It really scares me.

[pocaracas]

Damn mega-post.
Do forgive me for just going through a few points, stat... this does become tiresome!.. oh, you're not stat... sure look like him!
Where is your re-spawn ship?

And just how did you (or anyone else) come across all this information, in order to write it down?

There's general revelation this the general stuff you can figure out about the nature of the universe and the general experience of being human and you have special revelation this would be the Bible and the gospels Christ, the writing of St Paul and Church fathers and all that business. You may find this kind of revelation in other religious traditions even though they do tend to disagree on certain major details. This is nothing you can prove with science but why is absolute proof with science a necessary criteria for belief/faith? Who came up with that rule?

How do you distinguish genuine revelation from genuine deception or delusion?

How do you know there was an external force that created the universe?

You're saying the universe brought itself into existence from it's own existence? How does that work? What be the reason for all that? How do we come into the picture are we meant to be an accident?

Too many questions... sooo little time.
First, no, I did not say that. I asked you "how do you know there was an external force that created the universe?"
But let's run with your skewed point a bit. Still, I did not say any of that.
I'd say that the Universe exists. How it came into being, I know not. I can guess, I can fantasize, but I cannot say how. That information is, at best, very elusive. Our current abilities can explain the Universe, in broad strokes, up to the big bang, but no further back.
This is where your god of the gaps argument comes in.
It is one possibility. A god.... A 20-D entity, A 40-D entity.... a n-D entity.... whatever...
Or the Universe was always here, but under a different guise...
Or... or ....or... the possibilities are endless... as endless as human imagination.
You yearn for a reason, for a purpose. I give you none of that, so you find my lack of answer unacceptable and choose to embrace one of the few possibilities that provide you with what you desire.
You're free to do so, but please, do not spread that need for a comforting non-truth. It's dishonest.

If god is real and it wants me to acknowledge its existence, then it should make it known.

He did that's what the Bible (and other sacred texts perhaps) are. What did you think they were?

Texts written by people to convince other people of their rules of conduit... stories designed to lend credence to their belief system.

Painfully obvious. Instead.... faith is required.

If faith wasn't required you would be forced into a relationship with God that you wouldn't necessarily want. If there is some room for doubt you get to retain your own freewill.

Haven't you read the retort to this enough times, yet?
How many angels, fully aware of the nature of your god are said to have dismissed the guy?
Did they not retain their free will?

Faith in what you or others tell me.

You can make up your own mind whether you would like to believe or not. It's just an option you have rather than something to be dismissed because Richard Dawkins tells you that you should. Richard Dawkins is not the supreme being he just has his own opinion and that's pretty much it.

You are a deluded sap...
I got to atheism all on my own. years... decades before I ever heard of Richard Dawkins, or Daniel Dennet, or Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens, or George Carlin, or any other of those... let's call them... spokespersons.
I dismissed the faith because of faith itself. The requirement of faith is a self-defeating one. Things are either known or not. Having faith means not knowing, but pretending you have the right answer... and that is dishonest.

No thanks.
I smell snake oil a mile away!

If God does in fact exist and I would say he does then you're the one who has been convinced to buy the snake oil. Someones going to be mistaken, and it could be you why not?

I could be mistaken, of course... I could be mistaken about the lack of knowledge about the pre-big-bang conditions... but I don't find your position one of knowledge... It looks like one of dishonesty...

No, there's no evidence.

Plenty of evidence but no guaranteed proof. That's why it's called faith. Though it can still be true even if you don't know 100% that it is. Though if it turns out that atheists are actually right we can say no believer would ever find out that they were wrong.

Those believers will have spent a fair percentage of their lives doing something useless... I'm not saying they would have done something useful with that time, but, when you add up all the people, something useful would have come out of that, for sure.
In the name of fairness, some faith-based groups do help the less fortunate, so that a good usage of their time.

If there was, you'd have presented it... instead, you ramble on about how I refuse to accept it as evidence.

You will have to define what you mean by evidence as I thought that's what I was doing. I know this isn't proof but no-one is claiming that.

Faulty psychological states are never evidence for anything.

"his very definition"?
Who defined god?

He's the creator of the natural/physical universe and all of space and time itself that's the why he would be God. If he isn't a part of the natural physical universe then he isn't observable and so therefore beyond the scope of what science can possibly observe. No-one defined God the idea is that he exists and actually told us about himself. We don't know he did but that that's the idea.

How would that have happened, if "he isn't observable and so therefore beyond the scope of what science can possibly observe"... If science can't observe it, then how can human observe it?

Then how would anyone know about the guy?

Because you can rationally conclude that the universe must have been created from an initial starting point as all effects have a cause and because you have revelation in scripture where he tells us about himself. You can prove the existence of God with science you can only study what God created with science.

I can rationally conclude that the Universe was, at some time in the past, in a state we call a singularity. Beyond that, I can't say anything. I can't even define that singularity properly, much less what caused it...

