of course believers can't prove god exists. if there were proof then more people would belong to the religion with proof. some would still deny it just like people still deny evolution, but that's typical.
The problem is, to doubt religion is treated with the same animosity as the doubt for evolution; however, doubting evolution is to ignore evidence. Doubting god on the other hand is to simply acknowledge that there is no evidence for any such thing. The two are not similar propositions.
you could try something easier. instead of asking them to prove their god exists, ask them to prove their god is the correct one. but, they can't do that either obviously.
I'd been tempted several times to edit the OP to reflect something more like this, but the thread is quite old and I didn't want to invalidate quotes or seem to be misleading later posters by editing things so far post-facto. I think the thread made it along just as well, even if I did have some moving to do in getting to the point.
what can they prove? that they are just as susceptible to parental/community brainwashing or fear of the unknown as billions of other humans. both those currently living and the billions of humans who are long dead that belonged to thousands of different religions or belief structures.
I think the point here, as always, is to introduce people to rational thought in the context of religion. In point of logical fact, the truly honest will (and did) move directly to admission that faith is required and we get to argue from that point. If they attempt to introduce bad evidence, there is a whole series of debates to be had before they're willing to make that step.
Strictly speaking, if nobody wants to think about it and just accepts faith and irrationality over evidence, the conversation is over. But, I'd like to think for every person who takes this cop-out there are a few more who do not. Bringing more people to the point of shrugging off their irrational worldviews and considering evidence in a logical way is the goal. The props used to engage that argument are a matter of taste. I don't particularly care if someone comes out of the thread as an atheist, deist, or theist, but I do think they'll be more critical in their assessment of dogma in any case.
If you're arguing the line of debate in general bears no fruit, I think we have 50 and some pages of evidence to the contrary. If you're arguing that the debate is simply a waste of time, well, I don't feel my time was wasted and I've been the major participant here. Others are, of course, free to feel their time was wasted, but that wasn't the purpose of the thread.
My example was awful. What I was trying to convey is that if you have no belief in good or evil you would have most likely done some things in your life that would have led to your death. To have a different understanding of what is good and what is evil is one thing. To believe that nothing is good and nothing is evil is something totally different. I'm having a hard time rationalizing such a viewpoint. I would think the most likely scenario after drawing such a conclusion would be suicide. If nothing is good why live?
I see what you’re getting at. The idea that if nothing is good so why live seems very shallow, if we lived in a world of post apocalyptic shit I would be very sad if everyone committed suicide because everything was so bad. Life is a struggle but it is an amazing thing at the same time. One would assume that puppies are good and therefore playing with a puppy makes life worth living because there is good in the world. I accept that puppies are generally cute but personally I don't like dogs so again perspective comes into play.
I used to have a friend where he deemed everything in life negatively and he always complained that he had no luck. The ideal that he always approached things with a piss poor attitude basically created his self prophesized failure or bad luck. I believe if you have bad thoughts bad things will likely occur, but again this is all perspective. Me having fun in life (which makes it worth living) has nothing to do with good or bad, what I choose do to for fun can be interpreted in either view point. Love can be used as an example, I'm assuming that people would determine love to be a good thing but what happens if you love a murderer, does that make love evil?
It doesn't matter what you do as long as you enjoy it, people can judge you for whatever reason it doesn't mean it's good or evil. I don't agree with torture, murder, hate etc... but in some cases these actions could be determined necessary or for the greater good.
Back to on topic, sorry for the derail proletaria but I think you have the situation under control and honestly half the stuff your listing I have no clue wtf your talking about. The basic principles of religion I’m fine with (be a good person); however using religion to teach and control is an outdated practice. At one point when lightning occurred humans thought the Gods were angry because they didn’t understand what was happening. Religion filled a void of science that wasn’t accessible to the masses for a long period of time. As for proving Gods, the above posters have stated enough it cannot be proved or disproved; I have nothing to say on the matter.
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
The basic principles of religion I’m fine with (be a good person); however using religion to teach and control is an outdated practice. At one point when lightning occurred humans thought the Gods were angry because they didn’t understand what was happening. Religion filled a void of science that wasn’t accessible to the masses for a long period of time. As for proving Gods, the above posters have stated enough it cannot be proved or disproved; I have nothing to say on the matter.
I get this point of view a lot, from both religious persons and non-believers alike, and I think it has merit in the context that religion continues to evolve with society. Having said that, I think there's also a degree of wishful thinking inherent in this proposition. If we're being brutally honest; Religion isn't meant to make you an objectively good person (in so far as we understand objective good), but rather a good follower. One might say they are good due to religion because that is how they (mis)understand the concept of good or right action based on their theology, but I don't tend to allow anyone to claim they have a handle on what's good simply because they are following the tenants of a supposedly good or wise leader (be that leader an actual person, deity, or anything else).
Religion certainly was man's first way of explaining the universe as he could perceive it, but that has slowly but surely given way to our empirical sciences. That isn't to suggest science currently has all the answers, but through science we now understand that the sum total of religion is simply conjecture or a means of guessing based on absolutely no (or very little) evidence. I do understand that some persons are simply unwilling to give up their long-held beliefs because it feels good, but I don't see much of a reason to believe something because it can't be falsified. As I've said here before, I can't disprove dragons, unicorns, or fairies, but there are not many people around who consider a belief in those things to be anything but an obviously antiquated superstition. I would simply like to live in a world where god (like the many gods before it) was treated in the same fashion.
Myths, legends, and quirky beliefs do make for wonderful poetry and prose. I doubt the Vedas, Bible, or Koran could ever be ignored for their historical and cultural impact on society. But the onus that true belief in these books (and creative interpretations of those literal beliefs) will continue to confound humanity until we can make that transition. Unless we accept the premise that the world will always be tribally divided on the basis of who was raised in what religious tradition, I think we owe it to ourselves to be more of a skeptic and less accepting of irrationality in all it's forms.
I think you're conflating "the church," as in the catholic church with it's own doctorine, with christianity and the plethora of protestant spinoffs. The evangelical movement which uses passages such as this one from Romans: "I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin," to justify Zionism and support for it's aggression against neighbor states are majority protestant. As for the idea that anyone's interpretation of the biblical mythos is more valid than another, I think it's entirely foolish to attempt that argument. If it all comes down to taking one or another line on faith, there is no distinguishing factor between which interpretation is correct. All I need to do is point out one way in which something is being interpreted to comment. You; however, have to prove the validity of your specific counter-interpretation. I don't suggest what they're arguing is right. I think you're both flattering a millennial book with far more import than it's value. But I can tell you, logically, you have no way to prove an irrational assertion with another irrational assertion.
Catholicism directly opposes Zionism. Misinterpretations of a truth does not make the truth a falsehood. I could prove my interpretation valid to a Protestant, however, you will ignore it because the proof would largely come from the bible. Catholicism teaches that the sacred scripture holds equal weight with sacred tradition, the personal teachings passed on from Jesus to the apostles and so on.
I think you would agree that the if people over the age of 35 started to produce stem cells in their brains it would absolutely wrong/evil to murder and harvest 35 year olds' brains to correct ailments and disease in the younger population.
