Religion. The evolution, creation and everything in between megathread

[philo-sofa]

As for God not showing Himself - well, I would say that He shows Himself in many ways on a daily basis, from guidance to healing to answering prayer to inspiring the actions of others ... and I would love to provide examples from my own life and those around me, but whats the point? People who agree will agree with my statement, whereas people like yourself will just ridicule and disagree!

It's a difficult thing to convince someone of the presence of God - it does also beg the question of God's apparent abscence of involvement in wars, poverty etc, though I think that could be explained (though not undebatably) by the fact that God finds free will desirable in humans.

It's not a bad tack to talk of the experience of God as being a direct pointer to the existence of God.  The idea that a religious person can feel the presence of God moving and working through them.  Though it's subjective, it is arguably a sensation that can lead people to induce the existence of something (God) - much as the sight of a falling apple could suggest the existence of gravity.  Because of free will one must 'accept God into one's life' to experience this - it's not a forced thing, but nonetheless it is a near universal constant for the religious - an experience of God.

Consider this point:
This thread is now 133 pages long and has been going for as long as I can remember - pretty much since before I even joined this community. So if your argument is so well thought out and so convincing and so infallible, why is it that I still go to church every week? In fact, why is it that I actually feel closer to God now than I did when I found this thread?

I would insert the 'the world's problems solved by internet debates' .jpg in here, but can't find it.  Arguments can be excellent but if they don't guarantuee the truth of their conclusions they can fail under the weight of experience, people can just not be listening, or they can suck.

[Raped_ByA_Spoon]

Ok I have a wierd story to share, you can most prob discredit it but does mean something to me though, and as I have stated I dont believe in an organised religion per say - just marely the notion something greater exists.

When I was about 9 my mother used to take me to church every Sunday.  Anyway I used to get chronic (and I mean chronic) saw knees all the time (growing pains and the like).  Anyway whilst a prayer was occuring at this church my knee got hot, real hot.  Never had a saw knee since then.

Now you can most prob explain it in some method, however it does seem to me more than mere concidence that it happened in a church after it was prayed for, and it hasnt hurt since.  Just my personal experience which makes me unable to believe nothing greater exists, now what that greater thing is I am not sure yet.

[Arnifix]

Humans are great at pattern recognition.

[mish]

...even if you take away the God aspect of the Bible, its still jam-packed full of pretty good advice....Whether or not you believe in God, the Bible is still a good source for advice on how to get through life. Its a shame some of you can't see the forest for the trees.

I call myself an atheist, but I readily agree with this.

[philo-sofa]

Humans are great at pattern recognition.

Best post ever.  Seriously.

[detonator7]

Theres even less evidence of those storys being true than  of god existing.

so if there is more evidence than that there is some evidence. so did you just admit there was evidence for gods existence? or am i just being to picky

[maorifulla]

I went to a catholic boys school in auckland and it was compulsory to take religious education. Funny thing is though the same teacher we had for Religious Ed was the same teacher we had for science

Science Class : "Man evolved from the Ape"
Religious Education: "God Made man"

LOL confusing aye

[KiLL3r]

so if there is more evidence than that there is some evidence. so did you just admit there was evidence for gods existence? or am i just being to picky

well wouldnt you consider the bible evidence of god? Even though i would describe it as good evidence against there being a god

evidence is different to proof

[detonator7]

lol yeah then you could use that to argue with anything.

e.g. there may be hard evidence of the big bang but theres no proof

it contradicts itself in a way

[detonator7]

but isnt evidence and proof pretty much the same thing?

googles definitions:
Evidence: attest: provide evidence for; stand as proof of; show by one's behavior, attitude, or external attributes
Proof:any factual evidence that helps to establish the truth of something

i lold at how the defintion uses the other word

[KiLL3r]

but isnt evidence and proof pretty much the same thing?

googles definitions:
Evidence: attest: provide evidence for; stand as proof of; show by one's behavior, attitude, or external attributes
Proof:any factual evidence that helps to establish the truth of something

i lold at how the defintion uses the other word

i prefer a dictionary to google

ev·i·dence  (v-dns)
n.
1. A thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment


proof  (prf)
n.
1. The evidence or argument that compels the mind to accept an assertion as true.

[detonator7]

hmm ok i guess a proper dictionary would be better. there were lots of definitions on google but those were the first.

[SteddieEddie]

I went to a catholic boys school in auckland and it was compulsory to take religious education. Funny thing is though the same teacher we had for Religious Ed was the same teacher we had for science

Science Class : "Man evolved from the Ape"
Religious Education: "God Made man"

LOL confusing aye

 That is classic, did anyone point out the obvious.
95% of noble prize winners that are scientists are atheists, makes you think

[KiLL3r]

That is classic, did anyone point out the obvious.
95% of noble prize winners that are scientists are atheists, makes you think

well science is the basis of all knowledge.

just think if it weren't for the dark ages when the religious leaders of the time condemned any sort of science we might have started colonizing space by now.

thanks a lot "god"

Religion. The evolution, creation and everything in between megathread

[cobra]

