Proof that God exists!

just one and a half paragraphs of that made me nauseous
did you even read it?

Reasoning involves using the laws of logic. These include the law of non-contradiction which says that you can’t have A and not-A at the same time and in the same relationship. For example, the statement “My car is in the parking lot, and it is not the case that my car is in the parking lot” is necessarily false by the law of non-contradiction. Any rational person would accept this law. But why is this law true? Why should there be a law of non-contradiction, or for that matter, any laws of reasoning? The Christian can answer this question. For the Christian there is an absolute standard for reasoning; we are to pattern our thoughts after God’s. The laws of logic are a reflection of the way God thinks. The law of non-contradiction is not simply one person’s opinion of how we ought to think, rather it stems from God’s self-consistent nature. God cannot deny Himself ( 2 Timothy 2:13), and so, the way God upholds the universe will necessarily be non-contradictory.

I stopped reading after this para (the third) because there is the most massive leap of reasoning I've ever seen in there which nullifies anything that could possibly follow. "This is the case because God exists" is not the same as "God must exist because of". It's idiocy.

he truly is an awesome god

You can’t stub your toe on a law of logic.

I read it all! It's funny, almost every single sentence is balderdash.

The materialistic atheist... believes that everything that exists is material.

No, that is not a world view that was held by anyone ever.

You can’t stub your toe on a law of logic.

^^^ should be the new OTM

heres who wrote this piece

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/j_lisle.asp

Dr. Lisle is not the stereotypical “egg-head” research scientist who has difficulty communicating at a layman’s level.

Funny how an astrophysicist with a Ph.D is so in need of basic science 101.

or logic 101

or basic reasoning 101

imagine if this guy was your dad & you disagreed with him on something

I just hope U of Colorado Boulder is embarrassed. Why can't you redact somebody's Ph.D like you can get disbarred or lose your right to practice medicine? I suppose because science is all a lie anyway! Thanks Bible!

Mind you many not batshit scientists have a pretty poor grasp of basic philosophy.

http://www.nbc.com/30_Rock/images/episodes/season1/118/rok_118_08.jpg
thanks BIBLE!

Atheism and theism both involve leaps of faith that go beyond reasoning.

However atheists more commonly accept a contingent methodology (scientific enquiry) to their worldview, whereas theists generally fit the world to their view, which seems wrongheaded.

I'm a devout agnostic.

Atheism and theism both involve leaps of faith that go beyond reasoning.

RONG

How so?

And a RONG answer is no answer. Refute my balls.

ho boy this is gonna be fun, at least until ethan says 'why am i arguing with this jerkwad' and goes off to google for more christian fallacies ^_^

I'm willing to be refuted. I'd love it, I want to love TEH LORD.

You're a moron.

everyone's a moron

atheism is not a positive belief, it's lack of a belief. nothing can be 'proven' besides boring math stuff, and you can't disprove a non-testable hypothesis like 'god exists'. but aside from personal testimony there's no reason to believe god exists, and religion's popularity is the only reason people act as though it takes some leap to not belief in something without evidence. no one would propose that belief in, i dunno, dragons and non-belief in dragons require equal amounts of faith and therefore they're just gonna sit this one out. its bullshit semantical fencesitting.

^_^

http://www.clydecaldwell.com/jpgs/large_images/dragon_steed.jpg

sweet ride

t'mboto

Nice dragon, mookie. Although I'm not sure those 'fuck off' spurs are necessary, given that said dragon is well bitted.

First assume we have a can-opener, basically.

TL;DR.

Mind you, back when Ma$e stopped rapping because he'd gotten religion, I had to seriously consider this as evidence of a benevolent God.

well, as far as christianity is concerned I'm atheist, but I think it is a leap of faith to claim that there is definitely no sort of paranormal agency. it's not a very hard leap of faith to make (and i myself believe it to be highly probable), but you can't totally rule out the possibility of any deic force unless you trust your own judgement to a certain extent....jeez the more i think about it, the more atheist i get.

you cant rule out the possibility of anything

only with supernatural religious bullshit do we make claims like this

does it take a leap of faith to assume the earth isn't hollow and populated with a secret nazi base that caused 9/11? yeah, i guess

paranormal agency
vvv
http://www.armyofinbetween.com/images/films/ghostbusters.jpg

I can't rule out the possibility that the world is full of mysterious particles and waves and little invisible fairies that have no effect on anything whatsoever, to include being completely useless even as a predictive tool for developing any testable hypotheses, so I guess that makes me a "doubter."

