When you see pictures of Jesus praying...

That's a pretty good essay.

The problem with stating dead on that there is no god however is that there's always the chance there is. Christian belief (and really every religion) lies in what is unknown and can't be explained, stuff too far back for science to test, and when science shines a light on the area god resides, god takes a step back to an even farther back darker area. Maybe we'll get to the point in which there's no more places to step back and the whole tunnel of life will be illuminated, but I think that'd be rather boring, that is to know everything there is about life.

Generally, you know you've done your religiou argument right if the religious person backs into an argument along the lines of "You can't explain god or reason god, god is and god's arguments are too divine and high for any normal person to understand or even human logic in it's entiriety. It's impossible to understand god you just need faith." This means that they've utterly run out of logical counter-arguments and have stepped into non-compatibalist views which, because of their purely faith based nature, can't be argued against with there being dark areas in the tunnel still.

But ultimately I came to this belief at a certain point of my life when I became an Atheist (and why I left Atheism for Taoism) is that:

It's better to have a false belief of hope, then a true belief of hopelessness.

The point is that belief in an all powerful sky being is not theory. It's simply a belief.

See that's the thing.. they are "slamming it" (ie making fun, jokes, jesting, mocking)

That are not enacting laws to put a stop to it.

As my friend once put it....

"The left my make fun of the right, but we defend with our lives your right to be so stupid."

I am amused that so many of you think that an argument against the Christian God is an argument against God. Can you not overcome your conditioning even a teensy bit ?

Lets just assume for a moment that there is indeed a supra-consciousness which shaped the appearance of reality, and spawned our mini-consciousnesses the way it wanted them, to inhabit and enjoy that reality.

Do you think It would have any diffficulty concealing Its existence and activities from our gaze ?

So you see, non-existence of evidence is not evidence of non-existence. Might even be quite the contrary.

After all, don't you find it a bit odd that we totally lack any convincing explanation at all for what we are or what we are doing here ? Anything that isn't just an appeal to an external authority (some old book) rather than to our own common sense ? That the whole question is so cryptic ? You don't find that at all odd ?

You haven't noticed that science has nothing to say whatever on the most important question of all ?

You are designed not to notice, and you have inbuilt barriers against becoming too interested. Remember the strange mixture of embarrassment and pity you feel when someone religious tries to convince you of their irrational belief-system, oh atheist ?

I find belief in such a supra-consciousness a totally rational deduction from what I observe of reality. Mind you, I go a lot further. There is only one consciousness. You are experiencing it right now. I (and therefore you) am one of its billions of alts.

To better understand your relationship with God, and the total inappropriateness of so much that is said about Him, try to imagine two of your SL alts talking to each other about you. Or trying to talk to you. Or praying to you ?

Do you see how weird that is ? The profound implications for morality, riight and wrong etc etc. How it is probably better held in the back of the mind than dwelt upon ? Kept quiet about ? How little half-glimpses of it could spawn organised religious practices with varying degrees of irrationality and misunderstanding ?

Imagine your little alt's puzzlement at the lack of "fairness" he sees around him. Why do you allow that ? Because everyone else is you too, of course !

Do things like "Love thy neighbor AS thyself" seem to fit in, as do bits of other religions ?

What really was the temptation in the forty days in the desert ? Who the true tempter ?

Do I need to spell it out ? Should I use capital letters ? I've already put the damn apple right into your hands......

But I have no fear of being believed. I know most of you are far too clever to notice.

Or, to put it much, much more briefly, the religious view is that reality has been deliberately designed to mislead us about its true nature, and/or conceal its designer.

If once you admit even the possibility that this might be the case, the floodgates are open, and everything needs to be rethought.

Given this possibility, you can see why many might believe that clues have been left around in old books. Don't deride religions until you have really thought through the implications of my first sentence for yourself. Then maybe attack each religion on its detailed further deductions, rather than on this fundamental premise.

But can we agree that it is not logical to dismiss that first sentence out of hand ? It's not actually impossible, is it ? Nor, necessarily, untestable, depending on the level of concealment.

Any good reason for it being the right book? And not the coran or the hindu book? or any other religion book?

Please notice that this isn't a atheistic question: it's only about why should i choose one book rather than another one. God could be different from EVERY idea we have of him (or she...).
He (or she) could even not be wanting to have anything to do with us...

Hmmm.

In my thinking, God is the singular consciousness. The All Consciousness as it were.

It is us, here, manifesting consciousness that are the multi-consciousness. Not each individual, but us, as a whole. We are all one consciousness and it is through manifesting in the material realm that we become seperate. Our ego says "I am" and refers to this singular embodiment in this particular space and time. This is the part of us that is 'in here', in each of our individual minds.