Full-stop with the stawman argument. I'm not going to take you seriously if you're going to compare a collection of unaware cell matter to a living human being who has had a lifetime of experience.
Do you agree with this equation: Human_Life_A = Human_Life_B? At the point of conception, the mass of cells is a human life. All that happens after is simply the 'mass of cells' aging.
People commit acts of evil without having social disorders. People with true social disorders don't understand their acts to be evil which is why they don't apply to a "moral compass".
I don't think evil has any meaning in that liberal of a context. If you mean to say "anyone would steal," (under certain circumstances) than you'd be right. But, is there never a time when theft is not so bad or perhaps a lesser good? Do you think the character of robin hood was inherently evil? What about stealing from a dictatorial government in the modern day? What about taking someone's harmful drugs away from them to facilitate their recovery?
The problem with the bipolar worldview is that it's oversimplified.
You still haven't answered my question. You even removed it from my quote. Why do you care about the well being of others? Why does almost everyone on this planet have an understanding of good and evil and have a predisposition towards good?
This is how dogma prevents becoming obviously irrelevant and contrived in a modern setting where people actually know of other religions and good people who are their adherents. In the past, the church would have said they're all heretics and pagans. Today they are simply knowing the grace of god in another way. If this isn't obvious ass-covering I don't know what is. The bible says nothing of this sort about non-jew/christians.
Acts 17:25-28; 1 Tim. 2:4
A heretic is someone who rejects the teachings of the church. If you don't know the church how can you reject it?
I could prove my interpretation valid to a Protestant, however, you will ignore it because the proof would largely come from the bible.
You really have no respect for the word "truth," if you're going to say that a line in the book in-question is proof positive that one is reading that very book correctly or not. Unless you are going to be a strict literalist, and as a catholic you most certainly cannot do that, you have no grounds on which to refute someone else' opinions with your own or that of some obviously human hierarchy whom you attribute with divine inspiration.
Do you agree with this equation: Human_Life_A = Human_Life_B? At the point of conception, the mass of cells is a human life. All that happens after is simply the 'mass of cells' aging.
I would leave that to the biologists who know more about those cells. Obviously there's more to the process than an arbitrary moment can describe. I simply think the more reasonable position is completely development, at birth, rather than conception. As I said, I could be swayed on the issue of at what point in a pregnancy an abortion was more or less ethical, but ultimately it's the woman's body and her right to choose. I have to respect a human being who has been alive for a few decades, more than I respect the potential life of her fetus. To do so in reverse is to make women slaves to their uterus and in extreme cases (hello senator Akin) to their rapist. I find that a far more obvious problem than that of not bringing a pregnancy to term.
You still haven't answered my question. You even removed it from my quote. Why do you care about the well being of others? Why does almost everyone on this planet have an understanding of good and evil and have a predisposition towards good?
I care about the well being of other for the same reason you do, although you've mistakenly assumed it to be god instead. Human beings are socially evolved primates. The healthy minds among us do want to work together and do care that others are healthy too. Nobody on this planet has a concrete understanding of good and evil, as I said those concepts are meaningless absolutes in a relative universe. I explained the predisposition for good above. Healthy humans (ie. not mentally ill) are prone to help one another and work to be a cohesive social unit. That is much of what we consider to be "good," and it's no surprise religions have borrowed heavily from this. It is our evolutionary moral compass.
A heretic is someone who rejects the teachings of the church. If you don't know the church how can you reject it?
By now you must know that a rational person feels no more obliged to take the acts of the apostles at face value than they do Shakespeare or Tolstoy. You have presumed to say that your church has some immense value and we should all know those teachings? I say to you that I am well aware of it's teachings, but you reject that notion on the grounds that it can only be interpreted as such a wonderful thing. Clearly that is not the case.
To be a heretic is to wear a proud intellectual badge of honor; To recognize the invalid "truths," that holy-books and their clergymen foist upon their inculcated populations. We aren't rejecting anything out of hand and if you take the time to read the argument here, I trust you'll have a more constructive point to articulate.
In perfect honesty, I find you asking why I reject such a church to be almost farcical. Why would anyone hesitate to argue against a body so bent on human suffering that they, to this day, support the suffering of homosexuals, support the genocide of non-Christians in the Balkans and in Africa, support the spreading of lies concerning contraception in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world? On what ground can you possible claim moral superiority? On what grounds can you insist that I, or anyone else, is missing out on a "truth," worth having? The most-holy of your religious tradition are sat in a golden city debating homosexuality and the finer points of child-birth (quite ironic since they're all virgin men) while the vast majority of their laypersons are wrought with hunger, disease, and violence.
A heretic indeed is someone who rejects the teachings of the church. I ask you then: How can you not be counted among us?
You missed the point on all accounts. You keep deflecting instead of answering the questions or stating your beliefs. And still more lies about the Church are spread.
"...proud intellectual badge of honor"? Why are you so proud of choosing a position based on 'empirical' evidence? You claim a religious man a fool, but to look at the universe and all its complexities, to look at the human species and our DNA, to look our lives and not see the need and desire for a loving, omnipotent creator is foolish. How can you look at the Big Bang and not see a creator?
The desire of the human mind for their to be something greater than themselves is quite amusing... The general populace strive to have that divine entity that created and guides this universe, and claim that without it there is no morality or some such non-sense.
Physics has proven quite adept at explaining every detail of this universe, and with time we will have all the little details ironed out that completely nullify any little gap your religious beliefs may cling to. Currently there are only 2 gaps that religion can cling to, 1 creation of the universe, we have a very solid theory and the more recent discoveries add credence to the theories on creation..and 2 the purpose of life.
The first gap is easily closed by science, the second is a philosophical gap, one that only even exists because of our advanced cognitive reasoning skills. Remove our abilities to identify self, and greed, love, and etc and you have a base primate specie, but because of our enlarged and quite talented brain we have the ability of introspection and in turn can question our very existence.
If you try and say that is evidence for a creator then you clearly do not understand evolution, if you try and claim the irreducible complexity argument then you REALLY do not understand evolution. For those trying the watchmaker argument, sorry that is just childish and feeble. Go look through an electron microscope at the matrix created in the formation of a stone. show me a more intricate and precise formation then that of a diamond, absolute perfection in its form... yeah we know exactly how it is made, and there is no divine creator, it is just natural physical laws that create it.
And for the whole "god created the big bang"... seriously? you are going the cause and effect route? okay then God was the effect of what cause? And if you place the supernatural quality on god then guess what, you are going to need incredible evidence for his existence...
You claiming your god exists requires you to prove it, independently without the aid of your bible, which has been proven time and time again to be full of fairy tales and imaginations. So pretty much if you are a muslim, jew, christian, hindu or what ever religious belief you hold they are nothing more then the personal delusions of yourself that allow you to tolerate your existence instead of embracing the amazing complexity that is live and just having some fun know that there is no true answer to the purpose of life beyond what you make.
heh so your god is in the same boat as dragons, unicorns, odin, thor, Zeus, osiris, anubis, Mardok, My little pony, dragon ballz and anything else that you can claim as real but it is impossible to prove false...
