Fair enough. I'll just leave the same invite as I leave to all the people of this forum. If you are searching for the existence of God, I'm always willing to share what I have. But I would hope you wouldn't close the case on the existence so quickly. If you do then you no longer will be able to accept the proof when it comes. I'm sure in your 11 years study of the Bible, you came across the Pharasees of the Gospels who were so set in their belief of what the messiah was they didn't realize it when he actually came. Even if you don't believe in the truth of the Bible there is a lesson to be learned form their mistake. Hopefully you will keep your mind open to what the bible says, and when you feel like putting the bible to the test it will be there waiting.

you just stated the differance between the jew and the christians. the jews r still waiting for the "messiah" (its a hebrew word btw, "savior") and the christians believe he already came.
i believe its junk in tomato juice. i dont search the existance of god, because i can live without him. you cant. i understand that, so u should understand me.

the best security guard, EVER.

I'm not trying to goad you into a fight, or force you to change your beliefs. My point in bringing up the pharasees is not to point out the difference between jews and christians. Even in this conversation you got to look at the context. The context of my response was not to close the case on the existence of God so quickly. I used the situation of the Pharasees and the Christ to exemplify the point when you close your mind you are unable to understand or learn. That's all I meant by bringing that up. I think you would agree with me, that when you close your mind to new ideas it will be impossible to learn or understand anything.

yeah i agree with that. soooooo... is your mind open to accept the idea of no god or goal and meaning to our life? if god will come out and show himself to me, perform some miracles that i would see with my own eyes, things that r truly supernatural- haleluya! god exist. i am not just a grain of sand in the shores of life, and when i die ill go to a really really warm place where i could be my little devilish self.
but guess what- i havent met god, and i do not believe in what i do not see, so im just being my little devilish self on earth, filming my documentries, and live the mment without waiting for the after life.

ps : Drunkdecoy- i really am 17, im just mature to my age. 😛 1.5 months till the end of the summer and im one of the seniors in my high-school. in my path my rank will be above any law, the juniors shall bow before me, muahahahahaha 😀 😀

the best security guard, EVER.

Hmm... I want to bring up another point with believing in God.

I've often thought of this before, but I never knew it had a name:

The anthropic principle: if our solar system really were the only one in the universe, this is precisely where we, as beings who think about such matters, would have to be living.

haha... taken from The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Aahhh... I love this book so far. Quite a few arguments that I haven't thought of myself. Hehehe... it's the first book about religion from an atheist's point of view that I've read. Though I'm only on page 70, I highly recommend it. I like what I'm reading so far. Tons of stuff makes sense.

-Max

My views on God:
I can't believe that the universe came to be from nothing. Science has yet to prove how you can get something from nothing (a scientific nothing were there are not particles, atoms or anythinge that indeed some higher being did create the universe. However, I don't believe that there is some omnipotent being out there listening to and answering our prayers. Even if their is, when you look at all the evil in the world you have to say that the god either doesn't care about us or is sadistic and enjoys watching our suffering. He's totally impartial and is something like Ryuk from Death Note: he's given us weapons (in the form of intellect) and is just sitting back and watching the show, enjoying seeing what crazy situation we get ourselves into. A being like that may be all powerful but it certainly isn't worth worshiping.

My views on religion:
I think that religion is nothing more than a basic set of rules for civilized creatures. When you boil all the mysticism away from religion, all of them basically are just, "don't kill, don't steal, etc." You need these rules for a civil society to work and prosper and I feel that religion was created partly for that reason.

Another reason is that humans feels the need to classify things. Even if we don't understand it or can't comprehend it, we like to classify it. Religion and its mysticism provides a convient way for classifying everything that we can't grasp with out current technology/science. The heavens were once regarded as holy and the sun was seen as a good by early civilizations. However, as science evolved and our understanding of the heavens evolved, they moved away from being considered religious and were put into a new field called astronomy. Life was once considered to be an act of god but as we understand it more and we're slowly moving it into a science called biology and genetics. I think that in a hundred or so years, kids will read history books and will laugh at all the fuss made about stem cells... similar to how we laugh and are puzzled by the guy who killed for suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun.

Now, I don't think religion is an inherently bad thing. Like I said earlier, it does create a basic rule set that is necessary and for those who need it, it creates incentives to following those rules: the materialistic people will get streets pathed with gold, the nympho's will get 40 virgins, the sit-around-the-house-all-day crowd will get a nirvana where they can chill and do nothing all day, etc, etc.

I feel that religion gets misused when people stop thinking for themselves and put more emphasis on the mysticism and storytelling (which really in my opinion is little more than parables and fables) that surround the rules rather than the rules themself. When people allow one person to selectively interpret the book and they don't question it solely because, "well its the xxxxxxx, and you're not supposed to question it cuz in xxxxxxx it says not to question it" they can be easily duped into doing whether that interpreter wants them to do. Thats not religion's fault but moreso the fault of the user. Its like a Death Note. The book itself (religion) isn't inherently bad, but it can be used for evil or good... it just depends on who happens to pick it up.

sickvisionz.tumblr.com

whoaaaaaaaa.... you write almost as much as me and zubz...
well, about the "what the universe came from" thingy, i think your way of thinking is a little bit uhmmm... how to say.. well dont get offended, SQUARE.
on earth we tend to think in phrazes like "time" or "beggining" or "end". problem is. we live in a teeny tiny itsee bitsee chibi-planet-chan. on our planet we live inside spaces, that have borders. everything has a beggining and everything has an end. but in reality... there is no such thing. thing do not have a beggining, and they definately have no end. when the sunll explode- its chunks will still be out there in space. problem is- we wont see it, because r bodies will already be plant food. aka- no brain function.
so we can go back to the big kaboom, we can go back to the begining of this chibi earth, we can go back to when our galaxy was formed, and we can go back forever, bcuz things have no start. and 99.99999999999999999% of humanity cannot accept it. personally, i get dizzy and immidiately start thinking of something else when the idea get into my head, as part of my brain's security sistem.
live the moment. there is no start, there is no end, and you might get dizzy and faint if you think about it too much.

the best security guard, EVER.

