Religion (in general) Debate.

So i decided to bring this up (probally again) clean slate and what have you.  Anyhow, as stated in the title lets have a bit of a debate about religion as a whole, no directed point on this but lets just see how it slowly evolves (no pun intended).  Such things to go on about would be: Morality of religion, Proof or lack there of of God, Faith vs Logic, Fate vs Reality, and so on.  Just a few rules

1) Dont say anything dumb.  Dumb as in "You dont believe the way i do YOU ARE AN IDIOT!" just comments directed to get a rise out of one side or the other.  I dont mind a witty comment, just not a stupid one.

2) No personal attacks

3) Bring in your own arguments, what i mean by that is, dont come in and just post a link to some site.  However if a site does influence your belief/support it by all means post a slink to which part helps support your argument after you have made your argument.

4) No trying to convert one way or the other, just present the argument and well if you are good at it maybe you might open someones eyes or save someones soul.

5) i would ask that any stupid comment be deleted by a mod, rather then the thread locked.

I will come out and say i am agnostic.  I will play the middle ground here, i will argue both sides, if one side makes a bad point i will try to break it.  Anyways i dont think there is a person on this forum that can even come close to getting anywhere near proving or disproving God's existance, or even debunking my argument(s).  So ill leave this up for awhile see if i get a bite, if not, well i guess ill have to start, but lets see if any of you are passionate enough to kick this off.

**edited in #5**

I'm also agnostic. Been to buddhist temples and churches but they just didn't feel.. right.

Just wanted to mention that it is strategically smarter to believe in god because if there wasn't god, well, you are good. If there was god, and you didn't believe him, well you are straight going down to hell (or w/e punishment). I read that somewhere and that just made me lol. That wouldn't be the best reason for believing in a god, but that sure is a funny reason to.

-Lemon Jello

Personally i never bought that idea really.  So say God does exist.  And say i am religious for the sole reason of "Well i have all to gain and nothing to lose."  So  i die and im standing then at the gates of heaven, God presents him self, and i say "Hey i beleived in you all the time my man, i wasnt like them" youd think God being... well a god, could see through the idea of only being religious because i wanted to save myself some pain, and get out of hell.   Id imagine if God is real hed be able to tell who truly beleived in whatever religion vs whoever believed just to get out of hell.

I have to go to work in a minute, so this is just a little opening post. I will get more into my views later.

Giggle: I know you have strong views based on philosophy, I do not know much in this area, but will look more into it, so if I do not know how to answer a question you put to me, please don't take that as my defeat, I just don't want to ramble out some silly reply that only half makes sense.

I am atheist. But it is more the god in the bible that I disagree with. The contradictions and evil in the bible (and I admit it is mainly the old testament) have lead me to believe that is this god is real, then I definitely do not want to be in any heaven he provided.

A part of why I believe this:

God kills 70,000 innocent people because David ordered a census of the people (1 Chronicles 21).  God also orders the destruction of 60 cities so that the Israelites can live there.  He orders the killing of all the men, women, and children of each city, and the looting of all of value (Deuteronomy 3).  He orders another attack and the killing of ?all the living creatures of the city: men and women, young, and old, as well as oxen sheep, and asses? (Joshua 6).

Now I have to go to work. Bye de bye

okay, i'll step in.  atheist here.  and the problem with a discussion like this one is that people who believe in god by definition don't need or want proof.  that's what "faith" is.

PS I always thought agnostics were a bit unlucky here... If there is a god, they haven't devoted their lives enough to him, so they will be going to hell anyway (it takes more then a lil belief to keep you from that place). If there isn't a god, then there was time wasted in having a little bit of worry there might be.

Actually, what is worse is if you are a devoted Christian all your life, you die and then found out that Catholics had it right the whole time. For that little mistake you are damned forever. lol, now that would suck

God does worse than that, in the old testament (not sure if it made it to new) he Kills a pregnant woman, for more or less living in a sinful city, she was other wise innocent.  But take the Old Testament God, the one that was taking names and really laying it on people.  Say that is the "true" god of all humanity.  So you would not want to have any part of such a thing (the religion) or any part of the being responsible (God),  you dont want to be apart of his heaven.  That is noble i will give you that, but if God tests humanity in such brutal ways in a "neutral ground" (earth), imagine Hell.   So while this doesnt counter any point you made more or less just something to think on, youd fear what his heaven could be like, but wouldnt hell then be so much more unimaginably brutal?

i dont think there is a person on this forum that can even come close to getting anywhere near proving or disproving God's existance

Of course not.  The existence of god is a philosophical question, not a scientific one.  Trying to prove god through science went out with the Rationalists.  I agree with pgeorgian that this is what makes it a matter of "faith" rather than "proof."

on the agnostics being unlucky.

