Is there a God?

[Punished UMN]

1) is easily explainable by the fact that not all of the Apostles were present at the Crucifixion and were therefore relying on different witnesses, and 2) is easily explainable by the likelihood that information was added to the gospels later, possibly by multiple authors.

3) It's not gatekeeping to ask that they use the same criterion as scholars.

1&2. I agree those are reasonable explanations when we assume it written by fallible human beings. But then were the many debates that took place during the early church to make sure that the we canonized the right scriptures ultimately in vain? We don't know many of the authors, and even the ones we actually have good reason to claim knowledge of authorship (namely Paul's letters) aren't without opposition. So how do we know they're trustworthy at all? It's been known for a long time that the bible hasn't had its long life without being adulterated. What level of certainty can we have in the texts?

So you're right. The idea that the books were written by fallible human beings does explain some discrepancies. But that doesn't strengthen the case for Christianity. It leaves it just as weak. The two main positions are:
A. The bible is god inspired.
B. The bible is a collection of observations and beliefs (of which we have no clear evidence as to how faithful they are to the original source material) of imperfect (largely anonymous) people who's writings have clearly been corrupted.

A is troublesome if we are to believe that God would get details mixed up. B is troublesome if my eternity is at stake and I might burn in hell for not being convinced by contradictory testimonies of unknown authors. Just because contradictions can be cleared up (which tbh you haven't actually cleared them up, you've just given a possible explanation for the contradictions not definitive evidence but it doesn't really matter) doesn't mean that the theology is cleared up.

3. I agree. But you didn't ask anybody to use the same criterion as sources. You just said "X sources are not reliable sources of scholarly textual criticism. Most of the 'contradictions' listed are easily explainable."

Who's "they" when you say, "they (should) use the same criterion as scholars?" You mean Rationalwiki and Skeptic's Annotated should use use the same criterion? Do you have a preferred criterion? Those specific sources horizontal reading, which is common in scholarly circles to compare texts. Or do you mean that the people (including myself sadface.jpeg) using them as sources should use the same criterion as scholars? Because I've done that in the past, I just didn't in that post. I don't think that's a big deal, since I was just posting a list of contradictions to see what people think. Again, those contradictions are not a problem to people who don't believe the bible is irrerant, but that leads me to objections that go beyond contradictions.

A and B are not mutually exclusive.

3) What I'm trying to say is that many of the "contradictions" both use are well-known and explained by scholars.

[VoVoDoCo]

1&2. I agree those are reasonable explanations when we assume it written by fallible human beings. But then were the many debates that took place during the early church to make sure that the we canonized the right scriptures ultimately in vain? We don't know many of the authors, and even the ones we actually have good reason to claim knowledge of authorship (namely Paul's letters) aren't without opposition. So how do we know they're trustworthy at all? It's been known for a long time that the bible hasn't had its long life without being adulterated. What level of certainty can we have in the texts?

So you're right. The idea that the books were written by fallible human beings does explain some discrepancies. But that doesn't strengthen the case for Christianity. It leaves it just as weak. The two main positions are:
A. The bible is god inspired.
B. The bible is a collection of observations and beliefs (of which we have no clear evidence as to how faithful they are to the original source material) of imperfect (largely anonymous) people who's writings have clearly been corrupted.

A is troublesome if we are to believe that God would get details mixed up. B is troublesome if my eternity is at stake and I might burn in hell for not being convinced by contradictory testimonies of unknown authors. Just because contradictions can be cleared up (which tbh you haven't actually cleared them up, you've just given a possible explanation for the contradictions not definitive evidence but it doesn't really matter) doesn't mean that the theology is cleared up.

3. I agree. But you didn't ask anybody to use the same criterion as sources. You just said "X sources are not reliable sources of scholarly textual criticism. Most of the 'contradictions' listed are easily explainable."

Who's "they" when you say, "they (should) use the same criterion as scholars?" You mean Rationalwiki and Skeptic's Annotated should use use the same criterion? Do you have a preferred criterion? Those specific sources horizontal reading, which is common in scholarly circles to compare texts. Or do you mean that the people (including myself sadface.jpeg) using them as sources should use the same criterion as scholars? Because I've done that in the past, I just didn't in that post. I don't think that's a big deal, since I was just posting a list of contradictions to see what people think. Again, those contradictions are not a problem to people who don't believe the bible is irrerant, but that leads me to objections that go beyond contradictions.

A and B are not mutually exclusive.

3) What I'm trying to say is that many of the "contradictions" both use are well-known and explained by scholars.

