Lets have a debate

Never said anything about theology, but regardless, you've got some irreconcilable notions that will remain.

 

Debates often only serve to raise my anxiety, and open debates on the internet (especially about this tired subject) tend to just exasperate, but I'm feeling opinionated today so I'll throw in my two cents. Two pence. I'm caught between nationalities and I don't know which to use. Two pesos? I digress.
 
Do I believe in God? Yeah, sure. Let's call it that.
 
I don't worship anybody or anything, and I don't think anybody can logically argue against the fact that scripture and religion are tools created by the powerful in order to extend and exert their power. Always has been, always will be. Not to mention, the notion that it's truth is insanely ridiculous given the scientific evidence we've accumulated over the course of our existence.
 
But to deny the existence of a higher power, or conductor, for lack of a better term? I think it's naive and, honestly, quite egotistical. There's a lot that we've learned, and a lot we know how to do, but the fact that there is still so much that we can't explain is enough to keep me in faith. Which is what I prefer to call it rather than any word to do with religion, God, or the like.
 
And then there are my own personal experiences, which I know have no place in this forum, but are often the strongest arguments that we can drum up in the whole belief debate. It's not hard science, but does it have to be? It's that question that keeps me silent on this topic. I feel guilty arguing for it, but it's really all any of us have to argue with. Does it prove the existence of a God or God-like power?
 
Absolutely not. But it keeps me convinced that there's something else out there, something we can't explain and may never be able to explain. I don't know what it is, why it is, or even if it is. But it's helped keep me moving on a number of occasions, and isn't that all that really matters?
 
Ah, who knows.

 

My my, such a classy display! ROFL
I guess age doesn't guarantee maturity either.

No mention of the other 612 commandments that you don't observe? How about you live by your own rules instead of constantly weaseling out of them before you espouse them to others. That way someone might actually take them seriously.

 

There is the problem. In a nutshell. You want to live by your own rules. I've dedicated my life from the age of 22 to living by God Almighty's rules. I'm not perfect, as Jesus the Christ was / is but, I try my best. That's all anyone can hope for. Amen.

 

I don't want to live by my own rules. I recognise that in order to live in a harmonious society people need to live by a set of agreed rules that deliver the most benefit to all people and protect their basic human rights. To that end they need to be based on the best knowledge and understanding we have. Ignorant stone-aged superstitions from a religion that thinks it got them from an imaginary fairy who's been proven false time and time again don't even begin to fit the need. Even if we ignore the farcical source, a collection of teachings that were supposedly given to the 'chosen' people are by their very nature exclusive, divisive, and intolerant. Religion isn't the cause of all human conflict, but when it's best defence against the charge is "hey we're only as bigoted, hateful, intolerant, violent and irrational as these other sick fucks" then it lacks any worth as a set of rules at all.

It doesn't matter how you try to twist it, religion has no basis in rational reality. The only thing you can cling to is the feeling in your heart. Well, good for you. There's thousands of people who wholeheartedly believe that they 'felt something' when aliens abducted them and shoved probes up their asses. What you feel in your heart has no more evidence to support it than what they felt in their ass and they have many more books claiming to document it. Unless you believe aliens anally rape people, and Charles Manson really got messages from his god to kill people, both claims with as much evidence as your has, then you're not just a hypocrite but you are also the best argument for your own beliefs being bullshit. If you don't believe Manson really heard god, then every excuse you use for dismissing his claims is equally valid for dismissing your own.

 

WTF is with all of the age issues? Assuming ignorance because of youth is no more reasonable than assuming dementia because of age. The gay comments I'll skip. I don't agree with  AR Toasty up there but them I think I like, they made me smile in the first paragraph or so and that's worth a bit to me. This aggression shit, that breeds atheists. It doesn't fight them. I wasn't always one and that's how my doubt started.

 

I haven't read through the entirety of this thread, so forgive my outside opinion, but it's always seemed to me that aggression and bullheadedness come equally from both sides of the debate. And that's the problem with "debate" on the existence of God. Those who instigate it, regardless from which camp they're rooted, are so rarely interested in hearing out the other side. It's always seemed to me that the primary motive of those who engage in such discussions is to convince the opposite party to accept their reason (the goal of any debate, I suppose), but be damned if they don't. Atheists, at least the majority that I've been exposed to, can't seem to be able to accept that a believer is anything but a total loon. And those who believe are as equally closed to the rationale that might shake their spiritual foundation. Respect is immediately lost on both sides and from there, you're cooked.

Just to clarify, I'm not referring to the nutjob uber-conservatives who wave their God-given American rights around to marginalize and displace everybody who isn't a white, upper-class, nuclear disciple with a rager for their surpreme Christian God. I don't think those people have any place in this discussion.

But for people like me, someone who's spent a very long time coming to terms with the idea of God and the systems of faith, it's not worth the frustrations of trying to rationalize your beliefs to an opposite party that really isn't open to recieving such rational.

Not that I can rationalize my faith. I can't. I don't know. I just know what I feel and how it fuels me. Does anything mlelse really matter?

I don't know that God exists, and you don't know that he doesn't. I can't prove it. You can't prove it.

Seems to me like there's nothing to debate.

...I'll step down from my soapbox now.

 

Well, two issues here, so I'll hit this thread first. I didn't read every word of it so don't know or care who started it but the type of comments made in the post http://forum.grasscity.com/religion-beliefs-spirituality/1342520-lets-have-debate.html/page-6#entry20921883 and others leading up to it struck me as more than a little over the line. I'm not saying it was only on one side, but that one was more leading the way here and more extreme.
 
