Barack Obama is the Antichrist

[Captain_Tea]

It all comes down to what you consider to be reliable evidence. Obviously, as you have just stated, there are experiences you have had that you consider evidence for the existence of a god, presumably the Christian god.

The difference between a person that experiences this possible evidence and forms a belief in a god versus a person who has the same experience and does not form a belief in a god is the intriguing part to me. To believe or to not believe is often determined by the way the person interprets the "experience".

Those "interpreting/critical thinking" skills are often shaped by such factors as how and where we grew up, what our parents believe and passed to us, peer pressure, cultural/societal sway, emotional response to dramatic experiences coupled with an understanding or misunderstanding of statics and probability, causality and correlation, and other factors. Combine all that with the fact that we often apply our critical thinking selectively, depending on the topic.

My point is (and I'm not trying to judge your personal experience), we often come to subjective conclusions to things that are objective in nature and can be figured out with chalking it up to a higher power. It's human nature.

In my opinion, the definition of religious faith is a strongly held belief without evidence at all or with subjective, possibly unreliable "evidence".

A true knowledge of God is based upon divine testimony which is accepted by faith, but which is also confirmed for us by evidences of various types. The testimony of Scripture about such matters as the work of Christ on the cross and justification by faith are things which can't be proved; they are accepted by faith.

The Bible acknowledges the reality that many people will not believe no matter how compelling the evidence. Remember the story in Luke 16 about the rich man who died and suffered torment? He begged Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his brothers about what they also faced. Listen to the response. Abraham said, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead." A determined will can ignore the best of evidence.

Unless we are talking about proof in the mathematical sense, we need to note that proof is person-relative; what will convince one person might not convince another. This doesn't mean, however, that Christianity only becomes true when someone is convinced. It's true whether anyone believes it or not.

 

[Jacks:Revenge]

The Bible acknowledges the reality that many people will not believe no matter how compelling the evidence. A determined will can ignore the best of evidence.

I'm sorry, where's this evidence?

 

[Captain_Tea]

I'm sorry, where's this evidence?

It's all around you.

 

[TomWithTheWeather]

A true knowledge of God is based upon divine testimony which is accepted by faith, but which is also confirmed for us by evidences of various types.

What are these various type of "evidence"?

The testimony of Scripture about such matters as the work of Christ on the cross and justification by faith are things which can't be proved; they are accepted by faith.

The Bible acknowledges the reality that many people will not believe no matter how compelling the evidence. Remember the story in Luke 16 about the rich man who died and suffered torment? He begged Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his brothers about what they also faced. Listen to the response. Abraham said, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead." A determined will can ignore the best of evidence.

Unless we are talking about proof in the mathematical sense, we need to note that proof is person-relative; what will convince one person might not convince another. This doesn't mean, however, that Christianity only becomes true when someone is convinced.

The kind of proof or evidence I'm talking about is objective, observable, and scientific, none of which exists to point to the existence of a god or anything supernatural for that matter.

So by your logic:

You say: God exists.
I say: Why should I believe that?
You say: Because the Bible says God exists.
I say: Why should I believe the Bible?
You say: Because the Bible is the word of God.

That's faulty, circular logic. That's not proof at all.

And it's not about being willfully determined to ignore the "evidence", it's that the "evidence" doesn't hold up to any type of scientific, philosophical, or logical scrutiny.

It's true whether anyone believes it or not.

You believe it to be true, you don't know it to be true so you can't make that statement with any type of objectively-informed confidence. The thing is, the "evidence" isn't compelling in an objective way which is why you need faith in the first place.

The difference is, we value faith differently. For you, faith is good enough to justify your belief. For me, faith is nothing more than an acceptance of claims for which there is no objective evidence for.

 

[Captain_Tea]

What are these various type of "evidence"?



The kind of proof or evidence I'm talking about is objective, observable, and scientific, none of which exists to point to the existence of a god or anything supernatural for that matter.

