theres another thing... eternal damnation. If we live for 70 years, commit a few sins here and there (punch someone etc.) then 70 / infinity = 0?
so really our sins meant 0 for the amount of punishment we were given? and yet other animals just simply pass away to non-existance?

"Baptism opens the gates of heaven to sinners." That is originally a quote from Thomas of Aquin, but it was last renewed 3-4 years ago by the current CEO of The Church Josef Benedict.
In other words, never mind your sins, that's ok as long as you find some guy wearing white robes (btw. it does not matter if that happens to be a child molester, as long as he was baptised) to pour some water over your head. A few centuries ago, you would have had to buy indulgence too, but you're lucky today.

Having said that, my belief is that religion is the ingenious invention of clever people to make an easy life from everyone's fear. If you look throughout history, and in nearly every culture (some Buddhists exempt, but they simply haven't understood how it works, yet), the priest has always, for millenia, been the fat guy drinking wine from a golden cup, eating meat, and having a good time while you and everyone else was working 14 hours daily on the field, starving and dying from plague and in in wars (mind you, wars with people whose only crime is to pray to the exact same god under a different name), because god wants it that way and because you're a darn sinner, and those heretics deserve to die, and you do too, anyway, you sinner.

I do not doubt that god, or one god, or several gods exist as such. Though I don't think so, but who am I to say, how would I possibly know.

But it is certain that it (he/she/they?) does not exist in a way like The One Book says, or in the way like the Other One Book, or in the way The Yet Other One Book says. Those books were written centuries after their alleged stories by people who had a lot of motives, truth not necessarily being one of them. And, those books were censored, adjusted, and re-written several times throughout history in non-trivial ways.

"Cogito ergo sum"

It's actually part of a longer proof that God exists.

The idea is that you deny everything you cannot prove is being manipulated. You cannot trust your senses -- they may deceive you. You know only that you think -- and therefore that you must BE. "My thinking this question IS the proof of my being". It continues with "And therefore thinking things must exist".

Having got to that point, the proof considers things that can be thought about -- and Descartes says that the concept of "God" contains things that he himself could never have created. And therefore the origin for the concept necessarily lies beyond his own mind -- and that therefore God must exist.


{It's not a great proof, in my opinion.}

And I wouldn't worry about being an atheist. It's perfectly possible to be a rational considered atheist. Considered means that you've actually thought about it and made a positive choice rather than merely being a lapsed faithful. And rational means that you understand and accept the implications.

The former is easier than the latter. The latter means abandoning much of the sort of "warm fuzziness" that even the majority of the non-religious have. There is no god, there are no souls -- which even lapsed religious people seem to hold dear to. True atheists accept that we are just thinking meat.

On the other hand -- we are meat that THINKS and can understand the universe. How cool is that???

And people die. And there is nothing afterwards -- and that means that people are important alive. They do not go to a reward and to meet us again in the future; they just go. We do not go to a better place; if we want a better place we must make THIS a better place.

'staticVoid2' said:

This goes on forever (god's god's god etc.)

Ha! The mere existence of stack overflows is a proof that god exists.

Chuck Norris doesn't get stack overflows, because, obviously, he if chooses, he will overflow the stack himself. Therefore he must be God.

On a serious note, however:

Generally speaking - why is it that people throw around the term God without giving the slightest thought to what actually constitutes it? The omnipotence of Q from Star Trek? The multifaceted existence and can'tquiteputmyfingeronitness of the Vorlons from Babylon 5? The fact that we, as a species, figured we'd be punished in horrible life-threatening ways if we didn't sacrifice living things to it for thousands of years? A good conversation point? The beard?

I personally don't think I've seen two people from any same religion (or different for that matter) whose understanding and definition of God would hold up to honest comparison. "I think therefore I am" is a recursive term and as far as God in its generic sense is involved, Hodgman's assertion that the reverse doesn't hold true might just as well be wrong - after all what constitutes 'thinking'? In its broadest sense even motor reflexes are a form of thinking; and even bacteria have motor reflexes - they seek the ideal conditions for existence.

Of course all that sounds a bit dubious and one would do well to take a step back here and consider the link between an undefined entity (a God) and their own ego that their ability to be sentient, in and of itself, implies their existence (and that the reverse, which some people also believe, doesn't). I hereby propose the Anthropic Principle - a close counter-relative of Charles Darwin's Evolution Of Species that in a modern scientific context suggests that, given the extremely fine-tuned nature of some things in our universe (eg the very particular value of the Cosmological constant, which is absolutely essential to get right for our kind of existence), there must be some form of meddling involved that has brought about the absolutely essential conditions required for our kind of life - the existence of a kind of super-being or 'god', if you will.

Regardless - before jumping to the obvious conclusion, take another look at the Darwinian approach and consider some self-similarity that our universe seems to hold a special place for (as examples, consider the Rutherford atomic model vs. the planetary model or the presence of oscillations on every imaginable scale from gravitational distortions to musical harmonics to how fundamental particles behave):

Assuming a landscape of a virtual infinity of pocket universes - a.k.a. parallel universes or parallel dimensions - (eg String Theory suggests a number in the range of 10500), both Darwin and logic dictate (ironically, one could argue that Darwin was also bound by logic) conditions in one of those are bound to meet some form of criteria necessary for sentient life - whatever your definition of sentience might be. Even our kind of life. Admittedly, whether those pocket universes are real or not is a debate for another time, but some pretty darn respected people have admitted that there are things that actually don't make sense without the landscape. The implication hereby is that if you have a virtual infinity of universes, a virtually infinite number of those will contain "just the right conditions" for sentient beings (such as ourselves) to ask the question. This, in and of itself, does not require the existence of a supreme being (of course one could always go a step further and ask: "What, then, has prompted the existence of time and space in which the landscape exists? Ha!" and we'd be back to square one with the problem of recursion).