The All Consciousness is forgotten in everyday life, hidden behind a veil created by our senses and our memes which tells us we are seperate from the world 'out there'. Most people never see beyond this veil.

The thing is, there is no 'out there' out there, seperate from 'in here', but to truely perceive this requires utter supression of the ego. One most close the "Little I" to perceive with the "Big I" or in other words, "Thou art God, stupid."

-Ghoti

It's not just a matter of faith. Or a false belief of hope, or something that needs arguing.

There are also experiences - direct, unexplanable, experiences. In my case, with a hefty dose of the psychic unexplanable tacked on almost as an afterthought, just to convince me for sure it's real.

coco

Ghoti, you sound like you had more or less the same experience I did.

coco

Jesus is praying to god just as any good jewish boy would do. He also calls his mom up once a week and visits her on Passover and Thanksgiving.

THe question as to what sort of christian he would be... he would be Jewish, he was born a jew, he died a jew. His church was supposed to be a new Jewish church. Instead it became a cult of Peter which eventually lead to Roman Catholism.

As for as believing in creationism over evolution, exactly how was it created? Genisis1 or Genisis 2. They don't agree at all really so which is it? The age of the earth is not mentioned anywhere in the bible, it was calculated by some yoyo by counting generations back from known events which is about as accurate as counting packing peanuts with a leaf blower. Young earth people aren't taking into account the Chinese who have a history that goes back 10,000 years. If the grand canyon was washed by the flood, where are the rocks? The canyon is solid granet in most places and anyone who has ever messed with granet knows water, no matter how far it falls or how fast it runs will not affect it so it would have to have washed away huge bolders to do what it did in less than 6 thousand years so.. where are the rocks? Look at a satalite veiw with Google Earth and guess what, there ain't any. The Gulf of California, California, New Mexico, Mexico should be strewn with huge boulders but its not, its covered with sand. Almost as if water ran across rock for millions upon millions of years, wearing it down little by little.

Then you have to explain diamonds. Diamonds come from coal, we know this because we can make manmade diamonds. The temperatures and pressures needed to make diamonds in less than 6,000 years does not exist on earth except in factories where the diamonds are made.

I am a science kinda guy, ya know? I served on a nuclear submarine in the Navy and I am pretty convinced it worked the way I was taught in nuclear power school. I learned a great many mathematical formulas to predict how the reactor and other machinery would perform. It was uncanny how right it usually was (mistakes happen but it can always be traced to human error) and how reliable the machine as a whole was. Not one calculation included God as a factor, the nuclear power plant ran just fine without opening or shutting a "god" valve. Prayer was not used as a moderator in the reactor core and priests tend to make lousy technicians in general. My point being science has a tangible reality to it that religion and ID sorely lack.

Evolution has been shown to work. It is a viable explanation that has useful applications, our understanding of DNA would be utterly useless without the underpinnings of evolution yet we have DNA testing, stem cell research, cloning etc. Countless computer simulations show the process works and works surprisingly well. In fact, variations of the evolutionary process is being used to design machines and streamline industrial processes.

Of course none of this says there is no god, only that anyone who believes in a young earth isn't looking at the world around them. Those that tend to support it the most feverently tend to have mail-order degrees and shady pasts.

Me, I am a pastafarian too. I am looking forward to my beer volcano (assuming of course I start liking beer when I die) and the stripper factory.

I have to disagree with that If you have to lie to yourself to have hope, it's not really hope.

If it is not a lie... then do you cast that same light upon yourself?

If it is not a lie... what then? Hopelessness seems pretty sad and pathetic in the end.

Would you rather live a life full of hope, or perhaps faith reaping the benefits of happiness, content, and joy... this belief making your life better... and be wrong in the end... or live your life full of hopelessness, and a lack of faith with the dispare, the emptyness, the sadness... this belief ultimately making your life worse... and be wrong in the end?

Which life was lived to the fullest? The one with no hope... or the one full of hope?

Here is a question for all of you athiest, strict evolutionists. Some of you state clearly that you do not have to have faith to believe in evolution. Fine and dandy then.

The universe as we know it has a timeline, a birth in which all time started and events ofer billions of years have produced everything we know... out of NOTHING.

How exactly do you make "something" out of "nothing" without devine intervention?

*Waits for a logical explaination not requiring some kind of leap of faith*

Oh, I do like the water example given earlier to help explain the nature of the trinity. It is incomplete however but a good try.

Most mainstream Christian religions believe in the trinity to answer an earlier question, not just Catholics. Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, most Protestant religions, and many others. Some do not believe in it so it is not an exclusive belief in Christianity. Some do not believe in the divine nature of Christ for example.

