Why does religion still exist today when most former religions died out?

[Web Rider]

Er, Russia has been tolerant of the Russian Orthodoxy since '17. Even Stalin was portrayed as an ally of the Orthodoxy by the state. That, and the Soviet Union collapsed over ten years ago, in case you haven't noticed. .

 

Of course, Russian orthodoxy is a lot like the religious leaders in the muslim world, if the political leaders aren't on their side, they're out.

[JediAthos]

Just because there are millions who say otherwise doesn't mean squat. Hysteria is the reason that millions came to believe in christianity today, I think.

 

Despite this, there still remains no proof that god exists. Why should we take it for granted that he does? Why do we have to argue that god doesn't exist when figuring out evolution or the creation of the universe?

 

 

There still remains no proof that God doesn't exist either. If anyone who claims so can offer concrete proof that God doesn't exist I'd love to see it. I would not be so bold as to attempt to offer concrete proof that God does exist either because I can't. So, again I would play devil's advocate: Why should we take it for granted that God doesn't exist?

[Druganator]

There still remains no proof that God doesn't exist either. If anyone who claims so can offer concrete proof that God doesn't exist I'd love to see it. I would not be so bold as to attempt to offer concrete proof that God does exist either because I can't. So, again I would play devil's advocate: Why should we take it for granted that God doesn't exist?

 

for the same reason it isn't a widespread belief or a fact that aliens exist. it hasn't been proven.

 

and @JO do you think those people would be any less generous if they didnt believe in god? I believe that people are good and people are evil, i volunteer at a non religious soup kitchen that fills up too quickly because i dont know of any christians that will help out there. I go there every other weekend and i have yet to speak to anyone of any faith. we are all there to help the homeless solely out of empathy

[vanir]

As usual in religion vs science threads I think we are offering resounding confusion about religion between allegorical belief structures and fundamentalist political mythologies.

 

It is reasonable to observe that political dictates are by definition totalitarian and contain little democratic presence. But it is not religion. The formative and specific nature of religion can only be succinctly described with actual theological research of archaeological scripture and some degree of palaeoanthropology, it is a distinctly academic project requiring some degree of competence.

 

It is equally reasonable to assert that allegorical structures are more easily absorbed using a fundamentalist political mythology. It is easier to tell a child that governing their own behaviour will lend a greater appreciation for their wishes by an according figure such as Saint Nicholas, whom was indeed a historical individual.

 

 

It is simply childish to answer childish claims of supernatural naturalism with the misunderstanding the individuals in question have the slightest idea of what they are talking about in the first place.

Yes the world was not magically created 6000yrs ago by a supernatural entity, but the burden of proof lay with the claimant. Meanwhile science is not a matter of opinion, it is where establishments are self evidenced by physical observation, therefore where burden of proof has been satisfied to a reasonable degree.

 

Yet it is possible to shout down science and force educational dictates. This is what the Catholic Church effectively did during its formation by the adoption of Greek mythology as "scientific truths" by the mediaeval period in contrast to Judaic scripture, as a form of political revolution. Thus "mortal breath" became the "divine human soul" and "productive psychological state" became "Heaven."

 

Meanwhile there are always problems in defining allegory inherent to religious scripture, so mention of the angels created sectarian kabbala, mention of the messiah created the Christian sect (which evolved into its own distinct religion).

 

 

It's no biggie to figure out why religion still exists today. Regardless of how you view or interpret it, there is still insight in scripture, even if it is only psychological, political and sociological in nature. And profound things do attract followings.

 

But as I've mentioned before, judging religion by the religious is like judging music by its fans. There's more to it than that.

[Darth_Yuthura]

It takes a lot of hubris to say you have knowledge of the entire universe in order to say God does not exist.

 

It takes a lot of hubris to say that god exists without any proof.

 

One does not need to see the gardener to know that a garden is being cared for. One does not have to have die-hard physical proof of God to see that the statistical impossibility of life even existing on this planet without God requires just as much faith, if not more than faith in God.

 

How do you know that it is a gardener? Maybe it's just nature that succession would determine which species would dominate in a given ecosystem. No, we don't exactly need die-hard evidence; some evidence at all would be nice.

 

And that's very arrogant of you to claim something that not only you don't know is impossible, but has happened. Life came to exist. And just because you don't know exactly how it did doesn't mean we should assume it's an all-powerful being that caused it to happen. There is far more evidence that supports life came about from nature than that god created everything. Even then, you still need to prove he exists. You can't place a deed to a person who might not even exist. Therefore you must prove he exists before you can contemplate god created life.

