It seems like no matter how emphatically one demonstrates another's argument to be flawed or illogical, they always refuse to accept defeat. People usually just resort to special pleading and invoking the invincible ignorance fallacy until the debate just descends into an exchange of straw man fallacy and argumentum ad hominem. Have you experienced the same? Or have you successfully been able to win someone over to your view?
I was raised in a VERY bible thumping religious family of penecostal and Catholics. I was raised my whole life believing in god then when I hit my teenage years I wasn't quite so sure so I started experimenting. What I mean by that is i looked into and tried and experienced different religions. Buddhism, Mormon, atheism, etc. Till finally I settled on ok maybe there is no god but just a higher power. But in my later years after getting married and having 3 kids and after going through so much I then began doubting that there is or ever was a god at all. I had pretty much lost all my faith. Then I experienced the absolute worst nightmare any parent could have to go through. My middle child (2nd daughter) at 17 years old who was healthy as a horse and who never gets sick. The 17 year old girl who was and had been running 3 newspaper routes everyday for the past 4 years all of a sudden with no warning ends up in the emergency room in the ICU unit of the children's hospital with a life threatening brain trauma. With a blot clot that covered the left side of her brain wrapped around the back of her head and left another 50 cent size blood clot above her right ear. The doctors gave her a 2% chance to live. And said that if she did live she would never have a normal life and would be nothing more then a drooling vegetable. She went through numerous seizures , had a lot of brain damage, and ended up in 3 cons. (2 on her own and the 3rd was medically induced with phenobarbotal.) We had her put in a cooling blanket ( which is 1 step above being dead or cryogenically frozen) we had a hole drilled in her skull and a brain pressure cap put on her. After numerous EKG'S, MRI'S, CAT SCANS and many more tests; The doctors had all of us completely convinced that she was gone. The hospital set us up with what they called a memory kit and helped us create a memory box which included licks of her hair a mold of her hand pictures and other things. We also had to make funeral arrangements and the hardest thing we had to do was see a date to have her taken off life support and let her go I spent the entire last and final night I had with her (before letting her go the next morning) sitting beside her talking to her, reading to her, pleading and begging her to wake up. Crying the entire night. The next morning arrived and the doctor checked the level of phenobarbotal in her system (which according to the doctors and medical science she had way to high of a level still in her system that it was impossible for her to wake up) we were set to let her go at 7am. the whole family was in the room at 6:30 and at 6:50 I said her eyes are open... the nurse said no thats not possible its just your imagination but then my husband and my father looked and saw that I was right. As the doctor came in the room he heard my dad ask the nurse if him and my husband were also imagining her eyes being open too. The doctor rushed over and sure enough her eyes were open. The doctor talked to her and she responded. From that day my daughter did EVERYTHING the doctors said she would NEVER do. Begining with living. My daughter did the impossible from then on. She proved all the doctors wrong she went against everything that was know in the medical books and she recovered faster than anyone they had ever seen recover in medical history. She graduated high school and today is engaged to be married and has had 2 children. So yes that most definitely restored and renewed my faith in god there HAS TO BE A GOD for it was ONLY a miracle from god that was able to save my daughter for me and my family and my daughter!! So.. do I believe in god? YOUR DAMN RIGHT I DO !! And no one will ever be able to change my mind about that. But personally I dont feel its right to force religion on others so to each their own and may god bless!
Nice story. To me, it goes to the heart of what religion is. It's a useful way to explain the gaps we have in how the universe society and bodies function. Sadly it's not evidence of God at all, just a nice story and I'm pleased everything turned out okay. Its really flattering to think that we've been saved by God because we're good and deserving people. Ultimately, everyone believes they are right and just, even criminals believe their action are justified and right. If religion brings you some joy, that's great. To me its just a plaster over ignorance.
