Ray, I wasn’t implying that the Koran was absurd, just that its references to the existence of a god were unproven.
I recognize that there is no way to either prove or disprove the existence of a god or a metaphysical world. This means we have to accept a god and the Koran or Bible or reject them by faith.
While I’m a strong atheist, I have no proof for that position; I just have the belief based on my observations and reasoning, but ultimately on faith.
I would guess that you arrived at your beliefs by a similar set of reasoning and observations, which led you to Islam.
I have no criticism of those who believe in a god’s existence, but I am bothered when they try to convert others to their beliefs. I have the same annoyance with Dawkins and others of his ilk who are demagogues in the cause of atheism.
Occam
Beautifully stated, completely honest, and totally correct reasoning.
I think we will get along fine Occam.
Your position is the exact position I also hold. I dont know where you got it from, but I got it from the Koran.
In there, God says we should not try to force our beliefs on each other but rather try to talk and convince one another with reasoning and evidence.
In the Koran, God reasons with humanity thus:
Do you have more power than God? Would you force people to come to your position? If God had so wished, He could easily have forced everyone to believe in Him. But He does not do that. You also do not do that either.
So, dear members of the forum, dont worry. I am not here to convert anyone. I have no desire for anyone to become a muslim and convert to Islam. There are a lot of people with vested interests who try to keep us apart and keep us fighting. We should be wary of them. We are all brothers in humanity. We should simply talk and try to remove any misunderstanings that we may have of each other. Thats all.
There are a lot of people with vested interests who try to keep us apart and keep us fighting. We should be wary of them. We are all brothers in humanity. We should simply talk and try to remove any misunderstanings that we may have of each other. Thats all.
Your position is the exact position I also hold. I dont know where you got it from, but I got it from the Koran.
And I got mine from learning the scientific method and taking logic, critical thinking, and philosophy courses. There are many sources of knowledge. The difficult part of gaining it is working to decide what is useful and correct and what is harmful, or at best, not useful or correct.
Sorry I´m not following discussion but when I started read this thread, I found this link http://www.godisimaginary.com. And I must say about that proofs, that a lot of them are really stupid and means nothing. I´m sure somebody had personal problem with belief into God, so he deal with it this way. What a blind couple of men wrote all of that. All I had seen, desire was father of ideas.
Sorry I´m not following discussion but when I started read this thread, I found this link http://www.godisimaginary.com. And I must say about that proofs, that a lot of them are really stupid and means nothing. I´m sure somebody had personal problem with belief into God, so he deal with it this way. What a blind couple of men wrote all of that. All I had seen, desire was father of ideas.
Well which ones did you think were reasonable.
Proof#11—no scientific evidence
Proof#28—if there are 20 religions and YOU know 19 of them are misguided superstitions. But each of them has followers who think THEIRS
is the one in 20 which is true….how can this be…
Proof#27—life after death—why do humans have life after death and other animals don’t? If you believe in evolution, how did we evolve to have life after death but lower animals don’t…does this make sense?
For me all of them .... but I don´t want to write about all of them. (and this is only my opinion)
Proof#11—no scientific evidence. Science is something what have two edges. Experiments findings are telling to us two informations .... in this example: 1. There are no scienfitic evidence of God´s presence and 2. There are no scientific evidence that God doesn´t exist or 3. God exist but have no power realize wishes. According to this It means to me, they can´t say science confirm God doesn´t exist.
Proof#28- How can this be? Easily ... noone of them didn´t think wisely or they just did not find conections and similaritis between religions. And scientology is not religion but movement. They don´t belive into God. You shoul read Roman Roland´s book about Ramakrishna. What a great book.
Proof#27- Yes it make sense, why not? You even don´t understand everything about human, are you sure you will understand everything about animals? I see you wish to, but I think you and most of us, we are still not prepared.
and of course proof#1 - is showing the bigest misunderstanding what God is. This experiment worked this way: People—-> their prayings for something—-> God´s will——> results <—- scientists (comparation of prayings and results) findings: prayers ≠ results = God doesn´t exist. How can they understand God´s will? They can´t, so they can´t thinking if resuls were right or not. If somebody is praying for new car or house are you sure God must realize it? And more ... they were talking about studies of praying and they didn´t find nothing, THEY ARE LIERS, recently there are studies which are showing 30% of deadly sick people which are praying will live longer then those who are not praying .... If in the future you will be afected with deadly illneses you will be very greatefull to be one of this 30% of people. You will be very glad that you can be watching how your children are growing, watching their first steps in their life. And be sure of that, you will try everything what can save you from death or can give it to you even one day more.