Well i dont worry about the existance of a god at all.  I simply have no proof one way or the other and wont place my feet firmly one way or the other.  So lets say  i die, and say God is real, i step up to the gate of heaven and hes like, "So uhh... what happened down there, just didnt feel like believeing?"  i would say, "I felt no strong pull from either side, i saw no evidence either abstract or physical to prove one way or the other.  Had i chosen to be religious when in fact i had no feeling for it, i would have sold my intergrety, i would have been lying." and that is all that would be said :P.   If God is real, there is no way to outsmart him, or trick him, he will know who holds a true belief out of compasion and truth, who holds a belief out of Fear and chance...  so ya more or less i at least wont lie to God in the end and thats why i believe strongly what i believe in, nothing.

So you two would agree that Faith is totally based on the lack of solid truth?

no, i don't think i'd say that.  i think faith is a choice.  it's making a choice--conscious or not--to believe, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

Evidence how?

evidence of evolution.  evidence that the earth is several billion years old, not a few thousand. 

faith--or at least christian faith--has made a few attempts to adapt to the evidence.  you know - all those evolutionary creationists trying to have it both ways.  but when you get right down to it, if you're going to choose to believe in a god, you have to ignore a lot of other stuff. 

how can you look at millions of AIDS orphans in africa and believe that it's part of gods plan?  (well, maybe the OT god, but like you said, puppy, even 2000 years ago, that guy wasn't popular enough to maintain a following.  they had to find a way to spin the whole thing and bring the nice guy into the mix.)

actualyl there are a few reason what Jesus and what he preached caught on, it really wasnt spun all that much.

First off he (jesus) never swayed (that we know of) from his beleifs, he died for them and endurded absolute hell on earth for a while.  So he was either one very smart and manipulative man playing a well thought out game and just got in over his head, or he really beleived what he was saying, either way after becoming a martyr a lot of people took ahold of the belief after a man was so willing to die.

Fast Forward the roman emprie is seeing a huge increase in christians, the emporer (forget the name sorry i will find it if needed) at the time decides to punish all who are christian.  He rounds some up tars and feathers them, beats others, tourtures some and all the time sayign if you give up your beleifs you can go home to your familes, no one really swayed.  The emporer then made a spectical of it and in an arena released lions onto christans tied to pulls to be devoured alive and spoke out to the audiance something along the lines of, "Just renounce your faith and you are free."  and none of them did.  A complete back fire.

That just got things started though.

So onto what you said.  There is a lot of scientific evidence that shows religion to be false, or i should say whats writen in the bible.  now i will agree with you anyone who will blindly accept one side or the other without looking for falsities in their own arguments are ignorant (they are on both sides).  So before i tackel this one (coz it is actually going to be hard) you feel that Faith comes into play when there is some evidence showing that any belief other wise should be considered wrong (not in the idea of morality but truth or false)?

As for the kids in africa, a lot of the existance of those children are the rich worlds doing, supporting something that has tried to die many times over.  But how could God let kids die?  Well i dont think of God if he were to exist like one would think of him in the bible, but rather like a parent with a young child.  The parent wants to give the child the world, but some things the child just cant have and at that point the child says "Its unfair! YOU ARE MEAN (cruel)" And the parent calmly says, "One day you will understand."

Lysis curious, what do you believe?

I think that faith being the absence of truth is a little strong.  To me, science is one way of looking at things, faith is the other.  In science, everything that we know is verifiable.  There is no question.  In faith, we take a "leap" from things that we know to things that we don't.  I think it's common to take a lot of things "on faith" besides the existence of god and it's not a complete fiction, it's just a way of filling in the gaps in our knowledge.

Despite everything science has taught us, it has not provided an explanation for the origination of life.  That is a gap in our knowledge.  Some people fill that gap by concluding, "God created us."  I am ok with saying, "I don't know where life came from, but maybe someday we will have a scientific explanation."

There is always question in science, science has changed its mind a couple times, religion has too.  But science is the pursuit of "facts" so its good that it can change its mind when it sees a new truth, but nothing in science is ever definate or what most accept fact to be defined as, there is always room for failure, nothing has ever been proven to be totally true.

well, yeah, but science requires another kind of faith, doesn't it?  because--let's face it--evidence is subjective.  i'm not a scientist, but i choose to have faith in science - not all science, by any stretch, but in general.

edited to add that i was responding to lys.  puppy, you're too fast.

It is true that science can change the facts.  The "faith" that science is based on is the idea that if many different people can observe the same phenomenon, that phenomenon is probably "true."  Some people might reject this assumption on the grounds that "truth" supercedes human observation.  Again, it's a choice between philosophies ... the philosophy of science just makes a lot more sense to me than the philosophy of religion.

"Nothing has ever been proven to be totally true."  Nothing?  Not e=mc2?  Not the laws of thermodynamics?  If these things are not "true," then how much proof would you require?

There is a God and there is a devil and I have proof:

Chocolate and calories!

The speed of light is a theory, well in most senses of it.   I will be honest and admit i know nothing of thermodynamics so  i wont pretend to.  So let me take something simple that i used last night,  prove to me that you exist, you must be real, right?