Some religions must be false.

I have been round the world continuing in the same direction and arrived back home.

I have never seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched god.

Nor has anyone else.

Well this is where what you say contradicts what lots of other people say. Tons of people say they have seen or heard God. I myself have heard God. So who am I to believe - you who says that I and others have not experienced this or the testimony of my own senses?

I think it would be perfectly logical for you to say that you and lots of people you know have not experienced God. But when you start making statements that are not based on fact but on some faith about what all the people you have never met are saying (and contrary to their testimony too), then you have gone too far.
 
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Nobody proved god's existence 2000 years ago and they still can't.

Here you go again saying things you cannot support. People wrote letters saying that they saw God walk on water. You do not know that the letters describing that proof are not true.

Today, on the other hand, I know of no one who is proving that God exists. But we cannot know what happened 2000 years ago based on what is happening today, can we?

But I have all the proof I need for myself. I am not asking you to believe me unless you want to. But I do think it would be best if you stopped saying things that are actually more faith based - like there is no God.
 
The principle is not the same.

You can demonstrate and verify the roundness of the earth.

It is supported by observable evidence and reason available to all.

These factors are all absent in the god argument.

Actually they are not absent in the God argument.

The factors you listed are:

observable evidence - that one is not absent
reason - that one is not absent
available to all - that one is absent (one needs to actually listen)

But then again when we are talking about the vast majority of scientific observations they have not been available to all, have they? They have been available only to those with the right tools in the right place at the right time. Want to see a rare comet. Then get a telescope, climb a mountain, at night, either 250 years ago when it last came by or 300 years from now when it will next come by.
 
I care because the notion of god has been used to suppress science, to rob the poor, to exert tyranical power, to deprive children of blood transfusionsetc etc.

that enough for ya?

All sorts of non-God notions have been used for exactly the same purpose. That does not make them any less real.

They will be real or not based on, well, whether or not they are real. We can hope that the evidence we have will show us what is real and what is not but what are we to do when there is not enough evidence to show what is real and some evidence emerges that imperfectly indicates that what is not real is? Interpreting the evidence is a pretty tricky thing and if anything the history of science tells us that more often than not we get to reinterpret it when new facts emerge that show us we were wrong.

So far there is no evidence against the existence of God and there is some "imperfect" evidence that tells us there is a God. The best we can do is accept the existence of God on faith (lack of perfect evidence) or to say that we don't know. But to say that there is no God is illogical.
 
But they did not do what they did in the name of atheism.

The ones I cite have done it in the name of god.

Next
 
What???

How aout the last pope telling the aids ridden millions of Africa that condoms are bad???

What about the catholic priests ****ing little boys???

What about the Church taking money from the poor and then its priest walking ropund in $10,000 robes?

What about the lobby in the US trying to stop evolution being taught???

Enough for ya?

You realize that we could generate a list like that detailing the atrocities of Godless Russia. Your list and the one we could make would show most that MANKIND is prone to do evil.
 
But they did not do what they did in the name of atheism.

The ones I cite have done it in the name of god.

Next

(Some have done bad things in the name of atheism.)

And are you trying to make the case that since some god believers have done bad things that there is no God? That would be illogical.

Just what conclusion would you like people to draw based on the fact that some God believers have done bad things?

And by the way, did those priests who molested children do it in the name of God or did they do it despite their vow of celibacy and then tried to cover it up?
 
Name a country that has done bad in the name of atheism.

Stating that bad stuff has been done in the name of god does not imply god's existence.

Father xmas has a name but he doesn't exist. Your attempt at logic on this point does not look good.

The church, for a long time refused to allow surgeons to disect human bodies forcing them to work on pig corpses instead thereby holding back medical science for years.

The Spanish Inquisition burned around 800,000 men, women and children for being slightly eccentric.

I could list a thousand terrible things done by the pious ****wits in the church and you cannot name one done in the name of atheism.
 
Name a country that has done bad in the name of atheism.

