Religion

[original PM]

the problem of trying to have a rational discussion with a religious person is pointless as their beliefs and therefore arguments always centre around something which does not exist.

SO therefore when we talk about how if their god was so powerful why would he allow people to blaspheme they simply say that he did not allow it he sent his followers to do his work and shoot the blasphemers.

There you go magic, problem solved our god is all powerful.

[d000hg]

the problem of trying to have a rational discussion with a religious person is pointless as their beliefs and therefore arguments always centre around something which does not exist.

SO therefore when we talk about how if their god was so powerful why would he allow people to blaspheme they simply say that he did not allow it he sent his followers to do his work and shoot the blasphemers.

There you go magic, problem solved our god is all powerful.

Sorry, but that is an utterly ignorant argument. While ultimately there comes a point where people with ANY contradictory world-views simply reach an impasse, you're brushing aside hundreds or thousands of years of reasoned theological study, often carried out by non-believers.

Of course you can have a rational discussion but only subject to whichever set of axioms you are basing your framework of discussion on. You can equally say a religious person cannot have a rational discussion with a non-believer because the non-believer doesn't accept the most important axiom of all.

It's no different from right & left-wing political people arguing - they fundamentally believe different things so while they may agree on some subjects, however well-informed and well-reasoned their arguments are, they won't reconcile.

[SpontaneousOrder]

You said there is definitely, definitively, no God. Now you're merely saying there is no proof for the existence of God. The two are entirely different, the second is back-tracking substantially as it only says "there is no reason to believe in God" rather than "there is no God".

They aren't *that* far apart. As you know, it is not possible to prove a negative. That doesn't mean that we should consider *anything* to be possible.

The existence of God is just as likely as the existence of *ANY* other thing we could possibly dream up. I.e. sufficiently unlikely that it is unreasonable to believe that God might exist.

You can't try to make a reasoned argument by suggesting that is reasonable to believe something that is unreasonable. It's a self-falsifying argument.

[SpontaneousOrder]

It's no different from right & left-wing political people arguing - they fundamentally believe different things so while they may agree on some subjects, however well-informed and well-reasoned their arguments are, they won't reconcile.

It's entirely different.

Left vs Right is subjective whim vs subjective whim. Faith vs Faith.

God vs no God is Faith vs reason, or imagination vs observing reality.

You might imagine something that turns out to be true, but that's a very different process than deducing the probability of something based on observations of reality.

[SpontaneousOrder]

the problem of trying to have a rational discussion with a religious person is pointless as their beliefs and therefore arguments always centre around something which does not exist.

SO therefore when we talk about how if their god was so powerful why would he allow people to blaspheme they simply say that he did not allow it he sent his followers to do his work and shoot the blasphemers.

There you go magic, problem solved our god is all powerful.

Exactly. You have to re-train a religious person to think, before you can suggest that their belief in God is mistaken.

You wouldn't argue about anything, from a reasoned perspective, with a cow - because the cow lacks the capacity to think.
Faith is the the opposite reason, by definition, and the choice to have faith is the choice to not think.

God isn't the problem. Faith is.

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

11 dead in French shooting

How incredibly arrogant it is of some humans who were previously nothing and non-existent, to look at everything and say:

We came from nothing
There is no purpose to anything
Nothing created this even though there was nothing before
There is DEFINITELY no God
After we die we will just become nothing
We are here by an impossible set of coincidences.

At the very least be humble in your view and say as far as I am aware I don't know if there is a God or not.

[TykeMerc]

One could argue that it takes a staggering arrogance to believe that anyone is capable of interpreting the "word of God" to the point where they believe they know what is required, let alone what is in the mind of said deity.

It takes a mind boggling level of arrogance to feel that you understand the mind and will of a deity sufficiently to tell others what that deity wants.

Religions are instruments of political control and justification, they are nothing to do with actual belief and true faith which is personal and individual to the devout.

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

One could argue that it takes a staggering arrogance to believe that anyone is capable of interpreting the "word of God" to the point where they believe they know what is required, let alone what is in the mind of said deity.

It takes a mind boggling level of arrogance to feel that you understand the mind and will of a deity sufficiently to tell others what that deity wants.

Religions are instruments of political control and justification, they are nothing to do with actual belief and true faith which is personal and individual to the devout.

What you say holds a lot of truth- religion is not the problem, it is the way it is used for personal gain.

[SpontaneousOrder]

How incredibly arrogant it is of some humans who were previously nothing and non-existent, to look at everything and say:

We came from nothing
There is no purpose to anything
Nothing created this even though there was nothing before
There is DEFINITELY no God
After we die we will just become nothing
We are here by an impossible set of coincidences.

At the very least be humble in your view and say as far as I am aware I don't know if there is a God or not.

That's the dumbest thing I've heard in a long time.

Do you also admit that as far as you are aware, you don't know whether the moon is made of cheese or not? Because it's exactly the same.

and this:

We are here by an impossible set of coincidences

Makes me very suspicious that you don't understand how evolution works. Among other things, such as just how vast the universe is, and just how many star systems it contains.

[TykeMerc]

What you say holds a lot of truth- religion is not the problem, it is the way it is used for personal gain.

You're totally incorrect.

Religion is exactly the problem, a subset of that is that people don't understand that religion and genuine faith have exactly NOTHING to do with each other.

It's not the truly faithful and devout believers that have shed oceans of blood in the name of their gods over the millennia, but the religious who follow the words, doctrine and edicts of their leaders.

All religions across time have been used as a way for a small number of people to exert control over a larger populace, that's the function of a religion, no matter what they chose to call their deity.