How come God allows people who debate for his existence to say really stupid things while trying to do so? It seems like he's trying to make us choose not to believe in him. Of course he's given everyone a free will regardless of their intellectual capacity, but it's weird that God just sits on his ass while most people who really dig him and make it known to the world are actually rather stupid. Maybe they're all actually a part of the devil's plan? Nah, God would still intervene, because that whole situation that they have going on is like if God were playing chess against the devil but God had nothing but a king and an endless supply of queens.

I don't really have anything to say, but I wanted to make a thread because it's 4:30 am and this was the first thing that came to mind when I thought about something that might garner some replies.

okay thanks

you should probably go to sleep there krokoman

yeah, I'm gonna chalk this up to you being drunk or super tired.. but you basically just said that "anyone who believes in God is stupid."

I'm not going to bother to prove you wrong.

Though I will just quickly comment your question.

1) Assume God exists and he is infinitely more powerful and intelligent than any human being on earth.

2) In that case, who are you to think that you know what God would or wouldn't do, or to criticize Him for His actions? Maybe He knows something you don't. obviously

that's all.

Is 1) and 2) suppose to relate in someway?

Freewill. If you're an atheist you might not believe in freewill.

they're steps. In order for 2) to work, you must first accomplish step 1). If you don't believe in God and believe that he is more powerful and more intelligent than you, then you will never be able to understand or rationalize his actions or inactions.

Yeah. I'm just going to put this here.

God doesn't exist, just like Santa Claus.
Except as far as I can tell nobody has ever died in the name of Santa Claus.

Hundreds of thousands of would be Santas have died in chimneys. It's on Snopes. Look it up.

I think if there is a God and he gave us freewill, its all for his own amusement. Plus if you get too disrespectful, he can always smite your a$$.

If I was god, I'd run my universe the same way.

Ah yes, "it's beyond our understanding!" what an intellectual cop out.

Yeah, you fail at step one, Emon.

What, because I didn't quote it? I read it, understood it, and my statement is still true.

Saying "we don't understand" is a great way to not bother to think about difficult questions.

I'll just paste what I said in a discussion elsewhere about the whole "god's will is beyond our understanding" thing:

It's not necessarily an intellectual cop out if it is truly what you believe. If in the back of your mind your going 'damn that question is tricky and I'm backed into a corner... Ahha! I'll use the god is beyond our understanding line!' then it's is obviously a cop out. But there is nothing wrong with admitting you don't know the answer to something. It does not prove or disprove anything, other than that you don't know.
If you do believe in god then you probably do truly believe there are going to be some things about said god that you/humans in general will not understand.

That doesn't really make sense. How would you know if your knowledge and understanding has passed Gods without knowing Gods knowledge and understanding.
If he really did create the universe, and if he is all-knowing and all-powerful, then he knows and understands things that we have yet to scratch the surface of. God would probably have a little chuckle at the ignorance of our greatest scientific minds. We're still trying to work out why certain creatures/insects behave the way they do, what makes you think we'd be able to know all about something that we would be insects to?
For all you know, we're just phase 3 of a 20 phase plan, and when we get wiped out that's just a small step.

I don't beleive in god, or at least not any of the gods I'm familiar with (christian, catholic, jewish etc) but I think if there is a great and all powerful being who made our entire universe, of which we only occupy a tiny speck, it's quite logical to assume it thinks differently to us, and that our knowledge and understanding is incomparable to it's, or if there were any comparison to be made it would be like comparing the understanding of a dog to that of a human.

EDIT: mine was a response to Flibrnic, not Darth_Alran, who I fully agree with

I'm referring specifically to the biblical concept of God (which is relevant to the conversation, since that's the god that apparently concerns himself with whether you believe in him or not). This is the god that allegedly created a much less sensible universe than what scientists observe and theorize. If we ignore the part where God supposedly created the universe and only look at all the mythology that happened after creation, what I said holds true. The character of God in the bible is an irrational and intellectually stunted character.

If Adam named all the animals[1], why do we keep having to come up with new names for animals we discover?

[ Edit: seriously, I've been trying to figure this one out. ]

1. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+2:19-20&version=NIV

Because Adam didn't write them down?

No it's because he didn't exist.

no you!

I doubt anyone consciously thinks it. But they fall back on it nonetheless. That doesn't make it any better an argument.


Uh, okay? What is your point?


