I never said god or love created the universe. Reigion states that. I denounce religion. Also, the really cool thing about philosophical and religious belief is that we dont know. We know what is right for us. Your God meand mothing to me and likewise my god means nothing to you. Does it matter if you are right no. In the end sir we will be ash and dust. Can change that. Btw on evoluton. If god is omnipotent and omnipresent, he could create things to appear old and lwave s trail of evolution and remove the missing link just to mess with us. Just saying. we eill agree to disagree. I dont like preachers so I refuse to preach. I bow to you and your atgument snd agree to disagree. If you look you will see there is pure evil in this world there also pure good. Evils root is hate. The root of good is love. Or God. Philosophical belief. Only god knows the absolute truth.

 

I'd recommend that to anyone who believes that because things exist, there has to be a god. Quantum mechanics demonstrates that an entire Universe can appear out of nothing - phut goes any reason to argue that there has to be a creator.

 

I checked with God last time I was traveling.
He still insists he exists.
But Shooter thinks he doth protest too loudly.

 

i believe in god but not what man saids about god. i believe that book is more to teach morals and value but not to get closer to god. i believe that god is a more loving man than you think and he doesn't care if you call him god, jahova, yhwh, or even gaia.

 

Good Topic: Thanks to the OP for it.
SO Here's My View. I Am A Follower Of Jesus Christ because He has been the historical figure that most aligns with my views, although I am some what Hesitant To call myself Christian although I was raised Catholic. I Do not believe Religion is needed to be a follower of Christ/God.

But I DEFINITELY believe God Exists. When You Define God as an omnipotent being as Christianity does, it is a self fulfilling necessity that God exists. I Look To St. Anselm's Ontological Argument For the existence of God:
God is That which None greater can be conceived.
That which exists is greater than that which doesn't exist.
Therefore God exists.

As to who/what is really God? I Believe ALL that exists is God. So We All Are because we exist (at least I do (but that's a Descartes Side note)). I take This from the Scientific Evidence of the Big Bang when EVERYTHING was one single infinitesimal point in Space and Time with infinite mass. This means all matter around us, including us, was at one time One in this Singularity. So Me, You, Jesus Christ, were/are all equally this Original Being that blew up and transformed into All that is observable today...This is how Science and God are unified In My Mind. SO Basically I have as much of a right to call myself God as Anything that has ever existed. It Doesn't Matter that I haven't walked on water or resurrected people from the dead because we come from the same beginning of the Universe, thereby making none of us a special snowflake.

Even if you don't follow my reasoning, it is hard to refute the fact that the Word/Term 'God' DOES Exist (Even if Humans Created it). The term 'God' Implies Omnipotence, a Being Which Can take any form It/He/She so chooses. So I Would not put it beyond an Omnipotent Being to take the form of The Word 'God'. After all it's in the Bible That God Is the Word.

These are just the Basic Beliefs of God in My Mind. If I Typed it all out, I might get infracted for trolling.

 

Most atheists are atheists because they think it's a sign of higher intellect. After all, there are a lot of smart atheists and they want to be in that club. They haven't actually put a lot of thought into. It's sort of like wearing team jersey for a sport they never actually played.

 

I never said that you said god/love created the universe. Please do not put words in my mouth. What I said is if we take what you have said you are using the word "god" to mean exactly the same as "love". If you want to describe the feeling of love as god you can, but that still doesn't change the fact that all you are doing is renaming an emotion. Why do that when we already have a word (love) that describes that emotion? You are basically just making the one term redundant, and since if you go with a standard dictionary definition that will say that "love" is an emotion, and "god" is a supernatural deity, why would you reuse a word that carries a specific meaning to it to describe an emotion that already has a perfectly good name. It literally makes no sense.

To use an example: From now on whenever anyone says the word "anger" what they actually mean is "cheese". Now I know that might seem weird, but anger is actually cheese, because that's the word that I want to use to describe that emotion. You can sit there and tell me it is just a dairy product all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that cheese is actually an emotion, and not a nice one at that. Please don't get cheesy with me just because I want to use a word differently to everyone else in the world!

See how stupid that would get?

