Do You Believe In A God? Why or Why Not?

All you have to do is look at how old the bible is, and how old the Pyramids are (e.g Egyptian gods) :slight_smile: funny how there are religions older then God. Because people/each civilization cant be at peace of mind that the universe just is, so they create things to worship. Religion is also a method of gaining power e.g the pharaohs were seen as Gods, Or you can just take a look at all the churches that are rich and dont do shit for society/helping anyone

A person says l have decided to follow the Christian code of morals because l now believe that God will judge me. Since Jesus said, if the intention is wrong, so is the action.

Millions of people will testify to you, that not only do they no longer cheat on their taxes, mess around on their wife, or stay addicted to whatever. They attribute it to this God that they asked to change their acts and desires. Whether you believe it or consider it unknown attribution, it is no speculation to them. Or to fellow followers.

I am not trying to logically convince you. It takes faith, which is why l used gravity example. But faith is so certain (to Christians anyway), we literally are basing our present and future on it.

Ah well, I think we can just agree to disagree. We just look at many aspects of this topic too differently and coming to a conclusion would require time that both of us don’t have.
I do find the points you bring up, although not immune to criticism, to be completely valid.

Millions of god-fearing people cheat on their taxes and mess around on their wives. Actually, our president, who enjoys one of the strongest evangelical bases of all time, has a literal lifelong documented history of this. People lie about this stuff all the time, and plenty of people only correct bad behavior out of self-preservation, ie, if you believe doing these things will make you burn forever, you might stop doing them. There are a myriad of reasons besides the existence of a God which might explain why a belief system would make them do certain things. Again, not saying there isn’t a God, just saying that example is comparing apples to floating oranges.

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God is eternal, my friend. Religions are mans interpretation of Natural phenomena and deification of said phenomena as well as development of traditions and tenets by which they encourage their followers to live their life. Some are more successful than others.

Says you?

As it becomes centralized sure .. from what I’ve read most religions are/were born from a small group of people applying some sort of philosophy and applying some spiritual mythos to it. It can/has been hijacked by some forms of government .. but not always .. for instance. the Geek pantheon is a good example since most of those city-states had no centralized state power until Alexander unifed them through conquest. Even then, I believe he respected the exercise of conquered people’s religions - as did the Persians - Romans were a mixed bag, Ottomans did to an extent, etc etc

I can also take a look at churches who are rich that DO plenty of ā€œshitā€ for society/helping millions .. but we choose to see what we wish to see, no?

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What are we disagreeing on? I haven’t even given my opinion of anything in here except what I think survival of the fittest means.

Oh I’ve wasted way more time than this on PWI before. Is there a reason you started the thread if you don’t really want to discuss things?

Feel free to criticize them. Nearly everything I’ve said so far has been asking you to clarify what you mean. If I’ve said something you disagree with take a whack.

I’d say it takes effort to have faith, regardless of how entrenched one is in one’s religion/way of life.

Speaking from experience, @pfury has plenty more time.

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There are valid religious explanations that allow for all of that stuff. You’re venturing into dangerous territory - claiming to have some sort of proof that God doesn’t exist. Ya can’t disprove faith and belief.

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IMO, the intention of not doing something bad because of punishment, or something good because of reward, points to the intention being self serving.

If you need god to be a good person, I hope you stay with it, but don’t assume that people without god, need the fear of hell, or the reward of heaven to be good people (BTW, not saying you are claiming that, just have heard it a bunch).

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My point was is that it gets used wrongfully for power, and alot of people do it and have been for thousands of years. Alot of battles/wars have been over religion.

" to survive and grow a religion must find a way to build power and wealth and compete for market share. Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity—any large enduring religious institution is as expert at this as Coca-cola or Chevron. And just like for-profit behemoths, they are willing to wield their power and wealth in the service of self-perpetuation, even it harms society at large"

Anybody. People want to believe there is an afterlife so they do all these things and follow all these rules and then feel better thinking that when you die it isnt just the end. Etc. People need something to believe in.

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'tis true

and a lot that had nothing to do with religion .. again I’m not a big organized religion guy, but it’s not all black and white .. especially in the context of history (written history). I’d wager a lot more battles have happened more so over the lust for power than over religion…

I can’t argue with this. It depends on where one puts their energy.

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Yeah explanations made up Thousands of years after the pyramids. Lol

Well you can… the fact there is so many religions proves they are false. How could there be thousands of gods? People make them up. My point was that every civilization has to have there own religion and something to believe in. When people claim one religion is The only one, like when people claim God to be it makes no sense considering all of the other religions and deities. How can people not see that it’s all made up bs

You could disprove specific gods (or at least the god as described by the holy book of that god), but god in general, I have not seen any one pull that off.

I’d say it just proves there are variations on what people believe to be Truth. I find it hard to determine that they’re ā€œfalseā€ unless you mean something different than I’m interpreting it (…and this is how we get different religions - different interpretations of various natural phenomena)

I’d say this has more to do with what I said above .. people may be interpreting the same natural phenomena through different cultural lenses - that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all ā€œwrongā€ just as much as it doesn’t necessarily mean any one of them is ā€œrightā€.

We’re flawed and that much is clear given your argument of the 1000 made up religions (I can’t argue with this - but to that point, my name is made up, the term ā€œHumanā€ is made up and what you and I think of as human is a different string of sounds in another language). We may not be able to fully comprehend or communicate something that millions of people experience everyday all over the world - that doesn’t mean they’re wrong, per se, because there are limited and varied ways of expressing this experience nor does it mean that that experience doesn’t exist. It just means we aren’t able to define it succinctly using our flawed forms of communication and limited ability to analyze these phenomena.

Again, we’re flawed, imperfect beings - our failure to define or communicate some shared experience in a universal way doesn’t necessarily discredit its existence .. and I’m not specifically talking about God here, but the logic, I think, applies to that same phenomenon.

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The fact that society bases beliefs and worship off what they find in a book or ancient texts is just silly. I can write that I have superpowers and I’m an alien from another planet. Cool story!

I believe Scientologists have a patent on this .. I’d watch out if I were you

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Lol. :wink: The F.B.I are coming for me as we speak

My point is proving any god doesn’t exist is not something anybody has been able to do.

You can say that there is an infinite amount of other possibilities that could also explain our origin or the origin of the universe, and all of those possibilities are just as likely as a god.

The point is why would you believe in a god over any of those other possibilities? Loc Ness monster / Yeti / Mermaids are all a possibility, but guess what, I am not believing it until I have evidence.

Science… science uses facts not fiction. Yeah Zeus is real and can throw lightning bolts, Yeah jesus was born from a virgin and could turn water into wine. Yeah Thor Could fly around throwing his hammer at his enemies. I do not understand how people can follow religion with such outrageous silly fictional junk.