Rob is better than God because Rob actually exists and he's an awesome person.

Q.E.D

(November 5, 2015 at 10:23 am)AtlasS33 Wrote:

(November 5, 2015 at 9:49 am)Pandæmonium Wrote: Evidence he exists. Not so much an ability but still more than any other god proposal to date.

/thread

Actions speak about their source. The sun exists but I don't worship it, even though it melts stuff from far distance and provide rays of goodness to our planet and hence : it is very big and bright; but its actions are not so sufficient to call it God.

God's actions speak for him; if the Quran wasn't here I would've worshiped the reason/the cause behind the universe; i.e an intelligent entity called "God".

If you had been in the room with Uthman's committee when they wrote the Koran would you still think God did it?

I think I got it Rob.
You can't be God, because then he would "know" you exist, and he'd have no reason to "believe" anymore.
I think believing or having faith in anything for too long becomes addictive and after a while, just believing is the drug, not the content of the belief.

Matt D calls that "believing in believing".

I could steal the theistic rhetoric and say that everyone knows I'm god, they are just in denial.

If God were to come down, what are the scenarios?
If he's a wonderful entity, the religious will say that he can't be the God of the bible, therefore he's an imposter.
If he's the arsehole we know and love, he would be the last person the religious would want to see!

Since 100% of religious people have built their own personal version of God in their heads, I don't think any of them will agree who or what God actually is, even if he did show up.

(November 6, 2015 at 4:39 am)ignoramus Wrote: I think I got it Rob.
You can't be God, because then he would "know" you exist, and he'd have no reason to "believe" anymore.
I think believing or having faith in anything for too long becomes addictive and after a while, just believing is the drug, not the content of the belief.

This is all really interesting.

I have a friend, who I will call Peter to protect his identity. (His real name is James.)

I've known him a long time, although the time I've spent with him amounts to quite a small percentage of my time alive. I hadn't seen him in several years, and he suddenly turned up to visit me. Upon seeing him, I was happy beyond reasonable doubt to say that this was my friend James. I mean Peter. I didn't ask him any questions, I didn't ask for any evidence, and I didn't ask him to do anything. I just decided that based on all my previous experience, this was Peter. It's the same person.

Now, it's possible that he never was quite what I thought he was, maybe his real name is Steven and not James. It could all be an elaborate deception. However, he would still be the same person I know as Peter, whatever he may actually be. I could never say 100% he is not an alien impersonator, either this time or any previous time, but I'm still comfortable with the high probability that this is my friend.

What I've seen in this thread is that even if the real God turned up, people would not recognise it. They are apparently not as familiar with it as I am with one of my friends. They would be sceptical that this was really the being they have been worshipping all this time, even when it was standing right in front of them. They would demand evidence from their own god. This implies that they actually have no significant prior experience of their God at all, and couldn't pick it out of a lineup. However, some magic tricks seems to be all it generally takes. This means any alien with enough technology to do some "magic/illusions" could pretend to be "God" and get away with it.

I wonder how many religious theists would actually care if their God was just an alien with some magic tricks, and had no part in the creation of the universe or any power to grant afterlives? Because I've seen no argument for how they can be even vaguely sure this isn't the case. Assuming they are worshipping anything real at all, that is.

Maybe this theistic scepticism right in the face of the God of the universe might give them some perspective as to why we are sceptical about a book.

To qualify that also, as young kids, the way our beliefs are moulded in our imaginative minds (usually by our parents), tend to have a childish innocence to them.
Basically our subconscious and our limited intellectual capacity and understanding of the real world does the cherry picking for us even then.
It is no wonder we grow up as adults still clinging to the warm and fuzzies of religion. I suppose that's what indoctrination is.

Once the wonder of the bigger than life "God" character has been cemented in our child psyche, anything else we discover or understand from the bible as adults will always be excused for via a fallacy, an apology or explained away as metaphor.