Why do/don't you believe in a higher power? (Any HP)

[Salandriagado]

Why? Why, for example, could such a hot singularity not just spontaneously throw out a universe? We know that things happen spontaneously for no external reason all the damned time, so why not that one?

Why did it happen? If it was just sitting there for all eternity unchanging, why did it decide to change of a sudden

Plenty of options. To name some of the more popular:

1. It was a random event with probability zero.
2. It didn't: it happened lots of times.
3. It didn't: the universe is cyclic.

[Kowani]

Well, if he was all knowing, he’d know the outcome of the bet before it happened so it’d be unnecessary.

Yes, but if the "bet" never, He would NOT know the outcome

...I mean, no? God is omniscient. He knows all that is, was, will be and will not be.

[Valentine Z]

The thing is, and I don't want to offend anyone along the way because this isn't my intention, but it's hard to make judgement or believe that there's one God or someone of higher power because even as of now, we don't know much about the universe and the life beyond.

We are still one planet out of the billions or trillions, and while this is not a nihilistic view, this is a rather small sample space. I might be saying that we will probably need other planets and alien lifeforms, then ask who their Gods are, if any.

My idea, of course, has a flaw on its own. Even for humans like us, we have thousands of religions, so bringing hypothetical aliens into the equation will make things much more varied and all the more confusing.

But say that we bridged the language gap. In other words...... we might need another completely different lifeform or from another planet to describe their God to us. If by chance that whoever they are describing resembles one of our Gods, it's either coincidence, or... maybe Jesus/Allah/Buddha/etc. is universal.

---

This is just my crazy talk, so do take whatever I said with a fistful of salt, and I am being very very hypothetical.

[Salandriagado]

Yes. Still.

That doesn't fit the definition of lying. Are you looking for "ignorant"?

Human psychology is weird. People lying to themselves happens absolutely all the time, and there absolutely are large numbers of religious people, perhaps even a majority, who don't actually believe in what they profess to believe in, but instead believe that believing in it is good, and therefore that they should believe in it.

[Kowani]

The thing is, and I don't want to offend anyone along the way because this isn't my intention, but it's hard to make judgement or believe that there's one God or someone of higher power because even as of now, we don't know much about the universe and the life beyond.

We are still one planet out of the billions or trillions, and while this is not a nihilistic view, this is a rather small sample space. I might be saying that we will probably need other planets and alien lifeforms, then ask who their Gods are, if any.

My idea, of course, has a flaw on its own. Even for humans like us, we have thousands of religions, so bringing hypothetical aliens into the equation will make things much more varied and all the more confusing.

But say that we bridged the language gap. In other words...... we might need another completely different lifeform or from another planet to describe their God to us. If by chance that whoever they are describing resembles one of our Gods, it's either coincidence, or... maybe Jesus/Allah/Buddha/etc. is universal.

---

This is just my crazy talk, so do take whatever I said with a fistful of salt, and I am being very very hypothetical.

[Salandriagado]

where the existence/nonexistence of God is uncertain

It's only uncertain to those who don't believe.

No. Uncertainty is an objective thing, independent of your beliefs.

[Valentine Z]

-Snippy-

I actually contemplated on writing that, because I think this is just too silly for me. But you know, you could get it out and get some comments on that, maybe.

[Ifreann]

The arguments that prove Allah SWT beg to differ.

"SWT", that means "Peace and blessings be upon Him" correct? Why would an omniomni God require a measly, weak, powerless, vastly inferior human to wish Him peace?

SWT means سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَىٰ‎ , subḥānahu wa-taʿālā, which is "May He be praised and exalted" in English. You're thinking of PBUH, "peace be upon him", an honorific phrase often attached to the names of prophets in Islam, particularly Mohammed.

[Genivaria]

You know in many mythologies and lore there's the concept of 'primal deities' which existed at the beginning of the universe or even before it that are basically the personification of chaos and horror, and the newer gods protect us from them.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... rdialChaos

[Salandriagado]

I think it's just human nature to believe in a higher power.
I personally believe in God because that's what I was taught and as far as I can tell is accurate. Because Jerusalem exists, scintists agree that the flood happened,

Don't fucking lie.

plus year after year more and more planets are found to have no life

Erm, no? You're lying again.

make earth apear more and more likely to have been put here by some higher power.

