What if there is no God?

(Daffy, are you ever gonna fix the title of of this thread?)

I wondered that too, it should be "What if thee is no God?"

outdoor338 wrote: What would you do if you found out daffy that there was a God and didn't live the way He wanted you to, what would you do?

Yes, would he continue to rebel?

cydl wrote: Organized religion has two purposes:
1. Keep people ignorant and frightened
2. Keep the power brokers in power

Sort of like the media!

Sounds like liberalism

The Viking wrote:

DaffyDick wrote: What if you found out that there was no God? What would you do, if you learned that everything you had been told about religion is a lie?

How would you feel if you learned that mankind is nothing more than a survival of the species, and that mankind is here by chance, and not by the grace of God?

And for those of you who don't believe in God, what stops you from just going out and taking what you want and doing whatever you please, as in the long run it won't matter anyway right? What are the consequenses of your actions during your life if you just end up as dust anyway? Why not go out in a selfish blaze of glory appeasing all your worldly and physical desires? What will it hurt? When your dead you won't care and it won't matter correct?

Ridiculous question. What stops us from just going out and commiting crimes is the will to help our fellow man and our society, not tear them down. Even animals do what is needed to help their group and I doubt that you can find too many believers among them. You've been brainwashed.

Albert Einstein wrote: The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.

The Merging of Spirit and Science

Is there such a creature as a conservative atheist? Probably not. That would be the ultimate oxymoron. No atheism is the bastion of the arrogant left. Nothing is greater than them (in their opinion)

PrintSmith wrote:

Scruffy wrote: No matter how many times you repeat yourself, atheism is not a faith. It is the absence of faith in a deity. Absence.

Belief and faith are not necessarily one and the same there Scruffy. Changing the word in an attempt to win the debate is at best disingenuous. What we were talking about was belief, not faith. Atheists believe there isn't a God. They don't know there isn't a God, they simply choose to believe that there isn't one. How about we stick with the same word we have been using in our back and forth, belief. An atheists beliefs and mine regarding the existence of a divine Creator may be on opposite sides of the same coin, but the coin is the same one - what we as individuals believe to be correct.

No, you are wrong. Atheism is the absence of belief in a deity. No claims or denials are made - an atheist is just a person who does not happen to be a theist. There is no "dis-belief" or "belief," there is just the absence of believing in something in which you (PrintSmith) believe.

Here's a link for you to research: http://www.alternet.org/belief/148555/i ... m_a_belief

A quote from that article, in case you don't want to go to the link:

For me, and for the overwhelming majority of atheists I know, our atheism is a provisional conclusion, based on careful reasoning and on the best available evidence we have. Our atheism is the conclusion that the God hypothesis is unsupported by any good evidence, and that unless we see better evidence, we're going to assume that God does not exist. If we see better evidence, we'll change our minds.

Look at it this way. Are you 100-percent certain that there are no unicorns? Are you 100-percent certain that the Earth is round? I assume the answer is a pretty heartfelt, "No." I assume you accept that it's hypothetically possible, however improbable, that unicorns really exist and that all physical traces of them have disappeared by magic. I assume you accept that it's hypothetically possible, however improbable, that the Earth really is a flat disc carried on the back of a giant turtle, and that all evidence to the contrary has been planted in our brains by hyper-intelligent space aliens as some sort of cosmic prank.

Does that mean your conclusions -- the "no unicorns/ round Earth" conclusions -- are articles of faith?

No. Of course not.

Your conclusion that there are no unicorns on this round Earth of ours is based on careful reasoning and the best available evidence you have. If you saw better evidence -- if there were a discovery of unicorns on a remote island of Madagascar, if you saw an article in the Times about an astonishing but well-substantiated archeological find of unicorn fossils -- you'd change your mind.

And that's the deal with atheism. If atheism is a belief, then any conclusion we can't be 100-percent certain of is a belief. And that's not a very useful definition of the word "belief." With the exception of certain mathematical and logic conclusions (along the lines of "if A and B are true, then C is true"), we don't know anything with 100-percent certainty. But we can still make reasonable conclusions about what is and is not likely to be true. We can still sift through our ideas, and test them, and make reasonable conclusions about how likely or unlikely they are. And those conclusions are not beliefs. If that's how you're defining belief, then just about everything we know is a belief.

Teddy wrote: Is there such a creature as a conservative atheist? Probably not. That would be the ultimate oxymoron. No atheism is the bastion of the arrogant left. Nothing is greater than them (in their opinion)

http://www.theatheistconservative.com/

Scruffy wrote:

The Viking wrote:

Scruffy wrote:

The Viking wrote: True Christians don't do anything out of fear. We have Faith and Grace so there is nothing to fear. We do everything out of love. Are we perfect? Of course not but it is a Christians' innate nature to love others as you would love yourself, even more so. And we don't expect anything in return.

Can you explain to us why you are a Christian? From your previous posts, and the escalator picture someone posted, it would seem that Christians are afraid of going to hell.

And as a Christian I am saved by Grace and have Faith so I am not worried abotu hell or living in fear of ending up there. What I do work for as a Christian is helping others who do not believe, to not end up there. It isn't a fear for myself, but a sadness for others.

Thanks, but that didn't answer my question. What was the driving force behind you becoming a Christian? I know that when I was "saved" at the age of 7, it was because I was afraid of burning in hell.

I'd like to know if Viking has an answer to this.

WhereDidMyVoteGo wrote:

major bean wrote:

DaffyDick wrote: What if you found out that there was no God? What would you do, if you learned that everything you had been told about religion is a lie?

How would you feel if you learned that mankind is nothing more than a survival of the species, and that mankind is here by chance, and not by the grace of God?

I would still sit down and ask myself "Why am I conscious?".

A trip to the library would answer that question for you.

Try "Discourse on the Method and Principles of Philosophy" by Descartes who most famously said, "I think therefore I am."

(Daffy, are you ever gonna fix the title of of this thread?)

You obviously did not understand the question "Why am I conscious?". Descartes does not answer this dilemna.
Consider this: I think, but you are not me. You think, but I am not you.