Religion

[DodgyAgent]

Interestingly enough I seemed to have gained a Jehovah's witness friend .

That is one more friend than most IT contractors

[sartois]

However none of this is a problem as each individual is entitled to believe in what they believe in.

Unless of course that individuals beliefs are so extreme that it necessitates the slaughter of people who poke fun/disagree with those beliefs...

I've never heard of atheists slaughtering anyone for disagreeing with or poking fun at what they believe in... not sure that I could say the same about just about any other religion though

[GlenW]

I've never heard of atheists slaughtering anyone for disagreeing with or poking fun at what they believe in... not sure that I could say the same about just about any other religion though

Really?
Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Paddy]

Egyptian student jailed for proclaiming that he is an atheist | Media | The Guardian

He is lucky that he wasn't sued for loss of prophets

[d000hg]

However none of this is a problem as each individual is entitled to believe in what they believe in.

Entitled by whom?

I've never heard of atheists slaughtering anyone for disagreeing with or poking fun at what they believe in... not sure that I could say the same about just about any other religion though

As well as Russia, Communist China also made being a Christian (I assume other religions) very difficult, a whole network of underground churches appeared during that period. To an extent this might be more a "you cannot put anybody higher than your mighty leader" thing though.

[SpontaneousOrder]

It seems he's one of those morons who, if they can't understand something, are incapable of comprehending that it's because they're a bit fick.

I thought it was because God did it?

[unixman]

...I agree with however we can observe things and then make up a hypothesis that can be tested in the quantum world and be proved or disproved.

With god there is nothing you can observe and make a rational test for which is why religion is more about belief than fact.

However none of this is a problem as each individual is entitled to believe in what they believe in.

You will never prove or disprove the existence of God. The whole notion is transcendental. I believe in God, but have no problem with anyone who doesn't, obviously. (I sometimes have not believed, and the level of conviction inevitably varies. How could it not?)

Most annoying are those tedious gimps who profess total certainty that God does not exist, simply in order to appear the cleverest person in the room. They aren't even proper atheists.

[SpontaneousOrder]

That's rather what I meant. Learning more about science doesn't make the idea of a creator more or less believable.

Sure - but the 64 thousand dollar question is, rather than why isn't it believable, why *is* it believable? The default position without any evidence must be disbelief, otherwise you would literally be clinically insane & die if you were unable to assess the different probabilities of any given possibilities being real.

yet some things need evidence and other don't I.e. God is an exception to the rule. Why? That's all we ask.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Most annoying are those tedious gimps who profess total certainty that God does not exist, simply in order to appear the cleverest person in the room. They aren't even proper atheists.

It's impossible to prove that anything does or doesn't exist, with absolute certainty, other than purely logical concepts like 2+2 = 4.

So can I assume that you have no absolute convictions about the nature of reality? Or are you a tedious gimp too?

I don't mean that in an insulting tone - I'm just pointing out that all statements of truth are bounded by accepted probabilities. Do you accept that Dawkins' flying spaghetti monster certainly doesn't exist?

The point I'm getting at is that if you say yes, then the difference between that and God is just a matter of probability - you happen to have set your acceptable boundary at a certain point (which excludes spaghetti based deities).
If you say no, then you're just arguing about word semantics - and not the underlying point.

The whole question of whether God exists or not is a red-herring. The real question is *why* do you believe in God?

[d000hg]

yet some things need evidence and other don't I.e. God is an exception to the rule. Why? That's all we ask.

Fair question, but one without an answer (I'm aware of) which will satisfy you - in fact I think by definition no answer to this can satisfy you.

You can't use the scientific method to [dis]prove God, because the scientific method relies on repeatable experiment, on a subject which isn't aware of the experiment. Vaguely akin to using blind trials in medicine I suppose, which rely on the subject (a person) not knowing which way they are 'supposed' to react. If you want to prove I always take the same route to work but you tell me, I might go the other way just to mess with you.

Trying to treat a god as something you can experiment on simply makes no sense.

A specific example of this failure in understanding is trying to do a clinical trial on the efficacy of prayer. The scientific method demands prayer is some sort of natural process, controlled by the person doing the praying, which can then be studied in a blind trial to see if it works. But Christianity (as one example) says the person praying does nothing, only God choosing to answer - that's going to mess up your results when God knows about the trial. (and yes I know "why does he answer some prayers not others?" but that's not the topic we're discussing)