Example of true evidence procedures... FTL neutrinos... they detected them but didnt believe it possible, but they also did not toss it out.. they submitted their results for peer review, so thousands of others could all dig thru the data, run the same tests... after a while everyone else was getting the standard expected results and only that 1 facility got the FTL neutrinos... and after they went back over their equipment for the 100th time they found out... they had a bad cable one a timing component and it was what threw everything off..
That is real, claiming a book is real and then ignore any and all evidence to the contrary is ignorance bordering on stupidity. You religion claims nothing new or original, every single ounce of modern day religions was claimed in a previous faith, hindu is the closest of all faiths to having a semi original belief system since it is quite a nice bit older then Judeo-christian beliefs but even it has pulled from the local customs and beliefs that pre-dated it.
so to be honest your bible is nothing more the copyright infringement at best and shitty plagiarism at worst... there is no truth within it, there is not an ounce of morality to be gleaned from it that did not exist before it... As for where do natural laws come from? that is in the realm of science cannot answer as of yet.. they were in place due directly from the events of the Big bang and so once we figure that out we will figure out why the physical laws are the way they are...
You missed the point on all accounts. You keep deflecting instead of answering the questions or stating your beliefs. And still more lies about the Church are spread.
Seeing as I don't actually have any "beliefs," that is, non-evidential claims to knowledge, I think you either misunderstood what I wrote, or you're simply being disingenuous.
"...proud intellectual badge of honor"? Why are you so proud of choosing a position based on 'empirical' evidence? You claim a religious man a fool, but to look at the universe and all its complexities, to look at the human species and our DNA, to look our lives and not see the need and desire for a loving, omnipotent creator is foolish. How can you look at the Big Bang and not see a creator?
Because empirical evidence is all we have. It is the only way that I can take an idea I have, test it, and pass it to others for the same testing and further scrutiny. It is the only way to seriously pursue knowledge. We may not gain an "ultimate" understanding of rocks through geology, but we learn more about geological processes with each passing year. Gaining more knowledge about the universe is obviously preferable to accepting that we can't know anything about it. You could not be on a computer, on the internet, and using a keyboard, without the aid of empiricism. None of those inventions would have been made without people questioning the nature of the world we live in and seeking to know more about it.
To say something as absurd as "look at all the complexity," implying that the universe is simply too magnificent to learn anything about it, is to deny the intellect that evolution developed in our species. We have the capacity to learn more about the origin of the universe, substituting a creator and implying the job is there-by done: that's nothing short of willful ignorance
I cannot empirically prove God's existence, just as you cannot empirically disprove his existence.
And yet the claim, admittedly impossible to prove, has been used as justification for slavery, homophobia, subjugation of women, war on other religious groups, war on other ethnic groups, anti-abortion, anti-medicine, and anti-science movements the world over, just to name a few.
For such an obviously vacuous claim, it appears that a whole lot has been argued with a basis in that irrational assumption.
heh so your god is in the same boat as dragons, unicorns, odin, thor, Zeus, osiris, anubis, Mardok, My little pony, dragon ballz and anything else that you can claim as real but it is impossible to prove false...
Example of true evidence procedures... FTL neutrinos... they detected them but didnt believe it possible, but they also did not toss it out.. they submitted their results for peer review, so thousands of others could all dig thru the data, run the same tests... after a while everyone else was getting the standard expected results and only that 1 facility got the FTL neutrinos... and after they went back over their equipment for the 100th time they found out... they had a bad cable one a timing component and it was what threw everything off..
That is real, claiming a book is real and then ignore any and all evidence to the contrary is ignorance bordering on stupidity. You religion claims nothing new or original, every single ounce of modern day religions was claimed in a previous faith, hindu is the closest of all faiths to having a semi original belief system since it is quite a nice bit older then Judeo-christian beliefs but even it has pulled from the local customs and beliefs that pre-dated it.
so to be honest your bible is nothing more the copyright infringement at best and shitty plagiarism at worst... there is no truth within it, there is not an ounce of morality to be gleaned from it that did not exist before it... As for where do natural laws come from? that is in the realm of science cannot answer as of yet.. they were in place due directly from the events of the Big bang and so once we figure that out we will figure out why the physical laws are the way they are...
I do not claim it is real on the basis that it is impossible to prove false. Do you realize that the early chuch was spread by men who gave up their lives to travel from city to city and teach about the life of Jesus; that most of these men died as martyrs because they would not recant their faith is Jesus Christ? Do you believe in anything in this world by which you would stake your life and well being before denying it, even if just in appearance? To say the Catholic Church was started as a fairly tale means to control a population is just wrong.
How can you claim Catholicism is not original? You obviously know little about it.
How can you claim Catholicism is not original? You obviously know little about it.
Based on discovered writings, Hinduism is the oldest religion by at least 3000 thousand years (compared to Catholicism). Personally I think paganism was around much earlier than that, but there was no "bible" written for this belief at the time.
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
Because empirical evidence is all we have. It is the only way that I can take an idea I have, test it, and pass it to others for the same testing and further scrutiny. It is the only way to seriously pursue knowledge. We may not gain an "ultimate" understanding of rocks through geology, but we learn more about geological processes with each passing year. Gaining more knowledge about the universe is obviously preferable to accepting that we can't know anything about it. You could not be on a computer, on the internet, and using a keyboard, without the aid of empiricism. None of those inventions would have been made without people questioning the nature of the world we live in and seeking to know more about it.
To say something as absurd as "look at all the complexity," implying that the universe is simply too magnificent to learn anything about it, is to deny the intellect that evolution developed in our species. We have the capacity to learn more about the origin of the universe, substituting a creator and implying the job is there-by done: that's nothing short of willful ignorance
I do not believe we should throw up our arms at the complexity of the universe, quite the opposite. The advancement of science is a great thing. When an engineer looks at a bridge, he also understands the time, thought, and work that went into building it. When a computer programmer plays a new video game, he understands how involved and complex the code is that allows the game to function. When I look at the wonders of this world I see design. Science is reverse engineering.
And yet the claim, admittedly impossible to prove, has been used as justification for slavery, homophobia, subjugation of women, war on other religious groups, war on other ethnic groups, anti-abortion, anti-medicine, and anti-science movements the world over, just to name a few.
For such an obviously vacuous claim, it appears that a whole lot has been argued with a basis in that irrational assumption.
When has Catholicism used its theology as justification for any of these except anti-abortion? I am not arguing for monotheism, I am arguing for Catholicism. Anti-abortion groups are not limited to religious groups. Secular society also has pro-lifers.
Based on discovered writings, Hinduism is the oldest religion by at least 3000 thousand years (compared to Catholicism). Personally I think paganism was around much earlier than that, but there was no "bible" written for this belief at the time.
Hinduism and Catholicism are both religions; other than that, they have very little in common.
heh did you know that Jesus was added to the list of different personifications of brahma within Hinduism? just a tidbit for similarities.. As for the Christians being martyrs and tortured mercilessly for refusing to recant their faith..yeah that is some propaganda right there..
Most christians were not tortured for refusal to recant their faith, the romans (the ruling elite when the religion started) did not give two shits about recanting your belief..they let all those they conquered keep their faiths, they just required taxes and tributes to be paid...
And since the christians were quite the little terrorist back then, they caught some extra flak, add to it they were seen as an upstart cult (on par with how most christians view mormonism or a little less credit even) and people like Nero (who was a nut case anyways) used the early christians as a scapegoat for some of his actions.
