Atheists... what would it take?
 

I wanna know, under what circumstances, if any, would you (atheists and what not) believe in God? Would it take a timely life saving miracle? Would it take the so-said God to come charging down from the clouds and slap you in the face? What would it take?

They want you to prove the existence of God.

That undermines the purpose of religion. However, the realization of the dream of prooving the existence of God would be a beatufiul thing.

Overly religious people that try to convert really annoy me, so don't bring it up.

There is no reason to convert others into different religions.
People will believe in something either because have evidence to support what they believe in, or they think that will benefit them if they do believe in such things.

If god himself came down, slapped me in the face, and granted me any 3 wishes i asked for i would believe.

Yea, id need some proof, actually, physical proof, before i made any assumptions or started believing in anything.

I believe in a supreme being, but not necisarily the christian God, and I don't believe in some perfect Jesus dude. I'm not atheist though, i'm agnostic.

Human beings have relied on religion to prove their existance.

Theres no god that "made adam a& eve and put them in the garden of eden" its all evolutionary

but then the question, where did the first living organism come from...where did it get the life?

Well, methane and ammonia and water vapor were in the atmosphere, methane is CH4 I believe, water vapor is H20, some how these things made some kind of premordial soup and formed life, 2 guys made an experiment like this in the 50s I believe, where they made the same kind of conditions in a lab as there were back then, with just water vapor, methane, and ammonia, and there were signs of living organisms after a few weeks, so that question is easily answered.

The harder question, where did the methane, ammonia, and water vapor come from? Probably formed with the earth after the big bang, but something must have triggered the big bang, which leads me to believe that there is a supreme being.

Miller and Urey did the experiment, based on Oparin's theory of primitive Earth's atmosphere. By charging electrodes through the air containing the aforementioned substances (hydrogen) and then having it pass through a condenser, organic molecules formed, which then, combined with macrosomethings, could have created the first forms of life.

The molecules in the air would have mostly been present while Earth was forming. The Earth was formed over a 400 million year period (estimated) while it was constantly erupting and colliding with meteorites to combine and form a larger mass.

Yeah, Miller and Urey, I need to remember that, biology final next thursday.

Here is a few thing that i find somehow funny.

Once you have evidence that something is true. Well, it isnt believing anymore. Believing is to accept something as true whithout any evidence, proof or whatever.

Sorry...no offense 2 ne1 whatsoever but i have a hard time blindly following things without some evidence of them...i mean why should i listen to this supposed god or even believe in him if there is no evidence. You can say it's a matter of faith...but if you want my faith you have to earn it i dont just go around having faith in things...

Fuck why do people keep making these threads? There was just a religion thread posted in Zelaron, a continuation of one posted before it.

Anyway to answer your question, if it came down here and slapped me in the face, I'd kick it's ass, then I'd believe that there is a God that could get it's ass kicked by a mortal.

Again, two thing that cannot go together. You want proof to have faith. Faith is basicly the same thing as belief. It's believing in something that does not rest on a logical proof or evidence. But yeah, i do know what ya mean. I would rather know a few thing then beleive in many.

God is just created by weak people who can't kick any ass while they're alive, so they created religion to threaten the people that pwn them with "hell."

It depends on the level of evidence. Evidence beyond all shadows of doubts (which no one can attain) or evidence beyond all reasonable doubts. When one can have the first one, he can claim that he has knowledge of certain things, but if one only has the latter, then he is only believing in certain thing.

God would have to come down, slap me in the face and say "hey, fucker, im real!" and then float into the heavens atop his flying donkey. Then I might consider religion, if I could garuntee I wasnt on drugs or asleep.

