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[Neruz]

One can fairly easily logically deduce that if there is a God (something i have seen no true evidence of, thus the reasonable conclusion is that there is not), he does not match any of the holy scriptures; to whit, the Bible states (when it's not contradiction itself out the ass) that God is Benevolant, All-Powerful and All-Seeing. A simple logical excersize proves that to be impossible, to which becomes the question "Why bother worshipping a God that lacks one of these three things, assuming he exists at all?"

The only answer i can come up with is that if God is not benevolant, but is All-Powerful and All-Seeing, and he tells me to get worshipping or enjoy divine punishment, then i'll get worshipping. But otherwise there's no reason to. Especially if he really is benevolant and all sins really can be forgiven.


In the midst of all of which i have completely lost track of what i was talking about. So i'll just paddle around in this pool here until i get my bearings.

[Croquantes]

The christian God is definitely not benevolent. He's not malevolent either. God is supposed to be beyond both of those "human traits". Remember, this is the same God that "works in mysterious ways" and is thus beyond understanding.

This whole, "God loves me and is wonderful and benevolent" thing seems to be an American invention because for the longest time, God was terrible. You worshipped God, cuz you'd go to hell and burn for eternity if you didn't.

It's the same God that causes natural disasters and lets people do horrible things to each other. I don't think he's capable of infinite forgiveness either, that's why we're supposed to live free of sin. When we die, the least sinful of us get to go to heaven, while the sinful go to hell. And burn for eternity.

I'm not really qualified to go into depth, cuz I'm atheist but I think this is how the christian God works. I could also be shooting hot air.

[Rashilul]

You aren't listening to me, are you.

[Croquantes]

Rashilul, aren't you, by trying to draw attention to the fact that you think this thread is derailed, derailing the thread even more? 

[Rashilul]

Rashilul, aren't you, by trying to draw attention to the fact that you think this thread is derailed, derailing the thread even more? 

No, I'm trying to draw attention to the fact that the thread is useless and that neither side will ever agree with the other side. It sounds like little children arguing.

[Croquantes]

Well, the thread is over 109 pages long. People are bound to repeat what someone else has already said. If people want to argue, let them argue. You don't have to read the thread. Some people just like to argue.

And Neruz has raised some really good points. I'd just like to give him props, for being so articulate and having such well thought out arguments. Read his posts kinda makes me want to take another philosophy class. Hopefully I'll get a better mark than B-. :/

[Pjoo]

Implicit Atheism is Atheism without thought, basically a child is an Implicit Atheist, as a child has not yet been told about God and thus cannot believe in God, due to not knowing about God.

A child is not an implicit atheist. I know a lot of kids who believe in God. Likely they've been informed, but the default stance is certainly not "there is no god". If anything, a child would be Agnostic, not Weak Athiest.

Child who has never been informed about God has a default stance of not thinking about God, and forming no belief one way or another. Sure, child always isn't atheist, but until child is told about God, the child usually is Implicit Atheist.
And Agnostic is not "middle ground" for theism and atheism...

If you believe that God(s) is a made-up idea with no proof, then you're Athiest. If you believe that there's insufficient evidence to support the existence or non-existence of God(s), then you're Agnostic. If you believe that there's not enough existence to support the existence of God, and that the pressure lies on believers to prove God's existence, then you're an Athiest. If you believe that the pressure lies on non-believers to disprove God's existence, then you're a Theist.

If you state "Gods do not exist", you are Strong/gnostic atheist.
If you state "I do not believe in existence of Gods", you are weak atheist.
If you state "I believe in deity/deities", you are theist.

If you state "It is impossible to know truth value of existence of Gods", you are agnostic.
If you state "Truth value of existence of Gods is unknown", you are weak agnostic.
If you state "Truth value of existence of Gods is irrelevant as He/She/they don't care"  you are apathetic agnostic.

Implicit atheists haven't thought about existence of God. Maybe because of indifference, maybe because they haven't heard about it or they haven't though such thing could possibly exist. Or maybe because they do not have consciousness.