 

If you do anything besides that, you'll get only a circular argument.

 

Please don't pigeonhole people of faith into one single cubbyhole. We are far, far more complex, knowledgeable, respectful of people and this planet, and willing to learn all we can about science and other issues than you will realize unless you take the time to get past your anger about whatever was done to you at your former church and get to know people as the wonderful, complex, imperfect, unique creatures that we are.

 

I would gladly get past my anger, but that depends on you not debating with a circular argument. In order to argue about god's deeds, you MUST present something upon which that theory can stand on. Using a lack of proof as evidence does nothing more than say that science doesn't explain the origins of the universe. That is not a justification to say that god exists... just because science can't prove something *yet* It means that science hasn't disproven god. That is all the value of that argument.

 

I would be more than willing to accept that the universe is God's creation, but I won't accept God for ANY debate if you simply bypass the fatal flaw in that argument by assuming he exists. First prove that he exists... and then I will accept any argument that involves god. Otherwise you could just remove god and say it was the tooth fairy and that would hold just as well.

[Lord of Hunger]

You cut my post short, i said most because i understand that not every single christian grew up that way. I am very involved with homeless people because i want the only life they have to be a good one since when they die nothing happens.

Then I salute you. Seriously, no sarcasm. You are doing a good thing.

I'm not saying religion is pure evil,

Um, yes you have.

just like everything else, guns are not evil, drugs and alcohol are not evil, but if given to the wrong people, they are used for evil. I am for gun control, i am for government regulated marijuana so that potency purity and distribution could be better controlled, i think if religion were out of the picture, people would be doing just as many good things as they are now and they would have one less excuse for anything evil.

The word I would use to describe this is NAIVE. Seriously, do you think that if religion were to suddenly disappear that there would be any less evil in the world? People make up excuses all the time...or don't even bother do so. If you were to take away all the excuse people make for their actions, the actions would still be there.

 

And again, you have not addressed the massive amount of good that religion has done in the world as myself and others have pointed out.

[Darth_Yuthura]

There still remains no proof that God doesn't exist either. If anyone who claims so can offer concrete proof that God doesn't exist I'd love to see it. I would not be so bold as to attempt to offer concrete proof that God does exist either because I can't. So, again I would play devil's advocate: Why should we take it for granted that God doesn't exist?

 

Because we need proof that he exists FIRST. It is foolhardy to assume we also have to disprove the tooth fairy, santa clause, the easter bunny, the devil, star wars, daredevil, magic, lightsabers, anti-time... the list goes on.

 

 

I, D_Y, declare that I am an actual twi-lek Jedi!

 

Would it be fair of me just to go under the assumption that I am who I claim unless someone else has disproven what I am? Wouldn't it be more logical that I, the one making the claim, have to prove my point before I could expect for someone else to take it seriously? That is, for me to say that because you can't prove it, I am a twi'lek Jedi?

 

No! You would most definitely dismiss me out of hand unless I presented something that really had some validity to it. This is just as logical as assuming God exists until disproven.

[Druganator]

Then I salute you. Seriously, no sarcasm. You are doing a good thing.

 

Um, yes you have.

 

The word I would use to describe this is NAIVE. Seriously, do you think that if religion were to suddenly disappear that there would be any less evil in the world? People make up excuses all the time...or don't even bother do so. If you were to take away all the excuse people make for their actions, the actions would still be there.

 

And again, you have not addressed the massive amount of good that religion has done in the world as myself and others have pointed out.

 

I havent denied them either, the intent of my post was not to debate whether or not christians are good people.

 

i will recognize them when there is proof that there is a god. otherwise i'll chalk up the good deeds for people, just people the same way people say that the bad things were done by people not religion.

[Jae Onasi]

@DY--the final comment was to Druganator, not you.

 

Proof? It boils down to two things for me. First, the statistical impossibility of life developing without some kind of guidance. It is far, far too complex to have come to being on pure chance, even over billions of years. The chance of that is equivalent to throwing 1 marked electron into a universe full of electrons, and picking out the correct one on the first try. Do you have faith that you could pick the correct one? I don't, for either of us. Since it couldn't come into being on its own, it had to be created by something with the knowledge, power, and interest sufficient to do such a complex task. I call that entity 'God'.

