If You Choose Not to Have God, You Choose to Face Eternal Death

that's the cool thing about athiesm: I don't have to worry about that

That's a very insightful comment. An agnostic most of all does not have to worry about religion because he just doesn't know. In Christianity, you need to try. Jesus is willing to accept you, but you must be willing to run to Jesus.

Yes you do.

i will face eternal death either way once i die

There's an atheist statement. Heh. Just a claim then for now?

As a Christian I 100% agree. Even believers are, as the Gospel says "unprofitable servants", who have only done what what we are required to do. Yet, somehow, God loved us so much that he died for us anyways.

Amen

Hurrah!

Prove to me that your god exists, and we'll talk.

Can do. Let's see here... we'll go with the Teleological argument.

If you're walking through nature, the middle of a forest, and you see a real working watch, what are the chances that the thing was made my nature and not made by some watchmaker? Probably something like 1/10000000000000000000000000000000000. That kind of thing just doesn't happen, and that's what miracle means. Our existence is a miracle, influenced by a God who created us.
The universe is the same way, it's set up so that it needed to be designed to survive. Think about the force of gravity. If that was slightly tweaked, we'd not be alive. Slightly higher, we'd all come back in to the center and die, slightly lower, and the universe would expand too fast for us to keep up with, and we'd be dead.
And the earth? If it was slightly too close to the sun, or too far, or if the sun wasn't this specific type with a small size, giving out just the right spectrum for visible light, or if we weren't in the perfect position in the galaxy, a clear spot with little obstructions, we'd all be dead.

There's a lot of proof that God exists. Sit on that.

If I was walking through a forest and found a real, working watch, of course I would think it was made by a watchmaker and not nature, because as a human who has seen watches, I know that they are made by people. If I was walking through the forest and found a mushroom, I wouldn't think it was made by people, I would assume that it grew from spores of its parents. Now if was was walking through a forest and came across something I had never seen before, I would not assume it had an intelligent creator, I would instead, investigate it and try to find out what if was and where it came from.

As for your other argument, the reason everything seems to be perfectly made for us, is that if it wasn't, we wouldn't be here wondering why. It is like being on a train randomly crisscrossing the country, whose windows only become transparent when the train is next to the ocean. Looking out the windows, the passengers would assume that the train was following the coast.

Your analogy suggested that your religion was evaluation, correct?

I'm going to assume you mean evolution, correct me if I'm wrong. If it is evolution, my answer is no, evolution is not my religion, I don't have one. As for my religious views, I consider myself an apathetic agnostic. I don't know if there is a god or not, and I don't care. So far, no one has proven to me that any type of god exists and until they do, I will live my life as if there are no gods.

Well if you become a Christian, it will have to be through God, not me. My arguments alone, no matter the backup, won't convince you, because you won't listen. It might be God through my argument.

I know what you're going to say about this. "But your argument is flawed!" Well, save your breath for the actual debate, sir. This is just what I believe, you can disagree. I do not intend to summon the big guns here.

I'll let you in on a secret, I love the idea of an all powerful, loving God that answers prayers and where I can find peace and eternal life. If I could pick a universe with a God or without one, I would choose the one with one, however, as my father use to say, if something looks to good to be true, it probably is.

Throughout human history, people have been trying to make sense of the world and have made up many supernatural beings to try and explain it. The vast majority of these beliefs have been disproven. So what makes your beliefs any better? This is where science comes in. I don't have to base my beliefs on feelings or what my parent's believed, but rather on observation, experimentation, and logic.

I have always had lots of questions about how things work and nothing makes me more annoyed is when someone answers back, "God did it". I would rather hear that you just don't know, at least then I know that the answer is still out there waiting to be discovered, rather then I will never find out until after I'm dead.

Gods only exist in a few places. Not in my forsaken homeland though. Those aren't as powerful as people think.

I spy someone who is not Christian or atheist. Woah. What are you, a new spiritualist? I have no idea.

