Faith and Fact

[unriggable]

CrazyAngelican, there is a difference between having faith in an existing thing and having faith in an end result. End results can be put down into probabilities, whereas existing things cannot. When you hear scientists say "I have faith there is life outside out galaxy" or whatever, that is comparable to the god argument.

[CrazyAnglican]

I went back and reread my original post. It was badly written. I wasn't arguing with Mandalorian's definition of a fact. I was adding the stipulation that in order to be a fact there has to be some independent method of agreeing on it or seeing its truthfulness. If not, you're just taking someone else's word for it.

There, hope that somewhat dull tirade about logic, facts and opinions clarifies things... sorry if it comes off as abrasive, I don't mean to offend either of you. I'll go back to being quiet again.

Much Love
DM

I didn't find anything remotely offensive about your post DM. It was well stated and polite. I, on the other hand, seem to have offfended Mandy which was unintentional. I do have a couple of questions regarding your post.

What Mandy is saying is that people who state "there is a God" have no evidence to back their proposed 'truth' with; and that people who declare the opposite do, therefore making the first group irrational and delusional.

Isn't this making a gross assumption about the issue of evidence? Now let me be clear. I am not challenging you to disprove the existence of God, but you do seem have opened a door by stating that there is empirical evidence that He doesn't exist. Given that this is the basis for claiming I'm delusional, I'd certainly like to see it.

While "Is Gods" have an 'opinion', this opinion is an opinion on the factual state of a certain matter, and as such it can be called irrational if they believe this state of facts without having sufficient empirically demonstrable evidence to support it. Essentially, they have opinions which make declarations about states of facts; so these can be quite fairly objectively tested, and labelled irrational if they seem lacking in logical backing.

This is a much more familiar argument. It boils down to the burden of proof. The default should be atheism, and anyone making a counter-claim should have an airtight argument. The default isn't atheism though. I live in a country in which the vast majority of people already believe a certain thing to be truth. Whether what they believe is actually true or not, they constitute the default. Atheists are presenting the counter-claim. To assume otherwise is to assume that your audience already agrees with you when they don't. Before you go on assuming that I believe merely because a lot of people do let me offer this example. If everyone thinks the world is flat, they are wrong, but the guy who says it's round still has to prove it.

Basically, the distinction between facts and opinions was talking about the two words in a context that wasn't helpful in this exchange (sorry, that sounds rude, but I'm not trying to be), and that's what Mandy appeared to have meant.

Perhaps, but I was merely pointing out that Mandalorian was presenting fact and faith as if they were antonyms or at the very least mutually exclusive. Life isn't a laboratory. There are very few absolutes, and as such once you leave the facts you have entered faith. Having faith doesn't mean having faith exclusively. When you believe that "my favorite color is blue" is a fact, you are having faith that I'm not lying to you.

CrazyAngelican, there is a difference between having faith in an existing thing and having faith in an end result. End results can be put down into probabilities, whereas existing things cannot. When you hear scientists say "I have faith there is life outside out galaxy" or whatever, that is comparable to the god argument.

Isn't saying "I have faith that there is life outside our galaxy" looking at the facts and making a statement of probability? If that is analogous to the statement that "I have faith that there is a God", I'm not sure that I see your distinction between process and existing things being different.

[unriggable]

CrazyAngelican, there is a difference between having faith in an existing thing and having faith in an end result. End results can be put down into probabilities, whereas existing things cannot. When you hear scientists say "I have faith there is life outside out galaxy" or whatever, that is comparable to the god argument.

Isn't saying "I have faith that there is life outside our galaxy" looking at the facts and making a statement of probability? If that is analogous to the statement that "I have faith that there is a God", I'm not sure that I see your distinction between process and existing things being different.

It's not a statement of probability since the probabilities involving life outside earth is completely random. We could say it's a 1 in 9 chance a planet has life or 1 in a million, the point is we don't know. Same goes for god.

[CrazyAnglican]

I can see your point.

Thanks

[Backglass]

A US Marine had just finished his 4 year military service and was taking courses at his local campus. The professor of his course stood up on the front podium and said "If the all powerful God really exists, he will prove it by knocking me off this podium within the next 15 minutes. If I'm still standing within the next 15 minutes, I will have proven that god does not in fact exist".

