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Does a God of ANY KIND exist?

camerupt said:
But you've never seen one. For all you know, it could all be fake.
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Yes, this is true, and I know it is true. That you are even trying this argument on me demonstrates that you really have no idea what the atheist position is at all.

1. I do not arrange my life around whether or not giant squids exist. If tomorrow they were demonstrated to be a hoax, that would be a novel addition to the list of stuff I know, but otherwise would not affect me at all. I would certainly not have to restructure my entire view of life, the universe, and everything.

2. There is nothing paranormal or otherwise inexplicable about a giant squid, and thus little reason to suspect a prank. There are also numerous recorded sightings of the creature; a hoax would thus either have to be very wide-spread but kept quiet (which is highly unlikely for the scientific community) or pulled off by someone with tremendous resources without being noticed (also highly unlikely). It is thus far more probable that the giant squid actually exists.
Meanwhile, theists have all the reasons in the world to honestly believe that their pet deities exist, leaving them wide open to all sorts of cognitive biases that trick their brains into seeing Mary on toast or whatever. I am not familiar with any group who is so utterly dependent on believing that a giant squid exists.


But please feel free to explain how the question of the existence of a giant squid is at all comparable to that of a deity.
 
But please feel free to explain how the question of the existence of a giant squid is at all comparable to that of a deity.
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Well, duh, Squiddion, the giant squid god of squids. XD

Funny thing about religion, you don't need scientific proof to believe in it. Sure, it's more a psycological thing when someone sees Jesus in their grilled cheese sandwich (Cheesus!), but then, when you see exorcisms and hear these accounts of demonic possession, you can either say, well, according to this study, people have been imagining these things...Or, you can say, DEMONS! and get on your knees. And funnily enough, both the scientific approach of shrugging it off and the religious approach of praying it away seem to work.

...I don't know how coherent that is, sorry if it's not.
 
Blargh, curse my horrible way of wording things...

I meant...a big point of religion is to be able to believe in something despite the complete lack of evidence there is about it.

There we go. ^_^
 
Alexi said:
Funny thing about religion, you don't need scientific proof to believe in it.
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What makes religion so special that it does not require proof? In my experience people just don't want proof; they have found some delusion that lets them avoid thinking about some undesirable facet of life and will rationalize away any attempts to point this out.

Rejecting rationality for something you just want to be true so you don't have to consider the possibility that it isn't is hypocritical, irresponsible, and downright dumb.

Alexi said:
And funnily enough, both the scientific approach of shrugging it off and the religious approach of praying it away seem to work.
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Wow! Praying is the same as not doing anything. Astounding. I wonder why that is.
 
Alexi said:
I meant...a big point of religion is to be able to believe in something despite the complete lack of evidence there is about it.
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Well yes, otherwise nobody would believe in religion. But I don't think that just because everybody says that about religion, somehow makes it a reasonable thing to believe.
 
Wow! Praying is the same as not doing anything. Astounding. I wonder why that is.
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Because Squiddion makes it so. *nodnod*

But I don't think that just because everybody says that about religion, somehow makes it a reasonable thing to believe.
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*shrug* It can be a challenge. It's more of an experience you have to let yourself, er, experience, rather than something that can be documented in a report. Or something like that.
 
Iibui said:
Yes, this is true, and I know it is true. That you are even trying this argument on me demonstrates that you really have no idea what the atheist position is at all.

1. I do not arrange my life around whether or not giant squids exist. If tomorrow they were demonstrated to be a hoax, that would be a novel addition to the list of stuff I know, but otherwise would not affect me at all. I would certainly not have to restructure my entire view of life, the universe, and everything.

2. There is nothing paranormal or otherwise inexplicable about a giant squid, and thus little reason to suspect a prank. There are also numerous recorded sightings of the creature; a hoax would thus either have to be very wide-spread but kept quiet (which is highly unlikely for the scientific community) or pulled off by someone with tremendous resources without being noticed (also highly unlikely). It is thus far more probable that the giant squid actually exists.
Meanwhile, theists have all the reasons in the world to honestly believe that their pet deities exist, leaving them wide open to all sorts of cognitive biases that trick their brains into seeing Mary on toast or whatever. I am not familiar with any group who is so utterly dependent on believing that a giant squid exists.


But please feel free to explain how the question of the existence of a giant squid is at all comparable to that of a deity.
Click to expand...

What makes you think that I, my friends, or any random person bases their life around wether or not God exists? It affects me in my daily life about as much as what color my shirt is.
 
What makes you think that I, my friends, or any random person bases their life around wether or not God exists? It affects me in my daily life about as much as what color my shirt is.
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Some people do. Believe me, I see it when my parents drag me to church every week. >_< Not that I find much wrong with it, if it makes them happy, they can groove with it, it just annoys me when they try to get me on their gravy train.
 
Who can go out and look at the sky, or a mountain, or the ocean, or a forest, or a newborn baby, and say that it just happened.
 
Drifloon Rocks said:
Who can go out and look at the sky, or a mountain, or the ocean, or a forest, or a newborn baby, and say that it just happened.
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Way to completely sound like Ted Haggard. The environment did not "just happen". Millions and millions of years of change allowed the world to become what it is today.
 
Drifloon Rocks said:
Who can go out and look at the sky, or a mountain, or the ocean, or a forest, or a newborn baby, and say that it just happened.
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Theists.

Who can go out and look at all the suffering, all the war, starvation, drought, floods, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, deathly illnesses, parasites, and just plain badness of the world, and say that there's a god who loves us?
 
Who can go out and look at all the suffering, all the war, starvation, drought, floods, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, deathly illnesses, parasites, and just plain badness of the world, and say that there's a god who loves us?
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Um...I don't. :) Humans did that to themselves, and the gods don't interviene because IT'S THE HUMANS' FAULT.

EDIT FOR MY STUPIDITY: Drought, floods, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, deathly illnesses, parasites are not humans' fault, but they have a purpose in the world too. ^_^
 
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Apparently no god of the gaps argument there.

:3 I use things for my advantage, too.

edit:
wait, wait, wait. you claim that these happened because of humans?
drought, floods, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, deathly illnesses, parasites
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and that's all but three of them D: come up with an argument that works
 
because i control the population of <whatever> tornadoes, earthquakes, droughts, tsunamis, deathly illnesses, and parasites pop out of nowhere.

that makes so little sense it isn't funny.
 
No need to get snarky.

Those are natural phenomena (sp?). Parasites and illnesses (which are viruses and/or bacteria) are finding their niches in bodies, and those other happen because of the geographic environment, weather conditions and techtonic plates. *nod*
 
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