The christians never had this massive time period of tortured rough existence, though you people sure do like to claim it. And as for the catholic church and doing good??? HAHAHAHAHAHAH they have much more dirt on their hands then good in the bank. Support for slavery since it was commonplace (even got details in your bible explaining how to treat and trade your slaves), or the backing of genocides (crusaders could be called no less), oh i know how about the repeated overthrowing of established countries, and cultures all for their own coffers?
And as to your statement of me not being familiar with catholics since i state they are far from original.. mmm yeah i got a pretty good clue on them, studied them for quite a few decades now. Their history is not some glorious passage of suffering and enduring through the blights... they had a short term of being below notice, and then a even shorter term of being considered a cult, and finally getting a lovely little perk of "lets editted ever living crap out of every inch of this book to make it conform and adapt to the concepts of domination and leadership"... which is why constantine supported the faith and placed it as the official religion of the empire.
You want to know why so many turned to the original tennets of christianity? not cause of the catholics (which did not come about for many many years, but due to things such as the Gnostic scriptures, preaching peace and goodwill, treating the meek as kings, and the rich giving everything up to help the poor...
What poor man in their right mind would not want that? free money, food, clothes..shit yeah let me have that. Once the catholic church came about post constantine they were no longer of those values. they had nothing but greedy and power mongering in their history.... And with quite a few of those considered good deeds actually being the results of horrendous actions... Such as the conversion of ireland... nicely destroying an entire culture to make it conform.. or the Mayans, incas, and let us not forget the pillaging of the southeast asian regions...
Please do inform me where the catholic church has a long standing history of great and kind deeds.. was it their support of the US Slave trade? how bout the backing of the Nazi's? oh i know the spreading of lies that condoms cause cancer in Africa impeding the prevention of AIDs spread... Ooo how about their tacit acceptance of pedophilia within their priesthood and the pope himself helping hide away confirmed child molestors? please do elaborate for me...
I believe in God or an all powerful entity. I don't know what it is, where it came from, or WHY. You asked me to prove to prove to you that my God exists. I don't know if I can prove to you that my God exists, I can only show you what was proven to me that my God exists. This may be lengthy but I hope it is worth the read.
Background: I was raised in a Pentacostal household. Growing up I was exposed to religion at a young age and saw a lot of things that were quite frightening to me as a child. As I grew older, I kept waiting for things to happen to me. I kept waiting to feel overwhelmed in church and do the things that others in my religion were doing. It never happened, and I felt that I was lost. Eventually in my mind I decided that none of it was real and that it was an act. I wouldn't admit it, but its what I felt deep down.
In 1998 I was living in North Carolina. I was young, had a wife and a child and was working a job barely over minimum wage to pay for food and rent. I worked the late shift and left work around 7:15 AM every morning. On my way home one morning, I was listening to the radio and heard the DJ announce that they would be giving away $3,000 to a listener that day. I later found out they were doing this every day that month. The contest was simple, they announced the 3 songs to listen for and you had to be the 77th caller when the third song began to play.
When I arrived home, I half heartedly told my wife about the 3 songs, and I went to bed. Normally I slept until around 3:00 PM. On this day, I woke up around 1:00 PM and was lying there listening to the radio. Thats when the first song came on the radio. I didn't think anything of it until that song went off and the second song came on. I knew then that this was the 3 songs to listen for. I didn't even know the radio station, I only knew it was based out of Winston Salem. I dialed 411, explaining to the operator that I was looking for a rock station out of Winston Salem. They gave me the call letters and decided that was the right one, at which point they gave me the number. I hung up and dialed the radio station. Busy signal. I dialed again. Another busy signal. I dialed a third time and it rang probably 10 times before the DJ picked up the phone and announced that I was the winner.
Awesome! We just won $3,000, things were already tight in the house so this would help out tremendously. After taxes we would probably net around $2,200.
Two weeks go by and after the proper paper work and release forms signed we received the money.
The day after receiving the money, I was preparing to leave for work around 10:30 PM. It was November and very cold out so I went out ot start the car. We had a fairly new car, a 1998 Dodge Neon. The car would not start, battery appeard to be dead. I had been living in the area only a few months and had no friend or family around. I tried finding a neighbor with some jumper cables. Finally I called my boss to tell her I was going to be late for work at which point I phoned a cab.
At 11:20 PM the cab company still had not shown up at which point I called them back. As soon as I hung up the phone, it rang. It was my wife's aunt with bad news. My 19 year old brother in law had passed away. She recanted immediately and said that they were working with him in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It was a horrible call to receive and horrible news that I had to somehow tell my wife that her brother may or may not be dead. I told my wife we had to go home (a four hour drive) that her brother was on his way to the hospital. I phoned my boss, telling her that we had a family emergency and needed to go home.
At this point I went back outside to the car and tried starting it again. This time, the car started without issue. I had tried to start this car several times over the past hour.
We packed quickly and we were on our way. I stopped to get gas just before getting on the interstate. A stranger was pumping gas beside me and struck up a conversation. The only thing I remember from the conversation was him saying "It's a clear night tonight. It's one of those nights you can move on at 90mph and not worry about a thing". Thats what I remember from the conversation and just how calm he was and how calm I felt after speaking with him.
A few hours later the ER doctor confirmed that my brother in law had been brought in, and that he was DOA.
Over the next couple days, we made funeral arrangements. No-one in my wifes family had the money to pay for a funeral so it fell to us. We ended up using the money we'd won from the radio station to pay for the funeral rather than letting the state put him in a pine box.
Let's recap the story -
I won money from a radio station used two weeks later to pay for my brother in law's funeral. I didn't even have the number to this radio station. I didn't even know the name. Do you realize how many people had the number memorized, written down beside them, or on speed dial?
My car would not start, causing me to be late for work and receive a horrible phone call that my wife would have otherwise received, alone with a 2 year old. Upon receiving the news, somehow the car starts.
A complete stranger gave me a calming message. In hindsight it wasn't important that we drove fast to get there, at the time it was of the utmost importance.
I know this was a long story, and probably a "Cool Story". And it doesn't answer your question. I can't prove to you that my God exists. To me, these events proved one thing to me. That something far greater is in control. Far greater than you or I. I tell this story when I'm challenged about life, religion, or the big question of Why? It doesn't answer any of that. It just tells ME that there's something else to life and that we should not spend it arguing about who's right or wrong.
These days I spend time meditating and trying to communicate appreciation for the life I have, my family and friends. As for religion, I believe that many can hold a framework of communicating ways for humanity to live with and love each other. The internet saddens me at times and I worry about our future. I pray that whoever you are in this life, you should look at your hands, look at everything around you and question "Why did anything have to exist in the first place?". Sometimes it doesn't hurt to just have a little faith. Thanks for reading.
I do not believe we should throw up our arms at the complexity of the universe, quite the opposite. The advancement of science is a great thing. When an engineer looks at a bridge, he also understands the time, thought, and work that went into building it. When a computer programmer plays a new video game, he understands how involved and complex the code is that allows the game to function. When I look at the wonders of this world I see design. Science is reverse engineering.
