy some of the other oldschool religions; borrowing key events from Judaism, Zoroastranism, the Egyptian, etc.

It is not they think these things, they were TOLD to think these things.

Fear not these sheeple, they will eventually destroy themselves.

Well, I was talking about vanilla logic not the
logic of the Abrahamic Theists.

I do not understand why you purposefully choose to avoid reading any of the writings in this field. It is as if you want to be ignorant for some reason. First of all, you are talking about micro evolution or adaptation, and there is no human being on this earth that does not believe that (accept a minority of people who don’t know anything). As I said before, we are talking about macro evolution. Also, yes over 90% of people believe in God, look it up. Second, the way that faith functions as an epistemic position is just as equally founded on logic as naturalist thinking or any other thinking. Please, do not respond to this unless you first read even a little bit about “Reformed Epistemology.” Have you never heard of skepticism? It has been proven for hundreds of years that believing that the laws of nature are consistent is not logically necessary, in fact there is not really any significant grounding to believe it. You are getting tangled up in words because you call religious way of thinking “belief” and you define “belief” in your mind as that which is not logically or epistemically justified. This is false though, and has been proven for so long. If you want to have a hateful view toward the majority of the world that verify by experience and nature the existence of God and spirituality then you really need to be educated about what you believe. I just don’t understand why you would refuse to search out the answer to your unfounded statements. You call religious people ignorant for believing something that isn’t logically necessary, when virtually all of your beliefs are the same way, and the beliefs you have that are logically necessary (such as that something exists perhaps) everyone else already believes. Athiesm is a religion and functions logically the same way as any religion. Please, just read more on this subject before you have a hateful attitude. I understand that perhaps you are upset that some people can believe in God when you see no reason why, but those same people are thinking the same way toward you. How can you not believe in God? For you to just say “you are illogical” is purely worthless, don’t you agree? I could say this to you: “You believe in atheism, therefore you are illogical and incorrect because you go against science and rationality, it is only religious people that are logical and are affirmed by science.” This is your same argument rephrased against you. How would you respond to this? By simply saying “I’m rubber and your glue”? You need to have concrete and specific criticism that make sense and are simply mud slinging ignorance. Wouldn’t you rather be able to talk to a religious person in such a way that wouldn’t result in a fight, but rather in a discussion? When you say things like the guy who posted above about “in a self deceitful manner,” that is just mean and has no argumentative value. Of course aspects of Jewish religion can be found in other cultures before them, if this was not the case wouldn’t that be odd? If God existed forever and always wanted Himself to be revealed to His people, then it would be insanity if after thousands of years of human existence no one had any idea about the “Truth.” See? His argument was just an emotional mud sling that is very easily answered and could be answered in many more ways that make sense, and that isn’t even a logical problem. He said “fear not these sheeple, they will eventually destroy themselves.” He means by this that all religious people will self destroy because they are so ridiculous? This might make sense if the world supported it, but maybe we should look at how religion functions in the world. First of course we have evil, religious people do evil and non religious people do evil. Think of communism for example, a purely atheist machine that did a lot of harm. Then we might think of the crusades or Islamic terrorists, and we might say “religion causes evil.” It is obvious though that religion does not necessarily cause evil, because the vast majority of religions in the world teach peace and many of them always have. Think of the famous spiritual figures throughout history, Ghandi, the Dhalai Lama, St. Francis, etc. These people perhaps the embodiment in action of how a person ought to live. There are thousands of people like this in the history of religion, how many profound atheists or anti-religious people have made such an impact on individual people’s lives. Regardless of politic, these are people who touch people and bring compassion wherever they go. These are the kind of people who are going to “destroy themselves”? No one said religious people are perfect, but it is the view of religious people that strive to fulfill character like those mentioned above and others in that field that do not condone or even say that terrorism or other religious violence is allowable or even a part of the religion. They would say that it is the aspect of human selfishness or something else acting out, not the religious part. You might disagree, but I imagine it would be difficult to prove.

