| Author |
Message
|
| F (i L i) P |
 Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:52 am Post subject: Why DON'T you believe in GOD ??? |
 |
|
Forum Freshman
Joined: 14 Feb 2006
Posts: 61
|
it's just a simple question... anyone who has problems with religion and GOD should have an answer for this question... would you like to share the reasons that keep you back from believeing ?
_________________
" Love and you will be loved " |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
| HomoUniversalis |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 9:06 am Post subject: |
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 23 Oct 2004
Posts: 954
Location: Maastricht, Netherlands
|
The question is in essence flawed. It would be the same as asking "Why don't you believe George W. Bush is in fact Sauron, the Lord of the Rings?". Why not believe in something? Because the human mind can only process a limited amount of information. That is, we are incapable of believing in every single believable fact. No man has ever thought of a small bottle of cologne shooting through space whilst talking to a towl. While in fact, it might very well be possible.
The belief in God, an absurd entity, might be grounded deep in human civilisation but that need not imply that non-believers need a reason to believe in something. Those believers need a reason as to why distinguish their belief from the belief in small bottle of cologne.
Mr U
_________________
 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| RoyLennigan |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 9:56 am Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Freshman
Joined: 19 Sep 2005
Posts: 40
Location: Florida
|
it is the nature of man to explain the world around him in terms that he can share with his companions
in spite of overwhelmingly limited information, man tries to define all processes around him.
man has an ability to lie both to himself (subconsciously) and to others, with or without purposeful intent.
the human mind subconsciously puts more emphasis on information associated with a presupposed belief.
man communicates information using symbols. much of what we learn is conveyed with these symbols. the use of symbology greatly decreases the accuracy and amount of truth in an idea and allows for interpretation (especially over long periods of time).
it is the nature of a community to hold on to traditional ideals and methods, even (and sometimes especially) in the face of new, more efficient or accurate ideals.
the idea of god cannot be proven wrong in any way by definition. god is said to be omnipotent, so a lack of evidence for god's presence is able to be explained by this.
_________________
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known" - Frank Herbert |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Scifor Refugee |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 10:31 am Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Professor
Joined: 02 May 2005
Posts: 1171
|
| I don't believe in god because I have never come across any convincing evidence that god exists. I don't believe in things unless there is a reason to believe in them. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Ophiolite |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 11:01 am Post subject: Re: Why DON'T you believe in GOD ??? |
|
|
Forum Radioactive Isotope
Joined: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 4804
Location: Scotland
|
| F (i L i) P wrote: |
| it's just a simple question... anyone who has problems with religion and GOD should have an answer for this question... would you like to share the reasons that keep you back from believeing ? |
Lack of incontrovertible evidence. Lack of substantial evidence.
I have no problem with religion or God, so perhaps my response is irrelevant.
| HomoUniversalis wrote: |
No man has ever thought of a small bottle of cologne shooting through space whilst talking to a towl. |
You have. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| HomoUniversalis |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 11:10 am Post subject: |
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 23 Oct 2004
Posts: 954
Location: Maastricht, Netherlands
|
I am not.. human.
| Quote: |
Lack of incontrovertible evidence. Lack of substantial evidence.
I have no problem with religion or God, so perhaps my response is irrelevant. |
The Universe, Life, et cetera can be seen as evidence for God by a devout religious person. Yet, in a sense, it might also be perceived as not being a bottle of cologne talking to a towel, and as such leaving the very real possibility that it is in fact out there, rather than here on earth. Evidence is merely a manner of looking at irrelevant factoids, with the intent of simplifying and debeautifying reality. As many have said before me, shame on you mr Bush!
Mr U
_________________
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Ophiolite |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 11:24 am Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Radioactive Isotope
Joined: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 4804
Location: Scotland
|
| HomoUniversalis wrote: |
| Quote: |
Lack of incontrovertible evidence. Lack of substantial evidence.
I have no problem with religion or God, so perhaps my response is irrelevant. |
The Universe, Life, et cetera can be seen as evidence for God by a devout religious person. |
It can also be seen as such by a devout agnostic, such as myself. However, while it is evidence, it is neither incontrovertible, or substantial. Hence the careful phrasing of my original post. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| silkworm |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 12:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Senior
Joined: 15 Nov 2005
Posts: 349
Location: Kansas
|
I don't believe in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus.
