'Observed repeatedly and by multiple observers to be given credence'?...then you are saying 10 million Christians can't be wrong?

If they all see God then they`re possably not wrong.

No, since the individual experiences themselves are wholely subjective and cannot observed or "felt" by others and thus verified.

To summarise your point...you see me as a threat to your cosy unclinical views of the world. My 'Proof' to you means nothing as it falls outside the category of "all the information on what i've developed a desire to know about...". The point to this thread is to discuss in relation to known fact and thought whether proof is needed to create faith. You have already made it quite clear that proof is not needed to create faith, what you see as going through life and developing a concept of personal truth I see as the inability to face the world with the question 'why?' due to not feeling comfortable with the alternative reality suggested by people with actual proof that you will no doubt refute no matter what because you don't want it to be true.

I don't want evolution to be true..I'd love to wake up every morning and think 'God made me for a purpose and I shall indeed go forth and multiply' or whatever but I'm incapable of living my life based around an outmoded belief system of any sort just because it makes me feel better. I like the idea of us coming from monkeys despite it being true because I'm rather fond of our furry coconut headed friends and see them as the closest thing in weirdness to us anyway.

What Godlessness is about is taking responcibility for our own actions instead of blaming any divine plan, it's about accepting that we as the human race are not the chosen ones, we are still very special because we may very likely be the only example of life in an infinite universe..this makes us infinitely preciouse and it is our task if we truely care about life to make sure it is maintained in equilibrium. And not to rely on some cosmic parent figure to step in and do the work for us.

she answered it much more efficiently than my existential thought process could...

and tentacle dead...are you saying there is proof of no god, so therefore those that do believe in some sort of higher power are wrong? You know it all?

the point is that when it comes to god, faith, belief, feeling, intuition, the occult, spells, rituals, on and on, as with all idealistic concpets there is no proof for or against either belief, simply the subjective opinion of those who feel or do not feel there is someting...beyond just a natural fluke of natural selection aligning just right with the proper chemical and weather conditions to produce life...but hey, if you prefer your life that simple and mudane, who am i to condemn it.

There are two types of atheism: negative and positive.

A negative atheist is without belief in god because of lack of evidence, but makes no positive assertion of his un-existence.

A positive atheist makes the positive assertion that god doesn't exist, not because there's no evidence, but because the concept of god, an omniscient, omnipotent being, is logically impossible.

An atheist can often have a positive stance toward specific concepts of god, but a negative stance towards god in general.

funny enough i agree with that concept, but i'm not an atheist.

Meaning exactly that "created", in the big bang it is theorised that a object, or energy of extreme size reached critical mass and exploded outwards creating the universe as we know it. Energy is more lilely than matter becuase all matters is energy at its most basic level.

And to the next statement. Energy can be tranformed or transfered, but not created.. Now I dont presume, to say the

laws inside the universe apply outside the universe, but my only understanding is that from inside.

Now if I knew that I'd know everything. What was the cause of the Object that caused the Big Bang?

TentacleDead, I agree that the big bang is the Most Logical Expalantion, but the "hole" I was refering to was not the big bang itself, but the actual object involved and how that came to be.

You're not being clear as to what you mean by "created." Are you using it interchangeably with "caused" or are you using it to mean "generated from nothing"?

Please explain what you mean by this.

What I want to know is, does it logically follow that the Source must have a cause as well? If so, the Source simply being a cause within an infinite regress of causes, what's the point of calling it the Source, or god, or any distinctive term?

i believe that if god exists, then he/she/it must interact with the rest of reality in some perceivable way. therefore, if no interaction can be perceived, than it doesn't even matter if god exists. faith doesn't make sense to me. why believe something when there is no reason to, or even if there is reason to not believe? a lot of people will argue with me that you have to "ask God into your life" in order to perceive him. i was a achristian for six years. I was baptized, i studied the bible, i believed in god and i was very happy. but eventually i had to start thinking for myself, and i couldn't make myself accept things that just didn't make sense to me.