In the end, if you violently disagree with with any form of religion or spirituality, then perhaps you are doomed to just be a mean person who does not care about being right or rational, but just want to hurt those people who see existence differently than you. If this is the way you want to live then I suppose I can’t change your mind, but if you want to actually engage this aspect of human experience that people have been wrestling with for our entire history, perhaps you should take a more peaceful approach and try to learn more about what scholars are saying on the matter.

Thats all I have to say, I hope no one feels the need to respond with hateful things like neoprose did. How can that lead to anything beneficial for anyone?

again, my email is fcanepa05@georgefox.edu, I wouldn’t mind starting an open email between a group of people.

“I do not understand why you purposefully choose to avoid reading any of the writings in this field”

It’s a free world, so I don’t have to do anything.

“Also, yes over 90% of people believe in God, look it up.”

Look it up? So someone has surveyed every person on earth have they?

“then you really need to be educated about what you believe”

I know what I believe in and it’s not God.

“You call religious people ignorant for believing something that isn’t logically necessary, when virtually all of your beliefs are the same way”

You don’t know what my other beliefs are, so please don’t pretend that you do.

“it is only religious people that are logical”

I would respond that believing in a man-made entity is not logical because it relies on faith, and faith is a non-critical way of believing.

This is my “concrete and specific criticism”: people who believe in God do so in the main because of belief and because of scripture and both of these are based on faith, which is nonsense. If my faith was to believe that one day the sun would rise in the shape of Britney Spears’ chest then you would say I was being stupid. Yet it is my faith. Which is why faith is dumb.

“religion does not necessarily cause evil”

Perhaps religion does not cause evil, but when you have one set of believers fighting another all because there are slight differences in faith (eg protestants vs catholics) then I think you have to agree that religion is responsible for a LOT of deaths. Islam teaches peace but what about its ‘holy wars’?

You see, you fall into the trap here of assuming that people who do not belief in God are immoral. Why would I be “doomed” to be a mean person because I don’t believe in God? Can I not have my OWN set of moral values? Am I just an unevolved creature who is incapable of making decisions and judgements myself? No. I happen to think the ten commandments are a good set of rules. Now, I can follow those rules WITHOUT believing in God, can’t I? I do not believe in God yet nor do I kill, stealth or covet my neighbour’s wife. I am capable of murder and of theft yet choose not to: they are my rules.

The problem is that a lot of people think religion and believers of God have caused more trouble in the history of the planet than everyone else combined. Which is why people like Neoprose are hateful. I hope you can see that.

It has been proven that believing that you will not float away in the next minute is faith and not logically necessary. When I said virtually all of your beliefs are not logically necessary, I didn’t mean to imply I know what you believe, but that it is not possible to only believe things that are necessary, because then you would have no thoughts on nearly ever issue that you could think of.

You keep saying that belief in God and Scripture is irrational but your disbelief in them is just as logically invalid as a persons belief in them. You could never prove that it is more true to not believe in God than it is to believe in God. You are acting like atheism a neutral stance when in fact the only neutral stance is not having a belief. You have no good reasons to believe God doesn’t exist (you may think you do but they are not logical proofs, only feelings and intuitions about how you perceive things) the same way you would accuse a religious person for having no good reason for their belief. You might think you are more “justified” in your belief against God, but obviously the religious person believes that he or she is more “justified” in believing that God does exist, and since you cannot prove that God doesn’t exist they see no reason to accept your set of beliefs about God.

And no, you don’t have to read the scholarship on this issue, but if you want to argue with people about the topic you might want to consider looking at some of the writings.