I never said that A and B are mutually exclusive. But believing that has its own problems:
1. It’s hard to accept that the Bible is God inspired, when the existence of God has yet to be demonstrated.
2.Theoretically if that were proven, you’d have to prove that the Bible (and depending on your denomination other extra biblical sources considered canon) is the one true God inspired one.
3. Which parts are God inspired and which ones are inventions of man? Are all contradictions the result of man and all things that don’t contradict inspired by God? If so, why? We know that men are capable of writing things down that don’t contradict, so why would we assume the non-contradictory parts couldn’t be the work of men? Did god inspire fallible man to write down history, but not give them divine inspiration to write it down correctly? Or were the writings themselves divinely inspired, but God told these men to write down history wrong? Do we trust the Catholic Church to make the right call? If so, why? If they don’t have the original source documents and they don’t have evidence for the actual authorship of the original books, how do we know they made the right call? We take it on faith? Do we trust this thing that we called the Holy Spirit? It’s lead people to make the wrong calls before, why not now? Why not thousands of years ago?

Not to mention the word scholar has been used interchangeably with the word exegete. They aren’t mutually exclusive, but some forms of exegesis (such as the kind that believe that assuming divine inspiration is a sufficient method of interpreting the Bible) aren’t as scholarly as others.

And again, scholarship isn’t really required wanna comes to pointing out faults in fundamentalist biblical literalist logic. You don’t have to go to a Bible college or spend years in a monastery notice that the Bible is clearly not inerrant, so your focus on scholarship confuses me.

[Suriyanakhon]

"We can't know, but leaning no."

It's one of those questions whose ridiculousness is its own premise. Sure we don't know that the Earth is secretly run by a subterranean lizard cabal, but we can probably be assured it isn't due to lack of hard evidence.

Yeah. "Why should we believe in God NSG?" Well, what are the possible reasons to believe?

15. "Therefore, did we say, Kalamas, what was said thus, 'Come Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, "The monk is our teacher." Kalamas, when you yourselves know: "These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness," enter on and abide in them.'

The Dhamma satisfies all of these criteria.

[VoVoDoCo]

Yeah. "Why should we believe in God NSG?" Well, what are the possible reasons to believe?

15. "Therefore, did we say, Kalamas, what was said thus, 'Come Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, "The monk is our teacher." Kalamas, when you yourselves know: "These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness," enter on and abide in them.'

The Dhamma satisfies all of these criteria.

So I don’t mean to strawman you, I just know a lot less about the different sects of Buddhism than I do Christianity.

I asked “ what are the possible reasons to believe?”

Your quote says to abide in the things that allow you to know that some things are good, somethings are not blamable, somethings are praised by the wise, Because they lead to happiness?

[Punished UMN]

A and B are not mutually exclusive.

3) What I'm trying to say is that many of the "contradictions" both use are well-known and explained by scholars.

I never said that A and B are mutually exclusive. But believing that has its own problems:
1. It’s hard to accept that the Bible is God inspired, when the existence of God has yet to be demonstrated.
2.Theoretically if that were proven, you’d have to prove that the Bible (and depending on your denomination other extra biblical sources considered canon) is the one true God inspired one.
3. Which parts are God inspired and which ones are inventions of man? Are all contradictions the result of man and all things that don’t contradict inspired by God? If so, why? We know that men are capable of writing things down that don’t contradict, so why would we assume the non-contradictory parts couldn’t be the work of men? Did god inspire fallible man to write down history, but not give them divine inspiration to write it down correctly? Or were the writings themselves divinely inspired, but God told these men to write down history wrong? Do we trust the Catholic Church to make the right call? If so, why? If they don’t have the original source documents and they don’t have evidence for the actual authorship of the original books, how do we know they made the right call? We take it on faith? Do we trust this thing that we called the Holy Spirit? It’s lead people to make the wrong calls before, why not now? Why not thousands of years ago?

Not to mention the word scholar has been used interchangeably with the word exegete. They aren’t mutually exclusive, but some forms of exegesis (such as the kind that believe that assuming divine inspiration is a sufficient method of interpreting the Bible) aren’t as scholarly as others.

And again, scholarship isn’t really required wanna comes to pointing out faults in fundamentalist biblical literalist logic. You don’t have to go to a Bible college or spend years in a monastery notice that the Bible is clearly not inerrant, so your focus on scholarship confuses me.

First of all, fundamentalist biblical literalism is not a majority Christian view, in the grand scheme of things, it's extremely fringe. When I talk about scholarship, I am talking about secular biblical scholarship.

1) Naturally.
2) Well, the simple answer to this is that the Bible is a bibliography of other books and not a singular book, it was compiled over several centuries based not necessarily on what was believed to be inspired directly by God, but by what was considered theologically sound in some cases (e.g. 2 Peter is known to not have been written by Peter, but whoever its author was wrote something that was worth including).
3) Depends on your definition of divine inspiration. Is having witnessed an interaction with God, an angel, etc. enough to be divinely inspired? If so, then one needn't assume that the authors were remembering what inspired them correctly. In any case, it's unlikely that the Gospels were written by their original authors, and the mainline theory is that they were oral tradition for at least a couple decades before being written down just prior to the end of the 1st century AD.

[Suriyanakhon]

The Dhamma satisfies all of these criteria.

So I don’t mean to strawman you, I just know a lot less about the different sects of Buddhism than I do Christianity.

I asked “ what are the possible reasons to believe?”