The time ticked by but nothing happened. Finally, after 10 minutes had gone by, the US space Marine stood up and punched the professor in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. The Professor didn't get up and his jaw was bleeding. The Space Marine said "God was to busy torturing Saddam Hussein in hell to bother with you, so he sent me instead".

I have a better story!

A devoutly christian man was jacking off in the rest area bathroom just off the interstate, hoping another man would come in so he could have a another tryst. Instead, a state trooper came in to pee and saw the religious man exposing himself. The trooper arrested him. Later on television, the christian man cried, invoked the name of his god a lot and claimed to be an awful sinner who would try to tame his ways by being a better christian. He had his mortified wife by his side to make it look better.

Later that month, having still not come to grips with his homosexuality, he put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He died instantly. Later his body was buried. His religious friends all debated whether he would go to heaven or hell but he went to neither...because you see, they don't exist and you don't go anywhere when you are dead. His wife re-married an atheist three months later and lived happily ever after!

Yay for pointless stories!

[unriggable]

You bring up a very good point. So I'll let you in on a little secret. Faith is accepting God WITHOUT any visual proof. Faith is knowing in your HEART that he exsists. Afterall, that is the TEST for all of humankind. If he showed his face to the world then there would be no such thing as faith. Therefore beleivers would follow God on FACT and not faith. It's easy to beleive in something you CAN see. But to beleive in something you CAN'T see is FAITH.

Inorder to have perfect faith you must first start by recognizing the signs that expose themselves everyday. Then, take the signs you receive from God and apply them to your life. This is considered unseen proof of God and undoubtably leads to FAITH.

So if you subbed God for Zeus and his band of brothers...

The point is that you are assuming that the creator of all space, all time, everything and everyone, actually gives a shit about each and every one of us? I mean, faith is one thing, but theres that fine line between having faith and being extraordinarily naive.

[Neutrino]

A US Marine had just finished his 4 year military service and was taking courses at his local campus. The professor of his course stood up on the front podium and said "If the all powerful God really exists, he will prove it by knocking me off this podium within the next 15 minutes. If I'm still standing within the next 15 minutes, I will have proven that god does not in fact exist".

The time ticked by but nothing happened. Finally, after 10 minutes had gone by, the US space Marine stood up and punched the professor in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. The Professor didn't get up and his jaw was bleeding. The Space Marine said "God was to busy torturing Saddam Hussein in hell to bother with you, so he sent me instead".

Space Marine?
I think it's time to put the W40K set down and go outside for a little while...

[Hanul]

Lol, space marines...

I recall the story of the philosopher and the theologian. The two were engaged in disputation and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher being like a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat-which wasn't there. "that may be," said the philosopher; " but a theologian would have found it."
-Julian Huxley

[Dancing Mustard]

What Mandy is saying is that people who state "there is a God" have no evidence to back their proposed 'truth' with; and that people who declare the opposite do, therefore making the first group irrational and delusional.

Isn't this making a gross assumption about the issue of evidence? Now let me be clear. I am not challenging you to disprove the existence of God, but you do seem have opened a door by stating that there is empirical evidence that He doesn't exist. Given that this is the basis for claiming I'm delusional, I'd certainly like to see it.

Sorry, let me clarify myself there: I wasn't calling people delusional or crazy, I was just paraphrasing what Mandy said about the matter; i.e. he was stating that he didn't think there was evidence for a God, and that this made people who asserted God's existance as a 'truth' delusional.
I mean, I don't believe in a God either, but I didn't mean to call anybody crazy here, and I'm not trying to get into another "God vs No God debate"...

It boils down to the burden of proof. The default should be atheism, and anyone making a counter-claim should have an airtight argument. The default isn't atheism though. I live in a country in which the vast majority of people already believe a certain thing to be truth. Whether what they believe is actually true or not, they constitute the default. Atheists are presenting the counter-claim. To assume otherwise is to assume that your audience already agrees with you when they don't. Before you go on assuming that I believe merely because a lot of people do let me offer this example. If everyone thinks the world is flat, they are wrong, but the guy who says it's round still has to prove it.

