God does exist

Originally Posted by: PonyOne

Opiate. :)

Nice try smartass! The full quote is:

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." - Karl Marx

The 'opiate' alternative is a common mis-quote.... but who really cares? I just can't let things go ;)

Sorry.... I was kidding.

I studied English Literature, so get hung up on this sort of crap....

:D :D :D

Originally Posted by: t_shirtsnjeansJust after your last breath and last heartbeat you'll know for sure.

Or you might not. I imagine you'll know exactly nothing at that point.

Originally Posted by: zreynoldspNice try smartass! The full quote is:

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." - Karl Marx

The 'opiate' alternative is a common mis-quote.... but who really cares? I just can't let things go ;)

Well opiate means it quells the masses, opium is merely a drug. The opiate translation is grammatically and contextually correct.

Originally Posted by: HammurabiStatements like that make me respect christianity even less.

If your only support for your religion is an argument by fear that should worry you a lot.

This thread is about the existence of God, not about the veracity of Christianity, or the accuracy of practiced religion.
I could have guessed you don't have a lot of respect for Christianity even without your saying it, but the question in front of us is God, not Christianity or history or what have you.
No religion can be assumed to be proof of the existence of God, so much so that if you can present an argument that runs counter to the statements and claims of a given religion, then by extension you've disproven God.
I think the argument here is whether or not a being that is not bound by the Third law of Thermodynamics(Entropy) exists. One that can create order out of none, without creating disorder elsewhere

Although this is the stupidest reason to believe in God it is a logical one.


Pascal's Wager, Basically it says you should believe in God and an after life, heres why: If you don't believe in an after life and your right, thats fine for you. If you do believe in one and try hard to get to heaven and your right, what could be better? If you do believe in one and lead a good life and your wrong than, so what, your dead. And if you don't believe in one and your wrong, your screwed.
The best bet is God :cool: .

Oh and another reason to believe, The nature of cause and effect. There must be an ultimate first cause of evrything, God is the "unmoved mover" that started it all.

Originally Posted by: cayotic727Although this is the stupidest reason to believe in God it is a logical one.


Pascal's Wager, Basically it says you should believe in God and an after life, heres why: If you don't believe in an after life and your right, thats fine for you. If you do believe in one and try hard to get to heaven and your right, what could be better? If you do believe in one and lead a good life and your wrong than, so what, your dead. And if you don't believe in one and your wrong, your screwed.
The best bet is God :cool: .[/QUOTE]What if you choose to be a Muslim and the Christians are right?



[QUOTE=cayotic727]Oh and another reason to believe, The nature of cause and effect. There must be an ultimate first cause of evrything, God is the "unmoved mover" that started it all.

Then who or what caused God?


Sorry, but both of those arguments suffer from some very serious logical flaws.

Originally Posted by: Raskolnikov...Actually, that's all a very natural and predictable biproduct of Carbon Chemistry.

I doubt it.
If it were, then scientists would be doing a lot better than cloning, I think.

Like I said earlier, even without my Christian upbrining, I still think my natural gut feeling (I know how much nurture affects our perceived "natural" nature, don't people start on about that) would still make me incline towards the concept of God.

By the way, a while back I was reading about some discovery about the brain with regard to how we have spirituality. It's a brain function. The atheists are like "see, we told ya!". The God people say "see, he put that function in our brains to enable us experience him."

Like I said, like Pony said, if God is there and will punish Hammurabi and co. for their transgression, it will come to pass. Believe it. If on the other hand Hammurabi and co. are the ones who are right about this, then that's the way it is.
But it's nice to have people talk about it without tearing each other's jugulars. When was the last time you saw that happen at GT? Apparently Doc and The Banning Co. are doing a good job, it's getting to people's heads.

By the way, I love people who disagree with me, coz if they got a basis for what they're saying, there's something to be learnt from them.

Originally Posted by: kingdavidBy the way, a while back I was reading about some discovery about the brain with regard to how we have spirituality. It's a brain function. The atheists are like "see, we told ya!". The God people say "see, he put that function in our brains to enable us experience him."

That's the left parietal lobe.


Pascal's wager is logically invalid because, as Rasky mentioned, religion is not a black and white competition between christianity and atheism. What if Moloch is the one true god and he's incredibly pissed off at us for not sacrificing enough babies to him?

Originally Posted by: kingdavid

Originally Posted by: Raskolnikov...Actually, that's all a very natural and predictable biproduct of Carbon Chemistry.[/QUOTE]I doubt it.
If it were, then scientists would be doing a lot better than cloning, I think.

The trouble with cloning is getting a DNA sequence from one cell to another without damaging it. DNA is a very delicate chain of protines and so I'm sure you can see the trouble presented by sucking it out of a cell with a tiny metal needle then injecting it into another without anything becoming damaged in the process.

However, those protines (which are very complicated molecules, by the way) form very readily under the conditions Scientists believe existed on the Earth billions of years ago and this has been proven time and time again in experiments.

If you really want to get a handle on what Evolutionary Theory is saying, you should find yourself some copies of The Blind Watchmaker, The Selfish Gene and The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins and read them.

Very tough reads, but also very informative.



[QUOTE=kingdavid]By the way, I love people who disagree with me, coz if they got a basis for what they're saying, there's something to be learnt from them.

By far, the best outlook to have on debates such as this.

Ha, wow, every time I go away for a couple of months it always seems that I come back to the forum to find this same old topic alive and well. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great, I wish there was more discussion of complex topics like this one in the mainstream. But it's still funny. You always have two (fairly) well-defined camps going at it (the ones who are verbal about it anyway). I mean really, it just boils down to another duality. You either believe in something or you don't, for whatever set of reasons. Even people who declare neutrality probably lean in one direction or the other if they're honest with themselves.

There's a brick wall here, though. Uncertainty. Before you can even begin to debate the existence of God or how the world came to be you have to look at the idea of knowledge and if it's even possible for us to actually KNOW anything with any degree of certainty. How can you make a truth claim if you don't have any kind of an epistemological foundation? Well....you can't. It's called a "leap of faith" (coined by Kirekegaard I think) and you can't touch it. It's based in intuition, or a gut feeling, and it defies logic altogether. Even if you profess the absence of a god, its still a leap of faith to come to that conclusion.

Most everything we think we believe is based on what was taught to us by - get this - other human beings who have as little of a clue of what's going on as we do. That's the black hole. There's really no ground to stand on at all. We know nothing for certain. And these are just words I'm spewing here, but I'm pretty sure you'll stop breathing inadvertently for a few seconds when that idea REALLY hits you.

Originally Posted by: Jolly McJollysonWell opiate means it quells the masses, opium is merely a drug. The opiate translation is grammatically and contextually correct.

It never occurred to me to correct Marx's grammar. As the quote is translated to 'opium' rather than 'opiate' I'd always taken it to mean that it is a drug, and a particularly addictive one at that. Guess why an opiate quells the masses? 'cos it's derived from a powerful drug...

They must give you drugs in Church, why else would anyone bother going... :eek: