This was actually really insightful, I've never thought to look at "God" in this way before.

 

Personally I've always thought of God as some idea people use to give them a sense of worth. If something bad happens who does everyone turn to? God. If something good happens what was the source of that? God. People use the idea of a God to answer and explain the unknown. It makes their lives complete knowing their living for something.

Why spend your life devoting yourself to someone you don't even no is there?

Why not love yourself .

Are You scared of dieying ?

So by holding my hands together and talking to myself, I can magically speak to a invisible person ...

 

Life as it is, is uncertain. You can't tell me anything that will definitely happen. So what is really there at all? 

 

Nothing wrong with loving yourself, what religion teaches that it's wrong?

 

Death is a natural course to everything living, nothing evades death.

 

When people talk to their pets, can their pets hear them?

Edited August 2, 201312 yr by Mubu

Why spend your life devoting yourself to someone you don't even no is there?

Why not love yourself .

Are You scared of dieying ?

So by holding my hands together and talking to myself, I can magically speak to a invisible person ...

 

You say that you don't know he's there, but you still haven't answered my post... 

 

Also, what does "loving yourself" have to do with this? I try to be the best person I can be, so that I can and do love myself. Also, with the knowledge of God and Islam so clear in my mind, I'm not scared of dying. But, you seem to believe in a cold, dark, unconscious abyss of nothingness once your life comes to an end. So, it wouldn't surprise me if you were scared of death. 

 

"An invisible person" - did you even read the post?

I call it brainwashing really , and in the words of Richard Dawkins : child abuse forcing your children to believe that if they do wrong there burn in hell.

Also look at all the evil down in the name of religion ..

 

Call it whatever you want. A small speck that I will never really see at all in this universe doesn't really matter to me that much...

 

Also, do you really need Richard Dawkins to fight your battles? Also, look at all of the evil that people have done because they have no morals. 

 

JUST 2 EXAMPLES: Hitler and Stalin

 

Were they not "evil" by your standards? And, I don't think they did it in the name of religion. They were atheists - just like you.

 

Back to Dawkins!

Would you just say that directly to your kid if you truly believed in God? Just say "oh yeah do this or you'll go to hell". NO! You don't just tell a child that. They learn it as their lives go on through the study of their own religion. 

 

Also, I don't think "brainwash" was the term you were looking for. I think you were looking for the term "indoctrination". Let me tell you now: You may think that indoctrination is bad - but it's happened to you. You've been indoctrinated to think one way, hate some group of people, etc. You're very impressionable as a child and take in whatever you can. For example, if you grew up living on a secluded island which hated people for their race  - would you ever really question it, or would it become part of your daily routine? We, as people, are the embodiment of what we were taught in our pasts. The only other factor in our decisions is our genes - which we really don't control. A sort of destiny if you will...

 

Edit: Is anyone actually going to respond to the topic post..? We've been discussing God, but no one has actually critiqued the post itself yet... And I think the majority of people on here didn't even read it...

Edited August 2, 201312 yr by osrsbotternoob

Science can say many things but can they prove anything 100%? I find science interesting and I have no qualms with those who believe in it, but I can't take their argument serious when they turn to hypocrites in a heartbeat.

 

Argument being Show me proof that god exists, My retort being Show me that he doesn't.

Science can say many things but can they prove anything 100%? I find science interesting and I have no qualms with those who believe in it, but I can't take their argument serious when they turn to hypocrites in a heartbeat.

 

Argument being Show me proof that god exists, My retort being Show me that he doesn't.

 

1. Salam, Muslim brother

2. I, too, find science interesting and enjoy learning about the universe through a different lens. That's what brought me to post about this.

 

Also, he said to "Show proof that God exists"

I don't think that he read the topic post... 

Salams 

It's too bad nobody actually talked about the science aspect of this thread...there's some interesting stuff here. The Big Bang actually does obey the Law of Conservation Energy. The total energy in the universe is zero, meaning it can in fact arise from nothing . The positive energy, due to the matter/heat and what not in the universe, is directly counteracted by negative energy, in the form of gravitational attraction. The sum of all this energy is 0, so the Law of Conservation is not broken.

