On July 14 2011 21:24 Dark Stalker wrote: The reason I am a Christian is because it gives my life meaning.
I am going to just respond to this point you make with an example from Sam Harris.
Let's say you're walking on the street and bump into an old friend of yours you haven't seen in a while. He looks radiantly happy and you ask him what's going on in his life. He replies: "Man, everything changed for me the moment I realised I am destined to marry Angelina Jolie." After your eyebrows return from the back of your head you ask him what made him believe this, as Angeline Jolie one of the most famous and beautiful women on earth and, incidentally, is married to Brad Pitt and they have like 27 children by now. He, sensing your scepticism, responds, "no no, you don't understand. This belief gives my life purpose. It makes me happy and I'm a much better person" He continues by saying "I wouldn't want to live in a world where I don't marry Angelina Jolie". At this point it should be quite clear that your friend has lost his mind and probably is a dangerous person.
Our beliefs cannot be selected purely for what outcome they have on your life. They aren't like clothing that you can put on because they give you comfort and utility. They cannot be criteria for accepting them. To accept a belief you need to have good reasons and what effect they have on your life should not be among them.
On July 14 2011 21:24 Dark Stalker wrote: If you are an atheist then you pretty much having nothing to live for. Why don't you just kill yourself, if nothing exists after death anyway? The reason I am a Christian is because it gives my life meaning.
Stupidest thing ever written, yet so common.
Quite simple: the reason for continuing to live, as an atheist, is that I believe that this is all that there ever will be.
The argument for suicide is much better if you believe in some sort of life after death ... after all, if life isn't great, why not just go for the next life? As someone who believes there is nothing after death, living as long as possible and getting the most enjoyment out of it, is only sensible.
I think I speak on behalf of all Christians here on TL when I say we truly genuinely care about what will happen to your souls when you die, and if you believe in things like homosexuality and pornography it will only lead to death. Pornography is perhaps the most destructive thing in the world today that is leading to countless evils being committed (rape, suicide, homocide). I know this because I used to be an atheist myself, but then I went to a Christian camp at the invitation of a friend when I was 17. It was super fun and very eye-opening.
I see a lot of this; people who were converted during their teenage years and therefore believe all atheists think like they did when they were teenagers.
Pornography leads to and comes from a lot of awful stuff, yeah. Homosexuality though? Fuck off does it.
Pornography is like video games and violent movies. It can fuck up people that aren't capable of understanding it/dealing with it. I'd agree with you that the porn world isn't squeaky clean and that a lot of awful things happen in the adult industry, but the same can be said about pretty much any commercial product (clothing, food, iphones, you name it).
Chances are that if somebody rapes someone he's probably watching pornography too. Just like it's very likely that a teenager involved in a school shooting plays some kind of FPS or likes violent movies. Doesn't mean the two are related in any way, all it means that people with (sexually) aggressive tendencies tend to be interested in any medium that allows them to live out their fantasy. Not to mention that the majority of teenagers play games in the first place, and the majority of men watch pornography (especially in their late teens to their early 30s).
On July 14 2011 21:24 Dark Stalker wrote: If you are an atheist then you pretty much having nothing to live for. Why don't you just kill yourself, if nothing exists after death anyway? The reason I am a Christian is because it gives my life meaning. If I wasn't a Christian there would be a gap inside... I guess you could call it a 'God-shaped hole' that can't be fulfilled by money, sex, power... Pretty much any worldly thing there is out there. Basically Christianity is about believing that we are all born fallen, but there is still hope for us if only we're willing to accept it. If a judge was going to put you in jail, but someone came in offering to take your place, why wouldn't you take it? Because that's pretty much what Jesus did for us - we are all sinners, and if Jesus didn't die for us we would all be in Hell right now. Most people who argue against Christianity don't know anything about it so it's like trying to debate about the benefits of StarCraft with someone who thinks that all nerds are just wasting their lives and productivity and giving the gaming industry profits with no social benefits by playing computer games.
please dont be that offensive. I am an Atheist and why should I kill myself? Life is great. there are so many interesting things on earth and I am a very curious guy. So I use my time to experience as much as I can. Why isnt that enough? why dont all animals kill themselfs? they dont have anything to do with religion and afterlife. they just live and so do humans. We are just more evolved, aware of our existence and have a lot of question. Many of those (unanswered 1.000 years ago) have been solved by now, others haven`t. Maybe some questions will ever be a mystery, but hopefully mankind will never stop searching for answers. 'Religion pretty much counters this.