Quote from DeLtA_IjK

Hmm... I want to bring up another point with believing in God.

I've often thought of this before, but I never knew it had a name:

The anthropic principle: if our solar system really were the only one in the universe, this is precisely where we, as beings who think about such matters, would have to be living.

haha... taken from The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Aahhh... I love this book so far. Quite a few arguments that I haven't thought of myself. Hehehe... it's the first book about religion from an atheist's point of view that I've read. Though I'm only on page 70, I highly recommend it. I like what I'm reading so far. Tons of stuff makes sense.

GASP. That was the first "atheist" book I read, too~

Just beware of the last chapter. It kinda brings in quantum theory (if I recall correctly), and it kinda killed my brain. Then again, it could just be my unbalanced knowledge of science, but meh.

If you're interested in any other books from such a point of view, I can give you a few titles to look into. ^^

Hahah ObscureOmen, I'd love it if you were to recommend a few other books to me.

I've read too much religion from the perspective of Christians (i.e. I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, The Case for a Creator, The Case for Faith, etc.)... so I need some religious arguments from the atheist's perspective to gain more insight.

Oh and Mr. SickVisionz, I think you're more of a deist? Hahah... in the book that I've read, it classified people into 7 categories:

1. Strong Theist
2. De facto Theist
3. Agnostic leaning towards theism
4. Completely impartial agnostic
5. Agnostic leaning towards atheism
6. De facto Atheist
7. Strong Atheist

It seems like you might be more of a 2-3-4 person.

Haha... I'm clearly a 6, leaning toward 7. :]

-Max

Ah, then we can trade book titles! ^^; I hadn't been interested in reading any nonfiction before The God Delusion came out, and I've only really read books from the point of view of an atheist so far. So it would be awesome if you could recommend some books from the point of view of a Christian. ^^

I've divided the books on atheism in two categories:

1. Books based on science,

and

2. Books based on morality/statistics.

In the first category are only two books: God: The Failed Hypothesis by Victor J. Stenger. As a warning, though, he's a physicist, so the book's rather heavy on science. (XD I still have to finish it, actually... has about ten books that are half-read) The other book is much more user-friendly, and it is Atheist Universe by David Mills.

In the second category are books by Michael Onfray, Christopher Hutchins, and Sam Harris: The Atheist Manifesto (warning: is translated from French, so it might be worded strangly), God is Not Great, and The End of Faith. I dunno if Letter to a Christian Nation would be considered in this category, since its purpose is to point out that the United States is NOT a Christian nation (it still has interesting information on morality).

As for which I recommend the most, that'd probably be Atheist Universe.

And, while this title may not be written by an atheist, I think the subject is interesting enough to allow it to be listed: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman.

How about the Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel from the POV of an Atheist turned Christian?

Quote from Zubz313

How about the Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel from the POV of an Atheist turned Christian?

Ah, I think my mom's friend gave her that book to read once. >< Too bad we don't have it anymore. But thanks for the suggestion. Once I get my funds back to their normal levels (stupid Otakon's gonna steal all my money), I'll be sure to get ahold of it. ^^

ObscureOmen, whoa, thanks a bunch for the book titles! I read in The God Delusion about some books that he highly recommends also. I think I'll try for Atheist Universe when I get the chance!

Hahah, so remember the part in The God Delusion where Dawkins was bashing on Behe? I think it'd be a nice, short read for ya if you haven't read Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe. Reading the book was really enjoyable for me (and it was only 5$ paperback!). But as you already know, a lot of the arguments from there were kinda disproved already, but I think that it's a really good thing that religion is there to sorta... motivate science.

I wrote a paper over Darwin's Black Box a few years back, and basically said that, wow, I don't have any answer to these questions he poses. O_O; Maybe they really are irreducibly complex, but because creationists point out these holes in science, it's up to the scientists to find answers to respond to creationists' questions. Thus, it drives understanding and knowledge even further. So! It's a great thing what creationists are doing.

Hahah... kinda a really, really nicer way of saying it than Dawkins puts it: creationists find gaps where science hasn't explained and wallow in ignorance while scientists find gaps to motivate them to understand it.

XD Richard Dawkins probably makes enemies on a daily basis by saying stuff so harshly. Ahahaha. :]

-Max

Gasp. I don't think that I've seen a five-dollar book in a looong time. >< They're so expensive now...

Does Behe mention the evolution of reproduction? I haven't found any book mentioning how it evolved, and it seems to me that creationists would enjoy it as a debating point. And I agree with what you said: creationism is definitely spurring further research into the evolutionary theory, especially involving the alledged irreducible complexities. I don't even want to think about how much research it takes for a scientist to prove an irreducible complexity as false...

I bet he does. (I can't imagine how much hate mail he's gotten in response to The God Delusion...) Especially when he goes around saying that atheists should be called "brights." ._.; Christopher Hitchens does not see Dawkins in the best light, I must say.

just as a side note, i was checking up christian critisism of Harry Potter on wikipedia today, great fun. Of course only a very small faction of chrisitians seem to even care about the whole debate and are smart enough to let common sense rule, and that the best seller of the century get critism from all sorts of people is also standard. But its still great fun.