^The typical ad-hom argument, that people opposed to Christianity are doing it because it is "cool" these days. For me, it is actually ethical to be opposed to anything which worships a god of violence and hatred, as the Christian god is.
Bobby said:
I can decide what kind of sandwich I'll make, but I can't decide if I'll become a monk or what will happen to nations. Something like that.
Why can't you decide to be a monk? You are free to choose, you have free will given by god. You can choose to be anything, it is not a holy calling. If it were, you would not have evil men taking the cloth, as we see abundantly in Catholicism. If god called them, what a fucking monster!
I should add that I do not believe the Christian god is evil, because I do not believe in it. Its a rather odd discussion to have for me.
Doctor Molecule said:
Life is essentially a bio chemical switch that strives toward consciousness, I propose that there is a genesis to that force that propels that progress. A consciousness behind consciousness.
I don't believe this is so, and it is a common fallacy when people examine evolution. Evolution does not have an end point, an ultimate goal, because it is a blind process. We are not an improvement on other lifeforms, simply a different life form. Evolution is blind and only selects organisms that survive and procreate. Whether a life form is conscious or not means nothing. Hominids, the most intelligent and actively conscious species we have evidence for, are actually what we could call a failed lineage. There have been many hominids and, in about 5 million years, all but one have died out and I do not think our future is especially rosy. And, it is likely that homo sapiens are responsible for the extermination of many other human species, either through active genocide or through sexual assimilation. Felines, on the other hand, are rapidly evolving and have persisted and diversified rapidly because they contain attributes that actively perpetuate their survival, yet they are not sentient in the way we seem to uphold as a kind of achievement.
Consider mammals. We flourised only after dinosaurian species died- through a chance encounter with an asteroid, an asteroid that, through the laws of physics, was probably headed towards earth in a circuitous route and chaotic interaction for millions of years. This was determined through the laws of physics, not through a striving for higher consciousness. There is probably a distant asteroid with our terran name upon it, with you in its sights as we speak.
If consciousness is the aim, all animals on earth would exhibit this. We have all had the same time frame in which to evolve, yet only humans have evolved this weird sentience. And, is it really something that is enviable? We alone live with the utter knoweldge that we will die. Is this a blessing or a curse? To my eyes, its not something I would wish upon my dear cat-friend, Maggie. Hey darling, I love you- get this, you will die, no matter what and I have programmed you to do everything to avoid something that you simply cannot avoid! If god made us this way, again- he is an evil god. That is cruelty. Or, it is randomness at play. I know what I believe.
But, I love nature and its brutality and know that it is a blind process and that makes me realise that humans are not so much a crowning achievement, but something more akin to an aberration, an anomaly and something that will probably be a distant memory held within the quantum computers of the robots that will enslave and slaughter us with laser beams
:D
Christians do have answers, you may not like them, and because you haven't found an answer doesn't mean we haven't, projecting your experience on to us makes no sense, we are not having your experience, you are, and vice versa.
If there is no evidence for God, what have you reviewed in order to determined God doesn't exist? Obviously I don't believe that Islam is a valid faith system, but to say there is no evidence for the god of Islam is reckless and foolish, of course there is evidence. The question isn't whether there is evidence, the question is does that evidence have the necessary weight to warrant belief.
Wouldn't the most rational position for you be that of agnosticism?
I'm not sure why you think I am an atheist anyway, but I wish you would answer some of my questions. But, yes, in answer to your's, agnosticism is closest to where I sit. I also don't see why god existing would make a difference anyway. It cannot change the reality of life on earth, which is a totally brutal place. And this is brutality is something I consider evidence against the
Christian "loving" god- which I have rather clearly stated in the post you quoted and responded to a small percentage of. The majority of animals live lives of suffering and brutality, often being eaten at the end if they don't starve to death in isolation. If God loved his creations, I cannot imagine why he would engineer such a place. The only reason I think that life is so is because there is no consciousness guiding it or fostering/nurturing/caring for it. Jesus died for us, but what about everything else? Has He abandoned them? Why would a loving creator do this? Why would He make a world that appears random, in which the only really viable explanation for the proliferation of beings is random mutation?
I'm curious- and you've been asked this and shied rather poorly from answering, but you've made the statement- what evidence is there for the god of Islam? Or the Christian god, for that matter? And please, you cannot claim the Bible or scriptures are evidence of a supernatural, omni-everything God. Any more than a text book on physics is evidence for physical processes.
I don't really like the god v atheism debate, I would rather examine the absurdity of scripture because I think Christianity is one of the worst philosophies that humankind have conjured up, but I am curious as to why believers believe.
You've made some compelling and reasoned arguments here.