Im not trying to flame peoples religions and such, but I have some pretty valid points that question whether god is real or not.
Vilot_Hero
An interesting proposal, though not one that I'm inclined to take whollly seriously from the get-go. This, after all, has been a debate which has raged for thousands of years, and it's exceedingly rare, in my experience, to find an atheist who is saying something genuinely new.
-Why do people say "god" answers their prayers when It could of been sheer luck? And compared with statistics, the argument is further questionable. The bible said god answers prayers, but peoples "prayers" are mostly if not all unanswered.Vilot_Hero
This is not a proof, nor is it even a part of a proof.
You may have heard the saying "and sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from madness" in your travels, and I think there is an analog to be made here: any sufficiently improbable instance of a prayer being answered is insdistinguishable from luck. And hey, I will grant that all these prayers that have been answered could just be luck. It could be something substantially more than luck too -- no metric exists by which we could determine the truth of the matter, though, so how can we know?
As to unanswered prayers, I'm reminded of two things -- one is a line from Evan Almighty, and one is a line from a Rolling Stones song. It is very true that we don't always get what we want, especially in response to prayer, but I have learned that we can trust that God will give us what we need. And it really is true: if I pray for courage, do I suddenly become more courageous? Or do I find that I am presented with additional opportunities to demonstrate the quality instead? If I pray for money, does my boss deliver a cheque to my desk the following day, signalling that I've just got a big fat raise? Or do I find myself presented with opportunities to switch jobs or work on additional projects?
God answers every prayer, but do we always participate in the answer we get? Or do we miss the answer we need to get because we have a pre-conceived notion of what the answer should be, or what the answer would be if we were the one answering it? Do we miss what we need because we're too myopic about what we want?
Why do people look up to the bible so much when It could of been written by anyone(It just doesn't logically make sense).Vilot_Hero
Actually, in a sense, it was written by anyone...by several anyones, in fact. Scholars wrote parts of it. So did fishermen. Scribes of kings and lowly peasants all contributed to its pages and teachings.
In the end, we take it on faith that there is something worth considering in the pages of Scripture, in much the same way that we take it on faith that the author of our physics textbook actually possesses the degree in the field that his bio claims he has. When we don't know a book's author personally, we have no ability -- logically speaking -- to judge the book based on what we do know about the author (that is: what the author claims about himself). All we're left with is the contents of the book, the real world around us, and our God-given ability to think rationally. And we have to evaluate the veracity of the text using those three things all at once.
Now, if this was intended as a historical criticism, that is another matter; we have the original manuscripts for almost all books of the Bible (all canons), and we have a very good idea of just how old many of those are. So we can be quite sure that the Bible was not just suddenly written by some wily monk in 1200 AD.
-If everything is made up of matter, then how Is It possible for god to be created or to be in existence, If there was nothing from the start? And If god just magically appeared, then how could he of created the world? Its scientifically impossible.Vilot_Hero
This is actually quite an irrational sentiment, although I'm not sure you see the problem initially. Basically, though, how do we know that matter -- within the confines of the universe -- is the sum total of what is "real"? How do we know that matter, antimatter, energy, dark matter, and all the rest are not components of a subset of a larger reality? How do we know that the universe itself, and all that is in it, is not a subordinate part of a larger existence?
It's kind of like math: subsets and supersets. If the universe is the subset, the Judeo-Christian God is the superset (I'm not going to get into pantheism or panentheism in this discussion). The analogy can be extended: the contents of the subset cannot, by definition, know anything about the rest of the superset, in the same way that an integer variable in a programming language or mathematical calculation cannot be used to store or represent a real or complex numeric variable.
I think science can prove that god is not real.Vilot_Hero
Then you probably don't' understand what science is. Science is the study of that which can be empirically observed or detected, the study of the physical universe and its properties. Now, if we could say for certain that God existed only within the universe, then yes, I suppose science could someday prove or disprove His existence. But if, on the other hand, God exists outside of the universe, then there is no way that science could possibly detect it. Moreover, if God exists outside of time (which is implied by the notion of God being 'eternal'), then there is also no way for science to detect Him either.
Science has no ability to render judgements about metaphysical concepts, so do be careful that you don't over-extend its authority.
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