Your quote says to abide in the things that allow you to know that some things are good, somethings are not blamable, somethings are praised by the wise, Because they lead to happiness?

Sorry I didn't expand on the meaning, it's in reference to the Kalama clan asking the Buddha about what religious figures they should believe, and he tells them about how to establish what is proper to believe (“abide”) based on the fruits they produce. This leads them to conclude that the Buddha's teachings are the truth and to accept them and take refuge in them. These are reasons to believe imho.

[VoVoDoCo]

I never said that A and B are mutually exclusive. But believing that has its own problems:
1. It’s hard to accept that the Bible is God inspired, when the existence of God has yet to be demonstrated.
2.Theoretically if that were proven, you’d have to prove that the Bible (and depending on your denomination other extra biblical sources considered canon) is the one true God inspired one.
3. Which parts are God inspired and which ones are inventions of man? Are all contradictions the result of man and all things that don’t contradict inspired by God? If so, why? We know that men are capable of writing things down that don’t contradict, so why would we assume the non-contradictory parts couldn’t be the work of men? Did god inspire fallible man to write down history, but not give them divine inspiration to write it down correctly? Or were the writings themselves divinely inspired, but God told these men to write down history wrong? Do we trust the Catholic Church to make the right call? If so, why? If they don’t have the original source documents and they don’t have evidence for the actual authorship of the original books, how do we know they made the right call? We take it on faith? Do we trust this thing that we called the Holy Spirit? It’s lead people to make the wrong calls before, why not now? Why not thousands of years ago?

Not to mention the word scholar has been used interchangeably with the word exegete. They aren’t mutually exclusive, but some forms of exegesis (such as the kind that believe that assuming divine inspiration is a sufficient method of interpreting the Bible) aren’t as scholarly as others.

And again, scholarship isn’t really required wanna comes to pointing out faults in fundamentalist biblical literalist logic. You don’t have to go to a Bible college or spend years in a monastery notice that the Bible is clearly not inerrant, so your focus on scholarship confuses me.

First of all, fundamentalist biblical literalism is not a majority Christian view, in the grand scheme of things, it's extremely fringe. When I talk about scholarship, I am talking about secular biblical scholarship.

1) Naturally.
2) Well, the simple answer to this is that the Bible is a bibliography of other books and not a singular book, it was compiled over several centuries based not necessarily on what was believed to be inspired directly by God, but by what was considered theologically sound in some cases (e.g. 2 Peter is known to not have been written by Peter, but whoever its author was wrote something that was worth including).
3) Depends on your definition of divine inspiration. Is having witnessed an interaction with God, an angel, etc. enough to be divinely inspired? If so, then one needn't assume that the authors were remembering what inspired them correctly. In any case, it's unlikely that the Gospels were written by their original authors, and the mainline theory is that they were oral tradition for at least a couple decades before being written down just prior to the end of the 1st century AD.

I’m aware that biblical literalism is not the majority. As far as it being a fringe sect, I don’t know if I would go that far. Depending on where you live, 25% of the population can believe that the Bible is the literal Word for Word...uh... word of god. That being said, a belief doesn’t have to be agreed on by the majority to warrant scorn and critique. I know that’s not what you were saying, but I wasn’t handwaving the entirety of Christianity on the basis of a doctrine relegated to the few. The contradictions were part of what led me away from Christianity, but it wasn’t the contradictions themselves, it was their implications.

2. I referred to it as a singular book colloquially speaking. The Bible can be one book, two books, 66 books, 100 books, the point still stands. How do we know that the biblical canon as we know it is true? And if it is true, that it’s god inspired?

3. I’m quick to make a distinction between Divine inspiration and inspiration from the divine. Divine inspiration, in the sense that I’m using it, is synonymous with divine revelation. One way of saying it is, “The basic idea of revelation is to make known something that is hidden.“

If that is the kind of revelation that Inspired the authors, why are there so many facts about the natural world that are wrong? Why couldn’t God uses power to inspire truthful authorship to prevent corruption’s from future authors? or to make sure that there were no scientific inaccuracies in his holy Scriptures?

If by inspiration you’re talking about being inspired by what we perceive as the divine, That’s problematic as well. People can interpret totally natural things as being supernatural. It happens all the time today. Christian who have near death experiences see Christian iconography. Muslim of near death experiences see Islamic iconography.

If it’s a combination of them, how do we Decide which verses are divinely inspired, and which ones are inspired by the divine? Are the things that are contradictory or obviously untrue simply inspired by the divine and all things that are not contradictory intentionally inspired through divine intervention? What evidence do we have for that? And if you’re able to answer those questions to a reasonable extent, and some verses still have to deal with the problems of being divinely inspired, and the other versus still have to deal with the problems associated with simply being inspired by the divine.

[VoVoDoCo]

So I don’t mean to strawman you, I just know a lot less about the different sects of Buddhism than I do Christianity.

I asked “ what are the possible reasons to believe?”

Your quote says to abide in the things that allow you to know that some things are good, somethings are not blamable, somethings are praised by the wise, Because they lead to happiness?