the earth isn't hollow and populated with a secret nazi base that caused 9/11

blasphemer

well, most or all current religions are chock full of supernatural fallacy IMO, but there are always going to be universal unknowns. my point is that i am only agnostic by default of pedantry; i'm largely on ethan's side in the great religious debate. certainly i wouldn't advocate subscribing to religious belief, but hey, although i severely doubt there's any kind of deity, i don't feel i can entirely rule it out and be 100% right for absolute certain. it doesn't affect the way i act or think.

it has been proved, for instance, that the earth is not hollow. but as for whether there is an overall force in a higher dimension that we can't detect which controls certain aspects of existence...although hugely improbable, we can't prove against it, nor should we try to. it really doesn't matter.

you can't prove the earth is not hollow - the nazis who live in the center developed a high-tech system that makes it seem to all scientific instruments as though it isn't

^^^ this is basically 'we can't know if there is or isnt a god'-logic

http://www.anointed-one.net/atheism.html

lol

fair enough, the improbability of your straw man probably approaches that of there being a god in the christian sense. :D

and probably in any sense, to be honest. whatever doubt there is, isn't worth paying much mind to. "pedantic atheist-agnostic" is henceforth my position on the matter.

xp

listen

something that is completely unfalsifiable is not "probable" or "improbable" it is a CONCEPT

i love concepts

...by which we measure our pain, right.
(xp)

inasmuch as the word god has any meaning it is in how we relate to that word and how that affects the way we as individuals use that relationship to inform our behavior in the world. to even pretend that god holds some meaning in terms of logical or scientific inquiry outside of observing the relationship between human behavior and their religious semiology is like step one on the path towards "science is just another religion"

the concept of inner-earth nazis doing a James Bond Invisible Car thing on seismic waves has a probability, and one which approaches 0 very very quickly.

how do you test for that? propose an experiment

show me how your experiment will prove or disprove the existence of this idea

oh wait the idea already exists, see, ethan wrote it down 22 minutes ago. it's there already, you can't disprove that it exists, therefore you might as well assume it does

we create a machine that can burrow into the centre of the earth. when it doesn't bump into a nazi, as expected, we know that the concept is a false one. or we just assume it doesn't exist because it is batshit.

no you said "the CONCEPT of inner-earth nazis." you were going to prove that the CONCEPT of inner-earth nazis had a probability approaching zero. DO YOU SEE.

Rodney M. Cluff
From the Author...

As a young man, I had two favorite subjects, science and religion. In my study, it became my conviction that ultimately science and religion will become one and the same, science being the study of God's creation; and religion consisting of the revelations of God to mankind. Both are ultimately manifestations of the truth of all things given to man by God in His infinite kindness and love to bring about the happiness of His children. It is from the Book of Mormon, an ancient text of scripture written by ancient American prophets of God that I gained the desire to obtain the object of both true religion and true science: the search for the truth of all things. The ancient American prophet of the Book of Mormon concluded this book of scripture with a perfect scientific test anyone can perform on that book to know it is of God. Moroni wrote 421 A.D.:

"Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.

"And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

"And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things."

It is by application of this scientific test to that book of ancient American scripture that I came to a knowledge that it is of God, because God did answer my prayer and let me know by the power of the Holy Ghost of its truthfulness. Millions of Latter-day Saints have performed this same test and received the same answer of the divinity of this book. Therefore, it could be said that Mormonism is a scientific religion. The acquisition of this one precious truth has given me the impulse to discover the ultimate: the truth of all things. And my search has not been in vain. In fact, my search is a much more efficient one because my hits in the dark are much more infrequent when I have the power of the Holy Ghost to lighten the way to the next truth. Thus my search has been an exciting one and I hope some of the things I have uncovered concerning this earth of ours will be as exciting to you as it has been to me.

Would you like to receive a free copy of The Book of Mormon? Then click here.

http://www.ourhollowearth.com/ourhollo/rod.jpg

is Tahiti Denmark Florida Calif. Italy the hollow world version of NYLPM?

RODNEY M. CLUFF, author of World Top Secret: Our Earth Is Hollow! was born and raised in the American colony of Colonia Juarez in northern Mexico. He became interested in the Hollow Earth Theory at the age of 16 while working on a New Mexico farm where the farm manager told the workers of the theory. He thought, What an ideal place for the Lord to hide the Lost Tribes of Israel!