The original question of this thread has been answered a couple of times nicely. I will add that Jesus' entire life was to set an example to the rest of us how we should try to live ours. He prayed in part to show us how to do it, to show us one way to communicate with God. Did Jesus really HAVE to pray to anyone, to himself? No, neither did he really HAVE to come here to earth in human form... except to teach us, show his love for us, and help us better understand our nature... and his.

My opinions above... sorry if you don't like em but they are what they are, no offense intended to anyone who disagrees.

Well that all just depends on how much you put into it, as you can see, no religious person has the understanding that they're lieing to themselves, they whole heartedly believe it. And in Atheism, if the afterlife just involves darkness and worms, a total lack of conciousness, then no one will care if you'd dedicated your life and love to a false god in the new of having something to look forward too. Certainly the person rotting in the ground wouldn't be thinking "damn I wasted my life".

Atum, I don't ask the means to how we don't see a god, but rather why we don't see a god's actions in traditional christian good and evil, the bible is full of divine intervention. I had heard once that God was a list of qualifiers. Why can't I see God? Because he's invisible. Why can't I hear God? Because he doesn't speak. Why doesn't God save the lives of Good people? Because God works in mysterious ways that we can't understand. And it keeps going like this, until I have to ask: Well....is there even a describable difference between a world with God and a world without God anymore? Why can't I see God? Because he's invisible or because he's not there.

I'm a Taoist, but I make no claims that I know how the world started more than anyone else. Science only offers theories, but really so does Christianity and all the other major religions. What says one is better than another? Besides that the Christian and other religion's theories were written in times were they believed the oceans were populated with mermaids and that the earth was the center of the universe. Again, it comes down to us not really having the technology and studies to know right now, but we have atleast an inkling and a good theory. Is this theory of the big bang absolutely positively right? No. But is there evidence pointing to it? Yes. Is there any evidence pointing to the religious theories we have? No.

Atum I have to say, your analogy on us understanding god being like 2 SL alts understanding us, is honestly flawed. With that kind of an analogy, then you grant that there isn't just 1 god, but sometimes 4000 at a time. And of course when you have that many different entities vieing for attention and power, there's going to be a lot of lack of fairness.

I think a better way of putting it would be like in the sims. Did you not try to lead your sims to better lives and big houses, teach them how to do things, and try to make them happy as possible? I think at this point, God playing the sims would be more equated to him giggling maniacally as he ruins sim's lives and kills them by the hordes in a city. Now honestly, I fail to see the love and kindness ascribed in the bible.

So I have to ask, the first commandment is that we have to put God before all other gods. God bothered to send out those commandments to Moses to put upon the people. That's hardly keeping his presence hidden. So this would suggest a few things: 1.) the bible and the ten commandments are wrong and completely human made, moses went up to the hill carved them himself and said god told him to do it, but this pretty much disolves all modern notions of God and Bible. 2.) God has changed from the dynamic and actively interested entity he was before to the uncaring and perpetually hidden one he is now, this means that god can change personalities, and if god can change personalities, get bored, lose hope, lose faith I might even say, is he really a god?

But the bigger question to ask about the God veiled in secrecy, is why? Why hide yourself? You certainly didn't do it in the bible days, where every other day someone seemed to be chatting casually with him or going to stab their son for him. Again, this would suggest that the bible is mostly made up if not entirely.

When it comes to my beliefs on God, I think there's a force that moves through the universe, a balanced, immortal, all-present force. It's shapeless and invisible, but you can still see what it does. Pick up a book and drop it, and that's what this force is. Watch water flow through the world and nourish life, how it moves in balance via currents and winds. That's the force, the Tao. The Tao doesn't care about human suffering or prayers, it can't. It's just a force not a thinking and emotional entity. I think that this life isn't the end because at a subatomic level, nothing is destroyed, even Einstein believed in regeneration because Energy is immortal and indestructable. We just deconstruct and form into something better (hence the evolutionary theory in place).

Of course my own beliefs there are subject to most of what i've said, but here's the difference that gets me irked about christians. I don't take this as the one and only belief in the world, I don't tell people that "i'm right and you're wrong" because I don't know. I might die and find myself in hades, or heaven, or Toronto. It's the ability to recognize that your beliefs are not absolutely correct and that not everyone has those beliefs. I state my points and reasoning on the subject, if you choose to believe them, that's great. If you don't, it doesn't matter either, i'm glad you're commited to your beliefs, just don't think I should be too.

I can't get my head around the idea of the Christian God. But I do respect the every day practitioners. Not the nut barn fundamentalists sniping at abortion doctors, but the people that use the Word as a template to live a good life. I just can't see this as a bad thing.