Science is in one way really bad ... it takes our hope. This is what I hate at Science.
Everything I wrote is only my opinion .... I don´t want to argue with you.
For me all of them .... but I don´t want to write about all of them. (and this is only my opinion)
Proof#11—no scientific evidence. Science is something what have two edges. Experiments findings are telling to us two informations .... in this example: 1. There are no scienfitic evidence of God´s presence and 2. There are no scientific evidence that God doesn´t exist or 3. God exist but have no power realize wishes. According to this It means to me, they can´t say science confirm God doesn´t exist.
Proof#28- How can this be? Easily ... noone of them didn´t think wisely or they just did not find conections and similaritis between religions. And scientology is not religion but movement. They don´t belive into God. You shoul read Roman Roland´s book about Ramakrishna. What a great book.
Proof#27- Yes it make sense, why not? You even don´t understand everything about human, are you sure you will understand everything about animals? I see you wish to, but I think you and most of us, we are still not prepared.
....
Freemind in your original post you said “a lot of them are really stupid and means nothing”. So I asked, “Well, which ones did you think are reasonable”—I meant, which ones did you thing are not really stupid.
The ones I picked were ones that I thought had pretty concrete arguments, though I wouldn’t call them fully-developed “proofs”.
“Proof#11”—there is no scientific evidence that God exists. The counter argument that there is no evidence he doesn’t exist is spurious—the evidence that Santa Claus doesn’t exist is that someone else delivers the presents; the evidence that God doesn’t exist is that natural processes explain many of the things like rain, clouds, seasons which were originally attributed to God, and that God currently is used to explain things which we don’t yet understand.
“Proof#28”—if you think there is evidence that your God exists, well there are 20 other religions that think there is evidence that THEIR god exists. Please review the 20 other religions and report back to us what is wrong with their evidence. And ask them to critique yours. An atheist is arguably objective about all religions.
“Proof#27”—what evidence is there of life after death. Can we agree that no one actually knows that there is life after death for humans—
Again, were there any of these proofs you felt were not really “stupid”?
Going back to “Proof11”—this week D.J. Grothe has an interview with Eric Maisel author of the Atheist’s Way.
His blog: http://theatheistsway.blogspot.com/
3. Atheists are arrogant to assert that there are no gods.
There are two different sorts of responses to this charge. The first is, “Fine, I accept the charge, if you accept that it is incredibly arrogant of you to assert the existence of a god.” The second is, “No, reason is on my side and all you have is wishful thinking.” But it is really the form of this charge that interests us: all sorts of words can be substituted for “arrogant” in an “ad hominem” sentence with this linguistic form: words like “silly,” “short-sighted,” “deluded,” “mean-spirited,” and so on. So a blanket reply might be, “You sure do know how to use language!” and leave it at that. Or maybe just, “Same back at you!”
I checked attached links ... If we can say that Atheism is religion then I have to say in some way is really nice but for me it is still not enough. Something important is missing to me in it. The hope to be something more after all.
About your reaction ... I knew it will be similar like you have posted. We can argue about that forever and noone of us will convince each other. My belief is based on my knowledge and expierences and your at yours ...
Were there any of these proofs you felt were not really “stupid”?
No, I think there were not. With every proof I can do the same like in proof 11 or 27 . I mean I can give you answers which not satisfy you. But if they will be as you said .. fully-developed, I´am sure I will start think about it, for now I can´t accept them and because of that their resuls too. May be one day will somebody come with really holeproof evidences that God really doesn´t exist but untill that day come I will risk it like ideaslist.