It's not a bad tack to talk of the experience of God as being a direct pointer to the existence of God.  The idea that a religious person can feel the presence of God moving and working through them.  Though it's subjective, it is arguably a sensation that can lead people to induce the existence of something (God) - much as the sight of a falling apple could suggest the existence of gravity.  Because of free will one must 'accept God into one's life' to experience this - it's not a forced thing, but nonetheless it is a near universal constant for the religious - an experience of God.

the trouble i have your paragraph is people choose how they interpret experiences - it doesn't point to god

you cant compare gravity to god - we can use gravity to predict future events, you can't with god, if you pray for a coinflip to be heads it will be 50% of the time, people with religious agendas just attach more significance to those times

you can blast people in the brain with radiation and they experience "god" - it is just a part of our brain that evolved oddly for some reason

[harry1942]

Guys if there s no science there s no INTERNET =OOOO

[philo-sofa]

the trouble i have your paragraph is people choose how they interpret experiences - it doesn't point to god

you cant compare gravity to god - we can use gravity to predict future events, you can't with god, if you pray for a coinflip to be heads it will be 50% of the time, people with religious agendas just attach more significance to those times

you can blast people in the brain with radiation and they experience "god" - it is just a part of our brain that evolved oddly for some reason

True, but people fundamentally interpret sense data all the time - the argument is that this is not different to looking at an object - subjective, but still sensory data.  Gravity was a bad choice on  my part, what with it being a physical law.  That God argument is maybe more analogous to a caveman looking at wind blowing leaves around and interacting with the world -it's implied by sense data and is 'there' if we believe the sense data.  It's also narrowable down to some specific effect and protagonist that can be isolated and named (wind/God), without it becoming a predictable physical law.  Rather "it" is just something that it is can be argued is reasonable to believe to be there based on sensory experience.

I'd argue that the human tendancy to read significance into every little thing that goes on, and draw connections between dots on different pages is not entirely applicable here - though it is a just tragic side-effect of us being 'pattern matchers'.  I once had a girlfirend who constantly saw numerical significance every time anything happened at x hours 11 minutes or y hours 22 minutes, which was about... oooh one in thirty times anything happened.  She'd say how meaningful it all was and and expected me to start agreeing due to the weight of 'evidence'.  Lovely girl, but lord the numerology was tiring! :chuckle:

I do agree 100% with the 'religious center of the brain' response though - which is my belief about the whole issue (apparently if you stimulate it enough people start seeing those around them as angels etc??).  But I don't know that it can defeat the argment making it more reasonable to believe in God, as it requires a certain amount of belief in the lack of God for it to be more consistent to write off the experience of the religious as being a delusion. In that sense (the ambiguity of the conclusion) it is a pretty fail argument, though it does add some muscle to the it being somehwat reasonable for that person to believe in a God IMO.

[cobra]

True, but people fundamentally interpret sense data all the time - the argument is that this is not different to looking at an object - subjective, but still sensory data.  Gravity was a bad choice on  my part, what with it being a physical law.  That God argument is maybe more analogous to a caveman looking at wind blowing leaves around and interacting with the world -it's implied by sense data and is 'there' if we believe the sense data.  It's also narrowable down to some specific effect and protagonist that can be isolated and named (wind/God), without it becoming a predictable physical law.  Rather "it" is just something that it is can be argued is reasonable to believe to be there based on sensory experience.

you use "specific effect", i can understand effect when it comes to wind but not god, can you explain "the god effect"

when you say sensing god - christians are just renaming sensations that atheists would put down to natural sources, i cant see how people with an agenda who choose to rename there experiences as god can put any weight towards the existence of a giant magical ghost

[ThaFleastyler]

christians are just renaming sensations that atheists would put down to natural sources

OK, if your theory is correct, explain these using "natural sources":

- a woman whose hearing was restored in a meeting for healing prayer - and by "restored" I mean that when she came in she was almost deaf and whenshe left she was fine. This happened at a meeting I was at, and the woman is the wife of a friend of mine.

- a man who was able to read after a meeting for healing prayer - and by "able to read" I mean that when he came in he couldn't read (he was a wellknown member of the church and his illiteracy was no secret) and during the meeting he read passages from 2 different books. This also happened in a meeting I was at, and the guy is a friend of mine.

- a man who had problems with recurring pilonidal sinus (don't look it up on Google), which kept coming back every 2-3 months - after receiving prayer for this ailment, the pilonidal sinus hasn't recurred in over 3 and a half years. This also happened in a meeting I was at - the guy is me.

- this: http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html - if God can be explained by natural sources, why do 84% of the worlds population associate themselves with a God/gods?

[philo-sofa]

you use "specific effect", i can understand effect when it comes to wind but not god, can you explain "the god effect"

It's the idea that the experience of God within a religious person is a sense that implies the existence and effect of God in an indivisible way - for them the experience is the same as seeing a chair and reporting that your senses imply the existence of a chair.

When you say sensing god - christians are just renaming sensations that atheists would put down to natural sources, i cant see how people with an agenda who choose to rename there experiences as god can put any weight towards the existence of a giant magical ghost

It's perhaps unfair to immediately attribute it to an agenda - first it must be proven to be untrue, which is the whole purpose of the discussion - to disprove it someone havs to prove it to be delusional or prove that everyone who experiences this is simply lying.  The sense I'm talking about isn't like the "miracle" that is the birth of a child or a good feeling from singing in a congregation - it's claimed as a specific apparent sensory report to those people (and most religious people report something of that kind to be a somewhat regular experience).  

