D.Wiggs

:doh: Don't make me smack you.

Huh?? What do you mean I never replied back? And I just call it like I see it. If stuff is not up to my standards, I'm not going to lie and say it is. Are you sure you want to be my 2nd UGR kill though? I mean, if you're a smart guy (which I would liketo assume you are), you have to realize your car doesn't stand a snowballs' chance in hell. It weighs more with a ton less HP; worse gearing, no aero, etc. etc. etc. It's not exactly a 'fair fight' so to speak.

We need to start lining up some races. 100-250 perhaps? Or 80-whomever stops accelerating last?

You just created a paradox. It's a very old one. Here it is: God can either create a stone so heavy he cannot lift, in which case he is limited, or he cannot create a stone so heavy as he cannot lift it. Either way, God, by definition, is no longer omnipotent. Like I said, this whole debate has been going on for centuries and none of this is new. The bottom line is that there is NO good reason for believing that God exists; some people do, however, and that is fine. But they should never begin to claim that they have a rational or good reason for thinking so. Just like we do not have good or rational reason for thinking we can fly, or breathe underwater. It really is THAT simple when you actually break it down.

I am VERY deeply attached to logic for it is all we have to get through this world of ours and make good decisions. I agree Math is not perfect, but I did not say it was. I simply said you it is something you cannot get rid of; that was all.

It's not that I cannot perceive a square circle, it's that there CANNOT BE ONE. PERIOD. It's a logical contradiction. You would have to break the very definition of a square and a circle in order to even attempt this, but then you are not making something that is both a square and a circle. This is not about what is beyond human power, it simply CANNOT BE DONE. Not by us, not by God, not by anyone. Just like God cannot make something that is both tall and short, or all black and all white. Please trust me on this.

Murci - 11/17 H2 - 8/12 M3 - 14/20 CGT - 12/18 Murci Rdstr - 10/16 G Spy - 13/19 760Li - 13/24 Dodge Mega 3500 - 12/17 Cooper S - 27/36 All 6-Speeds except H2 and 760Li.

Please do not take this as an "attack" but yet as a chance to further educate yourself on the matter since you seem to be interested in doing so. You made many common mistakes with your argument on time, freewill, "timelessness" etc., but the most important one is the one I have quoted. God is very much constrained by logic. For example: God cannot make square circles. God cannot sin (thereby making him NOT Omnibenevolent) God cannot learn (thereby making him NOT Omnicient) The list goes on and on and on. God, also cannot avoid Math. For example: If God got rid of EVERYTHING in the Universe he still could not get rid of numbers. Why? Because what would you have in a Universe with nothing in it? Zero (a number). Another thing to remember is this. Just because you can IMAGINE a higher being that does wonderful things and is very powerful etc. etc. does not give you good reason for thinking it exists. We, as humans, can imagine all sorts of things (e.g., monsters under our bed) but we certainly don't think we have good reason for thinking they actually ARE there. That is where the religious groups have corrupted so many minds into making God somehow "rational-thought-exempt". Here is a perfect parallel example often used to demonstrate the principle. Say I kill your (whoever is reading this) family and at my murder trial I state, "Well, it is possible that what I did was God's bidding and that a greater good has been served by me murdering his family. I do not KNOW if the greater good has been served or if God wanted me to do it, but since it is possible, you should believe me and let me off the hook." That is tantamount to saying that since God COULD exist, we should believe that he DOES exist and live accordingly. The Church in particular has framed many people's mind to reject this notion because of "FAITH". Well, as I said before, Faith is nothing more than Belief. It's not a special kind of belief; it's not reserved only for God; and it is not above being examined rationally either. "Faith" is used as a way to try and get people to not think critically about their religious beliefs by dismissing any naysayer. I could go on about the whole problem of God not being temporal versus being temporal and all of the problems you run into there. And then the logical contradictions with the 3-O God and free will (as I did above). This is very complicated stuff and there is nothing that has not been proposed and defeated from a Theists point of view as I stated earlier. The ONLY thing a Theist can say is, "I believe in God and/or religion even though I know it is irrational to do so and that I have absolutely no good reason for doing so." The only problem with this is that it is the same thing as saying, "I believe a little alien is on my head and telling me what to do at all times even though I have no rational or good reason for thinking it is the case." and we all know where we would put someone who thought like that ! LOL

All this discussion has made me hungry. I tried praying to God for food to appear but I keep getting the bastard's voice mail so I must go make it myself! (so people know that was a JOKE!) I am off to eat!

It has been so powerful because it was forced on people to believe and taught at such a young age to others who did not know otherwise and were punished for questioning. My mother is Jewish, my father is Presbyterian (sp?) and I was given the choice of choosing my religion. Neither of my parents were or are religious (my Dad basically not at all (hasn't been to church in probably 50 or 60 years) and my mom is a reform Jew and only went twice or 3 times a year)). I was exposed to both and chose to be Jewish and had a Bar mitzvah. I was always an atheist Jew since Judaism is a Philosophy first and religion second, and now, whilst still considered Jewish, a full fledged atheist.

Religion is not religion without worship. That is just it. I was taught by professors who give you ALL of the information and let you decide on your own as opposed to forcing you into a set of beliefs like Christianity does whilst clouding the truth in shame and damnation. I never said I was the holder of all truth; quite the contrary. WHat I said is that my opinion is based on good reason and not poor anecdotal evidence.

Here is the thing that people seem to forget. To TRULY be a Christian for example, one must accept the Bible as the WORD OF GOD and live by it verbatum. As the years have gone by, and especially in today's society we make changes and make excuses for the Bible (e.g., we do not think it is right to own slaves or kill our children for being disobedient like the Bible tells us); however, that is not being a Christian for one is arbitrarily substituting one's own judgment for that of "God's" supposedly. One might as well call it "Johnsianity" or "Steveianity". The second you choose not to follow the Bible exactly, you are no longer a REAL Christian and therefore should not consider yourself one. The Bible is an ALL or NOTHING proposition for a Christian; otherwise you are believing is a HUMAN'S interpritation of it (e.g., Lutheranism etc.).

If God is not the "3-O" God, why would we worship him? Why would you worship someone who is just Powerful, or Just Good, or Just Knowlegable. You need all of those things and to the highest degree (i.e., Omnipotent, Omnicient, and Omnibenevolent) otherwise he should not be worshipped. God is not a PERSON, it is a JOB TITLE, like Janitor. It is ANYONE OR THING that happens to meet the 3-O criteria. People make this mistake. To Christians, God's name is Yahwe (sp?). You can have a CREATOR, or a ALL-Powerful being, or all-knowing, but if he/she/it is NOT ALL 3, then they are NOT God BY DEFINITION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And don't forget the two totally incompatible stories about Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 and 2. In 1, Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden. In 2, Adam is created first an dthen becomes lonely, so God makes Eve out of Adam's rib. If you take the Bible as anything other than a shaky account of historical events and mostly fiction, you are really stretching things. The most likely purpose of the Bible was to serve as a story about Morals (which is a whole other can of worms since morals DO NOT EXIST) and a kind of demonstration of the ones to have and not to have.

I never said anything about hell. I said that if you instill fear in people, they will do as you please. We even do it to ourselves. WHy do we excercise? Fear of being fat or unattractive, or DYING at an early age, etc. We do it all of the time, that was my point.

(1) Every religion is DIFFERENT, therefore not similar. The interpretation argument fails miserably when you actually break it down. (2) Who is perceiving God? If you do not have at LEAST the "3-O" God he CERTAINLY is not worthy of worship! NOTHING can be both CORRECT AND INCORRECT; it's a logical contradiction. Who are we to speak to its trueness??? That is like saying who are we to say that Gravity is most likely real for we are only humans! That is lunacy! This is why the debate is so hard. Most have not read a lot of the literature on the subject and therefore think they have some new reason that refutes what I am saying. Trust me, there isn't. The "Evidential Problem of Evil" has not (and for all intensive purposes CANNOT) be solved by any Theist. Trust me, you do not want to go down these roads.

Degree (undergrad) and in the process of finishing up my Masters in Philosophy of Religion. May or may not do my PhD as well.

Because fear is the ULTIMATE motivator.