Hmmm, I'm not sure I agree.
Granted, if a group of people think 'State of Affairs X' is true, then the burden is obviously on you to prove them wrong before they'll change their minds; but that doesn't make their particular set of beliefs the logical default for argument to begin from.
To be more precise: stating that there 'is God' is making an active claim and asserting a state of affairs, this goes beyond simply stating that there's no evidence for any such claim. The point here is that the logical default position that people always ought to start from (in any field of argument and regardless of how many people believe what) is the simplest one, where nothing is assumed to exist until proven to do so. Simply stating that lots of people believe in a God doesn't make it the logical default position to begin argument from, and it certainly doesn't shift the burdens of proof that rationality imposes upon us. All that widely held belief can do is dictate how hard we have to work to convince the opposition, but it doesn't do anything to warp the default starting point of the discussion.
Do you see what I'm trying to get at here? Argument should always start from a blank canvas, regardless of who is participating. As such, the burden is on "Is Gods" to bring some evidence that God probably exists before any other party needs to bring evidence to deny him.
Sure, you already believe in a God, so to convince you otherwise we'd need to be the first to bring countervailing evidence. But if we're going to argue perfectly logically about this issue, then the burden has to be on the active claim maker (saying God does exist) to kick things off.

It's worth noting however that I'm not saying that 'without proof God definately doesn't exist', I'm just saying that we can't be sure of any such thing unless somebody brings up evidence to the contrary. Similarily we can't be sure that God doesn't exist until we've seen evidence of that either, we can only state that we have no reason to believe that he does, not that he definitively doesn't.

Life isn't a laboratory.

Why ever not? I see no evidence to suggest that it isn't. I do however see evidence to suggest that we have not yet mastered our understanding of science, and as such some of life's qualities remain mysterious to us.

There are very few absolutes, and as such once you leave the facts you have entered faith.

Not exactly, ''leaving definitively provable facts and adopting the most likely explanations on the basis of incomplete sets of facts" isn't quite the same thing as faith. It's simply adopting the most plausible solution based on what facts you have, you're relying on the most empirically demonstrable possibility. Faith isn't doing that is it? Isn't it relying on something which you categorically can't prove with facts/evidence because you simply have a gut-feeling that it's true?

When you believe that "my favorite color is blue" is a fact, you are having faith that I'm not lying to you.

As above, is this really 'faith'? Or is it simply me relying on the best evidence I have available to reach the most likely conclusion?
Faith would be if I said "I think CA's favourite colour is Red, because I simply believe that is true"

CrazyAngelican, there is a difference between having faith in an existing thing and having faith in an end result.

I'm not sure if I agree with Unrig here. Both reliances are based on looking at the facts available and reaching a 'most likely' conclusion. If I can hear a breathing noise through a door I'm not simply 'having faith' that somebody is behind it, I'm simply relying on the most logical explanation (other possibilities being that there is a tape playing breathing noises etc). How is this different to relying on a logically reasoned prediction about what state of affairs will arise in the future (Stock Markets being our current example here I think?).
Neither is a 'faith' judgement based on an unprovable feeling, both are simple best-fit judgements based on an incomplete set of facts.

I'm not saying that it's not possible to state that God might be the best-fit solution for the facts we find ourselves living amongst (I don't think he is, but I don't deny it might be possible to do so); I'm just saying that the examples of 'faith' that you're given aren't actually examples of 'faith' at all.

End results can be put down into probabilities, whereas existing things cannot. When you hear scientists say "I have faith there is life outside out galaxy" or whatever, that is comparable to the god argument.

See above I think. I think that the distinction between possible results and the existance of things is a false dichotomy. Indeed I have yet to see any argument as to where the distinction lies.

Thanks for this by the way, it's proving good interesting fun.

[Gregrios]

You bring up a very good point. So I'll let you in on a little secret. Faith is accepting God WITHOUT any visual proof. Faith is knowing in your HEART that he exsists. Afterall, that is the TEST for all of humankind. If he showed his face to the world then there would be no such thing as faith. Therefore beleivers would follow God on FACT and not faith. It's easy to beleive in something you CAN see. But to beleive in something you CAN'T see is FAITH.