Unfortunately for your design theory, evolution has proved to be a very well-evidenced theory for how the universe and everything in it developed. You can, of course, see patterns where none actually exist. I see neat things in the clouds all the time. But your intuition is far from a legitimate critique of scientific understanding.
When has Catholicism used its theology as justification for any of these except anti-abortion? I am not arguing for monotheism, I am arguing for Catholicism. Anti-abortion groups are not limited to religious groups. Secular society also has pro-lifers.
You should study a little bit of world history. The justification for the European enslavement of Africans, and the Native Americans who were subjugated (and massacred), was made by the Catholic Church. Conquistadors were given writ to convert and/or enslave natives and Africans were fast-tracked to slavery by means of the Noah myth (descendants of Ham). Catholic zealots were the antagonists of countless ethnic wars from the first crusade right on up to the Balkan conflicts which saw militant Catholics (in holy orders) attempting to snuff out their Muslim neighbors in Bosnia. I could go on, but I think you get the point.
I know this was a long story, and probably a "Cool Story". And it doesn't answer your question. I can't prove to you that my God exists. To me, these events proved one thing to me. That something far greater is in control. Far greater than you or I. I tell this story when I'm challenged about life, religion, or the big question of Why? It doesn't answer any of that. It just tells ME that there's something else to life and that we should not spend it arguing about who's right or wrong.
These days I spend time meditating and trying to communicate appreciation for the life I have, my family and friends. As for religion, I believe that many can hold a framework of communicating ways for humanity to live with and love each other. The internet saddens me at times and I worry about our future. I pray that whoever you are in this life, you should look at your hands, look at everything around you and question "Why did anything have to exist in the first place?". Sometimes it doesn't hurt to just have a little faith. Thanks for reading.
I am very much fighting the urge to use that phrase, but I will resist. In any event, you appear to be intelligent enough to realize none of those events was proof of the divine or that there is a plan for you or I. The part of this that really strikes me, is that you appear to have some real appreciation for the fact you could pay for the funeral, but the death itself is a footnote. Apparently, the plan was to kill one of your relatives (God did this, I would assume?) in order to give you a grandiose feeling of security or perhaps purpose? I can't quite grapple with which dots you connected to bring yourself to these conclusions, but as I said, I think you are just as aware as I am that you experienced nothing miraculous or even overly coincidental.
The question you pose is not just silly, it's paradoxical. Why did any of us have to exist? We didn't. It's obvious that, for most of human history, people died in childbirth and before they were old enough to really remember anything, all the time. It is due to the evolution of our species that we are in such a position to speculate on these matters. Chocking it all up to a deity or a cosmic force wrests all the credit due to our ancestors for some imaginary being for which we have zero evidence.
Sometimes it does not hurt to have a little "faith" in something or someone you know very little about. I trust the police to keep me safe because I have seen them arrest criminals. I don't have an intimate knowledge of every cop, some might be crooked, but I have a little faith that they'll get the job done. If you want to call that "faith," instead of a reasonable expectation, be my guest. However; it is never a good idea to have blind faith in something you know nothing about, certainly not if that something is not even evident to exist in the first place.
@cdaxis212: I could read your story and say, "Wow, this happened near Winston-Salem which is where I live (and that's actually true, btw), so it's a sign that I was meant to read this. Plus, there's an awful lot of coincidence in that story so maybe I should rethink the whole faith thing."
Here's the rub though. So many different things happen every day in each of our lives that we are almost all bound to have a series of coincidences similar to your story eventually. If we call it a 1/10,000 chance for a confluence of events like that to occur in a given day, then we can expect that on average, we should each see something like this roughly every 27 1/2 years. And frankly, I don't think there's even that small of a chance of something like this happening when you consider all of the possible coincidences which could have happened and didn't.
Lets say I get past that though. So you won the radio contest due to God's intervention and thus had the money to bury your family member intead of having the State do it. Is that the most important thing that money could have possibly done considering the situations of every person in the listening area? Could that money perhaps have saved someone's life, for example, and if so, why did God decide your need was more important? For that matter, if God wanted to help your family, wouldn't you have been better served by not having your brother-in-law die in the first place?
Of course, we can rely on the old standby which says that we don't know God's plan and maybe there's some much worse series of events which would result from your brother-in-law not having died. That always seems like a cop-out to me though which people use when they realize a reasonable analysis would have to include significant doubt. Plus, it just leads us back to square one anyway which is that maybe it's true and maybe it's not.
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...and if you disagree with me, you're probably <insert random ad hominem attack here>.
religion is just another form of out dated government. its the cause for hate crimes. it is the cause of war. it is the cause of subjugation. science is the answer to your questions, as its based off of fact. anything else is propaganda.
atheist for the win
PS... if religion was never created. the world would be a much more peaceful place.
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The problem is, to doubt religion is treated with the same animosity as the doubt for evolution; however, doubting evolution is to ignore evidence. Doubting god on the other hand is to simply acknowledge that there is no evidence for any such thing. The two are not similar propositions.
I'd been tempted several times to edit the OP to reflect something more like this, but the thread is quite old and I didn't want to invalidate quotes or seem to be misleading later posters by editing things so far post-facto. I think the thread made it along just as well, even if I did have some moving to do in getting to the point.
I think the point here, as always, is to introduce people to rational thought in the context of religion. In point of logical fact, the truly honest will (and did) move directly to admission that faith is required and we get to argue from that point. If they attempt to introduce bad evidence, there is a whole series of debates to be had before they're willing to make that step.
Strictly speaking, if nobody wants to think about it and just accepts faith and irrationality over evidence, the conversation is over. But, I'd like to think for every person who takes this cop-out there are a few more who do not. Bringing more people to the point of shrugging off their irrational worldviews and considering evidence in a logical way is the goal. The props used to engage that argument are a matter of taste. I don't particularly care if someone comes out of the thread as an atheist, deist, or theist, but I do think they'll be more critical in their assessment of dogma in any case.
If you're arguing the line of debate in general bears no fruit, I think we have 50 and some pages of evidence to the contrary. If you're arguing that the debate is simply a waste of time, well, I don't feel my time was wasted and I've been the major participant here. Others are, of course, free to feel their time was wasted, but that wasn't the purpose of the thread.
I see what you’re getting at. The idea that if nothing is good so why live seems very shallow, if we lived in a world of post apocalyptic shit I would be very sad if everyone committed suicide because everything was so bad. Life is a struggle but it is an amazing thing at the same time. One would assume that puppies are good and therefore playing with a puppy makes life worth living because there is good in the world. I accept that puppies are generally cute but personally I don't like dogs so again perspective comes into play.
I used to have a friend where he deemed everything in life negatively and he always complained that he had no luck. The ideal that he always approached things with a piss poor attitude basically created his self prophesized failure or bad luck. I believe if you have bad thoughts bad things will likely occur, but again this is all perspective. Me having fun in life (which makes it worth living) has nothing to do with good or bad, what I choose do to for fun can be interpreted in either view point. Love can be used as an example, I'm assuming that people would determine love to be a good thing but what happens if you love a murderer, does that make love evil?
It doesn't matter what you do as long as you enjoy it, people can judge you for whatever reason it doesn't mean it's good or evil. I don't agree with torture, murder, hate etc... but in some cases these actions could be determined necessary or for the greater good.
