Another Denier Wakes up and smells the coffee,,

How do you know it's god, and not E.T. playing jokes on you?

 

That is a really good point as I was originally going to use foam board all the way around (glue it to the walls). The cost was about 3x as much. I am still thinking about using on the south half just because we use that half for ping-pong and storage. The only thing is is that I have been told it is a code violation because of flammability. Apparently if you use it, you have to cover it with sheet-rock. That seems like too much work.

 

Dude, don't think the thought hasn't crossed my mind. The thing is, if I am wrong, will my life have any worth any less? No way, if anything, much more. If I am right however...

Faith.

 

But if there really is a god, say for example Allah, and you are worshiping the wrong god because E.T. has been screwing with you, you could wind up in hell. There are probably a thousand religions in the world, and no guarantee that ANY of them is right. So your chances of picking right are AT BEST one in a thousand.

On the other hand, if there really was a god, and if he wanted us to believe in him, he'd either reveal himself to all of us, as fundamentalists of all religions claim he has revealed himself to them alone, or he'd just appear in the sky and say, "I am! Believe in me." The multiplicity of conflicting religions is proof that EITHER there is no god, OR that he does not want the vast majority of us to believe in him. The former seems more likely to me.

 

Yeah I understand the mold issue. But it really is dry up here (like 8" annual rainfall) and absolutely bone dry in the winter. That said I will use a semi-transparent vapor barrier and keep an eye on it.
Suppose I might need to add some kind of air exchange down there? With it all sealed up it will probably get rather stale.?

 

I just finished reading every news report of the Athiests going to war against the religious.
Didn't take long, there are no examples of this ever happening.

Atheism for peace I say!

milf, <snicker>

 

If almost half believe in a "god" then over a half don't. I think the atheists have the numbers.

When did truth become a popularity contest?
It could be said that at some point in history over half the population of the world believed the earth flat and static while the sun moved across the sky each day. Was that true too?

 

Pat: You quoted me as saying what Spiderman actually said. Perhaps you could correct that?

Again, the Bible is a hodgepodge collection of diverse writings collected by church leaders for the purpose of making their own case. Its only claim to authority is that it claims to be authoritative. That is a worthless claim.

Two: Some people do feel that the world is so "wonderful" that there must be a god. This is a non sequitur. I.e. it does not follow logically that there "must be a god" merely because uneducated humans cannot imagine an alternative.

Three: If you do insist that the world MUST have a creator, you have come no closer to understanding the nature or identity of that creator. It might be Allah, or the FSM, or something humans cannot comprehend. It might love humans or it might despise humans or it might not care about us one way or another. It might want us to worship it, or it might regard worship as despicable fawning.

Really? As Pat points out above, if you insist on going by the numbers, atheism is your best choice.

Are you a universalist? If so, I respect you for that. Of course, if you are a universalist, then it does not matter what you believe. I have a friend who is a Roman Catholic universalist. (Yes, in the eyes of the church, that makes her a heretic, but she considers the church to be the heretic. ) Her view is that everyone will go to heaven, regardless of what they believe or how they live. For her, the reason to live a holy life is that sin makes god unhappy, and if you love god you won't want god to be unhappy. She lives in voluntary poverty, in constant service to the poor and homeless, and spends her free time in prayer. She does not pray for "stuff." She prays her thanks to god for loving us, and because she feels that prayer will help her to become a better person. I deeply respect her, and I love her as a friend, even though I think her theology is nuts. She is a good and kind and generous person, which is what matters. Why she took holy orders in a church that she believes to be wrong on every important point of dogma is a mystery to me.

 

sorry I posted the numbers... they don't do anything for me either. The almost half I was referring was just Christian+Islam+Judaism.

No, not a universalist. No we must except the gift of salvation before we become His adopted children. The path is narrow but is available to all.

 

To not believe in a creator would take more faith because every species on Earth would have to all find a way to reproduce within one generation or face permanent extinction. This required a male and female finding each other and working together within a single lifetime.

