By popular request ... The religious debate

Mikey23

I assume this is within the flipping rules?

Richard Dawkins in his many books concludes that a supernatural creator does not exist and religious faith is a delusion. Is he right?

cornerblock

I can't answer that, but as soon as my wife gets home I'll ask her what I think.

ballysmate

Sorry, I seem to have posted a duplicate thread.

cornerblock

That's how religious wars started.

Stevo_666

Cornerblock wrote:

That's how religious wars started.

Isn't that the aim here?

Phil Fouracre

Mikey - Now we all know you are just trying to stir up trouble. Richard Dawkins for president? Be interesting to see if we have many forum members who believe in imaginary friends! Duck.........

pinno

"God is a chocolate teapot. As it is small and its dark. you cannot see it as it revolves around the earth."
-"God isn't a chocoalte teapot"
"Yes, he is"
-"Prove it"
"First prove that this chocolate teapot does not exist"

...and thats why many believe in a higher being. No-one has seen him but no-one can prove that he doesn't exist.

ballysmate

pinarello001 wrote:

"God is a chocolate teapot. As it is small and its dark. you cannot see it as it revolves around the earth."
-"God isn't a chocoalte teapot"
"Yes, he is"
-"Prove it"
"First prove that this chocolate teapot does not exist"

...and thats why many believe in a higher being. No-one has seen him but no-one can prove that he doesn't exist.

But why do you believe he is a chocolate tea pot and not a liquorice allsort. Is it because your parents told you so?

seanoconn

Mikey23 wrote:

I assume this is within the flipping rules?

Richard Dawkins in his many books concludes that a supernatural creator does not exist and religious faith is a delusion. Is he right?

What are your thoughts on Islam Mikey?

cornerblock

seanoconn wrote:

Mikey23 wrote:

I assume this is within the flipping rules?

Richard Dawkins in his many books concludes that a supernatural creator does not exist and religious faith is a delusion. Is he right?

What are your thoughts on Islam Mikey?

I think you'll need to ask his missus!

Stevo_666

pinarello001 wrote:

"God is a chocolate teapot. As it is small and its dark. you cannot see it as it revolves around the earth."
-"God isn't a chocoalte teapot"
"Yes, he is"
-"Prove it"
"First prove that this chocolate teapot does not exist"

...and thats why many believe in a higher being. No-one has seen him but no-one can prove that he doesn't exist.

And the follow on from that is that as it's logically impossible to prove that something doesn't exist, if someone believes that something does exist then the onus is on them to prove it. Usually when something exists there's some verifiable evidence...

RDW

Oh God.

Any minute now, someone is going to make a post that uses the words 'sheeple' and 'sky bully' in the same sentence.

Stevo_666

RDW wrote:

'sheeple' and 'sky bully'

What have the results of unauthorised Welsh breeding and Rupert Murdoch got to do with this?

RDW

Stevo 666 wrote:

RDW wrote:

'sheeple' and 'sky bully'

What have the results of unauthorised Welsh breeding and Rupert Murdoch got to do with this?

I'll have you know that's a scurrilous myth! Here in Wales, all breeding is properly regulated by a committee that reports directly to Sir Tom Jones. And anyway, sheep can't cook, so what would be the point of marrying them? As for Rupert Murdoch, he almost certainly works for the other guy:

sungod

if people want an imaginary friend that's fine

but not if they demand other people do what their imaginary friend says, or think that they are allowed to hurt others because their imaginary friend says they can do it

Daz555

I'm atheist. Why? Lack of evidence that any gods exist.

Thoughts on religion. Summed up with this sentence: "believe in rocks if you want to, but don't throw them at me."

Mikey23

Ok, missus away for a couple of days so struggling to think for myself ... Considered, articulate and extremely rambling post to follow after I'm back from coffee with a couple of transvestites

Phil Fouracre

Are you having coffee with them, or, bringing them home, 'cos your misses is away?? Don't really want to think about this!

Mikey23

Friends of ours, one runs a holiday complex in east Cornwall... Quite a racey place round here
Point from different thread. Blasphemy resonates with me in a similar way to someone dissing your best mate or upsetting your kids. But I'm sure god (should he or she exist) is big enough to deal with that
Islam. Ok with other religions provided that they are not of the fundamentalist and exploitative kind. However, so much evil and exploitation and persecution has happened in the name of Christianity over the last two thousand years and continues to happen that I'm not throwing any stones

So do you guys think that physics and evolutionary biology have disproved the big fella with a long white beard sitting on a cloud on the other side of the moon? What kind of evidence would convince you otherwise?

