Dad links son's suicide to 'The God Delusion'

[LukeMC]

I regard life, the universe etc as real evidence of a Creator.

Why so?
Imagine you'd never been told about any gods. You wonder where you came from. To begin, you see what you're made from (cells and such) and you wonder where they came from. You see how they can be created and altered over time, and this shows you how your cells and organs evolved over time. You trace your ancestry back to the very first, most primitive organisms and see what they're made of. You learn which molecules are involved and how they ended up arranged in such a way. You then wonder where these molecules came from. You find out that most of them were thrown out from the sun and such things. You wonder where the sun came from, and research shows you exactly how these stars are formed. You wonder where the star "stuff" originally came from, and after doppler experiments and such, you see that all of this matter and energy has expanded from a single point. Next you wonder what happened at this point, how it came to be, etc.

Do you continue experimenting and finding the natural solution? Or do you think "perhaps there was a supernatural being which was all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, a sort of father (despite being around *before* sex) who loves us all and has a magical cloudland for us to go to when we die, but also a fiery mean land to go if we don't obey his rules which he hasn't made a particular effort to outline clearly. He watches everything we do and demands that we send him telopathic messages with our hands clasped together, and that for one day of the week we enter a big fancy building and sing songs about him and listen to a man tell us stories about his marvel."

I can't think of any logical person who could have such a thought process unless previously indoctrinated with these ideas. Damn that silly bible =/

I hope I didn't seem offensive, I was just offering a different perspective.

Anyway back on topic...

[josef rosenkranz]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?f...geId=81459

A New York man is linking the suicide of his 22-year-old son, a military veteran who had bright prospects in college, to the anti-Christian book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins after a college professor challenged the son to read it.

"Three people told us he had taken a biology class and was doing well in it, but other students and the professor were really challenging my son, his faith. They didn't like him as a Republican, as a Christian, and as a conservative who believed in intelligent design," the grief-stricken father, Keith Kilgore, told WND about his son, Jesse.

"This professor either assigned him to read or challenged him to read a book, 'The God Delusion,' by Richard Dawkins," he said.

Jesse Kilgore committed suicide in October by walking into the woods near his New York home and shooting himself. Keith Kilgore said he was shocked because he believed his son was grounded in Christianity, had blogged against abortion and for family values, and boasted he'd been debating for years.

This is of course a tragedy, anyone will agree. But it shows again how theists completely miss the point on atheism.

Yes, that is a tragedy. I feel sorry for the family.

Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" was tackled by Bill O'Reilly on the O'Reilly Factor.

Bill O'Reilly, "You can't prove Jesus Christ wasn't God."
Richard Dawkins, "That's correct, but you cannot prove to me Thor and Zeus were not gods."

Richard Dawkins doesn't realize that he was "set-up" by Bill O'Reilly on that question. Dawkins shot himself in the foot when he replied to O'Reilly. Because that means Dawkins cannot disprove any God in any manner. So, why write a book on something that cannot be disproved? Opinions are not fact.

Dawkins claims, "Lack of evidence leans towards there being no god."
However, once again, Dawkins is not using his tiny brain. The only way the final result can be "Lack of evidence" is when every option has been thoroughly examined. Has anyone in human history been capable of exploring the entire Universe?


Secondly, Richard Dawkins is a Biologist not a Psychiatrist. He was asked to prove God is a delusion, and he couldn't. What's up with that? It sounds like Mr. Dawkins suckered a million people into buying his book. It's sound a bit crazy to write a book called 'The God Delusion' if he cannot prove God is a delusion. That is a delusion in itself.

You are right to believe that O"Reilly didn't get the right answer from Richard Dawkins because his Darwinistic method of disproving God does not give a direct answer to the question put by O'Reilly.
The direct and simple answer is that God is a creation of man motivated by a string of clearly provable causes, the main of them being the help he gets from this belief in his dayly struggle for survival.
Being a creation of man, God can not reside in any place than in the mind of the person who is thinking of him.
That does answer also to the question which each religious person sees as a blasphemy, namely:"WHO CREATED GOD?" to which religion has no positive answer.
Science of nature, is by no means, able to totally disprove the existence of God ,by the very simple fact that Man being a link in the evolutionary chain of life on earth has not yet the answer to all problems of the Universe.His knowledge of Nature is therefore limited to the level of his momentarily physical and mental development.
Would Man be in possession of all answers he would be himself God,which he is not because God does not exist.
The inexistence of God makes the O'Reilly question irrelevant.
The existence of Jesus is sustained by the Gospel which is also a creation of man. The appearance of Christianity is a complex phenomenon explicable by a lot of causes of historical,social,economical and theological reasons all
of them provable by a series of writings of the history of 300 years since the appearance of Jesus in ancient Judeea till it's political acceptance by the emperor Constantinus.
Atheism does not mean to despise religion or religious people but to convince people of the truth of reason against the irrational belief in God.