To be completely and totally honest with you.. i am still today not a religious person and in all reality I use god as a miracle for the reasoning of my daughter being alive today because without acknowledging that it was a miracle or gift from god I have no other way to rationally have an explanation or reason for how my daughter is alive today. According to the doctors (who did ask for my permission to allow her specific case to be used in medical school and put into some sort of medical science book so they may research and learn all they could) it was supposed to be literally a medical & science Impossibility for her to live let alone live and recover. So even though I acknowledge that I do believe there is a god I still today dont go to church and I really dont pray. But I do believe that if a person does believe in god then they shouldn't have to go to church and pray they should be able to worship god wherever and however the choose. But if you have any other ideas of how to rationally explain all that happen i am all ears!!! And thank you for the kind words.
They drilled a hole in her skull and put in a presser cap and bolt. They did so many different things and we went through so much. In the end she had suffered a total of 18 seizures 10 of them were brain seizures.. She had over 80% damage to her short term memory bank.. 20 % to 45 % damage dont to other parts of her brain including the part that controlled movement. she went through 3 separate comas 2 on her own but the 3rd was a medically induced coma with phenabarbitol... She had been put in a cooling blanket and her body essentially frozen ( one step away from dead) when she woke she was a 4 year old inside of an 18 year Olds body. She was paralyzed for a while on her left side... I could go on but I think you get the jest of it.
Honestly if I go by the medical treatments and what the doctors all said She is SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD. According to the doctors it was medically and scientifically IMPOSSIBLE for her to wake up when she did due to the very high amount of phenobarbitol in her system at that point in time... Even the doctors say it was a miracle. They still to this day are finding it difficult to believe what she has overcame and how much.. as well as how fast she has (and still is) recovering. (We still meet with all the doctors in meeting once month) they say she is a medical merical. she has defied all the laws ofedical and science from day one and has done everything they said sge would never be able to do. So if I had to choose yes I would say it was an of god and that for some reason god gave us the miracle of my daughters life and recovery. Before this I had lost ally faith in god and did not believe he really existed but after this I know in my heart that there has to be a god otherwise my baby would be dead right now.
Thanks for the story about your daughter @Smurphanie. I'm wiping tears away here. I have a similar story about my sister. But 4 years later she ended up back in thw hospital. Headed down the same path. Only this time her heart gave out right away. My sister was chronically ill her whole life. By all rights she never should have lived as long as she did. But now that she's been gone for 5 years. I can look back on it and to me it's proof od Gods existence. And i know that some people are going to say "but she died". She did! And she should have died the first time. I'm convinced that God wanted to take her then. Spare her the suffering. But we gathered around and prayed so hard that god gave her back to us... even if it was just for a little while. To say goodbye. When he she went back into the hospital again he took her quickly to spare us the pain.
You k ow how at hight school graduations they usually only have 1 speaker.. That speaker being the valedictorian correct? Well after everything my daughter had went through and with as hard as she worked for it she was asked to give a speach at hwr high school graduation (and boy let me tell you I still today feel so bad for that valedictorian... they should have let her make her speech first.) If you would like to read her speech let me know and I will post it for you to read.
@ChiTown33 you are very welcome and I am so sorry to hear about your sister but very happy to hear you got to have what time you did with her those moments will last forever in your memory.
Interesting. So you really do believe that only divine intervention could've lead to her recovery and that it was medically and scientifically "impossible" to quote you for her to wake up. So I'm interested to know, what do you base that statement on? Do you know everything there possibly is to know about human physiology? Do you think everything there is to know has already been discovered and the individual doctors treating your daughter know absolutely everything about human physiology down to the sub-molecular level?
No I dont and all of what I know is what I learned from all the research I had done , what the doctors were telling me, and what I felt and believed to be true. According to what the doctors said and according to all the research I did regarding the drug phenabarbitol, medically induced comas, the human body system, and the rate of asorbtion and expulsion of drugs in the human body system. It was at the time to be known to be a fact that her waking up was in fact impossible. But you are absolutely right I dont and neither does anybody else know everything about everything and if there is one thing I do believe now is that it is Fact that ANYTHING is possible
I think the fact they are including your daughter's case in a medical journal suggests there is something to be learnt from it. There is potentially for new discovery and what they thought was impossible either isn't or there was something else they did or a time or way they did it which has been overlooked.
I also came to that same conclusion and I even asked the doctors about it and they told me that they are hoping to learn something new or find something new ir at the very least concentrate on how her body (brain) reacted and responded from start to finish. They are still trying to this day to figure out hoe or what even caused it to happen. We still dont know. But yet again holding true to form that doctors dont know shit... They said my daughter would have to stay on the blood thinners (coumadin) for the rest of her life but yet she is now off of them and they only time she has to worry about being back on them again is if in the future she decides to have anymore kids.
I doubt any religious person would actually even listen to an argument against the existence of God. I mean they would pretend to, but they wouldn’t actually be listening, they would just be going ‘la la la la la la la lalala’ in their head. It’s not their fault, they’ve been brainwashed, and it’s their human right to believe what they want to believe. They’re ‘God-given’ right... 😌
I am no longer very religious but on the same token if you are an atheist and I am guessing you are you would never listen to their argument either. The truth is we do not know and you and them both need to put your egos aside and admit that.
AdithyaR | 108 opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
Yoda
1 y
Well I'm an atheist but I never go around trying to pick arguments. But some of my friends are very religious and often joke about how I'm faithless or a sinner for not believing in God. I generally ignore the banter cause that's not an argument I'm interested in. The problem arises when they start trying to force stuff on me, like during a special festival here, my friends wanted to go to the temple for the rituals and we're forcing me to go. That was the only time I retaliated and busted out all the math and physics I had. Obviously they didn't wanna listen. I simply walked away telling them if our friendship was less important than religion then I don't want it. Though they apologised for it.
I do agree that it is not right to force religion of any kind or type onto anyone. That in my mind is just NOT right. To each their own. Everyone has a right to believe what or in what they want or choose but NOBODY has the right to force it upon others. And may I ask why you are an atheist and why you dont believe there ia a god? And do you believe in the devil?
Well I initially began to be drawn towards atheism initially because my family was Hindu and I didn't like some of the practices, they just seemed illogical to me. But I firmly became an atheist in my late teens once I began studying more about astrophysics and cosmology, when I began to reading about the creation of the universe and theories of guys like Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku. The math just made more sense to me than traditional religion. Also yeah I don't believe in the devil either.
Well at least your not one of those idiots that believe that one can exist without the other. Thats good to know. And you say the math and everything made better sense to you? I am quite curious as to what you mean. My dest daughter and her husband are what is called Satanists and no they are not evil nor do they believe in doing evil. From what I understand most people have misconceptions about a lot of religions Satanists and atheist being 2 of the most common so I am looking into both religions and trying to learn what I can about them. So if you wouldn't mind sharing with me about your atheist religion I would be most interested in learning.
Well to be honest I don't exactly have a religion in any sense. I'm not really a spiritual person. So I'm not really sure how I'd explain my thing. When I said the math made sense, there's this theory in astrophysics that states that a universe wouldn't require a creator as the creator wouldn't have a time period to create it. I believe you can find it online if you read up on Michio Kaku. It's been a while since I've read it so my explanation might be rusty, so I think you'll find the actual source a way better way understand.
Actually, reading my own question and the details back it is actually asking 1. Have you have you ever heard a good argument against your own view? Then there is sort of a 2. Have you been able to convert someone to your view? There is also kind of a 3. Does the discussion always just fall apart because of obstinance on either one or both sides? I suppose it was a clumsily asked question.
1) the cosmological argument comes close but no cigar to proving god. 2) never converted any one. 3) because they always jump to arguments of incredulity or special pleading. God can live outside space and time. Or I haven’t heard a better explanation for the origin of life.
jshm2 | 2.2K opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
Master
1 y
You're confused.
There is no argument against the existence of God (logical or otherwise) as God is not a hypothesis which needs proving or disproving. Also, only "created" things exist, God just IS - hence why he's God. The dispensation being that he is eternal, hence entirely outside the purview of science as science can only deal with the finite and quantifiable.
For anyone to accept otherwise they would need to provide argument way above humanly possible.
Hence the reason it's among the philosophical questions you can never ask and expect a straight answer. It's like asking who would win in a fight between an unmovable object and an unstoppable force.
God is just one thing that is not a hypothesis and just is. There are lots of things that just exist. Like your inability to grasp reality, Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. They all equally exist just because dude.
So I wouldn't say that I believe in "G-D ('s)" personally but I also wouldn't say that I dont believe in them. In context it's all in how you view the world and what you want to believe. Example being that the Roman's have been believed to have stolen the Greeks religion and made a version that they portrayed as a much stronger entity.
I would say that I don't believe in them but I couldn't prove they don't exist. Basically I don't THINK god exists. It doesn't seem to be anything which should be part of reality.
No I said that I believe that there are entities that have shown themselves to humans and that why we have religion I didn't say I dont think G-d is real
BlacklightShade | 411 opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
Yoda
1 y
I don’t think you can “win” any argument involving religion. The best thing you can do is engage that person on their terms and understand their perspective and hope you can share your perspective, as equals. If you can’t first do that then you will just be talking past each other. Even so, history has proven there is no convincing someone of something so deeply engrained as a religious belief. This is where we have had wars since the dawn of mankind.
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slatyb | 1.6K opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
Master
1 y
No, and I’ve heard them all. There is no way to decide the existence or non-existence of God. All we know is that prayer has never been shown to be more effective than not praying. So I just don’t worry about it. All the holy books are just stories to me.
I was an atheist who turned to Jesus. Whenever atheist try to argue with me about God, I'll just let them speak and then remind them I was an atheist and why I turned to God. This ALWAYS surprises them and typically ends the argument because they know I know where they are coming from and my choice has been made.
I feel that no matter what being an atheist could not be good... i mean think about it.. if your a Christian and die come your judgement day you find there is no god oh well no big deal... but if your right and there is a god Awesomesauce all is forgiven your all good and golden. But now on the other side of the equation if you are an atheist and die then comes your judgement day and if there is no god then hey cool beans... no big deal... but.. if your wrong and there is a god to put it simply... YOUR FUCKED !!
Well I dont agree I see it as fact if you go by what the bible says.. if your a Christian and your wrong nothing happens but if your athiest and your wrong you will burn in hell for eternity.. But honestly I don't know and I'm sure nobody else really knows either but if you go by what the bible says then that is how it would turn out. You can't argue with a fact. There is nothing to debate its cut and dry. And as for pas also wager oh yes its very well know and it just proves what I'm saying. Here.. Pascal's wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, theologian, mathematician and physicist, if God exists, but if not, one will be no worse off in death than if one had not believed. On the other hand, if you bet against God, win or lose, you either gain nothing or lose everything. You are either unavoidably annihilated (in which case, nothing matters one way or the other) or miss the opportunity of eternal happiness. In note 194, speaking about those who live apathetically betting against God, he sums up by remarking, "It is to the glory of religion to have for enemies men so unreasonable..."represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).[2] Taken from the words of pascal
@Smurphanie Of course there is something to debate. It is definitely not cut and dry and you actually make a glaring assumptive error which could actually turn your own argument against you on probability stakes. However, you don't seem like you're ready to face the rebuttal so I will refrain. The purpose of this question was never to actually argue anyway. It's just interesting to hear the things you actually think are "cut and dry".
But to get to the conclusion of all I have said and to answer the actual question that was asked then yes I had a change in my own personal views of gods existence with the arguments I came up with to myself.
I would really like to hear what you have to say I value everyones opinions and beliefs and I am a very open minded I like to listen and learn i admit I'm not that smart and I am always learning new things. So if you wouldn't mind... please I would like to hear what you have to say. This kind of conversation / debate / differences of opinions whatever you want to call it is what I enjoy and how I learn and whi lnows maybe you can teach me something new , change my view on something or at the very least... Give me something to think on.
@Smurphanie Well, the argument is a wager. So it is always a question of probability. Since there are currently more than 10,000 known religions in the world, the probability of pleasing god just by being Christian isn't very good. You may be upsetting god by being Christian. The same goes for every other religion. It could be argued that by being atheist and humane, you could be acting appropriately in the eyes of god. This is especially backed up by the sheer lack of credible evidence there actually is for god. Almost as if there is a god, it doesn't want you to know it is there and prefers you show you are good of your own volition. God may view sycophants with disdain since your actions would ultimately be selfish. Then there is the obvious other side of the coin. If you live your life as if there is a god and there isn't, you basically wasted your only opportunity to do the things you wanted while you lived. So it definitely isn't cut and dry since even if you believe and there is a god, you might be doing it wrong anyway and even the act of believing may work against you.
I will admit you definitely put up a very good argument/debate. Definitely gives me something to think about. You have some very good theories/arguments there. I will think on them. Okay now let me ask you this... How did we get here? How did the universe and earth become? And if god made the universe, the earth, the people, etc then who made god? And dont say we came from monkeys. !! (I absolutely DO NOT believe we came from monkeys !!)
@Smurphanie You're kind of asking me to answer the sorts of questions which may be posed to a theist rather than an atheist such as "who made god?". I can try but first I need to address the statement you made about not believing we came from monkeys. So this tells me you don't believe in evolution. I can assure you that evolution is regarded as a fact by this point in human discovery. We now know not only that evolution happened (is happening) but we can deduce from DNA the degree of relatedness all species share with one another. There is evidence that all the great apes which includes humans share a common ancestor which lived around 6,000,000 years ago which you would've called a monkey if you had seen it. I don't like when people deny this scientific discovery so if it may help you to warm up to this idea, allow me to present it to you in theistic terms. I and most biologists disagree with this statement but some theists state that evolution of life on earth is such an improbable event that it could only be a divine miracle. So evolution may be proof of god rather than evidence against it. 🤷♂️
@Smurphanie OK, now to your other questions how did we get here? Well this comes back to evolution but how did that start? In short, scientists had two hypothesis. One was called panspermia which is the idea that somewhere in the vast expanses of the universe, the chemical components of life were produced and earth has been seeded either by meteorites or aliens. The other one, and this is the one scientists believe they have begun to uncover confirmed evidence for is called abiogenesis. Basically, the chemical formula for the first living cells existed on the early earth and once it took hold, evolution began. How did the earth become? A cataclysmic event like a supernova explosion occured around 5 billion years ago, causing a dense cloud of interstellar dust and gas to collapse and form the sun and the planets including earth. How did the Universe begin? I don't know and nobody does but we believe there was an event around 13.8 billion years ago known as the big bang which led us to the current state of the universe. Who made god? Good question. Theists would commonly state that God is ether eternal or self created or even the element of self creation itself. There is no argument which can disprove that any more than there is to prove it.
@Smurphanie I had my stomach blown open by an IED while in the military. I was my unit's only Corpsman (Navy and Marine Corps Field Medic). The Marines dragged me to the medical tent to be treated by the medical officers off the front lines. I was pronounced dead on the spot. I gave up the will to live and was happy to die. However, I kept feeling this super calming and loving presence all around me. When I tried to rest, this presence would block me. I woke up and one of the Marines I served with told me I was out for 3 days and they were getting ready to prepare my body for a funeral. Fast forward a year later, I am in WTU (Warrior Transitioning Unit). I asked to see the footage of my injury. When I saw it, I realized there was no way I should be alive. I have seen Marines die from lesser injuries. I continued to go to my appointments and I healed enough to continue military service. Even then, I did not believe in God, but the thought would not leave my head. At the end of my military career, I went off on a superior because my grandfather was dying. I was getting chaptered out and going to receive a General Discharge, which means I would have lost everything I worked for. I prayed to God and told him if he let's me walk with my Honorable I would never doubt him again.
That is a very intriguing story and after going through what I did with daughter I DONT DOUBT one word of it. I think it is quite amazing how and when the realization that god is real is revealed to a person when they are at their most venerable time or lowest depth of depression But yet. doesn't let us be aware of him any other times. Its either that or I guess we just dont know what to look for. Cause I will say this with all the lows throughout my life and with all the constant hardships and struggles that seem to constantly continue in my life I can't help but to say yes I believe there is a god and I believe he must hate me. I a lot of times wonder if I had a past life and did something really bad to piss him off and this life is mu punishment..
MissDawn7961 | 206 opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
Guru
1 y
I know people who have denied Gods existance but when I ask them - if God does not exist then who created the - birds , flowers and such - and I never got an answer that made me decide other wise so then God made these things ! thanks
Dazed0N0Confused | 58 opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
Yoda
1 y
Nope, but there is never going to be an argument that will change my mind. Considering people who believe in God also tell their children that "Cukie the Giant Cowboy Rooster" isn't real, but God is... I consider it hypocritical.
Literally never. There are things that we don't know and spirituality has its place, but "God" in an organized religion sense is overwhelmingly flawed.
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pigoat | 109 opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
Guru
1 y
It's an argument for the sake of arguing
How do people not get this
Wanna argue?
Let's talk about god
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Wade8888 | 226 opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
Xper 6
1 y
I've never seen any Atheist make a rational argument against God.
Atheists are INSANE and think reality came from absolutely nothing, which has been disproven for thousands of years.
As an atheist I don't think I know the answer to where reality came from. I'm not even sure if it is a legitimate question. I don't know if god exists or not and I have never said it I impossible but I'm not a 50/50 agnostic because I have the courage to say I don't think it exists. Atheism doesn't correlate to a particular view about cosmology other than it probably doesn't include god.
I'm content with believing I don't know everything and leaving it open for the possibility there is a Higher Power. You just don't know and I'm ok with that.
There is this one time I was in grade school and the whole question of evolution versus the Bible came up of course. We had a whole week long discussion where there you know evolution was on one side in the Bible was on the other at the end of the whole week we still didn’t come up with a good answer
Well the big bang is just what we extrapolate back to from the observations available to us. We don't know what happened before that or even if "what happened before the big bang?" Is a legitimate question or not. It could be asking something like "what is south of the south pole?". I'm not sure what you mean by the travel thing.
Oh you mean the Noah's Ark version of how everyone is descendants of the people who went to different geographical regions once the flood had subsided and the ark landed on a mountain in Turkey? And this is also where all the animals had to go back to their natural habitats from. Or the tower of Babel version? Where got dispersed everyone and changed their languages so they couldn't again collaborate to build a tower to heaven? You seriously believe these stories?
Of course they did. People went where there was a source of food and one of early human's most nourishing food sources was the woolly mammoth. Woolly mammoths lived in cold, arctic conditions. So it is only natural for the predators (the humans) to follow. Recent evidence suggests humans inhabited arctic regions as long ago as 45,000 years. This is actual, physical and scientifically tested evidence as opposed to an imagined story. So which is more likely to you to be the case? A fantastical story of starkly ignorant, uproariously fatuous detail told by people from 3000 years ago who had none of the knowledge of modern day scientific discovery or the account deduced from meticulously scrutinized data and discovery which is then pieced together bit by bit with ongoing corrections and revisions all done by the most scientifically informed people who ever lived?
Nobody knows anything so there is no point in arguing
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Anonymous
1 y
Once you have seen light you cannot go back to darkness. For those that have NOT seen there can be no explanation. For those that have seen there need be no explanation. That's fairh in a nutshell.
Sure it does. Faith is not a constant. It's very easy to have faith when life is going your way then when it isn't. But god is just as real both times. As i told another G@Ger the other day. Even Jesus cried out while on the cross "My God! Why hast thou forsaken me". Because he was in human form he was in pain and suffering and felt alone as any human would. It didn't mean he doubted god's existence. Get it? So i've listened to athiests at times when my faith wasn't so strong. And the argument they pitched may have made sense they may have been very persuasive. But in my heart i've already accepted Jesus as my lord and saviour.
Because God simply exist, but people can't understand how it exist. They expect to see somebody in the sky like throw a windou or to have God to theyr order. Moust of them don't understand that God is something divine, grate, big. They are not bale to understand how the world work for God plan and they think when we talk about God we have no self-determination.
Thats an awful argument. Its not even consistent in itself. God has a plan, yet we also have self-determination. Just think that through, you can not hold both to be true.
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