Phil Fouracre

Never believed anyway, but in answer to your first question, a definite yes. As to proof, I can't imagine anyone being able to convince me differently

ballysmate

Mikey23 wrote:

Friends of ours, one runs a holiday complex in east Cornwall... Quite a racey place round here
Point from different thread. Blasphemy resonates with me in a similar way to someone dissing your best mate or upsetting your kids. But I'm sure god (should he or she exist) is big enough to deal with that
Islam. Ok with other religions provided that they are not of the fundamentalist and exploitative kind. However, so much evil and exploitation and persecution has happened in the name of Christianity over the last two thousand years and continues to happen that I'm not throwing any stones

So do you guys think that physics and evolutionary biology have disproved the big fella with a long white beard sitting on a cloud on the other side of the moon? What kind of evidence would convince you otherwise?

Science is chipping away all the time. Evolution is now widely accepted as explaining the development of species and geology pretty much dates the age of the earth. But Creationists persist in their belief that the earth is a few thousand years old.
Most religions believe that Man has a soul, so it would follow that if evolution is correct, unless everything is so blessed, a man was born to a soulless mother, be it a chimpanzee or all the way back to a string of amino acid.
The more science is able to explain, the less convincing religion becomes.
Don't forget that people used to worship the sun, moon, tides etc. As science began to explain all these things, the gods were discarded.

capt_slog

Mikey23 wrote:

Richard Dawkins in his many books concludes that a supernatural creator does not exist and religious faith is a delusion. Is he right?

I think so. But when you look at the number of people who do believe, worldwide, the scale of the delusion is truly staggering.

I've seen reports that say religion tends to be more prevalent where education/literacy is low, and I think this was the case in the Uk through the middle ages. It was fostered in some degree by all the services taking part in a language which most couldn't understand.* I feel that at that time religion was 'imposed' on people rather than them following with any voluntary belief, you'd certainly struggle to be a non-believer as you would be an outcast.

This carried on into the last century. I recall my dad telling me that he had to go to the local vicar to ask for money to pay for his upcoming hospital bill in the pre-NHS days. As a 'member' of the church he could do this, so it's not surprising that people at least paid a lip service to the church.

*Is this is the case of Islam in some societies? I'm sure i read somewhere that the Koran 'has' to be arabic, and so you have to learn that to be able to read your own religion.

Islam BTW, I can just about get my head around why a man would believe in the eternal, but what's in it for women?

Daz555

Mikey23 wrote:

So do you guys think that physics and evolutionary biology have disproved the big fella with a long white beard sitting on a cloud on the other side of the moon? What kind of evidence would convince you otherwise?

Nothing can disprove the existence of gods.

However what science has done is given us a tool to investigate nature. As a result the list of things for which a god was previously needed to explain is getting smaller.

Mikey23

Many points here but will take them one at a time

Nailing my colours to the mast, I also think its quite absurd to believe that the earth is about 6000 years old which i think comes about by adding up all the genealogies. it quite obviously isn't. Proved and beyond reasonable doubt. I don't think many Christians believe it either, other than the fundamentalists many of whom seem to live in the USA and seem to lack capacity to think for themselves. i strongly believe that this kind of Luddite thinking is damaging to any credible belief system...

MattC59

Daz555 wrote:

Nothing can disprove the existence of gods.

And nothing can prove their existence either, in fact there isn't anything that even suggests their existence.

As mentioned, the belief in 'gods' is born from man not being able to explain the world around him.

freddiegrubb

Just a thought-if gods exist & you look at the state of the world they are all powerful & don't care or do care & are not all powerful. Take your pick.

Pituophis

freddiegrubb wrote:

Just a thought-if gods exist & you look at the state of the world they are all powerful & don't care or do care & are not all powerful. Take your pick.

Ah yes, but what if one "god" bet another that this is what we would do to the world if given freedom of choice?
Or was it aliens? Or a book?

The people who really need to believe in a god will always be able to justify any flaw in logic we might come up with on here, no matter what it happens to be :roll:

Mikey23

So is the point of existence to be born, to exist and to die? And how do you feel when your favourite auntie Nellie gets sick and dies?

Stevo_666

Mikey23 wrote:

So is the point of existence to be born, to exist and to die?

A Dawkins book I read a long time ago, "The Selfish Gene" gives quite a credible explanation: basically we're just vehicles for perpetuating our genetic code. A bit of an eye opener (and maybe a bit depressing if you had thought that life had some higher purpose), but the argument is the most credible one I've come across. Worth a read.

Phil Fouracre

So is the point of existence to be born, to exist and to die? And how do you feel when your favourite auntie Nellie gets sick and dies?

One, YES! What else is there? Second, very sorry, but, everyone does

Mikey23

@stevo... Yup ta, read it along with many other of his books while I was stil a comfy atheist. I like what he writes but was never quite happy with his reductionist evangelical fervour, which he seems to peddle over and over again like a stuck record. In the end, I started to feel quite sorry for him. And he helped me on an exciting journey of discovery which I will not go into here. Hence my original post!!