At what point during evolution did 1000's of species decide that a pair of eyes would come in handy having never seen or known what a pair of eyes were or even where to begin developing something so complicated? Someone born blind is not able to make their own seeing eyes even after being TOLD that sight is great. Birds, snakes, spiders, even snails with their pea brains were able to figure it out. If that one thing could be accomplished thousands of times over by mere chance, how come you and I can't grow an eye on the back of our heads to see behind us before we die? Where's the evolution since we apparently were much better at it when we were the equivalent of pond scum?

It would be similar to traveling to any foreign planet of your choice and finding thousands of objects way more complicated than a Timex watch or a Prius and deducting that the parts came together by chance. At what point did the Prius decide it needed tires? How could it travel to get rubber to begin with? It had to happen with a few days or risk death from lack of gas as well.

Believing in evolution is the equivalent of believing that you could put a bomb in the middle of a pile of wood infinitely many times and eventually get a McDonald's after the explosion. And not just once, but thousands of times over in the form of many incredibly complex "buildings".

So at least be open to the possibility since you already believe in the impossible...

Is Jesus God? Did Jesus ever claim to be God?

 

So this god of yours "wants" everyone to be saved, but only gives the "instructions" to a fraction of the world's people, while leaving the rest in ignorance and confounded by "false" religions which they were taught by their parents and therefore believe as sincerely as you believe yours. Hmmm??? Oh, and on top of that, waited until 2,000 years ago to "reveal" those instructions, leaving everyone born before that to be damned???

You know, if I believed that, I'd say that "god" of yours was a sadistic psychopath.

Universalism actually makes more sense if you believe that god wants us to come to him.

Of course, Deism makes sense also: the belief that the creator doesn't give a hoot about what happens to us; he made a world, maybe had fun doing it, and has gone on to other things. That makes a lot more sense than to believe the creator loves above all other things a race of monkeys too stupid not to crap in their own drinking water or totally screw up the perfect climate and beautiful green Earth he put us on.

No matter how you look at it, Pauline Christianity makes no sense. A god who sends people to hell for the honest mistake of believing the wrong religion, when there's no evidence to pick one over the other, is NOT a god of love. A god who punishes children for the sins of their fathers, is NOT a god of love. A god who plays games by hiding himself and then writing in a totally unreliable book, full of contradictions and just plain errors, that you should believe in him just because the world is wonderful, is NOT a god of love.

On the other hand, it's perfectly understandable that a tribalistic race, prone to hate everyone outside the tribe, would invent a religion that claims that everyone else will be tortured for all eternity. Pauline Christianity is so OBVIOUSLY the invention of psychopaths (human psychopaths) that it's success in the world is testimony to the prodigious stupidity of the human race.

 

Many religious people show signs of intelligence in some ways, so I'm not sure stupidity is quite the right term. I find it more useful to think of religious belief as a mental illness.

Love the patient, hate the illness.

 

The fact that there are actually people who believe the random string of non sequiturs and idiocy in post #212, suggests that "stupidity" is really the most predominant characteristic of the human race.

 

Weird how our DNA is more complicated than the best supercomputer ever CREATED so much so that our collective "stupidity" is just recently beginning to understand how it works much less explain how it happened by chance.

Order NEVER comes from chaos. Buildings have a builder. Creation has the fingerprints of a Creator. Everyone who believes that is stupid while those who believe in random beginnings of every species by mere chance are intelligent?

Much easier to call people stupid than to contemplate.

 

We have been over this ad nauseum. I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on each others theology.

I have to admint though this discussion has been stimulating... I could very well have been debating with the antichrist himself.

 

Not a bad idea. Some of my best friends are Christians (*), in fact most of them are. I have even held the door for several of them


(*) They don't all consider each other true Christians though.

 

Sure it does. As water vapor cools it goes from a more chaotic state (a gas) to more ordered state (fluid) to an even more ordered state (solid).
Your lack of comprehension of how basic physical properties work does not mean they don't work without divine guidance.

Ancient greeks didn't understand lightning, so they attributed it to a god.