 

Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist, I've heard of this theory before, but never really looked into it much, and although it looks like the majority of cosmologists agree with this theory, it's fairly hypothetical and requires a few assumptions. Also, here's a link to the source, which basically just says all the stuff I'm writing below http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/31_02/nothing.html

 

Now explaining how we get our universe from zero energy, doesn't appear to be that well known (or maybe I just haven't researched it enough), but from what I've read it appears that all that "nothing" would need in order to begin inflationary expansion is a small push, a tiny bit of energy (which kind of makes my whole, coming from zero energy sound like a load of crap).

 

But anyways, this tiny bit of energy is thought to have come from quantum fluctuations, which in normal words, are particle pairs which suddenly come into existence, and then annihilate each other almost right away. Now assuming quantum fluctuations could occur before the birth of our universe, this could provide the energy required to begin the inflationary expansion, and the particles would most likely annihilate each other afterwards.

 

I read in the article that apparently even if they didn't the Law of Conservation wouldn't really be broken because the energy violation would be too small to measure, but I am unsure if they mean "too small to measure with current instruments" or "too small to measure due to Heisenberg's uncertainty", I'm going to assume it's the second one, in which case I don't think it breaks the law of conservation. 

 

Now, for anybody who kept reading up this till now, more juicy physics, because I've basically been researching stuff as I've been typing this, and I'm too lazy to go edit the things I've already written. 

 

So quantum fluctuations create short bursts of energy, which vanishes almost instantly, so quickly that it cannot even be measured directly. Now, when I saw it cannot be measured, I don't mean we aren't advanced enough to measure it, I mean it literally is impossible to measure it, due to the uncertainty principle. If you are unfamiliar with the uncertainty principle, I advise you to  read a little bit about it on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle, just like the first paragraph cause it's late and I'm too tired to summarize. So, if you read that page, you may have seen that momentum and position have certain uncertainty's associated with them, and the product of the uncertainty has constant value. 

 

This same principle can be applied to time and energy, creating a time-energy uncertainty, similar to a position-momentum uncertainty (these are actually linked, I'm pretty sure, but I haven't looked into it). Now the quantum fluctuations actually arise from the time-energy uncertainty, that means that these bursts of energy, although supposedly coming from nothing, are actually "borrowing" energy from this uncertainty, in a short flash before again. 

 

So there you go, that's how a universe arises from nothing without breaking any laws, so we don't need a God to do that for us.

 

In case anybody was wondering, I think religion is just a place for people to ask the questions science hasn't answered yet, so unless Jesus gets resurrected again any time soon, I probably won't become a person of faith.

 

TL;DR; Please read it, physics is something everybody should learn Also, if anybody here is actually a physicist, please respond to my post

Science can say many things but can they prove anything 100%? I find science interesting and I have no qualms with those who believe in it, but I can't take their argument serious when they turn to hypocrites in a heartbeat.

 

Argument being Show me proof that god exists, My retort being Show me that he doesn't.

 

In response to this, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" -Carl Sagan

Edited August 2, 201312 yr by ohhungry

It's too bad nobody actually talked about the science aspect of this thread...there's some interesting stuff here. The Big Bang actually does obey the Law of Conservation Energy. The total energy in the universe is zero, meaning it can in fact arise from nothing . The positive energy, due to the matter/heat and what not in the universe, is directly counteracted by negative energy, in the form of gravitational attraction. The sum of all this energy is 0, so the Law of Conservation is not broken.

 

Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist, I've heard of this theory before, but never really looked into it much, and although it looks like the majority of cosmologists agree with this theory, it's fairly hypothetical and requires a few assumptions. Also, here's a link to the source, which basically just says all the stuff I'm writing below http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/31_02/nothing.html

 

Now explaining how we get our universe from zero energy, doesn't appear to be that well known (or maybe I just haven't researched it enough), but from what I've read it appears that all that "nothing" would need in order to begin inflationary expansion is a small push, a tiny bit of energy (which kind of makes my whole, coming from zero energy sound like a load of crap).

 

But anyways, this tiny bit of energy is thought to have come from quantum fluctuations, which in normal words, are particle pairs which suddenly come into existence, and then annihilate each other almost right away. Now assuming quantum fluctuations could occur before the birth of our universe, this could provide the energy required to begin the inflationary expansion, and the particles would most likely annihilate each other afterwards.

 

I read in the article that apparently even if they didn't the Law of Conservation wouldn't really be broken because the energy violation would be too small to measure, but I am unsure if they mean "too small to measure with current instruments" or "too small to measure due to Heisenberg's uncertainty", I'm going to assume it's the second one, in which case I don't think it breaks the law of conservation. 

