Why I'm not an Atheist and believe in what I believe.

[Ace Otana]

Ace Otana - we agree.

Bloody good, now we've got to find some kind of middle ground on god and his existence....

[Mystic]

Everyone has a choice to make. Many Muslims believe killing apostates is wrong even though their scholars teach otherwise. Why, because they chose to. It's the right decision, but never the less a choice.

The question is, whom made the right decision here? To assert God exists and has given us knowledge of himself, so I made right decision would be circular reasoning. To assert God doesn't exist or that he exists but hasn't given knowledge of himself, so I made wrong decision would be circular reasoning.

It seems it comes down to seeing whether it's genuine knowledge or not. We can agree to disagree on that decision, but up to that decision, I think we should agree.

And this where I want to reach an agreement.

[Ace Otana]

The question is, whom made the right decision here? To assert God exists and has given us knowledge of himself, so I made right decision would be circular reasoning. To assert God doesn't exist or that he exists but hasn't given knowledge of himself, so I made wrong decision would be circular reasoning.

It seems it comes down to seeing whether it's genuine knowledge or not. We can agree to disagree on that decision, but up to that decision, I think we should agree.

And this where I want to reach an agreement.

I don't think there is a 'right decision'.
I think a more rational stance when regarding belief in god would be I think is agnostic theist. Because we can't really know whether there is a god or not. I don't know, but at the same time I don't think there is such a thing. You don't know but are inclined to think that there is a god.
I don't think god (if there is one) would be insulted if you added a question mark to the idea. You're just being intellectually honest.

When I'm asked - "is there a god or isn't there" I have to answer - I don't know but at the same time don't think he does exist.

[Tempus]

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If #1 is true, you'd still have your work cut out to make a logical argument that it's possible to know god intuitively. A logical conclusion is reached by a logical argument, which must be both sound and valid to justify said conclusion. Logical arguments can be false though if, for example, they don't take into account relevant information. In such cases it could be because this information constitutes an "unknown unknown" - i.e., a necessary variable which is not only unaccounted for, but it's very existence is outside the scope of current knowledge. Logical arguments are used to determine how justified we are in believing things and aid in discovering new things, but they don't necessarily adhere to reality. I think what I've said here is right, someone correct me if I'm wrong!

For a logical argument about a god to begin to take form we would need some premises which were true to create an argument from; something like "a god exists", for example. If a god exists but we don't know about it we can't make logical arguments about it.

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Well to me if God exists, he can give us knowledge of anything he wants. This seems to be a solid premise.

If we take a god's existence as a given that still tells us nothing of its disposition toward humans. Your scenario hinges on a lot of ifs. The god can give us knowledge of its existence if it wants. The god could be the basis of morality* if it was interested in well-being of humans. I also see no reason why a being who doesn't biologically reproduce would be a "he" either.

*Have a look at the Euthyphro dilemma.

Aside from that, if he exists and we are linked to him, it seems possible that we can be aware of this link.

Yes, if someone were all-powerful they would have that ability. You know what they'd also have? Your phone number. And your address. And the ability to take human (or at least physical) form and perform miraculous deeds, demonstrate foreknowledge and repeat your thoughts to you to at least partially establish their divinity. Clearly at least slightly confused - why use such an error prone method of communication?

Also if the nature of greatness, honour, goodness, all have him as the eternal basis, then I don't see why they wouldn't point to Eternal Basis and Person-hood of God.

I think also if we a spirit/soul, then spiritual knowledge, eyes of the soul, is very possible.

Naturally if God exists, he can create us with knowledge of himself. The knowledge would be based on reality and a link to him.

If God is like the Sun behind the rays of morality, greatness, honour, why shouldn't we able to perceive him?

Basically if a god exists it's a fact of reality. I don't really see the point if saying "oh, if this exists, this, this, and this would happen!" I mean, to have fun and wonder about what could be or hypothesise is fine, but to continually muse over the same thing when even its most basic assumption hasn't been established is, to me, wasteful.

[Taqiyya Mockingbird]

What about gods?

A god is just a being worthy of worship.

That doesn't mean anything. Your arguments are getting sloppier and sloppier as they unravel. Your making up your own definitions isn't helping you any, either.

We already honour some humans to a very high degree. I would not be suprised if God's plan for every creation to to ascend to godhood and beyond.

And you make up qualities for your mythical god as well, fashioning it in your own image (meaning to suit your own proclivities). This is patho-logical as well.

This would not make the equal to God in anyway. Because God is Ultimate Greatness.

