A question for Athiests/Evolutionists. (re: How can one not belive in something greater than himself? et all)

I haven't yet read the 43 posts so sorry if I'm repeating what's already been said. I can't believe in something just because it would be nice if it existed. I lack belief in a god due to a complete lack of evidence that one exists as far as i'm concerned. There is little comfort in pretending something exists when I know full well that I do not believe it. Why would I fool myself like that?

The day is spit into two 12 hour halves because the ancient egyptians believed that Osiris spent the night passing through the 12 gates of hell. Does this mean that this literally happens, or just that humans are very symbolic? Not all countries ground their date the same as we do btw.

Thanks for the complients I consider the universe to be greater than myself, if that counts

I guess that all boils down to what you mean by spirituality. If you mean something refering to an actualy "spirit" that you think exists seperate from your body, then I have no belief in that.

I don't think your thought processes are at all different from most, what you describe is exactly the way it is. There is no way whatsoever to simply choose to believe something. As an example I usually say something like "Take a look at your sofa and choose to believe a leprechaun is sat in it. Truly believe it, not just pretend it's real." It simply can't be done. The same is true of the opposite of course. If I truly do believe something is true I can't just choose to stop believing, unless something external to myself makes me stop believing. Yes, I get that impression too. As I said in my original post in this thread though, if you don't believe in a god to start with then there is absolutely no comfort to be gained from the concept of a god. You would be wasting your time to try and get comfort from something you know you don't believe in, it would be self delusional and probably not all that helpful.

If that is a miraculous sign from god then it is a very bad, ambiguous one. I see nothing out of the ordinary in every so often someone surviving a crash. Now what WOULD be miraculous is if the crash was averted from happening altogether in such a way as to be definately go against the laws of physics. If that happened often then it would be a great sign that something strange was going on. Now the media definately does report on this when it happens as I remember a case of this recently. I can definately see that some thanks need to be given in a situation like this. Problem is i'd give the thanks to the doctors and other medical staff that made the seperation possible. It was their skill and ingenuity that made it happen.Miracles seem to be on a downward spiral. Take a look in the OT and you'll see miracles aplenty with god directly intervening in the day to day happenings in the word in a very overt and obvious way. Move steadily forwards to the present day and miracles seem to be drying up, until now there are no more overt miracles on display. No more does the sun stand still for several days etc. All we're left with are perfectly possible events that we just so happen to attach a great deal of signifigance to (such as people not dieing).

Doesn't detract from the point that I was making...that what was offered as miracles are in fact not good examples.

Most of us have undeniable proof that our parents exist, yet that doesn't demean our love for them. Knowledge of existence in no way forces love, but it does make love possible.

Oh, no I wasn't trying to do that. Just to point out the difference between what miracle was then, and what it has become now. We understand the motions of the planets almost perfectly, so if the sun stood still in the sky it would be truly against anything we would expect to happen. Someone surviving an accident, while unlikely in any one instance, becomes almost certain to occur somewhere at sometime given the huge number of accidents as Ned explained (much better than I).

How would you tell the difference between someone who had wisdom of something they couldn't know naturally implanted in them and someone who didn't have that wisdom, but thought they did?

Well thats the whole point. It's silly to expect humans to love something they don't know. If a god is ambiguous that in no way makes any love it gets better, anymore than if a person is ambiguous or anonymous it does. It just confuses the issue. A god being obvious also in no way makes love inevitable, it just enables people to make a choice of wether to love or not.As an example I'm adopted. If I walked past my biological mother in the street I wouldn't know it, for all I know i've already done that. If that ever does happen i'll feel no love or any connection of any sort towards her simply because I don't know it's her. I don't know about other people, but I can't love people or entities that I have no idea exist I'd say if there's no proof there's no love, as I pointed out with my example of my biological mother above. Well I guess not everyone is the same then. I have no longing to go home because i'm already there

You'll never see scientific proof that god doesn't exist since it's not logically possible to prove a negative like that. On the same note, you'll never see scientific proof that faeries, pixies, the easter bunny or Santa don't exist either. In fact, there will be an infinite number of beliefs that can't be disproved (well, as many beliefs as the human imagination can cup up with anyway). That's why it's not possible (for me anyway) to just believe something.

I fail to see how you can properly love a being that you don't know exists. If a god exists and wants to be loved, it is in it's interests to make sure everyone knows of it's existence so that they are able to love it. If people don't know of it's existence then they will never love it in a meaningful way.As for people loving god purely out of fear of hell, that is something that happens now! In fact that position is formalised with Pascals Wager, so people not knowing about god doesn't stop them faking belief and love out of fear of hell. At least if everyone had solid evidence that the god existed they would be able to make an informed decision on what stance they wanted to take.And as Scraf pointed out, there is a big difference between people knowing of gods existence and actually supporting and loving that god.This message has been edited by happy_atheist, 11-27-2004 08:59 PM

I actually disagree. Humans in general live in and fully depend of society. As individuals we're pretty weak and vulnerable. We require a level of integrity to keep the society working. While true that you may be able to make a gain if you and you alone were dishonest, quite the opposite would be true if everyone was dishonest. You would then lose out as an every-man-for-himself state would be produced.I don't think religion is necessary for this level of cohesion to exist, but I think it would certainly help to unite people to a common purpose, or at least a common set of values. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if some people have a genetic predisposition to be religious. Well it's true that rapid procreation involving many offspring is one way to ensure survival of the species, but it's not the only way. Nurturing a few offspring but with a high success rate is another. This is too far off topic to continue here though...

Bees can direct other bees to food without taking them there. Obviously I have no idea what goes on inside a bee's head, but I would guess the common opinion would be that they don't have imagination.Also i've seen people talk of examples of studies on monkeys (chimps if I remember correctly), where the chimps formulated a hunting plan and gave each member of the group a role that they went off and performed out of sight of others. This was in a thread on here, about what makes humans seperate to animals. I don't know how true that is, but if it were true, would it constitute imagination? I would think it would.I guess the problem with imagination is that we don't know what is going on in an animals head. Imagination is generally thought of as us creating images in our head that don't exist, or creating abstract ideas. We can see things such as birds building elaborate nests or doing dances with the sole purpose of attracting other birds, but I guess we can have no way of knowing what's actually going on in their minds.