Oxymoron

But it has a nice tune It's just about the only hymn I remember singing at infant school. I think the words just washed over me at the time.

I should add to my reasons for rejecting religion (which is a corollary to rejecting God, or is it the other way around?) was that I was sent to Cheder (Jewish Sunday school), and forced to learn (ancient) Hebrew without understanding what I was reading. I rebelled, so I had a bit of a grudge with God anyway for making me read that worthless crap!

doodad

I tend to agree with you on the idea that man does not have to be taught to believe in a god. When you say it's an instinctual concept like survival, yes, it does seem to be a mark of human nature to want to believe in a higher authority. To call it a god is something we are taught but to envision such a being could come from within, unaided by other input.

For those who think one cannot conceive of a god unless being taught consider this situation of my step-daughter. She has hallucinations and delusions that suggest shizophrenia, which is a mental disease. She wasn' taught that there was a man somewhere in the back yard that talks to her or who is bugging her at nite by injecting sounds into the heating ducts with a "dipthong", which is a term she apparently has invented.
In her case it's a matter of mental dysfunction, and there's sufficient evidence of the cause of the malfunction to permit a chemical (drug) treatment of the condition.

How does schizo relate to the human tendency to want to believe in a god? We tend to do what we want to do and believe what we want to believe, either consciously or unconsciously, without being taught per se. All it takes is some kind of motivation, which is a mental drive, so to speak. Am I suggesting that believers are mentally or socially dysfunctional? In general no, but mental illness is a relative condition that runs in severity from slight hangups or personality disorders to the phobias, which can be very damaging.

What's creative genius? Some of the most creative and brilliant scientists and artists of our time have been rather peculiar, to say the least, in the psychological sense. The human mind is a complex and wierd thing and there seems to be a fine line between sanity and insanity at times. It's primarily a matter of opinion based upon consensus of what is normal and what is not.

Most of us do not have all the answers pertaining to our reason for existing, the hereafter, or an absolute truth, which to me is an elusive concept akin to wishful thinking. Maybe we create a god to serve our unmet emotional needs or maybe it's a mere fancy, a product of the imagination. We do seem to have a plentiful amount of creative energy that needs an outlet.

Lack of evidence of God's existence is a common reason for not believing he exists, and that's ok with me. However, let me point out one more time. A believer's faith is not based upon evidence of God's existence, but more on a desire or an emotional need to have such a being. Additionally, the actual existence or not of a
God to a believer doesn't seem to be a big factor. The primary influence resulting from believing in God is the belief itself, not the actual existence of God. It' like the spirit of freedom. It can exert a powerful influence on the oppressed even they have never personally experienced freedom. Again, it's a belief, a concept, am emotional desire to be free from oppression.

We have somewhat the same thing with justice. Justice is a relative term and is somewhat conditioned by the cultural norms of a society. This God thing has the same quality in that people tend to conceive a God that fits their own cultural needs. That's why the Judaic God is viewed as an angry god and the Christian God is viewed as one of compassion. Who knows, maybe the Islamic cultures see their God in even another light.

I had expressed my opinion that the Christian God exists primarily in conceptual form, or as a product of the imagination.
In that sense he does exist, much like virtual memory exists. Most people argue that concepts cannot exist in reality, but one can make the argument that they do. Yes, a concept is not a material thing, and if that is the criteria for something to be real, then a concept does not exist. However, can we deny that a house plan carried in the mind of an architect is not real, does not exist? All he has to do is to draw it out on paper to make a monkey out of the doubters. Frank Lloyd Wright carried the concept of Falling Waters in his head for several months, and finally, in order to be ready for a visit from the client, drew the thing out on paper in just a few hours. Was the concept real? That drawing came from
somewhere in Wright's head so I conclude it was indeed real in the sense that it existed, not in the material sense but in terms of a mental construct. Mr. Wright by the way, was especially gifted with the ability to carry most of the details of a house design in his head before ever picking up a drafting pencil. Yep, old Frank was a bit of a nutcase. Seem to go with genius.

One can say the same thing about God existing in a conceptual form.