Well I can't say I'll let you in on a secret, but I can say that we have all sinned against a holly and just God. And the penalty for our sin is eternal punishment after death. But the one and only God, is a good God who loves his people, so he sent down his one and only son to suffer and die to take the punishment for the people who believe in Him, and take Him as their savior. Sadly, not everyone is one of His chosen people, but I hope and pray that you are one of them. I know this might not help you a lot, but I'm still learning about this myself, and I encourage you to seek out people who are more knowledgeable on this subject, and can explain this better. But I will pray for you. Thank you for correcting my grammatical mistake earlier, and I'm sorry if I made any more in this. Thank you, and please have a good day.

But how do you know that God is real? How do you know you are praying to the right God? How do you know what He really wants from you?

Ok, so the first law of evaluation, is that everything has to come from something. In fact, that's the first rule of most creation concepts. Now, to say that we just existed disobeys that law and just doesn't make sense. But to say that we were created by the All Powerful God dose make sense, because his ways and even existence is completely beyond creatures like us. And if you look at history you can even see evidence of people and events that are in the Bible. Now, you can learn about God by reading the Bible (which I encourage you to do). But, again as I said earlier, I do encourage you to seek people who are more experienced in this field than I. And I wish for you to think about this often from both perspectives.

Okay, so apparently my phone won't let me respond to your response, so I'm commenting on my own. So, first of all thank you for correcting my grammatical error yet again. But I will say that yeah I don't really know what the actual first rule of most creation concepts is, but I do know it's a rule in most of them. I do have to say I'm pretty sure that particles can't just simply "pop into existence", and in an argument, I would probably say that that should help my case that God is real. And for your last statement, I just want you to know that science and the Bible go together. Many great scientists were and are Christians. And I would like to say that you haven't disproven the existence of God this entire time, which says that even if you think you've found the "best" answers, doesn't mean you've found the right answers. Now as I have said a few times, I do encourage you to seek people who are more knowledgeable about this topic than me (seeing as I'm still pretty young). I hope that you will try to see the argument from both perspectives. Now have a good day please.

I'm going to assume you mean the first law of evolution since the first law of evaluation is about the impact of large scale social programs. If you do mean the first law of evolution, well, there is no such thing. There is no reason why everything must come from something. Science has even shown that particles can randomly pop into existence, even in this universe. Even if it was true that everything must come from something, does not mean that something is God. Just because we don't know, doesn't make God the default answer. And finally, if the universe needs to come from something, why not God? If you say because God's existence is completely beyond creatures like us, then why can't there be something that is not God, completely beyond creatures like us?

And just to let you know, in college I studied religion and science in an attempt to find the answers, and in the end, science offered the best explanation.

My answer for the third question would be to read scripture, compare it with what you think you hear from God, and pray.

How do you know the Bible is true?

I told you NOT to take this up as a challenge.

The Christian God is proven by science, check out the teleological argument. I'm not just gonna give you the answer "God did it," because God tends to tell things in a sensical way. God is logical, and science is a fantastic method to learn God's nature.

Just because something seems too good to be true doesn't mean it actually is, it just usually is. The problem here is that if you don't believe in Jesus you go to hell. I'm not a universalist. Just remember, just because something seems to be too good to be true doesn't mean it is. Did you know that you can eat tasty food and it saturates you? sounds too good to be true, right? Well it's true. We take so much for granted.

I love challenges!

No, the Christian God in no shape nor form has been proven by science. The teleological argument doesn't prove anything because there is no reason why natural process can't be used to explain the complexity of the universe. There have been many, many natural processes that at one time or another have been attributed to the supernatural. The Aurora Borealis being explained by the Bifrost bridge from Norse myths. The sun being the god Helios riding across the sky in is his chariot, and the formation of the Pacific Islands being attributed to Māui pulling up the land from the bottom of the ocean using a hook made from the jawbone of his grandmother. Just because we can't explain exactly how a natural process my work, just means we have more science to do.

Also, even if it was proven that an intelligent creator was involved, it doesn't mean it is the Christian God. It could have been Brama from the Hindu religion, or Ahura Mazda from the Zoroaster religion.

Finally, if you are going to use the teleological argument on the universe, then we should be able to use it on God. If God exists, then God must have a cause and that cause must be an intelligent creator. So even God must have a god.

