Now that the “crazy nut-job” has come over, you may have wished you’d never invited me.

Blessings to you ~Michelle

That is why it is irrational and foolish to use emotions are a guide to truth. If we are rational, we can train our subconscious and conscious reactions to respond correctly. But our guide to making decisions is reason, which is integrated with logic by reference to reality. Now, our consciousness and our emotions do not affect reality – it is the other way around! You can feel whatever you want about something, but unless your emotion has been guided by reason, you are placing emotion with primacy over reality – you are in effect wishing for a state of affairs; you’re asking reality to submit to YOUR desires, your emotion.

But existence has primacy – always. We live by acknowledging this fact and acting accordingly. Those who put emotion, or gut feeling, or hope, or FAITH over reason are contradicting the nature of reality, and are asking for trouble – and are lying to themselves.

Oxysmoron, you’re welcome to believe whatever you want, and you’re welcome to kid yourself that god exists – but you cannot make it true by an act of will. No matter how comforting that belief might be, it is false. No matter how convinced you are, and how happy you think this wishful-thinking makes you, it is still false.

You need to take some responsibility for your own actions – realise that you are a living rational volitional being with a mind and consciousness and morality. You cannot and should not fob this off into the hands of a magical being. You can create your own purpose in life and pursue it by achieving your values – this is what results in true happiness – the joy that comes from realising your non-contradictory values. And the only person you have to thank is YOURSELF. You are not a being made for the servile worship and bootlicking of a magical dictator – you are a rational human being that is privileged to be alive. To live like a human is to live like a rational being and by YOUR OWN arbiter. Give yourself some credit!

I have said recently (many times), for the very first time in my 52 yrs have I been challenged severely about what I stand firm on and in the way I believe. The more we reason, the more knowledge we obtain, the more likely we may come away from what was a Solid Belief. Although I have been open to listening to others and their views (outside of my own), I have found there are some things to which no one has been able to submit to me,whereby the argument/debate would diminish the simpler Truths set forth by Jesus. The first one is: God is of no religion, yet man continues to make Him apart of their religion. Religion doesn’t indicate what God says, has said, or will say. We obtain lies from religion; not God. Just as man creates religion, man creates a world filled with knowledge that has cracks filled with manipulative lies. What has been proven will thus be disproved and a new fact will fill the gap for the present generation… whereby this generation will stand on it’s belief system of what is Truth.

We try so desperately to reason in our own minds what is meaningful truth to us and the strange part of it all is that we want others to follow in our newfound territory of Realization. I too visited many boards of debating. Bottom line for me was in the end as I lay my head upon pillow I would think to myself: why do they try so hard to convince me I am wrong? I don’t impose religion on them. I do not try to convert. I only answer the questions they propose to me with sincerity and yet it is as if they are never satisfied with the answer… the debate could be ever exhausting, because they themselves want to be Righted. It isn’t about being righted as far as I am concerned… it is about standing Firm on something you believe. You see why God hates religion? You see why I hate religion? Because it all is filled with lies in order to Rule over people and they Manufacture it for profit. God has never lied to you… people and religion lied to you. He hasn’t ever lied to me and everything He has put forth to me has come to pass. And that doesn’t make me a psychic, or one with very good intuition. In the face of science I have seen evidences that should have put me into a wheelchair, but oh no I am walking just fine. This wasn’t the will to live; for I thought of suicide daily. Science was startled, and so was I. This is something unexplainable to me and to others. Who is keeping me daily and who is it who keeps my legs strong; even tho the evidence proves otherwise? Could be somewhere in the back of my mind something I am not aware of that drives me forward… who knows? Yet that would seem to diminish what is in my heart… knowing I am kept by someone greater than I. My daughter wasn’t brought up with religion, but she has another story and I don’t have to prove anything to her… for she sees with her own eyes the depths of something she is unable to understand. For we never have to prove God… He proves Himself. He is the One who is teaching; not me.

Again tho, I appreciate your open heart. I will check out your other pages… you write well.

As for being a red, well, I guess at least the Kop is divine!

You have achieved something wonderful by breaking out into the real world.

Ultimately its the people out here that make it worthwhile.

Kudos to you.

- – -

A Liverpool fan as well – is there an end to your talents?