This does not follow from the above in any way.

So unless someone can prove me wrong I will believe in God.

That was easy, welcome to the atheist club.

Uuhm, you do realise that scientists agree that the flood did NOT happen ?

Well more arcaticts and engineers don't agree with the official 9/11 story than those that do, that doesn't make ether side wrong.

Erm, no? You're lying again. Don't lie.

[Salandriagado]

So where are these arguments?

The one I like particularly is the Kalaam Cosmological Argument (KCA for short)

You realise that's literally a classic example of a bad argument, right? To do it properly: the first premise is false. The second is questionable. The leap from "a cause" to "an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful" is utterly unjustified. The leap from that to your particular preferred deity is equally unjustified.

[Salandriagado]

I think what he was getting at is that the existence of Jerusalem is one of the reasons that he believes in God. And so far as I'm aware there is strong consensus within the scientific community that Jerusalem does exist.

Hmmmm. It could well be. It was a poorly phrased argument, but that does make more sense.

But I don't understand why the existence of Jerusalem would inherently prove the validity of the Christian God. Jerusalem has an important role to play within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, of course; but on that logic, the existence of Lumbini proves Buddhism, and the existence of Qufu proves Confucianism - neither of which are inherently theistic belief systems.

That Jerusalem exists, and that us pesky archaeologists can prove that Jerusalem has existed for at least a certain amount of time, does demonstrate that some Biblical accounts aren't necessarily false (and please spare me the tiresome Harry Potter/London cliche; why some people ever think that's even mildly clever escapes me), but nor does it inherently prove that the accounts are necessarily true as written.

It might, though, at least in theory, show that some of them aren't literally true, if some pesky archaeologist happened to find some evidence that contradicts the account as written (cf the flood, Exodus).

[Salandriagado]

Proving that there is a god by assuming that there is a god is not especially convincing.

True, that's something I disagree with in the KCA, I think it should be replaced with "higher power(s)"

That is literally Aquinas.
However.
1. Unproven assertion. More accurately, incorrect assertion. Quantum particles spontaneously pop into existence at random, so there’s evidence that it’s factually wrong.

Those have a reason for coming into existence. It's just something we can't explain, that doesn't they come in at random.

No, they absolutely are random. This fact is one of the most fundamentally important observations of quantum physics.

Special pleading. Your conclusion cannot violate your premise.

If you build a phone for example, you're not bound by the laws/inner workings of said phone. It's the same case with Allah SWT building the universe.

This is a nonsensical comparison.

Additionally, in order that to be taken seriously then you’d have to prove that there is an outside of the universe.

The universe is expanding. Hence there's an outside.

That does not follow. The universe is not expanding by extending itself at some boundary, but by the distance metric shifting such that a fixed distance becomes shorter.

And even more additionally, you’d have to prove that this being is Allah and not, say, Xaos.

True, that's something I disagree with in the KCA, I think it should be replaced with "higher power(s)"

Right now I'm talking about higher powers, not Allah SWT specifically.

You explicitly claimed that this argument proved the existence of your particular deity.

If there can be things that can exist without needing a cause, how do you know that the universe is not such a thing?

Because nothing is like Allah SWT. I never said "things can exist without a cause", I said "Allah SWT can exist without a cause".

Here, you assume your conclusion.

Also, everything in this universe came from something, so it would make sense that the universe itself came from something.

This does not follow.

[Salandriagado]

In 2016, there were 109,748 architects in the U.S. In 2015, there were ~1.6 million engineers in the U.S. Your source claims that 3,104 architects and engineers support them. That's about 0.2% of that group. So no, more architects and engineers definitely do agree with the widely-accepted story of 9/11.

I'm saying more publicly support a new investigation than the couple dozen that support the official story, here is a lecture of there's I just finished watching.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bc5zF95o-UE

Literally millions support the official story.

[Salandriagado]

And yet your own position declares that we cannot trust our perceptions. Why the hell does this god thing make any difference?



