Do you believe in God?

[VirtualPA]

I am interested to know what the majority of people belive.

I personally believe in a Christian God, Heaven and hell etc.

I raised a strict an athiest

diplodoris: Science hasn't "disproved" god (I'm interested to know how you think it might do this). However, it has shown that gods are not necessary.

badgerspaws - you are amusingly right. It's the old "we just go one god further than you" idea.

backtotalk - you seem to be enjoying trying to wind me up, so won't give you the satisfaction. What "abusive language" have I used here exactly? I always come back to a very simple, Occam's razor argument. There is no evidence for a god.

Anyway I simply don't accept your initial premise that the existence of evil shows a god of pure good to be a self-contradiction and a logical impossibility (without "evil", a thing called "good" would be meaningless) and that therefore to believe in this logical impossibility somehow gives you more "options". Why would I want the "option" of believing in a logical impossibility anyway? Your argument seems to boil down to, "Yes, the Christian god is daft and illogical. This is how daft and illogical it is. It's even more daft and illogical than your puny Oxbridge-educated mind can comprehend. Therefore, isn't the fact that we, the Special Ones, are capable of believing in this daft illogicality just wonderful?"

But then, it's futile for me to try to use logic to argue someone out of a position which they abandoned logic to get themselves into in the first place.

(You sound suspiciously like Joanna Bogle. That isn't a compliment.)

I would add that some people are capable of mistaking robust logic-based argument for an "offensive tone", and equally capable of mistaking patronising sweetly-smiling holier-than-thou-ness for being "nice".

I wonder why religious debates always end up so heated.

Out of interest, how would all the Christians on here answer the old question "Can God create a box it is not able to open?"

google has answers for your theological questions. www.godandscience.org/apologetics/rock.html

Now you are spouting a pile of rubbish Sakura.

Have you read the offensive, rubbish that SGB has posted on this thread.

Being offensive for offensive sake, is just plain ignorant.

I stand by my previous post that being belligerent and offensive is not a good way to validate your point of view. Of course, in a debate we attempt to validate our point of view, this is what we are doing here isn't it?

I am perfectly happy with the my tone in this discussion. I have not sworn, I have not generalised or marginalised my views.

I take offense at SGB's comments and last I checked, I am perfectly entitled to say so.

Blah!

Oh and I never asked SGB to validate MY point of view. I am perfectly capable of doing that myself!

What's your definition of logic? God is not a "logical impossibility".

"a logical impossibility cannot exist."

seeker re: your Auschwitz question (which i know haas already been answered with a quote from the pope via google!)

can you imagine how much more torturous Auschwitz and all the other concentration camps would have been for all those Jews had they not faith in God?
(yes, i know they wouldn't have been there in the first place, but it was Jews from birth as well as practising Jews that were taken)

can you imagine how they would be able to cope with the evil actiosn that were done to them? They coped and a lot survived because they believed in a more powerful God, who was their comfort and their STRENGTH through al lof it. they coped because they took their religion seriously and thy believed that they would come through the other side. they believed. full stop. it made them strong and it made them want to live.
if they hadn't got God, they would have just curled up and died.

"gods are not necessary" in some people's eyes, but then there are many things in life which are deemed unnecessary by some, aren't there? There are scientific theories which rule out the existence of a higher power but equally there are those that don't.

TheBride

"I dont believe in an interventionalist God (so arguably then I dont believe in God).

However, I am a big believer in freedom of religious expression and I dont think it "causes" conflicts. If
People have very "tribal" tendencies. If you look at the worst examples of human behaviour over time, they do tend to have an "us vs them" feature and may appear religious on the face of it, but if you dig into the root cause they're not. They are more "territorial" than philosophical."

you're so right - there is proof that when Islam went to Egypt, they taught the works of Mohammed - they didn't fight and force the people to convert. they went in and they showed the Egyptians how they lived and what they believed and they taught the Egyptians that it was the true faith.
They've even said that Jesus prophesied Mohammed (i will give you another comforter). Christians believe that the other comforter is still coming as the second coming, but Muslims belive that Mohammed is it. i can see the logic, but i still prefer to stick with Jesus, the son of God, rather than a prophet (yy, i know that Muslims believe that Jesus was only a prophet)
of course, Jews believe that their messiah hasn't even come yet (and who can blame them, as they've still suffered horrendously in the past century, so for them, their salvation is still blimming far off)

Diplodoris, what scientific theories rule out the existence of a higher power?