After graduating from high school, Mr. Cluff served a full-time mission for the LDS Church in Mexico where he met his wife. One year after his release, they were married in the Arizona Temple and now have five lovely children and nine lovelier grandchildren!

They moved to Phoenix, Arizona, and one day Mr. Cluff noticed an advertisement of Raymond Bernard's book, The Hollow Earth in a tabloid newspaper. He sent for it and thereby began many years of study and writing which has led to the present work. Today, Mr. Cluff works as a computer programmer/analyst, and continues his research into evidences for hollow planets as a hobby.

He firmly believes: OUR EARTH IS HOLLOW! Backed with scientific evidence, including satellite photos of the polar holes, analysis of the observations of polar explorers, analysis of earthquake data and much more--coupled with evidence from the scriptures that the Lost Tribes of Israel are now FOUND within the Hollow of Our Earth, he presents his argument in favor of the Hollow Earth Theory.

It is his hope that someday, he may have the privilege of visiting his cousins of the Ten Tribes in the North Countries of the Hollow Earth! The author's own ancestry is of Israelitish origin, of the Tribe of Ephraim, and can be traced back to the Exile of the Ten Tribes from Palestine when they were carried captive into Assyria in 721 B.C.

The Ten Tribes were held captive for over a century by the Assyrians, but then escaped over the Caucasus mountains sometime before Babylon conquered Assyria in 605 B.C. They made their home in the region of the Crimea and the Steppe of Russia just north of the Black Sea up until the first century B.C. While there, they were ruled by an illustrious leader named Odin. The Roman armies threatened to conquer the region so his ancestors, because of their fierce love of freedom and independence, determined to migrate. From their custom of burying their dead in burial mounds, their migrations have been traced from the Black Sea up the valley of the river Dnieper in Russia to the Baltic Sea and from thence to northern Germany and Scandinavia.

One branch of these people became known as the Sakae or Saxons and settled in Northern Germany. Shortly after the Romans left the British Isles in the fourth century A.D., certain Celtic tribes of the British Isles invited the Engles, Saxons, and Jutes (who had previously raided the east coast of England as pirates) to bring their bands over and help defeat other Celts. From the eighth to the eleventh century they were known as the Scandinavian Vikings. They became the most volatile seapower and military force in Europe. They often attacked coastal areas with fleets that ran into the hundreds of ships and highly organized armies of several thousand. The French became weary of being looted each harvest season and so they invited the Vikings to accept a large section of France and raise their own crops. The Norsemen agreed and the territory became known as Normandy, or loved of the Norsemen.

The Author's Clough-Cluff forefathers were of the Saxon Vikings who settled Normandy in France. They came to England with William The Conqueror in 1066 A.D. In the distribution of lands among his officers, a large estate fell to one CLOUGH in Yorkshire. This estate has been transmitted from father to son until the present time and is known as the Esquire Clough Estate, and is situated about 26 miles from the old city of York, from which the Pilgrim Fathers sailed in 1620 for the New World.

In the year 1635, fifteen years after the first Pilgrims immigrated to America, at about the age of l9 to 2l, John Clough with his brother sailed from London, England on the Clipper ship The Elizabeth. Upon arriving in America, John Clough settled in Massachusetts. One of his descendants, David Cluff, changed the spelling of his last name when he joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (commonly known as the Mormons) in 1830. Therefore, all Cluff's in the world, to this author's knowledge, are descendants of this David Cluff, whose ancestry can be traced back through the Saxon Vikings to the Tribe of Ephraim of the House of Israel.

OMG, Ethan must have gotten his idea from this!

After opening a door he was told not to enter and touching a mysterious box inside, every citizen in the village is frozen. The only person not affected by the curse, the Elder of Crysta, guides him to resurrect the continents of the world in order to unfreeze the people. A way out of his hometown appears, and for the first time ever a human being leaves Crysta to explore the underworld which is portrayed as a frozen wasteland of imposing crystal mountains, crossed by rivers of magma. He conquers the trials of the five towers - each representing one continent - and revives the mainland of the Earth. Upon returning to his hometown, the Elder instructs him to travel to the overworld and to resurrect all living beings. With a heavy heart, Ark says goodbye to his lifelong devoted friend Elle and sets out to the Lightside.

Having crossed a dimensional crevasse that closed itself after his appearance on the overworld, Ark is confronted with the barren land that once was the Earth's surface. His first task is to free the giant tree Ra from the parasite he is afflicted with. This causes the resurrection of all plants in the world resulting in Ark's being able to cross the mountains of Guyana. He travels further into the world, reviving birds, the wind, animals and eventually mankind.