It might suck as an explanation, but God and God's existence is little more than the problem of the chicken and the egg - it's recursive and paradoxical. Unless... unless it's something we might even not be equipped to comprehend (eg akin to a paradox with a solution) in which case we shouldn't even be trying to attribute any form of belief to it. But that's just my point of view.

Now, personally, I don't think an argument can be made based solely on philosophy. However, I do think that a lot can be deduced from simply observing things and idling under an apple tree on a Sunday afternoon. Too many a time has this been proven, the most notorious case being that of Newton's Law Of Gravity, which was succeeded as a result of an even more dramatical tour de force of the human brain - as little more than a series of thought experiments - in the form of General Relativity in 1915. Both of these first came from one man's head (well, not completely, but to a vast degree) and were proven by other people. Hereby, whether Descartes' assertion is true or false, could be solvable/provable by thought alone. However, that doesn't mean it actually is.

Sorry, but if you're offended by questioning your belief of the paranormal/spiritual, then you're exactly the kind of person that needs to question a few more things about your life, and lighten the fuck up. Anyone serious about their paranormal/spiritual beliefs should enjoy questioning and discovering their foundations.

you misunderstand. I suppose I should restate that naively questioning the belief structure someone has held and studied their whole life is offensive.

Do you think I just go to church on sundays because my mother told me to? and she went because her mother told her to? Do you think I pray because the bible tells me to? In all of my 23 years, most of which as a catholic, do you think I never questioned my faith or pried deeper into what I believe to form the belief structure I hold today?

I do not believe in God because I fear that I will be punished if I don't. That is a stupid reason to believe in anything. I believe in God because through various life experiences both as a former agnostic and as a catholic that faith has been repeatedly reaffirmed and cemented; because when I have been more active with my faith my life has gotten better, and when I have not my life has gotten worse.

Religion is the clever explanation of WHY everything turns into misery in your life. The fact that it is spread by morons doesn't take the truth away from it. The best thing the devil did was convincing everyone that the truth can only be found in one place.

I am sorry you feel that way, but clearly you have never studied Christianity or Buddhism.

the priest has always, for millenia, been the fat guy drinking wine from a golden cup, eating meat, and having a good time while you and everyone else was working 14 hours daily on the field, starving and dying from plague and in in wars (mind you, wars with people whose only crime is to pray to the exact same god under a different name), because god wants it that way and because you're a darn sinner, and those heretics deserve to die, and you do too, anyway, you sinner
have you ever been to a church recently?

I won't say that nobody in any church is corrupt, but all catholic ministers take a vow of poverty and many different orders take it to different degrees. The church will often provide room and board, but the priests themselves make <$10,000/year for personal needs (books, hobbies, clothes, whatever) and very often donate their leftovers. And it's not like they sit around all day doing nothing. There is at least one mass every day they have to preside over, and they are most often the chief administrator for their parish responsible for everything that has to go along with that. A lot of them also have jobs on top of their priestly duties and more often than not either accept no pay or donate the pay to the church.

Seriously go talk to a priest for a little while. They're usually available and more than happy to talk to anyone about their faith.

The pope doesn't even get paid until he's dead.

I'm not really an atheist, I've actually read the new testament every night for the past four years with no exception. I'm reading revelations at the moment which is quite brutal and probably why I'm posting this. which reminds me... I think ill order a King James bible from Amazon while I remember.

But why? Imagine what you could understand if you read programming or scientific literature instead.

Do I fear eternal damnation for not believing nor caring about god? No, not really, if a god does that to me despite having been a good person, my only crime being not dedicating my life to him then that's one cruel god, that's one self-obsessed god if I have to think about him every day. Even if god is real, and he is the kind caring god he's portrayed to be in the bible, then do you really believe he wants you to spend your life paying attention to him? Even if you believe in god I'm fairly sure it does not mean you have to dedicate your life to him.

I don't believe in really any kind of spirituality at all, when you begin to understand chaos and emergence you recognise how things can come to be without any need for a god, the beauty of the results and patterns of emergent processes such as evolution are far more beautiful than any tales of god in any religion. You should not be suprised by the inconsistencies the thought of god leads you to note- the whole concept of god is inconsistent across the globe, if there are 2.2 billion christians in the world and 1.3 billion muslims and the christians turn to be wrong and it was Allah they should've worshipped then are those 2.2 billion christians to be condemned anyway? There's a lot of you religious folk and if any of you are to be believed you can't all be right yet you all insist you are right and many of you from different religions will even swear blind that you've had a religious experience demonstrating the existence of god. Some of you despite swearing blind you have, must be wrong.

Me? I'm content that if I just live my life and a god were to be real, that he'd fault me far less than those who zealousy worshipped him or other gods, those who did wrong. I do not believe for one moment that a god would fault me amongst 6 billion people for simply living a life of curiosity and interest in the natural world and his creations rather than giving him focus. More realistically though I think when I die I will be burnt or buried and any remains will eventually be soaked up as nutrients for plantlife and my remains will feed into the cycle of life- that's about the closest to reincarnation I believe I'll ever get.

if there are 2.2 billion christians in the world and 1.3 billion muslims and the christians turn to be wrong and it was Allah they should've worshipped then are those 2.2 billion christians to be condemned anyway?

they are the same God.

The differences between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are similar to the differences between Catholicism and Mormonism just earlier.