"seeker re: your Auschwitz question (which i know haas already been answered with a quote from the pope via google!)

can you imagine how much more torturous Auschwitz and all the other concentration camps would have been for all those Jews had they not faith in God?"

Frankly, no. It seems to me that it must have made it worse. Imagine believing that there is an all powerful omnipotent God, who could have saved your children from being tortured by Mengele, but who chose not to.

well that depends on whether you think this life is merely the appetiser or the main course.

but i don't belive that He chose not to.

he gave the Allies strength to fight the Nazis.
that's quite a lot.

the Nazis performed evil deeds and they would not see sense.

God can't actually intervene in that - all he can do is give people strength to overcome their difficulties and trials.

I think this life is all there is and I'm very comfortable with that, and have said so on this thread and repeatedly elsewhere.

Furthermore, I think it is quite sad and... [whatever the opposite of life-affirming is]... to think otherwise. And also potentially quite dangerous.

On the other hand, it would be quite NICE in many ways if there were an Eternity. But then, I think it would be nice if lots of things which don't exist, actually existed.

I do accept that it's a comfort to some people to have convinced themselves that there is an afterlife. Sadly, that doesn't make them logical, sensible or right.

"God can't actually intervene in that - all he can do is give people strength to overcome their difficulties and trials. "

Why can't he?

nickelbabe - some Christians believe that the "other comforter" is the holy spirit.

Also, it strikes me as a bit illogical for the Muslims to claim that the Bible prophesied Mohammad, as they also believe that the Bible has been corrupted and is not to be believed or trusted.

In the original spirit of the thread, I do not believe in god.

Organised religions make me so angry when I look at the damage they have done historically and are still causing. All the people killed or maimed and all the knowledge (books) destroyed, consigned to the fire because it contradicted religious texts.

ZephirineDrouhin, I'm thinking of how some scientists believe that the universe created itself and that God had no part in that. Other scientists would not rule out the possibility of a higher power that we don't understand, setting the process in motion.

"Diplodoris, what scientific theories rule out the existence of a higher power?"

I don't believe in God. Or Karma. Or Kismet.

I was raised by agnostic parents, converted to fervent Christianity in my teens, then found my way to atheism by my late twenties.

I found it wonderfully freeing and such a relief.

No more double think. No-one is watching me , what I do in this life impacts only on others around me, not on my Immortal Soul.

I felt like a weight had been lifted.

Seeker, you ask why God doesn't always intervene. It's a very good question and I don't claim to have the answer but I will offer the following for thought.

Supposing that God gives us free will to make our own choices. Then if God removed any negative consequences of our actions, would we still have free will? Or would God be making us obey Him like puppets, instead of allowing us to choose a good relationship with Him?

"Seeker, you ask why God doesn't always intervene"

The problem is that He never seems to intervene.

This free will argument always annoys me, as it always means there is only free will for some, not others. What free will has been exercised by a baby infected with HIV in Africa? What free will has been exercised by a woman raped on her way home? Why should they care that god gave free will to the rapist or the carrier of HIV?

exactly, seeker.

I'm with the people who talk about the enormously liberating sensation of shaking off the shackles of religious belief.

Even if, in my case, it was only a vague, cultural, going-to-a-nice-church, "I like the biscuits, the people are nice, there's probably a Big Guy upstairs" kind of wishy-washy C of E religion. I was never an especially foaming-at-the-mouth kind of Christian.

It felt enormously refreshing, in my mid-20s, to cut the ties. Not to have to keep mentally "looking over my shoulder" and updating myself on what I felt this nebulous being might or might not think about my choices. I've never looked back.