Existence of God/gods

That depends. Are you not going to read fairie tales to your kids because they're fake? Do they not have morals? To be honest, I really don't care if people believe in the stories as long as they belive in what the book teaches from a morral viewpoint.

 

The story of Adam & Eve is one of the most ridiculous parts of Christianity.

You cannot honestly tell me you think the first human being made out of a pile of mud is more logical than humans evolving from primates. And there's evidence pointing at evolution being factual. There's none pointing towards the first man being made from a pile of mud and the first woman being made from one of his ribs.

Also.. funny thing. They would have had to resort to incest to reproduce. And incest is a sin. Hm. Writer of the Bible didn't think that all the way through there.

 

Humans didn't even evolve from monkeys according to evolution

 

No, but we have evolved alongside primates, and there is a common ancestor between us. The fact that human and chimpanzee genes are 99 percent the same (or something like that) is enough proof for that.

And you talk of the Bible showing morals with their stories? Then explain why the Crusades were fought, in the name of God, no less.
Or even how the Hebrews in Egypt were "slaves", which they were not. Quite a few of the stories in the Bible contradict themselves, or even have a disruption of continuity. Lilith, for example, is cut from the first part of Genesis, but is mentioned later, though not by name.

 

I won't argue that there should be a time that parents should let go of their offspring. However...

Even if Adam and Eve did just fine, can the same be said about us? I think mankind in general is still showing destructive tendencies to such an extent that it'd be unwise for God to say "free will lol: just do something".

Suppose you have a son, let's say he's about 28. He's left the house, lives in an apartment etc. You're maintaining contact with him but you decided not to meddle with his affairs anymore, like a good parent should.
However things go wrong as he gets badly addicted to drugs and commits shady deals with mobsters to get the money to buy more coke.
Are you going to let him sort things out all by himself anyway? No? Well then isn't that what God's doing, if he exists?

No I'm not "sure" but what proof do I need? Two humans, the first of their kind and having known no hardships in life yet, demonstrate anything other than blind loyalty just once and get their butts kick out of Paradise. Then how the hell are they mature enough to let go of?

 

Personally i don't believe in god or any gods and merely sit back and enjoy the scenery as the religious try to bombard people with their version of truth along with the athiests. It's sort of laughable. It's in human nature to try and know everything and it's human nature try and find solace in something bigger than themselves. Whether there is something bigger out there, magical,scientific or indifferent i don't think people should stress majorly over it. I find it to be nice to debate about it because i find it fun but to go over the top is over doing it. Put your feet up and watch because if you can't see how can you make any speculation or view on the topic?

 

Because there are stupid people who abuse the faith. Don't condemn the idea itself just because of the idiots who don't get it.

 

This^

Get your morals from somewhere else, it doesn't matter, there's still going to be war.

 

God.

He is real? I hope so.
He is not? Then it doesn’t really matter.

 

Religion doesn't immediately dictate war. Fighting is the accumulation of dramatic, inconsequencials that build into a single event whether it's the start of a fight, a civil war, a war.

the concept of religion is warped by religious extremist's and the atheist extremists.

 

I didn't say religion dictated war.
She asked to explain how the Crusades were fought in the name of God and people still take their morals from the Bible's stories. Nova said that to blame the idiots who abuse the fate and I agreed saying that no matter where you get your morals from, war will still exist.

 

I agree with this statement.

I, personally, believe in the higher power that we call God because to me it seems very unlikely that human life came to exist mostly by accident. I do have a problem with the Book of Genesis because to me it doesn't make sense in many ways and I always have the question, "Who wrote Genesis?", "Was it God?", "Was it some random guy?". I may never know.

 

I'm not going to argue that evolution says that we are very closely related to primates. But you miss my point. That person said that evolution entails humans evolving FROM said primates, which is obviously false.

I do speak of the Bible having morals, and the Crusades serve as an excellent example of my point. Things like this happen when the people get too involved in their holy stories to see the morals; they begin picking fights over the smallest details and directly contradicting what their God is trying to say.
And as has been said, these are stories. I cannot attest to how many of these are factual, but I can attest to how many I believe are so, which is really all I can do when debating against people with such conviction to their logic (not trying to imply that this is a bad thing). And while logic holes do exist in some areas of the bible, I'd like to see you write a book full of poetry and morals and keep it away from inaccuracy from translation and corruption of religious bodies for some thousands of years.