So by your logic:

You say: God exists.
I say: Why should I believe that?
You say: Because the Bible says God exists.
I say: Why should I believe the Bible?
You say: Because the Bible is the word of God.

That's faulty, circular logic. That's not proof at all.

And it's not about being willfully determined to ignore the "evidence", it's that the "evidence" doesn't hold up to any type of scientific, philosophical, or logical scrutiny.



You believe it to be true, you don't know it to be true so you can't make that statement with any type of objectively-informed confidence. The thing is, the "evidence" isn't compelling in an objective way which is why you need faith in the first place.

The difference is, we value faith differently. For you, faith is good enough to justify your belief. For me, faith is nothing more than an acceptance of claims for which there is no objective evidence for.

I can go on and on about proof and cite endless apologetic books with very convincing arguments. The question I have is why does the burden of proof always fall on the believer? Why don't you prove to me that God doesn't exist. We can go back & forth in and endless debate about why I feel He exists and why others think god is a farce. How can you scientifically, philosophically, or logically disprove God or evidence of Him when you don't know what you don't know?

When it comes right down to it, it takes a lot less faith to believe in an eternal God who created all things than to believe that this universe just apeared one day and matter and energy just appeared out of nothing. That all manner of creatures designed themselves from a few basic elements. And just by chance the earth is just the right distance from the sun to support life. Just by some freak accident the moon is just the right size and distance from the earth to not disrupt its ability to support life. It is just by the laws of chaos that plants can photosynthesize sunlight into glucose to feed themselves. Those creatures that just happened to come into existance have brains and instincts to drive themselves to eat and survive. It takes far greater faith to believe that God doesn't exist given the alternative.

The fact of the matter is if you buy into post-modern thought that says truth is relative and there is no absolute truth, then you can never say with any certainty that anything is right or wrong, true or not true. If you follow the post-modern way of thinking, life is one great uncertainty with no meaning or purpose.

 

[Matfei]

I'm sorry, where's this evidence?

QFT.

Also any one who uses the bible as a means to try and prove any of it is just clutching at straws to justify their delusion. Imo anyway.

 

[Underscore]

The question I have is why does the burden of proof always fall on the believer?

This is very easy to answer. The reason the burden of proof is always on the believer is that if that were't the case, then anyone could claim absolutely anything they wanted, no matter how ridiculous, and then it would be assumed to be true until someone disproved it, even in cases where disproving the claim would be impossible. Clearly this is no way to argue.

 

[Mister_Prophet]

When it comes right down to it, it takes a lot less faith to believe in an eternal God who created all things than to believe that this universe just apeared one day and matter and energy just appeared out of nothing. That all manner of creatures designed themselves from a few basic elements.

Actually, I'd argue that a person's perception of what is simple and what is complicated is only relative to the person in question. To one person, God is the simple answer and the origin theories of the science ilk are the ones that are complex, and then again someone can think the complete reverse of that. Like say for example, me.

----

You all have different life experiences that tell you that what you feel in your gut is true and correct. The burden of proof here is on nobody. Now, in a situation where a national leader says God told him in a dream last night that China needs to be nuked, well that would be a situation where you could say, "pics, or it didn't happen." But that's different. You guys have nothing to prove to each other, and you couldn't do so regardless.

 

[Poker]

The question I have is why does the burden of proof always fall on the believer?

I lol'd. And I lol'd.

 

[Captain_Tea]

You guys have nothing to prove to each other, and you couldn't do so regardless.

Tru Dat. Nothing said in these forums is going to change what I believe.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

It all comes down to what you consider to be reliable evidence. Obviously, as you have just stated, there are experiences you have had that you consider evidence for the existence of a god, presumably the Christian god.

The difference between a person that experiences this possible evidence and forms a belief in a god versus a person who has the same experience and does not form a belief in a god is the intriguing part to me. To believe or to not believe is often determined by the way the person interprets the "experience".

Those "interpreting/critical thinking" skills are often shaped by such factors as how and where we grew up, what our parents believe and passed to us, peer pressure, cultural/societal sway, emotional response to dramatic experiences coupled with an understanding or misunderstanding of statics and probability, causality and correlation, and other factors. Combine all that with the fact that we often apply our critical thinking selectively, depending on the topic.

