Soldato
Perhaps not "blind" but it's certainly not testable. I'd call it a faith based position, yes.
Jealous of the Ned Flanders?
- Thread starter monkai666
- Start date
Perhaps not "blind" but it's certainly not testable. I'd call it a faith based position, yes.
Man of Honour
No it isn't, it is perfectly attestable and reasonable to state that God was invented by man. That is, unless the bible was written by divine hand.
That is the only interpretation.
Soldato
how so?
I'm jealous of a really Christian lad i know, he doesn't seem to believe the churches version but more of his own interpretation. Great lad though does lots of youth work and other things, will always help a person out if they are in need.
No sex before marragie is a bit of a downer though
Well I had a great student flatmate who was always Christian, but the type who was only Christian because his parents were and wasn't really that religious. Then one summer he basically got converted by his brother and now he goes to bible camp and after graduating is just working with the local church or something. Also when we recently met he told us he saw a 'miracle' at his recent camp.
I'm the type of person who hates religion - and I have a Darwin fish proudly stuck to the back of my car to prove it
. There's better ways of gaining confidence and personal happiness than wasting you're time believing in bull.Give it x years and humans will be laughing back at this day and age just how we laugh back at those who prayed to the sun gods and thought the world was flat.
Soldato
You're talking about the Abrahamic God. How do you know there isn't a god? It's a simple question, but no one can know for sure.
It doesn't really have anything to do with the Bible, I'm not sure why that's relevant. A god could exist completely separately from humans and not intervene in our lives at all - a view which I'm tempted to follow.
I agree.
Man of Honour
In fairness, I said God, not god.
A simple question for you; would you believe in a God had no-one shown you what they had seen themselves? If you'd never read nor heard about him would you still believe in him? Would you even consider the possibility?
Soldato
It's completely blind. He said they were all standing around a wheelchair-bound man, they all started praying and cheering or whatnot (all I think of is Borat) and then suddenly he started to walk.
I seriously cannot understand how relatively intelligent people (he's not a dumb guy) can even begin to believe that something like that is the work of a 'God'. Tons of people are wheelchair bound and can still walk, especially when they're adrenaline etc is going (MS as an example).
I think in those sort of situations, it's wanting to believe it, and therefore interpreting facts in that way.
My ex-gf had been brought up under very, very christian ideas. As much as she thought she'd 'logically' concluded that her faith was right, just about every single person she'd been in contact with in 16 years had been of the same faith. Hence, she's seen a man who, according to a medical transcript had aids, be miraculously cured of aids, according to another medical transcript. She wanted to believe it, so she did.
I understand about the OP's friend though... the ex-gf took an incredible amount of persuasion to wear a seatbelt, because she felt that a) an accident was just so unlikely to happen (never in 18 years had she had one) and b) if there was one god wouldn't let her get hurt.
My ex-gf had been brought up under very, very christian ideas. As much as she thought she'd 'logically' concluded that her faith was right, just about every single person she'd been in contact with in 16 years had been of the same faith. Hence, she's seen a man who, according to a medical transcript had aids, be miraculously cured of aids, according to another medical transcript. She wanted to believe it, so she did.
I understand about the OP's friend though... the ex-gf took an incredible amount of persuasion to wear a seatbelt, because she felt that a) an accident was just so unlikely to happen (never in 18 years had she had one) and b) if there was one god wouldn't let her get hurt.
Soldato
Meh, fair enough, but:
I've got no idea.
I can understand why you might ask this. I think one of the major problems with religion is that the non-religious view it as some sort of dogmatic regime that captures people so that they can no longer think for themselves.
I'm not even sure if I do believe in him, at least at the moment not in any mainstream "Christian" sense. I'm quite capable of making my own decisions based on my own views, and I certainly don't feel tied down by the fact that I "heard about" God quite early on.
To try and answer the simple question, there's no reason why my default position would be "God doesn't exist" or even "God probably doesn't exist". Earlier in the thread I made some attempt at explaining just one of the things that I feel points to the existence of a higher power of some form.
Man of Honour
My questioning was actually more aimed at there being no idea about a preternatural super-being; so would never even have a decision to make about whether you believe or not.
If someone hadn't come up with an idea to explain the unexplainable all those centuries ago then it's possible that there'd be no talk of God today. At that point, although you are free to make your mind up about what you believe, god wouldn't feature because he/they/it wouldn't exist.
By the way there's a pretty big difference between God and god. God would be the being spoken of in the bible, whereas god/s would be some higher power.
If someone hadn't come up with an idea to explain the unexplainable all those centuries ago then it's possible that there'd be no talk of God today. At that point, although you are free to make your mind up about what you believe, god wouldn't feature because he/they/it wouldn't exist.
By the way there's a pretty big difference between God and god. God would be the being spoken of in the bible, whereas god/s would be some higher power.