Inorder to have perfect faith you must first start by recognizing the signs that expose themselves everyday. Then, take the signs you receive from God and apply them to your life. This is considered unseen proof of God and undoubtably leads to FAITH.

So if you subbed God for Zeus and his band of brothers...

The point is that you are assuming that the creator of all space, all time, everything and everyone, actually gives a shit about each and every one of us? I mean, faith is one thing, but theres that fine line between having faith and being extraordinarily naive.

Yeah well, there's your opinion and then there's the truth.

[MeDeFe]

And your faith won't have any effect on the truth, no matter what your opinion.

[tzor]

An eariler poster suggested that things like 1+1=2 are "facts." Actually that is an application of logic, or even better of definition. We define the number two as the sum of one and one.

Facts are interesting things, we often get terms confused when discussing scientific matters, which is only odd when this is done by people who apparently claim that only science matters. So with that let's consider the fact as defined by Webster: "an occurrence, quality, or relation the reality of which is manifest in experience or may be inferred with certainty; specifically : an actual happening in time or space <fact in its primary meaning, as an object of direct experience, is distinguished from truth>"

Truth? What is truth? (No bad biblical pun intended.) Turth is something that is true. What is true? "conformable to fact : in accordance with the actual state of affairs : not false or erroneous : not inaccurate"

And so we have facts, things of direct experience by which we can create truths in accordance with those facts. But how? By the scientific method, "the principles and procedures used in the systematic pursuit of intersubjectively accessible knowledge and involving as necessary conditions the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and if possible experiment, the formulation of hypotheses, and the testing and confirmation of the hypotheses formulated."

There is an old saying and this is important to understanding science, "man is the measure of all things." This is because we do the observing, and thus the measuring. We observe things around us, we experment, formulare hypotheses and repeat ad infinitum.

Now let's go to that other idea, faith, "firm or unquestioning belief in something for which there is no proof." Opps, did I bring it in too soon? What's a "proof?" A proof involves truths and facts, "the cogency of evidence or of demonstrated relationship that compels acceptance by the mind of a truth or a fact."

So now let us do a nice 19th century thought experment. A hydrogen atom consists of a proton and an electron. (Ah that's a fact.) The protron is seperate from the electron and can be isolated for form ions. (Another fact.) The protron is heavier than the electron. (We're racking up these facts left and right now.)

I have faith that science can explain the hydrogen atom. It's faith because right now I have no "proof" that the hydrogen atom can actually exist, even though it's a FACT. Why? Because of other facts.

Protrons are attracted to electrons; left alone they crash into each other and form neutrons. So there has to be something keeping the electron from crashing into the protron. Planets are attracted to the Sun but they don't crash into each other because planets orbit the sun. So perhaps electrons orbt the protron? Unfortunately we have another fact, chraged particles that accelerate generate light and loose their energy. Going in an "orbit" is a change of angular momentum and in effect causes the electron to loose energy (all the time). This is a fact because there is a place right where I live that uses this in order to generate a light that is purer than a laser.

Ugh! Atoms exist, that's a fact. But Atoms can't exist because they would collapse! My faith in science is shaken ... not. Quantum mechanics comes to the rescue and we can reconcile these facts that were previously at odds with each other.

This then is the scientific method. That the universe exists isn't a fact, it's actually faith. That we can explain what we observe is not a fact either, it's also faith. We have no proof for the universe, but we do have a growing number of hypotheses that attempt to explain those stubborn facts.

What we don't know we simply don't know. To argue that what we do not know as fact cannot be is actually a heresy against the very nature of science itself. It is the 19th century man claiming that atoms cannot exist because science has said so. In fact in an ironic sense it takes as much faith to not believe in something that is not proved as it does to believe in something that is not proved. To state with certanty either side of an unknown which cannot be proved one way or the other is faith.

Is the universe closed or open? We currently do not know.
Is the universe finite or infinite? We currently do not know.

In the battle between the religious and the athiests is there a reason for the agnostics to be smug? Well we currently do not know, but at least they know that they currently don't know and that probably counts for something. If it does I just don't know.

[mandalorian2298]

:oops: I went back and reread my original post. It was badly written. I wasn't arguing with Mandalorian's definition of a fact. I was adding the stipulation that in order to be a fact there has to be some independent method of agreeing on it or seeing its truthfulness. If not, you're just taking someone else's word for it.

