what would it take to convert you to the other side

And your last paragraph is important.If the empirical evidence pointed to a God that is unworthy of respect much less worship, then that God should be opposed.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

How much money you offering?

i am offering you salvation and an eternal life the grate spaghetti monster gave one of its meatballs for your salvation the meatball was eaten to cleansed humanity from its original sin (Lasagna) repent or burn forever in a lake of hot sauce Edited by frako, : No reason given.

You are as wrong as those who follow the shoe or the gourd.There is no salvation in pasta, only the green chile pepper offers eternal life. I know this personally from the disciples in New Mexico.

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The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
Salman RushdieThis rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. - the character Rorschach in Watchmen

the spaghetti monster spoke to me and he gave on to me his true name Nudels how can you doubt his power even science is begining to grasp his power the string theories what else could those strings be than the grate ones spaghetti repent now and for a small offering of 50EUR i can also tell you the grate ones divine plan for he told it to me

Iano is by far the most active participant, and he's pushing a God of the literally inerrant Bible. I'm not an atheist, but I am on the same side of the issue as atheists in this thread. It isn't that that there isn't any evidence that would convince me. It's that theists like Iano don't appear to have considered or even understood the difficulty of providing sufficient empirical evidence of the God of a literally inerrant Bible. I'll elaborate on this a bit in a reply to Iano.--Percy

Hi Iano,The opening post says: This makes it sound very simple, but what does "a manifestation of a god" look like. Can you tell it's a god just by looking at it? Does it have to do something before you know it's a God, like perform a miracle? If it performs a miracle, should the miracle be studied empirically (answer: YES, OF COURSE, ABSOLUTELY!). So how does a god manifest himself empirically?But you're not just advocating a god, but *THE* Christian God of the literally inerrant Bible, so this makes the empirical requirements a bit more complicated. God demonstrating his existence empirically just proves he exists, but let's just grant for the sake of discussion that he somehow does this and I'm convinced he's God. But just because he's God doesn't say anything about whether he created the universe 6000 years ago in six days. There's all these little details from a literally inerrant Bible that make no sense if they're actually true.So your God would have some explaining to do. If the world is really 6000 years old, then why does all the evidence say it is 4.56 billion years old. Did he place that evidence there? If so, how, and maybe more important, why?There are scores of other questions just like this that derive from a literally inerrant Bible, and I won't become tedious by going into any detail about them, but one of the strengths of science is working out the relationships between all the data. A God of the literally inerrant Bible introduces a huge number of glaring inconsistencies between the claims of this God and the evidence from the natural world. We would have to understand a great deal about these inconsistencies before we could empirically accept that this God was the God of the literally inerrant Bible.And that's why I said that the empirical requirement was a bit tough. I'm not hyper-skeptical. I'm just applying normal scientific standards.--Percy

The point is that we want evidence before we will believe that the entity in question exists and it is usually in that context that evidence is demanded. Why would we worship something that we don't think even exists?However, once we have established that a deity exists the next question is, what kind of deity is worthy of worship?It's a very difficult question - but I can say straight away that if we have reason to believe that it is not only the Abrahamic (Judeo-Christian is a stupid term) deity but that the tales in the Holy Bible that he is given credit for were actually his work...then the only thing that would make me worship such a horrendous monster would be fear. And it is reasonable to suppose that I could be so terrified by such a being that I would go through the motions of worship.I doubt it would be genuine.But if Yahweh exists, then I could understand certain social policies regarding abortion being treated differently. Therefore, if someone claims we shouldn't allow abortions because Yahweh considers them immoral (assuming the Biblical Yahweh cares two hoots, which I'm not so sure about) then it would be perfectly reasonable to say:"Sure a big monster might torture us all to death and if that were true, we should consider not allowing abortions...but do we have any evidence that this big monster even exists let alone that it plans to torture us?" For those people that mind their own business - I let them get on with it. For those people that insist in meddling in my business on the grounds of God Exists or those who like to debate philosophy - minding my own business means tackling those who aren't letting me live mine.

i really don't get religion they actually convinced people that there is an invisible man in the sky that is watching everything you do, and he has a list of things he does not want you to do, if you do them he will send you to be tortured, burned.... and what not for all eternity and yet he LOVES YOU. come on i would get if a child would believe such nonsense but grown adults!!!!a bit of the post is borrowed from george carlin

I am already a Pastafarian, Pesto be onto Him.If I am to leave the promise of the Beer Volcano and the Stripper Factory behind then there is going to have to be a hell of a lot of money involved! So, being of loose morals, as His Noodlyness commands, I will trade my pirates eye-patch for a considerable sum.How much ya got?

If Russia attacks Israel with just about every weapon it has, but is defeated by fire from the sky. Something the Israelis could not produce themselves, than I would be on my way to believing.God appearing before me would help too. Of course I would have some tests for him. Like not speaking at all and having him read my mind. Maybe a little time travel and finally being able to create something out of thin air. Nothing big LOLOf course someone coming around the corner right now and giving a me a suitcase with a few million dollars in it would convert me on the spot. Heck even a $20 might do it right now. (Darn! I Knew it wouldn't work!)Too often I hear the response, well you wouldn't believe even if god did show up in front of you. To that I say, try me.

i'm no sure what the difference is between "evidence" and "empirical evidence".If there is "enough evidence to show that God exists and he indeed created the universe and everything, and that he is the Judeo-Christian God", then in what way could that sufficient evidence to show these things not be "empirical evidence"?Me, I think that when people say "empirical evidence" they're just indulging in rhetorical overkill, the same way as when creationists talk about "random chance".There's another kind?

umm show me the evidence, i cant see any evidence pointing to god creating the universe.

If in the first mention of "God" you meant the Christian God, then sure, yes. No, just that they should stop fucking things up for everyone else on the basis of nothing whatsoever.

AMEN Brother, preach the Gospel.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!