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Is there a god?

How can anyone who claims their arguments are rooted in logic and reason be anything other than agnostic?

This is mainly directed to those so firmly dedicated to their atheism. There's clearly no concrete arguments either way, and if you think there are, you need to think more deeply about everything.

Also, people keep getting dragged down into religion. Whatever benefits religion may or may not have to a person or culture are completely irrelevant as to whether or not an omnipotent being exists, which I assume is what we're talking about here.
 
c&r said:
How can anyone who claims their arguments are rooted in logic and reason be anything other than agnostic?

This is mainly directed to those so firmly dedicated to their atheism. There's clearly no concrete arguments either way, and if you think there are, you need to think more deeply about everything.

Also, people keep getting dragged down into religion. Whatever benefits religion may or may not have to a person or culture are completely irrelevant as to whether or not an omnipotent being exists, which I assume is what we're talking about here.
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The wonderful thing about atheism is that if anyone provided evidence of a God, we'd change our minds if such evidence was convincing enough, of course, and testable.

I guess in that sense, we are just REALLY skeptical agnostics.
 
^Except for those people who think we will all die and go to hell if we don't follow the word.
 
Why does evidence necessarily have to be testable? Obviously I'm all for the model of theories with testable predictions which can then be verified by experiment, but the only area it really applies to is science, and I feel that this argument is pretty much entirely philosophical. As such, any convincing proof, whether it produces testable predictions are not (sometimes, testable predictions just aren't possible: the majority of mathematics doesn't produce testable predictions but it's still proven, perhaps more strongly so than something based on testable predictions), is enough to sway me into agnosticism.

To be totally honest, even though this makes me sound rather fickle, I was completely atheist until I read Descartes' Meditations - if you're at all open minded about the debate (which I assume you are as an exceptionally skeptical agnostic) and haven't delved into such works, I strongly recommend it. Descartes uses (vaguely) scientific methods to construct pretty convincing proofs of god, definitely worth a quick glance at if nothing more.
 
I will check that out c&r, as it sounds interesting.

I added the world testable in there to avoid a bucket load of personal evidence.

Personal evidence would be fine, if it could be shared with me, or if I experianced it. But even then, it would be a question of sanity.

As for me and math. Lets not go there.

You clearly don't believe in any particular God because you don't follow a religion. Religions hold the only documentation (whether it's valid or not isn't important) of any God. Without religion, you'd have no reason to consider it's existence, and so wouldn't know it exists. I can't know for sure that God doesn't exist, but I think the huge clue is in that there is just no reason to think there could be, other than some obvious fairy stories. It's like saying "dragon's might exist!" Which is clearly stupid.

This is why I have trouble with agnosticism.
 
Just because every swan you have seen has been white doesn't mean that every swan is. However the appearance of one black swan may disprove this. I shall go and read that book c&r it's probably good.
 
Slash said:
Just because every swan you have seen has been white doesn't mean that every swan is. However the appearance of one black swan may disprove this. I shall go and read that book c&r it's probably good.
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Yeah, but after 10,000 years and nobody has seen a black swan anywhere in the world... You know? Odds are there isn't one ;)
 
...It's not even about odds. It's about why the hell you'd think there was a black swan in the first place.

If there are drawings of such a swan, if there was eye witness evidence of such a swan... If you had any sense, you'd see if any known large black birds fit the description.

What fits the description of the personal evidence for God? Mental illness.
 
Religion is not the greatest story ever told, but the greatest story ever sold.

End of the day The Bible was written by man.
 
furie said:
Slash said:
Just because every swan you have seen has been white doesn't mean that every swan is. However the appearance of one black swan may disprove this. I shall go and read that book c&r it's probably good.
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Yeah, but after 10,000 years and nobody has seen a black swan anywhere in the world... You know? Odds are there isn't one ;)
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Its hiding... :wink:
 
Of course there is a God...His name is God.
Or Jeff to his friends.
 
In the end, Jesus Christ changed my life. I would have killed myself a while ago if He hadn't made Himself real to me. My relationship with God is more than religion; the Bible is more than a book written by men (^and sold). They prove themself of the greatest value everyday.
I love theme parks and thrill rides, but I put things in perspective. My relationships with Christ and people are of much more importance.

cool) -------------- cool) --------------- cool)
 
Haven't read the rest of this topic but...

MY BELIEFS HAS CHANGED!

Yeah I figured it makes more sense for me to believe in no god, for reasons pretty long and drawn out, so much so that by the end of my conversion to agnosticism I had forgotten the reason which had sparked my doubts. Notice I use the word agnostic, I hold that there's no way to prove conclusively that there is a god, since the definition of god is a being outside of this universe - so for anyone doing philosophy, any a posteriori proofs for/against god are invalid because of the definition of god, and any a priori proofs are invalid because they ARE just definitions and assumptions.

Oh I also believe in a sort of afterlife - in that there is more life after this, but when you are living that, you think that that is the only life you've ever lived, so you have infinite afterlives, but you only know about the present.

I believe that athiesm does give you a freedom of mind which religion doesn't. So whereas religion can sometimes be comforting, it can also create problems that weren't there in the first place, especially to do with guilt, etc...
 
Gangster4Life said:
I belive there is a god. Because if there wasn't, how did humanity end up on earth :?:
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My family came from a small planet just inside the horsehead nebula. We were delivered by express lightspeed service. We were sent as a gel, which expanded when mixed with water to produce the family_Furie.

I always assumed that's how everyone else got here - unless you believe that evolution twoddle :roll:
 
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