I Know That God Does Not Exist

I had the impression you were trying to prove that no God exists. My mistake.Biblical revelation explains everything having to do with why people believe what they believe, but I don't expect you to accept that. It's something I learned on my way to Christian belief back in the eighties. For me it was an eyeopener but the secular world doesn't accept such things.So although the "vast differences" in religious experiences throughout history seems to you like evidence that none of it is true at all, to me it proves which is the true religion and why there are so many false religions, so that to my mind the fact of so many people believing in God IS evidence for God.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sounds like a quote. Ayn Rand?Christ did not bring an evil religion and to say so is to commit a really serious slander of the best man who ever lived. There are of course evil religions, I could name some, there are even some that misuse the name of Christ. Which to my mind is merely evidence that Satan is hard at his usual work of defaming Him and misleading humanity.Speaking only for my Protestant faith I know of many people who repented of all kinds of crimes when they became believers, including me. I had to confess and repent of helping a thief and I paid back his thefts after I became a believer. I had to make up for other sins too. It is very common in times of true revival for the police to get hundreds of such confessions and acts of restitution for past crimes.I won't say there aren't evil things done in the name of religion and even in the name of Christ but those things prove the reality of Satan, not of God or of Christ.I'm not expecting this to be accepted. I know what I'm up against.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It's those knots in your head. No! Not at all!Stubborn is one thing, M'Lady, but this is pigheaded delusion. Seriously, Faith, I wouldn't waste my time on such an exercise. These forums are full of your denials on everything god ever created.Besides, research, which I've done for decades, when approached right can be fun. I wouldn't dream of denying you such pleasures.
Of course I'm talking *YOUR* religion.

Steven Weinberg.

So when good people do things and claim that their religion had something to do with it, you believe that the religion made them do it, even though it could easily have been their own change of heart in the first place that made them decide to do good, and then take up some religion, but when people espousing some religion do bad things explicitly in the name of their religion you brush it off as not because of their religious beliefs?Oh, by the way, in July an indie band called off a concert in Lebanon because of fears of violence by the Christian community there.

Don't see how you got that out of what I wrote but I certainly don't agree. Islam does teach bad things and without that impetus I think we wouldn't have any suicide bombers. As for people doing good things and ascribing them to their religion I don't see any reason offhand to assume they are wrong about that. Recently I've been following some Buddhist teachings and find them remarkably similar to biblical morality, such as loving one's neighbor as oneself and so on.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Humanity has had so many problems with vast numbers of people believing things that just aren't so. I'm not talking about things like believing the world is flat, or believing in horoscopes or alien abductions.I'm talking about the anti-vaxxers or the people that believe certain races are superior or the millions of devoted practitioners of Communism that believed the millennium was at hand.Just because a lot of people believe something...

Yes, humanity has its problems, that's for sure, but none of the examples you gave have to do with any religion that I know of. And how ar4e you going to stop people from having what you consider to be irrational beliefs?Belief in communism itself, by the way, IMO, is one of the most dangerous irrational influences in the world these days, one that would bring down civilization completely, and it is often believed in with more religious fervor than any actual religion. Islam is another dangerous ideology. Both of these ideologies have no problem at all in knowing what to do with people who have what *they* consider to be false/irrational beliefs.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So you see the problem with devotion to unreason.

No you didn't. You just said, "You contradict yourself." Point out the contradiction.

Don't know about the term "devotion" but I consider the human intellect to be "fallen" since Eden so that we make all kinds of mistakes in reasoning.

That's cherry-picking. Show that the idea of god is inherently irrational. That's what you want to believe - but you can't seem to back it up rationally. I don't think that's true - but even if it was, it's irrelevant. You're the one making a positive claim - that the idea of God is irrational. You're the one who has to back up that claim. You have not done so. I am still waiting for you to fill in those blanks. Why can't you do it? Start by giving us one logical error in the idea of God.

I'm not necessarily concluding anything. I'm questioning your conclusions. I'm not convinced that the idea of God is irrational. It's interesting that your arguments against the idea are pretty much irrational.

Like believing in gods, demons, ghosts and republicans.We already know that "mistakes in reasoning" are a staple of human intelligence that apparently predates your mythical creation.See Gbekli Tepe

It's always best to give at least a partial quote from a link. I may or may not get to the link itself.The problem with what you are saying of course is that you trust your own fallen intellect to make such judgments, which is humanity's problem in general, and in this case you make them without any evidence except the absence of evidence. You ignore the evidence for demons and the other phenomena you list. Of course it's witness evidence which is all too easily discounted, especially if you've acquired an educated bias against the information. I used to have that bias myself.There's certainly plenty of mistakes in reasoning in our time, we don't have to go back to ancient times.But all this is why we have to be very careful not to jump to conclusions, and need to follow rules for determining the truth. Sometimes the rules are irrational. We never will be perfect.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.