(August 28, 2010 at 9:09 am)Paul the Human Wrote:

(August 27, 2010 at 11:37 pm)AngelThMan Wrote:

(August 26, 2010 at 9:55 pm)padraic Wrote:

Quote:God is not going to answer someone whose purpose is clearly to prove he doesn't exist.

Never ceases to amaze me how the thoughts,wishes and will of God conveniently coincide with the those of believers...

It's not about "conveniently coinciding." Think about it, if some bullies in your neighborhood tried to get you to come out of your house by tauntingly calling your name, would you come out?

So... you're saying that your god is afraid of us bullies? I thought he had, you know... godlike powers. Why is he so afraid to show himself?...

It has nothing to do with fear. The point is that God doesn't have anything to prove to a few unbelievers who "tauntingly" call his name. He would only answer those who called on him earnestly.

(August 28, 2010 at 11:15 pm)AngelThMan Wrote:

(August 28, 2010 at 9:09 am)Paul the Human Wrote:

(August 27, 2010 at 11:37 pm)AngelThMan Wrote:

(August 26, 2010 at 9:55 pm)padraic Wrote:

Quote:God is not going to answer someone whose purpose is clearly to prove he doesn't exist.

Never ceases to amaze me how the thoughts,wishes and will of God conveniently coincide with the those of believers...

It's not about "conveniently coinciding." Think about it, if some bullies in your neighborhood tried to get you to come out of your house by tauntingly calling your name, would you come out?

So... you're saying that your god is afraid of us bullies? I thought he had, you know... godlike powers. Why is he so afraid to show himself?...

It has nothing to do with fear. The point is that God doesn't have anything to prove to a few unbelievers who "tauntingly" call his name. He would only answer those who called on him earnestly.

Your view of a god is incoherent. If your god is all loving he will want all HIS creation to freely join him in fellowship. HE has created a situation where it is a reasonable position to have unbelief, and as such if god esxisted he should provide better evidence for his existence. I doubt the creator of the universe has such an uneasy vanity that he couldn't overlook a bit of name calling. So the question remains for an all loving god, who is perfect in every way and wants all of us to join him freely in fellowship, why doesn't he give us an unambiguous indication of his existence. I would argue that is becuase he isn't there - the hiddenness of the divine is a major problem for theism.

In my mind, there is no reasonable position for unbelief, and no amount of supposedly 'logical' arguments have been able to invalidate or refute my own observances/experiences in this world, or my understanding of God. Meanwhile, many of these so-called logical arguments prove my points to me even further than if nothing in defense of atheism had ever been said.

ys, God is all-loving. He does want us all to see that He has created this world. And He has set about very intricate and unignorable occurences in this world that clearly demonstrate His existence. It is only through denial that one could say these things did not happen or were not the work of God. But oh well. This is an atheist forum, afterall.

Hi, Watson! I missed you around here. Yer silly!

Hai Paul! What's up? Yer just as silly as me and you know it!

(August 29, 2010 at 7:58 am)Watson Wrote: In my mind, there is no reasonable position for unbelief,

True, apart from the COMPLETE AND UTTER LACK OF OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE FOR GOD.

Besides that there is every reason to believe.

There is no objective evidence for anything, Zen, since all of our experiences are limited to the subjective. If there exists objective evidence for something, and it can be shown as such quite clearly to the person experiencing it, then it becomes quite plausible to begin wondering about a God or Gods in relation to this evidence.

You're right, Watson, but the complete lack of evidence of any kind that can be validated by others (i.e. something other than a 'personal experience') certainly does not support the claims that god(s) exist. That doesn't leave much in the way of compelling reasons to believe those claims. The existence of god has as much supporting evidence as the existence of [insert imaginary creature here]. I personally find belief in either to be impossible.

(August 29, 2010 at 10:06 am)Watson Wrote: There is no objective evidence for anything, Zen, since all of our experiences are limited to the subjective. If there exists objective evidence for something, and it can be shown as such quite clearly to the person experiencing it, then it becomes quite plausible to begin wondering about a God or Gods in relation to this evidence.

Why should we assume that there may be a god? We would know this how??? You just said there is no objective view. Yet you find plausibility in trying to widen our extremely limited perception and consider the possibility of some god (who has no more proof of existence than unicorns). I've always heard that god sits outside of the universe, or at another realm. How the hell would we know that? Logically, one shouldn't make shit up and wonder if unicorns exist either.

That's just my opinion though, do what you like.

@Paul- Yes, but nothing can really be validated by others without the use of the objective. Because you are limited to your subjective experience, you have no way of validating anything outside of your own mind. Just because another person got a result similar to yours, or did something similar to what you did doesn't mean that that is evidence for anything. For all your subjective standpoint knows, that person could be a figment of your imagination, validating your thoughts for you by porjecting something onto the outside world.

So unless you acknowledge that there is an objective truth outside of your own, then you cannot claim to have any thought which is validated or given more weight by the similar thoughts of others. And if you DO want to go that route, then I'd say there is a lot of weight to the 5 billion out of 6 billion people on Earth who claim to have knowledge, understanding, or experience with God in some way or another.

@Disinter- We aren't assuming anything. By acknowledging God, we are expanding out view into the objective, which allows us to grow and progress as human beings. I never said there was no objective view, I said that unless you acknowledge an objective, nothing is verifiable or validated. Which, again, leads us to thoughts and musings about God very quickly.