Good Ol' Fashioned God Debate

[Dixanadu]

God bless America.

[Strike Witch]

God bless Gundam.

[MarsMudoken]

God bless Oddworld Forums.

[Nate]

God bless the topic which you are off.

God bless the humour which you are failing at.

God bless those who post offtopic after me who will receive infractions.

[Nemo]

No we don't. We don't belive in any higher power. Thinking they are both evil makes you a pussy agnostic.

Actually, that makes an anti-theist. Agnostics merely believe that evidence of a higher power is impossible.

[Josh]

Feh, close enough.

[Nate]

Actually, that makes an anti-theist. Agnostics merely believe that evidence of a higher power is impossible.

Wouldn't an anti-theist actively believe that there is no god, rather than simply not believe that there is a god?

[Nemo]

From what I've heard, there are two different uses for the word anti-theist.

One that says an anti-theist is a person who actively believes that there is no god, and one that says an anti-theist is someone who believe that either god, or the belief in a god, is harmful or evil.

Edit:

Or that it makes you a pussy as Josh was saying.

[Wings of Fire]

Wouldn't being antitheist be like being antisocial as opposed to asocial?

And wouldn't that make New Atheists like Richard Dawkins antitheists?

[OANST]

Mark Twain was atheist

This is what Samuel Clemens had to say about religion:

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life--hence it is a valuable possession to him.

In other words, yes. He was an atheist. But he was also a really fucking nice one.

Also, I'm a direct descendant of Samuel Clemens. Cool, but ultimately meaningless.

[Wings of Fire]

Mark Twain was a lot of things after he lost everything he had towards the end of his life.

Hoo boy.

[Havoc]

Yeah. If you'd actually bothered to read my post, you'd understand that that is the goddamn point. Keeping the law oral meant it developed with time and remained current and relevant; the religion didn't stagnate.

Yeah but I don't see how a set of rules can be at all useful if anyone can change them ever so slightly when they see fit.

Like, the original rule might be 'Murder is bad'. But 100 years later someone needs an excuse and makes 'Murder is bad... unless it's black people'. Or something, I dunno.

I get that it keeps the religion dynamic, but what's the point of having rules if they aren't documented in any way?

[Wings of Fire]

Yeah but I don't see how a set of rules can be at all useful if anyone can change them ever so slightly when they see fit.

So like Law then.

[Havoc]

Well no, not exactly. A person can bend the law or break it, but he can't claim that his version of the law is the real one because the real one is documented.

With oral law someone can claim it's the real law/rule and no-one else can prove that it isn't. So even if the rest of the community knows that this one person is wrong, it can and will still cause confusion.

[Wings of Fire]

Law is an active process though, it's changed all the time.

Every time a judge gives a sentence the law is changed a tiny bit.

[Havoc]

Maybe, but a law still can't be changed completely from one moment to the next. Murder can't be illegal one day and legal the next. With oral law that can't really happen either, but convince enough people that oral law never said that murder is illegal and you'll have eliminated that law entirely.

[Wings of Fire]

I don't think that's how Oral Law works though, I think like Nate said it's about making small changes and retifications to Written Law so it's still relevant to the times we live in.

But I do see your point on it being open to corruption.

[Nemo]

Wouldn't being antitheist be like being antisocial as opposed to asocial?

And wouldn't that make New Atheists like Richard Dawkins antitheists?

How do you mean?

[Wings of Fire]

How do you mean?

Atheist 'There is no God do what you want'

Antitheist: 'There is no God I WILL FIGHT THEE RELIGION'

[Nemo]

Yes, that would make someone an anti-theist.

Probably a better way to describe it would be that anyone who opposes a god or the idea of a god is an anti-theist.

[Pilot]

Mark Twain was a lot of things after he lost everything he had towards the end of his life.

Hoo boy.

tl;dr I'm not going to sit and read that whole thing. Link me to the juicy parts.

[Wings of Fire]

tl;dr I'm not going to sit and read that whole thing. Link me to the juicy parts.

"And you are going away, and will not come back any more?"

"Yes," he said. "We have comraded long together, and it has been pleasant - pleasant for both; but I must go now, and we shall not see each other any more."

"In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?"

Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, "There is no other."

A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from his, bringing with it a vague, dim, but blessed and hopeful feeling that the incredible words might be true - even must be true.

"Have you never suspected this, Theodor?"

"No. How could I? But if it can only be true -"

"It is true."