I want to adress another issue. I`ve read some comments by people who say that atheists "believe" in no god. Imo that`s an uncorrect expression. "Believe" per definition is directed towards something, no matter if there is enough or any kind of hard evidence and this something is wished to be true. Atheist don't "believe" when it comes to god and they dont "believe" that there is none. They just dont see enough evidence and therefore they aren`t convinced that there is a god. And here it ends. Atheist dont choose to not believe in god, they dont want him to not exists and they dont see the point in filling the gap(s). This is a very important point.
The escape from nihilism can be a tricky prospect for new atheists/agnostics, and it does take some reflection to figure out where one stands on the issue. Taking the Christian perspective, a purpose for life comes 'read-made' so to speak. That is, serve God, love one another, spread His word, and so on. An atheist needs to find his/her own purpose in life, or, deciding that there is no purpose, find a way to be ok with that or not.
To share some of what I believe, I essentially make two basic assumptions, my postulates if you will, and I try to figure out the rest logically. My first postulate is that the universe exists independently from my existence (it has existed before me and will continue after I am dead). A simple postulate I grant you, but necessary to be logically consistent. It is obviously meaningless to make conjectures about a universe about whose existence one is not sure. My second postulate is that we are able to interact with, and discover truths about (or at least approximations to those truths) by using our senses and reason. Here is where my assumptions stop. The rest I try to figure out given this framework. I realize this may not be everybody's cup of tea, but the world makes a lot of sense to me this way.
I concede that there are still a bunch of unexplained phenomena out there, but one just has to be careful here: Is something fundamentally inexplicable, or has a suitable explanation simply not yet been found? I will always gravitate to the latter opinion, and keep looking for answers.
So what then is my purpose of life? To be happy, to leave things a little better than I found them, to have thought about the big questions, to have a meaningful impact on the lives of those around me and, if I'm lucky, to have a little fun along the way!
On July 14 2011 22:48 Grackula wrote: You shouldn't believe in something just because you cannot know how things work.
Back then people believed the sun revolved around the earth because they couldn't observe anything. Were they right? No.
Not to mention believing in a higher power doesn't actually answer any of the questions the OP is interested in (where the universe came from, what the beginning is). Because now you have complicated our understanding of the universe by saying a higher power created it. Now you have to explain where that higher power came from and what its beginning was or you're in the same predicament. That's why I have to laugh at any religion which claims to provide a cleaner explanation of the universe.
In such situations it is not sensible to inject your instinctive explanation in place of the knowledge gap. The answer could be anything, we do not have it. That is where it ends. When we do, we will know. Until then, it is a bad idea to start guessing.
Yes. Pretty much exactly this. If there is a gap in knowledge, then we don't know. You can guess, but you need to acknowledge that its a guess and isn't supported by substantial evidence.
i kind of have a similar POV to the OP, but differes in that i think ....we are all just electrons? think about it. smallest thing in the universe is an atom, atoms make molecules, molecules make organisms and shit, organisms populate a planet, planets make a universe.......but what if the universe....was just another atom in something bigger...thus starting the whole cycle over. ...i watch way too much sci fi .....
No, I am not a deist. The only beliefs that we have in common is we agree that the universe was created by some higher power. We have an idea HOW it was created, but I think it has been adequately explained WHERE it came from.
The main reason I disagree with deism is because I think there is good evidence for a personal creator, a God who oversees and governs us from above, who can answer our prayers. I think there is evidence for his miracles, and his presence in this world.
I believe that anything that began to exist has a cause. I also believe that the universe began to exist. Therefore, I believe that the universe has a cause.
It is also a FACT that the biblical new testament has more and earlier copies of it's manuscripts than any other similarly aged document. By a LONG shot.
Long story short, I believe that a singular being (God) existed outside of space and time when he put the earth into motion. As my first statement goes, this being does not begin to exist, therefore it does not need a cause.
