Let me sum it up for you. "Just cuz."

[quote=tey]Let me sum it up for you. "Just cuz."[/quote]

Hi, Tey.

Why do you believe in God?
[i]
"Just Cuz"[/i]

Don't troll, please.

Thanks.

Oh, forgive my sarcastic remark.

If it's short enough for you, I have a 76 page thesis on the very subject. I expect full rebuttals on each and every point :).

No really though, specific questions. There is no short answer on such a broad topic.

Now to go back on what I said? Shoooort answer: because no evidence has been presented. Until good enouch evidence is presented, I shall not believe.

Long answer? i also have various philosophical objections to the position, as well as some scientific ones, as well as the basic one of Ockham's Razor.

[quote=the ozonized]
Why do I belive in God, because it makes more sense than beliving in nothing. and do you have any proof that he doesnt exist?[/quote]

This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Which god do you believe in? I rather believe in nothing, because there are too many gods. What if I pick the wrong god?

Damn if you do, damn if you don't, huh?

[quote]and dont say evolution.[/quote]

Evolution.

[quote]Evolution is nonsensical,[/quote]

Fuck you. It makes more sense that creation.

Idiot.

[quote]If it was true why is it so hard to find missing links.[/quote]

[url=http://www.freethinkingteens.com/forum/freethinking_teens_community/the_world_of_science/2715]See here.[/url]

[quote]Please correct me if im wrong, but It works on the idea that it takes hundereds of years to have one species turn into another. so why is it so hard to find little rats slowly but surely getting wings so that they become bats.[/quote]

*SIGH*

[url=http://www.freethinkingteens.com/forum/freethinking_teens_community/the_world_of_science/2715]See here.[/url]

[quote]Or apes slowly starting to have shorter tails and stand up straight to be humans.[/quote]

[url=http://www.freethinkingteens.com/forum/freethinking_teens_community/the_world_of_science/2715]See above.[/url]

[quote]So what loss do I have IF there is no God?
But what have You lost if there is?[/quote]

Fuck Pascal's Wager.

Here is a [url=http://www.freethoughtfirefighters.org/a_refutation_of_pascals_wager_Massimo_Pigliucci.htm]refutation[/url] of Pascal's Wager by Massimo Pigliucci.

[quote]1) Why does it make more sense to believe in God than believe in nothing?[/quote]

In order for something material to exist. Does it not need to be created?

[quote]2) I don't need proof he doesn't exist, the burden of proof is on the positive claim. For example, if I that I have invented a cup that never needs refills, because it stays full, you would want proof of said object.[/quote]

This claim may work, but only for agnostics. In my opinion, any extreme claim should provide some sort of evidence to back it up. In your example, if no evidence is presented for the cup then the person is neutral and may assume the cup doesn't exist, but cannot possibly be certain without evidence of their own.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought atheism said that there definitely is no god at all. If this is the case, then atheism is an extreme claim and should therefore provide evidence to back up that claim.

[quote]False. Most agnostics are atheists. Agnostic by knowledge, atheist by belief.

Atheism is the lack of belief in a god.[/quote]

The video on the link you posted says that there are atheists who believe "Absolutely there are no gods. There is no proof of any gods. No gods exist out there. There are no gods there, here, anywhere. There's just no gods." I believe he called them "strong atheists."

i love how when I, as an atheist, say I do not believe in God, people say 'but you can't KNOW!'

However, when the same Christian claims belief in God, he does not know either. People have no problem understanding the difference between knowledge and belief until they are proclaiming the arrogance of others.

[quote]Why do I belive in God, because it makes more sense than beliving in nothing. and do you have any proof that he doesnt exist?[/quote] Oh I do:

Contradictions of your bible and...

[quote] and dont say evolution. Evolution is nonsensical, If it was true why is it so hard to find missing links. [/quote]

Evoulution. If evolution has missing links I'll bring up your book of irrogance that says we have to suns and the world compelety flooded.

[quote]
Please correct me if im wrong,[/quote]
Ok. Your wrong. Next.

[quote] but It works on the idea that it takes hundereds of years to have one species turn into another. so why is it so hard to find little rats slowly but surely getting wings so that they become bats. Or apes slowly starting to have shorter tails and stand up straight to be humans.[/quote]
1.) Rats didnt become bats, genius. As of this year their is evidnece coming up showing that mammals were quite larger than rats.
2.) Apes didnt become our anscetor, thier our cousins. You show read up before explaining nothing.
3.) Can you explain where the bible explains [i]vestigal orgains[/i]? Your an obivsly a bright fellow and show know what vestigal means without getting your wrong facts from Wiki, opps. I spoke too soon.