Religion is a set of rules, and a pre-science to explain things. Now we have the real thing. Religion is also a social mechanism. People who are religiously active live longer, and are more productive. There's a neural mechanism inside the brain (they did many studies on this, and it gave rise to an entirely new field of science based soley on human religion and the brain) that forces people to believe in a god, or in some unearthly being. Latent static fields, such as unique magnetic waves coming from things such as a household radio, or from the northern lights can "activate" this area in the brain, causing religious hallucinations. Example, there was a girl who was having demonic visions at night, and afraid to sleep in her room because she believed it was possessed or haunted by a poltergeist. Some quick studies were done, and the problem was rectified. What was causing it? Her radio. It sat by her bed, and the magnetic field it emmitted happened to be on the same frequency as her brain waves in that particular lobe region. Hence, religious hallucinations. They were able to attach a magnetic device to the head of someone who didn't believe in god, and give them a religious hallucination. It's all just a biological mechanism to keep people happy, and help them live better. The smarter people get however, the less they need it. Every human being is a machine, despite what you think. You act and respond accordingly to what you've previously experienced. Countless people will deny them being a machine, but it is quite true.

Words of great wisdom have been spoken!

That's all swell, but do you believe in the prophecy?

I didn't know Tai is a materialist...

whats a materialist?

Materialists believe that Human Beings are just machines. We humans and machines are distinguishable only by the level of complexity.

There's no Mind, no Soul, nothing immaterial in us, and we are only complex physical organism.

why is it you think we follow God blindly? We have free will. We don't have to stay Christian just because others are. And we can think for ourselves a lot better than you can think. Some of the greatest scientists were Christian. Galileo, Darwin, Copernicus, etc.

i believe the same thing more or less as tai

a material

Not quite a materialist as you might think. Ergo the universe being a "hologram" to an extent, potentionally even as radical as two dimensional as I've heard, I'm willing to believe we're not really waht we appear to be, and there's a more definitive existance behind it. But we won't really know that until we get there, if it's there at all.

To be honest, you'd be better off believing in a god. Why? You'd probably be happier.

To have faith means you dont need and evidence but anyways i believe there is something out there. I dont know if i believe all of the Jesus and Bible stuff but i just believe something created the universe... something...

There is no way of actually getting 'real proof' or 'actual evidence'

Faith is the only real thing that you can go on. But, even if you don't believe in god, or anything superior to us, then ask yourself, How did we get here? There has to be something bigger than us that created us. I'm not saying that god had made each one of us, or that he even watches us now. But something had to have created us. Aliens, God, whatever it may be, there is something greater than us.

No matter how far you can trace back history there will be evidence that something had to get the 'ball' rolling. Even if there was a spec of a molecule in the middle of the universe, it didn't just appear out of time. SOMETHING HAD TO PUT IT THERE, Thats why i believe atheists are 'dim-witted'

Well...you can say the same thing about whatever it was that put us here. How did it come into existance?...is their something bigger than it. It could go in an endless cycle like that...it's inexplainable....but atheists give just as much logical explanation as the believers...no one can prove anything.

really? id think i was seeing pink elephants

that makes no sense
virtually all people.. unless under the influence or having a couple screws loose.. have some reason that they hold as evidence to think something is true

atheism is really nothing more than a religion for which the "supreme being" is designated as nothing or nonexistant.. just replace the "supreme being" or "higher existence" with "nothing" and youve got atheism

how is the explanation "logical".. its self contradictory if anything
claiming that there is no "supreme being" because there is no solid "proof".. yet they have even less "proof" themselves

Your the one that just made no sense. Come on, tell me some of those evidence that will look like
"I didnt had a meal in days and there he was! Jesus! Riding Santa sleig! After my joyful moment he threw me a bread and said enjoy."

hey this is kinda off topic and dumb but does anyone know whats the difference between like catholic and christian and like whats the difference of all those different types like methodist,bapist,protestent(not sure how to spell)?

yea...seriously that made no sense

Warning, off-topic: Iceman, send me a private message and I will tell you the difference.

On-topic: I think it would take a divine intervention to make an Atheist a Christian or god-believer...or several hundred bigotted Jack Chick tracts XD

No... it would take what you refer to as "Divine Intervention"... unless I was personally confronted with "God" and he gave me proof of "his" existence, I will not accept that there is a "God."

you'd be surprised at the amount of people who never see or meet God and yet God's divine intervention happens to be a friend or an aquaintance.

Yes, it is often refered to as *delusion*