Say, for example a constantly floating rock... generate an hexagonal grid some 1km at the side that covers the whole planet. On each vertex, put a floating rock and keep it there, by magic. Gravity doesn't work on the rock. No other force is acting on it.

Perhaps technologically advanced aliens shot the rock with an anti-graviton beam projector from a cloaked ship in orbit or something. It could be anything that would be causing that to happen so you would still require faith to believe it was anything to do with God and it would not be evidence of anything. Therefore you cannot have scientific proof of God. You can't use the lack of scientific proof for God as an objection against God if you can't have this proof to begin with.

Sooner or later, we'd be able to measure that anti-graviton beam and mimic it.
No, this is magic I'm talking about!

And top it of by appearing to everyone and imparting some of that timeless wisdom, while claiming to be the reason for the floating rocks. Repeat this every few years so you can catch up with everyone.

That could just be an alien like the being from Star Trek V and not really God some kind of impostor so you would still require faith in this being that appeared. If God was to appear as a human being on Earth he would be a little more subtle about it rather than appear and start spouting off. He would partake of the fullness of human life, suffer and die as a human and all that business. The the God who would die for you that's the guy right there.

I see no such god dying for anyone... I see lots of people dying for stupid reasons...
I see lots of people claiming to know about a god without knowing anything about it... Well, they know as much as I know about Darth Vader, I guess...

Would that be too above your definition of god?

He may have had a different and better way of doing things. Either way you would still require faith in the revelation. If some being suddenly appeared and started blasting unbelievers with lightning bolts you have reason to doubt him obvious though his actual existence would be.

Did I not mention that this god would appear to everyone somewhat periodically?
Revelation and faith be damned, if this guy would have been doing that ever since the start.... but clearly it's not.

Instead... we get a book written by people who may or may not have witnessed extraordinary things, and a lot of hearsay...

You have to read their experience of the divine with an open mind and judge for yourself, bearing in mind that this isn't a literal book of science and history right the way through. If something about it seems right to you on some level then you may be looking at the genuine article rather than some kind of fabrication.

"Open mind"? LOL
Did you know that if you open your mind too much, your brain will fall off?

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Sure some of it sounds right... it's based on a collective of human life. If those people couldn't come up with something that didn't sound right to other humans, then they would be very poor writers... maybe that happened to a lot of other holy text writers... which texts were rejected from catholic canon? How many? What did they claim?

The rational conclusion is: Everywhere we've peeked, we've found nothing but nature.

Everything we can see and detect would become part of the natural universe we understand by default, you can see how that works. That's not exactly a good case against the Creator. What you can do is take what we about the universe through science and try reading between the lines a little. There is a contingent and finely balanced natural order here, there certainly was a process of formation from a starting point in time.

Was there?

Nature holds some weird stuff, but nothing that can be pinned to any god.

Absolutely and the Bible agrees. There no gods that control the natural world as in ancient Greece only the Creator and his creation, the natural order. Where do you think the natural order came from? Something of this order of complexity and structure?

The OT would disagree with that...
Oh look, Stat's latest argument... natural order, the underlying cosmic sub-quantum designed Universe!
Come on... do you really think that the people who first suggested the existence of a god had any notion of these concepts?
If you want to convince anyone, you need to use the original argument... sadly, the original argument relies in faulty human psychology, so it's moot.
Anything after that are simply rationalizations which prove nothing.

There are places we haven't peeked yet... there are places we may never be able to peek at...

You can't find something that isn't physically there, God doesn't physically exist.

And yet, the guy allegedly contacted humans... so it is possible that we find physically observable evidence of the presence of this god.... no?

I will not fill in those places with an imaginary magical entity, just to make my life easier. That's being dishonest.... the very opposite of rational.

God fills everything that exists and you don't see him anywhere because there is nothing to see. But you have to explain why God isn't rational in the great scheme of things, what makes the alternative to God more rational?

It's irrational because it's a presupposition.
You presuppose god, then proceed to rationalize it.
The bible itself starts under this presupposition, read the very first sentence.

freedom of will... oh you...

Without God or a transcendent higher power doesn't that make us organic machines run on evolutionary programming? You can't get any kind of freewill out of that. But denying the existence God you're claiming to not have your own self realized rational mind to begin with so nullifying the point that atheism is the rational proposition. You're only an atheist because of cultural conditioning acting upon your evolutionary pre-wired hardware reacting a certain way and there is nothing else to it if you accept this materialism/physicalism as true.

Correct!
And you're only a christian "because of cultural conditioning acting upon your evolutionary pre-wired hardware reacting a certain way". This realization leads to the knowledge that theism is inevitable to some people and abhorrent to others... That theism was inevitable in humanity's history... that theism will remain with us for a while more...

You're a deterministic machine, with the illusion of free will.