I guess the most important thing about this is that it's not a standard sendory experience renamed (as it's not something the non-religious feel at all) - it's something that is often claimed to be present and obvious for religious people when they 'accept God'.

[Black Heart]

plenty of people die, praying to god for a cure. take your faith healing and shove it buddy. And I say that only because this part of your faith is actually dangerous to peoples health.

And heres another statistic to put in yor hat.
% of beleivers is dropping, yet the average life expectancy of people is rising.

[cobra]

- this: http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html - if God can be explained by natural sources, why do 84% of the worlds population associate themselves with a God/gods?

cultural/historical/brainwashing would be the three biggies - this is not a valid argument, 90% of the worlds population thought the world was flat a few years ago, 90% of the worlds population would have said heavier objects fall fast then light objects a few years ago - people are idiots basically

OK, if your theory is correct, explain these using "natural sources":

- a woman whose hearing was restored in a meeting for healing prayer - and by "restored" I mean that when she came in she was almost deaf and whenshe left she was fine. This happened at a meeting I was at, and the woman is the wife of a friend of mine.

- a man who was able to read after a meeting for healing prayer - and by "able to read" I mean that when he came in he couldn't read (he was a wellknown member of the church and his illiteracy was no secret) and during the meeting he read passages from 2 different books. This also happened in a meeting I was at, and the guy is a friend of mine.

- a man who had problems with recurring pilonidal sinus (don't look it up on Google), which kept coming back every 2-3 months - after receiving prayer for this ailment, the pilonidal sinus hasn't recurred in over 3 and a half years. This also happened in a meeting I was at - the guy is me.

placebo effect maybe, bullshit maybe - god no - these cases would need to be studied by people without an agenda - could these cases be replicated under scrutiny? the answer is no

have you heard of the case where they studied this "healing", 3 groups (with cancer) one with prayer who knew about it, one with prayer who didn't know and on with out prayer. The group with prayer who didn't know and the one with out prayer had the same mortality rate, the one with prayer who knew had a much higher mortality rate, and there is evidence of this trial (which none of your cases have) can you explain this? sounds like god is kinda insane if he is killing people who know the are being prayed for

[philo-sofa]

OK, if your theory is correct, explain these using "natural sources":

- a woman whose hearing was restored in a meeting for healing prayer - and by "restored" I mean that when she came in she was almost deaf and whenshe left she was fine. This happened at a meeting I was at, and the woman is the wife of a friend of mine.

- a man who had problems with recurring pilonidal sinus (don't look it up on Google), which kept coming back every 2-3 months - after receiving prayer for this ailment, the pilonidal sinus hasn't recurred in over 3 and a half years. This also happened in a meeting I was at - the guy is me.

Pyschosomatic illness / Placebo effect.  Faith in something cetainly does have power but it's not neccesarily anything other than your brain doing the work.

- a man who was able to read after a meeting for healing prayer - and by "able to read" I mean that when he came in he couldn't read (he was a wellknown member of the church and his illiteracy was no secret) and during the meeting he read passages from 2 different books. This also happened in a meeting I was at, and the guy is a friend of mine.

He may have been lying or exxagerating.  Or have learnt them off by heart.

- this: http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html - if God can be explained by natural sources, why do 84% of the worlds population associate themselves with a God/gods?

A lot of the world's people are retards!  70-odd percent of Americans still think Iraq was a center of terrorism.  An argument from "a lot of people believe in this" typically pales in comparison to any well thought out argument from reason - not to disrespect what you say - it perhaps has some value in compelling humans to consider something (e.g. saying to a tribesman that "back where I'm from we all believe that clean water reduces illness"), but at best it's a motivator - not a reason to believe in something.



Generally all the exmples you gave are good examples of why it can be difficult to have a good discussion about whether God is there.  Each thing is on its own very easy to explain through natural causes.  People who believe in a God will often take them to be evidence of God, whilst Atheists will take them to provide no evidence at all (I do myself take issue with modern 'miracles' taking the form of explicible things - not partings of seas, people being resurrected, arms regrown and so on).  As such, because there is no rational reason for any party to change their beliefs on the basis of the kind of stuff you're talking about, it's not that useful an avenue to go down.

[cobra]

It's the idea that the experience of God within a religious person is a sense that implies the existence and effect of God in an indivisible way - for them the experience is the same as seeing a chair and reporting that your senses imply the existence of a chair.

it is funny - after read this i experienced a leprechaun in a deeply spiritual, unprovable way, i guess that implies leprechauns

[philo-sofa]

it is funny - after read this i experienced a leprechaun in a deeply spiritual, unprovable way, i guess that implies leprechauns

I'm deeply moved by the experience of your sarcasm.


It would make it less ridiculous to believe in them if you and Billions of other people were actually to experience such an effect, and for that effect to be directed at something which is not defined as being a physical creature one can apparently see.