This is correct.

I have probably overreacted to your original post. There are people in this world who could post a logic-raping nightmare like that and then go through their lives believing that their position is correct (I hope that you are not offended by the fact that I considered you to be one of those people when I read your post) and I had been exposed to their thoughts and feelings, so your post just made me want to scream. But, if you have just made mistake expresing yourself, then forget that I said anything. Mistakes happen.

[Neoteny]

An eariler poster suggested that things like 1+1=2 are "facts." Actually that is an application of logic, or even better of definition. We define the number two as the sum of one and one.

Facts are interesting things, we often get terms confused when discussing scientific matters, which is only odd when this is done by people who apparently claim that only science matters. So with that let's consider the fact as defined by Webster: "an occurrence, quality, or relation the reality of which is manifest in experience or may be inferred with certainty; specifically : an actual happening in time or space <fact in its primary meaning, as an object of direct experience, is distinguished from truth>"

Truth? What is truth? (No bad biblical pun intended.) Turth is something that is true. What is true? "conformable to fact : in accordance with the actual state of affairs : not false or erroneous : not inaccurate"

And so we have facts, things of direct experience by which we can create truths in accordance with those facts. But how? By the scientific method, "the principles and procedures used in the systematic pursuit of intersubjectively accessible knowledge and involving as necessary conditions the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and if possible experiment, the formulation of hypotheses, and the testing and confirmation of the hypotheses formulated."

There is an old saying and this is important to understanding science, "man is the measure of all things." This is because we do the observing, and thus the measuring. We observe things around us, we experment, formulare hypotheses and repeat ad infinitum.

Now let's go to that other idea, faith, "firm or unquestioning belief in something for which there is no proof." Opps, did I bring it in too soon? What's a "proof?" A proof involves truths and facts, "the cogency of evidence or of demonstrated relationship that compels acceptance by the mind of a truth or a fact."

So now let us do a nice 19th century thought experment. A hydrogen atom consists of a proton and an electron. (Ah that's a fact.) The protron is seperate from the electron and can be isolated for form ions. (Another fact.) The protron is heavier than the electron. (We're racking up these facts left and right now.)

I have faith that science can explain the hydrogen atom. It's faith because right now I have no "proof" that the hydrogen atom can actually exist, even though it's a FACT. Why? Because of other facts.

Protrons are attracted to electrons; left alone they crash into each other and form neutrons. So there has to be something keeping the electron from crashing into the protron. Planets are attracted to the Sun but they don't crash into each other because planets orbit the sun. So perhaps electrons orbt the protron? Unfortunately we have another fact, chraged particles that accelerate generate light and loose their energy. Going in an "orbit" is a change of angular momentum and in effect causes the electron to loose energy (all the time). This is a fact because there is a place right where I live that uses this in order to generate a light that is purer than a laser.

Ugh! Atoms exist, that's a fact. But Atoms can't exist because they would collapse! My faith in science is shaken ... not. Quantum mechanics comes to the rescue and we can reconcile these facts that were previously at odds with each other.

This then is the scientific method. That the universe exists isn't a fact, it's actually faith. That we can explain what we observe is not a fact either, it's also faith. We have no proof for the universe, but we do have a growing number of hypotheses that attempt to explain those stubborn facts.

What we don't know we simply don't know. To argue that what we do not know as fact cannot be is actually a heresy against the very nature of science itself. It is the 19th century man claiming that atoms cannot exist because science has said so. In fact in an ironic sense it takes as much faith to not believe in something that is not proved as it does to believe in something that is not proved. To state with certanty either side of an unknown which cannot be proved one way or the other is faith.

Is the universe closed or open? We currently do not know.
Is the universe finite or infinite? We currently do not know.

In the battle between the religious and the athiests is there a reason for the agnostics to be smug? Well we currently do not know, but at least they know that they currently don't know and that probably counts for something. If it does I just don't know.

For uncertainty, we have statistics. And statistical probability is extremely close to fact. Because of that, I respect statistics more than I would respect my own, or anyone else's faith as you describe it. Faith in statistics and vicariously the scientific method carries a lot more weight than faith in tradition, or revelation.

