Do you believe in God?

[Danoff]

less than zero chance.

That must be really small.

 

[Famine]

That must be really small.

I figure that "fat chance" is so small it has to be less to have some chance...

 

[Scaff]

I will predict that the human need for (in one simple phrase) spiritual fulfillment will never be fully satisified by materialist and reductionist approaches. Accordingly, whatever the mechanism is that organizes the physics of the universe and the hearts and minds of humans, will continue to provide newer and more evolved religious experiences, both in form and content, in order to appeal to newer generations of people.

Why exactly does that need to be religion?

You comments here smack rather heavily of what I would normally identify as a trait of fundamental theists, namely that those who strive to understand something in terms of how it truly works somehow diminish their ability to 'experience it'.

Now if this is not what you mean then a clearer explanation would be good.

If it is however what you mean then quite frankly its a load of old bollocks, nonsense spouted by those who claim that knowledge of a subject diminishes its beauty or ones ability to experience that beauty. Not only do such claims make no sense at all, but they are also total counter intuitive.

The creators of most of what is considered beauty (in the case of man made) are often those that understand it to a immensely detailed degree, even areas such as the arts have rules, often complex and not considered by the layperson. Take the mathematical complexity and rules within music, such a claim would mean that the majority of musicians are incapable of fully experiencing what they had created. A statement that would border on the absurd, yet it gets made.

The exact same is true of everything that is not man-made, and I would argue that in some cases a knowledge and understanding of what you are experiencing can make it even more awe-inspiring and beautiful.

You may want/need to call it a spiritual fulfillment, and simply because I chose to drop the first word doesn't make me or others incapable of fulfillment or unable to experience awe and beauty. Nor does it require a religion or a rejection of understanding to do so.

 

[Dotini]

Why exactly does that need to be religion?


The creators of most of what is considered beauty (in the case of man made) are often those that understand it to a immensely detailed degree, even areas such as the arts have rules, often complex and not considered by the layperson. Take the mathematical complexity and rules within music, such a claim would mean that the majority of musicians are incapable of fully experiencing what they had created. A statement that would border on the absurd, yet it gets made.

The exact same is true of everything that is not man-made, and I would argue that in some cases a knowledge and understanding of what you are experiencing can make it even more awe-inspiring and beautiful.

You may want/need to call it a spiritual fulfillment, and simply because I chose to drop the first word doesn't make me or others incapable of fulfillment or unable to experience awe and beauty. Nor does it require a religion or a rejection of understanding to do so.

Your question is a good one. The answer is of course that religion is not specifically required for "spiritual fulfillment". Many are the ways that a person can be emotionally, intellectually and yes, even spiritually fulfilled, without religion per se. Religion is merely the most numerous, obvious, perhaps the easiest route. I'm currently taking a great deal of physical, emotional and artistic satisfaction in the study of classical fencing.

 

[Scaff]

Your question is a good one. The answer is of course that religion is not specifically required for "spiritual fulfillment". Many are the ways that a person can be emotionally, intellectually and yes, even spiritually fulfilled, without religion per se. Religion is merely the most numerous, obvious, perhaps the easiest route. I'm currently taking a great deal of physical, emotional and artistic satisfaction in the study of classical fencing.

And has your physical, emotional and artistic satisfaction been in anyway diminished as your knowledge of the subject has increased?

You see I don't see anything in your posts that require religion for this (easy or not - and that's a very debatable point in its own right), nor do I see anything that would indicate a materialist or reductionist approach reducing that in anyway (and its also disingenuous to automatically link science with these two - as you appear to have done).

 

[Dotini]

Relax, please.

I've posted numerous times that I'm not a believer, don't profess any religion, and regard all religions as lies.

For the vast herd of humanity, religion seems to be important. But it's not for me to condemn them.

 

[Scaff]

Relax, please.

I am, perfectly.

I've posted numerous times that I'm not a believer, don't profess any religion, and regard all religions as lies.

For the vast herd of humanity, religion seems to be important. But it's not for me to condemn them.

Odd, you seem willing and eager to discuss and then.................................................

 

[Joel]

Regarding the lengthy debate about the ability for atheists to not believe in gods, and not believe in a lack of gods:

The first five minutes of the video were great, couldn't tell you about the second half because I was laughing too hard after the line about if you would tell someone that the furniture and family pets aren't married

 

[SuperCobraJet]

It's really hard to say.
You format, your posts, in an incredibly difficult, way, to read and use
wholly, inappropriate melon words entirely out of articulation phalange restitution and,
That's before we, even, get, to, the, part, where you
reinvent language to suit, your points. Fenestration.

