Christianity is a wider subject than just praying to God or whatever. Religious experiences, life after death, miracles etc all come under it. Basically the unexplained. Some proof is based on eye witness testimony and I don't think it should be dismissed straight away just because it sounds daft.

Sorry if I sound kinda vague, its hard to argue against something you don't believe in ...

No thats not what I am saying, I am saying that they feel there has to be a god to justify the fact that they are alive as a rational thinking human being. They dont accept the fact that life evolved as an accident and we developed simply by natural selection.

If someone wants to believe in some deity sitting watching over us like a loving father, thats fine. If someone wants to believe that God made all this happen and that us humans are his selected life form, thats fine too.

If someone wants to believe it all happened by accident from a clump of matter/antimatter exploding forming galaxies star and planets, and on one little planet on the cooling surface eventually, on reaching a carbon based life sustaining state, chemical substances accidentally combined in the soup and formed a life form which eventually evolved into all the different life forms that have been supported on this planet, thats fine too.

b) I don't actually exist. When I die someone else will be started.


I totally think that.

I've always liked that quote. But yeah, I think you're just very cynical when it concerns organized religion, right? I think deep down you believe in a soul or a higher state of being or am I wrong?

When I think about it logically, I feel that there may or may not be something after this. That's the only logical route to take.

Unless something is proven, it's not worth believing in. I have no belief, I have knowledge, or I have nothing.

But they're not alive as a rational thinking human being. They're alive, but if they were a rational thinking human being they'd have no reason to believe in God.

Do you?

Absolutely.

Yeah it's very vague. No hard proof of God exists. That's a fact proveable by the fact that relgious people have faith and Atheists exist. If hard proof for God existed, atheists would not.

Eye witness testimony means nothing. Especially when it's from religious people. Thousands of reports exist detailing encounters with aliens, ghosts and monsters. Doesn't mean they exist [except for aliens, of course, who stand a very probably chance of existing].
So how can you die if you don't exist?

I used to. Up until last week, in fact, but all of a sudden and for no specific reason I became a bona fide atheist. My spiritual views got so diluted as they went along that they amounted to no fixed belief anyway, I was merely hanging on in the hope of making the world more interesting. But I have replaced reading religion with reading science and astronomy and really, that's far more fascinating to me now so I kind of dropped my vague beliefs in unproveable things just to appear more glamorous.

It's pointless sitting on the fence and allowing for the possibility of something after you die just for the sake of it. If that's the case there is an infinite scope of riddiculous, trivial things I could choose to believe in just because they could exist. Which nicely leads back to the teapot :).

I'm reading an excellent scientific book at the moment that's all about the spiritual being and mystical, unexplained experiences. Very interesting.

But a lot of stuff in the Bible has actually happened, for example theres meant to be historical evidence for the plagues of Egypt and Jesus did exist. And then theres things like visions, psychics and things such as spontaneous combustion. All ultimately falls under religion and the belief of the supernatural/God.

I don't think eye witness testimony is any less valid whether it comes from religious people or if it doesn't. But of course theres going to be a bias depending on your agenda, just like there is with everything in EWT.

There is no hard proof either way- sceptic theories are just that. Just because they're a more rational way, sometimes very far fetched, it doesn't make it any more or less valid than what its trying to disprove.

I don't think we'll ever know and I don't think I actually would want to know. But my personal beliefs are summed up in the title of this Facebook group

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Chr...6322705?ref=ts

i dont like this weird talk of stuff its creepy lol

Why?

This thread probably isn't for you :)

In other words there is no evidence for god, which was your initial point. If there was evidence we would know. At least in my understanding of the term 'evidence'.

Of course things in The Bible happened. At the end of the day it is a mixture of ramblings, prose, poetry and a *teeny* bit of history.

There is no universally accepted proof that the Egyptian plagues happened as told in The Bible.

Oh and the thing about aliens, thats a really broad term. Do you class a bug living on Mars as an alien or do you think theres a good chance of green men with black eyes who fly space ships, abduct people from earth and anal probe them existing?

Alien is a bit of a hollywood term I suppose, in fairness. Let's just say life outside Earth, which I believe stands a very, very high chance of existing.

No my point is theres suggestable evidence, its something you need to go really indepth with though, you can't really just touch on it with a few half hearted points. So you can't really objectively say its a fact God does not exist.

It's a personal belief and as long as it doesn't infringe on others, I don't feel it necessary for me to validate it on a forum. I believe that there are forces at work that are beyond the scope of our own understanding, that's all.

I think theory would be a more appropriate word. Sure, I can't say for a fact that God does not exist but you cannot say for a fact that a small teapot is not orbiting the earth. Both contain an equal lack of verified, hard proof.

Ooh. An existentialism debate. Sartre must be wanking in his grave.

There is no grave.

As I said earlier depends on a persons definition of God. There are many ideas about the nature of God.

Seeing as science cant explain everything just yet, in fact our understanding of the universe and its history etc is like a primary schoolchild's understanding of Social and Economic History since the 17th century. A rational person wouldnt rule out the possibility of the existance of God. But would err on the side of safety and not completely deny it.

Are you a parent?

Why does your post count always stay the same, Tony?

Cos I've never posted outside Chat and Games.