That doesn't mean anything, either. And all this hyperbole fails due to your initial failure to demonstrate that this god you propose exists at all. Without that, anything you use to describe its supposed qualities is just word salad. And patho-logical nonsense.

[quote[To me however it seems logical if God is Ultimate, he is also Ultimate Life. And if he is Ultimate life, there is no life that is really "aside from him" but is rather existing DUE to him. There life is not their own, but that God gives it to them.

This would mean originally, there had to be One Creator.

Does it mean a creation can never reach the level that they deserved to be honored to the level of worship?

No. It depends on you perception of "worship". To me an honourable human can reach the level of godhood. Why? Because his goodness in him has that potential.

Do I know of any "gods" aside from God? No. [/quote]

And all of this word salad falls for the same reasons as well. Waxing poetic about your mythical god's supposed qualities -- which in reality you are making up pathologically on the fly -- is not any sort of evidence that such a being exists. It is simply mental masturbation.

But a character like Batman if he were to exist, to me, would be a god.

Someone here has a Wall of Shame in their sig line for stupid things theist have said. The above gets my nomination for inclusion.

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Good question. Why then are we unable to detect such an entity?

lol but I think we are able to!

Then pull it out and show it to us.

Well perhaps you mean "we" as "us atheists".

So this is a figment of your imagination, then. QED. You are asserting that our sensory abilities are dependent on whether we believe in fairies or not?

I am going to go back to my "don't kill apostates" rule.

Why? It is a meaningless red herring.

Because some Muslims feel the need to follow their scholars and hadiths regarding this issue, they will "bury" that knowledge, but the knowledge is never gone and always shouting at them, whenever they think of the issue.

Pure speculation.

Now Atheists did an honest mistake in my perspective.

And now to all the fucktards who are claiming that this guy is only talking about his own beliefs and not trying to make his statements apply to everyone: Go fuck yourselves.

They said "We aren't aware of an analytical proofs of God, no logical argument, so I have no reason to believe".

Did we really? I don't remember saying that. You have evoked a straw man here. And this whole business of "analytical proofs" is a bullshit red herring. What most atheists have rejected your fairy tales on is their utter lack of EVIDENCE. All your "analytical proof" amounts to, in the absence of any direct correlation to evidence, is pure sophistry.

Then they perceived all those believing in God to do so without knowledge.

Without EVIDENCE. Your assertion of "knowledge" without evidence is pure bullshit.

Then they lived a long time and got emotionally attached to their decision.

And you know this because you can read all of our minds? This is patho-logical (make-up-as-you-go-along) speculation. In other words, you are bullshitting yourself and now you are attempting to bullshit us with the bullshit you have convinced yourself of (your delusions).

Now just as "religion" can blind people, for example, some think it's "good" to torture humans for disbelieving in a true religion, due to religion, while deep down inside, they know to be wrong and ugly and evil, the same can be about emotional attachment to "atheism" (non belief in God).

That is just pathological wishful thinking on your part.

So the knowledge of God to me, that perception is still there, even in Atheists, it's just they have to pull "God's sword" (so to speak) out of the rubble (so to speak).

The capacity to bullshit oneself is certainly there, but in order to overcome it you nee to pull your head (so to speak) out of your ass (so to speak).

Another issue is that religions like Christianity and Islam paint a very ugly image of God, and once you leave the religion, "God" is that to you, and you feel emotionally against that God.

And so, since you are making up your own version of this gawd anyway, you are going to paint a big smiley face on it.

Of course, those that mixed knowledge of God with that of indoctrination and religions, and then those chose to rely on religion's concept which was somewhat correct, and somewhat wrong, and relied on the wrong, and buried the correct knowledge, then when indoctrination left...it felt that all the knowledge of God was a delusion. The reason is because THAT god was a delusion.

Just like yours and everyone else's.

The real God however, the true beauty, the true greatness, is not a delusion.

Have you met it? If your assertions are true, then by all means, pull it out of your pocket and show us its beauty, its greatness, it's big pecker, etc.

That God is not to be perceived through eyes of religion, but through the eyes of the soul unshackled from pressure of religion.

One who is unshackled from religion doesn't have any use for your made-up gawds.

[Mystic]

I think a more rational stance when regarding belief in god would be I think is agnostic theist. Because we can't really know whether there is a god or not.

hmm..I think agnostic theist is more irrational. It's saying you believe in God, but you don't have knowledge of God. Why believe in God if you feel you have no knowledge of God? At most, I would believe in a Creator without claiming to know he exists, just likely, and be agnostic to whatever he is. But I don't see why believing in God is rational without feeling you have genuine knowledge.

