Thread: Do you Believe in God?

I can see this discussion being closed in the near future. But let's give this a shot and try to keep the discussion as civil as possible.

Does god exists?



I personally do not believe in God. I believe that if there was a God there would be no evil, no murder, no disease, no greed, and no death a destruction. If you look at it nearly 95% of the universe is inhospitable for life. Plus there is not logical or scientific proof of a supreme deity. I just simply can't believe on blind faith.

I'm going to agree with you, and I'm going to disagree with you. I personally do not have any beliefs in god, nor have I ever. I do not believe anything unless I can touch, see, hear, feel, smell, or download it. But, I disagree with you when you say that there wouldn't be those things if a god existed. If bad things never happened, then what would be the point of living? If everything was perfect, there wouldn't be happiness, because without sadness it doesn't exist.

I don't believe that the existence of evil precludes the presence of God. I believe in free will. I also believe that without suffering there'd be no compassion.

If there were no evil, there'd be no good. Yin and yang. Balance... that's what it all comes down to.

Well imo the existence of a theistic god is not possible if there is evil. According to the Theistic understanding of god it is said to be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent or in english all knowing and seeing, all powerful and all loving. Now if god is all knowing it should know how to stop the existence of evil as evil is not gods work as god is all good. If god is all powerful then stopping the existence of evil would be easy, as duh god is all powerful. If god is all loving ie nothing but love then why would god allow evil to happen to something god loves. As you can see all three of these statements can't be true without contradicting one. So this is a huge compression of the problem of evil argument perhaps not as clear and convincing as it could be but I cbf writing 3000 words like I did for my essay on the subject but You should be able to see the contradiction quite easily. Please also note this doesn't deny the existence of god but simply denies theism.

In my opinion there is no god because the universe is not finite. If there were a definite endpoint and a definite beginning to all of existence then there would be some support for the idea of a higher consciousness at play. But since time is and always will be, there is simply no causation involved. If there is a god he is just along for the ride like us.

@MrInternet -- Your argument implies that you understand the purpose of a loving, benevolent, and omnipresent God. It implies that God's purpose is to destroy evil. But how can anyone know the true purpose of God?

But I'd like to talk about this from a scientific perspective, rather than a theological.

Here are two laws we know from science:
1. Whatever begins to exist requires a cause
2. The universe began to exist.

Therefore, the universe must have a cause.

Basically, you cannot get something from nothing. The universe came into existence, therefore something must have created it. Even the smallest atom must have been created at some point in time.

I have more, but I'm tired.

Ahh I love a good religious argument but this I see going nowhere. The question does god exist can not be proved or disproved and all arguments to try and do so are futile. If anything this should be a simple poll because no argument will persuade the other side.

Originally Posted by WestingFenn

Ahh I love a good religious argument but this I see going nowhere. The question does god exist can not be proved or disproved and all arguments to try and do so are futile. If anything this should be a simple poll because no argument will persuade the other side.

I don't think persuasion is the main goal of this section. It seems to me that with the name "Brain Stew" it implies a melting pot of all of our ideas. Just my 2 cents.

Lets start this off with an IMO....

I think religion was started as a way to help people cope with their fear of death and was picked up by some very smart people who realized it as a way to control the masses. Let's face it, religion is a tool that leaders have used to manipulate their people.

I spoke to a man a few weeks ago who drowned. He was eventually resuscitated, however, he was clinically dead for several minutes. He told me that there was nothing, no bright light, no feeling of happiness, nothing, just blackness. I have never believed in god but this partly confirms my suspicions in my own mind at least.

I honestly believe the world would be a better place without religion. Be it the crusades, the reformation genocides, the middle east, mass slaughters in the name of god, then the obligatory reciprocal retributions, 9/11, Hitler committed his actions in the name of his creator, the bombings of London, Bali, the Pan Am flight, Ireland, Oklahoma city, countless embassies, the list goes on. God and religion are respnsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people.

1. In a world without religion science is no longer opposed by the ignorant
2. Science would have boomed and we would be 3 times as advanced as we are now
3. The Jews would have less cultural opposition(Palestinian, European etc) and there would be no religious terrorists meaning:
4. 9/11 would not have happened
5. The war in Iraq would not have happened
6. The London train bombings would not have happened
7. The mass cult suicides would not happen
8. Children would not be molested by the Catholic Church
9. People would have more personal responsibility and self respect because they would understand that this life is all they have and they should live it to the fullest
10. More charity organizations would be opened and more money would be given to them due to no more churches raking the money in
11. More taxes would be given to the government instead of to the church and the economy would stabilize.
12. The Nazi party would not have been fueled or funded by the Catholic Church and subsequently anti-Semitism
13. Hitler would not have been inspired by religious anti-Semitic Nordic Aryan blood myths
14. The holocaust would never have happened
15. Homophobia would not exist
16. Middle eastern racism would not exist
17. Slavery would not have been justified and therefore would not have been promoted meaning far less racism and poverty in America
18. The Spanish inquisition that tortured to death over 500,000 people would never have happened
19. The crusades that killed from 1,000,000 to 9,000,000 people would never have happened
20. The burning of witches, homosexuals, the mentally unstable, and women would never have happened saving countless hundreds of thousands of innocents throughout history
21. The spread of AIDS in Africa would be slowed considerably
22. The genocide of the North American Indians would never have happened
23. The genocide of the Central American Indians would never have happened
24. The genocide of the South American Indians would never have happened
25. Women would not be as oppressed and sexism overall would not exist in such abundance
26. Fanatical religious terrorist extremists would not exist and countless hundreds of thousands of innocents would not have died
27. The Japanese would not have massacred, raped, pillaged, and tortured the Chinese or have bombed Pearl Harbor
28. The genocide of the Armenians by the Turks would never have happened
29. People would not believe in a giant invisible ancient Middle Eastern desert spirit in the sky who gives a shit about them
30. Iran would not rape and murder innocent young girls under Koranic law
31. Saddam Hussein would not have massacred hundreds of thousands of his own people
32. World War 2 would never have happened
33. Manifest Destiny preached by Van Buren in the Second Great Awakening would never have happened and the Mexican American War would have been avoided
34. Numerous other atrocities would never have happened

The sooner people can finally stop being deluded about the existence of "the almighty" the better. I'm not deluded enough to think all our problems would be solved without religion, but I'm sure it would go a long way. Just look at all the topics influenced by religion in this very forum, abortion, extra-terrestrial life, cloning, the death penalty, evolution, euthanasia. These archaic religious dogmas are a scourge on our planet. It bastardizes anything and everything it can preaching damnation, homophobia, violence, and fairy tales to the masses of weak minded people in the world.

Religion is an ancient concept that should have been abandoned during the Renaissance. Without religion we would be hundreds of years more advanced than we are today, without religion there would have been no dark ages (a period that lasted longer than 600 years), imagine if the possibilities and technologies we have today were available in the 15th century. Imagine where we would be now.

Without religion, the world would be unquestionably a better place.