Why is belief in a higher power required?

[Brian37]

Considering that people are perfectly capable of living happy, moral lives without a belief in a higher power, I would like to hear logical answers from theists as to precisely why belief in a higher power is required in this world. It is a question I have never seen adequately answered.

Good question.

Hitchens in his books and speeches has said "Name me one good thing said or good deed done only a believer can do that an atheist could not do".

If the believer(insert any god name here) can accept people of other faiths or no faith can be good and happy without their particular superstition, that is clear evidence that morality is evolutionary and not handed down by fictional beings.

But I would recommend you get a barf bag because the responses will nauseate you.

[Silver]

There is one unifying truth among all of use, God is the creator who gave His son Jesus Christ to be our hope in salvation, and we all except this.

Argumentum ad populum. Just because a majority believes something to be true, unifying them all as you put it, does not mean that what they believe is true. It is possible for a majority to share the same delusion, especially when that delusion is indoctrinated from generation to generation for thousands of years.

[Statler Waldorf]

That's fine, then. That means I can just say "There is no God" and it's a fact until you prove otherwise. So get on it.

No, you’re still trying to play by the rules you could not prove were valid, you’d have to prove there is no God since all claims have burden and not just positive claims, so where’s your atheistic proof?

You can offer no plausible basis for your justifications. I'm being honest.

The fact we can obtain knowledge is proof that my justification is warranted.

Then, be so kind as to point me to a single example.

Ok, you. You are the example; you’re utter inability to justify any of your beliefs without invoking the God of scripture is proof that reality is incoherent without His existence. Whenever you make a case against God’s existence you’re assuming God exists. Pretty cool eh?

Prove that God's existence is necessary for it to be possible to learn about reality. Or, if you prefer, prove that I can't know anything about reality without him.

I already did! I challenged you to demonstrate how you can trust your senses and memory in a Universe where God does not exist. You could not do so, and yet this belief must be true in order for us to know anything at all. The Christian has no such problem, he or she has reasons for believing that their senses and memory are reliable, the non-Christian does not.

Proof?

That is an informal proof, you and I both believe “A”, and yet “A” requires “B” to also exist. You cannot believe “A” without also believing “B”; you cannot believe your senses are reliable without also believing that God exists.

Genesis 6:6

That was still part of the plan though.

a: What the original document is and what it actually says

I already explained how we can obtain what the originals said by textual comparisons through the early copies.

b: That the original is truly original

Of course there has to be an original, copies cannot exist without an initial manuscript to copy.

c: That any copy is accurate

They do not have to be very accurate, as I already demonstrated you can determine what the original said from even a very sloppy set of copies.

d: That the original is a flawless record of events which are empirically factual

No, this is a starting point, not a conclusion.

Your fellow Christians tell me that evil is whatever goes against the will of your god. Are they wrong?

Not necessarily wrong, but a bit roughly stated.

When you prove that a single demonstration is an indisputably correct one, and you take care of the four problems noted above, then you'll be at square one and you actually have an intellectually legitimate basis to make a single claim. Until then, there is no compelling reason to think you're not just a belligerent fraud making shit up, or (more likely) that you're a troll riling us up by making deliberately terrible arguments.

A troll that’s been on here longer than you have? Right. Please point to one of these alleged terrible arguments and explain why it is terrible.

[Godscreated]

No they're not the same thing, if I cut down a tree and it falls on and kills a man I certainly did not murder him, my actions caused his death so I killed him but I did not murder him.

True, but that's still manslaughter, and you still get punished for it.

Up till now I did not believe you were stupid, with that statement you leave no other alternative.

Thank you, and no above I explained the difference in killing and murder. So you do not think you may have misread other things or should I say you haven't the whole of the story.

I'll get into this in more detail further down, but what I will say is that I probably wasn't phrasing my question right. I should have asked why what happened is killing, and not murder. Happily, you answered that, though I'm afraid we still disagree.

That's exactly why individuals should not make laws' can't wait to see what's up.

Killing is not always okay, murder is never okay. Killing for the most part is a bad action, it usually brings sadness to someone. When a war breaks out killing becomes a necessary tragedy, that does not make it murder in all cases, self defense in taking a life is killing but, it's not murder. I've not said the killing in those verses was good nor did I say it was bad, what I will say it was just because it served a purpose that proved what God had promised His people the Israelites.