I don't think god (if there is one) would be insulted if you added a question mark to the idea. You're just being intellectually honest.

I agree God would not be insulted. I also think God wants us to be intellectually honest. To seek the truth and guide towards it. But I think I would intellectual dishonest to myself if I said "I don't know God exists".

When I'm asked - "is there a god or isn't there" I have to answer - I don't know but at the same time don't think he does exist.
[

This is what it comes down to. You are being honest to yourself and I respect that.

[Ace Otana]

hmm..I think agnostic theist is more irrational. It's saying you believe in God, but you don't have knowledge of God. Why believe in God if you feel you have no knowledge of God? At most, I would believe in a Creator without claiming to know he exists, just likely, and be agnostic to whatever he is. But I don't see why believing in God is rational without feeling you have genuine knowledge.

Personally I find the theistic position (or any belief in a god) to be at least a little irrational. How can one know there is a god? How can you tell that it's not a delusion? For me I just stick to Occam's Razer.

I agree God would not be insulted. I also think God wants us to be intellectually honest. To seek the truth and guide towards it. But I think I would intellectual dishonest to myself if I said "I don't know God exists".

I'm glad you use the words 'I think'. Many like to state it as if it's a fact. I prefer to remain honest myself.

This is what it comes down to. You are being honest to yourself and I respect that.

Honesty is always better.

[Mystic]

Clearly at least slightly confused - why use such an error prone method of communication?

I'm a little confused by what you meant here. Perhaps you can clarify.

Basically if a god exists it's a fact of reality.

And if we have knowledge of him, it's based on reality. This the point I am making.

If Ultimate Greatness exists, it seems all this spiritual knowledge I'm talking about is not only possible but logical to assume would exist with his existence.

For example, if there was a conclusive philosophical argument to prove God in 10 years...and you know for certain this was a true argument and every philosopher and logician agreed upon the argument. I don't think it would be rational to believe that God was not knowable until that argument came a long. I think it's more rational to believe God made his knowledge properly basic in the soul the same as morality, were he to exist.

As I stated earlier:

To assert God exists and has given us knowledge of himself, so I made right decision would be circular reasoning. To assert God doesn't exist or that he exists but hasn't given knowledge of himself, so I made wrong decision would be circular reasoning.

It rather just comes to honestly asking yourself if it's genuine knowledge. And here I respect either Atheist decision that we don't know or Theists decision that we do know.

I myself believe I do know.

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I'm glad you use the words 'I think'. Many like to state it as if it's a fact.

Well I think it's a fact, but it seems impolite in a discussion forum in a debate to state things as facts, when the other side is debating it.

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How can one know there is a god? How can you tell that it's not a delusion?

You see to me this is a fallacy. Their can be a relationship between God and the soul or mind or conscious that establishes this knowledge. It's possible.

The question should be, "Is there one?" Not "how can there be one".

[Taqiyya Mockingbird]

Killing someone because they're not in your particular religion is pathetic.

Well, they don't kill people just because they are not in particular religion. They kill people for leaving their religion.

Did you miss the memo about that little incident on 9/11?

I see it as wrong and evil, but it's a "buried" evil with them. Scholars of Islam from all schools teach this law.

Are you claiming that "many scholars of islam" teach NOT to kill apostates? If so, please provide evidence of this assertion for all schools of islam.

It's also wrong because it contradicts their own holy book which teaches otherwise. (They follow narrations here over Quran)

Apparently you have not seen some of the juicier verses in the quran.

Any ways, the point is we can KNOW some things naturally (not everything), without needing to rely on analytical proofs.

Completing the circle of your circular reasoning. And again, "analytical proofs" is a red herring. We can KNOW what we have EVIDENCE for.

There are something we only know after analytical reasoning. There are something we know without analytical reasoning.

Again. The only sort of reasoning going on there is circular.

Killing people for fun is properly basic knowledge to be evil and wrong.

Do you really think islamists kill for fun?

We don't need to argue why even if there is good arguments as to why it's evil and wrong. We simply know it and perceive it as such.

You are declaring this by fiat. There are reasons against killing, but "we simply know it, and we can apply this to my made-up gawd too, hurr durr" is not one of them.

[Ace Otana]

Well I think it's a fact,

Well a fact is something that's well supported. Not sure what support there is for a god.

You see to me this is a fallacy. Their can be a relationship between God and the soul or mind or conscious that establishes this knowledge. It's possible.

Need to first demonstrate that souls even exist, and god. Why would either of them exist? Why assume they do?

The question should be, "Is there one?" Not "how can there be one".

I think both questions are valid. One question asks if it's possible while the other asks does one exist.