Yo guys, there is no all creating god, the only real God is Zeus, wheres the proof? Read the Iliad, and if Zeus isnt real then where does thunder come from? And if you dont beileve in him you will be striken by thunder.
Haha. I believe the word you were looking for is 'struck'. As in THUNDERSTRUCK - Yeah Yeah Yeah THUNDERSTRUCK.
I've asked the same question a few times when the agnostics get on their high horses, but I can't recall them ever answering. Bertrand Russell faints.
If I stopped trying, and limited my understanding of the bible to a 2nd grade level instead of doing a little more, I probably would be dead set against it as well.
Gotcha. Everyone who believes in religion has a second grade education. Enjoy whatever 100% "knowledge" you think you have. My God, what a dumbass stance to have. "THERE'S NOTHING OUT THERE! STUPID PEOPLE THINK THERE IS!" I'm guessing you believe there are aliens, as well? Ever seen them? Just a thought. And I will berate any dumbass that thinks religion equals lack of education from now on.
No you don't understand what I'm saying at all. I am a Christian. I was responding to YugoRocketsfan who was laughing at what the bible says or what he believes the bible to say. I certainly don't have all the answers or total understanding of the bible. However I've moved beyond the simplistic interpretation and understanding that YugoRocketsfan is claiming that all Christians have of the bible. My mother was a pastor, and had post graduate education. Dr. Martin Luther King had religion and was obviously educated... thus the "Dr." I'm not sure where you got that I was claiming anyone who believed in the bible to be uneducated from, but you are wrong to believe that. However if my I limited my belief in the bible to one of a 2nd grade level rather than continuing to strive for greater understanding, and a deeper belief then I would have given up on it long ago. That's what I was trying to convey.
The problem is the bible is a book that should bring up philosophic debate but instead its used as a factual book and the focus should be in understanding the book and elaborating on what you understand. We tend to become lazy and want to go by what someone tells us about the metaphors the bible discusses and never talk about what we read means to us.
Love the Bible, Mine does not look like it is suffering at all. I find no bias in the Bible, only in people.
I agree that does happen. It doesn't mean that all religious people do it. I'm by no means an expert and by just placing what I've read into the historical and cultural context it was written I've gotten far more meaning out of the bible than I would have ever known existed had I stopped at the surface level.
I'd be interested in an atheism vs. agnosticism thread here. There are many intelligent unbelievers on the board and it would make for a great discussion. I'm reading "God Delusion" right now and find many of Dawkin's points fascinating, although I'm still in the middle.
You win the Internets, I guess. I was totally on my "high horse" and you sure SHOWED ME! Unfortunately, you can have an agnostic outlook on God and not on other things by definition: So my agnostic belief on God is unrelated to whether I think there are pink unicorns (which I don't) -- definition 1, but not 2. Alternative Gods like Zeus are also fictional as it's well documented as having been written/created/thought up by man; similarly, the Bible is written by man so I don't believe it either. In fact, the last barrier keeping me from being atheist is this: what created the infinitely small, dense that expanded to create the universe during the Big Bang? In your attempt to poke fun at the agnostic point of view, you made yourself look like a fool. Thunder and lightning has physics behind it that don't involve a fictional character like Zeus, so that's not really up for uncertainty. Here, in case you weren't aware: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning
I used to have this view- there was no bible god, but there were supernatural forces of good and evil I rejected the bible as being valid, but I understood the possibility of god existing though unprovable to my intellect. the possibility of god didn't seem like evidence for god to me, more of an acceptance that I didn't know everything but I was sure that god was not real by practice or I lived as if god was not existant I consider that to be a skew of agnosticism but I called myself an atheist the supernatural forces I believed in originated in the power of the human mind... power to control others, witchcraft para normal... stuff that I didn't need to explain having attended church as a child I am sure there was alot of carry over to my adult thinking once when I was busted for drug smuggling in Mexico I started praying to god, then once I was released and back in the US I went back to skewed agnosticism
I looked, but you still haven't created the thread. I'm agnostic by some definitions, because I don't think you can prove or disprove God. I hold out some possibility that some god does exist. But, I don't like to call myself an agnostic. That's a fence-sitting position where there is no benefit to sitting on the fence. If the Christians are right, agnostics are going to Hell, if the Muslims are right, agnostics are going to Hell. Etc. I don't benefit from sitting on the fence. If there is a God, but the religions are false, if it's some sort of clockmaker, or nature god, some deistic entity that is not omnipotent or that does not grant salvation, again there is no profit to being agnostic or even devout. When I die, I'll be no better or worse off than if I were an atheist. So, why quibble about it, other than to assuage the religiously-minded who might find atheism jarring? It's okay to acknowledge you can't be sure one way or the other for sure on the existence of God, but in the end, pick something and go with it. And, when you're picking something, choosing atheism is the most natural resting position when you can't believe in Jesus or Mohammed or whomever -- there are no requirements.