Sorry I didn't expand on the meaning, it's in reference to the Kalama clan asking the Buddha about what religious figures they should believe, and he tells them about how to establish what is proper to believe (“abide”) based on the fruits they produce. This leads them to conclude that the Buddha's teachings are the truth and to accept them and take refuge in them. These are reasons to believe imho.

So it doesn’t really matter if they are true? It just matters if believing in them produces good things? So it’s OK to believe things that are untrue as long as perhaps somebody finds comfort in fulfillment of them?

Again not a strawman

[The Cosmic Mainframe]

It's not all that useful to debate religion in logical and scientific terms, IMO. I have never met a person who is religious primarily because they are convinced by a preponderance of evidence or logical argument. There is usually a more subconscious or personal reason for belief.

Accordingly I find most of the arguments by both sides here unconvincing. Arguments for the existence of god(s) are scarcely formulated in a serious search for truth, and more often to prove a prior belief; arguments against tend to target specific literal interpretations of religious texts, conceptions of god(s) that are not quite universal, or very strong definitions of things like omnipotence or benevolence.

I don't believe in any God simply because I don't have a particular reason to.

[Weastern Nontopia]

I mean that's a big question.

There is absolutely no evidence in favour of such a thing, and mountains of evidence against pretty well every specific god ever proposed, so it would very much appear not.

I haven't seen much evidence besides "we can't see it so it doesn't exist," so have you seen something else?

The most common evidence given for the Christian God can also be used to support the existence of other gods and the truth of other religions, or it seems to rely on fallacies... evolution seems to disprove an intelligent designer...

The most commonly given evidence for the existence of the Christian god is Christ's time on Earth and the miracles he performed. I believe those happened if only because Luke wrote about them from the perspective of a neutral outside observer and returned much the same results as the faithful around Christ.

Evolution doesn't disprove an intelligent designer unless you look at (as an example) the Bible from an anally literal standpoint, and the fact that it uses metaphor and literary devices proves that as kind of dumb. God is literally described as omnipotent. There's no reason that Big G couldn't have just set up the system fourteen billion years ago with expectations it would produce the exact results we see today. Besides, humans are described as being made in God's image (at least in mind), and wouldn't you agree that a perfectly-designed world would be boring?

And you literally can't disprove the existence of something outside of a system from within that system, as you can't observe outside of it. If I'm in a sealed, fixed box I can't prove there's a guy standing just outside the box juggling a ball.

I went to Catholic school and had a religion teacher, who studied theology extensively, tell my class that faith in God and His intelligent design does not conflict with the concept of evolution. This teacher explained that evolution must be part of God's plan.

[Achidyemay]

Personally, I err on the side of there not being a God, but I'm not remotely sure. The universe, for the most part functions as it would if there were no divine intervention in it (at least from the big bang onward). And I haven't seen much compelling evidence for, or many compelling reasons to put any intuitive faith in, any of the world's religions.

One theist argument that does give me pause is the question of how something could come from nothing. How did the universe begin from nothing? Did it begin from nothing? I don't know. However, inserting the divine as an answer to that question, I believe, raises more questions than it answers (Where did God come from? How did God create the universe? etc). It also stifles scientific inquiry I think, to fill every blank in our knowledge with the divine, it prevents those blanks from being filled in with hard science.

I'm not sure though. This is just the way I see it now. I'm open to being wrong.

The universe acting in the way that it acts is proof of divine intervention. The way the atoms work, the way time works, the way gravity works, the way evolution works, all these things coming together to create you, humanity, society, science and religion, and art. God's work is evidenced in the fundamental forces the same way that a sculpture shows the tools used to sculpt it, and a good understanding of those tools helps understand the wielder of the tools. Inserting the divine simplifies the question of our make and purpose, questions that science shouldn't attempt to answer.

As for the interesting questions, God always was, same as the universe, but His actions weren't felt until time began, same as the universe. When science tells us more concretely about what happened at the beginning of time re. the universe, I'll revise that statement accordingly.

To keep it real with you, I view my entire life as proof that God doesn't exist.

People say "God must be protecting you young man. You've cheated death so many times." No, this isn't protection. Its sadism if any God is involved. I get to see people I know die left and right, and I should be thankful I'm alive? That's selfish. Me and my family and friends, we're all we got. Fuck it.

This is interesting to me, because you're taking your sapience, an utterly unique and unnatural experiential phenomena, and then you're putting value judgements on it and using that to disprove God. If you were a rock, you would be every bit a creation of God, but you wouldn't have these experiences; if you were a raven, you would have experiences, but lack the sapience, the closeness to God, to comprehend whether those experiences were good or bad (as opposed to pleasurable/painful); if you were a writing desk, you would be made of the creation of God, but be made by humans, and so you could be a good or a bad writing desk, but you wouldn't know better. But you are a human, interacting with other humans.