 

Now, for anybody who kept reading up this till now, more juicy physics, because I've basically been researching stuff as I've been typing this, and I'm too lazy to go edit the things I've already written. 

 

So quantum fluctuations create short bursts of energy, which vanishes almost instantly, so quickly that it cannot even be measured directly. Now, when I saw it cannot be measured, I don't mean we aren't advanced enough to measure it, I mean it literally is impossible to measure it, due to the uncertainty principle. If you are unfamiliar with the uncertainty principle, I advise you to  read a little bit about it on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle, just like the first paragraph cause it's late and I'm too tired to summarize. So, if you read that page, you may have seen that momentum and position have certain uncertainty's associated with them, and the product of the uncertainty has constant value. 

 

This same principle can be applied to time and energy, creating a time-energy uncertainty, similar to a position-momentum uncertainty (these are actually linked, I'm pretty sure, but I haven't looked into it). Now the quantum fluctuations actually arise from the time-energy uncertainty, that means that these bursts of energy, although supposedly coming from nothing, are actually "borrowing" energy from this uncertainty, in a short flash before again. 

 

So there you go, that's how a universe arises from nothing without breaking any laws, so we don't need a God to do that for us.

 

In case anybody was wondering, I think religion is just a place for people to ask the questions science hasn't answered yet, so unless Jesus gets resurrected again any time soon, I probably won't become a person of faith.

 

TL;DR; Please read it, physics is something everybody should learn Also, if anybody here is actually a physicist, please respond to my post

 

     I spoke to my friend about this thread since he's the most knowledgeable person I know on any type of science. I sent what he told me to the OP, but since you brought it up I'll throw it      in here as well. 

 

 

Well, there's the law of conservation of energy, and there's the law of conservation of mass. In reality they aren't two separate laws, but two parts of one law: The law of conservation of mass and energy. The law of conservation of mass says that matter can neither be created or destroyed (it's a useful in a chemistry class because during chemical reactions this half of the combined law is true: the mass of products created HAS to equal the mass of reactants use) and the law of conservation of energy says that energy cannot be created or destroyed but only change forms (touch a light bulb and the electricity makes it out, so you're going from electrical energy (the flow of electrons) to heat energy (friction from the electrons moving))

 

 

But the big thing is

 

matter and energy are the same thing

 

they aren't different things so much as they're just two sides of the same coin

 

Einstein's famous equation: E=mc^2 shows this relationship

 

what the equation says is that energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light multiplied by the speed of light again.

 

In practice what the equation means is that energy and mass can be converted from one form to another

 

Something Hiroshima and Nagasaki know very well

 

During a nuclear reaction, either during fission when the nucleus of an atom breaks into multiple parts or during fusion when two nuclei come together to make a larger nucleus (and often times other smaller bits)

 

mass is lost

 

and energy is given off

 

What scientists noticed was that when a nucleus broke apart the sum of the pieces left over weighed LESS than what they had to begin with

 

What they also noticed was that relatively large of amount of energy was produced

 

So they hypothesized that the energy produced came from the matter that disappeared.

 

Subsequent observations and experiments bore this out

 

Now, the flipside is that while matter can be annihilated and produce energy, energy can also make matter.

 

Once a certain amount of energy is achieved at a given point in space it starts to behave as if it has mass. Because it does have mass

 

During the big bang, there was an TREMENDOUS amount of energy in a very, very, very, very, infinitely small space

 

through mechanisms that I do not understand fully, this energy ended up becoming the matter of our universe

 

Now, with matter we have regular matter that we're familiar with and anti matter that we are normally exposed to from a perception standpoint

 

(even though we can't see an electron, we can see the effects of electrons)

 

but a positron is not something that we routinely get to observe in action

 

electrons have a positive charge

 

electrons are negative

 

not positive

 

Positrons are positively charged electrons

 

when a positron and an electron collide with each other, they also destroy each other

 

the mass is transformed into energy

 

well there are also our "normal" positively charged protons

 

but they also can be negatively charged protons (the name escapes me, but I think they're simply called anti-protons)

 

Well from what we can gather neither our normal set of matter or the abnormal anti-matter are prefered over the other

 

It came down to probability

 

Flip a coin and 50% of the time you should get heads and 50% of the time you should get tails

 

but you never do

 

(rarely anyway)

 

Flip a coin 10 times and you might get 6 heads and 4 tails

 

that's 60%/40%

 

or you may get 5 and 5

 

or 7 and 3

 

and so on

 

Flip a coin a billion times

 

however

 

you'll get really close to 50%/50%

 

but you'll very unlikely get 500,000,000 heads and 500,000,000 tails. You'll probably get closer to 499,999,000 and 500,000,100.