I believe that this world, and all humans who are made in God's image have fallen into evil ways, or ways that are far from what this creator God originally intended.
In order to teach us these ways, as well as forgive us for our wrong doing, he sent his son to us in the form of a human. He was both fully human and fully God.
I believe this being, named Jesus, suffered and died at our hands after living a perfect, "evil-less" life as a sacrificial tool. Through believing that truth and trying to be more like him, we gain that forgiveness, and our evil is washed from us.
Eventually, when we die we will go to a new world that he is building for us. When he returns here, all those who do not believe his truth will accept the opposite truth, that they will spend eternity in hell as all people apart from Jesus deserve.
Well.. trying to avoid biased information about this subject.. I would like to suggest everybody who are here, reading this topic, to just enjoy their lives, to love their families, to make something that they will be proud of when they are older.
I don't believe in anything. Human race is just a product of the colision of lots of particles, there was a chance of 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000003% that we raised up from that particles, and we are now evolving.
What we are living right now, what we will be living in 30 years, we will not have any conscience about that. Becase we are already dead. I mean, we are part of the Universe, we are part of a variable which is called time. We are not eternal, every human being has their ages to live, but we gotta leave room for the next ones.
We will not remember anything that we have lived simply because we will never know what life is. There won't be any rememberings.
I think that people who truly believe in God have fear to death, have fear to be part of the eternity, have fear of what I have stated before. I also have fear, but I accepted that there's no way an after-life could happen.
It is a debate between Laurence Krauss and the Christian theologian and philosopher Dr. William Lane Craig. It is long, but there are arguments presented from both sides. I leave it to you to decide the winner after watching it.
I don't see how claiming that the universe came from a higher power fills in any gaps at all, and it just raises many more questions. No, I'm not a Deist.
I still think burden of proof is on the person believing in god, atheism is without belief and isn't claiming certainty of no god. The video wraps it up well.
Glad to see the thread hasn't turned into a shitfest/flamewar yet, hopefully it can stay that way.
I watched the start of the video and already there are a couple things I disagree with.
Let me first define atheism for you: "Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.[1] In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities"
Copied off of wikipedia.
As far as I can tell, this literally means that an atheist considers it a fact that there is no God, of any kind. However, since one cannot state that as a fact (Since there are legit reasonings leading to the conclusion of there being a God, in the broadest sense of the word) one could say that, atheists ->believe<- there is no God, at all.
Which brings me back to my post you quoted.
In that case you can claim that there are no facts, because the universe is huge and we can't know.
...Which is daft.
You can't say the flying spaghetti monster nor scientology is untrue but people consider those false without even thinking about it. Same with most of the over 3000 dead religions gods.
I could make up a god right now, and it would have the same likelihood of the christian god or any other god existing. I could make it as ridiculous as possible, and it would still not be "unprovable". And you couldn't say I just made it up, because I could be a prophet!
So understand that if you go down the seriously weak route of "well you can't prove a god doesn't exist" what you're really doing is instead of judging religion with the critical thinking faculties you've applied to unicorns, leprechauns, pixies, all the old weird religions/paganism, you're going with paschal's wager. And paschal's wager is a contemptable piece of writing, because it seems to assume that the god in question (who is supposedly omniscient) could be fooled by a mere human.
It's just pathetic pandering.
Edit: Oh and I hope I can clear it up for people, Atheism is a lack of belief, not a belief in no god. Don't assume grabbing something off wiki will be accurate, it depends very much on whether a theist or atheist wrote it. When someone attempts to attribute a belief system to atheism, they are attempting to drag it down to the level of a religion so it can be quietly ignored like all other faiths.
The rational default is lack of belief. Then when whatever is in question is proven, it can be taken on as fact. This is why it is only the existence of a god that needs proving, not the non existence.
On July 14 2011 16:22 LloydRays wrote: Without going off on a rant, there are other beliefs, such as pantheism, the idea that the universe and its collective are literally god, a belief held by the late Carl Sagan.
Oh wow, this is pretty much what i believe. I didn't know it actually had a term, I just came to this conclusion by using my spare time on buses and in school thinking about it.
EPT