When Adam and Eve were tricked/sought out the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, they chose, willingly or not, to invite suffering into their life. The potential to cause suffering is a human invention, the war on entropy is a human conflict, all of the bad things in your life are the results of human actions, all of the relief from those bad things will be the results of human action. God wants you to be happy, He put us in the Garden of Eden, we evolved out of it, took on powers we hardly understood, and now wield our own destinies, often in conflict with eachother. By refocusing on God's teachings, we can invite goodness back into our lives. There's more to a happy community than just your family and friends, be tha change you want to see in the world, etc. etc.

Blessed be those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Well I can only really speak from the perspective of an ex-Christian. If Allah or Vishnu or whoever wants me to believe in them, they know my number.

The biggest reason to believe in any god is faith. But there is nothing that has been shown to me that one cannot believe in based solely on faith. You can believe anything based on faith. You can believe God doesn’t exist based on faith, you can believe that everything is a God based on faith, you can believe that one God exist based on faith, You can believe that contradictory religions can both be 100% true based on faith, etc. And this doesn’t apply to Just religion. You can believe that whites are superior, deforestation is good, the earth is flat, etc. solely on faith. So it is a unreliable method for establishing truth, and therefore people who are interested in believing in as many true things as possible and not believing in as many false things as possible, will disregard faith in favor of a more trustworthy epistemology.

I agree, but have found reason to prove God more than negate Him.

So we should use reason. What would the universe look like If the Bible was 100% True? The sun would spin around the earth, The moon would give off its own light instead of reflecting the sun’s light, the earth would be 7000 years, goats would give birth to striped calf if they looked at striped sticks while having sex, there would’ve been evidence for a Global flood, Incest would never lead to genetic malfunction (we are led to believe this due to some of the events of our creation and the flood), etc.

Most of these are translation dependent, like the moon doesn't emit light, it reflects light, but the Hebrew word 'owr means both emit and reflect, lit. 'to become bright'. Or how we say the sun rises even today, knowing full well that it is the Earth spinning. Modern interpretations also give leeway to the age of the Earth and it seems very likely that the bible refers to tribes outside of Adam and Eve, or they had lots more children than Cain and Able before they left. I just wanted to address this briefly, Genesis, and the whole Old Testament really, are better read as myths than anything to do with Christianity.

There’s some things that we might guess would be true if god exists, such as us being genetically unique and therefore being closer to the image of God rather than being genetically similar to chimps, imperfections in our own design not existing, cancer in animals that pre-date the alleged fall of man never existing because the fall of man was what let death and sin into the world in the first place, etc. but that’s all speculation.

We can never prove that God doesn’t exist. But this world looks exactly like one would imagine if it was the result of nature and Physics. The way our bodies formed look exactly like one would think they would After an imperfect unintentional series of small changes.

I mean, we are genetically unique. Despite Alex Jones' best ramblings, humanzees don't exist. I would say that the fall of man let death and sin and evil into the world, but thay it existed beforehand in the non-spiritual cessation, pain and accidents. Entropy always existed, it's a tool of God forcing us to be better, but it hasn't always been evil*, it used to just be a fact. But that's just speculation on my part.

We sure do look like we were made out of physics, we were, any process God uses would be physical and could be described by physics. The second part isn't perfectly true, our bodies look like one formed through a series of small changes, not a random or imperfect or unintentional set. Quantum and entropic randomness are another tool of God, as is evolution. At the very least, the phenomena resulted in you and me, at least for a time, and this wasn't guaranteed but it couldn't have happened any other way or it would have.

*no tool used by God is actually evil, the suffering entropy brings to humans is only the results of humans failing to overcome entropy. Like how your mom putting you in time out isn't evil, even tho it involves your suffering.

Historical evidence is scant. Just about all the books of the Old Testament, in a decent chunk of the New Testament, have unknown authors. We don’t know how close to the original source material the books are based off of, in that we have no original manuscripts. Put in chronological order, the new testament stories become more and more extravagant in their details of Jesus’ divinity, which is what you would expect to see if it was a legend that was growing and growing. In some instances it gets details out right wrong. There is no extra biblical evidence for the census that Mary and Joseph had to travel to do, there is no extra evidence of the slaughter of the Israelite children the Jesus escaped, there is no extra biblical evidence that Pontius pilate was as kind hearted as he was portrayed in the Bible (He was much more vicious) The list goes on.

So is there a God? Maybe. We certainly can’t disapprove it, anymore than we can disapprove the universe is a simulation. Maybe God is just lying To us. Maybe the world is under the influence of evil spirits that make us not see the universe the way God intended us to see it and I just doesn’t care enough to fix that. In any case, I do not believe that God exist. I’m open to being convinced though.

Other people have taken up the bible thing, so I'll just truck on to the end. I've always held that the existence of an omnipotent, all-powerful God is something that science could prove or disprove. That physics seems to be conspiring to create humans and humans seem to be conspiring (ideally) to help eachother and Jesus seems to be conspiring to teach us how to help eachother more efficiently, I take this as a seems to be God a la the Holy Trinity. Even if the universe was a simulation, one of our prime directives, aka religious obligations, would be to convince the people running the simulation that we're good, interesting, and incomplete, while we go about other means of securing our universe from the dreaded off switch.

