believers on this board repeatedly claim subjective experience as a major source for their belief.
this anecdotal evidence can't be checked by science because it falls outside the empirical realm.. what about atheism?
would it be possible that an atheist too has had a personal experience that convinced him of the non-existence of god?
I can't really point to one event that afterwards I knew I was atheist whereas before that event I was theist. Maybe the first seeds were planted when I was allowed to stay up and watch Cosmos on PBS all those years ago. :)
I can't say for 100% sure that a god or gods doesn't/don't exist, but neither can I say that I know for a fact that a planet full of man eating pink unicorns doesn't exist somewhere in the universe.
in honor of this being my 12345th post, i thought i'd pass on a bit of gematria:.
according to: http://homokaasu.org/gematriculator/.
unfortunately, watchtower.org is only 50% evil, with 50% good.
My post claiming to defeat evil is infact 33% evil. Hmmm.... I'll just stop while I'm ahead.
SL - Apparently being corrupted by JWN's evil
in honor of this being my 12345th post, i thought i'd pass on a bit of gematria:.
according to: http://homokaasu.org/gematriculator/.
unfortunately, watchtower.org is only 50% evil, with 50% good.
My post stating that Leolia's opening post which declared JWN 59% evil is 15 % evil is 1% evil.
SacrificialLoon - defeating evil on JWN
in honor of this being my 12345th post, i thought i'd pass on a bit of gematria:.
according to: http://homokaasu.org/gematriculator/.
unfortunately, watchtower.org is only 50% evil, with 50% good.
Leolia's opening post stating that JWN is 59% evil is 15% evil.
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my wife and i were talking about this and thought it would be fun.
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5' 8" ish and 168lbs.
twenty arguments for the existence of god.
the argument from changethe argument from efficient causalitythe argument from time and contingencythe argument from degrees of perfectionthe design argumentthe kalam argumentthe argument from contingencythe argument from the world as an interacting wholethe argument from miraclesthe argument from consciousnessthe argument from truththe argument from the origin of the idea of godthe ontological argumentthe moral argumentthe argument from consciencethe argument from desirethe argument from aesthetic experiencethe argument from religious experiencethe common consent argumentpascal's wagerbts.
And one arguement against.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
God(s) is/are a human construct. Man created God in his image.
my new year's resolution is to make the lifestyle change to the vegan-pure vegetarian diet: no animal derived foods.. it is a change i have considered before on different occasions.
i didn't stick with the diet in the past due to lack of information, or perhaps the abundance of misinformation available on the optimum diet.
i've never been grossly overweight, probably never over 170 lbs.
vegan yogurt.
Bacteria are animals, that's cheating.
it seems that mostly dead just made her very first post on the board since joining on 7-17-2008.. mostly, welcome!
and i hope you can be revived here.. cameo-d.
Welcome. I like the screen name and avatar.
"You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."
in many ways it would, because there has been so much bloodshed, torture, misunderstanding between humans because of their different religions and all done in the name of their god.
today everyone still wants their faith to be right & many arguments have been had over who is right and wrong.. then again religion has kept many people in check - doesn't allow the masses to run around willy nilly in their freedom.
it controls the masses.
The human brain is too prone to delusion, hallucination and the inability to tell the difference between them and reality.
This begs the question why? I think that religious belief has conveyed an advantage over the (tens) thousands of years that humans have had some form of religious belief. Long enough perhaps for natural selection to take place. Almost every civilization had a religion of some form. Did society come first or did religion? Well since primates are societal creatures I think it's safe to assume that religion came later. So then what happened? Did the religious early humans elimate nonreligious early humans? Did nonreligious early humans see an advantage and adopt religion?
I think that certian beliefs like a belief in an afterlife do give certian advantages to a group. If one believes that one will live on past this life then they would be less afraid to give one's life for their group, and others would be less traumatized by the loss if they believed that this person was alive somewhere else. With all else being equal this would give a society a big advantage over one that doesn't believe in this way, obviously religious cavemen couldn't defeat athiestic spacemen with deathrays. Then there is a curious correlation between religiousness and birth rates. Some that are born to religious parents do not stay religious, but the religious tend to have higher birthrates than nonreligious.
Anyway I think that yes the world could, but I also think that religion has conveyed an evolutionary (societal, and perhaps human too) advantage that needs to be investigated.
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ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa revved the rolls-royce gas turbine bypass turbofan aero-engine as sir walter mitty prepared for takeoff ... the comely cockpit stewardess, a certain babette de sheer, plied her sumptuous way to sir walter's seated, muscled side and offered him a tall, cold one: a frosty lalique of milk, shaken, not stirred .... .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zva5xmrz48a.
Even milquetoasts have dreams of glory.