i think the most common issue it seems people have is separating the concept of christian type worship from faith. Faith is more than believing in some patriarchial god, his son, and whatever else the bible is condoning these days. Faith is something to improve yourself, the view you have about your life, i have faith in my husband, faith in myself, faith in my children, and faith that the mountains will be here thousands of years after i'm dead and gone...

belief too is a...feeling that can ascend the concept of god, the only relation any god or goddess should have in a persons life is something to aspire to...i personally worship(not in the christian way) the keltic goddess macha. It's not because i need to form a religion around her, but more so for what she symbolises, a hero i guess you could say that i like to focus as being the immaculate woman, and i would like to be as she was in her day

but i imagine worship to me is different than what the majority of people view worship as(or from those i've talked about it with), so many people no matter how much they say the disagree with christianity let it affect their lives, their beliefs and their views on life, people...and belief.

belief, the way i percieve it in mono religions, is a leap of faith. I think it's important to recognize that. Logic has nothing to do w/ religion, if a god existed in some reality, it probably would be illogical. I dont know, im tired but look at jesus. how illogical was that man's life, and howabout this nonsense with the isrealists and pakistanians

Being a negative atheist myself I`d like to know why God is considered logicaly impossable form the positive atheists.
*Strikes a match*
I think you mean matter.

The principle of the conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, which consequently means matter also is conserved sinse energy and matter are the same. When you light a match, you are not creating energy; you're transferring it from a potential state to an actual state.

God is often characterized as being both omniscient and omnipotent at the same time. If god is all knowing then he can predict the future, which means the future is set. If the future is set, then he cannot change it which means he is not omnipotent. If he does change the future than he has failed to predict it in which case negates his omniscience. Thus a god that is both omniscient and omnipotent is illogical. There are other arguments against other conceptions of god, but I'm not a positive athiest, so I really haven't researched them.

Ah yes I forget the atoms are made of energy too bit, never did like the potential energy idea.I havent ruled out a future perpetual motion device in the future though.

Have you ever heard of a editor reading a book and then changing it? If you see what will happen and then change what will happen then in linear time you will have to look again. In any other form of time all things would be seen and changed at once I would imagine.

If God exists and is Omniscient and Omnipotent there would still be nothing to suggest that he is good as surely his creation would reflect his personality. If all of nature (his creation including mankind) and the violence, death and suffering that goes along with it is representative of God then there is little reason to expect any mercy as none is shown in nature.

To Jordyn..You make no distinctions between faith and blind faith. You have faith in your loved ones baised upon the solid groundings of the 'proof' of his past actions and behaviour. Faith in religious terms has no solid grounding in factual 'proof' unless by chance you consider your past prayers to have been answered, in this case you can expect your future prayers to be answered as well. This faith is a strange thing as only a little 'proof' is needed to maintain it against the larger harsher truths..take my friend..he is religious and considers his past prayers to have been answered such as success with his financial plans etc..when he contracted a serious illness recently he failed to notice how this went against his prayers or when he was mugged and had three ribs broken. That kind of faith to me is not only illogical but verges on madness.

What I say is there is more quantifiable, touchable and observable proof against any God than for, BUT I have said I keep my mind open rather than deny the existance of proof against my views like the thousands of religious people attempting to hold back science out of fear...if they truely believed in God they wouldn't have to fear science as science is based on reality and if reality is God then it can't possibly prove them wrong.

did i mention anything about blind faith? Did i say i worship in hopes that i'll have prayers answered keeping me safe, bringing me riches, getting a job? If he was stupid enough to think that praying to a god would keep him safe, than it was a fallacy with his own reasoning and let him self get into a situation where he was harmed...gods can't protect you, they would have to be physical entities...

what you seem to fail, and not realize is that my approach to relgion and all the glorious aspects of believing are really quite different from most...but then we're getting into religious/spiritual discussions...so perhaps you should check into what spirituality is and realize it's not all prayers and religion...

Well this is of course the crux of the whole 'proof' problem. Obtaining proof of something that occurred before theoreticaly the largest explosion in the univerce took place is nigh on impossible as anything around before the '