What I was saying about the "afterlife" is that the fear of the unknown is a HUMAN trait that I would generalize to say virtually ALL people have. Because of that, we create answers to our questions no matter how unbelievable. Religion was created as a way for the powerful, wealthy, and educated to control the ignorant masses through fear. It was the easiest and absolute best way to keep people under your control and it worked BEAUTIFULLY. Like I said, this is my field of expertise and I could go on and on and on refuting point for point everyone's observation and attempted argument, but it really isn't worth it because as soon as you attack someone's religious beliefs, they get VERY offended because they are taught to be. I will leave you with these two thoughts though. (1) AT MOST only 1 sect of 1 religion is right, and ALL OTHERS are wrong. This is due to the fact that if any two religions did not have a difference then they would be the same religion. SO at MOST, only one group of one denomination has it right (e.g., some sect of baptists or something). (2) The "3-O" God (i.e., Omnipotent, Omnicient, Omnibenevolent) must know what you are about to do 5 minutes from now. However, 5 minutes from now, if you do anything other than what God knew you were going to do 5 minutes prior, then you caused God to have a false belief which an Omnicient being CANNOT have by definition. The problem is that in order to have moral responsibility, one must believe in TOTAL free will, otherwise no one is morally accountable (i.e., if you could not do anything other than kill someone, then you cannot be held responsible for the action). To have free will means that at any moment in time, you can do as you please but COULD have done something else. If you are always doing as God "foresaw" then he is the one in cotrol and you do not have free will and thus have no control over any of your actions and therefore are not responsible for them. Those are just 2 of the most basic reasons why I do not believe in any typical "3-O" God.

Think about it. Outside of mathematics we can prove VERY little. Faith is simply believing so an "assumption of faith" is tantamount to saying assumption of belief, which is just a longwinded way of saying I believe (and hope) that X is true. That is all we do in our everyday lives so God and religion is nothing different except that religion has been beaten into so many of us from the time we are young and blinded many as to what is really going on.

Actually, I can give you one account of a very reasonable explanation as to how God came about. One word: DEATH. What is the one thing we will NEVER know about until it happens. DEATH. It's called FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN. SO what do we do? We make up what we want to be true. Everyone does it (myself included) in many situations throughout life. If we were all immortal, you can be damn sure there would be no organized religion. Why? Because without the threat of "eternal damnation", why would we be so concerned with what happens after we die. A very simple people talked about "God(s)" for the fact we had a Sun, a Moon, Water, Tides, Lightning, Hurricanes. Did you know it was thought by the Greeks and Romans that Homosexuals caused Earthquakes? SO what happened when one occurred? Round up all the homosexuals and kill them. We certainly do not hold these beliefs to be true today. Why? Because people have good reason for thinking otherwise. And by the way. What in the HELL does voting Democrat have to do with being knowledgable about the subject you are discussing? Are you making the generalization that all people who prepare well for a discussion topic must vote Democrat? If so, I guess you are putting down all Republicans.

But who is to say that "God" as the Bible describes is not just some fictional character? I think that was his point.

You are confusing possibility with certainty. I simply said, why should we hold the belief that there even is a higher power. IT COULD be true; it COULD NOT be true. That is not the point I was making. I was just saying, why should we even think that there is! I am NOT saying we can prove anything.

What pisses me off the most is the fact that so many people jump on the "faith bandwagon" and try to say that one cannot use reasoning when it comes to religion. Well here is how you show them they are full of shit! What is faith? Faith is belief. Why do they believe in Christianity? Presumably, because one thinks he/she has good reason for doing so? Why? Well, do you think that you have an intangible, invisible, and alltogether undetectable troll sitting on your shoulder that tells you what to do 24/7? No, you would say that's crazy! Why? Because you think you have good reason for thinking that it is not there EVEN THOUGH it COULD be the case that it is. Same goes for God and religion. People wouldn't believe it and follow it so devout;y if they did not think it were true. That right there means that you can discuss God's existence (or lack thereof) and religion using normal logic and rational thought and thus go on to more discussion. Nothing makes me angrier than the moronic and ignorant imbeciles who just go spouting off at the mouth who know nothing about what they are even talking about.

One thing to remember is that we have no reason for thinking that there is anything like a "higher power" whether or not there actually is.