pastafarian
Well-known member
Ive seen Ben Hur and The Greatest Story Ever Told on widescreen.
Should i have seen them at IMax?
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Agnostic vs Atheist
- Thread starter maffew
- Start date
Ive seen Ben Hur and The Greatest Story Ever Told on widescreen.
Should i have seen them at IMax?
Mental Lental
Well-known member
I can actually answer this first hand. I once through a bizarre set of circumstances found myself sitting at a charity dinner table with a group of hard core Christians who were in Japan as missionaries.
Utter wankers. They flew in right after the Tsunami with the cynical intention of targeting the weak and vulnerable victims of that disaster as being easy targets for conversion (they didn't put it that way of course). They went up to Tochigi and Fukushima under the guise of "volunteer workers" to "spread the word of God".
And no. They didn't believe in dinosaurs.
With the greatest of respect, you're sister don't know shit. If there's a god, that doesn't mean it's the god she thought it would be.
DavePage
Well-known member
Is it not a good ripping yarn?
Stumpy Tim
Well-known member
My favourite Hitchens quote:
Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years.
Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person.
Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years.
Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person.
pastafarian
Well-known member
No
But compared to God Hitler was a boy scout, whats it like to worship a genocidal maniac that wipes the whole of mankind (except Noah and family) off the face of the planet?
pastafarian
Well-known member
What if God created the big bang. Maybe they are both right.
He didn’t though, if he had done it would have been mentioned in his book, by all accounts he went down a different route to a big bang
I used to be into logical positivism. Essentially, the question ‘Is there a God?’ Is meaningless because it can’t be proved by empirical evidence.
Thing is, empirical evidence is limited to the senses we have developed as Homo Sapiens. Essentially, we only sense things we need to through evolution.
There could be many things ‘out there’ we can’t sense. Dark matter and dark energy come to mind or maybe a 4th or 5th dimension.
So, I’m comfortable to sit in the humble ‘don’t know’ category of agnosticism. I’m as certain as I can be that there is no God we can conceive of. But a God we can’t conceive of. . . well that’s possible. It has to be.
Thing is, empirical evidence is limited to the senses we have developed as Homo Sapiens. Essentially, we only sense things we need to through evolution.
There could be many things ‘out there’ we can’t sense. Dark matter and dark energy come to mind or maybe a 4th or 5th dimension.
So, I’m comfortable to sit in the humble ‘don’t know’ category of agnosticism. I’m as certain as I can be that there is no God we can conceive of. But a God we can’t conceive of. . . well that’s possible. It has to be.
'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...' Genesis Chapter 1 Verse 1
btnbelle
New member
- Apr 26, 2017
- 1,438
Who wrote the book? They were not around to know what was happening, just like the rest of us. Humans are great storytellers.
Could this inconceivable God truly be described as a God, then?
By a God, what people generally mean is the Abrahamic deity that created existence, created life, wrought baleful wrath upon life, guided certain individuals in one particularly volatile part of the planet, ignoring more advanced civilisations elsewhere, then, counter to its previous behaviour has since taken a hands off approach to their creation.
Unless of course they're talking about the panoply of deities that have, at some point, been the Gods of the time? the Pagan Gods, the Mayan Gods, the Norse, the Homeric, the Slavic? Though, I suppose with polytheistic religions, that there are a multitude of deities diminishes the idea of omnipotence? Odin isn't all powerful, nor is Zeus.
If an inconceivable, non interventionist, all powerful entity exists, it isn't a God as we'd describe it. All but a few of the gods that man has invented have been malicious, thin skinned, jealous and violent. The sooner the world collectively grows the **** up, the better.
- Jan 3, 2012
- 16,582
Have you ever been called Bruce and worked at the University of Wollamaloo.... or however it might be spelt?
- Jan 3, 2012
- 16,582
I think different people who believe in God would have a whole lot of different views of what "God" is. Different people would come up with some very different descriptions. I'm not sure what mine would be.
Think the question should be, why do we?
BHAFC_Pandapops
Citation Needed
- Feb 16, 2011
- 2,844
Isn't everyone an agnostic? Nobody can be sure of anything, such is the vastness and complexity of the universe. It's extremely arrogant to be absolute in either conviction because the knowledge of whether or not God etc exists is unknowable.
As Socrates said, the only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing.
As Socrates said, the only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing.
sussex_guy2k2
Well-known member
- Jun 6, 2014
- 3,734
Thanks for saving me the time.
On a fun note, I thought we'd all developed enough to realise that religion was a social construct initially developed by the rich to control the poor and uneducated?
Papa Lazarou
Living in a De Zerbi wonderland
As above. I agree with this reply. Well put.
We are consciousness experiencing life in a physical body.
The vast majority of people wander around the world like in The Matrix, oblivious to what's really there. Especially the intellectuals because they have invested all their life accumulating as much knowledge as possible of the physical world. When we are ultimately not physical. So they have like a thicker veil around them hiding who they really are.
Explore consciousness. Meditation, yoga, energy healing, read books by mystics and sages. Then suddenly you'll have a red pill moment and you'll be aware of the real world. When I had it, it took me about a while to recover from about 10 minutes straight of pissing myself laughing. You realise that there is a dormant sense we have which is real feeling that far supersedes our other senses. Develop it by trying to be aware of it more and more and then it becomes HD and you can't not be aware of it.
I don't believe in God in the traditional man sitting on a throne on a cloud way but there is a huge world out there at higher levels of consciousness that I yearn to explore. The added bonus is by moving away from the stuff that busies us in the world, you become much more happy and contented in your daily life.