[Mayaimi]

I've always held that the existence of an omnipotent, all-powerful God is something that science could prove or disprove.

True.

Ramakers et alii develped the formula. But here is the catch: the formula could prove both at the same time. It's all very quantum.

[Achidyemay]

I've always held that the existence of an omnipotent, all-powerful God is something that science could prove or disprove.

True.

Ramakers et alii develped the formula. But here is the catch: the formula could prove both at the same time. It's all very quantum.

I've never heard of anyone attempting this, I'd be curious to read it. Do you have a DOI or something, because I can't find it...

[VoVoDoCo]

Well I can only really speak from the perspective of an ex-Christian. If Allah or Vishnu or whoever wants me to believe in them, they know my number.

The biggest reason to believe in any god is faith. But there is nothing that has been shown to me that one cannot believe in based solely on faith. You can believe anything based on faith. You can believe God doesn’t exist based on faith, you can believe that everything is a God based on faith, you can believe that one God exist based on faith, You can believe that contradictory religions can both be 100% true based on faith, etc. And this doesn’t apply to Just religion. You can believe that whites are superior, deforestation is good, the earth is flat, etc. solely on faith. So it is a unreliable method for establishing truth, and therefore people who are interested in believing in as many true things as possible and not believing in as many false things as possible, will disregard faith in favor of a more trustworthy epistemology.

1. I agree, but have found reason to prove God more than negate Him.

So we should use reason. What would the universe look like If the Bible was 100% True? The sun would spin around the earth, The moon would give off its own light instead of reflecting the sun’s light, the earth would be 7000 years, goats would give birth to striped calf if they looked at striped sticks while having sex, there would’ve been evidence for a Global flood, Incest would never lead to genetic malfunction (we are led to believe this due to some of the events of our creation and the flood), etc.

2. Most of these are translation dependent, like the moon doesn't emit light, it reflects light, but the Hebrew word 'owr means both emit and reflect, lit. 'to become bright'. Or how we say the sun rises even today, knowing full well that it is the Earth spinning. Modern interpretations also give leeway to the age of the Earth and it seems very likely that the bible refers to tribes outside of Adam and Eve, or they had lots more children than Cain and Able before they left. I just wanted to address this briefly, Genesis, and the whole Old Testament really, are better read as myths than anything to do with Christianity.

There’s some things that we might guess would be true if god exists, such as us being genetically unique and therefore being closer to the image of God rather than being genetically similar to chimps, imperfections in our own design not existing, cancer in animals that pre-date the alleged fall of man never existing because the fall of man was what let death and sin into the world in the first place, etc. but that’s all speculation.

We can never prove that God doesn’t exist. But this world looks exactly like one would imagine if it was the result of nature and Physics. The way our bodies formed look exactly like one would think they would After an imperfect unintentional series of small changes.

3. I mean, *we are genetically unique. Despite Alex Jones' best ramblings, humanzees don't exist. I would say that the fall of man let death and sin and evil into the world, but *thay it existed beforehand in the non-spiritual cessation, pain and accidents. Entropy always existed, *it's a tool of God forcing us to be better, but it hasn't always been evil*, it used to just be a fact. But that's just speculation on my part.

We sure do look like we were made out of physics, we were, any process God uses would be physical and could be described by physics. The second part isn't perfectly true, our bodies look like one formed through a series of small changes, ***not a random or imperfect or unintentional set. *Quantum and entropic randomness are another tool of God, as is evolution. At the very least, the phenomena resulted in you and me, at least for a time, and this wasn't guaranteed but *it couldn't have happened any other way or it would have.

**no tool used by God is actually evil, the suffering entropy brings to humans is only the results of humans failing to overcome entropy. Like how your mom putting you in time out isn't evil, even tho it involves your suffering.

Historical evidence is scant. Just about all the books of the Old Testament, in a decent chunk of the New Testament, have unknown authors. We don’t know how close to the original source material the books are based off of, in that we have no original manuscripts. Put in chronological order, the new testament stories become more and more extravagant in their details of Jesus’ divinity, which is what you would expect to see if it was a legend that was growing and growing. In some instances it gets details out right wrong. There is no extra biblical evidence for the census that Mary and Joseph had to travel to do, there is no extra evidence of the slaughter of the Israelite children the Jesus escaped, there is no extra biblical evidence that Pontius pilate was as kind hearted as he was portrayed in the Bible (He was much more vicious) The list goes on.

So is there a God? Maybe. We certainly can’t disapprove it, anymore than we can disapprove the universe is a simulation. Maybe God is just lying To us. Maybe the world is under the influence of evil spirits that make us not see the universe the way God intended us to see it and I just doesn’t care enough to fix that. In any case, I do not believe that God exist. I’m open to being convinced though.

