(July 6, 2012 at 12:09 pm)Minimalist Wrote: All theology is boring.

True enough.

(July 6, 2012 at 11:44 am)CliveStaples Wrote: So God was just a magical sky being to you? What a boring theology that must have been.

Attempts to make the 'God' concept more sophisticated, does not make it any more likely to be true.

As if the "Man in the Sky" proposal could be made sophisticated, lol. Doesn't matter what color his kilt is, still just a man in the sky.

Quote:Our understanding of the laws of nature have changed over time. We went from the Greek notion of the four elements to the periodic table, from aether to atoms, and so on and so forth.

You refer to superstition being replaced with scientific ideas. Today, not many people believe in aether, yet people still believe in gods.

Quote:Similarly, a previous conception of God was proved to be false in some way. That doesn't mean you can't verify God's existence (although modern science is based on falsification, not verification), it just means you're verifying that lots of different conceptions of god are false.

I explained later in my original post why gods' existence can never be verified or falsified. Falsifying a supernatural idea is impossible.

Quote:Maybe eventually they'll all be shown to be false?

Not until every idea imaginable, where the god-of-the-gaps can hide, has been exhausted. This will never happen.

(July 6, 2012 at 2:23 am)Jeffonthenet Wrote: ...I hope you will not shut off the light of reason while reading my post as I sometimes did when I was an atheist.

I don't care if we are three pages in, or that you said this quite some time ago.

If you were an atheist and are currently a Christian, what made you change your mind? Seriously, I need to know. When I hear this from people I typically slam my face into my palm hard enough to hurt myself, because the responce is nearly always some kind of personal incredulity. There is never any evidence, and generally not even an argument, that ex-atheists have for their newfound belief.

It really makes me wonder, because I used to hold a position like yours and found it utterly indefensible and pathetic.

Quote:Very true, maybe one day it will be shown that god exists.

How?

(July 6, 2012 at 12:30 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: Attempts to make the 'God' concept more sophisticated, does not make it any more likely to be true.

I'm surprised, I didn't think I'd ever run into the person who knows everything that's true.

(July 6, 2012 at 11:36 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: I started off gullible, gradually became more skeptical, and some time afer I stopped believing in Bigfoot, ESP, and UFO abductions; I realized I had stopped believing in God too; and for pretty much the same reasons.

I also don't believe in these things, but for different reasons. It's actually plausible that bigfoot is real and that people are being abducted by extraterrestrials. But, it's not possible for gods to exist in a way we can understand. We would have to invent a new kind of science, or a new way of understanding reality, to show that gods are real.

(July 6, 2012 at 9:03 am)CliveStaples Wrote:

Quote:Reason 1. God is an unverifiable idea: There’s no concise definition of god, so a god can be anything that believers want it to be. This means that the definition of god can change to evade falsification. For example, when Darwin discovered that species are created by natural selection, rather than the God of Genesis, the definition of the Biblical God changed. No one today worships natural selection, even though it’s the actual mechanism responsible for the creation of new species. However, people do continue to believe in the Biblical God. The fact that the definition of god can change prevents us from ever verifying a god's existence.

I don't think I quite follow the reasoning here.

Our understanding of the laws of nature have changed over time. We went from the Greek notion of the four elements to the periodic table, from aether to atoms, and so on and so forth.

Each time, a previous conception was proved to be false in some way. Similarly, a previous conception of God was proved to be false in some way. That doesn't mean you can't verify God's existence (although modern science is based on falsification, not verification), it just means you're verifying that lots of different conceptions of god are false. Maybe eventually they'll all be shown to be false?

You know why those Gods are now regarded as fairy tales by the general populous? When previously unfalsifiable propositions can be tested, they lose their validity. Why?
Nearly every claim ever made that couldn't be falsified had no basis in the beginning, and only hid under their shroud of unfalsifiability to cease scrutiny. When it turned out that our universe behaved in different ways than we had previously understood, the set-in-stone definitions were already too concrete to be altered and thus fell to the axe of science.
So many Gods fell to new descovery, so much so that Gods are scared of discovery. Quantum theory is scaring apologists right now with the idea of particles that can freely come into being without cause.

(July 6, 2012 at 11:44 am)CliveStaples Wrote:

(July 6, 2012 at 11:36 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: I started off gullible, gradually became more skeptical, and some time afer I stopped believing in Bigfoot, ESP, and UFO abductions; I realized I had stopped believing in God too; and for pretty much the same reasons.

So God was just a magical sky being to you? What a boring theology that must have been.

Please fascinate us with your unbelievably exciting theology. *sitting at the edge of the chair leaning forward*.

To address the OP, I did have a... somewhat interesting discussion with a deist in a different forum. His question was "is it reasonable to believe in god". Needless to say that it quickly degenerated into a pseudo-ontological, semi-epistemological, and all bullshit flame war.
Now I'm an agnostic atheist, meaning that I do not believe in any god, but I entertain the extremely remote possibility (emphasis on remote) that a god like critter can exist.

The major issue is addressed in your first point. God is not defined. The conclusion that I drew from the previously mentioned "discussion" was that if you provide a definition for god, then you may establish if said god belief is reasonable. If you do not provide a clear definition, then it is unreasonable to believe an undefined concept, or you may as well believe that $#@#%!@ exists.

The reason I do not believe in god, is that I find such a belief to be unreasonable.