The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: God - A Fantasy?

Re: God - A Fantasy?
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Saturday, March 3 2012, 12:47:47 (UTC)
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>In a normal society, we find all sorts of beliefs. What is not reasonable, in my opinion, it to claim knowledge of the truth and to scorn those who think otherwise. Some have come to the conclusion that there is no God. I find that acceptable. Others are convinced of the existence of a deity. There is nothing wrong with that.

..of course there is. There is definitely something wrong in believing in something you have never SEEN, or have reason to believe has ever manifested himself (and they are all HIMs), of course you can say "it is a matter of faith"...but that's a bastardization of the word "faith".

...if I have faith that if I work hard and have some luck, I can be a movie star, that's a valid usage of the word "faith", though it's still a long, long shot...it's valid because I know these things DO happen, so why can't they happen to me? But if I believe I'm going to be lifted up to heaven, and people have had this same "faith" for ten thousand years...or that in order to become a movie star I have only to lift my hands in prayer while sitting on the 50 yard line of a football field and God will grant my wish IF I am truly faithful, this is not only madness, it has never worked, not once, and it's a very poor usage of a perfectly good word.

God has never, absolutely never, "shown" himself to anyone. That people CLAIM he did, and that other people choose to BELIEVE those people, is not "faith", does not speak to the "reality of God-concept, but rather to the wishful thinking of humans who always needed answers for questions but were very bad for most of their time on earth in getting actual answers that had anything to do with reality...all sorts of delusions have been passionately believed in by humans....so? That isn't evidence that those beliefs were true, or even close to it.
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>I am saying this because some atheists are advancing the notion that religious believers are irrational. They believe in fairy tales and fantastical claims. Their faith is a sign intellectual deficiency. It is the antitheses to reason. Believing in God or not is not the problem. Saying that the other guy is gullible, foolish and naive because he doesn't agree with me... that is the problem.

...if I call you foolish for not agreeing with me that pigs fly on Mars...am I wrong?

...I disagree....believing in something which has never appeared to those believers, who say they believe, IS irrational. It is the entire problem...you cna say the same about any beloief, no matter how foolish and irrational....people believed the earth was flat, but for all of that it didn't MAKE it flat. It remained round and would have no matter WHAT "believed".

You are NOT going to invest in a piece of property you don't SEE and KNOW is actually what the seller says it is...if you do and get burned, what do we say? That you were a man of great FAITH, or that you were stupid to trust where there was no REASON to?...do we say, "never mind the status of that land, you remain a man of great FAITH"? Or you were foolish and hopefully will never make the same mistake again.
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>There is also this notion that the more science we know, the more unlikely God becomes. God and science are mutually exclusive. Science tells us about how the universe functions. But it does not say why it is here in the first place.

...no they are not. To make a claim for a god is a direct challenge and USE of science...because you posit a definite answer for the appearance of matter...just because someone 5000 years ago said, "I got it!! Matter was created from nothing by that MONKEY over there", and then sat back on his naked haunches and said, "now you prove that Monkey DIDN'T create all matter"...shows only how stupid that person was.

...just because god-people concocted a silly, implausible "answer" for where things came from, does not mean they CAME FROM THERE...does not mean "they have an answer where science has failed"...looking at the record of science in onl a few hundred years, and especially since god-people stopped KILLING them. science has provided lots of explanations for how "things got here", or where they came from and how they work...and even god-people no longer beloieve half the malarky they used to believe.

When someone today says, "Childhood cancer is caused by a lack of belief in God" and then chooses to pray over their sick child rather than go to a hospital, we don;t say, "Look at the faith and devotion of those parents, they KNOW that god is real and will answer their prayers IF the child is worthy and belives"...no, we say, "your religion is cute and everything but if that child dies, never mind suffers, under your "care"...you go to jail. We don;t honor such "faith"...though for most of our existence we did...now we know better and even most god-people know better and will rush their child to SCIENCE rather than to their OWN church...if they choose to say "thank God", even though it was the surgeon and God who saved their child...we don;t mind. But clearly that's even more stupidity because ten other children, as cute and dear as your own, died with out "God's mercy". So again I say, there is clearly NO god...because you choose simple answers and cling to them until science proves them wrong, doesn't mean you had the right answers all along. Even you are grateful that science proves religion wrong...because you take aspirin for a headache, and don't resort to prayer.

We now understand how the light bulb works, therefore Thomas Edison did not exist? We now understand aerodynamics and how the airplane works, therefore the Wright Brothers did not exist?
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>We now understand relativity and quantum mechanics, therefore God does not exist?

...no. We know he doesn't exist because he DOESN'T exist...all you've presented as evidence that he does is the fact that people BELIEVE he does...this is not evidence. No need of quantum mechanics....all that was needed was science, rational thinking AND removing the fangs of the Churches before they could FORCE God on children, or kill their parents for "unbelief"...just that has been enough to allow people to start THINKING and once you allow too much of that it becomes clear that believing in God took the PLACE of science and rational thought for most of our existence....but we have better ways of knowing, and though its only been a few centuries that you could say these things without getting yourself killed, we've made great strides....if god existed it would never have been necessary to murder all those millions of men, women and children who did NOT believe in him the "right way"...no need at all.
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>The debate about God has been going on for centuries. It has not been settled, and it will certainly not be settled. Logical deduction and scientific endeavors will not furnish us with a definitive answer.

...they already have...and would have much sooner had the church not been so murderous. We now know that it is a great fallacy to attribute what we don't yet understand to a God...we didn;t always know that...mostly because were terrified into "believing" that God did it all and he WAS the answer...but it never sat well with the more advanced minds and hearts....and little by little , here and there and always under the threat fo the stake or garrote or hangman's noose, people dared to THINK. We dare more and more and will rid ourselves of these delusions one day...it has already begun and since the Churches are powerless to stop it, they will lose in the end...and they know it, that's the reason for all this god-business rebirth and Fundamentalism...because they KNOW they are losing.

...I know there is no God because I don't see him anywhere, and neither do you and neither does the pope...the fact that others believe in him means nothing, says nothing about the existence of god but more about THEM and the state of their mental development.
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>Conclusion: Both ends of the belief spectrum remain mere beliefs. Agnosticism is the dead end of reason.

...wonderful. Obviously this is more of your "belief" system. Not believing in God-making diseases, was "agnosticism" to you 200 years ago...and since prayer, back then, worked about as good as the most primitive "medicine" which the most primitive "science" was then able to produce, you were able to say, "see, science will never answer all things". therefore " a belief in science is as irrational as a belief in gods"....and you said that right until science finally developed a vaccine for Polio...and then you RAN to get your child inoculated, running right past the church on your way...saying along the way about anything which had YET not found it's rational explanation, "you won;t find a scientific answer THIS time,,this time God is as valid as science", until the NEXT discovery...and yet you would say it AGAIN for whatever science had not yet gotten to, because it was so damn busy debunking all your god nonsense" What's the matter, don;t you WANT cures to diseases? Do you LIKE keeping us at the age of faith where we pray and nothing else?

It is God that challenges science, that steps on the rightful terrain of science......science has no need of god...but god has a definite need to suppress science...and has been doing it for centuries. If you make a claim about god, you are challenging science, because you are substituting witchcraft and magic for Reason...but a scientific claim or proof is none of God's business...why should he take an interest in thwarting Reason? But clearly he does....so do his henchmen...ahem.



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