Kytro,

I agree. I think a lot of it comes down to definitions. Just exactly what is meant by 'faith'? If I look up a definition of faith as used by a religious person, it's totally different to that used by a non-religious person. For example:

Faith: The knowledge of and active belief in the existence and power of the living God and His only begotten Son Jesus Christ. Faith is the actual spiritual substance of God's Holy Spirit, which gives the believer the assurance and the confidence that what God has promised, He will perform.


I think it's quite clear from that definition, that non-religious people don't have faith.

God these are stupid arguments.

If the people define their existence and actions, by accepting an unfounded, unprovable belief, then who cares?
Is it a sensible approach?
Of course not.

We hear the silly pascal's wager argument, which says just in case, we may as well believe in god, which you could extrapolate to "I better not move, because the earth may disappear from under my feet if I do."

Both accept that a course of action may protect you from an imagined peril, without examining the probability of the peril actually existing.

Religious try and diminish atheists credibility by saying you can't prove their is no god, and they are right, we just work on probability.

Now the probability of a supreme, divine, interventionist being, who is only ever claimed to have shown himself to a couple of primitive desert dwellers, actually being anything like they claimed, and yet have a total inability to communicate in any transparent and understandable fashion, is something which I regard with a probability factor approaching zero.

Plenty of more interesting god concepts are available, but religions choose the god which is a better reflection of human capriciousness, I suppose you get more excuses that way.

When we see people brainwashed into cults, who accept some charismatic leader, making messianic claims, we feel sorry for them, and feel they are being conned, and that they are having their human rights violated by the, sometimes sincere, but always delusional, claims of their leader.

If any of you have ever seen anything like that, you will know what I mean.
An atheist just extends the same sense of concern to all people.

God these are stupid arguments.

Freediver will do.

Religious try and diminish atheists credibility by saying you can't prove their is no god, and they are right, we just work on probability.

Dawkins tried to do that. He failed.

Now the probability of a supreme, divine, interventionist being, who is only ever claimed to have shown himself to a couple of primitive desert dwellers, actually being anything like they claimed, and yet have a total inability to communicate in any transparent and understandable fashion, is something which I regard with a probability factor approaching zero.

Couching your belief in statistics doesn't make them more objective.

The same thing may true with a god/s. 

How so? God is almost by definition something 'unearthly', so why would you expect to one day find 'earthly' evidence for or against the existence of God?

muso wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2008 at 11:34am:


It was faith in common sense why else would you listen to a shout out of nowhere and bother to check on the information received.

Grendel wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2008 at 1:09pm:




I did say "without examining the probability" grendel.

Now clearly I do not "know" that it is real,(GW) I use my experience of science, and scientific knowledge, which has given me reason to put some trust in it's abilities, to assess the situation, and then choose whether I believe what they say.
I have chosen to believe what they say about GW, because the track record of science is known, and subject to open scrutiny.

So I side with them when they say that the probability of GW being contributed to by man, is quite high.

Now, on the other hand, we have theists, who in my experience, have never postulated an acceptable theory to justify their beliefs.

On a personal level, I find the concept of a being who can control, life, the universe, and everything, that cannot even manage an unambiguous introduction of themselves, as being highly improbable, hence my dismissal of it's probability.
Not impossible, just impossibly improbable.

A man was walking down the street when he saw someone across the road behaving very strangely.
He was walking sideways, then rolling on the ground, then jumping up and down, so I said to my friend, "look at that guy, he must be crazy"

"Not, really, that's god, he moves in mysterious ways."