Red, there is a way--You could ask him.

http://i.imgur.com/bg2Gu.jpg
Mind you, this is from /b/.
But I couldn't care less about other people's opinions about life. Believe what you want and let me believe what I want.

@Mujus, yes, I exist, thanks for asking.

A convincing argument, if you already believe.

If you don't it's just so much garbage. I have to laugh whenever I read stuff like this, it just shows how fucked your minds are.

What constitutes "proof" for the faithful is laughable.

I got as far as the first bit about the earth being the perfect size and perfectly located from the sun (a star). Considering that there are around 100,000 million stars in the milky way and millions and millions of other galaxys, the chances of a planet being a certain size and position from the star are not really route at all. This is like saying someone is remarkable for winning the lottery.

I was pleased by the attempt for the first three or so, though Maniac's point and the principle of natural selection can easily refute all of them, but then it started talking about Jesus and how he preformed miracles and I gave up

"The Earth...its size is perfect"

What century is this? Why do you sound like Pangloss from Candide? Why are you completely retarded?

If Jesus wasn't the main man and God not cool how did these lyrics get written, if you look closely all these words of this song are actually in the Bible, I think that is conclusive evidence
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flow’r that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.
The purple-headed mountains,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning
That brightens up the sky.
The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden,
He made them every one.
The tall trees in the greenwood,
The meadows where we play,
The rushes by the water,
To gather every day.
He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.

No change in my beliefs. I don't spend much if any time trying to convince people God doesn't exist. But, just to humor you. I will address why these don't budge my feelings. 6) There is no proof Jesus even existed. No contemporary historian wrote about him while he was alive. The only records we have of him are in the Gospels.
5) I rarely think about God. Only when others bring it up, or I hear or read something about religion. Generally speaking it doesn't cross my mind. And when my friends get all crazy atheist I try to get them to calm it down, I mean we just came to different answers to the big question, no reason to hate each other. 4), 3), 2), 1) bases their arguments on logical fallacies. Intent is by no means a necessity. That being said, this person may be right and I am completely wrong. If so it will suck for me when I die.

If God isn't real then why the bible?

>Theists 1
>Atheists 0

Not really jumping in on the argument here, but I did want to address the point of the only evidence for Jesus existing being the gospels. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the only historical evidence for, say, Alexander the writings of Herodotus and other Greeks? Everything we know from history is someone's written account. In the case of Jesus, they just happen to be named Matthew, Mark, Luke, etc. Whether or not he did everything in them is, of course, a question of your beliefs, but the same is true for many things with other historical figures.

If Xenu isn't real they why Dianetics?

>Scientologists 1
>Uncool people 0

And I guess the Greek items found around Indus and dated to Alexander's time carry the same weight as stuff written by 4 no-name stoners.

Every one of these "reasons" is complete and utter bullshit:

1) As Maniac correctly points out, there are an inconceivable number of planets. By pure chance alone, it's perfectly reasonable to expect there to be many earth-like planets.

Similarly, humans only seem special because we are here. If there aren't sentient beings on other earth-like planets, is that proof that god doesn't exist?

2) God is not an acceptable explanation simply because no better answer is currently available.

3) See 2.

4) This is really a rehash of their first point.

5) Wat.

6) Let's see a Jesus 2.0 perform some miracles.

Abge, a lot of people saw Jesus perform miracles the first time but didn't believe that he was sent from God. But "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." There's more to the universe than what you see and touch. Being born again doesn't mean--It is a spiritual process. Do you have to climb a path to get there, attain a certain level, earn it in any way?? No. Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find... ask God for wisdom. It's not that hard.

@Mujus

What? That made no sense at all.

"Why Jesus? Look throughout the major world religions and you'll find that Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius and Moses all identified themselves as teachers or prophets. None of them ever claimed to be equal to God. Surprisingly, Jesus did. That is what sets Jesus apart from all the others. He said God exists and you're looking at him. Though he talked about his Father in heaven, it was not from the position of separation, but of very close union, unique to all humankind. Jesus said that anyone who had seen Him had seen the Father, anyone who believed in him, believed in the Father."

I know several other people who claimed to be god as well, does that make them devine?

I think perhaps you should look at revelation itself if you truly want a guage on how persuasive Jesus is as savior. Judaism states that every member of the tribe of Israel was present at revelation, a small group of followers was present for Jesus revelation. I don't see how you can claim that Jesus revelation is more convincing when a very limited number of people saw and reported it, oh yeah and they all happened to be his best buds

"@Mujus What? That made no sense at all."

Were you expecting some? These people don't process reality the same way a nonbeliever does. They deliberately disbelieve the tangible and suspend the logical in favor of the tenets of their faith. It's not reasonable to expect that their conclusions ought to make sense to a reasonable person, an outsider to their beliefs.