After that, the Elder appears to Ark in a dream and tells him to keep helping humankind grow, as the world is still in the fledgling stages. He continues his journey, traveling and expanding cities, assisting with the invention of groundbreaking technologies and ultimately, freeing the ingenious Beruga from his sleep in a cryogenic chamber. The professor provides Ark with an insight into his personal image of the paradise. He envisions a perfect world by killing all insignificant life with a virus named Asmodeus and turning everyone else into immortal beings. Ark tries to attack Beruga after this revealing twist but is stopped by robots, injuring him heavily.

The Elder once again appears to him, saying that his mission is fulfilled and he may now pass away. Ark realizes that he's been used by Evil to lead the power which created him to world domination. Just as he is about to die, Kumari, a wise human who watched the world's growth through reincarnation, teleports Ark out of Beruga's laboratory. He then instructs him to go search the five Starstones and to lay them at the grave at time's end in order to call the golden child. Ark obtains the stones one after another and sets them into skull statues at Dry Valley, the location at the South Pole where the final confrontation between Good and Evil once took place. This leads to the appearance of Ark's Lightside self, the person Evil - now given the name Dark Gaia - used to create Ark himself. He tells him that he's the legendary hero and then kills him.

However, Ark is reborn through the power of Good, Light Gaia, and departs to defeat Beruga. After having conquered the professor, he returns to the underworld to defeat Dark Gaia. The victory over that entity brings forth the destruction of the Darkside. In the end, however, a major purpose is served and Ark, although sealing what appears to be his own demise as well, realizes he and all of his loved ones are bound to meet again in future reincarnations. Thus he goes to sleep, after being told that he, as creator and defender, is what the outside world would call a "god".

i believe in the hallow earth!

http://greyfalcon.us/picturesh/reed3.jpg

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/41SPN1ZNA5L.jpg

From their custom of burying their dead in burial mounds, their migrations have been traced from the Black Sea up the valley of the river Dnieper in Russia to the Baltic Sea and from thence to northern Germany and Scandinavia.

Wait a second. Did the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel use burial mounds before they were captured by Assyria and escaped over the Caucasus, or only after they escaped?

Wouldn't the present day Israelite tribes of the diaspora continue to make burial mounds, too?

gff totally otm upthread

Terranigma was a cool game you dooshbags

It infuriates me how christians insert bible quotes into their 'logical' arguments for god's existence. I do not believe in the bible, that's not going to sway me one jot.

Proof that God exists:

http://cdn.last.fm/coverart/300x300/2031483-1352787762.jpg

^^^picked this up the other day for $1. The Lord Hath Smiled Down Upon Me.

their message that “there is no God.”

"lol"

I've always thought that Terranigma would make a great song, like Scott Walker's take on the Seventh Seal; only trouble is, whoever did it would probably botch the lyrics.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b361/tapestore/frankensteins_cousin_grave_md_wht_2.gif

Jesus Christ! Outspoken atheists are just as annoying as fanatical Christians.

You can discuss this all you want, but no one really knows the answer to the proposed question. So when you shove your belief in others' faces (as if it's 100% true), you just come across as a dickhead to realists (agnostics, in this case).

:) http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b361/tapestore/dancepeanutdance.gif

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b361/tapestore/sad.jpg

^^^ That, too

uh oh

YOU'RE RETARDED

ain't nothing like animated gifs to humiliate your opponent

http://www.sweetsncandy.co.uk/prodimages/milfis_l.jpg

^^^^
proof that white chocolate exists

gah i suck and am hungover

http://www.sweetsncandy.co.uk/prodimages/milfis_l.jpg

still: milfis?

I went to church for a little while in high school. I was very much a loner when I was 15 and felt empty and plus my parents sort of forced me to go to youth group because they thought it was good for me to interact with other people.

I remember being in this fundie church though that had a workbook we worked out of that was the biggest piece of shit propaganda ever.

One shining quote (it was from someone famous but I can't remember who) used the logic that the Bible could not have been merely an 'invention' of good people, because if it was, the 'good' people would be telling a lie, which would mean they were not good. Furthermore, the book explained, the Bible could not have been invented by 'bad' people because they would be condemning themselves.

The quote concluded that therefore, as a result, that proved the book was a Divine work and thus true.

I don't know what was more alarming, the insulting logic used or the idiots that accepted it as a valid argument.

