Josie said:
Oh wow, we love generalisations.
Being an atheist doesn't mean you get drunk and sleep with everyone all the time.
Besides, I know plenty of Christians who do exactly the same thing.
yes, my post was in reply to someone who said atheists can do 'fun stuff' (and i made the assumption that 'fun stuff' involved drug alcohol etc) and that if fun is worthless to you you will live a 'terrible and boring life'
i never said that all atheists do any or all of those things or vice versa. if your going to pick arguments, at least do it in context.
I think you're similarily simplifying the argument made against prayer. The idea is that basically asking forgiveness in its self is pointless because god already knows you desire forgiveness, giving gratitude is pointless because god already knew it was there.... etc
There are extreme complications when you want to evoke a 'perfect' being.
yes but in a christians eyes that external acknowledgement still has value. say you are going to apologize to someone for something you did, and that person finds out you are going to apologize. does that mean the apology isn't necessary anymore because they know you are repentant?
also isn't asking God for something a different act from simply desiring it?
They definately can. Christians are fine to go ahead and 'observe' god responding to their prayers much in the same way as humans imagine a pet rat has fallen in love with them, doesn't really bother me, but at the very least I know that I can have the feeling of 'love' and thus can contemplate other similar creatures having the same feeling (i.e. other humans). I don't see how even such a preliminary understanding is available with 'feeling' god.
i know some people have a problem with biblical quotations in this thread. but a major principle of christianity is the notion that the good tree bears good fruit ie. a person's actions can reflect God working in them. dont we do the same with love? i dont think we purely judge love by feeling, i think a major factor by which we assume love exists because it makes itself evident in the actions of ourselves and other people. therefore, the godly actions of a person who had repented and believed are attributed to God working in them. also i'm sure that a lot of spiritual people would attest to having felt the presence of god, much like many people would attest to having felt the feeling of love, while there will always be people who will say they have felt neither.
also how does observation of God via reponse to prayer correspond with 'feeling' god? if your only argument against that is that it is purely in the imagination of the person who prays, much like imagining a pet rat has fallen in love with you, then i respectfully disagree, but i suppose a non-theist and a religious person will always diverge on what exactly is just coincidence vs the hand of God.
I feel fairly comfortable with my logic... Basically do you accept all other (fundamentally equal) supernatural things as existing? If not then you're applying double-think and at the very least being less logical than me.
I don't "limit myself to those things which I can see or definately prove", I do however hold that we have no reason to believe such things exist until there is strong evidence for them.
much the same as you, i dont neccessarily affirm or discredit the existance of any other supernatural beings other than God, i just dont have any evidence to reason that they exist. i think the point is, i do have reason to believe an omnipotent god exists, moreso than other supernatural forces via evidence from my own personal experience that you would seem to disregard as we covered above. and that evidence i have sufficiently implies God's existence enough for me, i dont require God to personally come down and transform me into a leprechaun to have that belief - where the concept of faith comes in - hence not limiting yourself to what you can see or definitively prove. however, i wouldn't discredit any other supernatural beings from being in existance, i just wouldn't believe that until i had any kind of evidence, and i also see it as quite possible that God can exist singularly.
and Lengy, sorry i inspire such hate in you or anyone else
but i'm still entitled to my opinion however lowly or illogical that opinion might be.