Back to on topic, sorry for the derail proletaria but I think you have the situation under control and honestly half the stuff your listing I have no clue wtf your talking about. The basic principles of religion I’m fine with (be a good person); however using religion to teach and control is an outdated practice. At one point when lightning occurred humans thought the Gods were angry because they didn’t understand what was happening. Religion filled a void of science that wasn’t accessible to the masses for a long period of time. As for proving Gods, the above posters have stated enough it cannot be proved or disproved; I have nothing to say on the matter.
I get this point of view a lot, from both religious persons and non-believers alike, and I think it has merit in the context that religion continues to evolve with society. Having said that, I think there's also a degree of wishful thinking inherent in this proposition. If we're being brutally honest; Religion isn't meant to make you an objectively good person (in so far as we understand objective good), but rather a good follower. One might say they are good due to religion because that is how they (mis)understand the concept of good or right action based on their theology, but I don't tend to allow anyone to claim they have a handle on what's good simply because they are following the tenants of a supposedly good or wise leader (be that leader an actual person, deity, or anything else).
Religion certainly was man's first way of explaining the universe as he could perceive it, but that has slowly but surely given way to our empirical sciences. That isn't to suggest science currently has all the answers, but through science we now understand that the sum total of religion is simply conjecture or a means of guessing based on absolutely no (or very little) evidence. I do understand that some persons are simply unwilling to give up their long-held beliefs because it feels good, but I don't see much of a reason to believe something because it can't be falsified. As I've said here before, I can't disprove dragons, unicorns, or fairies, but there are not many people around who consider a belief in those things to be anything but an obviously antiquated superstition. I would simply like to live in a world where god (like the many gods before it) was treated in the same fashion.
Myths, legends, and quirky beliefs do make for wonderful poetry and prose. I doubt the Vedas, Bible, or Koran could ever be ignored for their historical and cultural impact on society. But the onus that true belief in these books (and creative interpretations of those literal beliefs) will continue to confound humanity until we can make that transition. Unless we accept the premise that the world will always be tribally divided on the basis of who was raised in what religious tradition, I think we owe it to ourselves to be more of a skeptic and less accepting of irrationality in all it's forms.
Catholicism directly opposes Zionism. Misinterpretations of a truth does not make the truth a falsehood. I could prove my interpretation valid to a Protestant, however, you will ignore it because the proof would largely come from the bible. Catholicism teaches that the sacred scripture holds equal weight with sacred tradition, the personal teachings passed on from Jesus to the apostles and so on.
Do you agree with this equation: Human_Life_A = Human_Life_B? At the point of conception, the mass of cells is a human life. All that happens after is simply the 'mass of cells' aging.
You still haven't answered my question. You even removed it from my quote. Why do you care about the well being of others? Why does almost everyone on this planet have an understanding of good and evil and have a predisposition towards good?
Acts 17:25-28; 1 Tim. 2:4
A heretic is someone who rejects the teachings of the church. If you don't know the church how can you reject it?
You really have no respect for the word "truth," if you're going to say that a line in the book in-question is proof positive that one is reading that very book correctly or not. Unless you are going to be a strict literalist, and as a catholic you most certainly cannot do that, you have no grounds on which to refute someone else' opinions with your own or that of some obviously human hierarchy whom you attribute with divine inspiration.
I would leave that to the biologists who know more about those cells. Obviously there's more to the process than an arbitrary moment can describe. I simply think the more reasonable position is completely development, at birth, rather than conception. As I said, I could be swayed on the issue of at what point in a pregnancy an abortion was more or less ethical, but ultimately it's the woman's body and her right to choose. I have to respect a human being who has been alive for a few decades, more than I respect the potential life of her fetus. To do so in reverse is to make women slaves to their uterus and in extreme cases (hello senator Akin) to their rapist. I find that a far more obvious problem than that of not bringing a pregnancy to term.
I care about the well being of other for the same reason you do, although you've mistakenly assumed it to be god instead. Human beings are socially evolved primates. The healthy minds among us do want to work together and do care that others are healthy too. Nobody on this planet has a concrete understanding of good and evil, as I said those concepts are meaningless absolutes in a relative universe. I explained the predisposition for good above. Healthy humans (ie. not mentally ill) are prone to help one another and work to be a cohesive social unit. That is much of what we consider to be "good," and it's no surprise religions have borrowed heavily from this. It is our evolutionary moral compass.
By now you must know that a rational person feels no more obliged to take the acts of the apostles at face value than they do Shakespeare or Tolstoy. You have presumed to say that your church has some immense value and we should all know those teachings? I say to you that I am well aware of it's teachings, but you reject that notion on the grounds that it can only be interpreted as such a wonderful thing. Clearly that is not the case.
To be a heretic is to wear a proud intellectual badge of honor; To recognize the invalid "truths," that holy-books and their clergymen foist upon their inculcated populations. We aren't rejecting anything out of hand and if you take the time to read the argument here, I trust you'll have a more constructive point to articulate.
In perfect honesty, I find you asking why I reject such a church to be almost farcical. Why would anyone hesitate to argue against a body so bent on human suffering that they, to this day, support the suffering of homosexuals, support the genocide of non-Christians in the Balkans and in Africa, support the spreading of lies concerning contraception in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world? On what ground can you possible claim moral superiority? On what grounds can you insist that I, or anyone else, is missing out on a "truth," worth having? The most-holy of your religious tradition are sat in a golden city debating homosexuality and the finer points of child-birth (quite ironic since they're all virgin men) while the vast majority of their laypersons are wrought with hunger, disease, and violence.
A heretic indeed is someone who rejects the teachings of the church. I ask you then: How can you not be counted among us?
"...proud intellectual badge of honor"? Why are you so proud of choosing a position based on 'empirical' evidence? You claim a religious man a fool, but to look at the universe and all its complexities, to look at the human species and our DNA, to look our lives and not see the need and desire for a loving, omnipotent creator is foolish. How can you look at the Big Bang and not see a creator?
"I do not think it means what you think it means." -Inigo Montoya
Physics has proven quite adept at explaining every detail of this universe, and with time we will have all the little details ironed out that completely nullify any little gap your religious beliefs may cling to. Currently there are only 2 gaps that religion can cling to, 1 creation of the universe, we have a very solid theory and the more recent discoveries add credence to the theories on creation..and 2 the purpose of life.
The first gap is easily closed by science, the second is a philosophical gap, one that only even exists because of our advanced cognitive reasoning skills. Remove our abilities to identify self, and greed, love, and etc and you have a base primate specie, but because of our enlarged and quite talented brain we have the ability of introspection and in turn can question our very existence.
If you try and say that is evidence for a creator then you clearly do not understand evolution, if you try and claim the irreducible complexity argument then you REALLY do not understand evolution. For those trying the watchmaker argument, sorry that is just childish and feeble. Go look through an electron microscope at the matrix created in the formation of a stone. show me a more intricate and precise formation then that of a diamond, absolute perfection in its form... yeah we know exactly how it is made, and there is no divine creator, it is just natural physical laws that create it.
And for the whole "god created the big bang"... seriously? you are going the cause and effect route? okay then God was the effect of what cause? And if you place the supernatural quality on god then guess what, you are going to need incredible evidence for his existence...