Soviet Russia, Communist China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia were all atheistic regimes. Their leaders were atheist and their policies were atheistic and they were opposed to religion, and they all did horrible things. Are you going to quible over the question of whether or not they said "I do this in the name of atheism." These leaders developed atheistic ideologies and then acted on those ideas, the only thing they did not do was give it a name. Any reading of the volumes of literature by Marx or Stalin would reveal an ample amount of anti-theist statements. Are you going to say that Stalin was an anti-theist, wrote about it, integrated it into his ideology, practiced it, but just did not do anything "in the name of" atheism? Kinda silly.

Stating that bad stuff has been done in the name of god does not imply god's existence.

Didn't say that it does.

Father xmas has a name but he doesn't exist. Your attempt at logic on this point does not look good.

That wasn't the point I was making. You could go back and read it again. And by the way, Father Christmas is based on a real fourth century Bishop whose name was Saint Nicholas.
The church, for a long time refused to allow surgeons to disect human bodies forcing them to work on pig corpses instead thereby holding back medical science for years.

The antivivisectionist movement and the anti-dissection movement went far beyond the Catholic church and included many non-religious as well. Today there is still an anti-vivisectionist organization and it is secular. And liberals are the primary proponent of anti-dissection movements today. p.s. doctors still do work on pig corpses today to learn their trade.

Meanwhile while the ancient church opposed a few isolated procedures overall they advanced science to a great degree.

The Spanish Inquisition burned around 800,000 men, women and children for being slightly eccentric.

I think you should read up on your history to see what factions of the Spanish Inquisition were against the torture and what faction was for it.
I could list a thousand terrible things done by the pious ****wits in the church and you cannot name one done in the name of atheism.

Yet all the so called pious were acting in direct opposition to the ideals they claimed to follow. And there are lots of atheist doing bad things as a direct result of the philosophy of atheism. Just because they don't say "I murder you in the name of atheism" does not mean that they are not motivated by it.

And just because some of them are motivated by atheism does not mean that the best ideals of atheism are wrong. At it's best it includes some good things along with what I consider to be wrong thinking.
 
Don't be silly.

I said name a country that has done bad in the name of atheism. I didn't say just name a country that has done bad.

I couldn't care less who father xmas is based on. He doesn't come down the chimney on xmas eve, largely because he doesn't exist. I am sorry if this is a blow to you.

Your point about vivisectionsists suggests you think two wrongs make a right. This is not surprising as this kind of revenge logic abounds in that work of fiction called the bible.

If you think the Spanish Inquisition was against torture you have a very bizarre grasp of history. And for the record, it was originally know as the papal inquisition until the pope realised how nasty it was and what a blot on his wonderful reputation it was. ****ing little boys was ok for him but the inquisition wa considered bad marketing.

It is nor surprise to me that you hold these distorted views.

After all you think some beardy bloke in the sky made everything. If that is not the biggest form of self delusion I don't know what is.
 
I said name a country that has done bad in the name of atheism. I didn't say just name a country that has done bad.
That is an unreasonable request because even when atheist leaders do bad things as a direct result of their atheism they don't do it in the name of Atheism because Atheism doesn't have a name. When Christians do things in the name of atheism it is obvious that they are doing it as a result of their Christian beliefs. The same is true of Stalin. He did nothing in the name of atheism but he did quite a lot because of his atheism.

Your point about vivisectionsists suggests you think two wrongs make a right. This is not surprising as this kind of revenge logic abounds in that work of fiction called the bible.

No my point was that there are people today who are opposed to things because life just is not that simple. Vivisection can be wrong and can be right. Those who are opposed to it for the times when it is wrong are not committing an evil and stifling science any more than those of the past who opposed things that would advance science for the things about the techniques that were wrong were stifling science.
If you think the Spanish Inquisition was against torture you have a very bizarre grasp of history. And for the record, it was originally know as the papal inquisition until the pope realised how nasty it was and what a blot on his wonderful reputation it was. ****ing little boys was ok for him but the inquisition wa considered bad marketing.

Well I said that you should brush up on the history and apparently you decided to speak before doing that.

The Spanish Inquisition was started and was established in 1478 by Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile (who happened to be catholic) to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the medieval inquisition which was under papal control. The new body was under the direct control of the Spanish monarchy. It was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabel II.

This paragraph from Wiki tells us that the pope was not responsible for the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition but some catholic king who had political reasons was.

