XPost: alt.atheism, alt.agnosticism, sci.skeptic
XPost: alt.christnet
From: sylvia@not.at.this.address

On 26/09/2014 8:35 AM, mur@.not. wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Sep 2014 18:37:36 +1000, Sylvia Else 
> wrote:
> .
>> On 19/09/2014 7:21 AM, mur@.not. wrote:
>>> On Mon, 15 Sep 2014 19:54:14 +1000, Sylvia Else 
>>> wrote:
>>> .
>>>> On 14/09/2014 1:57 AM, mur@.not. wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, 10 Sep 2014 23:14:54 -0400, Olrik  wrote:
>>>>> .
>>>>>> Le 2014-09-10 14:47, mur@.not. a écrit :
>>>>>>>         Would they be able to post at all?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What lies?
>>>>>
>>>>>        All of them. Of course the biggest is that there's no evidence
for God's
>>>>> existence, when if there really was no evidence there would be nothing
for
>>>>> anyone to believe in.
>>>>
>>>> The alternative possibility is that people believe despite the absence
>>>> of evidence.
>>>>
>>>> As an argument for the existence of God, it really doesn't work. It just
>>>> leaves open the question of why people believe.
>>>
>>>       If there really was no evidence there would be nothing for them to
believe.
>>
>> If you believe that, I'm forced to ask you what the evidence is for it?
>>
>> Generally, all that's required is to conceive of something to believe,
>> and then believe it. Evidence is an optional extra.
>
>      How do you imagine it happened then? Since none of you can explain what
sort
> of evidence you think there should be, or where it should be, or why it
should
> be there if God exists, try explaining how the evidence you say doesn't exist
> came to be in the first place. Try explaining in detail how you think the
books
> of the Bible came into existence from the very start, and why they did.

Some people wrote them, just as people write stuff now. A lot of what
people write now is not true (and some doesn't even pretend to be).
There's no reason to think it was any different back then.


> Then go
> on to explain how the supposed lies were kept going and most importantly how
> billions of people were persuaded to believe the supposed lies.

Most of them weren't persuaded, they were indoctrinated at an age where
they had no defence. Essentially, they were psychologically abused as
children, and in turn proceeded to psychologically abuse their own
offspring (and we see parallels in other forms of child abuse).

Of the rest, well we see cults appear often enough even in these
somewhat more enlightened times, and belief in paranormal stuff persists
despite any number of debunkings that show that money and power are the
motives for the deception. Apparently, in some people (too many!)
there's a desire to believe that makes them vulnerable to deception.

All it takes is for someone with charisma (and probably insanity and/or
psychopathy) to manage to gather a sufficiently large crowd of
congenital followers, and you've got yourself a religion.

Evidence? There doesn't have to be any.

Don't just say
> some lame copout infantile mindless crap like you did above, but try
explaining
> IN DETAIL something that's at least some little bit respectable so there
> actually is something to consider. We know you people have no clue about what
> evidence you think should exist. Let's see if you are any less clueless about
> how the evidence you claim doesn't exist actually came to exist.
>

A real God could do stuff I'd have difficult explaining, (things that go
against the very basics of fundamental physics as we understand them)
though in practice I might suspect I was seeing an advanced technology
rather than evidence of God. From that perspective, I suppose it's
arguable that I could never be convinced as to the existence of God.

Fortunately, that issue doesn't arise. We do not see around us anything
that remotely qualifies as evidence for either a God, or an advanced
technology.

It occurs to me that a real God could just make me believe, and not
bother with crudities such as evidence. The fact that God, if He exists,
has not chosen to do so is surely evidence that either God doesn't
exist, or that He doesn't care about whether people believe. On that
basis, whether or not God exists, you should not care whether other
people believe either. I wonder why you do.

Sylvia.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
 * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)