You claiming your god exists requires you to prove it, independently without the aid of your bible, which has been proven time and time again to be full of fairy tales and imaginations. So pretty much if you are a muslim, jew, christian, hindu or what ever religious belief you hold they are nothing more then the personal delusions of yourself that allow you to tolerate your existence instead of embracing the amazing complexity that is live and just having some fun know that there is no true answer to the purpose of life beyond what you make.
I cannot empirically prove God's existence, just as you cannot empirically disprove his existence.
Example of true evidence procedures... FTL neutrinos... they detected them but didnt believe it possible, but they also did not toss it out.. they submitted their results for peer review, so thousands of others could all dig thru the data, run the same tests... after a while everyone else was getting the standard expected results and only that 1 facility got the FTL neutrinos... and after they went back over their equipment for the 100th time they found out... they had a bad cable one a timing component and it was what threw everything off..
That is real, claiming a book is real and then ignore any and all evidence to the contrary is ignorance bordering on stupidity. You religion claims nothing new or original, every single ounce of modern day religions was claimed in a previous faith, hindu is the closest of all faiths to having a semi original belief system since it is quite a nice bit older then Judeo-christian beliefs but even it has pulled from the local customs and beliefs that pre-dated it.
so to be honest your bible is nothing more the copyright infringement at best and shitty plagiarism at worst... there is no truth within it, there is not an ounce of morality to be gleaned from it that did not exist before it... As for where do natural laws come from? that is in the realm of science cannot answer as of yet.. they were in place due directly from the events of the Big bang and so once we figure that out we will figure out why the physical laws are the way they are...
Seeing as I don't actually have any "beliefs," that is, non-evidential claims to knowledge, I think you either misunderstood what I wrote, or you're simply being disingenuous.
Because empirical evidence is all we have. It is the only way that I can take an idea I have, test it, and pass it to others for the same testing and further scrutiny. It is the only way to seriously pursue knowledge. We may not gain an "ultimate" understanding of rocks through geology, but we learn more about geological processes with each passing year. Gaining more knowledge about the universe is obviously preferable to accepting that we can't know anything about it. You could not be on a computer, on the internet, and using a keyboard, without the aid of empiricism. None of those inventions would have been made without people questioning the nature of the world we live in and seeking to know more about it.
To say something as absurd as "look at all the complexity," implying that the universe is simply too magnificent to learn anything about it, is to deny the intellect that evolution developed in our species. We have the capacity to learn more about the origin of the universe, substituting a creator and implying the job is there-by done: that's nothing short of willful ignorance
Good catch on that typo. I meant farcical.
And yet the claim, admittedly impossible to prove, has been used as justification for slavery, homophobia, subjugation of women, war on other religious groups, war on other ethnic groups, anti-abortion, anti-medicine, and anti-science movements the world over, just to name a few.
For such an obviously vacuous claim, it appears that a whole lot has been argued with a basis in that irrational assumption.
I do not claim it is real on the basis that it is impossible to prove false. Do you realize that the early chuch was spread by men who gave up their lives to travel from city to city and teach about the life of Jesus; that most of these men died as martyrs because they would not recant their faith is Jesus Christ? Do you believe in anything in this world by which you would stake your life and well being before denying it, even if just in appearance? To say the Catholic Church was started as a fairly tale means to control a population is just wrong.
How can you claim Catholicism is not original? You obviously know little about it.
Based on discovered writings, Hinduism is the oldest religion by at least 3000 thousand years (compared to Catholicism). Personally I think paganism was around much earlier than that, but there was no "bible" written for this belief at the time.
I do not believe we should throw up our arms at the complexity of the universe, quite the opposite. The advancement of science is a great thing. When an engineer looks at a bridge, he also understands the time, thought, and work that went into building it. When a computer programmer plays a new video game, he understands how involved and complex the code is that allows the game to function. When I look at the wonders of this world I see design. Science is reverse engineering.
When has Catholicism used its theology as justification for any of these except anti-abortion? I am not arguing for monotheism, I am arguing for Catholicism. Anti-abortion groups are not limited to religious groups. Secular society also has pro-lifers.
Hinduism and Catholicism are both religions; other than that, they have very little in common.
Most christians were not tortured for refusal to recant their faith, the romans (the ruling elite when the religion started) did not give two shits about recanting your belief..they let all those they conquered keep their faiths, they just required taxes and tributes to be paid...
And since the christians were quite the little terrorist back then, they caught some extra flak, add to it they were seen as an upstart cult (on par with how most christians view mormonism or a little less credit even) and people like Nero (who was a nut case anyways) used the early christians as a scapegoat for some of his actions.
The christians never had this massive time period of tortured rough existence, though you people sure do like to claim it. And as for the catholic church and doing good??? HAHAHAHAHAHAH they have much more dirt on their hands then good in the bank. Support for slavery since it was commonplace (even got details in your bible explaining how to treat and trade your slaves), or the backing of genocides (crusaders could be called no less), oh i know how about the repeated overthrowing of established countries, and cultures all for their own coffers?
And as to your statement of me not being familiar with catholics since i state they are far from original.. mmm yeah i got a pretty good clue on them, studied them for quite a few decades now. Their history is not some glorious passage of suffering and enduring through the blights... they had a short term of being below notice, and then a even shorter term of being considered a cult, and finally getting a lovely little perk of "lets editted ever living crap out of every inch of this book to make it conform and adapt to the concepts of domination and leadership"... which is why constantine supported the faith and placed it as the official religion of the empire.
You want to know why so many turned to the original tennets of christianity? not cause of the catholics (which did not come about for many many years, but due to things such as the Gnostic scriptures, preaching peace and goodwill, treating the meek as kings, and the rich giving everything up to help the poor...
What poor man in their right mind would not want that? free money, food, clothes..shit yeah let me have that. Once the catholic church came about post constantine they were no longer of those values. they had nothing but greedy and power mongering in their history.... And with quite a few of those considered good deeds actually being the results of horrendous actions... Such as the conversion of ireland... nicely destroying an entire culture to make it conform.. or the Mayans, incas, and let us not forget the pillaging of the southeast asian regions...
Please do inform me where the catholic church has a long standing history of great and kind deeds.. was it their support of the US Slave trade? how bout the backing of the Nazi's? oh i know the spreading of lies that condoms cause cancer in Africa impeding the prevention of AIDs spread... Ooo how about their tacit acceptance of pedophilia within their priesthood and the pope himself helping hide away confirmed child molestors? please do elaborate for me...
Background: I was raised in a Pentacostal household. Growing up I was exposed to religion at a young age and saw a lot of things that were quite frightening to me as a child. As I grew older, I kept waiting for things to happen to me. I kept waiting to feel overwhelmed in church and do the things that others in my religion were doing. It never happened, and I felt that I was lost. Eventually in my mind I decided that none of it was real and that it was an act. I wouldn't admit it, but its what I felt deep down.
In 1998 I was living in North Carolina. I was young, had a wife and a child and was working a job barely over minimum wage to pay for food and rent. I worked the late shift and left work around 7:15 AM every morning. On my way home one morning, I was listening to the radio and heard the DJ announce that they would be giving away $3,000 to a listener that day. I later found out they were doing this every day that month. The contest was simple, they announced the 3 songs to listen for and you had to be the 77th caller when the third song began to play.
