Why shouldnt I believe in God?

[Jotto999]

First thing first, tell me how illogical the existance of a God is (not religon specific). Oh, try to make this less of an attack and more of a teaching.

Well, here is how I see it.

Throughout human existence, there have been thousands of gods made-up by humans. Some of them became quite well known, such as Zeus, Allah, the Christian God, Ra, Thor...etc, the list could fill a small bookshelf.

So by believing in the god of the bible, you are proposing that all gods have been made-up except for yours, even though there is no way to know for sure which one if the "right one". There is no way to differentiate between made-up religions and the supposed "right one". Does this mean god does not exist? No, however, it does completely destroy the credibility.

Second, the only reason you believe in god is because you were indoctrinated - meaning as a kid Christianity was pushed on to you. You never chose to be a Christian, you were born into it. Had you been raised anywhere else, you would be worshipping a different god. Raised in certain households, you might not even believe in any god at all. Once again, does this mean god isn't real? No but it destroys it's credibility. You believing in god is completely dependant on having been indoctrinated, born into a Christian household.

Third, this:
http://www.evilbible.com/Impossible.htm

 

[TheJilvin]

[[Ok, my theory is pretty close to the same as the one the infamous "VenomFangX" has conjured up.]]
In other words, your "theory" (its not a theory, its not even a hypothesis or even a coherent idea) is complete bullshit.

[[He states it simply as "event + event will never reach infinity thus time is finite and everything had a beginning. This beginning could only be brought fourth by a supernatural force which I believe is God". the difference between his idea and mine though is how we came to the conclusion, and the maturity level active when presenting it.]]

Lets see what we have here:

[[Zeno, a long time ago came up with what is today known as the motion paradox. he stated that given an infinite amount of mass, motion cant exist. to keep this short, ill only explain the motion (actually, movement) paradox if you don't already know what it is (im absolutely cool with explaining if you want0. anyway, because of the fact that we can move, it can be logically concluded that the cumulative sum of all matter in the universe is finite.]]
The paradoxes of Zeno do not definitely conclude that the sum total of matter in the universe is finite, however, you get a cookie because the finiteness of matter has been objectively verified by actual empirical evidence.

[[now, consider time. time (by definition) is the duration of an event or duration of a event lacking period between subsequent events. now, what's an event? an event is simply when something occurs. What's an occurrence? when something, somehow, changes in anyway. what's the only thing in existence to change? physical presence (matter). so an event can be defined as a change in matter. ]]

I guess.

[[now, if there is a finite amount of matter - how many events can occur? a finite amount. however - you may think 'well what about in the case of a single event repeated an infinite number of times?'. well, that's impossible once again, to try to keep this succinct - i feel this is a part you may already understand. so ill skip it unless you ask me to explain. and once again, id be happy to if need be. anyway, the conclusion here is that finite matter can only result in finite events. ]]

I see where this argument is going. The centuries old backward extrapolation argument. Note: without empirical evidence, it DOESN'T follow that a finite amount of matter cannot experience an infinite amount of events. However, I will allow this for now even though the premise may be incorrect.

[[so, now we know that both matter and events ARE finite. now if events are finite, time must also be because (using measurements that we create) time and only measure the duration of a finite number of events. therefore, once again, time must be finite as well. this, also through means i don't feel i need to explain to you unless you want, also means that time is directly dependant on matter. just like physics, it wouldn't exist without matter. now this means that because both matter and time are finite they both had a beginning. ]]

Meh. Okay i'll give this to you.

[[so the 'before existence period' that must have existed consisted of the absolute lack of everything. however - it all exist now. so how does nothing become something? it cant create the entire universe on its own. there had to be an outside 'supernatural force' in action. i don't call it a God or Gods because i want to be strictly scientific. i cant force someone to believe in a god or more because there's no way to prove that's what it is. but i can, i believe, prove that SOMETHING must be out there. anyway - the question may arise 'what created this super natural force'? ]]

[[well, i would go with the common 'you could ask that infinitely, but its got to start somewhere' cliché. but i don't think that's the case. this supernatural force didn't have to be created by another force of some kind. it could have simply existed forever. let me explain it in a hardly relevant metaphor. pretend you made a robot. you and the robot must abide by all the pre-existing laws of the universe 9ie gravity and stuff). but you, being the creator of the robot can add additional laws that only it must abide by. for instance you can make it shut down every day at 7:00 pm. you don't have to fall asleep everyday at 7:00 pm because you created that law - it didn't come before you and doesn't affect you (effect? which is right there? i have no clue). so anyway, you can transcend the laws that you created since they didn't come before you. ]]

Incredibly weak argument. Let's ignore for a moment the fact that the universe may actually be infinite in time (this does NOT contradict the Big Bang and I can explain later).
I would, like almost everybody else, find an event such as the begginning of existence extremely anti-intuitive. Let's see what this thing is that we are talking about that had to start the universe up. The only property I can think of is that it has to be simple. It has to be a simple and elegant structure, maybe even "supernatural" in that it doesn't consist of normal matter or energy. (This is highly questionable premise, completely ungrounded and only derived from personal incredulity.)

