(May 10, 2011 at 9:54 pm)SleepingDemon Wrote: 1. What evidence would convince you of God’s existence?-Remarkably, several things. If god himself, or herself were to appear in my living room and say, hey, i'm god, nice to meet you. If any sort of prophecy were specific, like if the bible predicted 9/11 by saying, on the 11th day of september, two large steel birds will crash into buildings in new york, killing three thousand people. Then i'd say, hey, maybe there's something to this. Bad example as it could be orchestrated, but you see my point. If an amputee were to be prayed for right in front of me, and his/her severed limb were to regenerate, that would be evidence of a superior being. If I asked for a purple and yellow rhinoceros that eats squirrels for my birthday, and god came down and gave it to me, that would be evidence. I want evidence that cannot be explained away by sheer mathematical probability or modern medicine. And I want measurable evidence. If 100 stage 4 cancer patients are taken off of their medicine, taken from their hospital rooms, placed in a church, and prayed for, and all 100 patients walk out of that church cancer free, then i'll believe.
2. You see the words, “I love you” written in the sand at the beach. Is this man-made? If so, how do you know? I would assume it's man made, what else could it be? Sea turtles? I don't see god in the unexplainable, that is god of the gaps. If I visit a pyramid, dig beneath it's depths, and find a nintendo wii under the sand, am I to presume that some deity plucked one from the future and buried it there? Or is it more likely that it was placed there intentionally by a man?
3. If the God of the Bible were real, would He set the rules or would man set the rules? If the god of the bible were real, he would set the rules, I don't understand the purpose of this question. Half the fun of being god is setting the rules...then breaking them to annhilate the world except for Noah and his peeps.
4. Do moral laws exist? If so, do they exist independent of humans? How do you know what they are? Yes moral laws exist, So far as we know they do not exist independent of humans. Morality in our understanding is a human invention. More to the point it is a function of civilized humans. We have to follow certain rules to live together. If we begin raping and pillaging, torturing and killing each other at a whim how long would we remain in vast cities containing millions of us? As we have grown over the last couple thousands of years, we have learned to value life. 1000 years ago, the church saw no problem killing heretics and infidels, perceived witches and necromancers. It wasn't a sin to murder these people. But we know better now. Murder is uncivilized. Torture is uncivilized. How can we be a civilized society when we resort to barbarism?
5. If everyone on earth believed that rape were morally right, would it still be morally wrong? Yes, it would be. Just as the host of us once believed that slavery was morally right, it was still very wrong. Your god didn't seem to think so tho. ;-) My wife was a practicing Wiccan for several years, their mantra is "If it harms none, do what you will." That's a pretty good code to live by don't you think? This goes back to question four. Rape and murder have victims, one can use whatever method one likes to dehumanize those victims, but they are still victims nonetheless.
6. What is the most dangerous religion on Earth? That changes rather frequently, don't you think. It really depends on what you mean by dangerous, dangerous to whom or what? Dangerous to our species, Islam, hands down. Dangerous to our futures beyond an act of annhilation? Christianity. Fundamentalist Islam seeks a quick end to nonbelievers, so a muslim extremist could use nuclear weapons, or biological weapons, and kill a large portion of infidels with little guilt, as could fundamentalist christians btw. As far as the future goes, that goes to the world champion of oppression, Christianity. Now I know, we have this puppy dog version these days that begs for money on infomercials and heals fake blind people on television programs. But it exists in our schools, in our government, in our judicial system. You may ask what the problem with that is? If it's okay for a casual christian to be president, what sort of leap is for a fundamentalist christian to be president? What happens when fundie gets elected and decides that homosexuals should be imprisoned? Or that hate crimes against doctors who perform abortions really aren't that bad, or begins bombing random middle eastern countries spreading freedom dust to the non democratic heathens? I view danger on several levels, danger from without from Islam, prolonged danger from within by a religion who ruled the world for 1700 years.
7. Where did the laws of logic come from? From our self awareness. The moment our species became self aware, we became more aware of the world around us, and began trying to work out how things worked. It came from our lack of understanding, and our hunger for it.
8. How did non-rational events and processes lead to a rational human mind? Which are you referring to?
9. Why do some atheists such as Carl Wieland and Alister McGrath become Christians?Why do some christians become atheists? For me personally, anyone who converts back to theism after being an atheism, was never an atheist to begin with. If not, then why wasn't their evidence for re-conversion anymore profound than the average christians? Someone who once said to themselves, I will not believe until the case is made to my standards, to scientific standards, cannot take what passes for evidence by theists as evidence.
10. How do beliefs and thoughts differ? Thoughts are fleeting, beliefs are not. If one sees something in their peripheral vision, your brain immediately begins to work out the shape and identify it. Thoughts spring to mind, when you pick one and go with it, either by observing what was in your peripheral vision or not, that is belief.
11. Do you believe that God does not exist? No I do not believe that any gods exist.
12. Do you think that God does not exist? Interesting choice of words. God isn't something I think about on a regular basis, I function without that thought most of the time. So for me it isn't a matter of thinking, I do not ponder if Santa really exists, if i'm just kidding myself into believing that he doesn't, the same applies for god. I tend to be militant sometimes when it comes to atheism, but it derives from my living in the bible belt and observing relatively sane people practice some archaic drabble and talk about heaven. I do not believe that any gods exist, and by not believing, I place god in the same list of improbable human hallucinations and mythology as werewolves, vampires, chupacabras, the tooth fairy, and perfection.
13. How do you think life began on Earth? Organic chemicals mixing and linking together to become reclipating organisms and then dinosaurs, or something like that. No one knows for certain how life began, anyone who claims to is an idiot. However with what we know so far about biology and chemistry, this fits for how life began in the first place. If in a couple years someone comes along with a better idea, and it makes sense, then perhaps i'll leave the current scientific theories on abiogenesis. I won't however go back to the oldest theories, being the wild claims of cavedwelling shephards about cosmic eggs or deity intercourse, or magically speaking things into existence.
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Thanks for the response, it was an interesting read!