But that doesn't disprove God anymore than the almost certain disprove that Dawkins gives in TGD. Just how there can be ZERO evidence and God can be EXTREMELY improbable and complex and STILL not be completely disproved. God can look so OBVIOUSLY man made but it still doesn't disprove him. He can look totally man-made and still have not been man made. And still exist. He's merely, lets say, almost infinitely improbable. Just as with Dawkins solution. Which is that 1. There is no evidence of God. 2. God is so extremely complex and improbable. The universe is extremely fine tuned but any God capable of creating such a complex and improbable fine tuned universe would therefore have to be EVEN MORE complex, improbable and fine-tuned.
Its a massive solution. I'd say, its less obvious, but an even stronger argument than the one you give. Such a MASSIVE improbability of God's existence arguably makes God more improbable than the merely obvious fact that God is man-made. You can have all the evidence that it appears man invented God. But I don't think it directly attacks the issue. because there's no evidence of any God to disprove in the first place. You can prove that man invented the word "God". And the texts. But you cannot address the supernatural issue itself this way. Not as satisfactory as Dawkins' argument atleast. In my opinion. Since the fact that there is both ZERO supporting evidence that supports God and the fact that he is MASSIVELY complex and fine-tuned. And would have to be even more complex fine-tuning and improbable than the constants of the universe - because he is supposed to have created them...
I think thats more of a massively powerful argument than yours. That's my opinion anyway. I certainly don't think Dawkins' argument is weak. I think its incredibly strong.
And I even more strongly, certainly think that Dawkins argument DOES address the issue in question.
I think that the fact that "Who created God?" brings about an inescapable regress from which God cannot escape because he always must have come from somewhere. I think that is a stronger point of the impossibility of the supernatural because it goes against natural law for God to exist. Than the fact that God was man made. Although I believe he obviously was. I think the inescapable infinite regress is a stronger answer to the question.

There is obviously more than one way to disprove the existence of God.
I consider my way as less lectured from the height of an university
professors' chair but as a more to ground one with a direct access to the way of thinking of religious people.
Every member of this forum has the right to defend his opinion.
Dawkins was trapped by a silly request by this O'Reilly (who is he
anyway) and instead to answer that he is capable to prove that Jesus is not God because God does not exists he gave him an answer fit for two persons who argue who's God is the right one.
Now,I am not competing with you about who's way of disproving God is the better one. I am not rejecting the basic Darwinistic approach to the problem by Dawkins at all, but I argue that the man-made God approach should
be also used because ,between others,it gives a direct answer to the crucial problem of religions ,namely WHO CREATED GOD.

[CoxRox]

I regard life, the universe etc as real evidence of a Creator.

Why so?
Imagine you'd never been told about any gods. You wonder where you came from. To begin, you see what you're made from (cells and such) and you wonder where they came from. You see how they can be created and altered over time, and this shows you how your cells and organs evolved over time. You trace your ancestry back to the very first, most primitive organisms and see what they're made of. You learn which molecules are involved and how they ended up arranged in such a way. You then wonder where these molecules came from. You find out that most of them were thrown out from the sun and such things. You wonder where the sun came from, and research shows you exactly how these stars are formed. You wonder where the star "stuff" originally came from, and after doppler experiments and such, you see that all of this matter and energy has expanded from a single point. Next you wonder what happened at this point, how it came to be, etc.

Do you continue experimenting and finding the natural solution? Or do you think "perhaps there was a supernatural being which was all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, a sort of father (despite being around *before* sex) who loves us all and has a magical cloudland for us to go to when we die, but also a fiery mean land to go if we don't obey his rules which he hasn't made a particular effort to outline clearly. He watches everything we do and demands that we send him telopathic messages with our hands clasped together, and that for one day of the week we enter a big fancy building and sing songs about him and listen to a man tell us stories about his marvel."

