I am a christian, i and i strongly belive in my lord jesus christ, and i also belive that if you belive in him and except him as your savior, u will go to heaven. and i also believe that he created the world, not the big bang, or that we came from stupid apes.
as far as i know atheism isn't a religion. an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in god or any other kind of religious aspects. (isn't he?) please correct me if i'm wrong
Yeah you're right. Atheism is not a religion. Atheism is the absence of religion... It seems theists try to compare atheists to try to refute some of their arguments about blind faith.
Now, because that god person is good and allmighty, how do you explain all the bad things that happens and happend to the world?
1. Sin is responsible for all "bad" things that happen in the world. 2. All things work for the glory of God; seemingly bad or not we do not have the full picture of eternity.
BTW, if christianity is the one religion to believe, why did christians started to pop up only 2000 years ago?
Erm. Well that would be because Christianity centers around the death and resurrection of Jesus who was God's anointed one (or Christ) which happened around 200 years ago. The precursor to Christianity was Judaism which existed for a much longer time. Also I believe the term would be the one true religious.
It seems theists try to compare atheists to try to refute some of their arguments about blind faith.
I am trying not to generalize, but some theists (religious peeps) try to compare atheism (no religion) to a religion. This way, when atheists say, "oh you just have blind faith no real evidence" then the religious could say "oh well you just have blind faith in atheism" as if it was the same as a religion.
This atheist in this situation is also strongly thinks that science and research are the way to answer the questions of the world, of course.
then the religious could say "oh well you just have blind faith in atheism" as if it was the same as a religion.
Well you have doubt, which is the opposite of faith. The differences between the two really aren't that vast however. Both are based upon subjective viewpoints and neither one can be proven or disproved objectively.
Here's some Kierkegaard for you
The leap of faith is his conception of how an individual would believe in God or how a person would act in love. Faith is not a decision based on evidence that, say, certain beliefs about God are true or a certain person is worthy of love. No such evidence could ever be enough to pragmatically justify the kind of total commitment involved in true religious faith or romantic love. Faith involves making that commitment anyway. Kierkegaard thought that to have faith is at the same time to have doubt. So, for example, for one to truly have faith in God, one would also have to doubt one's beliefs about God; the doubt is the rational part of a person's thought involved in weighing evidence, without which the faith would have no real substance. Someone who does not realize that Christian doctrine is inherently doubtful and that there can be no objective certainty about its truth does not have faith but is merely credulous. For example, it takes no faith to believe that a pencil or a table exists, when one is looking at it and touching it. In the same way, to believe or have faith in God is to know that one has no perceptual or any other access to God, and yet still has faith in God.[44] As Kierkegaard writes, "doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world".
The implication of taking a leap of faith can, depending on the context, carry positive or negative connotations, as some feel it is a virtue to be able to believe in something without evidence while others feel it is foolishness.
OP is an idiot. No one ever said humans came from apes. It might do you some good to actually study and learn things rather than just taking hold of blind faith as absolute truth.
as some feel it is a virtue to be able to believe in something without evidence while others feel it is foolishness.
I think Kierkegaard misses the point here. The crux is not that theists have no evidence for their beliefs; it comes down to what someone will accept as evidence. Just common-sense-wise, no one would even consider the proposition of a god without evidence for it. It's just that people telling me that god exists and the natural beauty of the earth don't convince me, personally, to accept the notion of a god. But these exact things, plus some personal experience, is often precisely what the theist cites as evidence for her beliefs. Some theists have even argued that those who don't accept something like the beauty of the world as evidence for God actually lack some kind of cognitive faculty (they call it the sensus divinitus, or something like that).
To accept some proposition without any evidence whatsoever is irrational. But whether or not the evidence the theist cites really counts as evidence is a debate unto itself.
To accept some proposition without any evidence whatsoever is irrational. But whether or not the evidence the theist cites really counts as evidence is a debate unto itself.
The question is, is this evidence objective? Can we test the beauty of the world, a persons feelings, or someones personal experience and arrive at the same conclusions even if the person running the test never heard of God?
If you're going to use faith, don't use it as evidence.
If you want to believe in God, you have to say you believe in him because you can. Nobody can argue that logic. If you present faith as evidence, then I have faith that you have one testicle. It must be true, because I have faith... and we all know that faith = fact.
If you present faith as evidence, then I have faith that you have one testicle
I swear you are some kind of sorcerer....
The question is, is this evidence objective? Can we test the beauty of the world, a persons feelings, or someones personal experience and arrive at the same conclusions even if the person running the test never heard of God?
We cannot deny that back then, science wasn't very well developed. Whatever conclusions they couldn't come to back then, they had to have thought that God was in the mix of things, because there was no other explanation for how these things happen. I think that's the big thing right there.
The question is, is this evidence objective? Can we test the beauty of the world, a persons feelings, or someones personal experience and arrive at the same conclusions even if the person running the test never heard of God?
That's a good point, but I think it talks past the theist. Again, it comes down to what we count as evidence. You and I consider only those objective facts that can be verified as evidence for a particular proposition. The theist, while recognizing the importance of objective evidence, still recognizes this sense of divine wonder and personal experience as evidence for their belief. Maybe a good comparison is a mother's intuition. There's just a feeling that something is about to happen or has happened that causes a belief to form in a person. I can't question the theist's personal experience of God because I've never ever felt that. But that doesn't mean it can't be felt (although if I ever did feel the presence of God, I would check myself into a mental institution).
But keep in mind that we don't choose what to believe. We believe what is presented before us. Now, maybe later on we get evidence that is incompatible with our belief and then we can assess whether or not to abandon that belief. I think it's hard to fault someone who was raised in a religious environment and counts certain experiences as God's love for them. It's what their environment surrounds them with, so their belief is completely understandable (to me, at least). What I don't accept is just blind arrogant belief without even a hint of consideration for other views. That's just being a poor cognitive agent.
If you want to believe in God, you have to say you believe in him because you can. Nobody can argue that logic. If you present faith as evidence, then I have faith that you have one testicle. It must be true, because I have faith... and we all know that faith = fact.
All sarcasm aside, I think this statement may be conflating the notions of faith and belief. In fact, it's fairly contentious whether or not faith has some propositional format. I can believe that x, but can I have faith that x? We all acknowledge that we can have faith in something, but not necessarily faith that something. I can hope that x, or desire that x, but to say that I have faith that x seems a bit off. But faith is a difficult notion to define on any account. I don't think anyone would hold that it has the same justificatory considerations that ordinary beliefs do. The difference between faith and belief may be subtle, but it is very significant.
We cannot deny that back then, science wasn't very well developed. Whatever conclusions they couldn't come to back then, they had to have thought that God was in the mix of things, because there was no other explanation for how these things happen. I think that's the big thing right there.
However plausible the idea of religion as an explanatory tool may be, there's no direct indication that this was the purpose of religion. But this point aside, a modern theist would be silly to adopt a "God of the gaps" kind of view. If God is simply inserted into phenomena that we don't currently understand, the theist runs the risk of having God completely removed from the equation as our ability to explain things progresses. There is nothing inconsistent with a God who works through and within the laws of nature and physics - perhaps flinging in a miracle every now and then.
I have faith... and we all know that faith = fact.
No-one's saying faith is fact. We're simply saying that that's why we believe. We're not saying it's irrevocable fact that you can't prove wrong. Though we all know saying 'we have faith' has no grounds in an argument such as ours...
