jayjay said:
I'm not sure about God, but I'm sure there must be a creator. So yeah, the world could have been created by the big bang all by chance, and we could have been evolved from bacteria or whatever. Seriously, what are the chances that the world happens to work perfectly, every single thing in the world having a purpose. The world is just too well designed for me to think it might have happened by chance.
There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and an estimated 500 billion galaxies in our universe, each with roughly 100 billion stars.
That's 50,000 billion stars in our universe (conservative estimate). Given that immense number, the chances of life evolving in the way it has here, is actually quite high. The numbers are so staggeringly massive, that it would be wrong to consider ourselves so unique and 'created'. The sheer size of the universe pretty much makes the chances of life developing naturally, in at least one place, very high indeed.
SchumacherFerrari said:
We live in an imperfect world, but one in which the good conspicuously outweighs the bad and one which any person could imagine as possibly being much worse if it were simply accidental or unintended.
Yet most of the bad which is committed in the world is done in the name of one God or another.
Chimpanzees live a much more peaceful society than we do. They have a strong social hierarchy, they show kindness and love. They live in a lifestyle which most religions would believe that God wishes for us to live in. Why do they live like that? Why don't we? It's because we have evolved our social structures beyond those of the primates. Our intelligence forces us to try and improve our lives. We spread and expand rapidly, and that causes us to come into conflict with other groups of humans. Chimps will fight off a rival group they share territories with. The difference is, we communicate, and then lie and cheat and deceive to give ourselves the upper hand and more chance of survival. We are complicated animals, too clever for our own good.
Religion is a superb way of laying down rules for people to follow to help us find that Utopian state our primate fore-fathers have. In theory, there's nothing wrong with it - in practice, it is used as an excuse to commit violence and hatred. In closed societies, religion is often a good thing. However, it doesn't cross boundaries well, and almost always causes conflict, hatred and violence when one meets another.
SchumacherFerrari said:
And finally: We each have a desire to seek love. From childhood on, we try to fill that gap that exists within us. Sharing a life with another person, enjoying the companionship, stems from Adam & Eve, and God saw that Adam was lonely and so he created Eve to fill the desire to love and be loved, and as a means of creating a world of mankind. If we believe that, then it follows that there is a God.
Many animals search for a partner and mate for life. It's an excellent survival technique and great for ensuring your offspring get the best chance at success. It's certainly nothing unique to humans.
Sam said:
And it makes me laugh how all these people who claim to not believe will pray when they're desperate.
Sorry, but not me...
It's worth pointing out at this point that I was brought up in a very religious environment. Sunday school every week, church afterwards and every religious celebration. Confirmed, church youth group, God discussion camps, no sex, drugs, rock, roll or excessive drinking; not even swearing -the whole thing. I was very devout until I was 17 or 18 - then I started to think about the doctrine. There's a huge amount in the bible, the church service, the church (organisation) itself and the congregations which is contradictory. There's a lot of subtle hatred, one up-man ship and quiet unpleasantness.
I started off by just trying to ignore it all, and only 'cherry pick' the nice bits. Then I found that I was in conflict - I had ask God to forgive me for not following his service, not saying certain things because I believed that those things caused hatred and violence. I was o longer following His ways because they conflicted with my own morality. I could follow Him and consider myself a bad person, or not follow Him and then have to ask His forgiveness. It got generally worse and worse as I realised that more and more of the people in the church were selfish, self-centred and generally actually not very nice people. Yet these were the people who put in a lot of effort for the church, but they only seemed to do it for personal gain. This wasn't isolated to my Church either - we had a kind of exchange thing and would have a service once a month as guests at another church in a kind rotary cycle. The same kinds of people, it was just all there, same in Stafford too.
I'm not saying it's a universal thing - there were certainly some very good, kind and pious people in the Church - it's just that they were not only a minority, but they were essentially abused by people with greater ambition.
It came to a head when I returned after being in Stafford for 12 months. I came to church, and to the youth group (I was a leader in the group, and put in many weekss of effort over the years to organise and run it). I was ignored by everyone - all the people I had been friends and collegues of for many years - except for one person. He was the father of a good school friend, and until that day, we'd never 'chewed the cud'. He was the only person who made any effort to speak to me and make me feel welcome back into the community I'd left just 12 months before. From that day on, I found it harder and harder to have any faith at all. I was certainly agnostic for many years, but within the last 5 or so, I've been atheist.
I've done a lot of research into religions over the years, and I know the histories. I also know Christianity pretty much inside and out from my youth. So I have a good foundation for my atheism, I've looked at all the alternatives, and there is just no reason to believe in God.
Big question for people though - was it my church upbringing which made me a slightly more pleasant and level headed person? Can I thank the Church for showing me a good sense of morals when I was growing up? Or would it have happened naturally, given the expansive evidence of unpleasant Christians out there?
Did I say 'No' by the way to the original question? :lol: