I Know That God Does Not Exist

It's a methodological difference. Philosophy can be rational but still be wrong. Philosophy believes that it can sit in a chair and think an answer; science requires evidence to form a conclusion but there is none.Philosophers have tried to prove or disprove god/s for thousands of years, all they have achieved are rational arguments for and against. A proof or conclusion is not possible.Science too can not disprove a deistic, non-interventionist god because there is nothing to observe or test. It can disprove all the theistic beliefs of the religious - hence all the complaints about Darwin and geology and astronomy etc etc.It might even get to a point of being able to show how a universe can create itself making the traditional religious ideas of primitive gods redundant. But it can never take that last step of saying therefore, there is no god.

Still, it's interesting. If we see something we don't understand there may be a natural tendency to impute a cause (SOMEBODY must be up on a mountain throwing those thunderbolts!) but the ideas of the monotheistic religions? How they developed must have been far more convoluted.

It almost seems as if the religionists have specifically designed their concept of a deity as something that cannot be objectively proven or disproven...

That's just a bald assertion. You haven't explained WHY one fictional character is logical and another is not.

But I haven't said any of literary characters you listed (007 etc.) are illogical.

I listed God. Why, specifically, is God "illogical" when 007 is not?Edited by ringo, : Spilling.

You listed James Bond, Holden Caulfield, Tom Joad, Long John Silver, Lemuel Gulliver and Jesus in your list of literary characters. In the next paragraph you talk about god. If you had intended god to be in the list of literary characters . . .Anyway, you've not answered my point

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In the same way that the process of Tarot card reading is not a logical method of foretelling the future, the idea of a deity (by whatever you mean your deity to be, whether an explanation for lightning bolts or a morality car wash to clean away your sins) is not a logical thing.

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I would have done exactly what I did.And I have told you what I intended, so there's no excuse for quibbling. You haven't made a point. You've made an assertion.You keep repeating that the idea of God is "illogical". Show us the illogic.

We know that the concept of a Deity is not an evidenced thing. As for said deity being logical, I think that He is. Look at how the process of my development occurred.
I grew up in a Christian culture. The Deity was spoken of in the media of my time and by people whom I knew, though very rarely as I recall. If I had grown up nearer the Bible Belts Buckle, I may have had a different story. My point is that even within a culture,(Western Christian/secular) the ideas about God are varied and not at all the summation of the God that culture collectively accepts. I saw cartoons about God. An old man with a long white beard and a scroll, taking names or making notes. Were I to turn on the TV, a dozen preachers all blathered on about peace, joy, and holiness...but I looked at them and not God.I never knew the God I know now). My Dad told me that the reason we went to church is because it "makes you feel good"...about yourself and about what you have been blessed with. He likely would have said that the other people in the world were either like us (though not quite as "good" because America had the most freedom) or oppressed by communism. He would claim that their governments limited what they could buy and how wealthy they could become. Thus, Dads idea of God was as a way to acquire more wealth and blessings so as to be able to give more to the church, the Masons, and the guy on the street that he might hire for a day to clean the floors in his houses that he built. Had ringo been around my family then, and tried to date my sister(who is now 70) Dad would have called him a beatnik and tried to protect her from him. God and America were synonymous. Edited by Phat, : No reason given.Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

If you were to project the size of an American family extrapolating from data of the years 1900 to 1940 you might miss the Baby Boom following the war, but your process would not be illogical. It might merely give the wrong answer. But Tarot cards, as a way of making a similar projection, even if it were accurate, would not be logical. Do you see the distinction here?

I'm sure there are plenty of reasons people believe things that are illogical. That doesn't make those things logical.

You're not answering the question. WHY are Tarot cards illogical? WHY is the idea ofr God illogical?The logical error that YOU are making is in saying that THIS example is obviously illogical, therefore THAT example is obviously illogical. The problems are that what is obvious to one is not necessarily obvious to another AND that the 'obvious' property is not distributive.

Lets start by defining logical. To some, a universe that began with nothing more than chemicals makes more sense than a Creator. To me, A Creator makes more sense. To some, humans invented god, gods, spaghetti monsters and religions. To me, I became born again when I became aware of the actual presence of God. One could ask for evidence and argue that I experienced something else, but to me, at that moment God became logical primarily because of my sense of awareness which started that day and has been with me ever since.

"Makes more sense" has little to do with logic. Logic is not something that can be compared. Either something is logical or it ain't. It's like going through a maze - either you get to the end or you're lost. Something does not "become" logical. It either is and always was or it ain't and never was.I suspect that Sarahy is making the same mistake as you are.

Perhaps there is a difference in the ways you and I conceive of the terms "logical" and "illogical"?Could you give me an example of a thing (or process, if you wish, though a process is also a "thing" in the broad sense) which you would consider illogical? I only ask because you seem to want to categorize everything as logical and only have the concept of "illogical" come in as a possibility when we talk about "belief" in that thing.