Alternative religions. Anyone follow one?

Wow, I came back to this thread expecting it to be gone today. Awesome that it's continued without belligerence. Made for some interesting reading at lunch time, and I've learned some stuff I'd never heard of before. I'll be 'googling' for days on some of it, lol

Snipped prior quotes for brevity!


You cannot prove a negative though.

Prove to me that your water sample has no contaminating mercury. You can't. The best you could do is say it is below the level of detection for whatever test you used. So, based on that evidence, it is safe to drink.

I'm the same with a god. There is no positive evidence that one exists, but the possibility cannot be ruled out completely. I think it HIGHLY improbable, of course, but it never does to shut ones minds totally.


By the way:

Matter can be created on the quantum level. It has been observed.

The entropy of the system refers to the complete system (i.e. the planet in this case). Organization can occur on a smaller scale (i.e. crystals, life).

And what came before the big bang? In science (as you should apparently know) when we don't know the answer, we say "I don't know". Making up entities to explain unknowns defies Ockham's razor.

The difference is how you approach an issue - aka "Innocent until proven guilty" versus "Guilty until proven innocent". My positive is that God exists. My quotes on science were to support a dynamic thought and investigative process. What we believed true yesterday, changes. The first law of thermodynamics - changed and if time allows us what we believed as truths or laws will change. My journey in this area is like many others, personal and you have do it yourself. Some given information will come to other conclusions and how that information correlates. I'm one of them, and I could be wrong. But for myself, what I believe in is based on the information at hand and whether I "trust" that information. I lived during the time of the moon landing. I did not witness the moon landing first hand but believe it happened. There are others who believe it did not. I did not live during the time of Moses or Jesus so I do not have concrete tangible evidence or artifacts that they exist. What I know is circumstantial what I have read and whether I choose to believe. This is same as other writings in time periods in which we did not witness. We can choose to believe or not believe what prior humans have written on any subject matter. So with the science thing I say yes, this is what we believe today, but I know that will change.

Firstly, I'm going to suggest one of my favourite essays by one of my favourite writers: Asimov's "The Relativity of Wrong". http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

Yes, science changes, but mainly by incremental steps. True paradigm shifts a la Khun are very rare.

Secondly, when viewing historical evidence (not that I am a historian) multiple sources are usually referred to to try and ascertain the veracity of any event or person. Unfortunately for the Bible, there are no external references to the Exodus (and the Egyptians wrote everything down! You'd think they'd notice all their slaves up and leaving one day), or even to Jesus (the mention of him in Josephus in the Testimonium Flavianum appears to be a later insertion). No first hand accounts of Jesus or his life exist - kinda strange when you think about how important he supposedly was. The earliest Gospels as we know them were first written in 70 AD - decades after his supposed crucifixion. Note - absence of evidence is not evidence for absence, but it is very strange when you find nothing for events such as this.

If God existed and did the things he is claimed to have done, one would expect some sort of evidence. And yet we see nothing. Miracles don't happen today. Intercessory prayers are not answered (unless, like in certain heart attack/prayer studies, the results are fudged and the people who got better were belatedly put on the "prayer" treatment). So it is still your burden of proof to show your positive. Why should I believe in your god if it can't be shown?

Atheist since birth

Not a "hipster atheist" either. I've honestly never even heard of that.

Do you start randomly screaming at anyone holding a bible or any other religion book?

Do you start attacking people who are minding their own business and only flaw is they belong to a religion?

Do you try to derail any argument and say stupid things like "all I know is that religion has caused many wars" or "religion is the mass murderer" etc (even though its not even close to being the truth)?

Do you constantly belittle other peoples intelligence by saying "oh yeah you beleive in your imaginary superman, I believe in science!" when the superman believing guy is actually doing his doctorate and you're still in first year of college?

If any of those answers in yes, then you're a hipster Atheist who's just trying to get on the bandwagon. If you're being respectful to others, then kudos, you're awesome and I love you.