Or it could have just... you know... happened. That happens, you know.



We know reality exists because we're experiencing it right fucking now. That doesn't mean this god thing somehow made that possible.

So what the people experiencing the supernatural right now? By your own line of logic, the supernatural exists because people are experiencing it right now

No. We observe evidence that reality exists. There is no such evidence for the supernatural.

A 2nd chance before revelations I mean. Good catch though.

I'm aware of THAT book's references to it. My bigger concern is that, to my knowledge, only in the end times will a second chance be given. You propose that it's given all the time.

If I'm correct, you only recieve a second chance at the end of time

Which, it appears, will never happen, so that means no second chances for anybody.

No they’re not. Unless they can provide reproducible and falsifiable evidence, a ‘supernatural experience’ is little different from a hallucination.

something has happened to people in these experiences so we can either make up bullshit claims about what we think they have experienced or we could investigate deeper, plenty of people claim to have seen Lincoln wandering the white house at various times.

We have investigated them. In all cases, it turns out that they're either bullshitting, or crazy.

No, I just have to understand that great complexity can arise from simple building blocks, I don't need to assume a creator. I did hesitate on using this example because I knew the *builder* bit would be seized on rather than the principle of great complexity from simple building blocks over vast time.

Kind of like how evolution works.

But that contradicts the notion of nothing exists outside of the universe. Nothibg exists outside of the universe, but existance exists before existence

This is word-salad.

Okay, let me rephrase that. God is a passive observer when it comes to matters of free will

The same objections stand: such a being would be both evil (or at least not morally good), and not worth worshipping.

"I don't know, ergo God"

Still a shit argument.

I don't know. Even though I don't know, I know with 100% certainity that it wasn't God, is just as shitty an argument

And an argument that exactly zero people have made.

I don't know. Even though I don't know, I know with 100% certainity that it wasn't God, is just as shitty an argument

No one here has claimed that God certainly doesn't exist. We've simply stated that since belief in a positive claim with no evidence isn't justified, the logical position is to believe in the lack of that claim, or the negative. Sure, God may exist, but until I see any verifiable evidence, I have no reason to stop believing that he doesn't exist.

Actually, I'm going to go out there and claim that the particular God concept espoused by Australian rePublic in this thread absolutely does not exist, because of all of the various contradictory claims that he's made about it.

Boy, your god sure fucking likes vacuum, doesn't he?

Yea, and? Are you trying to argue that God doesn't exist simply because He has a fondness for emptiness?

No, I'm pointing out that this directly contradicts other claims that you've made about your god.

...Cause my belief is to not belief/live around it until it is proven that it exists.

Its more likely dragons in some form existed than an all powerful space dude with a fetish of one planet and one species.

...I like to keep this civil, so please dont damn me or something. I have morals, I think the devil doesn't exist too. Im not against Christianity specifically, and no, my father did not have an influence on my ideas.

I am merely a dictionary atheist: a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.

On the assumption that there's only life on Earth. In either case, fondness of empty space=/=non-existance

No, actually. That's the point. You are claiming that your god specifically cares about a small group of entities living on one irrelevant rock circling one irrelevant star in one irrelevant galaxy in the entire universe. This is absurd.

No, actually. A triangle is always a triangle, and 2 + 2 is always 4. No exceptions, ever. The first is a tautology, the latter a trivial consequence of the definitions of "2", "4", "+", and "=".

Mathematics does exist outside of humanity.

Yes and no. The existence of logical structures is probably independent of humanity, though there are perfectly good arguments to the contrary. The particular logical structures that we choose to study and call mathematics are entirely a human invention, regardless of your philosophical/metamathematical views.

The whole notion of God judging us is ludicrous. If God is an omnipotent, omniscient being, then we are to God what bacteria are to us. Do you have any interest in which bacteria are good and which bacteria are sinful? We are infinitely closer to bacteria than we are to an all-powerful God. Compared to such a being, we are hardly even sentient.

If there's a God, the last thing he cares about is human affairs. That humans think a god would have human emotions like love and jealousy points to god being made by man.

