Faith?

[solarwave]

Solarwave, I've just spotted this quote at the end of your replies....

“Humanism or atheism is a wonderful philosophy of life as long as you are big, strong, and between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five”

Let me tell you that from personal experience over many years that your line is nonesense.
As an Atheist who is not big (barely 10 stone), nor very strong and is well, well, well past your
age limits, I still find Atheism as attractive to me now as it ever was.

As I approach my end now I know that if I am wrong in my lack of belief then I will
eventually know.....stoking the fires maybe? :-)
The believer on the other hand will die in blissful ignorance if he is wrong.
I find the former condition far more intellectually satisfying to know one's errors than to remain in ignorance of them.
Albert.

The quote doesn't say that all are in that age gap. If that works for you fine, I may change the quote soon anyway. To be honest if I became an atheist I think it would only last till 35 since I believe my motivation for atheism will be gone by then. But thats another topic

Well to be honest if there is no God and we die and turn to mere dust then what does it matter if it is 'intellectually satisfying', truth would have no absolute value anyway. I very much down that if you go to hell you will be thinking, well at least im intellectually satisfied. Reverse it and if Im right then I am intellectually satisfied and you are ignorant of whether you were right or not. I really dont like promoting religion on fear of death though.

I pick these two books because one deals with the scientific aspect of believing in God and how science shows there most certainly is not a God with respect to the Abrahamic God. The second book deals with religion and society and how harmful it is. Two very important aspects to the religion debate.

Science proves there is no God, I would like to hear that. As for the second book I bet he doesn't take into account the good by religion as well.

First, the magnitude of religions that claim they got it just right and if you don't subscribe to their brand of religion you're damned, and we're talking even withing different Christian denominations.

How does that prove there isn't a God. For me I dont think it is so clear cut as if your a christian or not.

Then there's the fact that millions of people suffer daily, some Christian, some not, and it's obvious their so called "prayers" go unanswered when their children die of hunger in front of them. I can't believe an omni-benevolent God exists and just watches, meanwhile basketball players will thank God for taking them to the championship game. To me, this simple problem shows me the world works just as you expect it would work without a God.

Is that not just the nature of man and the physical world? Suffering comes as part of living in a physical world and if God stopped every bad thing happening wouldn't it bring the world into chaos? If we didn't know if whether God would stop us everytime we act because it could have a bad consequence. The problem of evil is quite a big one and not one I can answer at the moment. So are you saying that there is no possible reason that a loving God could have from holding back, that you KNOW there is no reason, or are you saying it is just unlikely. Something being unlikely has never stopped it being true.

The Bible, look closely and it's full of holes and contradictions. Once I started to see all the problems with the Bible and learned how messed up the Gospels of Jesus are, that house of cards fell.

I havn't seen any unexplainable ones.

Free will versus "everything happens for a reason". This idea that you're in control, but not. All the good things in life are God, all the bad things are your own failings or God is "testing" you.

Can you expand upon this? Im not sure exactly what your saying. Thanks.

Afterlife, there's no evidence for it. Everything that makes us "us" is attributed to the brain. The science on this is astounding, and I've only skimmed the surface myself. There's absolutely no evidence for a soul.

What possible evidence could there be for a world beyond our own? Near Death Experiences: I dont mean the ones with fuzzy feelings, I mean the ones where someone is brain dead yet when they wake up know things that happened in the room when dead, or other things unknowable while dead.

The soul could be a mirror of the brain. A copy in spiritual form. Or the soul could be the soul be the explaination of consciousness or free will, but this depends upon whetherits possible for science to explain consciousness in the future. The soul isn't even necessary for life after death. God could recreate the body in spiritual form after death, which i acctuallly think makes sense with the christian idea of resurrection.