I can't think of any logical person who could have such a thought process unless previously indoctrinated with these ideas. Damn that silly bible =/

I hope I didn't seem offensive, I was just offering a different perspective.

Anyway back on topic...

You have not offended me. If only it were that simple, but I cannot imagine how I would have viewed things if I'd not been exposed to the belief in a creator god. I was enjoying you taking things back to the initial singularity and then was disappointed you stopped there. Where do you think that 'single point' came from? I was discussing this in another thread. I made the point that if you believe that matter or energy (or whatever the 'stuff' is that made everything) has always been 'out there' then why have a problem with an eternal God always being 'out there'. If you believe that stuff spontaneously appeared out of thin air, then to me that is as unlikely to me as your view of a supernatural being. When I look at a cell, and how all the parts have developed, how things are 'programmed' to do certain tasks, I am blinded by 'design'. I am learning about evolution at the minute, so maybe I will see things differently, but for now, I see design. I'd just like to say that you view of God doesn't sound too good. I don't have that view of God.

[LukeMC]

If you believe that stuff spontaneously appeared out of thin air, then to me that is as unlikely to me as your view of a supernatural being.

I find the universe "coming from nothing" to be slightly more likely than a god coming from nothing. Why would a God pop into existence with omnipotence/science, humanlike attributes such as emotion and even sex (male/female is a product of evolution, why would God be male? "He" doesn't need to reproduce with any women, doesn't need to produce gametes, probably doesn't have a penis), a plan, a need for praise, the inclination to create two seperate universes for the good and bad people who he would guide the creation of for billions of years, the need for sacrifice, the crazy idea that writing a book would be a GOOD thing. It doesn't add up to me how this ridiculously complex being with such randomly allocated powers (and they must have been random unless "he" came into existence and then quickly selected powers out of a catalogue) can seem more likely than this much less complex universe randomly coming into existence. But as far as I'm aware, there is a slightly better explanation out there than "the universe came from nothing", and I don't think it includes hocus pocus (I may be wrong)

I'd just like to say that you view of God doesn't sound too good. I don't have that view of God.

And I think my view on God is lovely I think YOUR view on God is bad! MY God is the REAL one, yours is a LIE FROM SATAN. [/sarcastic (poor) humour]

[Psalm 23]

Psalm 23 - may I ask you why you believe in the God of the Bible, and not Odin for instance?

Because God of the bible is eternal. These other gods that are so often mentioned have died and never ressurection. Why should I worship a god that died and never promised to return for his followers?

For example, Thor is not worshipped as god in any religion.

The only thing the world gets from Thor is "Thursday" meaning; "Thor's Day."

Odin is another Norse Mythology.

The only thing we get from Odin is "Wednesday."

These were not supernatural Gods. These were mere men claiming god-like divinity.

I can only think of one God that is supernatural, and his name of Yahweh. The God of Israel.

---

That is not true then is it? I'm wrong, but it makes me feel good, so I will go on like it is right.

It makes me feel good, and I notice there are millions of Christians donating their time in soup kitchens, disaster shelters and homeless shelters. Without Christianity, you can take away the Sunday soup kitchens for the families that are less-fortunate, and you can take away the disaster shelters for those in need during a natural disaster.

Dawkins regards religion as delusional exactly because of statements like the above.

I suggest you read the book called, "The Dawkins Delusion." It was published by a psychiatrist. Richard Dawkins is a Biologist. He does not have a degree in pyshchology. He does not have the authority or training to call anyone delusional.

Religion portraits itself as the absolute truth without a shred of evidence, and hides behind the "If it's true to me, and makes me feel good, then there is no harm in that." which IS a delusion.

Scientists claim religion is a delusion of the mind. Have they invented a medication that cures people from this God delusion?

[Edwardo Piet]

I regard life, the universe etc as real evidence of a Creator.

Why so?
Imagine you'd never been told about any gods. You wonder where you came from. To begin, you see what you're made from (cells and such) and you wonder where they came from. You see how they can be created and altered over time, and this shows you how your cells and organs evolved over time. You trace your ancestry back to the very first, most primitive organisms and see what they're made of. You learn which molecules are involved and how they ended up arranged in such a way. You then wonder where these molecules came from. You find out that most of them were thrown out from the sun and such things. You wonder where the sun came from, and research shows you exactly how these stars are formed. You wonder where the star "stuff" originally came from, and after doppler experiments and such, you see that all of this matter and energy has expanded from a single point. Next you wonder what happened at this point, how it came to be, etc.