And then there is ignostism, "Please elaborate." and apatheism "who cares?" and such...

Anyways, this is pointless discussion, lets change to Evolution vs Creationism

[Leafsnail]

Actually, according to your scale, "I believe in deity/deities" would make you a weak theist.  "There is a God" would make you a strong theist.

[Rashilul]

Anyways, this is pointless discussion, lets change to Evolution vs Creationism

Dogs. Okay, glad that's over. When can we stop arguing over these things?

[Reasonableman]

Just about when God appears to each and every person on the planet individually and says "I EXIST."

Or "I DO NOT EXIST."

Although the latter may just be confusing.

[Leafsnail]

Wouldn't surprise me.  If God does exist, he's clearly messing us around a lot.

[cerapa]

If some god happened to be a being like us once, it might like messing with us.

More reasonable than believing in a book within an infinite loop of copying and redesigning called the bible.

[Muz]

Benevolence is not forgiving all sins. Forgiving all sins and letting everyone go to heaven is well.. communism at its worst. It's like if you let everyone out of jail, gave them the same job as some Nobel laureate, and equal pay, whether or not they do anything. That's not exactly mercy or benevolence.

A truly benevolent God would punish/reward people just enough for their sins. Since the general purpose of humanity is to believe in God despite not having enough evidence, that it deserves a massive reward. And there'd be smaller reward/punishments for those who do lesser bits of good/evil.

There are people who joke that hell isn't all that bad and not as boring as heaven, Interestingly, God's benevolence would be in letting these people hang around each other and talk about stuff. With other interesting people like mobsters, the guys who made GTA, serial rapists, warlords, and Nazi officers. You might have your skin flayed and your flesh chewed by tentacle demons and succubi, but c'mon, there's a lot of fetishes for that sort of thing. It sounds like something bad to a 'good person', but it could be a fun thing to a 'bad person'.


And BTW, I find it kinda annoying how some people insist that this thread is dead. Really, it's an argument thread. I'd rather that all the religious/anti-religious argument be focused here than to derail some other thread. It's like that rant thread. It goes around in circles, but it's really like a punching bag sort of thing.

There are some good arguments coming out of this, there are more bad ones too, but I do like seeing the effort. Nobody's going to switch sides, but it's always interesting to see what it's like from the other side's perspective.

[Rashilul]

There are people who joke that hell isn't all that bad and not as boring as heaven, Interestingly, God's benevolence would be in letting these people hang around each other and talk about stuff. With other interesting people like mobsters, the guys who made GTA, serial rapists, warlords, and Nazi officers. You might have your skin flayed and your flesh chewed by tentacle demons and succubi, but c'mon, there's a lot of fetishes for that sort of thing. It sounds like something bad to a 'good person', but it could be a fun thing to a 'bad person'.

Heaven, population: 10

[Pjoo]

There are people who joke that hell isn't all that bad and not as boring as heaven,

Well, there are 3 "layers" of afterlife according to fundie beliefs mixed with mine.

1st layer: "Heaven"
Clearly the worst layer of afterlife. Populated by christians, big chunk of irrational people, who believe in creation, young earth, etc, which is even worse cause they actually were right. And are actually stupid enough to think they were rational all the time. "Told you so, told you so." Best reason not to believe in Bible.

2nd layer: "Hell"
Slightly better than Heaven. Here you get assraped by demons, but atleast you don't have to listen to "told you so, told you so", and generally you have rather enjoyable company, with creationists in heaven and greedy bastards elsewhere. Here are all the people Satan deems good - basically all other religious and areligious people, who have lived their lives, trying to stick to some good morals.

3rd layer: "Paradise"
Best layer of the three. Here be the murderers, rapists and other wrongdoers. Satan, being evil and all, has given them big houses and company cars for their bad deeds. They also get to employ several slaves, and generally have very high quality lives. Suicidebombers receive their virgins, plus other awards for possible records they broken. Wrongdoers who are christian can only blame Jesus for being sent into heaven instead of here.

I really hope Satan considers pro-choice as evil, I've always wanted a big house!