And about 28. I didn´t mean ,,my God exist” but ,,one God exist”. I don´t have to review their evidence. I didn´t say their evidences are wrong, but this people are too close to their own religion and it makes them blind and all of them can´t see conections between religions at all.
Btw did you ever have any spiritual experiences in your life or experiences your brain couldn´t explain even to you?
I would be interested in a critical review of the translation of the bible. Modern language research has discovered a lot of errors, and it would be interesting to see how a modern translation would look like, counting for the history of the texts (coming to us via Arabic, Greek, Armenic…). Does somebody know a good book or link?
GdB
Someone who has done a lot of work in this area is Bart D. Ehrman , Professor of Religious Studies At Univ. of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. He has a series of lectures available through The Teachng Co. He has written Jesus - Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium; The New Tesament: A Historical Intoduction to Early Christian Writings; The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture; Lost Chritianities - The Battle for Sripures and the Faiths We Never Knew & many more. He not only goes into the changes made into the Biblical texts, sometimes intentional sometimes unintentional,but also places the texts within their historical background, which is crucial key to understanding what they were orginally intended to do and how the texts and their interpertations changed when the societies using them changed.
From you stated interest I would start with Misquoting Jesus - The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible & Why.
From a different author, Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman. This is a bit older than Ehrman work but still interesting.
Gary the Human
Mr. Ehrman is very worthwhile and highly recommended. Great suggestion.
Lots of interesting links guys - thanks. I would like to say though that we need to bring the same level of critical thinking to ‘atheist’ labeled sits as to other topics. Just because someone is an atheist doesn’t make every point and argument he makes right and give him a pass. And when fighting the battle at the coal face against religious nutters the last thing we need is inaccuracy or lazy argument.
Ray, I wasn’t implying that the Koran was absurd, just that its references to the existence of a god were unproven.
I recognize that there is no way to either prove or disprove the existence of a god or a metaphysical world. This means we have to accept a god and the Koran or Bible or reject them by faith.
While I’m a strong atheist, I have no proof for that position; I just have the belief based on my observations and reasoning, but ultimately on faith.
I would guess that you arrived at your beliefs by a similar set of reasoning and observations, which led you to Islam.
I have no criticism of those who believe in a god’s existence, but I am bothered when they try to convert others to their beliefs. I have the same annoyance with Dawkins and others of his ilk who are demagogues in the cause of atheism.
Occam
Beautifully stated, completely honest, and totally correct reasoning.
I think we will get along fine Occam.
Your position is the exact position I also hold. I dont know where you got it from, but I got it from the Koran.
In there, God says we should not try to force our beliefs on each other but rather try to talk and convince one another with reasoning and evidence.
In the Koran, God reasons with humanity thus:
Do you have more power than God? Would you force people to come to your position? If God had so wished, He could easily have forced everyone to believe in Him. But He does not do that. You also do not do that either.
So, dear members of the forum, dont worry. I am not here to convert anyone. I have no desire for anyone to become a muslim and convert to Islam. There are a lot of people with vested interests who try to keep us apart and keep us fighting. We should be wary of them. We are all brothers in humanity. We should simply talk and try to remove any misunderstanings that we may have of each other. Thats all.
I am saying that the Bible and the Koran….or for that matter any religious dogma…... are all absurd.
I am saying that they are entirely invented by the fear based human mind.
They can be cherry picked to scratch out tidbits wisdom that pertains to the human condition but for the most part they depict a brutal, egomaniacal, xenophobic, homophobic, gymnophiobic, women hating monster of a god.
All one has to do is read either one from cover to cover to grasp their lunacy.
If one does even a small amount of unbiased research into their origin, their relevance evaporates in the light of common sense and it is seen that their Bronze-age mentality holds nothing of value in the twenty first century.
They don’t deserve a thinking person’s respect but should be relegated to the fairy-tale or the horror shelf of our libraries.
Toombaru, I understand your beliefs and probably agree with quite a few of them, however, you don’t get anywhere by putting down the beliefs of others. While you feel you have the only logical basis for yours, other people feel the same way about theirs. As you mature, you may adopt a more measured, empathetic and objective understanding of how they got where they are. It will help you relate to people more successfully and keep your blood pressure down.