No I'm a creation/creature of God made in his image with a freedom of will that reflects his own and so are you. You may think you're a deterministic machine but this is because you have gone a bit nuts or something. There is no reason to believe such a thing to be true when you have the alternative.

Actually, "there is no reason to believe such a thing to be true when you have the alternative."

You cannot say that, at any time in your life, you would have made anything different than what you did.

I can because I freewill and personal and moral responsibility given to me by my creator and so have you. You can try and prove me wrong but as far as I can tell you have absolutely nothing.

How can you distinguish true free will from the illusion of free will? The illusion that arises from the highly complex interactions of millions of neurons in your brain.

Or maybe, I can use Universe with a capital U and remove the god non-sense.

The universe is just the universe it isn't God or something to have in place of God. It is a process that God brought into existence for a reason and purpose and we are part of that. If you don't think this true then explain why.

That's not how it goes, dear...
If you think that is true, then explain why.
That has nothing to attest it.

Ah... how nice it would be to know about other life forms looking up at the stars and wondering if they are alone in this vastness...
Oh, vastness.... you know how close the nearest star is? 4-light years... that's 4 years moving at the speed of light. Now imagine a sphere with that radius. On the inside of that sphere, you have nothing but this tiny dot with water on its surface and life.

There could be trillions of planets just like Earth contained within this universe for all we know. So they're a large distance apart but that may be necessary to keep everything from colliding into everything else. Exceptional design you'll agree.

Are you making stuff up? in order to keep magic from being magical?

That's why you hear us say that "man made god".

Nope God made man.

Nuh-uh!!

There you go with the fine tuning thing again... Don't. Research into the thing and you'll find there's no fine tuning.

The complex and precise natural balance of the physical constants that allows organic life to exist then. This was either intentional or a coincidence we can't know. It would seem a bit unlikely as a coincidence though so I would say it's entirely intentional. What do you call an intentional creator of the universe?

Would you say that something unlikely, like winning the lottery can happen if you have enough attempts?
Can you imagine the amount of time nature had to arrive at life? Can you imagine the amount of time it took for life to become multicellular? Coincidence had little to do with it.

Aye, just look at the impact god has had in human life, why don't you?...
C.r.u.s.a.d.e.s.... want more?
H.o.l.y..I.n.q.u.i.s.i.t.i.o.n....

That's the same thing as saying that the impact of atheism on the world was the Soviet Union, Chairman Mao and Pol Pot. You can say they didn't really represent atheism but you can say witch hunters and crusaders didn't represent Christianity. Though with the Crusades you could kind of argue that the Muslims attacked Christendom first.

So... are you saying that the inquisition had its origin in a country's government? Or did it originate in the catholic church's headquarters?
The same for the crusades...

Is there some sort of atheism headquarters where Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin were bred?

I can see the arguments, but they all seem either like wishful thinking or plain delusion.

It could be you who is deluded for all you know.

I'm not the one claiming something to be real, when there's nothing pointing in that direction.

Sorry, I see no reason to believe in what the other side is claiming.

But you already established that you don't possess the freedom to rationally make up your own mind anyway.

Indeed... nor do you.
But the complexity involved does provide that illusion... allow me to be deluded in this tiny aspect.

The other side claims it's everywhere...

Look within your heart then, go with your gut feeling and all that business. Some of faith is rational and logical and some of it is emotional and what you feel the two go together.

Really?
My gut feeling?
My gut feeling tells me faith is a dishonest proposition.

No, I am open to reality.... just not open to being deceived.

You know atheism/materialism isn't the deception and God isn't the reality because?

Because I arrived there on my own.
Because no one tried to sell it to me, unlike what happened with faith.

And because I'm aware of all these venues by which humans can be deceived, I refuse to accept them.

How do you know you haven't already accepted a deception or the false depiction of reality? If God does in fact exist and is real if there is a higher power there then this what you have done. Someone will be wrong and it could easily be you.

If god exists and wants me to acknowledge that existence, it is doing a very poor job. It is then no god.

Think of it like a computer's firewall. I know there are bugs out there that exploit certain ports in my system, so I just close them.

Perhaps atheism/materialism is the bug you ought to have kept out of your system? You don't know if you don't know.

Are you seriously suggesting I let myself get deceived to be convinced of something I know is a deception?

Honest communication is still available, because many many ports are open. It's just those ones that are known to be used deceptively/dishonestly that are closed.

That's fine but the Bible and faith in God aren't deliberate attempts at deception. The people who wrote it clearly believed what they believed as does anyone who has a faith in God. It doesn't prove it's true of course you can choose to believe it or not it's only an option.

Indeed.
I can agree that some people who wrote it believed in it. Some believed in some of it and embellished it to make it sound better, or easier to explain.... belief in the afterlife is a very ancient belief... predating polytheism.

I want no faith.
I want knowledge. Information.

What would stop you from having both?

Faith is pretending to know... not something that interests me, thank you very much.

Damit... I ended up replying to almost every point!
Damn you stat!!!