Good ideas. I suppose my point of view is similar to that, not really a hard-lined agnostic view. I don't believe in the Bible, Jesus, Mohammed, etc., but I also believe that there's some governing force that created everything in the universe (or, rather, created the infinitely dense mass that expanded to create the universe). So the answer to the question I posed a few posts before (what created the infinitely small, dense that expanded to create the universe during the Big Bang?) is somewhat rhetorical to me: God. That's why I have trouble placing myself in the atheism category. On the other side of the coin, I can't really place myself in some religious category either. If I did have to pick one, I would pick atheism I suppose, but since I don't have to, I take the on-the-fence approach. Even that doesn't really work though, since obviously I believe there is some force of creation ("God") given the above, despite the lack of proof. All the labels are simply semantics though. Everyone believes something slightly different from everyone else, I just have trouble labeling mine I guess.
Whow there, buddy. Don't forget you were the one that wrote, "Agnosticism for the win." But really, I am grateful that you decided to engage in a discussion with me. But your originally stated reason for being agnostic--"Science also hasn't proven that there isn't a God."--does in fact justify agnosticism about many other things. Has science proven that there aren't invisible pink unicorns? Forget the word "agnostic" for a second. Would you give the same status you give god, the existence in your opinion of which is "unknown and unknowable", to invisible pink unicorns? If someone asked you whether invisible pink unicorns existed, what would be your answer? But there is an equal amount of evidence for the existence of god as there is for the existence of invisible pink unicorns, or Santa Claus, or a teapot orbiting Saturn. Why does the question of god's existence deserve any different of an answer than the questions of those other things' existences? And even if the answer to this question was "God", you would immediately be faced with the question, "What created God?" Furthermore, isn't it also possible that invisible pink unicorns created the pre-Big Bang universe?
I think in Christianity some people credit God's influence to significant changes that cannot be attributed to natural evidence. Some examples would be a change of heart from selfishness to unselfishness, restoration of love in an impossible marriage, or forgiveness replacing deep bitterness. Since most of these type things involve issues inside a person there are not material causes assigned to them. It is also possible that at this time anything pre-Big Bang Universe is unknowable by human intellect and at least unverifiable. What created God? is not really a logical question- it implies a special creation.
If God is omnipotent and such, he probably should have not let a bunch of men write the Bible. I don't accept that the Christian/Islam/Hebrew God exists in the sense that morality is either created or enforced by him. Divine Command Theory is archaic and easily debunked by simplistic logic, Natural Law Theory is simply take Aristotle's philosophy, replace "nature intended" with "God commanded" and voila, and certainly by definition the existence of "unnatural" things like diseases poke holes in it. Could there be a higher power? I wouldn't say its impossible, just like I wouldn't say its impossible that we are all on Marvin the Martian's Space Ship and are just brains in large vats of formaldehyde with circuitry and wires projecting our reality.
Not to cut in, but I think the "profit" criteria I used in my previous post can be used to defend agnosticism. The existence of God is a weighty subject, with important existential implications. Whether one exists because God wanted one to, or simply as a result of a big cosmic accident can be personally important. So, the desire to have proof one way or the other is understandable. By contrast, whether or not invisible pink unicorns (how they can be pink and also invisible I don't really understand) exist is completely unimportant. Their existence implies little about the meaning of one's own existence, and certainly has no impact on one's actual life. So, why exert any mental energy on such an unimportant question? It doesn't matter. Secondly, the question of God is a primary question, the answer to which will create a cascade of implications, including the possibility of the existence of invisible pink unicorns. The existence of God doesn't have many prerequisites, but it is the prerequisite for many other beliefs. Allowing for the possibility of the existence of invisible pink unicorns would be the tail wagging the dog in the structure of a belief system. You'd have to believe many other things first before believing in invisible pink unicorns. Not believing those prerequisites would make the unicorn question itself seem ridiculous on the face of it.