So, who's more smug: atheists, religionists, or agnostics? I don't know. But I'm smug enough to call you a fence-sitter. No offense, of course.

[unriggable]

You bring up a very good point. So I'll let you in on a little secret. Faith is accepting God WITHOUT any visual proof. Faith is knowing in your HEART that he exsists. Afterall, that is the TEST for all of humankind. If he showed his face to the world then there would be no such thing as faith. Therefore beleivers would follow God on FACT and not faith. It's easy to beleive in something you CAN see. But to beleive in something you CAN'T see is FAITH.

Inorder to have perfect faith you must first start by recognizing the signs that expose themselves everyday. Then, take the signs you receive from God and apply them to your life. This is considered unseen proof of God and undoubtably leads to FAITH.

So if you subbed God for Zeus and his band of brothers...

The point is that you are assuming that the creator of all space, all time, everything and everyone, actually gives a shit about each and every one of us? I mean, faith is one thing, but theres that fine line between having faith and being extraordinarily naive.

Yeah well, there's your opinion and then there's the truth.

And for some reason, 'the truth' is surprisingly inconsistent.

[Jenos Ridan]

But, what people don't realize is that you cannot have faith in fact, that is not faith at all.

I disagree with you and mandalorian2298.

Faith = belief in something you have no proof of. Wether or not it is fact is a seperate issue.

I believe that you are actually people somewhere and not mere text generated on my computer. I have no proof therefore I believe it and have faith that I'm correct yet it is still fact.

I have never been in New York. I therefore must use a small amount of faith coupled with some trust that I have not been tricked by computer generated images.

I believe that on september 11, 2001 two large airplanes struck the twin towers of the world trade center. I have faith that the images I watched that day on television were not altered, I also having never seen said structures have to use some faith to believe they existed in the first place.

I have read things and seen pictures that help me believe through faith in those events. Do you believe in those events, know them to be fact or niether?

Even if you don't I will continue to talk as if it is fact, because I have faith that it is even if you reason that it can't be because I have to believe in it by faith.

Nice.

People, think of it this way: God has to exist, it is His promises we must have faith in. We are assured by the very text He (or rather, His Apostles and their scribes) gave us to know about Him and by way of that we will then eventually know Him.

[Iliad]

A US Marine had just finished his 4 year military service and was taking courses at his local campus. The professor of his course stood up on the front podium and said "If the all powerful God really exists, he will prove it by knocking me off this podium within the next 15 minutes. If I'm still standing within the next 15 minutes, I will have proven that god does not in fact exist".

The time ticked by but nothing happened. Finally, after 10 minutes had gone by, the US space Marine stood up and punched the professor in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. The Professor didn't get up and his jaw was bleeding. The Space Marine said "God was to busy torturing Saddam Hussein in hell to bother with you, so he sent me instead".

Space Marine?
I think it's time to put the W40K set down and go outside for a little while...

A stupid story is fucked up even more.

[Iliad]

A US Marine had just finished his 4 year military service and was taking courses at his local campus. The professor of his course stood up on the front podium and said "If the all powerful God really exists, he will prove it by knocking me off this podium within the next 15 minutes. If I'm still standing within the next 15 minutes, I will have proven that god does not in fact exist".

The time ticked by but nothing happened. Finally, after 10 minutes had gone by, the US space Marine stood up and punched the professor in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. The Professor didn't get up and his jaw was bleeding. The Space Marine said "God was to busy torturing Saddam Hussein in hell to bother with you, so he sent me instead".

I have a better story!

A devoutly christian man was jacking off in the rest area bathroom just off the interstate, hoping another man would come in so he could have a another tryst. Instead, a state trooper came in to pee and saw the religious man exposing himself. The trooper arrested him. Later on television, the christian man cried, invoked the name of his god a lot and claimed to be an awful sinner who would try to tame his ways by being a better christian. He had his mortified wife by his side to make it look better.

Later that month, having still not come to grips with his homosexuality, he put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He died instantly. Later his body was buried. His religious friends all debated whether he would go to heaven or hell but he went to neither...because you see, they don't exist and you don't go anywhere when you are dead. His wife re-married an atheist three months later and lived happily ever after!

