freediver wrote on Oct 19^th, 2008 at 3:58pm:


No. I was blinded by a bolt of lightening.

I think FD was trying to say that the evidence for a creator is the totality of creation, including human beings. It's as valid an argument as any.

The alternative hypothesis is that there are an infinite, or large number of universes and this one is right for life to appear, which happens to be the one we in.  If the universe were different even in a subtle way, no human beings could exist.

See this eloquent article for the various anthropic principles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Logically, I can buy the idea of a Deist God, but I have problems with the Judeo Christian tradition with the personal God concept, but that's just me.

All I can say is that personally I don't believe in God or gods. I just can't bring myself to be convinced by the idea.

It has nothing to do with logic. It has nothing to do with choice.
It's just what I believe. Maybe I'll change my mind, but I don't see that happening. The point is that while I can see why it might be worthwhile for theists to shout it from the rooftops, I don't see why an atheist would want to do the same. It just seems slightly puerile.

It's like when I was a kid, my siblings would play games. One would emerge from the cellar. "There's a Ghost down there!".  I'd go down there and emerge and with the same expression, I'd shout "There's no ghost down there!", and everybody would laugh. Why? Because making such a forceful statement about the fact that there was no ghost was bordering on ludicrous.

In the same way, I find the statement "God doesn't exist!" to be ludicrous. To me, it's a nonsensical statement to somebody who doesn't believe or understand the concept of God. How do you define God? - and what does exist mean? Does "exist" apply to supernatural entities? and what does Supernatural mean anyway?  How do you measure it? For that matter, can you apply natural laws to the supernatural anyway?

If I go to a lunatic asylum, and a guy comes up and tells me he is jesus, I cannot prove he isn't, but I do not believe him

Why not? There are plenty of lunatics called Jesus. Why would you assume that because he is a lunatic there must be a religious angle?

muso wrote on Oct 19^th, 2008 at 5:23pm:


Bad example. Your siblings knew there wasn't a ghost down there, but theists are serious when they say they believe in God. In fact some of them are so serious about it that they're willing to kill people who don't comply with their God's will.

mozzaok wrote on Oct 19^th, 2008 at 6:14pm:


What if he is from M$oft? Is it ok then to "to form a framework to control my life and the society"?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=81459

By Bob Unruh

A New York man is linking the suicide of his 22-year-old son, a military veteran who had bright prospects in college, to the anti-Christian book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins after a college professor challenged the son to read it.

"Three people told us he had taken a biology class and was doing well in it, but other students and the professor were really challenging my son, his faith. They didn't like him as a Republican, as a Christian, and as a conservative who believed in intelligent design," the grief-stricken father, Keith Kilgore, told WND about his son, Jesse.

"This professor either assigned him to read or challenged him to read a book, 'The God Delusion,' by Richard Dawkins," he said.

Jesse Kilgore committed suicide in October by walking into the woods near his New York home and shooting himself. Keith Kilgore said he was shocked because he believed his son was grounded in Christianity, had blogged against abortion and for family values, and boasted he'd been debating for years.

After Jesse's death, Keith Kilgore learned of the book assignment from two of his son's friends and a relative. He searched Jesse's room and found the book under the mattress with his son's bookmark on the last page.

A WND message seeking a comment from Dawkins or his publisher was not returned today.

The first inkling of a reason for the suicide came, Keith Kilgore told WND, when one of Jesse's friends came to visit after word of his son's death circulated.

"She was in tears [and said] he was very upset by this book," Keith Kilgore said. "'It just destroyed him,' were her words.

"Then another friend at the funeral told me the same thing," Keith Kilgore said. "This guy was his best friend, and about the only other Christian on campus.

"The third one was the last person that my son talked to an hour before [he died,]" Keith Kilgore told WND, referring to a member of his extended family whose name is not being revealed here.

That relative, who had struggled with his own faith and had returned to Christianity, wrote in a later e-mail that Jesse "started to tell me about his loss of faith in everything."

"He was pretty much an atheist, with no belief in the existence of God (in any form) or an afterlife or even in the concept of right or wrong," the relative wrote. "I remember him telling me that he thought that murder wasn't wrong per se, but he would never do it because of the social consequences - that was all there was - just social consequences.

"He mentioned the book he had been reading 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins and how it along with the science classes he had take[n] had eroded his faith. Jesse was always great about defending his beliefs, but somehow, the professors and the book had presented him information that he found to be irrefutable. He had not talked … about it because he was afraid of how you might react. ... and that he knew most of your defenses of Christianity because he himself used them often. Maybe he had used them against his professors and had the ideas shot down."

He then explained to Jesse his own personal journey of seeking "other explanations of God's existence" and told of his ultimate return.

"I told him it was my relationship with God, not my knowledge of Him that brought me back to my faith. No one convinced me with facts. ... it was a matter of the heart."

Keith Kilgore believes it was a biology class that raised questions for his son, and a biology professor at Jefferson Community College in Watertown, N.Y., where his son was attending, who suggested the book.

A school spokeswoman told WND that the "God Delusion" was not a part of the biology curriculum, and several of the professors she contacted said they had not even read the book. However, the spokeswoman was unable to contact all of the professors in the department and could not state that none of them had suggested the book to Jesse.

Local police also did not respond to WND inquiries about the investigation into the death.

"One of his friends, and his uncle (they did not know each other) both told me that Jesse called them hours before he took his life and that he had lost all hope because he was convinced that God did not exist, and this book was the cause," Keith Kilgore told WND.

Keith Kilgore, a retired military chaplain who has dealt with the various stages of grief and readily admits he's still in the "anger" stage over his son's death, said his son apparently had checked the "Delusion" out of the college library.

"I'm all for academic freedom," Keith Kilgore said. "What I do have a problem with is if there's going to be academic freedom, there has to be academic balance.

"They were undermining every moral and spiritual value for my [son]," he said. "They ought to be held accountable."

He suggested the moral is for Christians simply to abandon public schools wholly.

He obviously didn't have real faith, and while Dawkin's book provides no real evidence as to the non-existance of God, it seems to have been enough to tear down the reasons to hold him to his "faith".

Sprint, previously you said that you prefer Atheists to Agnostics because Atheists had made a stand. But I think the true Agnostic holds a difficult position as well. All beliefed up and nowhere to go.

For instance whether I want to or not, I simply do not believe in the existance of God. It doesn't require an effort on my behalf to do that because it is simply an extension of my impirical view of the world. Doesn't mean I do not have feelings that I can't wholely explain, like Love. But I don't have feelings for something that I don't believe exists, God, dragons, fairies, honest politicians etc.

But IF I believed in God I would still be an Agnostic because I doubt if I could believe in selective revelation. The divine blessing certain people/groups from certain times with direct knowledge and not all others. It all sounds to convieniently exclusive and political. And most importantly I could not accept that humans or any mortal could comprehend the mind of such a creature. I think that being would be unfathomable.

For most of us it is easier to put on slippers than to carpet the whole world. But damned if MT didn't put her whole self into humanity. What a gal! What a hero!