[quote]So what loss do I have IF there is no God?[/quote]
You wasted:
1)Time
2)Money (donations in the church)
3)My time
[quote]But what have You lost if there is?[/quote]
Nothing:
1) Id go to hell if I dont believe in God
2) YOU go to hell because you worship him out of fear of hell ratherless love.

[quote]Such as?[/quote]
[url=http://www.submission.org/christians/bible-contradictions.html]These are some.[/url]

[quote]I'm not familiar with the two suns; enlighten me. Why is a universal flood so ignorant?[/quote]
"God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and god set them in the firmament to give light to the earth" (Gen 1:16-17)

Can anyone proove an universal flood? Id like to see that, have fun on the Himilayians.

[quote]Does the Bible need to explain vestigial organs?[/quote] Yea, I want to know why I have a tail in my back.

[quote]Oh, and many evolutionists are attempting to change the definition of vestigial simply because they cannot prove that a particular organ has no function at all; they just don't know what it does. [/quote] Prove please.

[quote]
[Sidenote: Why are you making fun of him for getting something wrong when you can't even go two words without a misspelling. Insults in a debate are useless, although adimittedly I have used them before.][/quote]

1) I mispell because I type fast and I have a laptop where the letters are very close, I could spend 10 extra mintues proffreading the letters but people can read them.

2) Good that you show your hpycriosy.

[quote]If possible, I would like to ask you guys to hold your comments until KCahill responds. I just want to hear what he thinks first.[/quote] Sounds like your ready to hit reply and tell me Im wrong without proof.

EDIT

Forget this one:
[quote]Are you saying Christians worship God only because they fear hell?[/quote] [url=http://http://www.freethinkingteens.com/forum/freethinking_teens_community/freethinkers_debate/2634]Please read the post[/url]

[quote]Quote:
Such as?

These are some.[/quote]

The first point i will respond to tomorrow because I need to go to bed.

[quote]"God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and god set them in the firmament to give light to the earth" (Gen 1:16-17)[/quote]

Mr. Sun, meet Mr. Moon. The moon reflects the sun's light at night. Pretty sure the sun and moon are what it's talking about.

[quote]Can anyone proove an universal flood? Id like to see that, have fun on the Himilayians.[/quote]

Not to you maybe.

[quote]2) Good that you show your hpycriosy.[/quote]

More of a mistake than hypocrisy.

[quote]Sounds like your ready to hit reply and tell me Im wrong without proof.[/quote]

Nope, not at all.

[quote=logos]
I think you missed the point of the conversation. It's about the burden of proof. You claimed the burden of proof is only on those who believe in God, I said otherwise.[/quote]

Well, in debate, ignoring the points is seen by the judges as not having a rebuttal. Since you ignored 3/5 of my original points, I'll assume that means you've already failed 60% of the argument.

As for your point, burden of proof is on the positive claimant.If I claim there are leprechauns under my garden, and you say, no they're not, you're a freaking moron, the burden of proof is on me, and you would have made a valid point. If I claim that I have a potential theory of gravity, the burden of proof is on me. Once all of that which I have sat out to prove is shown logically consistent with everything in the world to an extreme degree,meaning there is no rational objection to using those mathematical models, THEN, and only then does the burden rest on you to disprove my point. Christianity has obviously not met that standard.

[quote]
Such as?[/quote]
You already have a list, I'll leave you to that one. But the 4 accounts of the gospels have many differences, including something so pivotal as Jesus Christ, the only son of God's LAST WORDS. If you believed he was the Son of Freakin' God, would you forget his last freakin' words? I think not...

[quote]
I'm not familiar with the two suns; enlighten me. Why is a universal flood so ignorant?[/quote]

Because there's not enough... water? Because to rain that much, you'd have to rain enough to sink a modern steel tanker a hundred times over(I might be exaggerating slightly, but the point stands).

[quote]
Does the Bible need to explain vestigial organs? Oh, and many evolutionists are attempting to change the definition of vestigial simply because they cannot prove that a particular organ has no function at all; they just don't know what it does. [/quote]

As of when? Can you provide some sort of link? Even if the definition of vestigial is changed, however, the point still stands that There are things we have which we no longer use, which ONCE had a use. This is to be expected by evolution, but not to be expected by Intelligent Design. There are also certain structural errors, which work, and thus evolved, but are not perfect. This is because the most perfect possible things WOULD be irreducibly complex, and thus cannot form by evolution. Before you decry this as a contradiction, I do believe that there are irreducibly complex things, just not that any exist. They are potentials, and yet not potentials, as they could not evolve.

[quote]
Are you saying Christians worship God only because they fear hell?