I was racking my brain trying to think of why God created us. Obly reason I could think of was... well... to be totally honest.... boredom...

So now your god inflicts unimaginable suffering on people because of boredom.

This sort of argument kind of really irks me. How can we make that sort of judgment? I mean, we don’t know that God exists, let alone whether he tells people how to act. And we can’t just blame everything negative- e.g, committing murder- on the people themselves, and say all the nice parts are the work of all-powerful deity. So even if they did exist, they’d be responsible for all actions humanity undertakes, good and bad. Even if you bring up free will, if they’re an all-powerful deity, they would be omniscient and therefore know exactly what everyone would do, including all the bad things, and still let it pass.

Now, I’m guessing that stuff has probably already been brought up at this point in the thread, but I’m tired and saw this and was compelled to respond. So yeah.

No. You misunderstand. Some people need religion in order to be good. Were it not for religion, these people wouldn't be good. Whether or not their faith is true, they believe it strongly enough to obey it and comit good acts that they wouldn't have otherwise comitted. Same applies to people who use religion for evil (unless of cource, their evil interpretations of their holy book is intentionally interpreted with malice)

Except that by all accounts, the actual number of people that this applies to is tiny, and very few of those actually do behave well, regardless of their religion.

Same reason why he doesn't stop a human rapist. Free will

OK, so what about childhood lukemia?

No, and I never claimed that He was. However, God is repsonaible for establishing a moral standard that humans are free to choose to obey

Except that humans are entirely capable of doing that for themselves, so there's no need for your god.

No.

This always seems to happen with - in particular - bad apologists. At some point they realize that their arguments are flimsy, so they try to inflict them on the other side. Rather then being proud of their faith, or believing themselves justified by their faith, they resort to, "oh yeah, well you guys have faith too!"

No, no. That was refering specifically and exclusively to Salandriagado who was arguing that anyone who disagrees with him/her is uneducated. That was not refering to any other atheists

Except that I haven't argued that at all. There are a great many people in this thread who are very thoroughly educated on their topics of discussion, many of whom disagree with me. You, specifically, keep making arguments based on things that you do not understand at all.

You're talking about the supposed architect of mankind. A being of omniscience, or frankly even reasonable competence would understand how people are going to handle certain situations. If I don't fence in my pool I'm responsible for kids falling in because I should have fucking known they'd do that. If I know your schedule and put a bear trap in your path that's not the product of your free will it's me being an asshole. God set all this up and God knows how we'll handle it- he's basically the jigsaw killer but also eternity.

You mean like how He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah to wipe out the evil in that part of the world

"You should do something about this" =/= "you could commit genocide to deal with this".

Things like skin cancer are what I mean when the "Sun does not indiscriminately tax anyone for anything that can't can't be attributed to factors beyond its power."

I never claimed the Sun to be a Creator Deity. Simply an Important Deity will suffice, I mean in a lot of Pantheons people worshipped lesser Gods all the time, the Japanese and the Greeks had plenty of em.

Also being a Deity without a Code of Ethics can also be a blessing of a sort, without a Code of Ethics the Sun cannot judge anyone for anything. It cannot punish people, it can't bless them either. In that, it views everyone equally (unless of course again factors exist that it cannot control).

Wrong. Skin cancer is worse more likely in some places, and Vitamine D is less penetrable in others. Hence the difference in skin colours. In some places, you don't see the sun for weeks in winter, and it won't disappear for weeks in summer. In other places, you get 12 hours sunlight daily theoughout the year. The closer you get to it, the more light it provides (hence different fasting times for Ramadan, on top of Burj Kalifa). Seems pretty discriminatory to me. And don't claim that that's the fault of Earth's orbit. The sun is almost 100% responsible for Earth's orbit

Proximity to the sun is almost entirely irrelevant to the earth's climate. Northern-hemisphere summer actually happens around aphelion.

It might be because of the nature of your arguments that they are easier to target. Low hanging fruit and all that...

I'll accept that. In either case, my point still stands. I created this thread in order to learn, admitting that I'm not perfect

Your actions, frankly, seem to contradict this claim. It appears that you created this thread in order to repeatedly affirm your prior convictions, and to very determinedly not learn, as noted by how you've repeatedly ignored all evidence presented.