 

hmm, i see what you're saying. yea, i would intervene if my grown up child got to that point. i guess the only other thing that could be that it hasn't gotten bad enough to the point where intervention is needed yet? but that's HIGHLY questionable and not really any evidence to support that statement (in fact that's probably a lot of evidence to contradict that) so i guess i digress, i guess i only say that as a possibility cause i'm a pretty optimistic person. i don't believe there is a god, but even if there was one, i don't think we would really need one.

 

I've attended a religious school, and I come in contact with religious people on a daily basis. While I'm not very active in faith myself, I've learned a lot about my religion from school (Catholicism btw) and I'd like to clear some things up here, from what I believe and from what I've been taught.

Before I begin though, let me just say that I personally believe in a higher 'power,' or some BEING, maybe even of many different things, somewhere. It may not even be something tangible -- while living, it's beyond our understanding -- but if you ask me, it's there. I think that this higher power is what we address as 'God,' and also what orchestrated the creation of the universe. No, not only is it what Christians call God, but it applies to any other gods in all other religions, including ones with multiple gods. Everything proven by science still works. I'm not denying science. But I am saying that SOMETHING caused all of that science to occur, and I peronally think that whatever caused it was not coincidence.

Those are my PERSONAL beliefs, and no matter what you say I will not change them, so if you're planning on calling me an idiot for believing in something like that or whatever else, just shut it. Pity me all you want, but my opinion won't change.

I'll begin with this.

Please, please, please please PLEASE, do not take any stories in the Bible at face value. Ever.
These things should be taken FIGURATIVELY. Of course we did not evolve from dirt. That much is obvious. In fact if you seriously thought there would be any science pointing towards any of that, I'm... sorry, but I think you should be thinking a little harder. You didn't need to tell anyone that there is no factual information about it, because it's so painfully obvious.
The Creation Stories are meant to explain just that, the creation of the universe. At the time of writing, man couldn't explain the universes' creation, or why it was painful for childbirth, or any of that. Thus, the story of The Fall of Man/Genesis/other creation stories -- the Bible equivalent to the stories of how the zebra got its stripes in fables, or the reason why there are olives in Greece according to Greek Mythology. It introduces man, and temptation, and all of the things that caused Man's downfall; it introduces the Earth, why Light is good and Dark is bad, why Sunday is the Sabbath day, and why the serpent is considered such a dark creature. Hell, it even goes in to say why women were inferior to men, as thought at the time (Eve was created with a rib from Adam for companionship and.. Nothing else). This goes without mentioning the archetype it provided for many literary works to come.

I was told that humans wrote the Bible through inspiration from God. If God is supposed to be this amazing, all-encompassing being, we can't expect to understand everything in the Bible.

This makes the incest argument somewhat irrelevent as I am arguing with science. Human beings bred like any other animal.

Which leads to, well, just about everything else in the Old Testament. There is LOADS of "ridiculous" stories in there, and even some in the New Testament, which should be taken figuratively. Not. Literally. There are people in the Bible who, if you take it literally, lived for over 900 years each. Taking this literally, they lived... Well, a really, really long time, so long that humans probably will never reach a time where they will be able to live that long. But when taken figuratively, it could mean that they lived longer than average and/or accomplished a lot in their lifetime, or perhaps something else entirely? We can't know unless we speak to the authors themselves, which are of course long dead by now. Think of it in the same way people analyze music: One person can write a song about something, and then each person who listens can have a different view on what it's about, even though none are actually the song's real meaning in accordance to the artist.

I have also been taught that the Bible is not historically correct. Dates are off, events happen which have no evidence remaining, even some books contradict each other. I think the importance lies not in the stories themselves, but in the point they're trying to convey. My advice: Take the stories as very broad retellings of events with little history or evidence, with dramatizations and misconceptions. Disregard everything about time. Think of the Bible as a 'Hollywood Version' as the Israelite's lives, containing things that may or may not be true.

If you think about it, God even told some people to disobey his own Ten Commandments. If I remember correctly, Moses killed somebody at some point, and I'm sure there are a lot more examples of this. The Old Testament is scary, contradictory, and filled with all kinds of things that don't make a bit of sense historically, which is why I do believe taking it literally is a bad decision.

