We know there's a God because...

Every time I meet them. How did you know? As I said above, maybe I'm wierd.

Well, as Cold Foreign Object will remind you, if a given cloud looks like a bunny rabbit to every culture in Africa, then we must conclude that bunny rabbits live in the sky.And you'd realize that if the Cosmic Bunny Rabbit wasn't punishing you for not believing in sky-dwelling bunny rabbits by removing your bunny rabbit sense.

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...Onward to Victory is the last great illusion the Republican Party has left to sell in this country, even to its own followers. They can't sell fiscal responsibility, they can't sell "values," they can't sell competence, they can't sell small government, they can't even sell the economy. -- Matt Taibbi

What is there to rebut? You said something was a fact but offered no support. Even if what you claimed, (all cultures have religion/superstitions), was true it does not provide evidence for the existence of the supernatural. As has been pointed out, many cultures have blamed diseases on bad juju and the truth is that they're caused by natural means.

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soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
Live every week like it's Shark Week! - Tracey Jordan
Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
*not an actual doctor

But the OP asks what you might conclude from examining the world around us in the absence of religious texts. Is that what you would conclude, that God exists and that mankind has crucified Him? And not only conclude God exists and was crucified by mankind, but that we had done so in order to "stay in control as god himself," despite being buffeted by wars and disease.I'm not following the logic.--Percy

Well if you start a new topic in which you explain your thinking in relation to a simple practical example like the concept of 'red' I have previously detailed then I will be happy to take part.I looked at the link and have a number of comments but I will raise these if and when we cover this in another thread rather then go against Admin's wishes in this one.Anyone - How do I link to a previous post in the msg= format if I do not know the number of the forum/thread (or how do I find these out)??Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I'm entirely too tempted to sig that.

When typing a message into the message box, look at the links to the left of the box. One of them is for dBCodes help. Click on that.--Percy

That's an interesting concept of 'simple' - based upon layman understanding of the surface of concepts? How exactly is Newtonian gravity simple? It's immensely complex, with fun things like transfinite singularities and no reasonable causal structure. Where-as the whole of GR was written down over breakfast by Hilbert in the astonishingly beautiful Your simple universe is the "God's plaything" universe I envisage in Genesis 1-2. Don't foget that your mystery is our "oh, of course. How simple, how aesthetic. Now we know, how could we have ever thought otherwise?"

Right - those transfinite singularities would not exist and there would be no causes. Things would just happen. Billiard balls. The simple universe would be like a cartoon of what we actually see. There would be no need for general relativity. The point is that you can't argue that a created universe would be different from what you see, because you don't know whether it was created or not.What it comes down to, is that any "predictions" of what the other kind of universe would be like, are all strawmen. Ah, we can all go home now, job done. No more mysteries. Well done.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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I have no disagreement with this. Huh?

Percy:No... it is what I would conclude in a world where religious texts do exist.My point is a legitimate deduction in a world that does have religios texts. And that is the world we live in.I simply do not know anything about a world without them. The speculation about it is utterly unscientific and irrelevant to me.I gues I have nothing to cotribute to your speculation. Why do you want to know what we could conclude in a world without religious texts? Would it be relevant to this world?If God exists, the only legitimate explanation for war and other evils... is that man has been given the dignity to freely choose his destiny and subsequently, he has in general, rejected God's counsel, prophets, and His personal incarnation as well.PercyYes, that's exactly right!Jesus went so far as to make the case that even if a man were raised from the dead, 'they still would not believe'.He appears to know us well.There is nothing that god can dish out that will persuade a man who has made up his mind not to believe in God. Any consequenses man brings upon himself will immediately be used to prove that there is no Good God.All you have to do is read the story of the Exodus to see how hard the heart of Egypt is. And Egypt is a metaphor for the world in general.They might however, bow to a pantheistic god who does not threaten their diverse proclivities.Edited by Rob, : No reason given.

The OP asks you to consider a hypothetical question, and I'm interpreting responses as if they were addressing this hypothetical. If you'd prefer not to address the hypothetical because it doesn't seem to make sense or seems flawed in some way then you only need one post to say that.--Percy

Percy:Of course...I think that (hypothetically) in a world with no religious texts, we would live in a world without logical thought or consiousness.In which case... I wouldn't be thinking at all.

A world without the bible or any other similar religious text has been the norm for the majority of human existence.
War and the various other evils under consideration still took place. How could the people be expected to draw the same conclusions that you consider so evident without the help of the texts you consider so fundamental to your way of thinking?This is not unscientific speculation. It is history.The world you talk of, in which the texts in question exist and are readily available and accessible to those who seek them out, is a very recent development in human culture.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Just to make sure, so now you *are* addressing the hypothetical? Or is this just another way of saying the hypothetical makes no sense to you?If you former, then am I correct to summarize your position this way: that the mere fact that you're conscious and can think indicates that there must be a God. If so, then what is it about your examination of the world around us that would lead you to this conclusion?--Percy