My point is (and I'm not trying to judge your personal experience), we often come to subjective conclusions to things that are objective in nature and can be figured out with chalking it up to a higher power. It's human nature.

In my opinion, the definition of religious faith is a strongly held belief without evidence at all or with subjective, possibly unreliable "evidence".

Sure, all I was getting at is that something like that can't really be refuted. It doesn't mean I'm right or I'm wrong, but I believe I'm right

 

[Vitamin-Carrot]

What is a shepard if there are no sheep ....


Nothing

 

[Larkin]

The question I have is why does the burden of proof always fall on the believer?

So by your logic:

You say: God exists.
I say: Why should I believe that?
You say: Because the Bible says God exists.
I say: Why should I believe the Bible?
You say: Because the Bible is the word of God.

That's faulty, circular logic. That's not proof at all.

Global Warming!

You both described the Global Warming weirdos!

Gotta love it.

edit:

Anyway, religion works as a theory of what could be and what could have been be it god/jesus, budda, Muhammad, or whatever else god like creator someone believes in, but when you go out and say its real that is when it all breaks down and at that point needs proof.

 

[TomWithTheWeather]

I can go on and on about proof and cite endless apologetic books with very convincing arguments.

Rather than rip into Christian Apologetics like my first response was going to be, I'll just ask, have you read any books from the opposite side of the debate?

The question I have is why does the burden of proof always fall on the believer? Why don't you prove to me that God doesn't exist. We can go back & forth in and endless debate about why I feel He exists and why others think god is a farce. How can you scientifically, philosophically, or logically disprove God or evidence of Him when you don't know what you don't know?

The burden of proof falls on the believer because he is one making the bold claims. If I stated that the sky was green, I would expect that you would require evidence in order to believe me.

The non-believer makes no such claims, thus has nothing to prove. An Atheist may claim that there is no god while the believer claims there is, but these two differing statements are not equal though. The believer is making an assertion without any evidence to back him up while the Atheist is making his assertion based on the probability of the chance that a god exists and that's a probability that is far less than 50/50.

When it comes right down to it, it takes a lot less faith to believe in an eternal God who created all things than to believe that this universe just apeared one day and matter and energy just appeared out of nothing.

This is the basic teleological argument with a little faith twist on top.

It takes no faith at all to acknowledge the reality around us and just because we don't yet know all the workings of the universe around us doesn't mean that we have to have faith in order to believe what we already know.

That all manner of creatures designed themselves from a few basic elements. And just by chance the earth is just the right distance from the sun to support life. Just by some freak accident the moon is just the right size and distance from the earth to not disrupt its ability to support life. It is just by the laws of chaos that plants can photosynthesize sunlight into glucose to feed themselves. Those creatures that just happened to come into existance have brains and instincts to drive themselves to eat and survive. It takes far greater faith to believe that God doesn't exist given the alternative.

Think about this: How would the world look if the Christian God designed it? Why did God wire up our brains and eyes up-side-down? Why did God allow for diseases and viruses? Why does God allow predation? What came before God? Etc, etc, etc.

All those things you just listed are exactly what the world would look like if God didn't have a hand in designing it and everything was left up to probability. What we see in nature around us is exactly what we would see given billions of years of time and the right combination of variables. What was see probably exists in other parts of the universe given is unfathomable size.

The fact of the matter is if you buy into post-modern thought that says truth is relative and there is no absolute truth, then you can never say with any certainty that anything is right or wrong, true or not true. If you follow the post-modern way of thinking, life is one great uncertainty with no meaning or purpose.

I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

The only meaning life has is whatever meaning or purpose we assign it.

Your life has very religious meaning apparently. Mine doesn't have a religious component, but it's filled with much of the same stuff; music, love, family, art, fun, exploration, appreciation, and nature. My life has lots of meaning and purpose.

 

[Jacks:Revenge]

It's all around you.