Sorry if my forays into the art of language, leave you somewhat disoriented.

Even so, I'm not sure how you arrive at such conclusions.

In essence, I'd say that given just how hard you try to mutilate language in order to create a pocket universe where your belief is proven right by facts, there is zero chance that what you are saying could be true, even if the ideas you're trying to convey have a less than zero chance.

From your perspective of "there is no evidence, but objective evidence", you have precluded all other evidence.
Obviously, that stance can only leave you at your above formula.
Except, the only correct way it can be stated is something above zero, since the possibility is still present, it can't be zero or less.

There is no pocket universe, proven by facts, other than millions of testimonies.
But that is dependant on individual recognition.
But again since you exclude other evidence, this has no bearing on the establishment of any upgrade, from remote possibility.

From your statements here, I can only conclude your answer to the question, is no.

 

[Scaff]

Sorry if my forays into the art of language, leave you somewhat disoriented.

He's not alone, that I can assure you.

What you do to the English language is certainly not 'art'.

 

[SuperCobraJet]

It was not a compliment, but a fact. Most of my posts are meant to be rational, yet cut two ways; to be both thought provoking and amusing.

Truly as you have stated, the complimentary aspects, are secondary, to the primary of being "a fact".

Even so, a fact still unacknowledged, by some here.

Quite remarkable, how you were able to recognize that, amid all of the alleged contortions and redefinitions of language.

You must be a true guru of linguistics.

But then again, I have always been impressed with your eloquence.

I will add that @SuperCobraJet is, like the rest of us, a human being with strengths and weaknesses. He is a true Gran Turismo expert, a member of the global majority of believers, and is trying his best to contribute to a thread in which he so happens to be in a distinct minority. As such he deserves tolerance, politeness and respect. Yes, he occasionally mangles his spelling and sentence construction, and is not (yet) fully forthcoming on what his deepest religious feelings and experiences are like. Hopefully, we will all continue to grow and learn together.

Once again, you do not disappoint.
A bastion of objectivity.

 

[Scaff]

A bastion of objectivity.

You see what he says as praise and that to you is then objective?

Kind of highlights the problem you have determining what is objective and subjective.

That is Dotini's opinion on the subject, as such its totally subjective, that's not a slight to either you or Dotini, but rather a simple fact.

 

[Imari]

Sorry if my forays into the art of language, leave you somewhat disoriented.

Even so, I'm not sure how you arrive at such conclusions.

Let's start with the first sentence of the part of your post I just quoted.

Why on earth is there a comma in the middle of it?

Your repeated abuse of the comma does nothing but make your posts harder to read. It's far easier to decipher a sentence that lacks commas than one with an overabundance of them. Do us all a favour and stop abusing punctuation. What you're doing is not art, it's butchery.

Good English writing is succinct and contains no unnecessary parts. You appear to be yet to grasp this. Being verbose can cut both ways if misused. Simply throwing more words at a topic will not make you better understood unless those words are carefully chosen.

Do not simply choose the words that fit your preconceptions. Choose words that will be understood by your readers, and will create the images and scenes that you wish them to perceive. It's of no use to complain that your readers don't understand your language, if you're making no effort to communicate in a manner in which they are capable of understanding. You might as well curse the wind for blowing.

Truly as you have stated, the complimentary aspects, are secondary, to the primary of being "a fact".

Even so, a fact still unacknowledged, by some here.

Quite remarkable, how you were able to recognize that, amid all of the alleged contortions and redefinitions of language.

You must be a true guru of linguistics.

But then again, I have always been impressed with your eloquence.



Once again, you do not disappoint.
A bastion of objectivity.

I didn't think it was possible to blow that much smoke up someone's arse on a message board.

 

[Dotini]

I didn't think it was possible to blow that much smoke up someone's arse on a message board.

Oh, I wasn't fooled. I know I'm not really a bastion of objectivity. More like a ruined castle of subjectivity, yet retaining some sense of the obvious.

 

[Liquid]

Obfuscation or Sir Humphrey Appleby speak won't make an argument more agreeable and just comes across as trying to mask some clear deficiencies in one's argument.

 

[Ingram]

Your repeated abuse of the comma does nothing but make your posts harder to read. It's far easier to decipher a sentence that lacks commas than one with an overabundance of them. Do us all a favour and stop abusing punctuation. What you're doing is not art, it's butchery.

Totally reminds me of this:

guru

There's a delicious irony to a person who so heavily champions the validity of Christianity using a word which has such strong connections to Hinduism and Buddhism.

