Church

rick_chasey

No concrete evidence there isn't a god?

Rather like trying to prove you don't dope, proving an absence of something is quite tricky.

There are plenty of things in the bible that have been proven wrong (like the age of the earth) and furthermore plenty of stories which defy physics and biology (like talking bushes and virgin pregnancies) so I'd be sceptical of the rest of the content too....

bianchimoon

Singleton wrote:

bianchimoon wrote:

Why do religious people take offence when you question their faith? I've never known an atheist get upset when you question his thinking, in fact they positively thrive on it.

I'd suggest you objectively weigh up the previous 8 pages and then re-evaluate your statement.

You are living in a fantasy world if you think I'm going to read all that shoot again... oh

singleton

bianchimoon wrote:

You are living in a fantasy world if you think I'm going to read all that shoot again... oh

peterbob

bompington wrote:

'fraid I'm not going to get involved here because, like Singleton has said, this isn't really a great place to try and convince everyone.

I'll just make a couple of observations.

Firstly: after trawling through the whole thread, I've found a lot of contempt and disdain (verging on outright hatred) from people who say that Christians are a hateful bunch, a lot of outrage at what this God that people don't believe in is like, and a lot of claims that belief in God (or any supernatural beings) is equivalent to the tooth fairy.

What I haven't seen is any concrete evidence for the non-existence of God. Now of course you can turn that round and say that it's up to the religious nutcases to provide concrete evidence of his existence, and you'd have a perfectly valid point: but still, it works both ways.

Personally I am a Christian because I am convinced that there is pretty unarguable historical evidence. Evidence that there was a man called Jesus, that he did indeed claim to be the son of God, that he was crucified and thoroughly dead, and that after a few days no-one could find his body.
Some claimed he was alive again - and in fact, the vast majority of evidence points to that.
So why don't people believe it?
Because it's stupid to believe that people rise from the dead, of course!
Why's it stupid?
Because no-one ever has!
but Jesus did.
No he didn't!
How do you know he didn't?
Because no-one ever has.
But what about Jesus...
... it's basically a circular argument. If you start off from a point of view that God does not exist, then of course you'll wind up proving that he doesn't exist. And it's the same the other way - if you assume that God does exist, then there is absolutely nothing inconsistent or illogical in Christian beliefs.
You can't really argue with someone who's died and come back to life, can you? On the other hand (and it says exactly this in the bible - written by a guy named Paul, who was almost certainly a lot more intelligent than most of us) if he didn't, it's all a load of tripe and Christians are the most laughable bunch on the planet.

In the end (there's a clue in the abuse heaped on the church) I strongly suspect that neither Richard Dawkins, Billy Graham, you or me have made up our minds solely on the evidence. In the end, we go with what we want to believe.

That said, I have to take issue with the tired old trope that's come up a few times about how religion is responsible for all of mankind's ills, and "what have the Christians ever done for us anyway?"

For a start, there is a fair bit of truth in it. The Christian church, like all religions, has attracted a lot of people interested in power over the years: whether the petty power that the local priest can exercise, or the whole political game.
Personally I think it went a bit pear-shaped in about 200AD when it started to transform from an underground movement that utterly reshaped the Roman empire from the ground up to an institution that felt obliged to get involved in politics. It's not far from that to the Inquisition.

But even with that, almost everything in western culture - hospitals, universities, the abolition of slavery, the enlightenment - is largely down to Christian thinking. The whole concept of charity is a Christian idea.
If you actually stick to what Jesus (and his disciples after him) taught, Christianity is radically unlike any other movement. Which is one place where it differs from, for example, Islam. Islam borrowed some pretty good social stuff from Christianity and Judaism, but you'll not hear Jesus saying anything about slaughtering unbelievers.

Weighed against the achievements of atheism - the Gulags, the gas chambers, not to mention the utterly horrific consequences if we all start living like we mean it when we say that life has no meaning and there is no absolute morality - I'd be happy to stick with the church (I'm in a branch of it that, shall we say, doesn't look much like the Catholic church) even if I didn't believe in God.

I guess that must be the conclusion most Anglicans have come to, anyway.

I'm not sure many people have considered what the science definition of proof is give how the words evidence and proof are thrown about. Its pretty hard to convincingly argue against this definition using logic.
There is plenty of observable concrete evidence that can demonstrate and explain why the the world wasn't made by god 6000 years ago, microwave background radiation, expansion redshift, geology, fossils and dna frequencies/replication to name a few, you simply have to go out and read it armed with a good definition of proof to decide what is 'concrete' or likely, you can fabricate your own definition of course and conclude anything that grabs you.
I do live like I mean there is no absolute morality or plan, weather I am a nice person or not is down to me. Whatever happened to trying to be good for the sake of it and not for the purpose of avoiding punishment, this saddens me.

metronome

peterbob wrote:

bompington wrote:

'fraid I'm not going to get involved here because, like Singleton has said, this isn't really a great place to try and convince everyone.

I'll just make a couple of observations.

Firstly: after trawling through the whole thread, I've found a lot of contempt and disdain (verging on outright hatred) from people who say that Christians are a hateful bunch, a lot of outrage at what this God that people don't believe in is like, and a lot of claims that belief in God (or any supernatural beings) is equivalent to the tooth fairy.

What I haven't seen is any concrete evidence for the non-existence of God. Now of course you can turn that round and say that it's up to the religious nutcases to provide concrete evidence of his existence, and you'd have a perfectly valid point: but still, it works both ways.