You are right that just because something seems to good to be true, doesn't make it not true, but how can you tell which things are true and which are not? By observation, modeling, and experimentation, aka, science. I am not going to just blindly follow what some old book says because it was supposedly written by that book's main character.

Ugh. I was not about the challenge.

My point is that the things going on in with our specific things in life, everything has to have gone perfectly. Even the force of gravity has to have been perfect for everything to work out perfectly. The existence of God (we'll go with any God or gods for now) is proven on multiple fronts, including the teleological front. Your claim here does not succeed because, as I said, everything would have to work out perfectly, and the undiscovered science isn't gonna change anything about that.
Plus, if the way the universe developed in a way so that it turns out that it was inevitable for life to develop despite the impossibility of it, does that not suggest God's work just as much?

Now for why it's the Christian God and not any other. It is true that the Kalam Cosmological argument was developed by a Muslim. I can't remember where the other ones came from though. Also, Why did you not suggest the Islamic God? That one is also a couple hundred years old and is still powerful in the world today. I'm just curious.
So the events of the Bible has more proof than any other history book. There is a lot of evidence of these things happening, and in fact, some historical sources use the Bible as a base for what the ancient empires were. Now aside from archeological evidence, I have not really looked into the debate of the theistic religions. This is what I have for now.

Bro, that's not how that works, God is outside of the universe, he's not part of it. And he's infinite, unlike the universe, because he's outside it.

I hope that you may one day turn around to accept Jesus, but for now, I know exactly how this will end. Heated debates are like trench warfare. No one can ultimately beat the other, it's so difficult. And so, there is no victory in a heated debate, and no loss.

I see you are really not up to debating, and that's fine, but I do want to try to get the point across that reason the universe looks like it was made for us, is that we are part of the universe. If the rules of this universe were any different, obviously, we wouldn't be here debating this, but maybe if a few small changes had occurred in some alternate universe, sentient life could have still been created through natural processes that exist in their universe and they could be debating about how their universe seems to be perfectly made for them.

Say there was an impression in the ground and when it rained, it filled with water and became a puddle. Well, somehow our hypothetical puddle gains sentience and it observes that the depression perfectly fits. The puddle may think that this depression was specially made for it because it fits it so perfectly, no realizing that any depression it could have been in, would also fit perfectly.

To answer your question about why I didn't include the Islamic god, is that the Muslims believe it is the same god Christians and Jews worship. Also, if you bring the Bible into the debate, you are going to have to prove that it is the words of God.

No pressure if you don't want to continue the debate, I just find debate a great way of understanding my own beliefs and positions.

Ah, well I just meant that my original comment was not supposed to lead to a debate. I do think that debate is great and can help round a belief. So, it's not that I'm not up for debate, but more so that I wasn't trying to spark one with my comment. And I also think that a heated debate will get people nowhere.
Also, might I compliment that it's great to finally get a person who is respectful when they disagree with me? I'm very tired of getting "you fool" and "you idiot" every other word, so thank you for that.

Ah, the alternate universe counter argument. That takes the universe thing up a notch, but it also brings the fine-tuning up a notch as well. The multiverse would need some source.

I suppose you're right, the Muslims do say that Jesus was a prophet from God, but you should realize that the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Gods are not the same. For example, the trinity is distinct to Christianity. To Muslims, that is heretical. Christians, Muslims, and Judeists believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing God, but that's about where the similarities end. They are not the same Gods.

Your first argument is based on empirical data alone, but does not answer his/her argument, which talks about a miracle, and you do not refute the point that we are created as a miracle, influenced by a God.

As for the second point, you are verifying that this world is created for us, since you said yourself that "if it wasn't, we wouldn't be here wondering why." There has to be a reason for everything, and since there cannot be a infinite amount of an object, you cannot have an infinite cause-and effect chain with no definitive start, which means there has to be a supernatural first cause, that exists before time, which is the definition of God. I also don't see how your reasoning for your second argument supports your other point, which as I said earlier, supports the point that this universe is perfectly created for us.