4. Other people have taken up the bible thing, so I'll just truck on to the end. I've always held that the existence of an omnipotent, all-powerful God is something that science could prove or disprove. That *physics seems to be conspiring to create humans and humans seem to be conspiring (ideally) to help eachother and *Jesus seems to be conspiring to teach us how to help eachother more efficiently, I take this as a seems to be God a la the Holy Trinity. Even if the universe was a simulation, *one of our prime directives, aka religious obligations, would be to convince the people running the simulation that we're good, interesting, and incomplete, while we go about other means of securing our universe from the dreaded off switch.

1. I'm glad we both put reason on a pedestal, but there were a lot of assertions in your response that seem to lack evidence. Anything asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. I put a big * next to an assertion I feel should either have evidence to give it some legitimacy or be crossed out for being guilty of A. ad hoc reasoning B. being an empty assertion and/or C. needing clarification.
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2. I wasn't using the Hebrew in the OT, I was using the NT. The following passage to be precise: "But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give her light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken." -Mat 24:29. The word used for sun here, ἥλιος, is masculine. The sun has a female pronoun as well, but it's not used here. The word for moon here, σελήνη, is feminine. The word for give here, δίδωμι, means literally to give or extend. So it's saying that the moon will not give or extend its light, even though the light coming from the moon is not the moon's light to give or not give, it's the sun's.

We could also talk about how the stars are somehow tiny enough to land on the earth. The original texts, according to what I've read, refer to actual stars. That passage used the word "ἀστήρ", which translates to a literal star in the literal sky, not angels as some apologists have proposed. Now, one could say "Sure, the word literally means star, but its purpose in the text could still be metaphorical" but A. that could be said about literally every noun and B. Jesus was making a prophesy about when his 2nd coming would be and warning people (I think it was the disciples in this passage) about what signs to look for. That'd be kind of shitty and deceptive of him to give them physical signs to look for when it came to his second coming, but not mention that these signs were just metaphor, and therefore not even giving them (and indirectly us) any tangible evidence to look for, or at least correctly described what the evidence was, which was the point of the goddamn passage.

The bible says that the sun stopped for an entire day. YHWH could've taken this moment to tell the author, "Oh, btw, I figure I may as well give you guys divine foresight into the natural world to give these scriptures some real authority to back it up. You should instead say, 'And then the lord stopped the earth's rotation.' There, now those textual critics will take us seriously." But he didn't. The bible gets knowledge about the natural world, the world that YHWH himself created, wrong. That's not what one would expect to see if the bible was inspired by a being who was all knowing and cared about the accuracy of its contents. That doesn't prove God doesn't exists, but I'd be more apt to take the claims of the bible seriously if it could prove itself worth of being taken seriously.

I appreciate you're not a biblical literalist or believe the bible is inerrant. But why should I take the NT any more seriously than the OT? New Testament authors seemed to believe in the OT. Even Jesus referenced the global flood as if it was an actual event: "26 Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all." So is the coming of the son of man is going to be just as it was in the flood, a metaphor? Or is his coming not going to be a methophor, and therefore not just like it was in the days of Noah? Or will his coming be just like the days of Noah, and not a metaphor, because the flood wasn't a metaphor? No matter how you slice it, something here needs to give.
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3. We are unique, up to a certain point. But if we were formed from clay (or dirt or whatever)and made in the image of God, why do we share 99% of our DNA with chimps? We're unique from each other, but genetically speaking when god "formed you in the womb," he chose to copy and paste the DNA of a chimp for most of it, which is peculiar if god made us in his image uniquely and apart from everything else. If we evolved from other animals, which we did, why did God chose one primate species to have dominion over the earth? Why even create Neanderthals, which were religious but aren't even given any lip service in the scriptures, just to destroy them? Surely God would've mentioned them? Even to call them heathens that worshipped false gods?

This is where we start to hit speculation, as all religion inevitably in my experience does, but why would God call his creation good if it had cancer in it? Because it has the ability to strengthen our resolve? Give us endurance? Teach us with tough love how to persevere? I don't plan on babying my child and never letting him learn from his mistakes the hard way, but I would never use physical pain and suffering as a method of learning. This doesn't prove anything about the existence of god, it's just a moral issue. If YHWH allowed physical evil into the world as a way of building us up, he can go fuck himself. That's terrible.

That paragraph that I wrote was more about speculation as to some other things we might expect to see if the god of Abraham and Isaac was real, so that whole section is just full of moot points lol

What part of our evolution as I described is inaccurate? I said our bodies looked, "exactly like one would think they would After an imperfect unintentional series of small changes."

• Imperfect- Our bodies are imperfect. An unsound spine, an inflexible knee, a too-narrow pelvis, exposed testicles, crowded teeth, meandering arteries, a backward retina, a misrouted nerve, etc. Unless all that happened only after our fall, something you'd need evidence for, that is a level of imprecision and imperfection that I can totally see happening if our creation was the result of impersonal and not optimal natural processes. Not by the guidance of a diety that supposedly is omnipotent and knows what the hell he's doing.
• Unintentional- The case for evolution stands on its own merits through the available evidence. Saying that god directed evolution to produce us, doesn't have any evidence and therefore should be discarded. To me, that's sufficient reason to believe that our lowly origins were undirected.
• Small changes- That's simply accurate.