What is, your evidence? All I see around me are things born of natures biology and the constructs of man.

Did I miss the evidence?

Nothing said in these forums is going to change what I believe.

No ones trying to get you to change your mind, only pointing out the flaws in your reasons and the holes in your logic.
If you believe in god, fine. Just be careful how you throw around these indefensible statements about there being a god "because there is."

You also make the very odd statement about it requiring more faith in order to NOT believe in god. In fact, it takes no faith at all to believe everything is as random as it is. It's a pretty easy mindset and keeps me warm at night. You talk about all the little quirks in the world, how everything seems to fall perfectly into place and relate this to evidence for god. I think it shows just the opposite. Life and existence is a matter of circumstance, it was left up to chance.
The components to sustain life happen to be here on Earth. Which is exactly the point, they just happen to be here, the right conditions. And because we can only be here, and we're not anywhere else in the universe or able to see if this has happened elsewhere (yet) you're going to make the assumption we're special; that everything was created by one entity just for us, that we must be the only ones.
News flash: the universe is boundless. To say what happened on Earth hasn't happened anywhere else or that maybe the bible just neglected to mention any others is just dumbfounding.

God is supposedly perfect; all knowing and all powerful. If this was the case then apparently he's become a drunk and forgotten about us.

Tom says it well, above me.

 

[Underscore]

The non-believer makes no such claims, thus has nothing to prove. An Atheist may claim that there is no god while the believer claims there is, but these two differing statements are not equal though. The believer is making an assertion without any evidence to back him up while the Atheist is making his assertion based on the probability of the chance that a god exists and that's a probability that is far less than 50/50.

I don't think you can really invoke probabilities to make this kind of argument, because nobody knows anything about how probable gods are or the distribution of number-of-gods you would expect in a given universe, because there's only one universe to look at and no gods have ever been observed.

 

[Captain_Tea]

Debating religion and politics always ends the same way. I don't know why I even let myself get into these debates .

Everyone has their own thoughts and beliefs about God/Jesus. Some believe and some don't. No amount of data, logic or cleverly crafted argument is going to make a difference in swaying peoples opinion in the majority of cases. People shape their beliefs through the lens of their own personal world view. Obviously, I have a Biblical world view and most of you guys don't. This debate has reminded me that those of you who don't share my world view aren't going to think anything i've said makes any sense. My world view has been shaped by years of Bible study, answered prayer and personal experiences. I don't want to jam my beliefs down anyones throat and I apologize if it has seemed that way.

I will just say this and hopefully put an end to this debate that has no end in sight. If you really sincerely want to know if God/Jesus are real, there is only one way for each individual to find out. You have to pray to Him. Ask Him to show you that He's real. You just might be surprised at the outcome.

 

[GG-Xtreme]

I have a friend who believes that if the LHC successfully proves the big-bang theory, the universe formed will be ours and we will have effectively created ourselves in a paradox. Then there's no need to explain how everything came to be, because it created itself. That's his theory...

 

[ilkman]

I have a friend who believes that if the LHC successfully proves the big-bang theory, the universe formed will be ours and we will have effectively created ourselves in a paradox. Then there's no need to explain how everything came to be, because it created itself. That's his theory...

That doesn't answer the question of how something can create itself. Plus it violates the law of conservation of mass.

 

[Hadmar]

If you really sincerely want to know if God/Jesus are real, there is only one way for each individual to find out. You have to pray to Him. Ask Him to show you that He's real. You just might be surprised at the outcome.

Been there, done that, was surprised that I never got an answer from the invisible well-meaning being I was taught existed up there in heaven. Certain happenings in my childhood ended my relationship to God as so many inter-human relationships end: with open and loud spoken insults for the other party. Take a look at this world, at us humans and our societies. A real look. No omnipotent flawless loving god can create that frack up, and there's no way I'm buying the really lame "free will" excuse. For me there's only two possibilities:
He's It's not there.
And if it is, it's a god fracking arsehole and I'm not worshiping that.