As for the New Testament. Even if you do not believe Jesus was a savior, can you attest to the fact that miracles happen, and that sometimes people can do extraordinary things/extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people? If so, do you think that perhaps Jesus did perform miracles helping people, and perhaps if he didn't perform the physical miracles in the Bible, he was an inspiration to the people around him and just helped with whatever he could? Whether or not he was the savior, I think -- no, his very existence isn't as important as the acts of kindness taught though his story, which was one of pure love and an ultimate self-sacrifice. It served to show that all people, no matter how awful, have a chance at salvation.

No, contrary to popular belief, Christianity is not summed up as "God loves you, but you'll go to Hell if you do something wrong." It's more like, "God loves you and will forgive you for all of your wrongdoings, and only if you completely turn away from Him, only if you WANT to go to Hell will you end up there." Hell is not a PLACE. It is literally by definition of the Bible, being away from God. You could even say by that definition, all athiests are already in Hell. You could even say I'm in Hell, because I don't believe in the traditional image of God.

Also, just a small side-note about the whole "If God loves us so much, why do we suffer?" This goes back to the story of Adam and Eve, who committed the first sin -- Original Sin. This sin supposedly stains our souls, and even when baptized and this is 'washed away' we are all still able to sin -- no, more like inclined to sin -- because of original sin. Taken from a perspective of someone who does not believe in God, it's just another story (or excuse if you'd rather) to explain why people are imperfect.

Long story short -- I think, if you take away the religious aspect of it, the Bible is just two books: one meant to explain the creation of the universe before there was science, and the other to teach the importance of love and kindness. Whether or not you believe in God doesn't matter when it comes to the broad ideas presented inside of this book.

Oh, and one last thing. Please keep in mind that people are in no way finished studying the universe or its creation, and everything we know about it now could easily be turned on its head with one simple discovery. People used to think the Earth was flat, for crying out loud. But hell (and perhaps this is a bit of an extreme example), but maybe it's actually cube shaped and we don't know it? What then?

 

Something else completely bogus:

So, the Virgin Mary is Jesus' mother. Yes, I know God somehow magically implanted Jesus into her womb, but how in the bloody hell did she give birth without her hymen breaking? I mean, come on. And if God could magically put Jesus in her womb, why couldn't he just not put him in her womb in the first place, and make it like Adam?

There are SO many illogical things in the Christianity belief system. I'm so glad I was raised to not believe in it.

 

...You must have missed that extremely long and well-thought-out post just above yours urging people not to take the Bible literally.

 

Okay...
First of all, no one said her hymen didn't break. Of course it did. The whole "She was always a virgin" thing was started by the Catholic church. The Bible even says that after the birth of Jesus she gave birth to more children. She had sex after Jesus was born.
The reasons God made her give birth to Jesus was that people would see that virgin had give birth, which would make more people believe. And Jesus would have to live a full life without sinning to forgive us of our sins.

 

Religion was born out of fear of the unknown and the need for guidance. In ancient times, people worshipped the sun because all life seemed to stem from it. Religion has stayed with us because people like hope. Over the years things have developed, many different religions and branches spread from different places, and a higher being was put forward as the creator of the universe. People continue to believe in God/gods because of things like intelligent design.

 

I have at least the faith that it is possible a higher power or divine presence exists. If not divine, fine, but there could be something there that we can't quite understand at this point. Mostly because we are not in tune with it and therefore can't understand it.

I like to think the divine power is not necessarily a God, but a force to be recognized. Sort of like a frequency. Know the truth and it will set you free, in other words.

Also, Stardust, I like your posts. ;3

That is partially true.

"A higher being was put forward as the creator of the universe." This is the part that is questionable. In the Bible, God was never noted as the only creator. He simply replenished the Earth, if you interpreted the language carefully enough (and if you get the exact translation to English, that's what the words will tell you). That's from the New Testament, also.

As for there being "a higher being," it was more like "beings." The bible makes numerous references to there being not just one God, but multiple. The Hebrew people were henotheistic, so not everything was in reference to just one God. It was more like they chose a God and that became the one that was their "creator" and "image."