Do you continue experimenting and finding the natural solution? Or do you think "perhaps there was a supernatural being which was all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, a sort of father (despite being around *before* sex) who loves us all and has a magical cloudland for us to go to when we die, but also a fiery mean land to go if we don't obey his rules which he hasn't made a particular effort to outline clearly. He watches everything we do and demands that we send him telopathic messages with our hands clasped together, and that for one day of the week we enter a big fancy building and sing songs about him and listen to a man tell us stories about his marvel."

I can't think of any logical person who could have such a thought process unless previously indoctrinated with these ideas. Damn that silly bible =/

I hope I didn't seem offensive, I was just offering a different perspective.

Anyway back on topic...

Ha, brilliant post! I love it.

[LukeMC]

Because God of the bible is eternal. These other gods that are so often mentioned have died and never ressurection. Why should I worship a god that died and never promised to return for his followers?

Because your God won't return either.

[Edwardo Piet]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?f...geId=81459

A New York man is linking the suicide of his 22-year-old son, a military veteran who had bright prospects in college, to the anti-Christian book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins after a college professor challenged the son to read it.

"Three people told us he had taken a biology class and was doing well in it, but other students and the professor were really challenging my son, his faith. They didn't like him as a Republican, as a Christian, and as a conservative who believed in intelligent design," the grief-stricken father, Keith Kilgore, told WND about his son, Jesse.

"This professor either assigned him to read or challenged him to read a book, 'The God Delusion,' by Richard Dawkins," he said.

Jesse Kilgore committed suicide in October by walking into the woods near his New York home and shooting himself. Keith Kilgore said he was shocked because he believed his son was grounded in Christianity, had blogged against abortion and for family values, and boasted he'd been debating for years.

This is of course a tragedy, anyone will agree. But it shows again how theists completely miss the point on atheism.

Yes, that is a tragedy. I feel sorry for the family.

Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" was tackled by Bill O'Reilly on the O'Reilly Factor.

Bill O'Reilly, "You can't prove Jesus Christ wasn't God."
Richard Dawkins, "That's correct, but you cannot prove to me Thor and Zeus were not gods."

Richard Dawkins doesn't realize that he was "set-up" by Bill O'Reilly on that question. Dawkins shot himself in the foot when he replied to O'Reilly. Because that means Dawkins cannot disprove any God in any manner. So, why write a book on something that cannot be disproved? Opinions are not fact.

Dawkins claims, "Lack of evidence leans towards there being no god."
However, once again, Dawkins is not using his tiny brain. The only way the final result can be "Lack of evidence" is when every option has been thoroughly examined. Has anyone in human history been capable of exploring the entire Universe?


Secondly, Richard Dawkins is a Biologist not a Psychiatrist. He was asked to prove God is a delusion, and he couldn't. What's up with that? It sounds like Mr. Dawkins suckered a million people into buying his book. It's sound a bit crazy to write a book called 'The God Delusion' if he cannot prove God is a delusion. That is a delusion in itself.

You are right to believe that O"Reilly didn't get the right answer from Richard Dawkins because his Darwinistic method of disproving God does not give a direct answer to the question put by O'Reilly.
The direct and simple answer is that God is a creation of man motivated by a string of clearly provable causes, the main of them being the help he gets from this belief in his dayly struggle for survival.
Being a creation of man, God can not reside in any place than in the mind of the person who is thinking of him.
That does answer also to the question which each religious person sees as a blasphemy, namely:"WHO CREATED GOD?" to which religion has no positive answer.
Science of nature, is by no means, able to totally disprove the existence of God ,by the very simple fact that Man being a link in the evolutionary chain of life on earth has not yet the answer to all problems of the Universe.His knowledge of Nature is therefore limited to the level of his momentarily physical and mental development.
Would Man be in possession of all answers he would be himself God,which he is not because God does not exist.
The inexistence of God makes the O'Reilly question irrelevant.
The existence of Jesus is sustained by the Gospel which is also a creation of man. The appearance of Christianity is a complex phenomenon explicable by a lot of causes of historical,social,economical and theological reasons all
of them provable by a series of writings of the history of 300 years since the appearance of Jesus in ancient Judeea till it's political acceptance by the emperor Constantinus.
Atheism does not mean to despise religion or religious people but to convince people of the truth of reason against the irrational belief in God.

