play4fun :

Whether or not a higher power caused all this to be, I can't argue the wonder of how we are all standing here debating how we came to be. It really is quite a wonder. Although it makes me wonder how many other places like this there are in the universe. I hardly doubt we are alone.

I'd say that the idea of a God, is more or less, a person's perception of who they want their creator to be, much like with when a baby sees its first person in the world. They see their "creator" and hope to see themselves in the eyes of their maker. That is to say the way some view God, is the way they want to see themselves in his light, if he exists.

I think I somehow confused myself lol

soxfan849 : It doesn't matter whether we know how they are made or not, it's the argument of complexity that we know that it does not happen by accident. If I were to go to the front of your room and line up 20 leafs in a straight line and then leave, then you showed up and saw the leaves, you would not say that it was made by accident, because you know, it takes a type of intelligence to create a pattern or a design like that.

legacyme3 : "I'd say that the idea of a God, is more or less, a person's perception of who they want their creator to be"

That may be true for some people who do not think about what they believe clearly. Some of those people you may call "brainwashed," which do not seriously think about what they believe and just believe it just because. However, this is not everyone.

If the belief in God is just what everyone wants their "god" to be, then there would not be conversions. The fact that you see many people converting to a different religion is because they believe that there is some type of truth in it and they came from a different religion that they now think to be false. So there has to be a belief in truth if one were to believe in God, because if it is just what people want to believe, no one would change their mind.

I can say this for Christianity, that the beliefs that we claim are not beliefs that we want God to be, but that we believe it is true in understanding God's attributes, our state, and the solution. No one in Christianity claims the ideas of the beliefs because it is not something that is made up in the blue.

play4fun :

I see a theme of truth in what you are describing.

When we talk about truth, we also need to remember that perceptions play a huge role. What is true for one, will not always be true for all.

What I see truth as personally, is the desire to seek knowledge over impulse. If that makes any sense.

Truth is what you make of it. If you see something that changes the truth, so be it, but for an ideal of what the person's truth is to change, you need to start at the very roots with the most basic idea. That's why I believe people convert. When they first believe something they think of the master plan as opposed to the whole roots of the foundation. So what they get is a crumbling belief system that only works in the short term.

legacyme3 : You are now falling into the idea of relativism, which is a very faulty idea when it comes to truth.

Just because someone perceives something to be true, does not mean that it is true. Me believing that I can fly does not mean that I will fly.

Even with your statement: "What is true for one, will not always be true for all."

Well, if I said what is true for me is that you are wrong, who is right?

Relativism itself in logic is considered a fallacy. Just because you believe something is true, does not mean that it is, and it does not weight on how much effort you are making in believing it, but on whether it is true or not itself.

play4fun :

Have you tried flying? =P

Well, when I made my statement it was with a simpler idea in mind like "The truth is that the US is the best country in the world" or something more based on a faith-based opinion. While someone would see that s true, others would not, because it simply is not a total truth. There is a relative truth, and an absolute truth, and I see the idea of God as a more or less relative truth, because while to some he is the truth, to others he is not the truth any more than the US is the best country in the world.

Well, if I said what is true for me is that you are wrong, who is right?

The answer is neither of us, because we now enter a level of he said, he said in which the truth is that no one is right and that the truth is no longer a valid need to the people to which it would serve. (sorry for going off topic there =P)

Back to the topic though...

relative and absolute truths are the two truths that dictate the world around us, and our interpretation of them leads us to this point in the discussion.

legacyme3 : No I haven't, but the example was to serve a point.

The example you gave is not even a truth, it's called an opinion. Opinions are subjective to what a person sense. Truths are not relative, especially because the opposite of truth is falsehood.

ok, let me rephrase my example: If I believe that what is true for me is that you are wrong, who is right?

No matter how hard a person tries to believe something to be true, it does not cause something to be true, but it is that it is true itself.

play4fun : I'd argue that it does in fact matter if we know of it's origin or not. Life has been proven to evolve over time which could prove that the complexity of life was not simply designed, but a gradual process. What you are doing is comparing finite objects that don't occur naturally with those that do.

That's not to say there wasn't a creator, but there are theories that attempt to use the process of evolution to show how life may have been formed without one.

soxfan849 : 3 things:

1. Here is my thread about the misunderstanding that science "proves" things. The only things that proves things are mathematics, logic, and more specifically, deductive reasoning. Much of the science field is done inductively, which means to do experiments and find evidence to "support" a theory, meaning to make it more likely to be true. https://www.vizzed.com/vizzedboard/thread.php?id=22026

2. It works the same way, because your own mind would not be convinced that it is logical that something came from nothing. From the scenario that I gave you, you can't believe the idea that the wind or the trees can randomly drop 20 leaves into a straight line. In the similar way, you can't drop a Scramble board game on the floor and expect words to be form from the box. You may get short words like "an" or "is," but those are not significant by themselves. This incident cannot form something complex like....the word "complex" LOL. In the same way, considering yourself, you that is formed of millions of cells and to be able to reason, to sense, to communicate. You cannot simply think that we were created out of nothing. Logically, I can do this.

3. What is your favorite "proof", the one that REALLY convinced you that evolution is most likely true?

legacyme3 : We can continue on with the topic at hand. Do you think that believing in a religion deals with whether someone feels happy with their beliefs? or whether if it is to find truth?

play4fun :

Almost forgot about this lol, been busy.

"Do you think that believing in a religion deals with whether someone feels happy with their beliefs? or whether if it is to find truth?"

I'm a little confused about the question, are you asking me if I think that religion itself deals with either of those options, or are you asking whether it is a personal opinion?

I'm going to assume one of these...

