What is it that makes you people so sure that there is a god, and that that god is the god preached about by Christianity?
I'm
not sure. In fact, my waffling about God and religion makes some of the members of this forum sick to their stomach
I'm really fairly skeptical, and by skeptical I don't mean Randi/Shermer style skepticism (though I have nothing against the work they do exposing frauds), or the hack skepticism of Descartes... no, I mean real skepticism, like Carneades and such.
I mean, what is your evidence for holding such claims? Or to put it another way, I challenge you to prove to me that God exists.
Pretty much everyone agrees that you can't prove or disprove God (actually I would argue that you can't prove or disprove
anything, but that's perhaps a discussion for another thread). As for evidences for why I believe (sometimes, anyway), here are the three that come to mind:
- Beauty
- Irrationality
- Suffering
You can come up with all sorts of thoughts and explanations and such on those three things. However, IMO the best way of looking at them is to do so within a theistic framework. There is beauty, there is irrationality, there is suffering: therefore there is a God.
In the days whe I was religious, the thing that kept me believing for a long time was reports of miracles, I.E. I believed I had evidence for the truth of it. But when I re-examined the basis for my beliefs, I found that many supposed miracles can be written off as pious lies, delusions and coincidences.
See, here's the thing... I would agree that many miracles spoken of might not be literal and historical events, but I don't think that means we should disregard them or think less of them. We need to get past this idea that something being myth or religious story equates to it being a lie or deception or whatever. When your child paints a picture you don't do a stinging critique of it, you appreciate it for what it is.
I then acted upon the urge to critically reexamine the bible and its teaching and, to make a long story short, ended up an atheist. I will leave further comments on my own path (and my reasons for not believing in God) for when this discussion develops.
I also struggle with such things. As I've said on the forum before, when I first left Orthodox Christianity it was not because I was reading atheists, but because I was reading Christians.
Let me clarify one thing at the outset: the reason I'm asking is because I think you people are deluded (as I used to be) and want to discuss with you the reasons why I think you're deluded. I am NOT asking this because I want to believe in what you believe, am unsure about my own atheism etc (these were claims people made about my motivations when I posted this question on another Orthodox forum and they are not true. I am sure of my anti-religious beliefs and have no wish to be religious). I am starting this discussion in order to encourage critical thinking in people.
Fair enough.