That's why it's hilarious for somebody like me or you to listen to a Christian arguing with a Muslim arguing with a Jew. It's all just minor variations of the same idiotic argument.

and the fact that he performed miracles does not prove he has a wider base that recognized him as god, it means that you have a handful of disciples spreading stories that a wider base recognized him as god. Yo could say the same of L Ron Hubbard or Joseph Smith.

I admit some of there arguments are interesting. Though several of them are less convincing due to being easily dismissed. (Overall I'm far from convinced.)

I think the most interesting thought the article poses is in the introduction.
"If God does exist, would I want to know him?"
This is a question I've asked myself before. And the answer has changed over time.
Right now it's a strong no. For a variety of reasons. One of the most important of which is simply that he is the god of Israel. Why would I follow the god of another people? The second is I'm developing a skepticism for the value of religion. Particularly the way in which it encourages others to focus on a spiritual world, instead of the material world.

smcbride, your historical points are pretty silly. No contemporary historian wrote about him while He was alive? Well, He got famous 3 years before He died. How many people have historians writing about them within three years of their becoming an item? How many did in the ancient world? Precious few, if any.

As for other records than the Gospels, that is false. Josephus and Tacitus did, among others. Google those and you'll find more.

Ahem:

"1. Does God exist? The complexity of our planet points to a deliberate Designer who not only created our universe, but sustains it today."

Not novel or new, it's The Argument from Design, insert appropriate scientific and rational evidence that has been used here and elsewhere to blow that to pieces...next...

"2. Does God exist? The universe had a start - what caused it?"

First mover argument, first put forward by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Christian tradition and LONG before him in the Greek tradition (and let's face it, that was probably one of the first questions we asked PERIOD once our species evolved any semblance of consciousness, as once you ask "Who and Where am I?" and then "How did I get here?" Question #3 is often "What brought me here/started this?")...

Insert either an argument saying there doesn't HAVE to be a first cause (an interesting idea), the scientific argument or, better yet, ask the most obvious question to kill this one, "OK, well, if God created the universe, who created God?" and before a theist jumps up and declares that by his very nature God is eternal and therefore always was...PLEASE see how invented, self-serving, and utterly lacking in external proof and logic that line of arguing is, and refrain from it...next...

"3. Does God exist? The universe operates by uniform laws of nature. Why does it?"

...I'll concede that's an interesting question, but given how UN-uniform God is (if you have any doubt of that, check how many times he either changes his mind or flatly contradicts previous actions and decisions in the OT, and no, that cannot just be his changing as a character or what have you if you make the claim he's also eternal and perfect, as it's rather absurd for the eternal and perfect to likewise be changeable and changing due to a past decision reversed and thus an imperfection in judgment, choice, or both) God is anything BUT the mathematical answer needed here...and...

Insert mathematics here and really, you have no need for God, math does not NEED God to explain why 2 and 2 make 4, they just logically do, you cannot credit the sheer existence of logic to God either, as that's essentially arguing God created and maintains logic, the latter being shown to be rather false by his illogical actions in the OT (if you question THAT, go ahead and try to defend Noah's Ark as logical, or placing an Apple to tempt humanity as logical..."But it was God testing--" testing is different than LOGIC, that God wanted to test his creations--"God was giving us a choice!"--that God gives us a CHOICE does not mean that choice is RATIONAL or LOGICAL...even beyond that, try defending Leviticus and Deuteronomy as logical, try it) and the former is a re-working of #2, the First Cause/Creation Argument, and that's already been covered, so...next...

"4. Does God exist? The DNA code informs, programs a cell's behavior."

ANOTHER reconfiguration of the Argument from Design...if you doubt that, the last sentence of this section is, any I quote, "You cannot find instruction, precise information like this, without someone intentionally constructing it," and that's pretty much the Creationist/"Intelligent Design" argument in a nutshell, and we've already addressed and cracked that nutshell here and elsewhere, SO...next...

"5. Does God exist? We know God exists because he pursues us. He is constantly initiating and seeking for us to come to him."

First, before delving into the actual point here itself--notice the LANGUAGE in that proposition and how utterly vague it is...also note that it makes a supposition right off the bat--"We know God"--that is not at all necessarily true, for instance, *I* do not know God...it's rather hard for me to "know" entities that don't exist or are not proven to exist...

NOW.

I'll be fair and make one allowance there, as the theist may well answer ME "Obi, of ALL PEOPLE you 'know' entities that don't exist or are claimed not to exist, after all, you 'know' Hamlet and Sherlock Holmes, your literary heroes in fiction, right?"

Yes...and they're also just that, fiction, Hamlet being based off previous works of fiction and, possibly, some sort of political turmoil sometime somewhere in Denmark maybe, and Sherlock Holmes is based partly off of Edgar Allan Poe's fictional detective Auguste Dupin and partially from a doctor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle knew of who was, well, rather Sherlockian in his approach and meticulousness.