Atheist since birth

Not a "hipster atheist" either. I've honestly never even heard of that.

Do you start randomly screaming at anyone holding a bible or any other religion book?

Do you start attacking people who are minding their own business and only flaw is they belong to a religion?

Do you try to derail any argument and say stupid things like "all I know is that religion has caused many wars" or "religion is the mass murderer" etc (even though its not even close to being the truth)?

Do you constantly belittle other peoples intelligence by saying "oh yeah you beleive in your imaginary superman, I believe in science!" when the superman believing guy is actually doing his doctorate and you're still in first year of college?

If any of those answers in yes, then you're a hipster Atheist who's just trying to get on the bandwagon. If you're being respectful to others, then kudos, you're awesome and I love you.

crikey....you sound a bit angry here.....deeeeeep breath!!

Atheist since birth

Not a "hipster atheist" either. I've honestly never even heard of that.

Do you start randomly screaming at anyone holding a bible or any other religion book?

Do you start attacking people who are minding their own business and only flaw is they belong to a religion?

Do you try to derail any argument and say stupid things like "all I know is that religion has caused many wars" or "religion is the mass murderer" etc (even though its not even close to being the truth)?

Do you constantly belittle other peoples intelligence by saying "oh yeah you beleive in your imaginary superman, I believe in science!" when the superman believing guy is actually doing his doctorate and you're still in first year of college?

If any of those answers in yes, then you're a hipster Atheist who's just trying to get on the bandwagon. If you're being respectful to others, then kudos, you're awesome and I love you.

crikey....you sound a bit angry here.....deeeeeep breath!!

There is a modern example to "sin". Sin to me is not being trustworthy. It's like working for a boss or government and you cheat on them. They have trusted you to do the job or obey the laws of the land but you didn't want to do it. If you get caught, you go to jail, lose your job, get demoted etc. and not considered as being trustworthy. To me the Christian context is the same. God like an employer or government has a job for us to do and wants to trust us in doing it(whether you believe it or not). If you intentially scew up then you are not trustworthy. That is sin, to me it it not being good or evil, it's just the choices we make to those in charge or in authority or relationships.

The thing is in that scenario we are talking about a boss who has 100% perfect knowledge of the actions of every single employee he has and his punishment for disobedience is infinite suffering for ever single moment of an infinite amount of time. Since we are finite beings we are actually incapable of deserving and infinite amount of suffering for any amount of time. So there would be no possibility that such a being could even be good.

This would be compounded even further by the fact that he would have 100% accurate foreknowledge of every single action taken by each of those employees even before they were hired. In other words there would never be an action taken by any of us that would actually surprise god. This means that anyone who went to hell would also not surprise him. In fact it is difficult to envision a scenario where in which any could occur outside of such a beings intention. Meaning if I went to hell it would simply be a result of god's choices.

The idea of god does not stand up to logic because free will and omniscience cannot exist at the same time. It would be like having two people and each of them is taller than the other. It just can't happen.

But you have already stacked the deck my friend by creating god as all knowing and omniscience. You have defined god within paramaters that I do not believe. If you dig into it, like Genisis, God had watchers, and even Satan to observe the earth and report to him what was going on. Why would an all knowing god need spies and watchers ?

Bare in mind this is not my definition for god because I don't believe there is one. This means I am forced to examine the definitions that I am given. The most popular definition for god is one without any limitations whatsoever so that is the definition I am most often examining.

I can see why that definition is so popular. The scriptures certainly describe him that way 1 John 3:20 (omniscience) and in Matthew 19:25-26 Jesus himself blatantly says that all things are possible for god (omnipotence). These scriptures actually do intend to say these things even if you go back to their original translations.

I think the people that wrote the bible were just wanting to advertise their product to the best of their ability. And like all good advertisers you never say your product is really good you always say it is the best. So they got a little carried away with themselves and wrote in some scriptures that described a logically impossible god.