 

Again, sir you are smarter than me. You have all the answers. Cheese can be felt smelt seen and after eaten heard. Lol neither love or god can be validated through any of our 5 senses. See how silly your argument is. Come on now. Your smarter than that. Remember your smarter than me try harder.

 

Or shall we just agree to disagree. You are not going to convince me. Nor I you. Next time do a better job. If I do not respond you will know to try harder.

 

I believe in the sun. That's my god. It's the only thing I can see and if it wasn't there I would die.

 

Congratulations on being the first believer on here to put forward anything like a thought out argument for your view.

Sadly I don't agree with it.

First of all you call Jesus a "historical figure". At best we could say that is debatable. If you care to offer some evidence of: 1) Why you think Jesus actually existed, and 2) what makes you think he was the son of god. (I know you don't say in your post he was, but based on your upbringing and belief in god I am assuming you do. I am more than willing to accept you don't though if I have assumed wrong. You still need to provide evidence for point one though.)

As for St. Anselm's Ontological Argument, although it is an interesting notion it was argued against at the time, and we have come a long way since his time. I just don't see how that argument stand up. To me it kind of ends up like that ancient idea of the world riding on the back of a giant turtle, and that turtle is standing on that turtle, which is standing on another turtle...and so on into infinity. No matter what attribute you wish to give to your god, someone else can quite easily conceive of another being capable of beating it. The process would never end. You could never reach the concept of a being that is "unbeatable". The ontological argument also fails for the simple reason that you can use the same reasoning to "prove" the perfect version of anything exists. Replace the notion of god in the argument with anything (at the time of Anselm the common one was an island) but take anything: whatever the most perfect car you can conceive of must therefore exist. Or perfect woman, or beer, or literally anything. You can "prove" there is the most unstoppable force/immovable object (which obvious contradicts itself). Simply put: just because something can be conceived of in the mind does not necessarily mean it exists in reality.

While I will fully accept that we are indeed all connected in some way since all matter started at a singularity before the big bang, does this mean that we are all god? No. While we can say the current evidence does indeed point to a singularity followed by a big bang, it does not mean there has to be any god involved. While you may feel that god in some way is part of that you would need to demonstrate a how and why. I could assert that my underpants are/contain everything that is god. Unless I can show why I believe that the assertion is worthless.

Yes, the word/term "god" exists, but so what? The meaning of words implies nothing. While some religions or even dictionaries may say that is one of the attributes of god, that is still something that has been decided by humans. It does not mean that that word can't change over time (as indeed most words do). I mean no offence when I use this example but if we traveled forward in time and found at some point in the future they use the word "god" to mean what we call "shit" would that imply that your god is pure shit? No. Words only carry the meaning that is given to them by a population. Nothing more. And besides, there are some remote tribes who have no concept of a god, and as such have no word to describe such a being. That kind of hurts any notion of a word of god being omnipotent, as well as the ontological argument.

 

I have never met an atheist who is an atheist simply because they want to be like other smart atheists. There are smart theists as well, does that mean people are theists just to be like them? Besides isn't the idea of someone saying "I haven't really put any thought to the idea of if there is a god, so I can't really believe in him until I do" (making him atheist) more honest than a lot of religious people who claim belief in a god based on a book they have never even read, and who have put just as much thought into it (i.e. none)?

 

I wasn't trying to convince you of anything. I was just pointing out a fact that redefining words for no reason is a bit retarded. Sorry you have such a poor grasp on language that you don't understand that.

 

I don't know if you were referring to this, but your comment made me think of it anyway.

 

No, I am simply redefining a word to fit an emotion just as you did. Mine is just as valid as yours.

Besides, like I said before love does exist and can be shown to exist. You did so yourself in an earlier post. You said how you would only risk your life for someone you really loved (your kids) so if, and obviously I hope this never happens, but if your kids were in a situation that threatened their lives and you risked your life to save them you would have proven your love for them exists.
And that is before we get into something like brain scans that show that different parts of the brain are active during different emotions, and when someone experiences the emotion we call love, we can actually see certain parts of the brain working. There really is physical evidence that even an emotion like love really does exist. There is no need to redefine another word to fit it when we already have a word for it.

