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[RAM]

Just so long as the spaghetti monster isn't a creepy stalker sort of god. Remember, if you ever find spaghetti stains on something and can't figure out where it came from, ...

An all-powerful creator need not be all knowing. just because you have the ability to calculate any every outcome doesn't mean that you necessarily need to use it.

To take the sim city example, the christian god created the map, placed all the terrain, set all the functions of the various buildings and so forth, and then set the thing running. It also knows everything that happens everywhere in the simulation(this is necessary for it to properly manage the afterlife). that god built the original city and then left the game to run. It chooses not to interfere and didn't make any plans when setting stuff up, it just put everything together so it all worked. This is about the only way that the christian god can work, and it doesn't sound like a benevolent father, it sounds more like a bored DF player that can't even bother to make poorly labelled levers anymore...

[G-Flex]

The problem is that if you take the element of direct interference away, it's not the Christian God anymore, since it would contradict a rather big lot of stuff in the Bible and other Christian dogma, where it exists. It would be more of a Deist thing, or something like that.

[Neruz]

Furthermore, a God that doesn't interfere is pretty much irrelevant.

[RAM]

Well, the idea is that it interferes after you die, and it can still lob the occasional pillar of salt around, it just can't predict the whole of existence at its inception.

[MrWiggles]

Well, the idea is that it interferes after you die, and it can still lob the occasional pillar of salt around, it just can't predict the whole of existence at its inception.

Well now you added the burden of an afterlife to the god the claim.

There physical evidence we rot and don't go anywhere.

[Neruz]

Well, the idea is that it interferes after you die, and it can still lob the occasional pillar of salt around, it just can't predict the whole of existence at its inception.

You've got to prove that afterlife exists remember.

[RAM]

...

Fine, if you want to play it that way...


The idea of an afterlife is fairly universal, even among independent cultures, spiritual pursuits exist in a wide array of forms that do not require deities and reports of ghosts, communion with dead relatives, and experiences from people who have almost died are amongst the most common of unexplained phenomena. And, of course, the moral and personal implications of conducting controlled experiments makes research into the matter all but impossible. There is certainly evidence enough to warrant further investigation...

[Neruz]

It's certainly enough to warrent investigation, but it's not enough to definitively say an afterlife exists.

Certainly i'd be most interested to see the brainwaves and electrical activity of somone going through a near-death experience who then claims to have had some sort of wierd experience. That would be an extremely interesting record indeed.


Of course, in order to really prove an afterlife, you first need to prove a soul. The soul is pretty much the starting point for religion, afterlives and the supernatural in general; prove that the soul exists and you're not far away from proving that an afterlife exists. Prove one of those exists and a creator comes right behind it.

[Maric]

Now define soul  .

[Sergius]

This is far from being outside human understanding

In which case he's not Benevolent, you cannot apply a human characteristic to a nonhuman entity. Especially one so alien as to be beyond understanding.

Well, we don't know if he's benevolent by our standards, but he did say that he is all benevolent, so it must be true. It's just that Benevolent in alien-God tongue means "loves penis-snatching".

Spoiler'd for aside to Neruz:

Neruz: Re-read your post again. And again. And again. Every time I do, I see less and less countering, substituting "But I disagree" for an actual debate with laid out points.

Maybe if you re-read it a few hundred more times it will vanish entirely and you'll win at the internets! 

For the purpose of this arguement, God, or gods are supernatural entities that had a hand in creation. To disprove a god's existence, all you hve to do is take a look at creation myths, and compare them to solid scientific evidence. The resoning here, is that, if they are wrong, then even if those entities DO exist, they haven't created us, and are therefore, not gods since they violate the definition.

Gah, I know it's a bad idea to post here, but I'd just like to point out that the scientific evidence thing only proves that the book of Genesis cannot be taken literally, if it even contains any truth at all.

(emphasis mine)

So? What about the rest of the books? Are they automatically true? Must they also be proven not to be literal? You start with the assumption that they're literal until some evidence proves that it cannot be so. As far as I'm concerned, NONE of that book is literal or true unless some evidence for its literal-ness is presented. Not the other way around.

I suppose SOME of that book is true, because Egyptians did build pyramids after all. Physical evidence showing that indeed, there were pyramids. And they were pointy, or something. And houses had doors, proves that it is indeed possible that people used blood to paint something over said doors. But not that it actually happened or that it did anything.

[Areyar]

It is difficult enough to prove intelligence in humans, let alone souls.
 
With souls defined as a collection of paradigms, models, values and preferences making up a human personality. (Souls are often defined as something more ephemeral, but then how do you explain belief in ghosts retaining their personalities and knowledge if not by being 'lost souls'?)

Even even if you somehow recorded the human superego, I predict (because my theory predicts it) that if 'run' outside of it's original body it will be another mind altogether. Disproving a Soul, but proving that the mind is a manifestation of the flesh.

You can bet the definition of 'soul' will be redefined to mean something else entirely, something even more nebulous and definately not testable (at that point). Until science reaches a point where it is possible to test that new definition as well, then the redefinition game will go for another round.
And more scientific energy is wasted.

It is a sorry pattern in which extremely unlikely claims become more and more nebulous and vague as discussion goes on. In the end it always ends up in "there MUST be something else, just outside of science's reach."

I must repeat my vision of the believer's shortcut here:
Yhe universe is a book with pictures. By refusing to learn to read and only looking at the pretty pictures while making up a story, they may get a more colourful and imaginative story, but not the story that is in the book.
Anybody who can read, can reproduce the same story from the book, it is true. The imagined story, by contrast, exists only in the mind of those who heard it told. We know what happens to stories that get retold; they mutate. it is fantasy.

Also at the same time proof for that the world is not a shared illusion: science is true for everyone. More people believe in things unscientific and believe more strongly. More loudly at any rate.

[Sergius]

Now define soul  .

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Siquo]

Lol @ sergius 


Decided it's too much text between then and now, and I'm not going to reply to it all.

My girlfriend just gave me the solution to the entire topic, though:
Something cannot exist without Nothing also existing, they are two sides to the same coin.
God is Everything, therefore including Anything and Nothing.
Therefore, God is in a superstate of Something and Nothing, he/she/it exists and not-exists at the same time.
That is why he can't be proven to exist, and can't be proven to not-exist.

So we are all right. 

[Andir]

Something cannot exist without Nothing also existing, they are two sides to the same coin.
God is Everything, therefore including Anything and Nothing.

Not quite... The opposite of something is not something.  The opposite of everything is nothing.  If God is everything: In order for God to exist, nothing must exist.

So we are all right. 

...and we're all wrong.

This isn't working.

My girlfriend just gave me the solution to the entire topic

Women can be so convincing sometimes...especially when it deals with changing logic into emotion.

[Neruz]

Something cannot exist without Nothing also existing, they are two sides to the same coin.

It's called a Vacuum.