I submit to you that all loss of life, god sanctioned or not, is wrong, and immoral by definition.

You would be wrong, death comes in many forms, disease, accident and ect. are not immoral. I will agree that most man caused death is immoral or comes about because of immoral actions. God is the giver of life and as such has the right to take it according to His will.

You equate death with injustice in these verses without the understanding of the whole situation and in this case part of this situation goes back to Moses time.

I equate death with injustice, period. Unless there was a clear and immediate danger being posed by those infants and virgin women, there can be no justification for their death, whether or not god ordered it. There can be no context in which an utterly immoral act becomes okay; it's you guys that so often argue for moral absolutes, after all. If you wouldn't accept this as moral from a mere human, but would if it serves god's purposes, then it's hardly objective, is it?

The act was actually decided by the Israelites because the people of Jabesh-gilead did not come to Mizpah to help fight Benjamin. The Israelites took an oath that anyone would be put to death that did not aid in this fight, and they made it before the LORD, this meant it was binding, it was their law.
God did not order this, He however allowed it to happen because of an oath the Israelites took many years before, this oath they swore to God and Moses warned them they were going to regret it. God can only be objective it is who He is not what He believes. Man on the other hand can never be totally objective, that's why as Christians we rely on God's great wisdom and objective morality.

You can not solve a math problem without all the necessary information and I'm saying you have neglected to gather all the information that's available to this situation, so you can not possibly give a correct verdict to those verses. Like I told you I went back and read the story and found that I had forgotten part of it, nothing that would change my stance though. You on the other hand do not even know why this all got started, it was a promise from God to His people, Moses warned them yet they insisted on taking an oath.

I don't care. That's the thing. Whether they caused god trouble or not, their children couldn't possibly have been involved in that, nor could there have been any action they could have taken that was worthy of execution. It's the same reason we don't jail the tax evader's children.

It really doesn't matter whither you care or not the situation is history and God promised the Israelites if they broke their oath all Israel would suffer, that was the condition of the oath. God was keeping His word to them as promised. This is the very reason we can trust God, He keeps His promises. God deals with people in the environment they make, times were very different then. Our omniscient God's wisdom goes far beyond our understanding, who are we to question His actions.

Your position here seriously seems to be that they got in the way of god, and therefore every last one of them was deserving of death. That's not moral, that's just following dear leader no matter what. It's sociopath dressed up as righteousness.

No it was a righteous act because God keep a promise to the Israelites, one they swore to and one God swore to uphold. Like I said who am I to question omniscient wisdom. I did not say they got in the way of God, what does that mean anyhow?

I think I've pretty well have distinguished between the two, however in the case of these verses I say again it was just to God's purpose.

So you follow divine command theory? There are no moral absolutes, whatever suits god's purposes is permitted, no matter what? If god ordered you to do the same thing, would you? Could you? We disagree quite a lot, but I don't think you're an evil person, GC. I don't think you would.

God is morally absolute, God does put some limits on Himself, a being like God does not need to do "no matter what." This thing of "no matter what" is something you put on God, you do it to suit your argument, it doesn't exist in the reality of God, only in human terms. There you go again saying a childish thing like "you would do anything God told you no matter what," I thought we might have gotten past such childish comments, but I guess not.
Thanks for the comment on not being evil, others here say I am and I believe they mean it, that's there bad though. If I thought that God told me to do anything immoral I would not question God, I would however question my sanity. I do not think anyone here is evil no matter what they say about me, I do get upset at times though, I try to keep my conversations what I see as God's truth.

God never lets anyone off the hook as you put it, all sin is payed for, either through Christ or, for those who reject Christ through their own selves. You're right you could be a killer, worse than anyone ever and still be forgiven, but only through Christ, there is no other way. If you would not chose Christ as your savior then you would be paying for your sins. I do not pretend the Bible actually solves the problem of atonement, Christ did that, scripture records for us what He did for us, and if that's a loophole I'll take it,why, because God made the loophole for me to have in my favor, praise God on high.

That is... actually a surprisingly honest answer, and one I can respect. I wish you'd said it first off, instead of representing it all as something properly moral, but I can get behind the admission.