NEITHER of those characters I assume to actually exist, though, so an argument for God along those same lines would just make a God equal to a fictional character...which is an argument I'd thus side with as that's what I thing God IS, a fictional character written in works of mythology and theology by men, period.

But onto the argument itself.

Let me take this bit by bit:

"I was an atheist at one time. And like many atheists, the issue of people believing in God bothered me greatly. What is it about atheists that we would spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that we don't believe even exists?!"

As an atheist that is STILL an atheist, I'll answer that by saying 1. Atheism doesn't necessarily mean that you attempt to refute the existence of God but, again, that you yourself are arguing there is no PROOF for God and 2. To answer the question, we spend time on it for the same reason, say, Newton spent so much time developing the Laws of Motion and contradicting the ideas of Aristotle and showing many of his ideas to be false and many of his conceived scientific ideals not to exist--

Because there is a thirst for the truth and so a wrong answer is an answer worth refuting and showing to be wrong or, we're to be fair to the Christians here, if I perceive their books and their God and a large degree of their aesthetic as illogical, socially harmful, or both (and I do) it is then something worth arguing against...

ESPECIALLY when the alleged existence of said God and ideals is largely behind thing such as fights over abortion, gay rights, and teaching intelligent design vs. evolution

You're all free to hate Shakespeare...
I claim him to be the best author in all the English language, but NOT holy...
You can disagree, as did Tolstoy, and even argue Shakespeare's utter garbage...
But good luck. ;)

But if you were to come into my home and personally trash my Shakespeare collection, or pass a law saying Shakespeare was immoral or tried to ban his works on the basis of some religious ideal of YOURS that he disagrees with...you've now crossed the line.

LIKEWISE, Christians, you can got to Church, you may pray, you may read the Bible and praise Jesus and sing hymnals...and more power to you...

But when the argument is made MY country is "Judeo-Christian" when its Founders went out of their way to separate Church and State, when belief in your creation story hinders science being taught in classes tax money will pay for, when your beliefs hinder the rights of others...THEN it is something to argue against.

What's more, in this "realm of ideas" that Plato and Shakespeare and Locke and everyone else somehow still "exist" in, not literally but in the sense we still read and argue over who and what is right and who and what is not, God, then, is part of that, and will ALWAYS be argued over even if he DOESN'T exist, which I think IS the case.

"To be honest, I also had another motive. As I challenged those who believed in God, I was deeply curious to see if they could convince me otherwise. Part of my quest was to become free from the question of God. If I could conclusively prove to believers that they were wrong, then the issue is off the table, and I would be free to go about my life.

I didn't realize that the reason the topic of God weighed so heavily on my mind, was because God was pressing the issue. I have come to find out that God wants to be known."

I've already said as much above...do I REALLY need to say how that's plugging in "God" for the answer without external reasoning or, in this case, flawed reasoning? WHY do you assume that God "wants to be known" from your asking questions either way...better yet, since this seems to have been skipped over here, HOW did you come to the conclusion God EXISTS? The above reasons in 1-4 have been debunked, so...?

"He has surrounded us with evidence of himself and he keeps the question of his existence squarely before us. It was as if I couldn't escape thinking about the possibility of God. In fact, the day I chose to acknowledge God's existence, my prayer began with, "Ok, you win..." It might be that the underlying reason atheists are bothered by people believing in God is because God is actively pursuing them."

That's again assuming God as first the answer to the question, second assuming God's rationale--which is itself an exercise of the Fallacy of Intention--and third, again citing 1-4 as being blown to bits here, in other debates we've had, in other debates people with far fancier degrees and far more money than I have had, in books, in the literature on the topic in academia...in all those places citing 1-4 as being defeated...

HOW did you come to the conclusion God exists, then?

That assumes a God, assumes his intent, assumes his intent towards atheists...

That's one bundle of unsupported logical fallacies and assumptions after another.

SO...next...

"6. Does God exist? Unlike any other revelation of God, Jesus Christ is the clearest, most specific picture of God revealing himself to us."

...!!! xD

THAT is your argument here? CHRISTIANS can't even agree on this clearest, most specific picture of Jesus Christ as God!

Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, Methodists...etc...THEY DO NOT 100% agree on Jesus AT ALL, and remember, you're arguing this is the CLEAREST picture of God...!

What's more, the Early Christians didn't agree at all either. We now know what a diverse field of belief there WAS among them, there were those saying Jesus was man and God, saying he was just divine (arguing "How could a God DIE?"), arguing Jesus was a man MADE divine by his actions and God (which some didn't like and you can probably guess the reasons why), Gnostics, etc...