The grand organization that is The Church is another matter. 'Nuff said on that.

We don't need to convince people that their beliefs are rooted in insane ramblings and outdata arcana nor that the Godless Scientists are all going to hell. Nobody really knows, but, either way the world is a wonder.

That's been an argument used by creationists for a while. And it's true, that Science doesn't really have a perfect theory for this. But that doesn't mean we never will either, we just don't have the technology, science, and right minds to understand this now. But this really doesn't have much to do with Evolution. Evolution is the study of what's happened since the earth was created and has little to do with creation itself. Infact, i've seen some Creationists believe in Evolution, just that God created the first little sludge that all things came from and let it run from there.

But if you want to talk about creation, then I have a question for you. If the universe has a timeline, then who created god? Or if God was at the beginning of the timeline, then what was before the timeline itself? The problem with God being involved here, is that I can always go back and back and back and say well, who created that? Really at the current time everything involving the creation of everything needs a huge leap of faith. Again here I point back to my statement that i'd rather believe a theory about the universe made from days of research, work, and state of the art equipment and testing, than something made 2000 years ago by people who most likely believed that the earth was flat and if you sailed far enough, you'd fall off the edge of it.

As far as I know, we don't yet have an answer, Billy. Personally, in my non-scientific opinion, I wonder if it is something similar to a reverse black hole.

The good thing about science is that they are always seeking out the answer and in time, we will have an answer for that question as well. 1000 years ago, we knew little of how the the universe works, not to mention our own bodies. Today, we know a little bit of how the universe works, and we know a lot about how our bodies work - all thanks to science and w/o any divine intervention.

Now we know just how much we don't know

I think the point here is just because we don't know how something began doesn't prove a diety did it. "I don't know" does not equal voodoo. "God did it" is a nice simple answer but it is lazy and a cop out. We have a really good understanding on how stars work because hydrogen bombs work. We have a good understanding of how lighter elements can be changed into heavier elements since we can turn beryllium into gold and lead. We can also split the atom and create anti-matter. The mathematics and scientific principles that make these things work also lead to the theories concerning the creation of the universe. You gain nothing by saying god did it, poof.

Evil spirits do not cause sickness. Believing that they do gains you nothing and will likely lead to making it worse. George Washington was bled to death by his doctor who was "removing bad humors" and that wasn't all that long ago. Once the veil of superstition is lifted and investigation into how things really work is when real results occur and we can save so many lives from suffering.

As a thought experiment think about this, remove all traces of god or gods from the world. What would it affect? History would be vastly changed for sure but cars would still run, computers would still work, nuclear reactions would still occur. Now take away science and what do you have? You have a realm of fantasy where no natural laws exist, lightning bolts can flash from the sky and turn trees into unicorns and I can turn into a werewolf and melt steel with my lazerbeam vision.

There is no reason to think God did or didn't set the universe into motion from the evidence we have but it is certain if there is a god he uses natural processes and laws of science to do it. Abracadabra has yet to be seen or measured but I have touched fossilized dinosaur poo.

Because the something that is made is a new manifestation of the mater contained in the singularity you call nothing. The trap you get caught in is labelling "something: and "nothing." Everything just is. Everything was present at the point of the big bang.
Just because somethign is unexplained does not make it miraculous, and in need of a "god" to fix it.

At a minimum, even eliminating my own buddhist beleifs that do not recognize the truth of the bible (though jesus was an enlightened man), it is a simple matter of us not knowing enough to explain what existed prior to the big bang. It is not a leap of faith to admit you don't know something. I don't know what was present before the big bang and I don't know the result of the jets game on sunday. I don't need god to find an explanation for either.

I always wonder why Jesus looks Anglo and not as he was described in the bible.

Comes from ego's penchant for crafting God in its own image.

-Ghoti

I'm with you on this, Kathmandu, but I would like to note that way back when, people were certain about the flatness of the Earth. There are certainly things that go beyond current abilities to explain. Does that make it hoodoo? No. Does that fact that scientists explain alot of strange stuff away with theories make those theories fact? No. The manner in which the scientific community explains the inner workings of the univers is ever changing. What is certain today, is hocum tomorrow.

I also think that if "everything just is" is no better to me than "god did it".

Having said all that, I'm certain Their God didn't do it

True.
Most believers seem not to understand that if you don't have faith, being atheist or even agnostic, you'll have to face the fact that you'll be no more after your death.
That hurts.
Faith in life after death is a great, GREAT comfort.

I can't lie to myself about that. So i am living being aware of a future i definitely don't like, but having faith can't be decided.