I try to be honest all the time, and my above statement represents how I've always felt, maybe I did not word things in a way you or others understood in other posts and if I did that I'm sorry. I truly believe the scriptures can not save anyone, they are a guide to the One who saves and that is why for me they are so important.

In this case you are being intellectually dishonest because you have cherry picked a few verses out of an entire story, and as I said part of the story Goes back to Moses time. I said that the destruction of the town and it's people was just and it served God's purpose through a promise, so in that sense it was good, though I'm sure you will never see it.

There is no sense in which genocide becomes moral. Look, I know you're okay with it, but don't go telling me that the only reason I'm not okay with it too is because I don't know the whole story. That's incorrect; I could have been there personally, and still seen no justification for it.

Is it incorrect, do you know the entire story behind these events, you have yet to show you do. If you had been there personally you would have understood the times and would have no idea of the way things are today, you may have understood why this thing actually happened. I could see why you wouldn't have wanted to die.

Being god doesn't give one a pass on basic morality, unless the context was that the people killed in his name were building a superweapon to wipe all life from the face of the earth and strike out at him personally, and they were minutes away from pulling the trigger.

Now you're dragging something of this time into ancient history, that was not possible then. God's morality is not basic, He is complete morality and our responsibility to be moral come from who He is. God was keeping a promise to Israel and that is a moral act. How do you see it possible to put your moral sense on God who is omniscient, making Him all wise as well.

You are the one who keeps harping on sex, sex here, sex there, sex everywhere it seems that's all you can think about,

I don't find anything shameful about admitting I like sex, yes.

I see no problem with that either, but you used it in a far different manner with the men of Benjamin and the rest of Israel.

Of coarse sex was engaged in to have babies, Israel was trying to help the family of Benjamin to survive, but not in a way that you claim, murder and rape were not a part of this.

So did the virgins consent? Because if they didn't, then it's rape.

Scriptures does not say they did not, and scriptures use the word rape when it has been committed, like I said rape and murder are what brought this story about and scripture records it this way.

They did not have to be raped, the only reason you say this is because you hate God and desire to twist His word into something it's not.

No, I say it because I live in reality, where words and actions mean things and those things aren't contingent on whether the cause is mundane or divine. I don't hate your god, because I don't think he exists. I also don't hate Voldemort, for that matter. But the fact remains, if consent was not given by these prisoners of war, then they were raped. I'm sorry it makes you uncomfortable, but that's the inescapable reality of things.

You can not say consent was not given, like I said these were Israelite women and without any means of survival other than marriage they would accept marriage to other Israelites. Again we do not live in those times and you nor I can say how these women felt, yet we can take from history what people accepted as normal and try to determine what might be.

Binary choice, you sound like you want to be a god and dictate the only choices these people had. Well you got it all wrong, you do not even know who this women were, they were Israelite women, they were not marrying outside their nationality, just as God had commanded long ago.

Um, what? Why does it matter what nationality they were?

It mattered very much to these women, thee women would have considered marriage outside of Israel as sinful, because this is one of the commandments they swore an oath to.

They could have very well known some of these men, we do not know for sure, but it's not like they live a hundred miles away.

I thought it wasn't good to make assumptions that aren't present in the text? Besides, I know my friends, that doesn't mean I want to marry them, nor that me being forced to is okay. This isn't an excuse.

The assumption was made facts that surround and are within the story. I also claimed it an assumption and not a fact as you did with murder and rape.

Yes that's right the men, women and children that were killed were Israelites, surprised? Do you know why one Israelite town was attacked by the rest of the nation, let's just say they let down the rest of Israel and payed the price and through all this God's judgement came upon the nation. Do you even know how all this got started, it all came about because of rape and murder, yep that's right some men of Benjamin raped and murdered and the tribe would not give up the ones who did this terrible thing. So it started with Israel taking action against Benjamin, it cost Israel dearly but, it cost Benjamin almost everything. I have a suggestion go read the entire story and then find God's promise to the nation during Moses time, you'll have the whole of the story then, even if you do reject it.

So, they refused to give up the criminals, yes, we agree that that's wrong. And the children of the town were responsible for this because...?

I doubt they were even involved in the decision making process.

I'm sure the children had no part in this situation, however God told the Israelites that the nation would be punished as a nation, Moses warned them yet they insisted on making the oath, so God kept His promise, they gave Him no choice really. God had been patient with them He will let sin go only so far.