I'm not a "nonbeliever" or as I like to call "a rational human being" not because I do or do not believe in God, which is generally dramatized by a bearded man in a very light but cloudy place, but because I despise the comfortable mediocrity religious devotion provides. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Neutrino |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 1:09 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Ph.D.
Joined: 02 Nov 2005
Posts: 980
Location: Columbus, OH
|
| Very easy question to answer, and pretty much the same as the above answers. I don't believe in God because there's no good reason to believe in God. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| F (i L i) P |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 2:17 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Freshman
Joined: 14 Feb 2006
Posts: 61
|
| Scifor Refugee wrote: |
| I don't believe in god because I have never come across any convincing evidence that god exists. I don't believe in things unless there is a reason to believe in them. |
Do you have reasons for everything you believe in?
| Scifor Refugee wrote: |
| I don't believe in God because there's no good reason to believe in God. |
How "good" must a reason be to make you have some other thoughts on this matter?
| Scifor Refugee wrote: |
| Lack of incontrovertible evidence. Lack of substantial evidence. |
Do you have "incontrovertible/substantial" evidence for everything you classify as right?
... you know... christians say that the Bible is wrote by man under the guidance of GOD... that the Bible is GOD's Word... that it is written by divine inspiration given to man...
... others say that the Bible is just a book written some time ago so that man could "make up" a fantasy world and heaven in order to have a reason/purpose in life...
What if I could strenghten the first things I said... about the Bible being the Word of GOD... could that classify as evidence?... every book has an author... and for the Bible it's GOD... and I can justify this...
_________________
" Love and you will be loved " |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| eternal |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 2:37 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Sophomore
Joined: 30 Jan 2006
Posts: 103
|
I am not a religious mind (explanation will be given later
in this post), but...
Bible wrote under guidance of the God -
some texts are proved to be written hundreds of years
after the event they're descriping, so what is the part
of the God in this progess?
Events descriped in Bible give rather contraversal (hope
I wrote this word right) picture of the Gods nature,
when thinking the absolute monoteism - shouldn't
the God be one and only?
Many people forget that our "christianity" is actually based
on "hellenistic-christianity" (I don't know the correct words
to use), that was one "subcult" of the original christianity -
"judish-christianity" (unfortunately Romans totally destroyed
the original christianity during years of persecution but
some christian churches near Egypt still follow samekind
of rules as judish-christians)...
So why I don't be so religious? Well, mostly because
all the religions I have faced offers the same with
different names, forms, rules etc... and the most important
reason is that all given proofs (or attemps to proof)
of existence of the God is, should we say, rather paradoxal...
I don't wan't to offend but I think I don't believe because,
I can't accept things I don't understood (sounds familiar, eh?)
and because I need something that I can rely today, tomorrow a.s.o. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Scifor Refugee |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 2:40 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Professor
Joined: 02 May 2005
Posts: 1171
|
| F (i L i) P wrote: |
Do you have reasons for everything you believe in?
|
Yes. If I didn't have a reason to believe something, why would I believe it? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Ophiolite |
| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 4:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Radioactive Isotope
Joined: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 4804
Location: Scotland
|
| F (i L i) P wrote: |
| Ophiolite wrote: |
| Lack of incontrovertible evidence. Lack of substantial evidence. |
Do you have "incontrovertible/substantial" evidence for everything you classify as right? |
This was actually a quote from me, and not scifor refugee.
I don't classify anything as right or true in the sense I think you mean. I provisionally accept certain explanations as being the most probable. Some, such as the rotation of the Earth around the sun, or evolution, are so well established that it would require a very large amount of contrary evidence to cause me to shift that provisional view.
Others, such as the Big Bang, I have a much more guarded view about. I would not be at all surprised to see it disappear within a decade as the accepted wisdom.
