cogito ergo sum

[STM]

I'm so proud that we turned two non-religious threads into religious ones =)

And perhaps there's too many posts between mine and Oddhunters reply but I would like to say...I was joking mate

[Manco]

Well NOW I'm laughing.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

[STM]

Excellent, glad I could put a smile on yer pretty mug.

[ziggy]

Can you elaborate on this? If you have no religion, then why believe in God? It seems self-made and rather pointless to me. So enlighten me X_x Im curious.
What's your definition of God.

I don't have a huge definition I've established myself, but it goes pretty much with Phylum and WoF's interpretations. I just don't believe in Christianity or any other religion or believe anyone should follow the teachings of some prophet or anything like that. I'd also rather not waste every Sunday morning. A creator of some kind is the only way I can try to make sense of our universe, and I don't think we should put limits on 'what is out there.'

[Bullet Magnet]

Am I the only one who thinks it is remarkably stupid to make fundamental claims about the nature of the universe, not only from total ignorance but also because of total ignorance?

[ziggy]

Probably not

[OANST]

Think it? I didn't even understand it!

[MeechMunchie]

There's a God, I can tell because I don't know.

[STM]

There's a God, if there wasn't I wouldn't pray to him. simple as.

[MeechMunchie]

You're an idiot, if you weren't I wouldn't call you one.

That's how it works, right?

[STM]

Well obviously because I am an idiot so HAR HARDY HAR! And if you are serious then my serious face answer is that I feel my gut instinct is there must be something better or more divine than what my life is as the moment, there simply has to be. If you don't believe in God or think I am an idiot because I do, let me have this.

[OANST]

Trust me. I'm a chemist.

[STM]

Yes you are.

[MA]

i'd rather live my life the way i want to. and i'd also prefer it if people didn't knock on my door and try to force it down my throat. the more they hassle me at home or in the street, the less likely i am to even consider that there may be a god.

[OANST]

Personally, I enjoy talking to them.

[STM]

Really, even I don't like preachers, I don't like people who find religion fun either, yep, Catholicism is the only subsect for me.

[MA]

Personally, I enjoy talking to them.

i was pretty much chased by two Mormons on bicycles. they were wearing black cycle helmets so i did a double take when i first spotted them. i thought they were fucking Nazis.

[STM]

Mormons, really mormons? I didn't know there were mormons in England?

[MA]

yes, Mormons. they knock our door all the time. FUCKING YANKS

[Manco]

Personally, I enjoy talking to them.

They don't stop at your house anymore, do they?

[STM]

=) Heh heh, yeh he chases them.

@MA, we once got pestered by some whatchamakalits, oh blast I forget the name, the ones with the dreary stuff about the end of the world. Anyway they pulled up in a car and knocked on the door but I was 12 and by myself so I brought my bat downstairs and left it by the door not knowing who they were, they asked if I was interested in preparation for the end of the World so I told em I was a Catholic and that I wasn't interested in converting any time soon.

Cool story bro?

[OANST]

i was pretty much chased by two Mormons on bicycles. they were wearing black cycle helmets so i did a double take when i first spotted them. i thought they were fucking Nazis.

That sounds awesome.

I had to bite my tongue a couple of months ago. I was shopping with Abbey when a couple of Jehova's Witnesses, who were sitting outside of a store, started asking me if I know what will happen to me when I die.

A giant smile creased my face, and I opened my mouth before realizing that I didn't really want to belittle their religion in front of Abbey. So, I just grumbled "not interested", and walked away.

[Bullet Magnet]

I haven't yet had the pleasure. Someone else usually gets the door first. When it's my mother the spineless bastards never come back, but she doesn't take the advantage of the situation that I'd like to.

Really, they go around "spreading" the word, paying lip service to the whole proselytism thing to earn their passage to the sycophantic land in the clouds. They really don't care, or they'd but some fucking effort into it. Wouldn't help, though.

Out and about I only ever meet charities wielding emotional blackmail. It worked until I ran out of money.

I feel my gut instinct is there must be something better or more divine than what my life is as the moment, there simply has to be.

Well, I'm convinced! Guts and musts. Can't argue with that.

[STM]

...It doesn't have to convince you, it convinces me.

[Manco]

"My religion is true!"

"Prove it."

"No man I just know it!"

This is essentially the point that all religious debates eventually boil down to.

[STM]

I suppose I could dig up evidence but I've done this on other debates and cba to do it again, besides, do you really want to here me drone on OH?

[Manco]

I'd rather not.

So I take it you'll be leaving then?

[Bullet Magnet]

I would love to see evidence. I always ask, but never receive.

[MeechMunchie]

Maybe you should pray for evidence.

So what's that 'Without faith I have no power so to prove I exist is to destroy me' God-argument all about?

[Bullet Magnet]

Douglas Adam's Babel fish joke.

The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God.

The argument goes like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn’t thought of that," and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God.

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.