I do not worship a religion, I worship the triune God, the Father, the Christ and the Holy Spirit, and He is completely just and moral.

How do you know you got the right version of his words? There's more than one. Truth is, without getting confirmation from the big guy himself, every last one of you is just worshiping a religious interpretation of things he's said and done.

I know because God has confirmed it's His word through my experiences with Him in our relationship of love, worship, prayer and ect.
Thanks for a better discussion, even though we are still very much opposed to each others views this was a better conversation.

[Godscreated]

There is one unifying truth among all of use, God is the creator who gave His son Jesus Christ to be our hope in salvation, and we all except this.

Argumentum ad populum. Just because a majority believes something to be true, unifying them all as you put it, does not mean that what they believe is true. It is possible for a majority to share the same delusion, especially when that delusion is indoctrinated from generation to generation for thousands of years.

You mean like evolution is being indoctrinated into today's youth.

[Silver]

You mean like evolution is being indoctrinated into today's youth.

Facts are taught in school. The existence of god is not a verifiable fact.

[Ryantology]

No, you’re still trying to play by the rules you could not prove were valid, you’d have to prove there is no God since all claims have burden and not just positive claims, so where’s your atheistic proof?

I don't actually make a positive claim that God doesn't exist (if only because I know how readily Christians like you will latch onto that point to shift attention away from the fact that you can't prove your positive claim).

All I state is a simple fact: no evidence exists suggesting God does exist. And you don't help by not providing any.

The fact we can obtain knowledge is proof that my justification is warranted.

Prove this assertion.

Ok, you. You are the example; you’re utter inability to justify any of your beliefs without invoking the God of scripture is proof that reality is incoherent without His existence. Whenever you make a case against God’s existence you’re assuming God exists. Pretty cool eh?

Assertions don't prove assertions. I'm sorry, but this is not proof that your God exists.

I invoke your scripture to showcase its many flaws. For fun and entertainment. My beliefs, themselves, have nothing to do with your God or scripture. There's no truth to your claim, so it doesn't factor at all. Your worthless beliefs are no more important to me than the worthless beliefs of every other deity-worshiping religion in the world.

I already did! I challenged you to demonstrate how you can trust your senses and memory in a Universe where God does not exist. You could not do so, and yet this belief must be true in order for us to know anything at all. The Christian has no such problem, he or she has reasons for believing that their senses and memory are reliable, the non-Christian does not.

Unsupported assertions don't even begin to qualify as evidence that your God exists.

That is an informal proof, you and I both believe “A”, and yet “A” requires “B” to also exist. You cannot believe “A” without also believing “B”; you cannot believe your senses are reliable without also believing that God exists.

Unsupported assertions don't prove other unsupported assertions. Is this all you have? You really suck at this.

That was still part of the plan though.

God planned to regret his decision? That sounds logical.

I already explained how we can obtain what the originals said by textual comparisons through the early copies.

Such shoddy standards you have for discovering facts. There's no proof that any original manuscript is the original form of the story you know. Tales were often passed by word of mouth, sometimes for centuries, before someone committed them to paper.

Of course there has to be an original, copies cannot exist without an initial manuscript to copy.

Of course. And you have no idea what it is, a rough idea of what it said, and no idea where the actual stories originated or the forms they first took. Ever heard of the game "Telephone"?

They do not have to be very accurate, as I already demonstrated you can determine what the original said from even a very sloppy set of copies.

If I am to believe that the Bible is the truth of the universe as delivered by a perfect god, the tiniest flaw calls the entire text into question. As noted, your standards are low enough to be satisfied by such shoddy evidence as what you have, but not all of us suffer such intellectual failings.

No, this is a starting point, not a conclusion.

Of course it's a starting point, the point from which the legitimacy of all copies follow. Until you establish the legitimacy of your story, it's only true to you because you want it to be true.

Not necessarily wrong, but a bit roughly stated.

Yet, you dispute me when I merely repeat what they say?

A troll that’s been on here longer than you have? Right. Please point to one of these alleged terrible arguments and explain why it is terrible.

I've just finished responding to one.

[Godscreated]

How so?

You start with the premise - God is good. In that light anything you read of his actions are excused. In this thread we have examples of atrocities committed either in his name or on his direct order. For each you question whether it is actually an atrocity, what others were doing elsewhere in the world at that time and how we know the victims didn't somehow deserve their fate.