I didn't say random, but it's funny that you say our evolution isn't random. Mutation is a force of genetic chaos and randomness that is necessary for evolution, as it provides genetic variability. The traits we've acquired were selected for by our environment and brought to fruition by mutation. Mutations are random (though some mutations are more random than others.)
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4. Physics does not conspire to create humans.

• If you were to teleport to any random part of the universe, you'd almost definitely die immediately. There's too many ways to die with that vague of a range to even list here, so let's narrow down our search.
• If you were to teleport to any random part of the earth, you're almost definitely going to die. If you teleported too high up you'd burn in our atmosphere (surviving that you'd splatter on the ground.) If you teleported to close to the center you disintegrate from our 5200 C core. If you teleported too far down in the ocean you're lungs would would get crushed, or if you managed to survive that long enough you'd drown. If you teleported too far down in the soil you would get crushed and/or suffocate. Let's narrow our search again.
• If you were to teleport to any random part of the earth's crust (we're down to less than 1% of the earth's volume at this point), you better hope you don't teleport too close to a predator, a natural disaster, an area with scarce resources, a disease, the middle of the open ocean, and that's just the shit that'll kill you quick. Our bodies are also just plain inefficient. You can die from not getting enough food, eating the wrong food, not having a varied enough diet, not getting enough water, drinking contaminated water, etc.

The universe is more finely tuned for the creation of black holes than life, so let's not say that physics conspired to create us.

As far as humans "ideally" seeking to help each other, I'll concede that for the sake of argument. What does that prove about the existence of god? And as far as Jesus giving us advice on how to help each other more efficiently, it was kind of hit and miss. He never outright condemned slavery, which would've been a great step towards us helping each other more efficiently. Can you list any advice he gave on helping eachother that simultaneously hasn't been said by any other god or messianic figure and/or couldn't also be said by a secular one? And theoretically even if you could, how would does this prove that god exists?

As far as your simulation statement goes, it almost sounds like you're saying it would be in our best interest to appease the simulation maker we cannot directly interact with by assuming the simulation maker exists just to be safe and convince them not to delete us. Is that how you treat religion? Something we believe in just to be safe so as to avoid damnation? A Pascal's Wager of sorts?

It also sounds like you're implying that only the religious can be good, interesting, and (I assume the "in" was a typo unless I'm misreading you) complete. I resent that.

If I straw-manned your position (that's never intentional) or didn't make my position clear enough, just let me know.

[The Socialist Republic of Astrakhan]

I FOLLOW HINDUISM , according to Hinduism there are many gods , each one for each purpose . These many gods are in fact headed by a Greater God known as the Brahma , who created the Universe and solar systems and even the Gods are created by him , and Shiva is the greatest of all Gods even greater than Brahma. Lord Shiva might be called as the great God in Hinduism and Lord Vishnu protects the Universe . Therefore i conclude this post by saying that , the trinity known as Brahma , Vishnu and Shiva are Great. There are known temples for Vishnu and Shiva , but sadly nobody worships Brahma , though he created everything .

[Sancturia]

Is there an option for us Apatheists? I'm one of those people that don't care weather or not God exists.

[The Socialist Republic of Astrakhan]

Is there an option for us Apatheists? I'm one of those people that don't care weather or not God exists.

what religion do you follow , is it monotheistic or polytheistic

[Nevertopia]

If there is a God would it not mean they are evil or not all-powerful considering all the evils of the world?

[The Socialist Republic of Astrakhan]

Is there an option for us Apatheists? I'm one of those people that don't care weather or not God exists.

according to the religious world, there is no option for apatheists

[Nevertopia]

Is there an option for us Apatheists? I'm one of those people that don't care weather or not God exists.

maybe agnostic?

[The Socialist Republic of Astrakhan]

If there is a God would it not mean they are evil or not all-powerful considering all the evils of the world?

every religion has its good and bad gods and antigods too. Even Hinduism has gods and antigods

[Nevertopia]

If there is a God would it not mean they are evil or not all-powerful considering all the evils of the world?

every religion has its good and bad gods and antigods too. Even Hinduism has gods and antigods

So then the idea of monotheism is less logical in the grand scheme of things.

[Sancturia]

Is there an option for us Apatheists? I'm one of those people that don't care weather or not God exists.

what religion do you follow , is it monotheistic or polytheistic

I'm formally a roman catholic. I'm raised catholic, but I'm not religious as my parents.

[The Socialist Republic of Astrakhan]

what religion do you follow , is it monotheistic or polytheistic

I'm formally a roman catholic. I'm raised catholic, but I'm not religious as my parents.

oh ok ,

[The Socialist Republic of Astrakhan]

Hinduism does have its limitations, example - Hindus are not allowed to eat , smell, touch or taste beef and pork . its forbidden