You could take the position that these scriptures were mistranslated or misinterpreted but I warn you that does open a can of worms.

Either way we hit a bit of a speed bump here because we did not have the same definitions to start from. So in order to try and smooth out the road a bit we need to take a short pause.

Please provide for me your definition for god and if you could indulge me further please tell me why you believe it.

In any event I think we've scored a touchdown. I try to gain my persective not only from the Bible but other teachings/histories etc.
Yes people wrote this stuff so sorting through it all is tough. My undertanding it was men who decided what goes in the Bible and what stays out. Another book was written, which I will not state, because they thought the Bible was corrupted by men. Yes I can be skeptical, but I have elected to go down my own path to figure it out. So my views also change. Maybe it will never be conclusive for me. Take care my friend !!!

Frankly that's your opinion and I respect that. If you feel by your knowledge there is not proof so be it. And you do not have to believe in my god. That is my choice, and your choice is not to.

Proof - my perspective - we are the evidence, the animals are evidence, the earth and universe. I can either accept many histroical notations of a creator or the other alternatives. The creator makes sense to me because, we are models that aspire to creation, development and exploration. We do it ouselves, we create, build, destroy, love procreate etc. If we indeed have those capabilities which continue to grow, the given this enormous universe why can't it follow that the same model exists elsewhere and is a bit more down the road in knowledge and science than we are has has applied those capabilites. To continue the coverstation, we need to understand what you believe the characteris of god are versus mine. If not, we are arguing apples and oranges.

We are evidence that we are here. The universe is evidence that the universe exists.

I have no definition of any god. I have been given many different ones by many different theists. I try not to assume, but a standard omni-max god seems the most common (at least, among Christians), for reasons laid out by soldier.

Sure thing. Give the story of the Tower of Babel a try. What men constructed was considered a threat to heaven. Why would god consider us a threat ? Also states that man if left as an organized enttity we would be able to do anything. Hence do we ourselves become as god through our evolving development. Interesting. So as the story goes that's why people were scattered because we were a threat to heaven. Take care, respect your views but I will plod on in trying to understand as much as I can.

Edited - god has an army of angels - why does he need an army ?
There is a prophecy of war in heaven - why ?
When god visted earth he often asked what we were doing - why ?

Hey soldier, I can't take credit for some of this. Years ago a co-worker started talking to me about my thoughts of God. He was kicked out of his church for asking too many questions. They thought he wasn't in line with their doctrines and gave him the boot. He went on his own path - learned greek, latin, hebrew and started to do his own translations. He went beyond the Bible and tried to dig into everything he could find of the subject. Mythologies from around the world and works by folks like Velokovsky (sp) who had the disaster theories instead of evolution. I believed the one thing he told me was, God is a scientist, farmer/builder with a physical body who set the physical laws of the universe, and in doing so has elected to be bound by the laws he set in motion. There is a universal government that he presides over. Wow that just blew my mind cause it isn't the popular thoughts. It sounds crazy, but it motivated me to "dig in". I had all kinds skepticism. Sounded too much like Star Wars !! I still do today. This thing he did for me was make it seem plausable from our own context or what we see here, life death, love war, peace etc. The difference being the order of magnitude of intelligence and knowledge(god). So that's it. One thing he cautionned me on was "man created god in his image" as to have the powers of god, e.g. control of others etc. and there is a lot of human made stuff and garbage to wade through to rationalize to be self serving and god-like.

Really enjoying all the well thought out responses, and overall good behavior I've seen.
That said, my personal belief is that I'll have another beer. In this I am a true believer. I've looked at multiple different religions, none fit, but I do like the philosophy of many of them.

Really enjoying all the well thought out responses, and overall good behavior I've seen.
That said, my personal belief is that I'll have another beer. In this I am a true believer. I've looked at multiple different religions, none fit, but I do like the philosophy of many of them.

I agree, I think this is the best post I've ever participated in. Let's keep it goin !!! And me, well a beer is store as well !!! Cheers everyone !!!!