Jamie_L

Obviously, people can come up with all kinds of concepts on their own. However, even if I come up with my own concept for something, it's irrational for me to believe it without some proof. Even if people can come up with supernatural concepts (as clearly they can), that doesn't mean the default position is to believe these things.

God is basically a type of hypothesis to explain things. Like any other hyposthesis, it must be validated. To say otherwise is to really make things backwards and render rational belief impossible.

There are many different religious supernatural belief systems. They are all individual hypotheses. If there is not some burden for these beliefs to prove themselves, then how does one decide which one(s) to believe? Each hypothesis must clearly be tested. And what you are comparing it against is the general observation that no supernatural entities appear to exist in every day life.

Jamie

Aerik Von

It's entirely nonsensical and I personally don't believe in anything supernatural as we have yet to prove anything supernatual. I don't believe in things that are simply imagined, so I don't believe in gOD.

Ganymede

Here T-Rex T-Rex T-Rex! Good boy T-Rex! Now SIT! T-Rex SIT! Good Boy! NO! T-Rex don't eat the children. T-Rex DROP! T-Rex... AAARRRGGG

G

JubalsCall

I would have to disagree with you on the "actual existence . . . doesn't seem to be a big factor." Why would anyone knowingly believe in something they knew wasn't there?

Do you or anyone else on the board know anyone who "believes" in God even though that one person doesn't really care if God exists?
Or do you just presume this?

Also I think that many believers' faith are based on evidence.
An atheist and theist for the most part get the same evidence. Then atheist comes to the conculsion there is no God, but the theist comes to the same evidences and desides there is a God.
This isn't true of everyone, but many people look at the evidence at some point in their life and make a descion to either believe or not to believe.

Tibbs

JubalsCall

Just because someone can not prove something, does not mean that the object is not true.

There are many things that no one can explain yet, but faith is believing that what they believe will someday be able to proven.

For the Christian, they believe in God and that they will go to Heaven when they die. It's really hard to prove(may be even impossible), but they have faith that the moment they die, they will be given proof that their beliefs were true. But of course the oppostie could be true, too.

Do you believe in the "Big Bang?" Why? Can you prove it? What if some evidence goes against the "Big Bang"?

Tibbs

Hawkingfan

Yes, but there is not just an absence of evidence. There is an absence of evidence for the existence of God AND its very existence would contradict things I know to be true in everyday reality. The description of god in the bible contradicts known laws of science. It is therefore rational for me to reject the existence of God. The bible is also full of inconsistencies, scientific absurditites, scientifically incorrect information, and atrocoties.
Could you give an example?
Then can you see why I feel that their beliefs are irrational?
Yes, I believe in the big bang.
There are three excellent reasons that exist for believing in the big-bang theory. First, and most obvious, the universe is expanding. Second, the theory predicts that 25 percent of the total mass of the universe should be the helium that formed during the first few minutes, an amount that agrees with observations. Finally, and most convincing, is the presence of the cosmic background radiation. The big-bang theory predicted this remnant radiation, which now glows at a temperature just 3 degrees above absolute zero, well before radio astronomers chanced upon it.

To explain this in more detail--More than anything else, breaking down the light from celestial objects into its constituent colors has helped us understand the universe. A spectrum can tell astronomers what an object is made of, how hot it is, how fast it is moving, and a host of other important attributes. Spectroscopy has revealed the great abundance of hydrogen and helium in the universe—providing observational support for the big-bang theory—and showed the relative amounts of the other elements since cooked up in stars.

Just as important, spectroscopy revealed the expansion of the universe. When an object moves away from us, the lines in its spectrum get displaced toward longer wavelengths, with the amount of this so-called redshift proportional to the object’s velocity. Edwin Hubble first showed that the spectrum of almost every galaxy is shifted to the red, and that the farther away the galaxy, the greater the redshift. From these observations, cosmologists correctly deduced that the universe is expanding.
But one big question that remained was the nature of the fuzzy patches of light known as nebulae.