RBH

You claim there is evidence for the existence of a god, and I suspect that you only make that claim because you wish it to be so, but I contend that the evidence is nothing more than hearsay, superstition and fabrication. I invite you to prove otherwise.

You are correct on one thing: Napoleon does not exist.

2.) to the issue of the President. I am 58 yrs old, I have never met the president nor seen him in person and I don’t personally know a single person who has. Therefore, I use as evidence for his existence things that he has affected and left his mark (whether it be damage in Iraq or spending too much public money papers he has signed etc.)
I make the claim that those evidences are also available to show the existence of God. (you can deny them, but I could also deny the existence of Napoleon.)

See what you miss is that we do look at evidences (and they have all been laid out before, but your side just says “no evidence” and moves on.) I have read enough of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Brian Sapien etc. to know that they all use the same “talking points” and will not move off script. So, we continue to talk past each other.

“X cannot be X and also Y at the same time. Geno cannot be in New York and also California at the same time.”

Geographical location is not the same as being. A better example would have been “You cannot be you and me at the same time”

While the existence of a thing is entirely unaffected by whether you believe it or not, it is also true that the burden of proof lies with the claimant. If someone told you that your house was on fire, would you believe them without proof? If someone told you that they believe that the earth is flat because it appears to be so, would you believe them unquestioningly, or correct them? If I told you I was the President of the United States, would you require proof?

Please tell me why the god hypothesis does not require evidence.

You said – “There might be a teapot orbiting the moon. It’s existence is either a fact or not, there is no inbetween. If there is no evidence for its existence it is not logical to believe that there is a teapot.” You said it, the teapots existence is fact whether we believe it or not. And so is the existence of God. The America’s were in fact real long before the Europeans made the discovery – it didn’t change a single aspect about America’s existence just because some fat Italians showed up!
So you would agree with me that Carl Sagan was full of irrational thoughts up until his death as he tried to communicate with beings from other far distant places? He had no evidence at all to even think that there are other beings in the universe (in fact he had to make up the concept), but he lived his life everyday as if there were – that must sound pretty wacky to you.
Go to bed, you won’t be able to get up for work tomorrow.

You’d be dead! So “you” wouldn’t be in either place!

Geno said:
“You break your own rule here! “IF your god DOES exist, what you’re trying to show as evidence isn’t really evidence, because it doesn’t actually prove anything.” If my God exists, there is no requirement for proof. Existence is proof in itself!”

Wrong. Existence is not proof in itself. There might be a teapot orbiting the moon. It’s existence is either a fact or not, there is no inbetween. If there is no evidence for its existence it is not logical to believe that there is a teapot.

Correspondingly, there may very well be a teapot there all along, and you might just so happen to be right. But you’d only be right by sheer luck. It could just as easily be a kettle.

When you stop talking about proof, you cease to have any meaning in terms of reality. Anything goes. And I don’t think you want to go down that route with god.

Geno said:
“Therefore, you really can’t even allow for the possibility of a god and no atheist says that.”

Now, I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying here.

What I have said is that whether or not god exists, proof is required for belief. You can’t just say “god exists, even though there is no proof”. He MIGHT exist, but your belief still isn’t rational, because it isn’t based on anything. To explain further: Aliens MIGHT exist. But there is no proof of them. Whether or not aliens actually exist does not make a belief valid. What makes a belief valid is the evidence for it.

Everyone can allow for the possibility of god. But then everyone can allow for the possibility of anything! “god” is just one of countless things that could or couldn’t exist (depending on what “god” means). Instead of god, I could believe in Zorg. Now, Zorg MIGHT ACTUALLY exist, whatever that means. But do I have evidence of Zorg? No.

It’s the same with God. We need objective definitive testable proof; the kind that would hold up in a court of law, or better yet, a science experiment (the most rigorous and best way of testing we have). Or a logical argument that proves his existence. Nothing of the sort exists at the moment though.

You break your own rule here! “IF your god DOES exist, what you’re trying to show as evidence isn’t really evidence, because it doesn’t actually prove anything.” If my God exists, there is no requirement for proof. Existence is proof in itself! Therefore, you really can’t even allow for the possibility of a god and no atheist says that.