Yay for pointless stories!

Let's have another!

You ages ago there were cavemen. These cavemen used fire and hunted and saw many thing which they didn't understand: fire, stars, seasons, plants. Because they couldn't explain it they made up magic. After much time they had idols to which they prayed to. But then the "magic" was becoming better, an evolution of religion. Polytheism started with pantheons of gods, and widely spread. For a long time the polytheism was on the top of the chain until another type of religion started Monotheism. It spread and replaced polytheism making certain polytheistic religions go extinct. For a long time monotheism ruled. It destroyed the idols and the polytheistic religions. And then suddenly KABOOM! A certain Charles Darwin wrote a certain book. At first not much happened. His views were laughed at but slowly the atheism spread, competing with the other religions. Slowly it spread more and more, and the old religions slowly became weaker. The spread is slow but unstoppable.

How's that?

[Neutrino]

A US Marine had just finished his 4 year military service and was taking courses at his local campus. The professor of his course stood up on the front podium and said "If the all powerful God really exists, he will prove it by knocking me off this podium within the next 15 minutes. If I'm still standing within the next 15 minutes, I will have proven that god does not in fact exist".

The time ticked by but nothing happened. Finally, after 10 minutes had gone by, the US space Marine stood up and punched the professor in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. The Professor didn't get up and his jaw was bleeding. The Space Marine said "God was to busy torturing Saddam Hussein in hell to bother with you, so he sent me instead".

I have a better story!

A devoutly christian man was jacking off in the rest area bathroom just off the interstate, hoping another man would come in so he could have a another tryst. Instead, a state trooper came in to pee and saw the religious man exposing himself. The trooper arrested him. Later on television, the christian man cried, invoked the name of his god a lot and claimed to be an awful sinner who would try to tame his ways by being a better christian. He had his mortified wife by his side to make it look better.

Later that month, having still not come to grips with his homosexuality, he put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He died instantly. Later his body was buried. His religious friends all debated whether he would go to heaven or hell but he went to neither...because you see, they don't exist and you don't go anywhere when you are dead. His wife re-married an atheist three months later and lived happily ever after!

Yay for pointless stories!

Let's have another!

You ages ago there were cavemen. These cavemen used fire and hunted and saw many thing which they didn't understand: fire, stars, seasons, plants. Because they couldn't explain it they made up magic. After much time they had idols to which they prayed to. But then the "magic" was becoming better, an evolution of religion. Polytheism started with pantheons of gods, and widely spread. For a long time the polytheism was on the top of the chain until another type of religion started Monotheism. It spread and replaced polytheism making certain polytheistic religions go extinct. For a long time monotheism ruled. It destroyed the idols and the polytheistic religions. And then suddenly KABOOM! A certain Charles Darwin wrote a certain book. At first not much happened. His views were laughed at but slowly the atheism spread, competing with the other religions. Slowly it spread more and more, and the old religions slowly became weaker. The spread is slow but unstoppable.

How's that?

I liked the one with Space Marines better.

[MeDeFe]

I liked the one with Space Marines better.

ok...


You ages ago there were space marines. These space marines used fire and hunted and saw many thing which they didn't understand: fire, stars, seasons, plants. Because they couldn't explain it they made up magic. After much time they had idols to which they prayed to. But then the "magic" was becoming better, an evolution of religion. Polytheism started with pantheons of gods, and widely spread. For a long time the polytheism was on the top of the chain until another type of religion started Monotheism. It spread and replaced polytheism making certain polytheistic religions go extinct. For a long time monotheism ruled. It destroyed the idols and the polytheistic religions. And then suddenly KABOOM! A certain Charles Darwin wrote a certain book. At first not much happened. His views were laughed at but slowly the atheism spread, competing with the other religions. Slowly it spread more and more, and the old religions slowly became weaker. The spread is slow but unstoppable.

[Iliad]

A US Marine had just finished his 4 year military service and was taking courses at his local campus. The professor of his course stood up on the front podium and said "If the all powerful God really exists, he will prove it by knocking me off this podium within the next 15 minutes. If I'm still standing within the next 15 minutes, I will have proven that god does not in fact exist".