In 1923 and 1924, Hubble used the largest telescope in the world—the 100-inch Hooker Telescope at Mt. Wilson—to examine the Andromeda Nebula. The Oxford-trained lawyer-turned-astronomer detected for the first time stars similar to those in our own galaxy. By comparing how bright the stars appeared with how much light they actually gave off, he estimated the distance to the nebula as nearly a million light-years, clearly making it a huge galaxy in its own right.

Hubble went on to find the distances to many other galaxies, eventually pushing the frontiers of the universe out to hundreds of millions of light-years. He then compared the distances to the speeds with which the galaxies were racing away, and deduced that the farther away the galaxy, the faster it moved. This relation, known as Hubble’s Law, was observational proof that the universe was expanding. Appropriately, the famed Hubble telescope was named in his honor.

Tiny temperature fluctuations in the otherwise smooth cosmic background radiation represent the gravitational seeds in the early universe around which galaxies and galaxy clusters ultimately formed.

Predicted by George Gamow and his collaborators in the 1940s and detected by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in the 1960s, the cosmic background radiation is the faint echo of the Big Bang. Following the explosive birth of our cosmos, the universe both expanded and cooled off rapidly. After roughly 300,000 years, its temperature had fallen to about 3000 kelvin (5000° Fahrenheit) and a big change was taking place. Before this time, conditions were too hot for atoms to form—protons and electrons each went their separate ways—and photons of light could travel only short distances before interacting with the free electrons. It was as if the universe existed in a thick fog that kept light from penetrating.

But when the temperature reached 3000 kelvin, atomic nuclei finally captured electrons and formed stable atoms. Photons were then able to travel unimpeded—the fog lifted—and the universe became transparent to light. It’s that light we see as the background radiation, coming at us from all directions. However, in the 10 billion or more years since the Big Bang, the universe has expanded by a factor of a thousand, causing the temperature of the radiation to fall by the same amount. It now glows at just 3 kelvin (3° Celsius above absolute zero) in the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum, a faint reminder of our universe’s hot start. The background appears very smooth, varying by only one part in 100,000 across the sky.

The cosmic background radiation has a temperature of about 3 kelvins, or 3° Celsius above absolute zero. At this temperature, the radiation’s peak intensity occurs at a wavelength of about 1 millimeter, in the radio region of the electromagnetic spectrum, and can be picked up with a sensitive receiver.

It is always possible for a theory to be wrong. However, this means that we must come up with a better one, rather than just complaining!
For example, there are literally hundreds of data points which fit the Big Bang theory precisely, so we have confidence in the theory (e.g. nucleosynthesis of elements, red shifts of galaxies, microwave background radiation).
It's a free country, so anyone can voice their aesthetic displeasure at the Big Bang theory, but not everyone can come up with a rival theory which explains these hundreds of data points! It's easy to criticize: it's much, much harder to come up with a better theory.

DarkBronzePlant

Oh, I know lots of people have a psychological need for a "god", or some higher power, or at least some explanation for what makes things tick. However, and you may disagree, but I find it highly unlike that people are born with the belief that there is something we call "God" living in the heavens, who created the earth 6000 years ago, split the waters, mounted the earth on pillars, sent his son/himself to be killed for the sins of his creation, will return when the moon turns red, etc...
I think there are plenty of ways of knowing, if we really wanted to research it.
That I agree with, as long as "God" = "something more out there than what we can see"
No, I think it supports the atheist position.

JubalsCall

What things to do you today that directly go against God? And how does the Bible contradict science?
Finally, What "scientific absurditites, scientifically incorrect information, and atrocoties" are in the Bible?

I can't think of one off the top of my head, but if I think of one I'll tell you. But do you think you can explain everything yet? That is a much harder question to answer.

I'm not complaining. I'm trying to show how their has to still be a belief in the Big Bang. What about the second law of thermodynamics? If the universe is slowly leading to disorder, then when did the universe change from --Chaos to Order-- to --Order to Chaos--? Because if the Big Bang theory is true then their must have first been Chaos then Order, but now in our universe there is Order which is leading slowly to Chaos.

Tibbs