OK, but does that include you possibly learning something? Cos I see me 3 years ago in you and I didn't really listen to anyone. I knew it, and everyone else just didn't get it.

Be honest, I'm not trying to f**k up your s**t mate. But I see in what you put an aggressive, revengeful hatred of religion (OH boy do I understand that). Maybe I'm wrong, if I am correct me and I'll be done. It's hard to judge tone over the net so I might well be off on this one.

If I'm not, I'm not telling you to change your beliefs, I asking you to change your approach so more people will be prepared to listen to you and understand.

__________________
Manu Chao - Bongo Bong

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious." - Oscar Wilde

"Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise." - Sir Francis Bacon

I'm always very much willing to learn new stuff. I don't think it's possible for me learn something new and influential regarding religion, organized or not, than I do though.
I'm not vengeful as I was never seriously religious in my life. But I am perhaps a bit aggresive. My lack of patience probably plays a part there.
Good advice. I wish I could follow it.

I agree, muslims are retarded.

Thanks for participating.

In order to base what you know on what you observe and can measure, you have to trust your ability to observe. Further to some degree or another you have to believe that your ability is the best anyone's will be.

There may be total proof that God exists that you are unable or more likely unwilling to observe. You may well chalk this proof to the wrong source because in the end you are just making an assumption.

Technically, if you step outside of being agnostic in either direction you are going purely on belief.

Smae goes for pink unicorns in your teacup. Greater ability to observe may well prove them to be fact. Pink unicorns in your teacup can never be logically more than really unlikely or you are taking a sort of leap of faith that what you observe and measure is all that there is.

My friend in an infinate, yet ever expanding universe I would contend that anything that our simple brains can concieve has to be real at some point in the past, present, or future. Eventually, over enough time there will be or has been pink unicorns in someone's tea cup and even more utterly unimaginable stuff.

Let's say that the odds against God's existence are like a googleplex to the googleplex power to one. That means that eventually there will be God.

DanishDynamite you are no different than most religious people. You do exactly what they do, put the universe in a box you can relate to and take comfort in. Seriously, God could pop in tommorow, talk to you at great length, perform a miracle or two, and give you xray vision to boot and you'd either decide you had gone nutts or invent some other possibility. just as someone along the line probably have met an alien and in awe made them to be a diety.

You count on faith and belief just as much as anyone else, you just play a shell game with words and their definitions.

I have to assume that the information I receive through my senses actually reflect a world "out there". Yes. Otherwise I would be a solipsist.
No, I don't need to make that assumption. As long as it it is fairly average that's fine.
What sort of evidence would you feel was clinching in prooving the existence of any god or gods?
Technically, I don't see how. Could you explain?

Atheism would seem to be the obvious default position. Just as non-belief in teacups orbiting Alpha Centauri would seem to be the default position.
Indeed, it is possible that pink unicorns are drinking tea while orbiting some star, but this notion isn't supported by any evidence and hence not the default position.
You may contend whatever your fancy desires my friend, but without a modicum of reason to think your daydream contentions have any basis in fact, they must remain daydreams.
How could there eventually be a God? I thought part of the definition of almost any god currently invented by us humans was that it had existed since the beginning of time and in fact usually created time?
I'm different from most religious people in the sense that I don't assume things exist just because it would nice if they did.
I don't see how. Could you explain?

I am 92yrs of age and the question you asked, is relevant to me since I was 10 yrs of age, to find the truth of life you need to have an open mind, and not fear death.

I always find it funny when people get so into a debate that they start arguing about the existance of knowledge. I always see someone mention that knowledge requires faith, because you don't know whether or not the matrix has you. Furthermore, all of science is a leap of faith, since it could all be artifice of the matrix. They then equate that leap of faith with the leap of faith require to believe in god.

First, it doesn't matter if nothing we percieve is real, or that our perception is flawed, or whatever it is exactly that they're implying. If you can't assume our perception/experience/senses to be accurate, then there's no point in discussing this, because we can't be sure what the other person is saying. There would be no point learning science, since it's all based on people's flawed perception, so any conclusions (gravity, physics, the electrical laws that make your computer work) must be thought of as one person's personal beliefs.

Second, the leap of faith required to believe what you see, and to trust people who have evidence of their truth, is pretty (*)(*)(*)(*) small. There is no way to put it in the same league as believing the existance of something that is by definition outside of existance.

try telling that to an atheist who believes he has no blind belief like religious people. yet the lack of belief in god is itsself just as strong as a religious persons belief in a faith. truth cannot be achieved with belief and faith. thats why i chose to be agnostic.

good post. it makes a lot of sense.

Bingo .

__________________
Manu Chao - Bongo Bong

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious." - Oscar Wilde

"Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise." - Sir Francis Bacon