 

I'm making the numbers up, but for illustrative purposes that should work

 

Well that's what happened when our universe was formed during the big bang

 

nearly equal amounts of regular matter and anti matter were created

 

but regular matter was produced just slightly more on average

 

so we have a universe that is composed primarily of normal matter (the only thing that makes it normal matter is that it's what we're used to)

 

Now we get to dark matter

 

Dark matter and dark energy are ideas that physicists have come up with to explain some unexpected phenomena

 

From their observations galaxies spend too fast

 

faster than they should if they were composed of just matter

 

(regular or anti-matter makes no difference)

 

so they hypothesize that a new type of matter and energy that doesn't interact much with matter or anti-matter exists and they call it dark matter and dark energy because they cannot observe it.

 

Now there are some possibilities here

 

1) We just don't have the technology yet to observe these particles and energy, but may eventually do so.

 

or 2) These particles do not exist in reality and the scientists are wrong in their hypothesize

 

For the most part, scientists as a whole will be fine with either two possibilities

 

so long as they know

 

as an addendum to point 2) they would then need to reevaluate our current model of physics such as how gravity works on large scales

Now the reason I say scientists would be happy with either outcome is because both outcomes give scientists another path to move down. If our current technology isn't good enough then we have to develop technology to do the job which could be beneficial for other disciplines (a lot of the technology that is used in modern computers and cellphones comes from research into quantum mechanics and so on).Also if scientists understand what is wrong with our current models and can make them more accurate, then again, more technology can be developed.

 

 

 

Basically,what I got out of this was: Science is either right or wrong, much like Religion. We don't know, and that's just the nature of the beast. It's very fun to speculate, but it takes the fun out when people say that there is no -insert name of whatever you believe in- because at the end of the day, there's really no proof of it being real or not. I can't prove it just as much as you can disprove it, but that's why there's faith. You may think it's silly to believe in,what George Carlin(RIP) refers to as a "Man in the clouds" but it's no different than believing that shit just randomly started happening for no reason and that this Universe, Earth and all it's inhabitants are here just by a stroke of luck by 1/100000000000000000000000% chance.

 

To say there's no God without proof is to say that Humans are the ONLY intellectual beings in this Universe/Galaxy/Solar System. If there's us, there's the possibility of what people think Aliens to be, since we're here from a scientific cataclysm they could be too,correct? Just because it hasn't been discovered yet doesn't mean it's not there. *On the note of Aliens, anything E.T is Alien. A micro organism on Mars is Alien, although he may not be a little gray man with creepy eyes.*

 

Do I believe in God? Well..yes. When I was younger I didn't, but when I was younger I wasn't as open minded as I am now. Having read the Bible and other scriptures from other religions and keeping myself open to multiple facets of life, rather than one I do believe in a God. It may not be the Christian God, it may not one of the many Gods in Hindu, Greek, or Chinese mythology but I do believe in something and if, or when it's ready to do something it will. It won't be in my life time, it won't be in my kid's either probably, but something will happen. Earth will die, our Sun will die, everything will die eventually and who knows what will happen.

 

I call it brainwashing really , and in the words of Richard Dawkins : child abuse forcing your children to believe that if they do wrong there burn in hell.

Also look at all the evil down in the name of religion ..

 

 

As far as Religion goes, here's another set of quotes from Angels And Demons. 

 

“Whether or not you believe in God, you must believe this: when we as a species abandon our trust in a power greater than us, we abandon our sense of accountability. Faiths… all faiths… are admonitions that there is something we cannot understand, something to which we are accountable. With faith we are accountable to each other, to ourselves, and to a higher truth. Religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed. The church consists of a brotherhood of imperfect, simple souls wanting only to be a voice of compassion in a world spinning out of control.” 

 

tl;dr: Religion is flawed because man is flawed. Evil happens, and it doesn't have to be in the name of Religion

 

“Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.”

wrong section. This is the intellectual section.

Jews versus Muslims

Muslims versus everyone who isn't a Muslim

I'm not saying you can't love yourself I'm saying I don't see the point in devoting your whole life believing in and worshipping some one who maybe just a work of fiction, and as atheist dos that mean I deserve to burn in hell for not believing !?