When I arrived home, I half heartedly told my wife about the 3 songs, and I went to bed. Normally I slept until around 3:00 PM. On this day, I woke up around 1:00 PM and was lying there listening to the radio. Thats when the first song came on the radio. I didn't think anything of it until that song went off and the second song came on. I knew then that this was the 3 songs to listen for. I didn't even know the radio station, I only knew it was based out of Winston Salem. I dialed 411, explaining to the operator that I was looking for a rock station out of Winston Salem. They gave me the call letters and decided that was the right one, at which point they gave me the number. I hung up and dialed the radio station. Busy signal. I dialed again. Another busy signal. I dialed a third time and it rang probably 10 times before the DJ picked up the phone and announced that I was the winner.
Awesome! We just won $3,000, things were already tight in the house so this would help out tremendously. After taxes we would probably net around $2,200.
Two weeks go by and after the proper paper work and release forms signed we received the money.
The day after receiving the money, I was preparing to leave for work around 10:30 PM. It was November and very cold out so I went out ot start the car. We had a fairly new car, a 1998 Dodge Neon. The car would not start, battery appeard to be dead. I had been living in the area only a few months and had no friend or family around. I tried finding a neighbor with some jumper cables. Finally I called my boss to tell her I was going to be late for work at which point I phoned a cab.
At 11:20 PM the cab company still had not shown up at which point I called them back. As soon as I hung up the phone, it rang. It was my wife's aunt with bad news. My 19 year old brother in law had passed away. She recanted immediately and said that they were working with him in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It was a horrible call to receive and horrible news that I had to somehow tell my wife that her brother may or may not be dead. I told my wife we had to go home (a four hour drive) that her brother was on his way to the hospital. I phoned my boss, telling her that we had a family emergency and needed to go home.
At this point I went back outside to the car and tried starting it again. This time, the car started without issue. I had tried to start this car several times over the past hour.
We packed quickly and we were on our way. I stopped to get gas just before getting on the interstate. A stranger was pumping gas beside me and struck up a conversation. The only thing I remember from the conversation was him saying "It's a clear night tonight. It's one of those nights you can move on at 90mph and not worry about a thing". Thats what I remember from the conversation and just how calm he was and how calm I felt after speaking with him.
A few hours later the ER doctor confirmed that my brother in law had been brought in, and that he was DOA.
Over the next couple days, we made funeral arrangements. No-one in my wifes family had the money to pay for a funeral so it fell to us. We ended up using the money we'd won from the radio station to pay for the funeral rather than letting the state put him in a pine box.
Let's recap the story -
I won money from a radio station used two weeks later to pay for my brother in law's funeral. I didn't even have the number to this radio station. I didn't even know the name. Do you realize how many people had the number memorized, written down beside them, or on speed dial?
My car would not start, causing me to be late for work and receive a horrible phone call that my wife would have otherwise received, alone with a 2 year old. Upon receiving the news, somehow the car starts.
A complete stranger gave me a calming message. In hindsight it wasn't important that we drove fast to get there, at the time it was of the utmost importance.
I know this was a long story, and probably a "Cool Story". And it doesn't answer your question. I can't prove to you that my God exists. To me, these events proved one thing to me. That something far greater is in control. Far greater than you or I. I tell this story when I'm challenged about life, religion, or the big question of Why? It doesn't answer any of that. It just tells ME that there's something else to life and that we should not spend it arguing about who's right or wrong.
These days I spend time meditating and trying to communicate appreciation for the life I have, my family and friends. As for religion, I believe that many can hold a framework of communicating ways for humanity to live with and love each other. The internet saddens me at times and I worry about our future. I pray that whoever you are in this life, you should look at your hands, look at everything around you and question "Why did anything have to exist in the first place?". Sometimes it doesn't hurt to just have a little faith. Thanks for reading.
Unfortunately for your design theory, evolution has proved to be a very well-evidenced theory for how the universe and everything in it developed. You can, of course, see patterns where none actually exist. I see neat things in the clouds all the time. But your intuition is far from a legitimate critique of scientific understanding.
You should study a little bit of world history. The justification for the European enslavement of Africans, and the Native Americans who were subjugated (and massacred), was made by the Catholic Church. Conquistadors were given writ to convert and/or enslave natives and Africans were fast-tracked to slavery by means of the Noah myth (descendants of Ham). Catholic zealots were the antagonists of countless ethnic wars from the first crusade right on up to the Balkan conflicts which saw militant Catholics (in holy orders) attempting to snuff out their Muslim neighbors in Bosnia. I could go on, but I think you get the point.
I am very much fighting the urge to use that phrase, but I will resist. In any event, you appear to be intelligent enough to realize none of those events was proof of the divine or that there is a plan for you or I. The part of this that really strikes me, is that you appear to have some real appreciation for the fact you could pay for the funeral, but the death itself is a footnote. Apparently, the plan was to kill one of your relatives (God did this, I would assume?) in order to give you a grandiose feeling of security or perhaps purpose? I can't quite grapple with which dots you connected to bring yourself to these conclusions, but as I said, I think you are just as aware as I am that you experienced nothing miraculous or even overly coincidental.
The question you pose is not just silly, it's paradoxical. Why did any of us have to exist? We didn't. It's obvious that, for most of human history, people died in childbirth and before they were old enough to really remember anything, all the time. It is due to the evolution of our species that we are in such a position to speculate on these matters. Chocking it all up to a deity or a cosmic force wrests all the credit due to our ancestors for some imaginary being for which we have zero evidence.
Sometimes it does not hurt to have a little "faith" in something or someone you know very little about. I trust the police to keep me safe because I have seen them arrest criminals. I don't have an intimate knowledge of every cop, some might be crooked, but I have a little faith that they'll get the job done. If you want to call that "faith," instead of a reasonable expectation, be my guest. However; it is never a good idea to have blind faith in something you know nothing about, certainly not if that something is not even evident to exist in the first place.
Here's the rub though. So many different things happen every day in each of our lives that we are almost all bound to have a series of coincidences similar to your story eventually. If we call it a 1/10,000 chance for a confluence of events like that to occur in a given day, then we can expect that on average, we should each see something like this roughly every 27 1/2 years. And frankly, I don't think there's even that small of a chance of something like this happening when you consider all of the possible coincidences which could have happened and didn't.
Lets say I get past that though. So you won the radio contest due to God's intervention and thus had the money to bury your family member intead of having the State do it. Is that the most important thing that money could have possibly done considering the situations of every person in the listening area? Could that money perhaps have saved someone's life, for example, and if so, why did God decide your need was more important? For that matter, if God wanted to help your family, wouldn't you have been better served by not having your brother-in-law die in the first place?
Of course, we can rely on the old standby which says that we don't know God's plan and maybe there's some much worse series of events which would result from your brother-in-law not having died. That always seems like a cop-out to me though which people use when they realize a reasonable analysis would have to include significant doubt. Plus, it just leads us back to square one anyway which is that maybe it's true and maybe it's not.
atheist for the win
PS... if religion was never created. the world would be a much more peaceful place.