I would believe in God if...

[The Valkyrie]

Nothing would make me believe in god.

My favorite Hitchens quote:

"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more."

Wish I were that eloquent when it comes to dealing with pushy street preachers.

Best I can manage is, "You want me to believe in your imaginary friend?  Fuck off.  My fantasy life is far better than your bullshit!"

It does, of course, have its own eloquence.

[Minimalist]

At this point the entire concept of a god seems so childish and absurd that I can't imagine any set of circumstances which would lead me to fall for such a pile of shit.

[Amarok]

If he could prove himself in a way that was satisfying to my intellect, and not just the emotions.  Proofs for and against god rely too much on incredulity.

God is the premise from which people reason, not the conclusion towards which they reason.

God is a feel good drug that people desperately make shit up to try and  justify despite all evidence to contrary

[Neo-Scholastic]

God is the premise from which people reason, not the conclusion towards which they reason.

Great. How do I differentiate that from just making shit up?

The implied question is from what alternatives do you reason that are better.

[Angrboda]

Great.  How do I differentiate that from just making shit up?

The implied question is from what alternatives do you reason that are better.

God is neither better nor worse. As a hypothesis it is simply neutral.

And I think I've had enough of the deepities for one night.

[Nonpareil]

God is the premise from which people reason, not the conclusion towards which they reason.

This is true, but, unfortunately, trying to base your reasoning upon an unsupported assertion tends to lead to nonsensical conclusions. That's why most people try to avoid fallacies, rather than making them the foundation of their worldview.

[PETE_ROSE]

A more philosophical question to what is more likely; is our observable universe a result of chance or purpose?

False dilemma, but I take your point.  Our observable universe is more likely to be the result of non-random self selection operating on the raw material of chance.

Why not purpose?  It seem an unassailable standard that a Being who could purposefully design a universe would have to be of an order of magnitude more complex than the universe itself.  That is to say that such a Being would have to be better ordered than the universe.

Why would such a Being opt to create a universe with so many inherent cock ups?  (steady on, vorlon)  Parasitic wasps, tooth decay, HIV, floods, earthquakes, cosmic radiation, insurance salesmen...could not an infinitely complex Being have instantiated a universe without these and other horrors?  It's no good saying, 'God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform' - that's simply 'I don't know' dressed in borrowed robes, it isn't remotely an explanation.

I choose the likelihood of a non-purposeful universe by the simple expedient of looking around me:  The universe I see is exactly the one I would expect to see if were the result of what you call 'chance':  not perfect, just good enough to get by.

Boru

Again, bravo to you for articulating your point in such eloquent fashion. I feel outgunned and wish I did not have to post a biblically based response outside of the Christian box of threads.

Everything you said is plausible and I would agree with if the universe is the result of chance and randomness.

I would also concur with your point, if the Bible did not tell me that our world was broken, and to expect parasitic wasps, floods and cataclysmic events. In Genesis the world He created was perfect, He stated it was "good". Only later did the world we live in come to its current state, cock ups and all.

[Minimalist]

In Genesis the world He created was perfect, He stated it was "good".

Yeah.... and then the fucktard decided to kill almost everything with a flood.  Your 'god' is a piss-poor creator.

[SuperSentient]

Just curious if some of you have any genuine thoughts on this. Other than, "seeing evidence," what are some things that would make you believe in God.

For me, I would be believe in God if I could logically understand why he created a billions of year old Universe with stars, galaxies, blackholes, planets, etc. and all life while seemingly allowing it to look like it all could have happened without a conscious creator.

I ask this question, because for me, I still want to believe in a God, even though I don't. It just baffles me to think that everything just goes back to some form of cosmic luck. So that is why I ask the question, not based on what a religion will tell you about god, but what you'd like god to explain, to you, before you'd believe.

If you do decide to answer, lets just assume that god is any conscious deity. It would not be necessarily, any god that we know of, but rather just a god that you could imagine, knowing what you know. For example, if you're thinking that you'd like God to explain how he could murder millions of humans, including babies and children, in a global deluge, remember that we're not parsing over religious bullshit. We're atheists, we know that if a god exists, he wouldn't do anything illogical. So knowing that, we can openly talk about god in a more open way than any religious zealot ever could, because we truly have the ability to think for ourselves what a logical god figure would be like.

I would considering accepting it if an argument for the existence of a god that has a logically valid structure with empirical basis was put down. Unfortunately for the theist, no argument exists as of yet.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

In Genesis the world He created was perfect, He stated it was "good". Only later did the world we live in come to its current state, cock ups and all.

I don't see how that helps your position. If God created a world that was 'perfect', why would he allow his world to be made imperfect by lesser beings? To forestall the most frequent objection I get to this, it isn't a free will issue, as God could have created a world with beings who would freely have done what God wanted them to do.

Further, the world has never been perfect, regardless of what the Bible has to say about it. This planet was a raging, nightmarish, cataclysmic inferno billions of years before humans arrived on the scene. Lean on the Bible all you like, but this is a brute fact, not subject to sensible debate.


Boru