So you a claiming that "we are created as a miracle, influenced by a God." Fine, but if you want me (or any atheist) to actually give credence to that claim, you first need to prove there was a miracle and that there is a God, which so far, no one has proven.

The reason why the universe looks like it was made for us, is because this universe so happened to have the right conditions to support life. That does not in any way mean that there is some type of creator. If you were to throw a million toothpicks into the air, there is a chance (albeit a small one), that the toothpicks will form letters that spell a word. If a word does appear, does that mean that some invisible being formed the words or does it mean that you just got lucky and random chance formed the words?

Why would it have these right conditions?

God, by definition, is the cause of the universe, not part of it. Causes outside the physical universe aren't proven like things inside the system. We don't prove the existence of other minds, reality of morals, or logic. Yet we accept them since they are the best explanation. The existence of God is much like the same way; inference to the best explanation, not an experiment.

This is a massive assumption you are making here with your toothpick analogy. The fundamental constants of physics are unimaginably narrow to create life. This isn't "The universe looks nice for life." If the strong nuclear force were different by 1 in 10^40, stars could not form. Even more, if the cosmological constant varied by 1 in 10^120, the universe would fly apart or collapse instantly. This is not like toothpicks forming a word. This is toothpicks spelling a 10,000 page book in perfect English. Compared to the book, the word is less than a speck of dust to the laws of physics or nature. This also assumes the universe is random. But no, it is not random.

So then, what evidence do you have that the constants of physics arose by chance rather than design? None. You are making a metaphysical assumption just as much as you claim I do.

Also, a miracle isn't just "magic." It's an event whose best explanation is an intelligent cause rather than blind physical processes. The origin of physics, consciousness, and morality all are candidates for such explanation.

So what is the definition of God? Please let me know in detail so that I know what we are talking about.

The universe is not random? I see you know nothing of quantum physics. Quantum physics says the universe is random, at least at the quantum level, and scientists have proven this time and time again. If you can prove otherwise, I would suggest you author a scientific paper showing this. You will be guaranteed a Nobel Prize. That being said, if there is even a 1 in a googolplex chance that the universe randomly formed exactly this way, it proves that we don't need God to exist, the universe just happened to have to hit the right combo. Heck, we may be part of a multiverse where every possible universe exists, so naturally we would be in the one where life exists.

It may be possible that whatever the non-creator cause of the universe is, it had certain limits that resulted in our universe being "perfect" for life. The issue is that we just don't know, however that doesn't mean that "God did it".

Finally, without proof of a God, miracles are just "magic", since they cannot prove God's existence. Physics, consciousness and morality can all be explained without resorting to "God". I've already discussed how physics do not need a god. Consciousness has been studied for decades and there are some really good theories on how it works, none requiring God. Morality is easily explained through evolution. Being social creatures, we evolved with the ability to make judgements on our actions of what is "good" and what is "bad" in order to create a less chaotic society.

Just because we can't explain everything doesn't mean that God exists. That is called the "God of the Gaps" fallacy.

I didn't have two arguments. I introduced the watchmaker idea, then presented evidence for it. You on the other hand, just introduced that train analogy, but gave no backing. Get me some backing.

The strong anthropomorphic principle is not evidence, but the same Teleological argument, that the universe is too complex for their not to be an intelligent creator, but my counter argument is that it just appears that way. No matter what the odds that this universe came into existence without an intelligent creator are, as long as they are above zero, the fact that we exist doesn't require an intelligent creator, just some really incredible luck.

I see the train analogy was too much for you so let's try something else. The reality it even if you can show that there is an intelligent creator, it doesn't mean it's "God". Maybe we are in a computer simulation? Maybe the universe was created by super advanced aliens? Maybe the universe has always existed in an endless cycle or birth and rebirth? The existence of God still cannot be proved.

Being created by someone else would be nonsensical. If we were created by super advanced aliens, wouldn't they have some sort of corporeal form, which has to decay with time. Even a form made of light will fade, and even the world's strongest computers couldn't run every possibility of the universe. Our world is bound within time, and time can decay material. Therefore, someone else has to have created this world, without matter or antimatter, and has to exist out of time, which is God.

