Thread 33493166

Is God real?

>>33493166 (OP)
>Is God real?
No. He is Santa Claus for grown ups. You tell children about Santa to get them to do what you want; you tell grown ups about God to get them to do what you want.

>>33493166 (OP)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

>Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.[

>>33493166 (OP)
define real

>>33493166 (OP)
Who are you asking is real? Jesus? YHVH? Neither of them are The Creator.

>>33493240
>define real
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

Highly condensed answer: there must be *some* experiment whose results will be consistently different if God exists than they would be if he doesn't.

Consider a famous illustration by Carl Sagan.

Link: http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/110/Sagan.pdf

>"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

>Suppose... I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

>"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.

> "Where's the dragon?" you ask.

> "Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

> You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

>"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

> Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

> "Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

> You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

> "Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

>Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof, are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.

>>33493166 (OP)
Yes!

Ahhh to be dumb

If God wasn't real, would this people waste their entire lives trying to disprove? If it's not real, it shouldn't affect their lives. But it's real, they know he exists, and they hate him.

>>33493293
He's not The Creator and you're mad about it.

>>33493166 (OP)
Enigmatic nature of creation is real.

>>33493293
A non-existent God has no effect on our lives, but other people's false belief in him very much does. People fly aeroplanes into buildings because they believe in God. If you happen to be in the building at the time, this affects you. Try and be a little less retarded.

>>33493166 (OP)
>Is God real?
Which god do you mean? Zeus? Odin? Qetzlcoatl?

>>33493166 (OP)
Yes.

>>33493429
>People fly aeroplanes into buildings because they believe in God.

some enlightened people massacre innocent believers, so what. people do evil regardless of worldview

>>33493301
>He's not The Creator and you're mad about it.
Yes he is, and you wouldn't take your time to write this if he wasn't. You know God exists, he is the creator. Yet you hate him, because if he exists, you are living in sin.

>>33493429
That was more because Israel wanted to galvanise the US into aggression against anti Zionist.

>>33493664
If he were, you wouldn't need Apologetics and he wouldn't need to convince you. He's just all you have. You're waging an identity war with The One Infinite Creator.

>>33493166 (OP)
God is real but people like to think that He isn't just to not feel guilty when they have gay sex

>>33493677
Says the guy that always brings up homo shit. You need help.

>>33493166 (OP)
Definitely. Nowdays it's mostly midwits who deny it due to supporting contrarianism, or thinking that they're better than the rest of society.
Actual smart people have historically not only believed, but went further to research theology and devote themselves to worship.
Gauss, Euler, Newton, bernoullis, Leibniz, Descartes... Even the geniuses which did't stam from the west like Ramanujan would dedicate their lives to religion.

>>33493747
My belief system flies in the face of what you were taught by the world.

>>33493659
>people do evil regardless of worldview
That's true, but it's also a fine case of whataboutism. Religion specifically requires people to suspend their ability to think critically. All religions do this: they all promote "Faith", and having "strong faith" is pushed as the ultimate virtue and something to aspire to beyond anything else. But what is "strong faith"? It is the ability to continue believing in something even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it isn't true. That is not something people should aspire to. Eliminating the ability to think clearly is extremely dangerous.

Subscribing to a religion is an act of absolute moral abdication. A believer no longer has to make decisions about what is right or wrong; what is right is what God says is right, and this CANNOT be contradicted or argued against. What God wants is right, and that is axiomatic.

If you tell an unbeliever "God wants you to fly this plane into a building" then he can reply "I don't give a fuck what God wants, it's wrong, and I'm not doing it." But the only defence a believer has is to say "um, er, well, are you *sure* that's what God wants?" And he's already four fifths of the way towards obeying.

So yes, absolutely, evil people will always do evil things, and being an atheist doesn't prevent a person from being evil. Neither does religion. But it is only religion that makes GOOD people do evil things, in the sincere belief that they are doing good. That is why religion is uniquely damaging and dangerous.

>>33493747
Nice appeal to authority fallacy, there.

>>33493166 (OP)
Yes, and she's black

>>33493781
>Nowdays it's mostly midwits who deny it due to supporting contrarianism, or thinking that they're better than the rest of society.
Called it.