<p>“Man needs something to believe in and to have hope in when all else goes wrong. Man needs to feel that in the end the good are rewarded and the bad are punished.”</p>
<p>Religion has its social functions by comforting humans, but they lack tangible evidence to validate God. You are agreeing with me by saying that religion is based on more firmly on emotional necessities than it is on facts.</p>
<p>Reality isn’t sugar, spice, and everything nice. Some people do need the Bible to develop morals. However, I said that this going to heaven incentive occasionally fails in reinforcing morals. Terrorists kill innocent people, but they don’t give a **** because they are going to heaven with sexy virgins.</p>
<p>No, but it strongly implies that there is no god. It shows that the Bible/Quran are wrong in their explanation of how the universe was created and why humans are here on Earth, which strongly suggests that there is no god.</p>
<p>Well my stance on heaven and hell is Agnostic. I just don’t know. Heaven and hell are Biblical beliefs, so i’m on the “no” side but there’s the possiblity that it is real. You might change your religious beliefs? To Deism? The Bible teaches a lot of bad things that people overlook, but most of the good Christians I know pick-and-choose the right morals/ethics. So I believe that there is some good potential in organized religion.</p>
<p>Not all religious people supported Prop 8; not all Prop 8 supporters were religious. That law passed because of more than just religion in general.</p>
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<p>Deism isn’t the opposite of the God in Christianity.</p>
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<p>Not everybody uses this argument against Atheism. And not all terrorists are motivated by religious thought. Often they have been persuaded by people that are just evil and out for their own gain.</p>
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<p>Not really a generalization, though it does ignore the fact that everything “may not be true,” including atheism. Where are the “actual facts” you speak of?</p>
<p>It merely suggests that the Old Testament (and other analogous texts) is in many ways inaccurate. Those aren’t the only basis for the belief in God.</p>
<p>I meant the possibility that there is a place where God will damn me to if I’ve been an immoral prick and a place where I could bask beside God on a sandy beach all day if I’ve been a good person</p>
<p>AeroEngineer- math is not some inscrutable force behind the universe. Math is very basic assumpitons of logic (1 + 1 = 2) that have been built upon and built upon. All math can be derived from a 1st grade math book with sufficient intelligence and concept building. (Atleast in my opinion). One doesn’t need an interpreter for math to have meaning, whether or not someone wrote it down pi would always equal 3.14 etc…All the result of derivations of simpler math to more complex. Or that is atleast how I have come to view math .</p>
<p>Oh and about the universe being too complex for there not to be a God. I think science’s explanations for the begining of the universe and its subsequent formation are a lot less of a leap than to say an omnipotent being (who came from god knows where) created it.</p>
<p>Bible does not equal religion.
Religion does not equal baseless thinking.
God does not necessarily equal some dude on a throne. It’s a concept that is just usually illustrated as a human.
Dumb religious people don’t disprove religion, just like dumb atheists don’t disprove atheism.</p>
<p>Personally, I’m perhaps on the more Deist side of things. I don’t think God is the mechanism for everything; the world and rules he created are. <em>I think</em> evolution and physics and math and patterns…all those prove, rather than disprove, a being. <em>IMO</em> God is those patterns as well as the reason they all exist. Reason, I guess, is my basis for belief in God. I wouldn’t even necessarily call it belief, just an acknowledgment of what already exists: the universe. You can call it physics; I’ll call it God. That doesn’t make me a Bible beater or uneducated. </p>
<p>I do, however, completely understand the agnostic side of things. We don’t know. Atheism, on the other hand, requires a faith just as strong as religion. </p>
<p>I guess I just think that since there’s creation, it’s not so crazy to think there’s a creator, a reason, a mechanism.</p>
<p>Oh I don’t know… by using logic, physics, math, and common sense??? There is more evidence for the big bang theory than there is for god. Yes, we still don’t know what happened before the big bang, but we probably will someday in the future seeing as how we’ve gotten this far. I can almost guarantee you in about 100-200 years, since mankind becomes more intelligent as it advances, there will be very few religious people left in the world and the long, horrible nightmare of religious belief would have ended.</p>
<p>^That’s the mistake plenty of people make–religious people don’t necessarily (necessarily being necessary to account for the religious people who don’t believe what I believe) only think God is an explanation for what doesn’t exist. He is, IMO, what DOES exist, what IS. He (or she, or it, or whatever) is not just something to magically explain all mysteries. It’s not like what happened before the Big Bang would disprove God.</p>
<p>Notice all of those are human created religions, like all religions. Most are created by a manipulative group of people trying to take advantage of a tough situation, so they can obtain power, wealth, and control.</p>