Please msg me if what im about to say you don't agree with or you have any comments about it because i wont be checking this thread. (I do believe in God. I am Christian.) According to Science: 1) The Law of Conservation of Matter: Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. 2) Where did that little particle or whatever you believe in come from? Either the Law of Conservation of Matter is wrong or evolution/big bang/etc is not true. (Again please message me for replies or comments as i will not be checking this thread.)
I never judged how you were raised. I never said you specifically either. I said that the reasons to believe in him are those. And I gave a second reason as to why you would. It may not be exact, but it is definitely around there, and you sort of proved it in what you said next. If an afterlife somehow does exist, then there is NO reason someone of a different belief, Atheist, Jewish, Muslim, etc... won't go to heaven. Unless they truly, truly sinned like hell. (By the way, as a statement to some posts from earlier, you are not sinning by not being Catholic or Christian, you are just doing something called having an opinion, which is what you are doing too) Anyway, what you said next, about believing in him being better, if an afterlife exists, odds are 95% of all people will not go to heaven. Because close to no one in present day time does not, or has not sinned. You, technically sinning if you curse, yell at your parents, "I hate you", watch porno, or masturbate thinking of images of someone naked, are a homosexual, say the "lords name" in vain, (as in the phrase, Oh my God!)hurt anyone, physically or psychologically, or have ever stolen anything, even if it is just a few bucks from a friend, or a grand scale heist, lie about anything, white lie or not, and so on so forth. And even repenting for your sinning will not thus truly help you, because odds are you will continue sinning until you die. So I'm guessing that if it exists, there's a lot of empty room left in heaven, but not so much on the flip side... Continuing, "if you believe in him, and he exists, you gain everything. If you believe in him and he exists, you gain nothing, but lose nothing." -paradox? That part made almost no sense. You basically stated the first line, and then immediately contradicted it... But I'll try to decipher. What exactly is gained besides apparent, "Eternal life and happiness", what is "everything?" Also, bringing a new topic up, it seems to me that for a religion based on pacifism and peace, it is one of the most violent and hating religions there is, as a whole that is, not individually so. You cannot go on to AOL.com anymore and read a story without a group of Christian die hards preaching and yelling at people that they will go to hell if we do not convert. Or the Pope Urban II, who started the crusades in the Middle Ages. Or the Spanish Inquisition. It would seem to me that for a religion so focused on peace and respect, which I respect Jesus for setting out to do, lost its ways early on, and is now a flawed system...
Right. Smitty seems to have brought up an extreme view of Christianity and the afterlife. If all the non-Christian people I knew went to Hell, I would be thoroughly pissed. [this deleted because it was pointless/redundant]
It wasn't an arguement I haven't already heard. Its a god of the gaps arguement. No good can from arguing that point.
I know you won't check back, and I will message this to you, but for the sake of replying on the debate thread: If "matter can't be created or destroyed", which I don't deny, who says God could have?
For the sake of debate, lets forget about any contemporary religious idea of God and go by the definition; Matter cannot be created, nor destroyed (1 law of thermodynamics), yes? Yet, popular scientific (2 law of thermodynamics) and philosophical theory says that at some point way back when, things began. What started them? From the theists' philosophical argument, by definition the concept of the universe "starting" is God.
So do you beleive that 'God' is a supernatural force/being ot not? y points are based on whther your beliefs are of a supernatural God, not specifically a big guy with big hands who made the world. To be honest, no human can imagine, 'the begginning.' But whatever it was, a supernatural excuse is poor. Science cannot provide concrete evidence about its theories, but at least it has something. A 'God' is a pure blinfd belief. We have been through this before, but it is blind because you cannot prove nothing. Sorry, but religion is flawed and pointless.
You are not understanding me I think. My domino analogy was an analogy; I wasn't saying that God was "a big guy with big hands". And when I said that, I was trying to tell you to imagine God as the force itself that made the universe. To put it in another way in case you still don't get it, whatever science said started the universe is what God is. But as Nitrous said, this point of view kind of nullifies the argument.
There might be wrong something with that outlook on god. If we ever discover why our universe began, and you label that as god then god is not supernatural. If we can prove that the theory that explains the universe is "true" then it is natural and your god would not be supernatural. Secondly this would go against yours and many others religions. As I said before this would classify god as a natural being, therefore it could not do the many things that religions impose upon god. It could not watch over you, reincarnate people, answer prayers, most of the other powers god gets in the many religions. If god was the act that started the universe and we had a theory that proved what started the universe then god no longer becomes important.
Well if you name the force that started the universe, and we assume humans have figured it out somehow, god then god is natural. How can something be both natural and supernatural?
Think of it this way: A poor man cannot do what a rich man can, but a rich man can do what a poor man can. Something like that.
Could you explain? This is how I see it. rich man can do x poor man cannot do x rich man can do what a poor man cannot do which is still x. So A poor man cannot do what a rich man can, but a rich man can do what a poor man cannot. Red == redundant.
Oh, I messed up; I edited my other post though. But do you see what I was trying to say? How can God be supernatural if he cannot even do natural things?
Okay, I just want to clear something up. When I said that "If you believe in God and he exists, you gain everything. If you believe in God and he exists, you gain nothing." What I meant to type was "....If you believe in God and he does not exist, you gain nothing." If you still don't understand, I'll explain it. The thing you don't understand is that time is a physical quantity. When you exit the barrier of space and time, there is no longer time. Yes you will be in Heaven forever, but there isn't time. It's hard to grasp, but... And Zstrike, you were saying that the majority of Christians are only Christians because that's the way they were brought up. I'm guessing you were not brought up a Christian, so I can turn that statement right around and say that the only reasons Atheists are Atheists is because they were brought up Atheist and forced to believe by their parents and other figures in their life to not believe in a god. Once again, I find that statement quite redundant.
I never said that. I said that one of a few reasons people are christian is because they were brought up that way, chose it to be re-born and to help explain things, or truly believes that the supernatural is the truth. I'm not questioning yours or anyones reasons to want to be christian, just the beliefs you believe in. And if you read the OP, you would know I said I was brought up Jewish, but realized I have to think for myself, and decided that isn't the kind of stuff I believe in, and that I became an Atheist. So I can say I find your statement, quite redundant.