 

Second, the Big Bang. Since the laws of physics break down before 10^-37 seconds after the Big Bang, science is not able to fully explain the Big Bang. Matter, light, energy were all created at the Big Bang, and science will never be able to explain that because the natural laws didn't exist before that fraction of a second. This requires an explanation outside the realm of nature to explain how an entire universe came into being, specifically a super-natural explanation. Something with the power and knowledge to create the intricacies of an entire universe, and all life on this planet, certainly has my attention as a Creator, and I am content to call that Creator 'God'. Believing that an entire universe was created out of nothing all by itself is illogical. This is why I say it takes more faith to believe atheism than it does in God of some flavor.

 

Furthermore, logic disallows you from proving a negative, you will never have sufficient knowledge to disprove God, and hard atheism (saying definitively 'there is no God') is thus logically self-defeating.

 

However, if atheism floats your boat, go for it--just don't denigrate me or others here for having faith.

[vanir]

The real issue is not whether religious freedom should be allowed (which is what this argument is about) but how scripture is being interpreted.

 

Thus the argument over whether or not there should be religious freedom (that means where you say, I fully support your belief in God and everything which it entails), is a red herring over the real issue. How to interpret scripture, because whether you like it or not people are going to go around living their lives by these interpretations.

 

Damn those Protestants, but like Luther said, the Catholics were corrupt and now we're all buggered.

[Druganator]

@DY--the final comment was to Druganator, not you.

 

Proof? It boils down to two things for me. First, the statistical impossibility of life developing without some kind of guidance. It is far, far too complex to have come to being on pure chance, even over billions of years. The chance of that is equivalent to throwing 1 marked electron into a universe full of electrons, and picking out the correct one on the first try. Do you have faith that you could pick the correct one? I don't, for either of us. Since it couldn't come into being on its own, it had to be created by something with the knowledge, power, and interest sufficient to do such a complex task. I call that entity 'God'.

 

Second, the Big Bang. Since the laws of physics break down before 10^-37 seconds after the Big Bang, science is not able to fully explain the Big Bang. Matter, light, energy were all created at the Big Bang, and science will never be able to explain that because the natural laws didn't exist before that fraction of a second. This requires an explanation outside the realm of nature to explain how an entire universe came into being, specifically a super-natural explanation. Something with the power and knowledge to create the intricacies of an entire universe, and all life on this planet, certainly has my attention as a Creator, and I am content to call that Creator 'God'. Believing that an entire universe was created out of nothing all by itself is illogical. This is why I say it takes more faith to believe atheism than it does in God of some flavor.

 

Furthermore, logic disallows you from proving a negative, you will never have sufficient knowledge to disprove God, and hard atheism (saying definitively 'there is no God') is thus logically self-defeating.

 

However, if atheism floats your boat, go for it--just don't denigrate me or others here for having faith.

 

we are here because of that one in a billion chance, if it hadnt happened we wouldnt exist. and it wasn't the first try, look at all of the extint primates and the cro-magnons and other, for lack of a better term, "devolved" humans.

[Qui-Gon Glenn]

...And this thread wins the Reductionist Ahistorical Nonsense Award 2009.

 

FTW!!!

 

Good God, if you are listening, ten thousand thunders upon this thread!!! There are too many inane baseless claims to even begin quoting.... wow.

 

My belief here is that if God exists, then God either isn't interested in my deeming of damnation, or has bigger demons to fry. A big if, but must remain a respectable possibility. No less likely than the other way. 50/50, with very little real evidence to support anything. Really.

 

Intuition is the ultimate decider... what are you told from within? Whatever that is, if you believe it, it is true for you, regardless of whether you win the big lottery at the end or not. It just doesn't pay out like you thought... bummer. My intuition has been crossed back and forth, life experiences have swayed my view, and education has brought me perspective enough to say, unequivocally, I have no clue whether God exists or not, neither do you, it is an arguable point that must be respected, therefore you should give respect to religion insofar as that it represents a legitimate possibility.

 

Beyond that, you may criticize all you want... but that's not what you were asking for in this thread? You asked why religion still exists in the era of "Rational thought" (He...ha..hohoho)?

 

I think Web Rider said it, if not my apologies to WR and the OP, but this is the same question people have been asking themselves since conscious thought began (I will be glad to argue consciousness with someone ) - Who am I? How did I get here? Who made me? Why? Last I checked.... still waiting..... whistles......crickets?

 

Darth Miss Bully-pants, I wish I had saved my recent post from TG's forums on a similar matter for this thread... you are clever rather than smart, and trust too much in that cleverness. You have great potential, but no one wants to talked down to rudely. That must be obvious?