Pretty messed up if you ask me..

You should just spend your life doing good to people , and if you can do positive things to help other people then your life has been worth it and if there was a a god he / she should see that...

I don't mind or care what you believe in , but don't impose your faith rules on me..

Basically,what I got out of this was: Science is either right or wrong, much like Religion. We don't know, and that's just the nature of the beast. It's very fun to speculate, but it takes the fun out when people say that there is no -insert name of whatever you believe in- because at the end of the day, there's really no proof of it being real or not. I can't prove it just as much as you can disprove it, but that's why there's faith. You may think it's silly to believe in,what George Carlin(RIP) refers to as a "Man in the clouds" but it's no different than believing that shit just randomly started happening for no reason and that this Universe, Earth and all it's inhabitants are here just by a stroke of luck by 1/100000000000000000000000% chance.

 

To say there's no God without proof is to say that Humans are the ONLY intellectual beings in this Universe/Galaxy/Solar System. If there's us, there's the possibility of what people think Aliens to be, since we're here from a scientific cataclysm they could be too,correct? Just because it hasn't been discovered yet doesn't mean it's not there. *On the note of Aliens, anything E.T is Alien. A micro organism on Mars is Alien, although he may not be a little gray man with creepy eyes.*

 

Do I believe in God? Well..yes. When I was younger I didn't, but when I was younger I wasn't as open minded as I am now. Having read the Bible and other scriptures from other religions and keeping myself open to multiple facets of life, rather than one I do believe in a God. It may not be the Christian God, it may not one of the many Gods in Hindu, Greek, or Chinese mythology but I do believe in something and if, or when it's ready to do something it will. It won't be in my life time, it won't be in my kid's either probably, but something will happen. Earth will die, our Sun will die, everything will die eventually and who knows what will happen.

 

I'll talk about the science part you talked about first, cause that's the fun stuff All the things you said are true as far as I know, and your mass-energy equivalence is what was so important in my post, that mass makes up the majority of the positive energy, while the gravitational attraction makes up the negative energy. And as for dark energy and dark matter, I'm not confident enough on the topics to really talk much about them, but there have been large experiments which have hinted at experimental proof of dark matter.

 

Also, since the a lot of the science around dark matter in dark energy is fairly well founded, I think its better to think of them not as some problem in our theory, but as something our theory has discovered. 

 

Now on to the God stuff, science does not deny the existence of God, because science proves things. But the point is, the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim. Now you can argue that the claim is "God does not exist", but since it is impossible to prove the non-existence of anything, the point is mute. There is no way to prove something does not exist, all you can prove is that we can not currently observe it's existence. So to say "prove us wrong" is simply a cheap way of trying to win an argument.

 

Believers of leprechauns simply has to say "Prove us wrong", believers that the universe is actually held in a tiny marble in the hand of child simply has to say "Prove Us Wrong", believers that there is a unicorn flying through the vacuum of space all alone, while constantly being tortured by a radio which plays Rick Astley on loop..."Prove Us Wrong". 

 

The only things which hold ground in world of saying they exist are things which you have proof of existing. Now you can also have proof that things might exist, this would be indirect evidence. This can be applied to things such as aliens, but the same conclusion cannot be drawn about a God. With aliens, we have observable proof that life can begin on a planet, and we have observable proof that there are other Earth-like planets with conditions fit for life, so we can draw a conclusion that there is measurable chance of life beginning on another planet other than our own.

 

Now with declaring the existence of God, there is no direct, or indirect proof. Scripture is not any more proof of a God than sailor tales are proof of the Loch Ness Monster. There is nothing to even suggest that God must exist, so the existence of a God holds as much ground as belief in that unicorn I mentioned previously. It may seem ridiculous, but that's really how it is, and hopefully it shows you how proof of non-existence is a terrible argument.

 

So all we really say about God is, there is no reason for me to believe such a claim. 

 

Oh wow, this is quite intellectual indeed!

Let me first tell you, I've been raised in, so far as I know it, one of the most strict churches western civilisation has to offer.

One of the most, not directly saying it is the most as I haven't experienced much other cultures and religions.

 

The reason I tell you this is because I've debated and talked about it countless of times on the internet (Including /r/atheïsm, god that was horrible).