That is terrible logic. First of all, if super advanced aliens created us, it doesn't mean that they are still around. A creator doesn't have to exist after something is created, they only need to exist during it's creation.

As for the super computer, you are judging based on this universe. There could be a universe with an entirely different set of rules that allow a computer to create this universe with a different set of rules. Sort of like how our computers can create Minecraft for Roblox.

And here is where you make your mistake. Why does someone else has to have created this world, why do they have to not have matter or antimatter, and why do they have to exist out of time? The fact that the universe exists and allows for life does not prove that there is a god. We have computer powerful enough now to create a universe and populate it with a form of life. Does that make us gods?

Your assumption here is that I'm talking about a powerful being within the universe, like your aliens or supercomputer. That's not what I was talking about.

Anything material; falling within aliens, computers, energy, has parts, changes over time, and depends on external conditions to exist, which in turn makes it contingent. A contingent being cannot be the reason we exist, as it needs a cause.

Therefore, everything material is dependent, so the cause of the universe must be non-material, not bound by time, and not composed of parts. The first cause must be immaterial and outside of time. Creating a simulation doesn't make us gods, since we don't sustain our own existence--we depend on the universe, which depends on a sustaining cause. This is what God is.

You seem to be using very specialized meanings of words. I don't want to assume that you are using the same definition as me, so please explain what you mean by contingent, dependent, first cause, and sustaining cause.

Oh, no I got your train analogy. You claim that we can only see the parts that suggest God. What I wanted for you was to expound.

All three of those possibilities turn out to have their own problems. And, you'd be surprised to find out, I've seen those before.
The aliens and the computer simulation. You immediately run into a problem. How were those created? You'll fall back on the point that other aliens created them, and those created them, but that's not really possible for the same reason your third possibility isn't possible.
The universe can not be infinite. For that to work, infinity in a physical sense would have to work. We theists don't argue the Kalam Cosmological until we establish that. Look at the infinite hotel. Infinity's math doesn't math. This applies to your secondary aliens fallback argument no infinity, the universe began. And on top of that, the universe is expanding, not expanding then shrinking.

Then we reach the point. The Kalam Cosmological argument. Infinity can't be it, so therefore the universe began to exist. And everything that began to exist has a cause. The universe has a cause that's not JUST aliens, because they would have a cause as well.

You realize that you refuted God with your own argument, right? "Infinity can't be it, so therefore the universe began to exist. And everything that began to exist has a cause", if infinity can't be, and thus everything must have a beginning, which means everything must have a cause. So what caused God? If you can say that God always existed, then why can't the universe?

Well here's the thing. I see your concern, but the problem is not here. Something has to have started the universe, and it has to have been outside of this reality. Do you know what's outside of this reality? God. He's not in time, making him the only option.

It's funny if I was not a Christian, I would still not be an atheist. Christianity is irrefutable and is true for sure, so the only difference between me and a Christian would be that I still need God, just was too lazy to try.

Out of curiosity, if you were not a Christian, what religion do think you would be?

I would be a "Christian," as in I would believe in the Christian God, but wouldn't actually try. Like the chill Christians today. But I would admit that I am this, so not like the chill Christians.

Eternal death is what people will end up in. There is no resurrection or reincarnation like in cartoons. Also which god? There are many of them.

Look at the tags of this meme, sir. It's the Christian God.

There are not many gods, there is only one God, then a thousand different idols that people worship, including themselves and science.

yes. jesus christ is lord!

I'm not an atheist, but religion doesn't complete me, really.

Then try digging deeper into the Bible.

Wdym "what".

By what, I mean: wdym

My point is: if religion doesn't seem to complete you, then it's probably because you're not getting the complete message.

Good analysis.

Just hope it helps.

Thanks, man. I really think I need God now.

I would've said Christ. I don't think any other religion will properly do that.

Oh yeah, your right. Sorry about that.

No. Every person in a religion could stay in that way cuz they feel it fits them.

I will respectfully but strongly disagree with that.

So you're agnostic?

Nah.

So you think God exists but don't wanna get farther than that?

Wait, that's the answer... It actually is!

I know that feeling. Being a Christian can be hard.