Some people do think that religious people cause mot of the violence in the world. What do they mean by this exactly? That of all the violent people in the world, the majority are religious? If this is what they mean then of course this is true, since the majority of people are religious (in america over 90% of people believe in God and the majority of other countries have state religions and such that people claim to be a part of). If by “the majority of violence is caused by religious people” they mean that most of the violence done is done BECAUSE of religion (which I suspect is what angry people mean) then they will have a very hard case to make. Say an Islamic person is brain washed into thinking that Allah wants them to kill all Christians, so he goes and kills a sunday school class of kids. Did he do this because of his religion or because he was brainwashed and religious terms were used? There are a lot of factors to consider on this but it is undeniable that a huge amount of good has come out of religion, like the people I mentioned above and all the others like them.

I do not mean to imply that only religious people can be moral. You are absolutely right that you can do good things and live a good life without the belief in God. However many religious people would then call you religious. For example, 1 John chap. 4 says that “God is love” and that if you love, you “know God” and if you do not love then you do not “know God.” So if you are moving and living your life in love, then you might say something like “I am choosing to live this way because I think it is right” and the religious person might say “that is true, but also the reason you think it is right is because you are made in the image of God.” This is a matter of perspective of course. I am just trying to say that just because a person believes in God and Scripture, that does not put them in a less logically justified position than anyone else (this has been proven and accepted in philosophy by atheists and religious people alike). And like any good religious person, I do want you to move toward the good and I don’t think that because you do not believe in God that that makes you incapable of participating in goodness and love. My whole point is that we should not be angry and mean spirited toward people that believe differently. If you feel that you would like to try to convince religious people that they are intellectually inferior or something like that then that is your choice, but you should be aware that some of your issues with religion are there because of the way you perceive certain things, not because they are necessarily that way.

It is too bad that we can’t sit down and talk about this because it can be hard to have a fluid conversation just in messages.

“What do they mean by this exactly?”

They mean that religion CAUSES the wars. Catholics fights protestants BECAUSE they are catholics and protestants (NOT because they are violent).

Believers of Islam fights Christians BECAUSE they believe in Islam. If you know you’re European history you’ll understand that the crusades 500 years ago were ALL because of religion.

I do think you can be moral without being religous. Morals are rules and rules can be followed without any notions of belief or God.

Ultimately, I am not trying to convince anyone of anything; I posted the blog because of the inherent difficulties there are in believing in a God. We are born and we die and that’s that.

Have you ever heard of a murderer who said that the reason they killed the person was because they loved them? Did they really kill the person because they “loved” them so much? Or is their idea of “love” deformed in such a way that allows for violence in it?

There may be apparent difficulties to theism in your mind (and even to theists as well, but they see compelling evidence that outweighs those things), but you should acknowledge that there are also equally compelling difficulties in believing that no God exists, which is why many people believe in God.

Hey wanderer, why don’t you wander over and read a copy of Sam Harris’ “End Of Faith” Maybe then you will see what sort moronic ideals you have. Not because they are silly, but because they are ultimately dangerous.

Hey wanderer, why don’t you wander over and read a copy of Sam Harris’ “End Of Faith” Maybe then you will see what sort moronic ideals you have. Not because they are silly, but because they are ultimately dangerous.

People believe in God because the idea that some Superbeing is all around one is a nice comforting thought, as if He will ultimately protect us from all the bad guys out there. But, of course, He does not.

Because He is not there.

There is NO compelling evidence that God exists.

THINK about it: it GOD really DOES exist, and He has super powers and an IQ of one billion, would he REALLY lave no evidence of his existence on this planet?

Would he not make SURE that everyone knew?

If I was God I’d (a) create a bit of land that spelt out ‘G O D’ and (b) make sure the Bible was PERFECT in every way so that it could NEVER be misinterpreted and© appear at regular intervals on the X Factor so that all the bad war-mongerers would know not to start wars.

If you want to believe in something that does not exist, fine, you do that. And if you stick to the ten commandments, fine, you do that, because it’s not a bad moral code as far as it goes.