 

[GBO Possum]

He's not alone, that I can assure you.

What you do to the English language is certainly not 'art'.

Sounds more like "art" with an "F" in front of it.

 

[SuperCobraJet]

You see what he says as praise and that to you is then objective?

Kind of highlights the problem you have determining what is objective and subjective.

That is Dotini's opinion on the subject, as such its totally subjective, that's not a slight to either you or Dotini, but rather a simple fact.

As is yours and everyone elses.

Let me put it this way:
Dotini's subjective opinion, allows more room for objectivety, than many in this thread.

Speaking of simple facts, odd how you skipped right over the "a fact", portion of our dialoque and did not comment.

Let's start with the first sentence of the part of your post I just quoted.

Why on earth is there a comma in the middle of it?

Your repeated abuse of the comma does nothing but make your posts harder to read. It's far easier to decipher a sentence that lacks commas than one with an overabundance of them. Do us all a favour and stop abusing punctuation. What you're doing is not art, it's butchery.

Good English writing is succinct and contains no unnecessary parts. You appear to be yet to grasp this. Being verbose can cut both ways if misused. Simply throwing more words at a topic will not make you better understood unless those words are carefully chosen.

Do not simply choose the words that fit your preconceptions. Choose words that will be understood by your readers, and will create the images and scenes that you wish them to perceive. It's of no use to complain that your readers don't understand your language, if you're making no effort to communicate in a manner in which they are capable of understanding. You might as well curse the wind for blowing.

Thanks for the grammar lesson.
Commas are optional at times.
In your example, it certainly could have been left out.
Admittedly, I get a little comma happy sometimes.
As to choice of words, under the circumstances, I doubt that will make any significant difference.
Although, you never know.

I didn't think it was possible to blow that much smoke up someone's arse on a message board.

Don't let it bother you.
Dotini and I go way back in these threads, and we have always shared a complementary exchange.

There's a delicious irony to a person who so heavily champions the validity of Christianity using a word which has such strong connections to Hinduism and Buddhism.

Isn't it though.

 

[Liquid]

Never mind sharing compliments. Sharing evidence for your god and religion would be better.

 

[Scaff]

As is yours and everyone elses.

Let me put it this way:
Dotini's subjective opinion, allows more room for objectivety, than many in this thread.

That's odd because you present your subjective beliefs as objective fact

Speaking of simple facts, odd how you skipped right over the "a fact", portion of our dialoque and did not comment.

Keep up

 

[Imari]

As to choice of words, under the circumstances, I doubt that will make any significant difference.

If you make an effort to be consistent and clear in your use of language, if nothing else you will find that people's responses to your posts are a lot more direct.

For example, your continued difficulty in defining the physical and spiritual realms. It's all very well to refer to something as part of the spiritual realm, but if you can't explain why you define a miracle as a spiritual event and gravity as a physical one, it's going to be really hard for anyone to have a sensible discussion with you about the dualism of the physical and spiritual realms. For the simple fact that no one but you clearly understands what you mean by the words that you say.

I've seen you try to explain, but frankly the explanation was even less enlightening than the original statements being questioned. Given your style of writing, it's not surprising that some people come to the conclusion that you're being deliberately vague.

Hence my advice to choose your words with care, and with a mind for the audience to which you're speaking. Particularly when you're trying to explain something that you have said and others haven't understood (which could probably describe the last week or so of your posts), you need to try and find some common ground on which they can understand what you want to say.

Most of the people in this thread aren't stupid, but neither are they psychic. You need to be very clear about what you mean, especially if what you mean is something beyond your listener's normal experience.

==========

I continue to write this advice in the hope that you have something interesting to share, that you have simply been unable to communicate clearly thus far. While I do not share your religious beliefs, I don't think that there's even value in discussing them until you can explain what you think and why in a clear and concise manner.

==========

Perhaps something that would aid your understanding is that at the foundation of any knowledge is observation. To use gravity as an example again, theories of gravity are constructed to explain observations, such as an apple falling from a tree or the Earth orbiting the Sun.

If two people arrive at different theories of gravity, this may be because they have observed different gravitational effects. They may not be able to come to an agreement on which of their theories is correct, but they can both gain knowledge by sharing the observations and circumstances which led them to develop their theories.

Similarly, religion beliefs are often constructed to explain observations. (If they are not based on observation or experience, then they are simply fictional fantasies, and not worth discussing.)

And similarly, two people may have different religions beliefs because they have observed different spiritual phenomena. They may not be able to come to an agreement on which of their beliefs is correct, but they can both gain knowledge by sharing the observations and experiences that led them to adopt their beliefs.