I think religion deals with both honestly. I think that a person seeks religion to be happy with their beliefs and to find the truths in their religion. For some, they only seek happiness in these beliefs as a way of coping with the eventuallity that is death. But some seek some sort of higher purpose and hoping that they contribute to the greater truth in their own religions.

play4fun : I'll answer, but I want you to tell me what you think evolution really is.

And as for your examples, no one says that evolution is random. In fact, one of the things that does not allow for evolution to occur inside a population is random mating. If a species, or a population, mated at random the rate at which a certain genetic attribute occurs would remain almost proportionally equal to the population.

What convinced me that evolution, the change in genetic composition of a species over generation, is true? How about Africanized honey bees? They didn't convince me, but they are an example. The theory explaining how evolution occurs is a theory, but the fact that life is changing and evolving is a fact.

I'm going to revert back to the original question posed by the creator of this thread in the hopes of getting things back on track, because I feel like the thread has changed from "why do you believe in God" to "what is truth," the latter of which I think is a silly question.

I'm going to admit that I was brought up by a religious family. A traditionalist family, very devout. Still, my religious beliefs have been shaped by my own personal experiences and those of the people around me.

I'm going to tell you what makes me believe in God, and even what makes me believe in a specific God, but first I'd like to turn the question on you for a second.

I've noticed an interesting trend in the Atheists and Agnostics I call my friends and family. Something like ninety percent of them were raise Catholic, just like you, legacyme3
Now, the reasons why they don't believe in God vary from their belief that God is cruel to a lack of evidence. This happens in all of the Catholics I see, even the ones that didn't turn away from the church.

So now I'd like to pose the question, what made you not believe in God?

Now I'm going to answer your question. I believe in God because I've spoken to it. I talk to it (what some people call "prayer") and I see it answer. It has demonstrated its presence to me, in response to my actively seeking it out. It sounds crazy, but it's true.

I've questioned my beliefs, just in case you thought I was closed-minded, and no question posed by myself and my friends has in any way affected my belief in God. It's affected my belief in its nature, but not its existence. I'd like you to practice open-mindedness using my method by questioning yourself: Why do you not believe in God?

Crawldragon :

Are you asking me why I do NOT believe in God? I just want to make sure you did.

legacyme3 : Yes, that's exactly why I'm asking. I'm curious, and I'd like to get to know you rather than trying to profile and stereotype you as many religious types are wont to.

Crawldragon :

Very well, I have no problem expressing why I have turned my back from the church.

When I was around 15 I joined a bible study group at my high school. These were mostly my friends, and I was a Roman Catholic at the time. My parents were enthused so they got me my own bible.

Back to the point though, one day we were sitting in a starbucks talking about God and what he had done for us. I will note that I had a reason to believe. And then we had an interesting little debate.

Our debate was on who had the most unshakable faith and would be least likely to turn from God. Ironically I won after I said, it would take my girlfriend breaking up with me, one of my relatives dying, for a tragedy to happen on the other end of the world and for it to snow tomorrow (it was in mid September).

The next day my girlfriend broke up with me, and three days later, there was a death in the family. A little later something happened that made me cry that I will not repeat, and a week later it snowed. This isn't the real reason I left my faith though.

Once I told my friends, they shrugged it off like it was nothing saying how everything was as it should be and that everything would be ok and brushed it off so casually. It made me realize these people were telling a false word. I couldn't see how the things that happened were an act of God. So once I said he was crazy and that God would in no way hurt me like he had, he questioned my faith asking if it was I who knew what God's word was.

So I punched him right in the face.

The main reason I left the church is that there were too many selfrighteous emotionless people involved with religion that could not tolerate that I had a heart and didn't like all the suffering not only in my family, but the world. On top of the fact my family is poor and I always felt like God gave me a short hand to play with, I also had to contend with snobby rich kids for the attention that I needed. I ended up becoming a recluse because no one cared about the emotions I had with religion and how passionate I was about my own faiths. I eventually came to the conclusion that God would not have put me here to be with all of these obstacles just to see me struggle. Adding to it, my parents were intolerable to Atheism. And when I told them about my wavering faith, they demoralized me and tried to guilt me into believing what they believed.

I'm not the type of person who can believe what a person says based on just what someone else says, I've always been the one to come up with my own conclusions. And with the things that I had seen with my own eyes, I could not believe in the existence of something I wasn't too sure of to begin with.

Does that answer your question?

It's an excellent answer to my question. In fact, it's the same answer I've gotten from the majority of atheist people I know.

I'm curious, have you ever read the book of Job? I imagine you would have. It's one of my favorite books of the Bible.

Crawldragon :

I have, but my memory is fuzzy, I haven't read any of the bible in years, and I never was the best at remembering things.

legacyme3 :

Crawldragon :

"Why do you not believe in God?" Wait I thought I asked that question earlier, but this is a better answer than before.

soxfan849 : Specifically I'm against macroevolution, meaning that there is no documented observable case of a species evolving to another species through mutations and natural selection. With your Africanized Honey Bees example...I don't know what you are referring to about them....but they are still bees. I don't know what you were trying to say about them.

But I agree with Crawldragon that this is getting off the original topic, so let's go back to talking about legacyme3.

So this is basically like a huge off-topic sandwich post right?

legacyme3 : If you ever do read a Bible again, Job would be a very good 1 for you to read.

Annette :

Not really offtopic

This is a debate I am holding with play4fun and anyone else that wants to join in. It did go offtopic for a bit, but that's hardly my fault =P

Anyway...

play4fun :

Yeah, you did ask it, but I didn't really feel like completely answering it at the present time until I was sure I would be listened to, because I have in the past had problems with people taking what I say seriously. Had you asked again about 4 replies ago, I would have given the same response, but either way, the question is answered no?

trouble982 :

Yeah, I imagine, I might pick it up to read that one.