 

@Jae - you reminded me of Anselm and Aquinas for a moment... undecided if I should thank you or curse you.... if anyone's listening

[Darth_Yuthura]

Proof? It boils down to two things for me. First, the statistical impossibility of life developing without some kind of guidance. It is far, far too complex to have come to being on pure chance, even over billions of years. The chance of that is equivalent to throwing 1 marked electron into a universe full of electrons, and picking out the correct one on the first try. Do you have faith that you could pick the correct one? I don't, for either of us. Since it couldn't come into being on its own, it had to be created by something with the knowledge, power, and interest sufficient to do such a complex task. I call that entity 'God'.

 

Nice speech. That's assuming that you wanted to create another big bang with the intent to create another Earth with another Jae Onasi, D_Y, and 6 billion other people to exist. Not to mention the billions of galaxies out there.

 

Maybe that 'stray electron' you spoke of could have just randomly veered elsewhere and created a completely different string of life that evolved into an intelligent variety. Maybe it was just the product of probability that we all happened? If you went 50,000 years and killed off ONE human female that would have had several children that would no longer live and reproduce, odds are that the future would have been so dramatically different that all 6 billion people on the earth today could seriously cease to exist. If that outcome happened, it wouldn't be so remarkable to assume that you get 6 billion people, but because the timeline has changed, they are not the same people as before.

 

Odds are that the Egyption empire wouldn't have existed, but another might have emerged around the nile valley as well. From such small changes yields dramatically different outcomes that you could reasonably assume the world you live in would cease to exist and become something VERY different, yet be very much the same. It may be that technology progressed slower, faster, everything was scattered differently... and it ultimately would have been the same to us if it happened differently.

 

If you killed that woman and wanted to rectify the timeline so everything would turn out as it does today... good luck. It is ONLY when you set out for a desired outcome that you can argue that it demands a supernatural being for it to happen. We are random. Galaxies are random. The DNA in our bodies is random. Our fingerprints are random... if someone could perfectly clone a person with the same fingerprints as an identical twin, I would believe god exists. (I'm serious about that. If you cloned a person, their fingerprints would not be identical. Only if something as small, yet as significant as this were to happen; I swear I would believe in God)

 

Otherwise, we all came about by random events... there is no god needed unless you organized the universe to exist in a certain way.

 

Second, the Big Bang. Since the laws of physics break down before 10^-37 seconds after the Big Bang, science is not able to fully explain the Big Bang. Matter, light, energy were all created at the Big Bang, and science will never be able to explain that because the natural laws didn't exist before that fraction of a second. This requires an explanation outside the realm of nature to explain how an entire universe came into being, specifically a super-natural explanation. Something with the power and knowledge to create the intricacies of an entire universe, and all life on this planet, certainly has my attention as a Creator, and I am content to call that Creator 'God'. Believing that an entire universe was created out of nothing all by itself is illogical. This is why I say it takes more faith to believe atheism than it does in God of some flavor.

 

Again assuming that someone sought a desired outcome, which is what we have today. That is going under the assumption that the law of probability is so great that only an all powerful god could have duplicated the universe in the same way as it is today.

[Druganator]

FTW!!!

 

Good God, if you are listening, ten thousand thunders upon this thread!!! There are too many inane baseless claims to even begin quoting.... wow.

 

My belief here is that if God exists, then God either isn't interested in my deeming of damnation, or has bigger demons to fry. A big if, but must remain a respectable possibility. No less likely than the other way. 50/50, with very little real evidence to support anything. Really.

 

Intuition is the ultimate decider... what are you told from within? Whatever that is, if you believe it, it is true for you, regardless of whether you win the big lottery at the end or not. It just doesn't pay out like you thought... bummer. My intuition has been crossed back and forth, life experiences have swayed my view, and education has brought me perspective enough to say, unequivocally, I have no clue whether God exists or not, neither do you, it is an arguable point that must be respected, therefore you should give respect to religion insofar as that it represents a legitimate possibility.

 

Beyond that, you may criticize all you want... but that's not what you were asking for in this thread? You asked why religion still exists in the era of "Rational thought" (He...ha..hohoho)?

 

I think Web Rider said it, if not my apologies to WR and the OP, but this is the same question people have been asking themselves since conscious thought began (I will be glad to argue consciousness with someone ) - Who am I? How did I get here? Who made me? Why? Last I checked.... still waiting..... whistles......crickets?

 

Darth Miss Bully-pants, I wish I had saved my recent post from TG's forums on a similar matter for this thread... you are clever rather than smart, and trust too much in that cleverness. You have great potential, but no one wants to talked down to rudely. That must be obvious?

 

@Jae - you reminded me of Anselm and Aquinas for a moment... undecided if I should thank you or curse you.... if anyone's listening

 

the reason i know there is no god is because religion, every religion, from paganism to scientology, was created by humans in order to fill a void that those same otherwise brilliant people could be trying to find out instead of taking another group of peoples theories as their own.