So, yes, I believe things, or more correctly, I tend to believe things, based upon the quality and quantity of evidence for them. Otherwise, one could find oneself believing anything, just because it sounded like a good idea, or was especially elegant. This is the scientific method. It is an effective one and has allowed us to gain great understanding of our world. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Silas |
| Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 6:45 am Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Bachelors Degree
Joined: 04 May 2005
Posts: 436
Location: London, England
|
| Ophiolite wrote: |
| Homo Universalis wrote: |
| No man has ever thought of a small bottle of cologne shooting through space whilst talking to a towel. |
You have. |
I thought HU was subtly hinting at HU's gender....
| F (i L i) P wrote: |
| Scifor Refugee wrote: |
| I don't believe in god because I have never come across any convincing evidence that god exists. I don't believe in things unless there is a reason to believe in them. |
Do you have reasons for everything you believe in? |
Erm, I do! It's called the "rational viewpoint"! It's not for everyone, but it's not a mortal lock that "everybody believes in at least some things for no discernible reason".
| F (i L i) P wrote: |
| Scifor Refugee wrote: |
| I don't believe in God because there's no good reason to believe in God. |
How "good" must a reason be to make you have some other thoughts on this matter? |
If God even demonstrated once the Power he is supposed to be endowed with, or even the Love and Compassion he is supposed to be filled with, or remotely showed Himself the way He is supposed to have done millennia ago, I would revise my view. I was brought up in religion, Catholicism in fact, and I was taught about an All-Powerful God who had created the world, sent the Flood for Noah, stopped the World for Joshua (and Isaiah later on), sent a miracle-working Son, and who cared for me and looked after me. But after a while you notice that no real miracle workers are around today, neither are there any other world-shattering miraculous events, neither does anyone's belief and devotion to God particularly help them in the commonplace tragedies or triumphs of a lifetime.
You look around you and you see a myriad more things for God to intervene in and show his Love than were ever depicted in the Bible. He sent Jesus to the Middle East when thanks to the Roman Empire there wasn't even any question of wars and brother set against brother. What about now? What about letting the Holocaust happen to what was supposed to be His Chosen People? If this was a nineteen hundred-year-late punishment for rejecting Jesus, what kind of God holds a grudge like that anyway? Against people who devoutly worship him no less than Christians do?
Looking back, you realise that if you believed, what you were really being promised was a good Afterlife. Then you realise that there is no evidence whatsoever for what happens to us after we die, that nobody has ever come back from Heaven (or Hell) to tell us what it was like, or to demonstrate what specific qualities qualified them for either place. The only way of knowing is by reading the Bible, and there it becomes only too evident that no two preachers even read the Bible in precisely the same way. Even within one sect, one man's minor misdemeanor is another man's ticket to the eternal flame. After that you recognise that any God who condemns even the vilest criminal to infinite torture is no God worth worshipping in any case.
If God had stepped in at any point during that journey to demonstrate a) his Power and b) that He really does love and care for humanity and that He really does have a Plan, then I would have enough reason to believe.
| F (i L i) P wrote: |
... you know... christians say that the Bible is wrote by man under the guidance of GOD... that the Bible is GOD's Word... that it is written by divine inspiration given to man...
... others say that the Bible is just a book written some time ago so that man could "make up" a fantasy world and heaven in order to have a reason/purpose in life...
What if I could strenghten the first things I said... about the Bible being the Word of GOD... could that classify as evidence?... every book has an author... and for the Bible it's GOD... and I can justify this... |
But if you really could justify it in an objective way that was incontrovertible, then we'd all be theists, and Christian theists to boot. You'd be the greated theologian of all time! I think not. And please don't come back with "proof" that the Bible is God's Word based on what it says in the Bible. The Qu'ran has the same backing. So does the Bhaghavad Gita. Conversely, all the scholastic study of the actual words of the Bible in its original languages has demonstrated beyond doubt that the Bible is the work of fallible humans, who are incapable of creating a consistent picture of God or even of describing events in a non-contradictory manner.
Last edited by Silas on Wed Feb 15, 2006 6:50 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Lucifer |
| Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 6:50 am Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Junior
Joined: 14 Jan 2006
Posts: 241
Location: Close to 290125001
|
"Why don't you believe in God?"
Translates:
"Why don't you share MY belief of MY God?"
I never have found a exception to this rule so far... 
My idea of God is a sort of complicated thing and I don't use to share it as it sitll is a work in progress and anyway it's highly mystical... 
Anyway I do believe in "my" God more than I believe in God-believers' God, and usually I haven't got the lesser sympathy for "foreigner mysticism"... specially unrequested foreigner mysticism. 
FAI, I don't like Frank Herbert's Dune, and Heinlein's "Stranger in a strange land" is the ONLY BOOK EVER which I started and didn't finished to read it.
_________________
“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” -Charles Darwin |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
