Existense

How

You have to have faith and believe in a higher being and the higher being you believe in is not identical to anyone else's. So when you die, so does the higher being you believe in, even if you have projected it on others.

Only my projection of the higher being will die when I die, not the higher being.
My projection has died more than once already.

Any higher being you believe in only exists in your mind, because that is where everything you believe exists, even if others confirm your beliefs it doesn't make them real, because people lie, even to themselves.

Then hello, oh figment of my imagination. Turns out I believe you exist so, logically, you're just in my head.

I have better proof that God exists than that you exist.

You are half correct, on one half I do exist outside your mind according to myself and you, on the other half what you think of me only exists inside your mind. As I can't read your mind what is in there will die with you. I am not a god or your god, but if I was how easy it would be to talk with you and read back what you are thinking or tell you the future. Then again is it you talking to yourself or is it God, is it real or is it Memorex! LOL 1980s commercial reference! Did you predict the future or did a god put it in your mind. I certainly will never know, because only you can tell me! And people tell lies! I don't know if your god does though.

Thank you for the completely unnecessary jumble of words talking about how you don't know what I am thinking. It's true for everyone because we all have a bias that people don't relate to.

Honestly, if feels like you're making a red herring.

You seem to comprehend everything I have said, but it seems to me you are still confused as to what that is. I assure you I'm not trying to lead you astray. Any higher being you believe in only exists in your mind. Try and answer the question: "Am I lying to myself"? Then ask how you know? Nobody can be sure that they are being honest with themselves, and that is why psychologists can make a living doing what they do. I believe that people that believe gods exist are lying to themselves, just like the meme suggests.

In that case, I believe I can ask the same for you. My belief in a God is not based on the idea that I like the world better if there's a God, it's based on logical arguments.

I grew up in a Christian home, but when I came of the proper age, I realized: I have to consider not taking the Christian view for a proper philosopher's position.

So, my friend, let's take this into consideration. At its root, you are claiming that God does not exist. He only exists in the mind, much like a character only exists in his book.

That was, I must say, a very strong delivery to the claim that we are only deceiving ourselves when we believe in God. Well delivered for a claim that quite easily provokes outrage. I applaud you on your speech. You certainly know your way around rhetoric.

I think there are two kinds of Christians: Those who have never asked your question, as these ones never thought about it. Perhaps they grew up in a Christian home and that neglected to cross their mind, and those who have not only asked the question, but have answered it, using their intuition to come to a conclusion.

It's likely that this is similar when it comes to any religion or lack thereof.

Religion doesn't necessarily require a deity to worship, it merely requires a set of rules and a philosophy or a bunch of teachings about life. In theory an atheist can be religious and atheism isn't a thing.

Hence my saying, "lack thereof". There are atheists who have asked the question of whether they're just assuming that God doesn't exist, maybe they just don't believe because it's emotional, and there are atheists who have asked the question.

So I might ask you, have you asked the question for yourself or have you been fed doctrine, have you had people telling you all about how theists are a bunch of idiots? Have you accepted the atheist argument without properly criticising it, or have you seen the arguments and actually committed critical thought for them?

Re: So I might ask you, have you asked the question for yourself or have you been fed doctrine, have you had people telling you all about how theists are a bunch of idiots? Have you accepted the atheist argument without properly criticising it, or have you seen the arguments and actually committed critical thought for them?

If you look around at all people that have a strong belief in God regardless of religion, you will come to the realisation that nobody is any better off than anybody else. The arguments lead me to believe people are gullible, weak and afraid and seek reassurance that there fears will not come to fruition and some how the cure is to have faith and believe, but all the prayer in the world doesn't change a thing. Many confuse prayer with meditation and critical thinking. I would say that critical thinking is probably why there is so much hypocrisy in the Bible. I find it comical when I hear two people arguing about something and both are referencing counter arguments with passages from the Bible and then argue that each is taking things out of context when they can't bear to admit the Bible is full of crap in between stories. Sometimes when I ask them to put themselves in the position of a character what would they do they have trouble being honest, because it deviates from the narrative in the story. One of my favourites is: what would you do if it was a bad winter and you had 100 sheep, but you could only buy enough feed to carry 50 without mass starvation, until the spring when they could forage? And what would you do to someone, that burned the feed you were going to buy? And that's why Cane killed Able, the rest is embellishment! Which reminds me there is a war going on right now and it's about crude oil, the rest is embellishment!

Well, the burden of proof lies with the one making the one making the claim, so you'll have to deliver to validate the claim that arguments for God are just phony excuses. I would say that you would have to invalidate the strongest arguments for God in order to get me to stop believing. In other words, you would have to show me why the world doesn't need a divine being to exist in its state today (or at all, coming to the cosmological argument, which is the strongest argument for God). So, with a thirst for knowledge, I'm quite exited to hear your reasons for rejecting them.

Anyway, your dilemma. I don't think you get exactly the problem with Cain and Abel. I don't think that at any point Abel burned the feed Cain was going to buy for his sheep. What happened was that God didn't accept Cain's offering and accepted Abel's. Cain killed Abel because, as God said in the Bible, "...if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door..." so I would say that Cain probably killed his brother out of jealousy, not out of revenge (which, mind you, is not the right thing either).

So, your problem with the story of Cain and Abel is more of a strawman fallacy than it is a problem. You're finding a problem with a Biblical event that never happened. Now, if you still have problems with the story and still want to justify Cain, we can take the conversation of this dilemma further to the actual problem, but if you, looking at this story, don't see a problem, we can move on to your next dilemma of whether the "bad people" are justified.