In general though what you said above, "Atheists, at least the majority that I've been exposed to" is in itself the problem on both sides as far as I can tell. For the believer they see the aggressive atheists, for the atheists they see the aggressive believers. Both too often assume the visible portion represent the whole and both are offended that the other side thinks just like they do. Fun, isn't it?
 
An old acquaintance of mine (a believer if it matters, which it shouldn't but to some it might) who I wish still made videos posted one about that on YouTube ages back. It's the ones on the ends of the spectrum we describe that we most often see and hear about but it's the ones in the middle that matter more.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVk06NwmmYc

 

You're absolutely right, and I agree on all fronts.

The sweeping generalizations should be left out, and I was acutely aware of that as I was writing it. The majority of us on either side of the coin fall into the middle range, and I'm mostly exposed to those people in my day-to-day. The message in that video puts it in words far more eloquently than I can string together.

But if we leave the radicals and their staunch position out, I'm not sure what is left to debate among the middle-dwellers. One side comes mostly from a place of spirituality and/or faith while the other comes rooted in pure science. Please correct me if I'm wrong. God isn't science. Is there not then a thick wall between the two sides? It may be a glass wall, but a wall nonetheless.

I've always been in the dark over what exactly an atheist or questioner is looking for from their opposition in the God debate. Maybe I've been avoiding the wrong argument all this time.

 

I assumed you were aware of the problem with generalizations, your posts so far have been some combination of amusing to reasonable so that much seemed obvious. PapaFox was a real wordsmith. As I said last post I wish he was still around. Got tired of being stuck in the middle I guess.
 
On what's left to debate, lots of stuff, much of which we might agree on. Starting maybe with how the hell do the religious extremes keep getting elected when they don't really represent more than a small minority and how to fix that, lots of material for debate there for everything from politics to social trends and such. Or we've got the schools, how could moderate atheists and Christians work together better to protect science and history in our schools. There have to be a dozen different issues of the sort where the direction the nation is now going is opposed by both groups but we never even consider working in a common cause. Mostly because of the shouting extremes I'd guess.
 
I'm not sure how useful I'd be in getting any change enacted, did drug war and prison reform activism for a couple of decades already and stopped because I burned out, it just started to get to me too much and it got harder to keep the anger down. But I still do care about things even if I can't take any leading roles and something needs to change. If I can at least help convince people that we need a conversation maybe those who are better equipped can manage it. I hope so at least.

 

I feel much the same way about myself and my beliefs as you describe in your last paragraph.

I also recognize that there is plenty to hash out regarding the social and political consequences of radical religious belief, but unless I was mistaken, I thought this thread was debating the existence of a God or higher power.

On those other subjects, I have little to add other than a shake of my head. I don't get it. I'd like to get it. I don't understand why zealots get elected and textbooks are rewritten to serve religious purposes. Maybe I could if I were exposed to it, but I live in a remote place far removed from such rationalities. It just doesn't happen here, not to that radical fundamental degree. Not even when I was growing up, attending a faith-based school in the most religiously significant place in my country, did I encounter people with such strong and dangerous convictions about God and what his almighty rule means as I see in American news.

It simply baffles me.

 

You're right, I've got a bad habit with that I guess. One of many I need to work on. I'll drop this here then and it was nice talking to you.
 
Sorry about sidetracking your thread a bit, JuanS.

 

Likewise, brother.


If anyone else would like to explain to me what exactly there is to debate regarding the existence of God, I'm eager to understand. To refresh my question from above:

I don't feel I can logically argue the existence of a higher power. I'm of the belief that one exists regardless. Is there a way through this impasse?

 

That's the problem Saint Thomas Aquinas tried to solve with the concept of non-overlapping magisterium. He attempted to reconcile religion and science by proposing that they occupied different worlds that meet but don't overlap. The problem with this is a basic misunderstanding of what science does. If god existed and had any effect, no matter how small, on the natural universe then that effect falls squarely into the realm of science. If that effect truly existed, then it would be observable, measurable, provable by science. If god existed, but had no measurable effect on the universe, well who cares then? Such a god would hardly be worth worshipping and certainly not worth obeying. It would be impossible to obey anyway since a god with no potency couldn't make it's wishes known in the first place. The only weasel room for religion here is the claim of influence in the 'afterlife' since science, and hence we, know nothing about the afterlife. But if the reason they try this 'Argument from Ignorance' logical fallacy is that no one knows what happens when we die, then religions can't claim to be authorities on the matter either just by making shit up. Unless they can back up their claim it's still irrational. If there was an afterlife then it would be a hitherto unknown aspect to the natural world and ought to have evidence observable and quantifiable by use of the scientific method. So long as it is completely unknown it's irrelevant. It's like saying unicorns prove the existence of god.
Science provides the evidence, eliminates the nonsense, and puts a value on the strength of each piece of evidence. It's up to us to make a rational conclusion based on what that evidence tells us.
The best part about being rational is that your conclusion is based on the best evidence therefore if that evidence changes the right thing to do is to change your conclusion. You don't get tied up in mental knots trying to justify ridiculous ideas that had no basis in fact or reality in the first place the way theologians and religious apologetics do.

 

Phew! I'm starting to get seriously long-winded here. Time to stop yammering and filling up the thread