But that doesn't disprove God anymore than the almost certain disprove that Dawkins gives in TGD. Just how there can be ZERO evidence and God can be EXTREMELY improbable and complex and STILL not be completely disproved. God can look so OBVIOUSLY man made but it still doesn't disprove him. He can look totally man-made and still have not been man made. And still exist. He's merely, lets say, almost infinitely improbable. Just as with Dawkins solution. Which is that 1. There is no evidence of God. 2. God is so extremely complex and improbable. The universe is extremely fine tuned but any God capable of creating such a complex and improbable fine tuned universe would therefore have to be EVEN MORE complex, improbable and fine-tuned.
Its a massive solution. I'd say, its less obvious, but an even stronger argument than the one you give. Such a MASSIVE improbability of God's existence arguably makes God more improbable than the merely obvious fact that God is man-made. You can have all the evidence that it appears man invented God. But I don't think it directly attacks the issue. because there's no evidence of any God to disprove in the first place. You can prove that man invented the word "God". And the texts. But you cannot address the supernatural issue itself this way. Not as satisfactory as Dawkins' argument atleast. In my opinion. Since the fact that there is both ZERO supporting evidence that supports God and the fact that he is MASSIVELY complex and fine-tuned. And would have to be even more complex fine-tuning and improbable than the constants of the universe - because he is supposed to have created them...
I think thats more of a massively powerful argument than yours. That's my opinion anyway. I certainly don't think Dawkins' argument is weak. I think its incredibly strong.
And I even more strongly, certainly think that Dawkins argument DOES address the issue in question.
I think that the fact that "Who created God?" brings about an inescapable regress from which God cannot escape because he always must have come from somewhere. I think that is a stronger point of the impossibility of the supernatural because it goes against natural law for God to exist. Than the fact that God was man made. Although I believe he obviously was. I think the inescapable infinite regress is a stronger answer to the question.

There is obviously more than one way to disprove the existence of God.
I consider my way as less lectured from the height of an university
professors' chair but as a more to ground one with a direct access to the way of thinking of religious people.
Every member of this forum has the right to defend his opinion.
Dawkins was trapped by a silly request by this O'Reilly (who is he
anyway) and instead to answer that he is capable to prove that Jesus is not God because God does not exists he gave him an answer fit for two persons who argue who's God is the right one.
Now,I am not competing with you about who's way of disproving God is the better one. I am not rejecting the basic Darwinistic approach to the problem by Dawkins at all, but I argue that the man-made God approach should
be also used because ,between others,it gives a direct answer to the crucial problem of religions ,namely WHO CREATED GOD.

Yeah. Use as many effective approaches as you can. Even if only because different ones are better for different people. Depends on the person. Certainly.
But I don't see what was wrong with Dawkins' answer at all. Its just a lot of Christians don't actually realize that their God is no more likely than Zeus. Its certainly a very strong argument. Its just you can have the strongest argument in the world. And people still not believe it. Because after all if you're truly logical. Why would you believe in the supernatural that just does not fit the pattern? Just isn't part of the universe. Occam's razor disposes of it. It doesn't fit the pattern. Just a lot of people don't realize.

[lukec]

Read a book other than the Bible about gods. If you don't think that the Hindu gods or the Norse gods were/are believed to be actual gods, NOT men, you've got to do some more research.

Scientists claim religion is a delusion of the mind. Have the invented a medication that cures people from the God delusion?

Perhaps you should also learn a little bit about psychological disorders. You cannot "cure" all of them- often in fact you can only treat symptoms. Further, a delusion does not have to have anything to do with a chemical imbalance in the brain- perhaps you are thinking of hallucinations?

[Tiberius]

When I look at a cell, and how all the parts have developed, how things are 'programmed' to do certain tasks, I am blinded by 'design'. I am learning about evolution at the minute, so maybe I will see things differently, but for now, I see design.

The cells we observe aren't the cells that originated out of the primordial soup though, which is where I.D falls apart once again. Current cells and bacteria are all products of 4 billion years of evolution, the same as we are.