If possible, I would like to ask you guys to hold your comments until KCahill responds. I just want to hear what he thinks first.[/quote]

Sorry, I just saw this. Hopefully it's just for the last part, as I have already written my responses

Oh my bad forgot to post the link to the vestigial organ thing:

[url=http://]www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/negative_03June2002.asp#vestigial[/url]

You could hardly use a worse source, but I shall address the vestigial point.

This is exactly the point we have been making about irreducible complexity the whole time. Yes, something like the ear could not simply come up by itself. But with the aid of vestigial organs, there are structures in place which can be co-opted to take on other roles(for example, the middle ear bones). Some vestigial organs are completely useless, such as the appendix, the tail bone etc... others have lost their use, but have picked up another use, because it's far more economic to do that than to make whole new systems.

What point do you think you're making? That sometimes evolutionary biologists change small parts of their theory to better suit the evidence? It's something Creationists should consider doing, addressing the evidence and thus having to change their theories. But no, it's much more 'faithful' to remain entrenched in your views.

[quote=logos]Oh my bad forgot to post the link to the vestigial organ thing:

[url=http://]www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/negative_03June2002.asp#vestigial[/url][/quote]

This is litteraly the worse source Ive ever seen. You give me a Christian Internet Site to disprove science. Thats hilarious.

Yes, I find these science debates somewhat pointless (although occasionally edifying), as the level of expertise is significantly lower. I find that reading books, from Dembski and Behe to Dawkins to Gould to textbooks is a far better way of making decisions. However, the problem with certain sources(namely answers in genesis), is their perspective. I will draw attention to this quote from their site.

"the scientific aspects of creation are important, but are secondary in importance to the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer and Judge"

This alone shows that their approach is not scientific, and biased completely. They have done no research or searching for data without the coloring lens of their current perspective. They constantly reject data that does not fit with things they already believe, such as trees above the age of 10000 years.

of course, it's not as bad as that 'anointed-ones' site. Richard Dawkins writes a lead-in section, as he often does in his books, talking about the unlikeliness and so forth of certain things, then goes on to explain how they could have happened, saying that creationists will quote him out of context, using just the first, leading-on part. Well, he was right, they use those exact quotes, neglecting to use the second part, much as they do for Darwin with his quote about the eye. For that site, I can only conclude that they cannot read more than one paragraph at a time, or are malicious and not out to present the facts clearly.

ummmm, apes don't have tails, and they do walk up right.

thanks for proving our point. [:

yeah, i went to a zoo the other day, you learn lots from them, check em out.

[quote]Evoulution. If evolution has missing links I'll bring up your book of irrogance that says we have to suns and the world compelety flooded.[/quote]

[quote]I'm not familiar with the two suns; enlighten me. Why is a universal flood so ignorant?[/quote]

oh yeah, has any christian ever taken into account that the world has something we call precipetation(SpellCheck)? Water must evaporate to have rain, considering around 70% of the world is water, and 30% is land, where did the other 30% of water needed to cover the earth come from? and where did it go? if it evaporated, it would rain again. if the so called flood happened, the earth would be doomed forever, than you evaporation, than you precepitation. you dissproved a flood.

oh yeah, and i didn't cite and sources, and i didn't copy, cut, paste anything. so, sorry to any christians who think i didn't think of this myself, i think of my own battles unless i need a little help backing it up.

but, don't christian's also use their own form of backing up their arguments? something called the bible, probably the WORST argumental tool available in the world today. why not use the quran? or the torah? oh yeah, because yours is right, and theirs is wrong. sorry, i forgot christians were right over everyone else.

[quote]This is litteraly the worse source Ive ever seen. You give me a Christian Internet Site to disprove science. Thats hilarious.[/quote]

Thats like me saying that you're dumb because you give me an evolutionary site to disprove the fact that God created the world. They are not only Christians but also scientists.

[quote]I know. Why didnt God tell them its the Moon? Thats the point.[/quote]

Maybe because God doesn't need to say the sun and the moon every time for people to understand. He probably thought they had some shred of intelligence.

Sry for these late posts ... I haven't been able to get on the site for awhile now ...

In response to KCahill's list of contradictions ... I have chosen four of the claims at random to disprove ... here it goes:

Obviously whoever came up with these contradictions is fairly uneducated in both Biblical context and Jewish customs:

[quote] Should we steal?

* Exodus 20:15 "Thou shalt not steal."
* Leviticus 19:13 "Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbor, neither rob him."

vs.