Personally I am a Christian because I am convinced that there is pretty unarguable historical evidence. Evidence that there was a man called Jesus, that he did indeed claim to be the son of God, that he was crucified and thoroughly dead, and that after a few days no-one could find his body.
Some claimed he was alive again - and in fact, the vast majority of evidence points to that.
So why don't people believe it?
Because it's stupid to believe that people rise from the dead, of course!
Why's it stupid?
Because no-one ever has!
but Jesus did.
No he didn't!
How do you know he didn't?
Because no-one ever has.
But what about Jesus...
... it's basically a circular argument. If you start off from a point of view that God does not exist, then of course you'll wind up proving that he doesn't exist. And it's the same the other way - if you assume that God does exist, then there is absolutely nothing inconsistent or illogical in Christian beliefs.
You can't really argue with someone who's died and come back to life, can you? On the other hand (and it says exactly this in the bible - written by a guy named Paul, who was almost certainly a lot more intelligent than most of us) if he didn't, it's all a load of tripe and Christians are the most laughable bunch on the planet.

In the end (there's a clue in the abuse heaped on the church) I strongly suspect that neither Richard Dawkins, Billy Graham, you or me have made up our minds solely on the evidence. In the end, we go with what we want to believe.

That said, I have to take issue with the tired old trope that's come up a few times about how religion is responsible for all of mankind's ills, and "what have the Christians ever done for us anyway?"

For a start, there is a fair bit of truth in it. The Christian church, like all religions, has attracted a lot of people interested in power over the years: whether the petty power that the local priest can exercise, or the whole political game.
Personally I think it went a bit pear-shaped in about 200AD when it started to transform from an underground movement that utterly reshaped the Roman empire from the ground up to an institution that felt obliged to get involved in politics. It's not far from that to the Inquisition.

But even with that, almost everything in western culture - hospitals, universities, the abolition of slavery, the enlightenment - is largely down to Christian thinking. The whole concept of charity is a Christian idea.
If you actually stick to what Jesus (and his disciples after him) taught, Christianity is radically unlike any other movement. Which is one place where it differs from, for example, Islam. Islam borrowed some pretty good social stuff from Christianity and Judaism, but you'll not hear Jesus saying anything about slaughtering unbelievers.

Weighed against the achievements of atheism - the Gulags, the gas chambers, not to mention the utterly horrific consequences if we all start living like we mean it when we say that life has no meaning and there is no absolute morality - I'd be happy to stick with the church (I'm in a branch of it that, shall we say, doesn't look much like the Catholic church) even if I didn't believe in God.

I guess that must be the conclusion most Anglicans have come to, anyway.

I'm not sure many people have considered what the science definition of proof is give how the words evidence and proof are thrown about. Its pretty hard to convincingly argue against this definition using logic.
There is plenty of observable concrete evidence that can demonstrate and explain why the the world wasn't made by god 6000 years ago, microwave background radiation, expansion redshift, geology, fossils and dna frequencies/replication to name a few, you simply have to go out and read it armed with a good definition of proof to decide what is 'concrete' or likely, you can fabricate your own definition of course and conclude anything that grabs you.
I do live like I mean there is no absolute morality or plan, weather I am a nice person or not is down to me. Whatever happened to trying to be good for the sake of it and not for the purpose of avoiding punishment, this saddens me.

Or to sum up this nonsense -- you read it with blind faith

tangled_metal

Someone linked atheism with among several things the gas chambers. AFAIK Germany was a country with.a high proportion of Catholics. IIRC some of the big names involved in the final solution were Christians not atheists. There's evil among the followers of religion as much as atheists. Attributing the gulags and gas chambers to atheists or religious types takes away responsibility from the individuals and groups actually doing it.

For gulags I counter gas chambers, the Spanish inquisition and the crusades. I then counter that with the treatment of Christians by the Romans (practitioners of an earlier religion) or the hounding of druids on Anglesey by Romans effectively destroying a religion/culture completely.

tangled_metal

Someone linked atheism with among several things the gas chambers. AFAIK Germany was a country with.a high proportion of Catholics. IIRC some of the big names involved in the final solution were Christians not atheists. There's evil among the followers of religion as much as atheists. Attributing the gulags and gas chambers to atheists or religious types takes away responsibility from the individuals and groups actually doing it.

For gulags I counter gas chambers, the Spanish inquisition and the crusades. I then counter that with the treatment of Christians by the Romans (practitioners of an earlier religion) or the hounding of druids on Anglesey by Romans effectively destroying a religion/culture completely.

finchy

The Nazis weren't atheists.

Siberian forced labour camps predate the Soviet Union by 2 or 3 centuries.

Charity predates Christianity by a couple of millenia.

I'm a secularist. I believe that anyone should have the right to worship whatever god(s) they please, as long as their practices aren't forced on others or harm other people (or animals), and for me religion doesn't make you a better or worse person. I've met religious types and atheists doing charity work, I've met violent religious types (they always managed to justify their actions) and violent atheists. There is no point trying to justify our beliefs with "religion does (insert good/bad thing here), atheism does (insert bad/good thing here)". Those arguments never end up going anywhere, because at the end of the day, religious people and atheists are all human beings, with the capacity to do good or to harm others, so there will be examples from both sides of carrying out virtuous acts and evil acts. It's better just to ensure that any criticism of other people's beliefs is constructive (and yes, even mockery can be constructive - see Life of Brian, for example).

peterbob

The computers we are typing on didn't come about by processes of what people wanted to believe, if we want such technology to work it has to be based on what is known.