But just realise that we are born and we die: there is NOTHING ELSE. This ‘rule’ applies to EVERY living thing from a cat to a caterpillar and there is NO OTHER REASON for us and cats and caterpillars to be here. There is no Heaven; no Hell; no reincarnation; no fairies; no ghosts; no soul; no UFOs (yet!) etc.

You are born then some time later you die.

You need to live for today and live on our planet as if your death is the end of your life.

Because it is.

Amen!

The point is not that I need to try harder!

The questions are there to make you think, so I struggle to see how they are banal. Contrived? Yes, of course, what writing is not? All writing is planned and organised for a response, whether that be to make you think or make you laugh or make you cry. But banal? No, I don’t think so. How many other people have asked if God takes a holiday in Hawaii?

And what has you not knowing me got to do with anything? Do you know ANYONE on Urbis?

If the questions don’t make you think AT ALL then I’m surprised you have found the power to string a coherent sentence together.

You should question everything you hear and everything you hear yourself saying for only then will you understand.

Belief is not enough. Belief is a shield to hide behind, a shield that prevents questions being posed. And if we do not pose questions we cannot uncover the truth, if it exists.

Remember this: when million Jews were slaughtered in the Second World War Adolf Hitler hid behind belief: his belief that they DESERVED to die.

Now, who must try harder?

I’d give you 15/25.

While correct that science cannot prove the exist of God, it CAN propose an alternative theory that explains about 99% of the universe: evolution. Why do we have subtle differences in animals across one planet? Why do some humans have white (pink) skin and some black (brown) and some more of a yellow colour? Is it because of millions of years they have adapted to their environment? You only have to see fish that live 10000 feet below the sea and you notice that some are blind and lacking in pigment – why? Because 10000 feet below the sea it is BLACK so (a) no other fish or predator can see colour; and (b) nothing can see at all. So why have eyes and colourings?

God was created by man, nothing more, nothing less. Heaven is Earth and, if we are lucky, we get three score years and ten to enjoy it before we become dust.

Amen.

I’m playing devils advocate here, but as much as I beleive it to be true (and beautiful in it’s simplicity) evolution is still a theory.Check out my ‘Captain Birdseye’ piece I have posted up – I think you’ll appreciate the content.
Just noticed how your avatar has ‘Creator’ underneath – shit – I best watch my step lest I bring your mighty wrath upon me…;-)

I am THE CREATOR and I can use capital letters IF I SO WISH….

You are right – evolution is still a theory, albeit one tested each and every day since 1848!

If you can think of any flaws in evolution please let me know.

I can’t – and I’ve looked. Although (playing Devils advocate again) evolutionary theory being true does not disprove a ‘creator’. In fact there are Christians who choose to believe in evolution being Gods mechanism for creating diversity of life.
I feel like I’m arguing against someone who shares my beliefs about their beliefs – wierd…

Hmmm, evolution does not disprove a creator but it kind of sidelines him a bit, no?

There is more proof for evolution than there is for God. ‘Course, people threaten me when I point that out where I live, but years ago, when I was in seventh grade, we had to watch this video about ebola, and how certain people in this African village that had gotten sick had antibodies that fought off the disease. How does this not prove evolution? These antibodies aren’t present in everyone, nor were they present years and years ago.

Sorry, I had to put my two cents in. Believe it or not, I am actually a Christian, but a very loose one. Many would call me an atheist, though I don’t get how that works. I am an atheist because while I believe in God, I also believe in evolution?

Believing in God AND evolution! Well, you have to be right somewhere!!

I think evolution makes sense because of the adapting part of it: natural Swedish people are fair skinned because of the lack of light, whereas natural Nigerians have very dark brown (almost black) skin because of the sun there.

That makes sense to me.

God is really Mexican

Jesus was black. (Well, not really, but he would have looked Middle Eastern, wouldn’t he’ve? I just don’t get all these blonde, blue eyed pictures of Jesus.)

Yeah, that whole image of Jesus is patently false.