[Neutraligon]

About the rapist and free will. Given that rape is defined as sex without consent, by allowing the rape to continue god is choosing the free will of the rapist instead of that of the victim. And god does this for every crime that occurs.

[Australian rePublic]

"SWT", that means "Peace and blessings be upon Him" correct? Why would an omniomni God require a measly, weak, powerless, vastly inferior human to wish Him peace?

SWT means سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَىٰ‎ , subḥānahu wa-taʿālā, which is "May He be praised and exalted" in English. You're thinking of PBUH, "peace be upon him", an honorific phrase often attached to the names of prophets in Islam, particularly Mohammed.

My mistake

[Australian rePublic]

About the rapist and free will. Given that rape is defined as sex without consent, by allowing the rape to continue god is choosing the free will of the rapist instead of that of the victim. And god does this for every crime that occurs.

The rapist is taking away free will, not God

[Neutraligon]

About the rapist and free will. Given that rape is defined as sex without consent, by allowing the rape to continue god is choosing the free will of the rapist instead of that of the victim. And god does this for every crime that occurs.

The rapist is taking away free will, not God

And god by not acting is explicitly choosing the rapists free will over that of the victim.

[Ifreann]

SWT means سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَىٰ‎ , subḥānahu wa-taʿālā, which is "May He be praised and exalted" in English. You're thinking of PBUH, "peace be upon him", an honorific phrase often attached to the names of prophets in Islam, particularly Mohammed.

My mistake

I imagine you won't be pivoting to argue that it's ridiculous for measly, weak, powerless, vastly inferior humans to praise and exalt their gods.

[Christian Confederation]

I'm saying more publicly support a new investigation than the couple dozen that support the official story, here is a lecture of there's I just finished watching.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bc5zF95o-UE

A video on youtube. anyone can write anything on youtube. Oh and supporting a new investigation does not mean they do not believe the official story. They just support more research.

Thank you exactly, I and they just agree that the official story is Scientifically inpinitrable and needs a indipendant investigation.

[Estanglia]

So basically, just repurposed Aquinas. Which is still bulls*it.

I barely know who he is. Anyway, here's what the KCA says:
http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/th ... -argument/:

(1) Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence.
(2) The universe has a beginning of its existence.
Therefore:
(3) The universe has a cause of its existence.
(4) If the universe has a cause of its existence then that cause is God.
Therefore:
(5) God exists.

2) We don't know if the universe had a defined beginning or has just existed forever.
4) Leap in logic right there.

If there can be things that can exist without needing a cause, how do you know that the universe is not such a thing?

Because nothing is like Allah SWT. I never said "things can exist without a cause", I said "Allah SWT can exist without a cause". Also, everything in this universe came from something, so it would make sense that the universe itself came from something.

But why doesn't Allah have a cause?

[New Legland]

But why doesn't Allah have a cause?

Yes.

[Dazchan]

About the rapist and free will. Given that rape is defined as sex without consent, by allowing the rape to continue god is choosing the free will of the rapist instead of that of the victim. And god does this for every crime that occurs.

The rapist is taking away free will, not God

If you were to see someone being raped, have the power to stop it, and instead sat back and allowed it to happen, in the eyes of the people you’d be seen as an enabler who is no better than the rapist, and in the eyes of the law you might very well be considered an accessory to the crime.

Why should I hold your god to a lesser standard?

[Dogmeat]

Ah, so you admit it was God, and not Satan, who was responsible.

Because earlier you said it was Satan's fault, and not God's. But now you're saying that:
A) "God was testing" and,
B) You agree with Reverend Norv that Satan is just a servant of God.

That's a direct contradiction of your earlier stance.

I don't even know how Satan and God's relationship stands, but I know that the former is malevolent. He's a lot smarter than me, and I'm to stupid to understand how he works

You said you agreed with Reverend Norv's stance on Satan in Job, and then as soon as I ask you about it you say that you don't.

Are you being deliberately obtuse? Did you not understand what he wrote? Why did you say you agree with him, if you don't?