Why I believe in God.

[Norfolk And Chance]

I apologize wholeheartedly for mistakenly accusing you of arse-face related comments.

Thank you - I think there is a moral in there about not reading people's posts somewhere - anyhow...

Let's just clarify something though, my belief in there being a God does not rely on the Bible at all.

Indirectly it does rely on the bible, like it or not. You yourself might never have even read the bible for all I know, although I'd guess you might know it well. Belief in god is brainwashed into young folk through community and it's hard to shake off.

But let us be under no illusion, the root cause of christianity and belief in god IS the bible. No scripture = no christian god concept, and you would not be aware of that concept to even follow, let alone believe in. And neither would I be here saying "no way"

Religions exists across humanity, with or without religious scriptures.

Do they? I'm not aware of any outside the major god believing religions? I stand to be corrected of course, but I'm not interested in piss ant little cults that may not have a book or anything like that, because they are not important enough to aknowledge.

Take away the bible and I still believe in God. I may have a different understanding of him but the bible is not a necessity to believe.

When everybody believes and you are part of that community then I can probably concede that you only need to listen to what your peers say and follow what they believe - bible not necessarily required. There are so many, they must be right...

WHY do you believe god is real then?

Realistically, claiming to not have the bible as a reason to believe doesn't strengthen your position to believe.

As I have stated several times, I see the bible as a guide to life that must be interpreted taking into account the historical and political context in which every page was written.

It's just a book of stories.

My belief is not a choice.

True. My non belief is not a choice, I just don't buy god. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't, because I require evidence.

If you have a red ball, no matter how many times you choose to say it's blue, it remains red and you will still believe it to be so.

Nobody would have a demonstrably red ball and choose to say it's blue unless there was something wrong with them. A ridiculous notion actually, because you KNOW the red ball is red, not BELIEVE it to be red.

If, however, it can be demonstrated in a repeatable experiment to be blue and not red, them I would change my belief.

But you wouldn't believe a ball to be a different colour to what it was, because you'd know what colour it was. And no repeatable experiment could make the ball a different colour. Belief = irrelevant in this example = theistic waffle.

I think we agree that the variations in religion are a reflection on man but that does not logically lead to "therefore, he does not exist".

Never said it did. It is logical to assume he doesn't exist because there is no evidence, and you know that standard atheistic viewpoint anyway.

This is not about winning. This is merely about trying to get you to understand my position.

I really can't understand a theistic perspective, it is alien to me, and not natural. It isn't based in any reality that I know, and that's the problem. Sorry, but there you have it.

I have already said that I think your position is valid and I understand that when presented with a lack of empirical evidence, people will take a particular perspective, regardless. Yours is atheist, mine is theist.

I'm glad you accept my view as valid, however I cannot accept unevidenced belief as valid.

We are not in a position to scientifically prove either way and our attempts at logical resolution are always flawed because we end up being reduced to a "tis" "tisn't" argument.

The problem for an atheist is you can't prove the non existence of a non existent entity other than to point out that there is unsurprisingly no evidence to back up the non existent being. The exact same can be said about the tooth fairy, I cannot prove the non existence of her either - BUT - I KNOW there is no tooth fairy and don't need to prove that. Guess what? god = the same. It's up to theists/god to prove it to me.

Until then, he's made up, and I CAN say that from a position of significant strength no matter how much you protest that neither of us can prove ourselves to be right.

The philosophy I find interesting but I sense you are tiring of it. Like I said about Schrodinger's Cat, God both exists and doesn't exist until we can prove it either way. Until then, you believe he doesn't and I hold to the contrary. I am happy to leave it at that.

I'll never tire because as far as I'm concerned, if I ever start one theist on the path to deconversion - it was all worthwhile.