They were not atrocities, they were God's judgement on His sinful people, they actually agreed to punishment from God by an oath they made with God. How was God wrong in keeping up His end of the oath, if He had not then we would have cause to question Him.

If you were to read the Bible with no opinion as to whether God is good or not you might reach some very different conclusions. It would allow you to read the accounts as you might any other account of a crime being committed. Interestingly I very much doubt the mass murder of children (or anyone) would cause you to ask if they didn't deserve it somehow in ANY other case except that of the Bible.

God has made it quite clear as to why His people were going through this trouble in their lives, it's you who have not shown why God should not have punished them.
You want me to assume something in my life that can't be and then agree to what you see in scripture, now you are talking fantasy. I deal with what's real and stay away from suppose this, suppose that junk, it's not relevant to my life, actually it's just a waste of time.

All the time you appear to be utterly convinced you are right. That it doesn't strike you that others are equally convinced that they are right, but following a different path and therefore must be wrong according to you doesn't seem to register at all.

And you don't, you and other nonbelievers badger Christians with your relentless accusations and proclamations as to how wrong we are and, without one shred of evidence at that.
I defend what I believe and I will always do it with a positive attitude, I know what my experiences with God have revealed in my life. I've asked God to show me the answers I have about scripture and I do get answers, sometimes I get answers long after I ask, sometimes fairly quickly and some I'm still waiting on.
More registers with me than you will ever know, the problem I see is nothing registers with you about my beliefs. Yes I am convinced I'm correct about many things, or do you want me to say same on me for living a positive life.

If they are wrong - and you are certain of that - how can you be so certain you are not also wrong.

Living a negative on two different fronts, now that's what I call living. There are many things I'm not certain about but, my life with Christ is not one of them.

Take 9/11 for example. Those 16 men were utterly convinced that they were doing the right thing and that Allah would reward them in the afterlife. When I say utterly convinced - enough to give up their lives for. There can be no doubt that they believed in what they were doing 100%. Equally there can be no doubt that they were 100% in the wrong.

That's because they believe in a god that is brutal in nature, and they committed a brutal act of murder. Their god does not resemble mine in the least. God would never ask me or any of His followers to do such a thing, an atonement has been made for us.

Such strength of faith enabled the atrocities of history to be done. Your religion is not better than Islam in this respect - maybe just a little older and less impetuous these days but historically.....wow.

Two atheist leaders of modern history have killed more people than any and all of the atrocities committed by the misguided Christians of the past. I would say supposed Christians but someone would call out the no-true-scottsman.

Just suppose you are wrong. Now look at history from Biblical times forwards. How horrific has Judeo-Christianity been? I mean without the blinkers of faith.

That's how we see it. Shocking huh.

Here you go again asking me to suppose the irrelevant in my life, to dismiss my beliefs, just so you can what, convince me that some actions of atrocities were committed by the church, I know what has happened in the past and probably far better than you will ever. You think you can change my mind when Satan and all his power has failed.

[max-greece]

GC,

Impressive answer that completely missed the point I was making. I was trying to show you how an atheist sees the bible not persuade you of the error of your ways. I can see you are not going to be convinced by any argument of that.

One thing though - I was not talking about the atrocities visited by god on the Jews but on the horrors he inflicted on their neighbours. They hadn't agreed to anything.

[Godscreated]

GC,

Impressive answer that completely missed the point I was making. I was trying to show you how an atheist sees the bible not persuade you of the error of your ways. I can see you are not going to be convinced by any argument of that.

One thing though - I was not talking about the atrocities visited by god on the Jews but on the horrors he inflicted on their neighbours. They hadn't agreed to anything.

I did not miss the point at all, I knew what you were doing and I understand how atheist see the Bible, I wanted you to know that unless one studies scripture one can not come to a understanding of scripture. You wouldn't think you could cherry pick text books in school and pass test with a knowledge of the text. I hate multiple choice test, to me that is cheating, an explanation of text shows what one actually understands of the text.
As for the people who occupied Canaan before Israel took over the land, God was punishing them for their idol worship and the sinful acts they committed against each other. Remember these people came from the patriarchs, so they knew about God. They received punishment through just judgement.