Why We Believe In GodsFollow

I was under the assumption that no one actually viewed his "rising to heaven", rather that over 40 days after the third, he appeared to many people including his apostles on the evening of his resurrection.

Not believing in (a) God is the logical stance, as there is no evidence. You cannot prove an absolute negative. Thus, it is logical to assume God does not exist. An athiest does not possess faith, as conclusive evidence as to God's existence would lead to acknowledgement of God's existence. religious people, however, continue to make a baseless assertion about reality. That is what we call faith. Do you see the difference? I doubt I can be bothered to try and convince you if not.

This isn't entirely true. A Buddhist can have faith in the spiritual aspect of the religion and retain being athiest, because athiesm is the rejection of deities or theism. Buddhism doesn't advocate the belief in gods.

I'm 38 minutes in so far. Favorite quote so far:
Morality & Religion

-Morality is doing what is right, regardless what we are told.
-Religious dogma is doing what we are told, no matter what is right.

If life began either consciously or randomly, what are the assumptions that make random creation the more likely explanation.

We understand the process by which life could arise without intervention. I challenge you to craft a God, within the domain of what we know, simpler. If you can do this, you will show that conscious creation is more likely. Enjoy.

Yes. It appears to be the natural extension of chemical reactions in certain environments.

I'm not talking about just people, but life in general, complex life. As we know it, as far as WE know, this planet is the only one of it's kind with things like, say, plants, bugs, animals. My thoughts on the subject are not confined to the subject of "what does it all mean, man, why are we here".

I am thinking more along the lines of looking out my window and there is literally in my scope of vision hundreds of living things that exist that I can see. If you broaden it further to encompass the entire planet we have billions of different species of animal, plant, insect, virus, bacteria, etc. etc. that exist on this one planet and as far as we know doesn't, hasn't, and may never happen again on any other planet.

To trace all that back to a single event, a big bang, and all the little events contained there-in that led to this point, and it all being some random occurrence, some from the hip cosmic shot seems like a large leap of faith in and of itself. Hell that may very well be what has happened, how should I know. What has happened, and what continue to happen though is people will try to come up with some sort of explanation, something to lean on to make them feel like they weren't some sort of accident. Something that gives them meaning, hope (to sound overly sappy), I guess is the word for it.

At our base we are insecure beings, many will deny it. "Not me" yes, you, you seek approval from outside sources either through deeds or acts or speech, and for some, through faith. The belief in god while it may by some be viewed as weak, as I often view it in spite of my own personal view of a high power (conflicting as it may be), is still a intrical part of peoples lives. I assume it will continue to be a part of humans lives for the entire time we exist in some iterations, be it worshipping a higher being, or a effigy, or some other word we choose to call it. In the end we just want to be accepted, and when we don't feel like we are, well hell, we'll make something up that does accept us no matter what.

All that said I STILL think that it's an awfully large mathematical impossibility that all things aligned to have even ONE living creature come to fruition in lieu of the fact no other planet has such success in doing so. I mean everything has to be a-number-1-perfect. But all the life we have here? NO outside influences? I don't know.

I read back over this and it seems to sound like one of those who resort to anything they can't understand to reduce it to "god did it", it's hard to explain, that's not what I beleive, it's more of a feeling that it just seems AS far fetched to believe it's all a random series of events. Like there's some sort of middle gorund, maybe, idk.

Edited, May 7th 2009 2:35pm by Bauran

Also



That's a dishonest and frankly quite childish understanding of both morality and religion. Maybe it is less so in context.



You don't count apathy as a common cause of agnosticism?



You are describing an extremely westernized, romanticized, and narrow view of buddhism. Just letting you know.

Edited, May 7th 2009 2:14pm by Pensive

To assert that God does not exist takes just as much a leap of faith as to assert that God does exist.
False.

Am I doinitrite, Smash?

I wasn't either. I meant life in general.



You're still making the assumption that carbon based life is the only form of life possible. The illusion of statistical impossibility disappears when you stop making this assumption. What you're saying is that if the the universe had developed in a different way there's no possibility of some form of life arising and there's no reason to do that.

Say for example there's a form of life based upon some naturally occurring chemical other than carbon, and thus has totally different environmental requirements. Now there are two paths for universal development that result in life.

Do you really believe that agnosticism is in any related to a lack of interest in the subject?

Random isn't a good word to use. Not to sound to deterministic, but once I reached a certain level of broad scientific knowledge it seemed inevitable in the sense that everything occurs in line with the laws of nature we've discovered. I can understand the feeling that there's something more, but I don't think it's necessary to plug anything mystical into the workings of the physical universe to understand them. That's not to say there's no room for thoughts of this kind. It's just not required where you're putting them.