* Exodus 3:22 "And ye shall spoil the Egyptians."
* Exodus 12:35-36 "And they spoiled [plundered, NRSV] the Egyptians."
* Luke 19:29-34 "[Jesus] sent two of his disciples, Saying, Go ye into the village . . . ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him. . . . And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And they said, The Lord hath need of him."

I was taught as a child that when you take something without asking for it, that is stealing. [/quote]

These verses are completely taken out of context ...

1) Exodus 3:22 "And ye shall spoil the Egyptians."

Read Exodus 3:21-22 ... It states that the Egyptians were favorably disposed to the Israelites so that none of the Israelites left empty handed when the Israelite women asked their Egyptian neighbors for clothing and silver and gold. Hardly sounds like the Israelites are stealing. Plunder does not always mean taken by force.

2) Exodus 12:35-36 "And they spoiled [plundered, NRSV] the Egyptians."

Again read all of 35-36. It states that the Egyptians were favorably disposed to the Israelites.

3) Luke 19:29-34 "[Jesus] sent two of his disciples, Saying, Go ye into the village . . . ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him. . . . And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And they said, The Lord hath need of him."

Obviously the owners gave consent ... or they probably would have chased down the disciples and had them charged with theft, don't you think so?

Point refuted.

[quote]Shall we make graven images?

* Exodus 20:4 "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven . . . earth . . . water."
* Leviticus 26:1 "Ye shall make ye no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone."
* Deuteronomy 27:15 "Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image."

vs.

* Exodus 25:18 "And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them."
* I Kings 7:15,16,23,25 "For he [Solomon] cast two pillars of brass . . . and two chapiters of molten brass . . . And he made a molten sea . . . it stood upon twelve oxen . . . [and so on]"[/quote]

The commandment is not to make IDOLS to WORSHIP. They didn't bow to the pillars or the Cherubim. Point refuted.

[quote] Were women and men created equal?

* Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

vs.

* Genesis 2:18,23 "And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. . . . And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." [/quote]

Where does it say men and women weren't created equal? The significance of woman being taken from man is that they will be united as one flesh in marriage. Not that one is better than the other.

[quote] Who was Joseph's father?

* Matthew 1:16 "And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus."

vs.

* Luke 3:23 "And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli." [/quote]

Heli was Jacob's brother who died without bearing any children. If a man left behind a widow with no children, it was customary for the man's brother to marry his brother's widow and raise up children for he and his dead brother.

[quote]You mean the same people who fell to slavery and did not revolt? Or the same people who waited for Moses with the commandents and had ADD and couldnt wait too long so they made thier own gods?[/quote]

Oh, you mean the Israelites, some of the most brilliant military strategists in history?

[quote]Where does it say men and women weren't created equal? The significance of woman being taken from man is that they will be united as one flesh in marriage. Not that one is better than the other.[/quote]

"she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."

Man and woman werent equal because one came from the other.

[quote]Heli was Jacob's brother who died without bearing any children. If a man left behind a widow with no children, it was customary for the man's brother to marry his brother's widow and raise up children for he and his dead brother.[/quote]

Does it say that in the Bible?

[quote]About women...

Genesis 3:16- Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.[/quote]

So, men are the head of the household? That doesn't mean men and women are created unequal. Men have a responsibility to support their families and love and care for their wives. That what is means by "rule." Man's role is to lead his family through being a servant. Ever heard of Proverbs 31: 10-31?

Now you have:

10An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels.
11The heart of her husband trusts in her,
And he will have no lack of gain.
12She does him good and not evil
All the days of her life.
13She looks for wool and flax
And works with her hands in delight.
14She is like merchant ships;
She brings her food from afar.
15She rises also while it is still night
And gives food to her household
And portions to her maidens.
16She considers a field and buys it;
From her earnings she plants a vineyard.
17She girds herself with strength
And makes her arms strong.
18She senses that her gain is good;
Her lamp does not go out at night.
19She stretches out her hands to the distaff,
And her hands grasp the spindle.
20She extends her hand to the poor,
And she stretches out her hands to the needy.
21She is not afraid of the snow for her household,
For all her household are clothed with scarlet.
22She makes coverings for herself;
Her clothing is fine linen and (W)purple.
23Her husband is known in the gates,
When he sits among the elders of the land.
24She makes linen garments and sells them,
And supplies belts to the tradesmen.
25Strength and dignity are her clothing,
And she smiles at the future.
26She opens her mouth in wisdom,
And the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
27She looks well to the ways of her household,
And does not eat the bread of idleness.
28Her children rise up and bless her;
Her husband also, and he praises her, saying:
29"Many daughters have done nobly,
But you excel them all."
30Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,
But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.
31Give her the product of her hands,
And let her works praise her in the gates.

Nothing to say about the other arguments KCahill?