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  1. Default Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    EDIT: @SaptaZapta

    I'm talking about the omnipotent, omniscience and omnibenevolent being. I'm not entirely interested in his Catholic teachings, or the teachings mankind attributed to him, or the whole history of Jesus Christ.

    I think we haven't had one of these threads ever since this subject got the green light from Eos, so let's give it a try.

    Some things to keep in mind for the sake of civility and intellectuality.

    • A person's stance need not be his own belief. There are two ways to argue: emotionally and rationally. We strive for the latter here.
    • Be mindful that while one may fail to present a proof for his cause, it is still sufficient for him to defend the proposition so long as he had provided an argument for it to get things rolling (burden of proof). Things may not get resolved, but keeping it going until we get the most rationally defensible position would be acceptable, even desirable.
    • Be critical and try to separate things that are usually lumped together, although help should be provided if you fail to do so.
    • Added: Be clear about your idea; we aren't all inside your head. Try to develop a clear picture of your position and present it in as much detail as possible.
    [*]Added: Since it is supposed to be a debate, please, to the best of your ability, justify your claims rationally.

    I usually like to play angel's advocate (as there is a lot of criticism from the atheist's side), but for now, I'll borrow someone's point of view to get things going.

    A typical argument. How would you respond?

    EDIT: To make things more concrete, I'll borrow the famous argument from evil as an instance of said 'contradiction'.

    Last edited by Kalovale; 2012-07-07 at 09:22 PM. Reason: How do I format a list again...
     

  2. Monster Truck Tire Straight Male
    IGN: Triggernometry
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    Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    There's no "irrefutable answer" to that question as many others revolving around religions..
    I just believe that God exists where the human ignorance begins.
    Not trying to be rude, this sentence can be taken from 2 different views:
    1. God is the answer to all humankind questions that doesn't have an answer. OR
    2. In your ignorance you start believing in god.
    It's your choice to believe or not.
     

  3. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    @Chew: Okay, you made a few points, would you care to give some justifications for them? Let's start with this:

     

  4. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    that question is impossible to answer, as all the people who know the answer are already dead
     

  5. Monster Truck Tire Straight Male
    IGN: Triggernometry
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    Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    What I'd try to say there is that people will always seek ways to invalidate others people opinions (no matter what "side" they are), and I'm saying OPINIONS because nobody holds the truth, nobody knows if there's such "afterlife" as nobody has come back from the dead.
    Why do people keep discussing about this? I don't know, people likes to argue I guess. And besides, it's good to hear what everyone has to say, even the foolish has something to say and maybe in this cluster of ideas/opinions we will discover the "truth" about god (if there's one).
     

  6. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    What do you hope to gain from this, other than buttangry? I know you have a set of rules for this thread, but in this sort of setting they rarely hold.
     

  7. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    If there are ways to invalidate people's opinions, wouldn't you agree that they weren't right in the first place? Why should there be anything wrong with trying to do that? On the other hand, if the person has reached the answer and there are no possible ways to invalidate his position, however hard people try, they won't succeed in bringing it down, will they?

    I don't see how that can guarantee that there is not an answer. We certainly have not reached it, but that's entirely different from it not existing in the first place.
     

  8. Monster Truck Tire Straight Male
    IGN: Triggernometry
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    Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    Yes, but at this moment do we know who is right? or who is wrong?
    I'm not sayin there's something wrong with that, in fact I'm saying that's great because we keep wandering around looking for "the answer".
    Yes but as we asked it before. Who knows "the answer"?

    Until we find some kind of proof to backup our opinions until they become facts, everything can be taken from any ideal perspective.
     

  9. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    There is a distinction here, and I apologize for not having used better words.

    The distinction has to do with justification. One can be a nutjob and still has the correct answer, after all, God either exists or doesn't exist. What warrants 'attacks' is their justification for their belief, and those can be good or bad.

    For this purpose, we don't need to know the right answer.

    So, by your own wording, an 'irrefutable answer' would be a position that is backed by the most defensible justification. Again, we certainly can justify our beliefs, and some do it better than others, so it's reasonable to expect that there is a best candidate.
     

  10. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    Of course not, we're all star children
     

  11. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    I don't believe in an orthodox god. Frankly I believe there is a higher power up there, but not one as petty as the one presented to us in most religious texts.
     

  12. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    I don't mean to sound negative, but I didn't mean for this thread to be an opinion poll.
     

  13. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    A god that created the universe in 6 days and jots down notes of every aspect of everyone's lives? lol, no... definitely not. Religion is just an end result of people's ignorance, fear, or quest for power.

    Now, as for an intellectually superior alien race? sure I can get around that
     

  14. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    God, by many would say, is a creation of our own mind. A sense of self-security that if one has done unjust they can re-affirm themselves in religion. Religion is a counterbalance to our day-to-day lives that can help one with their stressful moments of life.

    So we can affirm that the book is the proxy that gives us these thoughts of stories that can change our selves so much that we believe the book to give us enough insight that we could believe it to be, and so some of us do.
     

  15. Orbital Bee Cannon
    IGN: SaptaZapta
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    Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    Define "God".

    If you want to discuss something with perfect rationality, first you must define it precisely. Then we can apply logical rules of deduction to prove its existence or the impossibility thereof.
     

  16. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    I'll try to work with what I consider to be the reason behind your beliefs.

    Barring the metaphysical nuances (God existing independent of our understanding), this is an acceptable claim. As I understand it:

    - Religion claims that God exists.
    - Religion was not founded on that good faith, but out of 'ignorance', 'fear', or 'quest for power'. (*)
    - Therefore what religion claims cannot be true.
    - Therefore God does not exist.

    (*) seems like a huge claim. Any defense for it?

    -----------------------

    Again, I'll first try to reformulate this into an explicit form, bear with me.

    - God's existence and religion help us positively in our struggle during the stressful day.
    - It is therefore possible that man invented the idea of God and religion to help himself get by.
    - Thus God and religion are both fabrication. (**)

    (**) A possibility being a necessity seems like a huge leap to me.

    EDIT: @SaptaZapta

    I'm talking about the omnipotent, omniscience and omnibenevolent being. I'm not entirely interested in his Catholic teachings, or the teachings mankind attributed to him, or the whole history of Jesus Christ.
     

  17. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    It's right in the Religion wiki under "Origins and development"

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

    also, didn't the guy who started scientology do it to get rich? Not to mention this stuff which is actually pretty hilarious http://www.cracked.com/article_18885...-get-laid.html
     

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  19. Orbital Bee Cannon
    IGN: SaptaZapta
    Server: Kradia
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    Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    @your edit: that's easy, then. Omniscience and omnipotence are mutually contradictory, in addition to each of them contradicting the known laws of physics (and if you're going to start arguing that God might exist outside said laws of physics, outside time and causality - then what exactly can we base our "rational discussion" on? What facts can be agreed upon, that we can derive any conclusions from?).

    As for (omni)benevolence, that requires further definition.
     

  20. Default Re: Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate


    Be mindful of their choice of word.


    - Omni-benevolence requires the being to always do the most known good.
    - I honestly don't think we humans are arrogant enough to think that our model of the world is not fallible. At the current rate of the metric expansion, if we were born into the world a hundred billion years later (or so), our picture of the universe would have merely our own galaxy in the middle of endless darkness [citation needed]. There would be no theory of Big Bang as well as any chance of arriving at it, given the availability of the observable phenomena. As such, I argue that contradiction to the known laws of Physics is not a viable appeal. Regarding the contradiction among themselves, you'd have to elaborate.

    citation
     

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