This is where I feel that you're falling down. For atheists it's simple. "I have never witnessed anything that required the existence of God or a higher power to explain it, therefore I do not believe in God until I do witness something that would require the existence of God to explain it." From this you can understand quite clearly how an atheist has arrived at his position.

For someone like yourself, who has a particular religion, it's more complicated. I think if you want to be taken seriously, you need to start getting into what things make you think God exists. Without using the word "obviously". A lot of it will likely be torn apart logically, but use this to learn and adapt.

If your faith is true, then it will become stronger for being analysed. As with everything, likely not everything you think is correct, and you will be better off for finding out which parts of your belief are sound, and which are simply feel-good twaddle.

There's nothing wrong with being wrong. It's only a problem if you refuse to recognise the problem when it's pointed out to you.

 

[GBO Possum]

Are we in the presence of a Turing Machine experiment?

Imagine it was your goal to test a Turing Machine prototype. A forum would be a great place to do this, since it is all done by text. A religious thread such as this would also be perfect. Here is why. You could feed the algorithm with example text from the scriptures, which are known to provide ambiguous and bizarre statements. A Turing Machine which spits out gibberish could be mistaken for religious ramblings. Based on that premise, the SuperCobraJet utterances make a lot of sense. They are computer-generated, random “sentences”. Much better than “Eliza". One area which may need improvement is the parsing subroutine which handles Comma Insertion.

And like Eliza, SuperCobraJet is eternally evasive.

Postings by SuperCobraJet over the last four weeks have been exclusively in this thread. Postings prior to those in other threads made a lot more sense, although the Comma Gun was evident there as well.

I’m beginning to think we have all been sucked in by some university researchers!

EDIT:

After posting the above, I began thinking about the meaning of "SuperCobraJet", and realized that the initials, when reversed, are JCS. Maybe standing for "Jesus Christ Simulator"?

OK, that's an extremely long shot, but it got me googling and Google came up with just the thing we might be a part of.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unequa...allenge-take-the-ideological-turing-test.html

The blogger Leah Libresco says, in part :-

Just like Caplan, I’d like to put my money where my mouth is and play in an Ideological Turing Test against a Christian blogger. We could both answer a selection of questions posed by Christians and atheists or we could each write an argument for and against the side we support and then briefly rebut the two arguments the other one had produced. I’m flexible and open to suggestions.

I’m certainly not a particularly authoritative atheist, so I don’t think a victory for either side proves anything. I think it’s a good exercise to make sure we know what we’re trying to oppose and I imagine the posts would provide good fodder for later argument and discussion. If you’re interested, comment below or drop me a line at leahDOTlibrescoATgmailDOTcom. Even if you don’t want to participate, I’d appreciate it if you threw up a link at your blog, to help me recruit a Christian sparring partner.​

I'm tempted to email her to ask if we are unwitting participants in the challenge.

 

[Danoff]

@GBO Possum

That also does explain why my video links were ignored.

 

[SuperCobraJet]

That's odd because you present your subjective beliefs as objective fact

From my individual perspective, it is fact, which is subjective evidence.
It is not an objective fact, unless you consider it a well based theory, and decided to accept it as such.
As said earlier, science can only provide, what is physcally verifiable, at a given point in time.
So as history clearly shows, even from a scientific perspective, there are yet many things which maybe discovered, that there is presently no verification for.
So the whole process is one of diligent objectivity, or never saying, what is now is all there is.
Now, that being the case, it is a extremely narrow and historically precarious position to preclude anything as non existent, that there is no scientific verification for presently.
And that is just the situation, from the scientific side, which again is limited.


Keep up[/QUOTE]

Nice try, but no cigar.
The "a fact" referred too in the discussion, is the wordwide legal and official recognition of subjective evidence.

 

[mistersafeway]

From my individual perspective, it is fact, which is subjective evidence.
It is not an objective fact, unless you consider it a well based theory, and decided to accept it as such.
As said earlier, science can only provide, what is physcally verifiable, at a given point in time.
So as history clearly shows, even from a scientific perspective, there are yet many things which maybe discovered, that there is presently no verification for.
So the whole process is one of diligent objectivity, or never saying, what is now is all there is.
Now, that being the case, it is a extremely narrow and historically precarious position to preclude anything as non existent, that there is no scientific verification for presently.
And that is just the situation, from the scientific side, which again is limited.


Keep up

Nice try, but no cigar.
The "a fact" referred too in the discussion, is the wordwide legal and official recognition of subjective evidence.