A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast, but a doubt checked it before it could issue in words, and I said, "But - but - we have seen that future life - seen it in its actuality, and so -"

"It was a vision - it had no existence."

I could hardly breathe for the great hope that was struggling in me. "A vision? - a vi -"

"Life itself is only a vision, a dream."

It was electrical. By God! I had had that very thought a thousand times in my musings!

"Nothing exists; all is a dream. God - man - the world - the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars - a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space - and you!"

"I!"

"And you are not you - you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream - your dream, creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me . . .

"I am perishing already - I am failing - I am passing away. In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever - for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!

"Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago - centuries, ages, eons, ago! - for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities.

Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane - like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell - mouths mercy and invented hell - mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! . . .

"You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier.

"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.

[Nate]

Yeah but I don't see how a set of rules can be at all useful if anyone can change them ever so slightly when they see fit.

Like, the original rule might be 'Murder is bad'. But 100 years later someone needs an excuse and makes 'Murder is bad... unless it's black people'. Or something, I dunno.

I get that it keeps the religion dynamic, but what's the point of having rules if they aren't documented in any way?

True. I've glossed over the finer detail of processes though. The fundamental books of the Oral Law (which were codified in the first 500 years AD) - the Talmud - aren't lists of Do this, do that. They're actually a series of discussions on the various issues and topics that set down the parameters of the Oral Law and how its interpretted. Any topic will list all viewpoint and will be argued thoroughly with individuals being forced to back up their opinion with relevant texts and proofs.

To clarify what I said earlier; people would not simply change a law to fit current circumstances. They'd interpret the law as they knew it through the perspective of their current lives. Because back then it was not written down, that meant that the law could subtly develop over time.

However, this was not the man on the street making these decisions. They were scholars and judges who had dedicated their lives to studying and discussing the law. Ultimately decisions would be made by majority consensus following their own rules and with sufficient logical argument to make their case.

[moxco]

I wish some more christfags come to this thread. I feel like arguing.

[STM]

I'll argue with you MoxCo (lol at responding ot being called a Christfags)

May I end your statement about breaking the law Nate by saying anything posted off topic is spam when you yourself have been talking about Law on a God debate topic for a good portion of this page, doesn't that mean you should punish yourself and everyone who joined in that conversation.

That, is applying the subject into context, what you did is a microcosm of how people bend and break the law.

Anyway MoxCo, I propose to you that there is a God, determinable by the amazing 'accidents' that brought life about, for example, Earth being perfectly close to the Sun for life to even be comprehensible. ...

[Sekto Springs]

As Nate pointed out, given the immense size of the universe, these "divine" accidents can be a constant. Even a trillion-to-one odds becomes an insignificant ratio when you consider the massive scale.

[STM]

But we aren't sure how massive the universe is, and remember, most if the Universe is nothing, no atoms or anything. Did you think that eventually, if the universe is growing, then every atom will be so far apart, nothing will exist anymore, just black holes eating other black holes (since every planet will have been eaten by the BH) and anyone still surviving at the edge of the universe can only wait for the universe to eventually stop expanding. Nothing can prepare you for that so I say, I expect the apocalypse rather than that.

[moxco]

Let us start by counting planets.

Our solar system has nine planets in it (including the dwarf planet Pluto).

Our solar system is a part of the Milky Way galaxy. Many attempts have been made to estimate the star count of the Milky Way. Some scientist estimate only 50 billion. Others estimate up to 600 billion. For the purpose of this example I will use 250 billion (It's somewhat in the middle).

There have also been multiple attempts to estimate the amount of galaxies in our universe; these have ranged from 100 billion to 500 billion. Once again I'll use 250 as a nice middle-ish number.

So assuming there are 250 billion galaxies with 250 billion stars we should have, in total 62,500 billion stars. Now multiply that by nine for all the planets orbiting each star. And we get 562500000000000.

That is 562 trillion, 500 billion planets (a very rough estimate could be a lot more or less)

With that many planets in our universe it's not that amazing that our planet has the right temperature and chemicals that are capable of supporting life.

[Josh]

If you count Pluto you have to count Haumea, Makemake, Eris and Ceres.

Also Scraptrapman, that is not how it works.

[STM]

What do you mean that's not how it works.

Eventually, there will only be black holes and nothing. Black holes can occur after a red giant destroys itself, once these black holes destroy everything else. that's it.