I don't believe in god and I still believe this. What are you getting at?

I'm saying that it's not always an argument. Sometimes it's just the truth. And if it's the truth outside of a debate, then it is also the truth when in a debate. I am well aware it is often used as a cop out, but that does not mean it is always so.

Also you give the vast majority of Christians too much credit. Of course most of them consciously think that. Most people don't debate religion with any real "Christian" intent, they just want to be right. And moreover they want to prove the dirty athiests wrong.

I remember reading an article that showed the average self-proclaimed atheists know more about christianity than the average christian.
They polled a whole bunch of people, it was an interesting article.

Damn you Godbotherers are nuts.

I think this might be it:

http://www.pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey.aspx

The trick is finding a Christian. There are a great many people who will tell you they are Christian, but very few actual Christians.

That Survey : I expect the partial cause of that result is that smart people know stuff about the world, and smart people are more likely to be athiest/agnostic.

I would like to point out a couple of things:

1) If god would be allknowing, then god should have the possibility to store that information. If god knows about every particle, then it would have to store all that information. For this storage, at least the same ammount of particles are needed. Thus implying an infinite loop resulting in an infinite ammount of energy.

2) If we can't see god, don't have any proof of god and still accept it. This would mean that we can just as well accept the little pink teapot around the sun, the invisible pink unicorn and the giant spaghettimonster. Why wouldn't you accept those? Let me answer that for you: you would probably apply occam's razor. And you would state: well, it would be silly for those things to exist, because we don't have any proof and the whole idea is rather weird. You see where I'm going, amirite?

3) If there is only one god. Then why are there different religions stating that there are 'multiple single gods'.

Please refute these points with valid arguments and I will promise I will pray to the allmighty one every day before I go to bed.

Ugh, not the flying spaghetti argument again ><

i love fake christians, they are some of the worst people on earth

My driving instructor is training to become... a vicar or a priest or something of the sort, I forget the exact term.

But he was the most down-to-earth Christian that I'd properly spoken to about beliefs. He said he often got into arguments with the others about thinking more for yourselves than taking it for writ, generally formed his own opinions and interpretations of bible verses, and so on. Mostly the topics only came up as a result of his studies - half the time he talked about his time in the police force and his motorcycle, anyway. But hell, as a rather stubborn atheist they were still bloody interesting.

I don't know how widespread that sort of mindset is, but it certainly beats internet militant Christians any day of the week, hands down.

I'm not understanding why this is even an issue. I wouldnt assume God is restricted to our universe or bound by its physical laws. I find it perfectly plausable that God would have access to unlimited energy.

This should go into religious discussion. I am too hung over so see in on the general discussion board.

We still have a religious discussion? I thought that got closed down ages ago due to inevitable flame wars etc.
So far this thread seems to be doing quite well within the rules though...

There are also a great many Christians that don't believe in free will (they see it as an illusion). These are the Christians that believe that God knows everything. If he knows everything, he knows the past, present & future & therefore everything is pre-destined. It's actually a very common Christian belief. These people find it insulting to say that everything isnt pre-destined because that would be to say that God doesn't know everything. There are also Atheists that don't believe in free will (depending on ones definition).

There are intelligent people that are religious, therefore all religious people aren't stupid. History is full of intelligent people that were religious. We can write it off by saying that Atheism wasn't always a viable option in their day (like in the case of the founders of this country who saw Deism as either more reasonable or more politically realistic) but that's too simplistic & merely ignores the various reasons that one may become religious. I'm no Einstein but I grew up as a Christian Fundamentalist. I was led to believe that anything less than strictly interpreting the King James bible was a one way ticket to hell. However, I was able to be reasonable when it came to other subjects. The fear of burning in hell for eternity is often strong enough to keep even the most intelligent people from looking at their religion in a critical manner. That's just one of the many variables on the matter.

Back then I would suggest social pressure, upbringing and ignorance, or a combination thereof.
When I say ignorance, I don't mean that you must be ignorant to be religious, I mean that you're more likely to remain in a religion if you are ignorant of any other option.
But I know a few people nowadays who I consider very intelligent, one fiercely so, that are christians.

It's rather strange but there are people that can look at everything other than their religion with a critical eye. However, when their religion comes up, so does an invisible wall that can be very difficult to penetrate, from either side.

Who are you to say who is and isn't a Christian?