Recently something bad happened to me, I've come to the conclusion that I don't really care about god anymore and totally shut myself out of the church. I'm rational towards christians, because I know what they believe and WHY they believe it. This doesn't make me a christian but just a rational being. As for that mention about /r/Atheïsm, I really felt like an adult discussing with children.

 

Now to all you people who don't believe; don't know what to believe, I don't know, whatever your vision on this world is, What really bothers you about the possibility of a higher lifeform in this universe?

 

 

Basically,what I got out of this was: Science is either right or wrong, much like Religion. We don't know, and that's just the nature of the beast. It's very fun to speculate, but it takes the fun out when people say that there is no -insert name of whatever you believe in- because at the end of the day, there's really no proof of it being real or not. I can't prove it just as much as you can disprove it, but that's why there's faith. You may think it's silly to believe in,what George Carlin(RIP) refers to as a "Man in the clouds" but it's no different than believing that shit just randomly started happening for no reason and that this Universe, Earth and all it's inhabitants are here just by a stroke of luck by 1/100000000000000000000000% chance.

 

To say there's no God without proof is to say that Humans are the ONLY intellectual beings in this Universe/Galaxy/Solar System. If there's us, there's the possibility of what people think Aliens to be, since we're here from a scientific cataclysm they could be too,correct? Just because it hasn't been discovered yet doesn't mean it's not there. *On the note of Aliens, anything E.T is Alien. A micro organism on Mars is Alien, although he may not be a little gray man with creepy eyes.*

 

Do I believe in God? Well..yes. When I was younger I didn't, but when I was younger I wasn't as open minded as I am now. Having read the Bible and other scriptures from other religions and keeping myself open to multiple facets of life, rather than one I do believe in a God. It may not be the Christian God, it may not one of the many Gods in Hindu, Greek, or Chinese mythology but I do believe in something and if, or when it's ready to do something it will. It won't be in my life time, it won't be in my kid's either probably, but something will happen. Earth will die, our Sun will die, everything will die eventually and who knows what will happen.

 

I'll talk about the science part you talked about first, cause that's the fun stuff All the things you said are true as far as I know, and your mass-energy equivalence is what was so important in my post, that mass makes up the majority of the positive energy, while the gravitational attraction makes up the negative energy. And as for dark energy and dark matter, I'm not confident enough on the topics to really talk much about them, but there have been large experiments which have hinted at experimental proof of dark matter.

 

Also, since the a lot of the science around dark matter in dark energy is fairly well founded, I think its better to think of them not as some problem in our theory, but as something our theory has discovered. 

 

Now on to the God stuff, science does not deny the existence of God, because science proves things. But the point is, the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim. Now you can argue that the claim is "God does not exist", but since it is impossible to prove the non-existence of anything, the point is mute. There is no way to prove something does not exist, all you can prove is that we can not currently observe it's existence. So to say "prove us wrong" is simply a cheap way of trying to win an argument.

 

Believers of leprechauns simply has to say "Prove us wrong", believers that the universe is actually held in a tiny marble in the hand of child simply has to say "Prove Us Wrong", believers that there is a unicorn flying through the vacuum of space all alone, while constantly being tortured by a radio which plays Rick Astley on loop..."Prove Us Wrong". 

 

The only things which hold ground in world of saying they exist are things which you have proof of existing. Now you can also have proof that things might exist, this would be indirect evidence. This can be applied to things such as aliens, but the same conclusion cannot be drawn about a God. With aliens, we have observable proof that life can begin on a planet, and we have observable proof that there are other Earth-like planets with conditions fit for life, so we can draw a conclusion that there is measurable chance of life beginning on another planet other than our own.

 

Now with declaring the existence of God, there is no direct, or indirect proof. Scripture is not any more proof of a God than sailor tales are proof of the Loch Ness Monster. There is nothing to even suggest that God must exist, so the existence of a God holds as much ground as belief in that unicorn I mentioned previously. It may seem ridiculous, but that's really how it is, and hopefully it shows you how proof of non-existence is a terrible argument.

 

So all we really say about God is, there is no reason for me to believe such a claim. 

 

 

Oh, don't get me wrong, I completely understand where you're coming from with the Unicorn. I don't believe in a God because of the scripture itself as it would be no different from me believing in something like Harry Potter, all I'm saying is that I believe due to the faith I have now having read said scripture. That's really all it is and all we have-a belief- be it right or wrong. It's no different than believing something such as Santa, or the Tooth Fairy.  

Close thread.

nuff said:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Shia_Muslims