 

Let assume that if we have a name for something another word would not be needed, then we would not need another word for let's just use finger. Since I am typing and using them. Which word would we use? Finger? Digit? Metacarpsal? Oh wait in the English language we are give the luxury to change a word from a noun to a verb to an adjective to an adverb. That gives me and you the right to change a word from subject to action to descriptor. See love is a noun or a verb. Change its tense or add ly and you have an adverb or adjective. So for me to choose to use love and God interchangeably is within my literary right using the English language. See sir when I choose to use the two words interchangeably is far from retarded.

That is not the issue though you find fallacy in my proof that God exists based on the fact love exists. That is where we agree to disagree. I was not out to prove the existence of god. Only why I believed in God. That in of itself is an opinion. Opinions cannot be argued based on evidence. If that were the case, in my opinion O J Simpson would have been found quilty. It was the opinion of the jury he was innocent. Though factual evidence and DNA proved otherwise. So arguments against opinions proves futile.

 

To OP:

It is impossible to disprove god, as you say. However, it is easy to disprove the "God" that humans believe in and revere.

Humans believe in a "God" that is greater than us. (If "God" were not greater, there would not be much point.) Moreover, this "God" has specific attributes, namely: (1) all-knowing; (2) all-powerful, and (3) perfectly good. (The fancy words for these three attributes are (1) omniscience, (2) omnipotence, and (3) omnibenevolence. Since all three of these words begin with the letter '0', "Gods" defined as such are formally called 3-O Deities. They are known as such to philosophy, because they are trivially easy to disprove, and thus trivially ridiculous.)

It is easy to prove that a being possessing all three of these "o" attributes cannot possibly exist in this universe.

However, Satan most certainly can exist, because Satan lacks the third attribute, omnibenevolence.

Interestingly, Muslims believe in a deity (Allah) that possesses all three attributes from their perspective, and thus Allah is logically implausible. However from the outside looking in, Allah lacks omnibenevolence and more resembles Satan.

The Satanic version of Allah is impossible to disprove, and this is certainly a problem.

However, lest you think I am picking on Muslims, this can also be said of the Hebrew (Old Testament) deity, Yahweh. To Old Testament Jews no doubt Yahweh was omnibenevolent, but no doubt the peoples of Sodom, Gomorrah, Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, and pretty much everywhere except Canaan had a much different opinion!

The New Testament deity, "God," is arguably the first universally monotheistic deity possessing all three attributes, due to His penchant for universal love. Thus "God" of the New Testament is consistently ridiculous and trivially easy to disprove, absolutely everywhere.

 

+1

Good retort.

I am an atheist, yet I have contempt for most self-ascribed atheists, because they lack the necessary strength in their convictions. They have not thought it through. They do not possess an absence of belief. Instead, they purposefully choose to believe in nothing.

Most likely they are motivated by laziness. They believe in nothing, to free up their Sunday mornings. Because the X-Box is a better use of their time. Dweebs.

These are the idiots who want to take "God" off the money, and want to burn all the Christmas trees. They are more evangelical, and bluster with more zealotry, than Jehovah's Witnesses on Saturday morning.

Most atheists fail to appreciate that faith defies and subsumes rationality. Faith is stronger than rationality.

Faith is harder than rationality, and it deserves our respect. (We should at least be wary of its power over us.) Soren Kierkegaard makes the point brilliantly, in Fear and Trembling, that Abraham offered his son Isaac despite his rationality.

Soren Kierkegaard, by the way, was a devout theist. And I would challenge anyone to call him an idiot.

 

I agree with Darkness, your subsituting love with God. I respect your belief though.

I dont understand the people who are offended by the word "God", that makes no sense to me, I guess you could say separation of church and state, or that not everybody believes in the one God. Some atheists definitely are over the top though.

 

The age of religion as a form of intellectual pretension has been over for about a century, give or take. You should talk to more atheists.

As the great theologian Louie CK said, "I haven't seen '12 Years a Slave Yet', but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist." For myself, I believe in polar and covalent bonding, neither of which I have ever observed and could not prove without an appeal to some authority on the subject.