[Q]

@D_Y:

 

And out of all of that chaos sprang DNA, just by random chance, of course.

Jae is correct. Believing that we're all just a gigantic cosmic accident requires just as much faith as believing that we aren't, and perhaps more.

 

But do keep forcefully talking down to people in as insulting a manner as you can. It can only help your cause.

[Darth_Yuthura]

But do keep forcefully talking down to people in as insulting a manner as you can. It can only help your cause.

 

Not to sound arrogant, but such people who generate circular arguments aren't exactly helping the matter. Jae has presented God's ability to organize the universe to a desired outcome as proof, but that leads to another question: how can you be sure that this is the desired outcome that God set out to achieve when he created the big bang?

[Q]

OMG! Circular arguments!!!111!!1

 

For the umpteenth time in this thread: you can't prove that God doesn't exist. Therefore, your constant whining about circular arguments is simply a case of pot; kettle; black.

 

GET IT?

[Druganator]

OMG! Circular arguments!!!111!!1

 

For the umpteenth time in this thread: you can't prove that God doesn't exist. Therefore, your constant whining about circular arguments is simply a case of pot; kettle; black.

 

GET IT?

 

can you answer why everything else has to be proven in order for it to be accepted?

[vanir]

I think it is as big a mistake to make a scientific argument for why any explanation whatsoever is an unfalsifiable hypothesis as it is to make a religious argument as to why a supernatural explanation is scientifically sound.

 

And that is not agnostic to say.

 

The current cosmological model does not even attempt to speculate any event prior to Planck Time. It does not suggest there was any creation event at all, nor any big bang. It merely outlines that the events following Planck Time look to observers just like a big bang had happened, but there is no data to directly support this. Look it up. The current model equally supports the Big Crunch and the Black Hole Universe, also M-Theory and any number of others, it begins at Inflation and not before.

 

By equal measure the eventuation of life is a wholly anthropic form of data gathering until life is discovered some place other than Earth. The only possible speculative math for the eventuation of intelligent life is the Drake Equation, which suggest an extremely high likelihood of abundant life in the universe if unknown variables are given speculative values.

The current model of evolution is complex evolutionary diversity however, which dictates the anthropic principle that life is accordant with the nature of quantum physics. This is extremely controversial however because it simply does not discount the fundamental contention of intelligent design. Back where we started.

 

Because scientific theorum is falsifiable by nature it can only discount supernatural explanation within the scope of available data, science is by nature agnostic but does lend itself to theism if by allegory.

 

 

Someone I consider a personal friend is a PhD theoretical physicist and believes in God for example. He is in no conflict about it.

[Q]

can you answer why everything else has to be proven in order for it to be accepted?

It has been proven. To me.

[Druganator]

It has been proven.

 

To me.

 

has it been proven to the standards of anything else?

[mimartin]

the reason i know there is no god is because religion, every religion, from paganism to scientology, was created by humans in order to fill a void that those same otherwise brilliant people could be trying to find out instead of taking another group of peoples theories as their own.

For a moment lets say I accept you assessment that all religion is just man’s creation. Wouldn’t that only prove that all religions are false?

 

That alone does nothing to either disprove or prove the existence on a supreme being.

[Q]

has it been proven to the standards of anything else?

Of course not. Belief is completely subjective. I don't think that there never will be a universal, one-size-fits-all basis for it.

 

 

You know, I could ask why you believe that without a doubt God doesn't exist, since there is no evidence that he doesn't.

[Druganator]

For a moment lets say I accept you assessment that all religion is just man’s creation. Wouldn’t that only prove that all religions are false?

 

That alone does nothing to either disprove or prove the existence on a supreme being.

 

it proves that a supreme being is the creation of man in order to fill the void i mentioned before

 

@Q because i don't believe in anything unless it's been proven to me, call me old fashioned

[Darth_Yuthura]

OMG! Circular arguments!!!111!!1

 

For the umpteenth time in this thread: you can't prove that God doesn't exist. Therefore, your constant whining about circular arguments is simply a case of pot; kettle; black.

 

GET IT?

 

Yes, I got it. Since I cannot prove God doesn't exist, I can't use that as evidence.

 

 

It has been proven. To me.

 

Then that means God has to be proven to exist before he could be used in an argument.

 

You know, I could ask why you believe that without a doubt God doesn't exist, since there is no evidence that he doesn't.

 

 

And what if there is no evidence that he does? What then?