I'm probably a hopeless optimist, but I think the core reasons for believing in God will tend to be a little more subtle and difficult than the OMG LEAVES! and OMG CLOUDS! and OMG EYES! line of thinking. When we get to questions from "why can't I conceive of space and time as being finite OR infinite?" to the more religion-specific "why do I feel like I'm levitating as my heart bursts out of my chest when I hear this hymn?", surely we're talking about examples where finding the most convincing explanation to be "because there is a God" isn't really so awful and absurd a line of thinking?

Original article is nonsense, obv.

this is the same reason i can understand that peoples dreams are important to them without actually literally thinking my little brother was chased by dinosaurs last night

this is like one of the greatest things I've ever read

I'm probably a hopeless optimist, but I think the core reasons for believing in God will tend to be a little more subtle and difficult than the OMG LEAVES! and OMG CLOUDS! and OMG EYES! line of thinking. When we get to questions from "why can't I conceive of space and time as being finite OR infinite?" to the more religion-specific "why do I feel like I'm levitating as my heart bursts out of my chest when I hear this hymn?", surely we're talking about examples where finding the most convincing explanation to be "because there is a God" isn't really so awful and absurd a line of thinking?

-- Merdeyeux, Sunday, December 30, 2007 3:08 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

how is refusing to dispel your own ignorance is a better reason than OMG CLOUDS

ignorance about what?

When we get to questions from "why can't I conceive of space and time as being finite OR infinite?" to the more religion-specific "why do I feel like I'm levitating as my heart bursts out of my chest when I hear this hymn?", surely we're talking about examples where finding the most convincing explanation to be "because there is a God" isn't really so awful and absurd a line of thinking?

there are valid explanations for those things which are available to anyone unless you're so lazy and uncurious you just say 'god did it' to every question

"why do I feel like I'm levitating as my heart bursts out of my chest when I hear this hymn?"

individual religious devotion proves that god exists? so was jim jones god?

http://www.kingsizemagazine.se/bilder/jimjones.jpg

but those examples aren't the same as the cop-out leaves sure are fancy, ain't they? examples. When you're talking about what people perceive as direct encounters with a transcendent other, scientific reduction of that isn't necessarily enough to satisfy the questions and neuter the thoughts the experiences bring up. It doesn't mean that Jim Jones was God or that Christian God is God, but it also doesn't mean that to deal with these experiences in a religious way is necessarily choosing ignorance over bothering to learn.

look, ethan, i may agree with you on this issue, and you may indeed be right, but you're not gonna get far by being so abrasive. if you want to convince people that they're being misled by a vast religious corporation, be funny, be reasonable, and don't go on the offensive at the drop of a hat. it's not like ILX is a gigantic christian commune you've somehow got to fight your way out of.

thanks for the advice louis jagger

it's not like ILX is a gigantic christian commune you've somehow got to fight your way out of.

;)

;)

ethan p4dgett is...THE SECULATOR

modern churches (maybe all churches ever) are basically just social fraternal orders, like elks club with magic

-- and what, Wednesday, December 26, 2007 7:51 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Link

yeah i think there is something to this. but i'm not sure whats wrong w/that. we are social creatures. we need community. that doesn't makes churches bad or good. other things do though!

e didn't you used to get all aggro on me when I'd get all irrationally pissed off at Xians y/n

ain't nothing like animated gifs to humiliate your opponent

Yes, right behind all caps name-calling

Whatever. ThatThis thread was shitty from the start; i only acted obnoxious to get some sort of revenge for my wasted time (the thread should have some attached note: "don't waste your time on this pretentious discussion; instead read d'Holbach")

-- Tape Store, Friday, December 28, 2007 7:07 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

e didn't you used to get all aggro on me when I'd get all irrationally pissed off at Xians y/n

-- J0hn D., Sunday, December 30, 2007 4:25 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

lol contrarianism

e didn't you used to get all aggro on me when I'd get all irrationally pissed off at Xians y/nsay ann coulter was pretty

-- J0hn D., Sunday, December 30, 2007 4:25 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

lol I have actually mellowed in my "their shit is so annoyingly irrational" stance this year, although the threadstarting question is like GOD DAMN YOU GUYS QUIT TALKING BULLSHIT PLZ

pretty much any time you see the term "worldview," that's your signal to locate the exits imo

the materialistic atheist's worldview

http://www.uffsite.net/ff4/images/maps/overworld.jpg

i know what map that is. i am sad.

I've been to Chocobo Forest sometime in my life.

I did not know what map that was, but did recognize several similarities between it and the world of dragon quest viii. clearly, god is involved.