darth_ender said:
Gosh, I haven't gotten back to you dclarkg. It's a shame because you're the passionate atheist I enjoy debating. It's frustrating with the large comment deleted and now so behind in the discussion, but I'll try to jump on board soon.
That's ok, these kind of debates require time to be properly discussed and sometimes there isn't enough, the good thing is that the same nature of the discussion allows it to be picked up at anytime and at any point so don't feel obligated to catch up when we can start from scratch without problems ;)
RicOlie_2 said:
The difference between a leap of faith in selling a house and in believing in Christianity is that there is a great loss if the buyer of the house doesn't actually have the money, but no such loss (unless you go all the way and become a hermit, or something) in being a Christian. However, by deciding not to be a Christian because there isn't sufficient evidence (while not seeing any other reason that it isn't true) entails a great loss in the afterlife, whether it's not going to heaven, or spending a long time in purgatory, or not being able to experience heaven in the same way as those who took the leap of faith (it could be any of those--I don't claim to know exactly how God judges).
However, there could well be other reasons for not believing than lack of evidence. I see no need to go into that now, so I'll leave you with that argument for now.
1- I don't see any good reasons for not believing in Christianity or any other religion in general other than a complete absence of evidence, what else would you need?
2-Of course there is a bigger loss in the house example since the consequences are immediate and we know those are going to be real, but becoming a christian just to play a ''safe side'' in case the whole deal is real looks like fear impulse and not a love impulse, that's precisely another thing I despise of religions because it also uses fear as a motive to sustain it's premises, the fear of god is a primary component of the religious faith because horrific consequences are always presented as a certainty if you don't comply with the dogma. First of all, what kind of all-powefull-loving god blackmails his entire creation with horrendous punishments if we use the free will that himself gave us? Second, why would I be scared of ''holly punishment'' presented in the same book that I don't believe in? If you are an atheist you won't believe in any of the religious propositions, you just don't care what they say.
Warbler said:
No, logically and scientifically speaking, I can't say with 100% certainty that he exists. But I believe he exists. I have faith he exists.
I quote myself: 'Still not enough for a supreme being that is bigger than the entire existence of everything, the existence of such deity can't be hold on a mere possibility .''
Warbler said:
yes, I logical conclusion that he doesn't exist, but not a 100% certain one. You maybe able to say it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt Christ does not exist. But you can't say it is a 100% certainty. It is possible(not probable) that he exists.
I think that is all I have to say on this for now.
By that rationalization then we can't rule out the existence of pixies, unicorns, trolls, witches, Easter bunnies, tooth fairies and so on because ''is not 100% certain those don't exist'' which puts your entire religion next to those same things with the only difference being the amount of people that believe them as true. You are just choosing one mythological story over the others and wishing very hard that it is real, and despite the fact that you already claimed that is not even probable and that you don't have any evidence you still go trough your everyday decisions, opinions and actions deeply influenced by you taking the bible ''by faith'' as true. It's amazing how can a believer be aware of the slim chances of the existence of something or a claim being true and then just neglect that fact and act like it is true.
You don't go to church, pray to Jesus and follow the bible teachings with such devotion while simultaneously believing that all of that is ''just probable'' at best, somewhere in your brain the ''faith'' has convinced you that all the story is true despite all signs pointing in the opposite direction and that makes sense since ''faith'' is ''...belief, confidence or trust in a person, object, religion, idea or view despite the absence of proof.''
At least we can conclude that Jesus is on the same level that any other gods, legends, mythic creatures and any super magical mystical beings that we can invent and not ''disproved 100% percent'', also we can conclude that anybody can pick one and just have 'faith'' in it, and finally we can conclude that Jesus is not a reality, just a slim philosophical probability.
I hope you are willing to debate in the future ;)
TV's Frink said:
Can you say with 100% certainty that he does exist?
C'mon, you know you want to be agnostic too. ;-)
Yeah, agnosticism is a way better position for a ''I logically conclude that he doesn't exist, but not as a 100% certainty '' argument.