And that's amongst CHRISTIANS! These are the people in Jesus' own CAMP!
(I'd make a "Jesus Camp" joke here, but I digress.)
That's amongst people who are in favor of the motion "A. God exists and B. Jesus is the Messiah."

Now consider people who are theists of another Abrahamic slant (so for A but against B)...

Jews sure as hell don't agree with the picture of Jesus the Christian community today, 2,000 years ago, or at any time has or has had of Jesus 100%...that's sort of how they're Jews and not Christians, and part of the reason the Jews faced persecution for 2,000 years (well, and the fact it took until 1964 for the Vatican to say the Jews and Jews living today were not to blame for the Death of Jesus, that may have possibly led to, well, a pogrom or two or six or sixty...and I exaggerate and kid with that last number, but still...)

Muslims certainly don't agree with the image of Jesus the Christian community has...

They have (correct me if I'm wrong) a different account of his birth, or at least tell it differently...and they don't believe in him dying on the Cross...that's a big strike against the Christian view of Jesus...

And then there are those of Eastern Faiths who are scowling at all this talk about deities they don't even believe in...

And then there are agnostics and atheists...

And these two groups CERTAINLY don't have the same view of Jesus...

So HOW is Jesus, at all, possibly the clearest picture of God revealed, when not only the majority of the world can't agree on that picture, but when amongst even Christians there is considerable disagreement and, the further you go back and closer you get to Early Christianity and the decades following Jesus' death, the more adamant and strict the divides become?

HARDLY a Unified Theory of God, as it were.

(Incidentally, I HIGHLY recommend the Yale Lecture Series/Course Religious Studies 152--The New Testament...you can watch or listen to it free via Yale's open source program or on YouTube, and I recommend it on a fun as well as factual basis, it's very engaging and done intentionally without a slant theist or atheist.)

"Why Jesus? Look throughout the major world religions and you'll find that Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius and Moses all identified themselves as teachers or prophets. None of them ever claimed to be equal to God. Surprisingly, Jesus did."

^Again, there are some Early Christians rolling in their graves right now who did NOT believe Jesus was God's equal...

"What proof did Jesus give for claiming to be divine? He did what people can't do."

Such as?

"Jesus performed miracles."

And your evidence for that, besides documents written in the Bronze Age decades after the actual events and which don't always have the same account of same events is...?

Furthermore, there are a slew of religious figures throughout the Bible and in other religions who performed miracles in their texts...what about THEM?

"He healed people...blind, crippled, deaf, even raised a couple of people from the dead."

Medical science treats and comes ever closer to curing blindness and deafness, and as for #3, again...proof?

"He had power over objects...created food out of thin air, enough to feed crowds of several thousand people."

Proof?

"He performed miracles over nature...walked on top of a lake, commanding a raging storm to stop for some friends. People everywhere followed Jesus, because he constantly met their needs, doing the miraculous. He said if you do not want to believe what I'm telling you, you should at least believe in me based on the miracles you're seeing."

Proof? For "straight-forward reasons" and proofs of God, you're not very good at this whole "supplying proof" business here, are you?

WebDip's Christian community argues better and supplies better arguments and attempts to prove and support statements than you do.

Aaaaaand I'd keep going and quoting along on this one, but it'd largely amount to my saying "Proof?" again and again as we're all re-told the same Jesus story and same claims about how God could do this or does to that...

So I'll end this quick little job around the theism block. ;)

tl dnr

Obi, a single one of your posts covers a thousand of mine.

"Josephus and Tacitus did, among others. Google those and you'll find more. "

New York times and Washington post reported on David Koresh and L Ron Hubbard. Now, granted the difference is that the Branch Dividians didn't have editing rights over the Times and the Post for a couple centuries...

"No contemporary historian wrote about him while He was alive? Well, He got famous 3 years before He died. How many people have historians writing about them within three years of their becoming an item?"

Burden of proof, Semck. Not on smcbride. You know who it's on. And as the only non-delusional avowed Christian I've chatted with at any length on this site, you must admit OP's article is sorely lacking.

You can very well argue that the lack of historical evidence is somewhat explained by the brevity of the man's fame, but that certainly isn't evidence that he DID exist. At best it softens smc's point somewhat.

I actually read obis post. Not bad, sir. tl;r

The article's pathetic. It's for a firm believer; nobody else. It's preaching to the choir - not persuasive, only affirmative. First of all, the last little segment… "This is your decision, no coercion here." No coercion? Are you fucking serious? You just wasted my time telling me why you are inflated enough to believe that the presence of a bunch of perfect conditions explains that God exists and that he's the creator of everything I take for granted. No coercion? Right. Pathetic article. Move on.

YJ, you're right about semck, but smcbride is completely wrong. It's pretty well accepted fact at this point that Jesus existed.