Later when the pope did exert his authority and gain control of the inquisition he appointed Tomás de Torquemada specifically charged with the task of reigning in the abuses of the inquisition.

By the way 800,000 people were not burned as a result as you stated. More from wiki:

"In the mid-16th century to the mid-17th century, a time when Europe was torn apart by Catholic-Protestant strife, there began to appear from the pens of various European Protestant intellectuals, who generally had minimal or no direct access or experience of the Inquisition, what has come to be known as the Black Legend, as part of the Protestant polemic in support of the Protestant Revolution. With the gradual ebbing of religious hostilities professional historians began investigations, giving a detailed, nuanced and less exaggerated picture of the Inquisition."

From 1476 to 1834 an estimated 2,000 people were executed (with roughly half of these being proxy executions of straw figures).

So over the course of about 400 years about 250 people per year in all of the country of Spain were executed after being tried and found guilty of heresy. Lawbreaking that they could have avoided if they had followed the laws. And let's not forget this was under Torquemada who had aready reformed the inquisition by this time so that the trials were fair. In contrast the trials under the monarchs who previously ran the inquisition in a much smaller area of Spain inspired the reputation of the spanish inquisition and then they only killed about 100 people.

Furthermore:

"Torquemada was a complex man: a ferocious zealot, he was also, ironically, the main reformer of the Spanish Inquisition - working to eliminate judicial corruption, bribery, false accusation and perjury. e.g., anyone found bearing false witness against another incurred the penalty due the one falsely accused. No respecter of rank, nobles, bishops and even a prince were called to appear before his Inquisition. He strongly supported the use of torture [as did every other government at the time], but at the same time limited its practice. An early example of a penal reformer, Torquemada cleaned up the Inquisition's jails and saw to it that the prisoners were properly fed and clothed. A telling measure of his efforts can be seen wherein the numbers of common criminals petitioning to get their cases transferred to ecclesiastical courts became an administrative problem."

And after all that correction we can still say that they acted against the clear commands of Christ and were not acting as followers of Jesus when they did these things. Even if they claimed to do them in the name of God that does not mean that the real motivation was actually to please God.

It is nor surprise to me that you hold these distorted views.

So who has the distorted view?
After all you think some beardy bloke in the sky made everything. If that is not the biggest form of self delusion I don't know what is.

I have no conceptions of God having a beard since He is spirit. I have no conceptions of Him inhabiting the sky either.

If you think that is what I believe though you might want to reconsider where you are getting your information.
 
By the way Dawkinsrocks, none of us fails to see what you have done. You got trounced when you tried to argue that there was no God so rather than admit you were wrong about the soundness of your case you just shifted gears and attacked the Christian people rather than continue in your failed attack of the Christian ideas.
 
many millions of people worship gods which don't exist.
I don't think that millions worship a God that doesn't exist. Millions of people follow the words of human prophets that were imperfect, and perhaps advocated judgement upon other people at the end of a sword. Religions are multiple rules. Faith in God requires one follow but one rule: If I appreciate the gift of my life, then to show homage to God, I must appreciate your gift of life, and leave it to God to judge you.
 
I have no conceptions of God having a beard since He is spirit...
If you think that is what I believe though you might want to reconsider where you are getting your information.
God in three persons: Father, Son, Holy Ghost.
Men of the Biblical time usually had beards.
Source of "God existing in three persons": King James version of Bible, et. AL. (include Catholic "crossing" themselves).
 
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I don't think that millions worship a God that doesn't exist. Millions of people follow the words of human prophets that were imperfect,...
Bale, Ishtar, Kali, Charles Manson, followers were not likely prophets. The reason is more likely that there are sociological pressures to worship false gods, some of which are: It gives a sense of belonging. It is reinforced by being in the company of those who believe the same dogma., etc.

...Faith in God requires one follow but one rule: If I appreciate the gift of my life, then to show homage to God, I must appreciate your gift of life, and leave it to God to judge you.
Show me that from the Bible.
The only rule is: "Believe upon the lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved."
and, "I am the way, the truth and the light, no man shall enter the kingdom of God but by me."
Nothing about "...appreciating the gift of life or showing homage...".

Of course, it is likely that it is all bull. Just like all the other religions.
 
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