The time ticked by but nothing happened. Finally, after 10 minutes had gone by, the US space Marine stood up and punched the professor in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. The Professor didn't get up and his jaw was bleeding. The Space Marine said "God was to busy torturing Saddam Hussein in hell to bother with you, so he sent me instead".

I have a better story!

A devoutly christian man was jacking off in the rest area bathroom just off the interstate, hoping another man would come in so he could have a another tryst. Instead, a state trooper came in to pee and saw the religious man exposing himself. The trooper arrested him. Later on television, the christian man cried, invoked the name of his god a lot and claimed to be an awful sinner who would try to tame his ways by being a better christian. He had his mortified wife by his side to make it look better.

Later that month, having still not come to grips with his homosexuality, he put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He died instantly. Later his body was buried. His religious friends all debated whether he would go to heaven or hell but he went to neither...because you see, they don't exist and you don't go anywhere when you are dead. His wife re-married an atheist three months later and lived happily ever after!

Yay for pointless stories!

Let's have another!

You ages ago there were cavemen. These cavemen used fire and hunted and saw many thing which they didn't understand: fire, stars, seasons, plants. Because they couldn't explain it they made up magic. After much time they had idols to which they prayed to. But then the "magic" was becoming better, an evolution of religion. Polytheism started with pantheons of gods, and widely spread. For a long time the polytheism was on the top of the chain until another type of religion started Monotheism. It spread and replaced polytheism making certain polytheistic religions go extinct. For a long time monotheism ruled. It destroyed the idols and the polytheistic religions. And then suddenly KABOOM! A certain Charles Darwin wrote a certain book. At first not much happened. His views were laughed at but slowly the atheism spread, competing with the other religions. Slowly it spread more and more, and the old religions slowly became weaker. The spread is slow but unstoppable.

How's that?

I liked the one with Space Marines better.

[AlgyTaylor]

In the battle between the religious and the athiests is there a reason for the agnostics to be smug? Well we currently do not know, but at least they know that they currently don't know and that probably counts for something. If it does I just don't know.

Just being pedantic, but technically all (or the overwhlemingly vast majority of) atheists are in fact agnostics as they know exactly what it would take for them to believe in god. Whereas the religious, possibly with a small number of exceptions, do not have a point when they'd cease to believe in god.

Like me, however, they have the same 'agnostic' feeling towards God that they do to the easter bunny/tooth fairy

[Guiscard]

In the battle between the religious and the athiests is there a reason for the agnostics to be smug? Well we currently do not know, but at least they know that they currently don't know and that probably counts for something. If it does I just don't know.

Just being pedantic, but technically all (or the overwhlemingly vast majority of) atheists are in fact agnostics as they know exactly what it would take for them to believe in god. Whereas the religious, possibly with a small number of exceptions, do not have a point when they'd cease to believe in god.

Like me, however, they have the same 'agnostic' feeling towards God that they do to the easter bunny/tooth fairy

That doesn't make most Atheists Agnostic. Having a clear idea of what it would take to believe in God means that you believe it to be provable, which (coupled with the fact that Atheists generally think they know or can prove there is no God) is just about as textbook definition of NOT being Agnostic as you could get.

Agnosticism means either you don't know whether God exists or you don't believe we CAN know whether or not God exists.

[Bavarian Raven]

I think this one quote by Mr. Goodkind sums this entire argument up in one quick short bit:

"People are stupid. They will believe anything they want to believe or fear to be true."

[OnlyAmbrose]

Faith is everywhere, certainly not just in religion. There are few basic facts that can really be ascertained, because most "facts" rely on a given which is an assumption based on faith.

Empirical evidence is seen by many as "fact" (myself included), but even then, it relies on a basic assumption of faith that empirical evidence is valid. Empirical evidence is gathered by the senses, but that presupposes a basic faith in the senses. They are, in essence, how we perceive the outside world, and there is NO WAY of proving that they are correct. Really, the only thing you can prove is your own existence, and even that is sketchy (I think therefore I am).

My point is that our perception of "truth" is entirely based on faith, or rather, what you put faith in. Most Christians put faith in God in the same way that they put faith in their senses - it's a basic, though unprovable, assumption which has determined their perception of truth.