However, I have seen this before, and my argument is the same: You do not claim just this, and your argument might be somewhat reasonable if all you stated was "something outside of spacetime". However, you assert much more:

You claim that this entity is conscious, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, had control in setting physical constants, cares about the Milky Way over all other galaxies, cares about the Sun more than any other star in the milky way, and cares about the earth more than all the planets in the solar system, especially giving his attention to the humans of the past 10,000 years. Not only do you claim to know this intelligence exists, but you claim to know it's mind rather intimately. Sometime 6,000 years ago, this entity (who apparently has all properties of humans) places two people in a garden, puts in a magical fruit tree and tells them not to touch it, and as soon as ever they do he punishes the rest of mankind, (not to mention possessing humanlike pleasures, anger, joy, vengeance, being capable of deception, and other advanced cognitive excercises) After 4000 years, he randomly decides to forgive mankind for a crime they haven't commited by sending down an avatar of himself so we can torture it to death, (affirming the original filthy sin that we are born of). Nobody has any say in this, all of us are accused of being vile sickly filth, being commanded to get better. And if we should refuse to accept an extremely strict interpretation of vague contradictory, and highly questionable bronze age scriptures on the basis of impressively thin evidence, then we are told by gentle Jesus meek and mild to depart into everlasting fire.

You fucking fail at everything.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

You fucking fail at everything.

You fail at quote tags... :lol:

Otherwise, your ideas are pretty much correct. Most of it seems to boil down to "I don't understand stuff, and therefore I can make up a god to answer the question without ever answering any question, ever."

 

[MachineSp1rit]

I don't belive in any god or gods because of the lack of evidence, I think we have a rigouros, natural explanation of the world, and so there is no need for any gods to describe it.

wrong wrong and wrong. science is faaaaaar away from discribing everything. and i think we never will.

describing everything, bullshit like "miracles" or any other stuff me and you meet in life, is FAR from everything that exists or may exist.

p.s. many of you people disappointed me, what he said had big sense inside, u just didn't bother to challenge it against your own ideas. i really don't have time to follow point by point but, my advise is to rethink your oppinions about this.

 

[Netheralian]

(quote="Josan": I don't belive in any god or gods because of the lack of evidence, I think we have a rigouros, natural explanation of the world, and so there is no need for any gods to describe it.)


wrong wrong and wrong. science is faaaaaar away from discribing everything. and i think we never will.

Regardless of your quote that we may never describe everything scientifically (argument from incredulity perhaps?), in what way is this statement wrong? With what could possibly described for humanity as a kindergardeners knowledge of the universe, we can already describe the universe reasonably well with no gaps that require a god to fill them. It is likely, given time, that these ramaining gaps will be filled with natural explainations as have all the previous gaps since "gaps" were "a gap".

So despite science being faaaaaaaar away from describing everything this still doesn't necessitate the existance of gods (or any superantural phenomena for that matter).

p.s. many of you people disappointed me, what he said had big sense inside, u just didn't bother to challenge it against your own ideas. i really don't have time to follow point by point but, my advise is to rethink your oppinions about this.

I don't find it necessary to challenge what he said against my ideas as it was a pile of shite with no merrit whatsoever. As stated by Josan, and pretty much everyone else here, Gods are unnecesssary and there is no evidence for them so why even bother even considering them...

 

[TheJilvin]

Machinesp1rit:

Don't make statements like "I don't have time to read all of your guys' responses, here's my reccomendation to you guys without bothering to make a rebuttal."

Several of us have posted convincing rebuttals. Read them before breezily dismissing them. Being in this type of community you should know that by now.

 

[Canto]

Why do I not believe? Lack of evidence sure, but there are a host of other reasons.

Corruption being first and foremost. The sheer number of people abusing any religion for their personal gain is utter hypocrisy. The fact that if you stomp on one, many others will jump to defend it regardless of how corrupt or assinine it is disturbs me.

Biblical Literalism comes in close to the top. A book you can show to be contradictory, historically inaccurate, incomplete, and purely the works of men can not be taken as irrefutable fact. If we KNOW its got plenty of errors, and reads like an autistic childs version of a fairy tale, why should we take it literally?

The God portrayed in the bible is an attention whoring mercurial slave driver full of wrath and bile. Yes yes, new testament Jesus is all sweetness and light, but thats what happens when you worship a prophet as God himself. Again, divinity decided not by facts or evidence, but by a council of men well after the fact.

The answer does not fit the question. If God is the answer you give, the answer fails to advance our knowledge and survivability. If the answer to swine flu is "pray to God", and swine flu is god showing us the error of our ways, this quickly becomes circular reasoning.

Judgement day belief makes living pointless. If you believe that God will come and judge us all "real soon", then you are not willing to LOOK at the future. If you are not looking towards your future, how are you capable of bettering the world and having any positive influence on it?

The amazing ability to completely block out reality and claim that everything we know through science is wrong is utterly stupid. The hipocrisy here also undermines the ability to believe in God. If you are willing to take advantage of modern medicine then you are tacitly accepting evolution. Without it we don't have modern medicine and are back to leeches and bloodletting.

Some of these things may sound like condemnations of the religion more than God, but the religion is what props up God and decrees what God wants, needs, hates and everything else about God. When I ask someone to show me God, they say pray and read the bible. That is not how reality works. Reality is far more interesting and wonderful than "god did it". The search for knowledge and truth are far more important to our survival than faith.

 

[MachineSp1rit]

Machinesp1rit:

Don't make statements like "I don't have time to read all of your guys' responses, here's my reccomendation to you guys without bothering to make a rebuttal."

Several of us have posted convincing rebuttals. Read them before breezily dismissing them. Being in this type of community you should know that by now.

no worries i will, that's a promise. in a day or two, i can't spare an hour right now.

and that is why i joined the community, most people (and sadly not everybody) pay attention to arguments given and not just ignore them. and i did not see that from certain people in this topic.