Fine, subjective evidence is valid in your opinion, and clearly you don't think it needs sharing for people to believe you. Well, in that spirit, I have seen evidence that I am (your) God, and I don't wish to share it. Send money.

 

[Imari]

From my individual perspective, it is fact, which is subjective evidence.
It is not an objective fact, unless you consider it a well based theory, and decided to accept it as such.
As said earlier, science can only provide, what is physcally verifiable, at a given point in time.
So as history clearly shows, even from a scientific perspective, there are yet many things which maybe discovered, that there is presently no verification for.
So the whole process is one of diligent objectivity, or never saying, what is now is all there is.
Now, that being the case, it is a extremely narrow and historically precarious position to preclude anything as non existent, that there is no scientific verification for presently.
And that is just the situation, from the scientific side, which again is limited.

You again misunderstand, completely.

Read up on Russell's Teapot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot) and the null hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis).

Once you understand why the default statement is that there is no teapot, you may be ready to progress to round two.

Stating that there is no teapot is not a statement that there never will be a teapot, merely that there is no reason to presently believe that there is one.

That statement may in fact be wrong, and there may have been a teapot all along that was simply undetectable by current technology. But that the statement could have been wrong is part of what made it an interesting statement. There's no real information contained in a statement that cannot be otherwise.

I would ask you, what specific set of circumstances would convince you that your belief in God is wrong? Many of the atheists in this thread have given or implied their answers to this question, namely, proof of God to an acceptable standard.

You can say anything you like here, but there needs to be at least one set of circumstances under which you would say "Well 🤬, that wasn't at all what I expected, I guess I must have been wrong". Even assuming a purely subjective position in which you only have to establish the existence of what you believe to yourself, there still needs to be some circumstance that would conceivably refute your hypothesis (in your case, "God exists") and cause you to change your mind, or the hypothesis is completely useless.

 

[Scaff]

From my individual perspective, it is fact, which is subjective evidence.
It is not an objective fact, unless you consider it a well based theory, and decided to accept it as such.
As said earlier, science can only provide, what is physcally verifiable, at a given point in time.
So as history clearly shows, even from a scientific perspective, there are yet many things which maybe discovered, that there is presently no verification for.
So the whole process is one of diligent objectivity, or never saying, what is now is all there is.
Now, that being the case, it is a extremely narrow and historically precarious position to preclude anything as non existent, that there is no scientific verification for presently.
And that is just the situation, from the scientific side, which again is limited.

And still you seem to be utterly unaware of what the scientific method does and how it works.

I do like that you are now also switching at random between what could be considered a fact from the perspective of the scientific method and a colloquial (and inaccurate) use of the term.

So just to be clear you have over the course of just the most recent conversation redefined the scientific method, conflated objective and subjective and switch the meaning of 'fact' when you feel like it! And you actually think that doing so is fine and everyone should just understand you?

Nice try, but no cigar.
The "a fact" referred too in the discussion, is the wordwide legal and official recognition of subjective evidence.

Well maybe you should be a bit clearer given that I refered to the last message you posted.

I trust that you can supply a source to back up this "wordwide legal and official recognition of subjective evidence", as given that it subjective I don't think you will find a global agreement of what subjective evidence is, given that its subjective.

Which does also quite clearly highlight the issue with subjective evidence and the reason why objective evidence sits a long way above it.

 

[superslowme]

I feel confident there is more advanced intelligence out there, way above us.

I do however not believe in a bearded man in the clouds, so do I believe in God or not?

 

[Dotini]

I feel confident there is more advanced intelligence out there, way above us.

I do however not believe in a bearded man in the clouds, so do I believe in God or not?

Superb question.

You do not believe in a personal God, but you suspect, like a lot of people, there may be an impersonal force, such as the Absolute, "the All", or the "Ground of Being".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_god

Once we understand consciousness, gravity and a few other mysteries of the universe, we'll have a better handle on this.

 

[citroengt1]

I feel confident there is more advanced intelligence out there, way above us.

I do however not believe in a bearded man in the clouds, so do I believe in God or not?

I too believe that there is some kind of life out there, if there is a planet similar to Earth,
there is a chance that there is life.Now is that life more intelligent then us we can only guess until we
probably find them, or they find us.

I believe that there is a God, an individual or many who created us, in one way or another.How we pictured them in
the past, and stayed with that form today, can come from many reasons.

Here is my theory of who God is.
A person of great knowledge and power who came from, who knows where, here to this planet.
And i think the reason why he has a beard is because he traveled far trough space, so he didn't shave
for a long time.Or perhaps he forgot, since he was devoted in our creation.