re: "Six Flags Over Jesus" sign posted on Cross Church Land - April Fools prank.

Either you believe in an intelligent creator or you believe this shite just came about on an accident.

One thing is for certain, the moment you die, you will find out if your were wrong or not.

I hope that all figure out what is right.

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This is a false dichotomy. Those are not the only two options, and the fact is that you don't have to have a belief about how or why the universe exists. It's possible to simply admit that you don't know (my position).

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Okay, give me another option.

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This is not "certain" at all. If there is no existence for a person beyond death, then that person will never know it. If death marks the end of your existence, you can never experience it.

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Would you rather die and find out that there WAS a God, and you made a horrible and irreversible mistake, or believe and then not know you were wrong? Your choice.

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I think what you are really saying is that you hope you are right and you hope everyone else figures out that you are right. You don't seem to be providing for the possibility that you are wrong, which makes your belief particularly irrational.

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I don't hope I'm right. I believe I am right. Just as you believe you are right. What I hope is everybody gives the issue serious thought, study and consideration. They have to make the decision.

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Would you rather die and find out that there WAS a God, and you made a horrible and irreversible mistake, or believe and then not know you were wrong? Your choice.

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would you rather die and find out the muslims were right? or the buddhist or the hindu or the *insert random cult* was right. you better pray to everyone.

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They all believe in a higher power, not that everything 'just happened'.
Good luck, my friend.

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Sure, but the problem with Pascal's Wager is that there isn't simply one god to choose from. Just counting recorded religions throughout history, there are thousands of gods to choose from, and in many religious doctrines, the penalty for idolatry is worse than the penalty for simply not believing in any god. Some religions believe in no afterlife, some believe in a type of paradise, some believe in a type of hell, some do not.

So it's not a simple choice between "believe" or "do not believe". It's a choice between "believe in one or many of thousands of historically known gods, and an INFINITE number of conceivable gods" and "don't believe in any of them".

Frankly, there is no evidence that any of these gods exist, so the rational choice is to believe in none of them.

Finally, you're trying to reduce the belief in god into a gambling wager. You say "believe in god because it's the likeliest thing to prevent you from suffering eternally" as though a belief based on that reasoning could ever be sincerely held. I submit that anyone who claims to believe in god for the reason you've stated does not really believe in god. That's just going through the motions out of fear of the unknown.

Personally, I embrace the unknown. I admit the limits of my knowledge. I don't know how or why the universe exists, how or why we're here, and neither do you. The difference is that I'm honest about it, and fables do not scare me.

lol

Just for the record, I didn't lol at whatever you posted before your edit. I'm assuming you deleted something, but I never saw it.

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Seek knowledge and you will find it, seek not and find not.
Peace, my friends.

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I did seek knowledge, which is why I'm no longer religious and now have three degrees.

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I did seek knowledge, which is why I'm no longer religious and now have three degrees.

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Religious isn't the same as lacking faith. And there really is some truth to the idea that knowledge would distance one's self from God, which is one of the often over looked stories of Eden. Many would point to that interpretation and assume then it is the purpose of God for the people to be unknowing. I would contend it is the purpose the powerful to keep the people unknowing while God is conspicuously absent from such things.

But my view of religion is that we are each personally trying to make peace with what we view as good, evil, morality, forgiveness, piety, and a slew of other buzzwords.

I am starting to drift a bit at this point so I'll go on to say, it is hard to deliver a baby and not assume there is a God and a great many OBs would agree. It's hard to assume that proteins and life are too small probability to have occurred without a push in the correct direction.

Not that there is a hand shaping us as we go, but rather one action that would ultimately lead to this point and the countless other points that could have been assuming different choices were made.

Then again I may just need a third degree since I'm only working on the 2nd.

I think a lot of religious people don't grasp math.

Tbh, most people probably don't understand the mathematics of really large numbers.


The incredible odds of chance combining things isn't so incredibly when you consider the sheer number of galaxies and stars and planets within the universe and the sheer amount of time the universe has been around.

I think the biggest reason that religion is still so popular is the inability of the human mind to grasp infinity. The whole creator thing. If a god was required to create the universe.. who created god? If no one created god.. then it stands to reason.. that the universe might not have been created, it could simply have always existed.

Add in the fact that there could be a limitless amount of "universes" that are far enough away that we can't detect them. If a Universe came into existence 29 billion years ago and it was 30 billion light years away.. we wouldn't see the light from it for another billion years.



Odds are a curious thing. Given enough numbers they can become certainties. This is how professional gamblers work. They don't make a single play, they make all the plays and put themselves into a position where they are advantaged.

The "odds" of life randomly arising is something that is hotly debated. The creationists tend to use the odds of a specific thing forming, with numbers like 1 in 10^150 to 1 in 10^390. Evolutionists tend to point out that the odds are actually much lower because we're not talking about forming specific life, but rather life. They go with a number such as 1 in 10^40 as not being too unrealistic, even if it might actually be more common.

Huge numbers right?

Well consider that the universe consists of about 10^28th stars with each on average having multiple planets.

The universe has been around for roughly 13.8 billion years.

A commonly bandied about number is that there are 10^18th seconds since the universe began.

Now, consider that the volume of space needed for these processes are quite low. The earth's oceans have enough water for roughly 10^20th liters.


So, we have 10^28 stars, times 10^18 seconds times 10^20th liters of water.. and we'll divide it by 10^6 just to make the numbers cleaner and to make things seem more rare than they likely actually are..

That gives us 10^60 chances for that 1 in 10^40 event to occur.




At the astronomical scale, infinitesimal events become near mathematical certainties.