"When you don't believe in God, you don't believe in nothing - you believe anything."
 

Certainly the evidence is starting to suggest that.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7996187.stm

Thousands of years ago people used to worship the sun. Unlike any of the others, you can see then sun and can prove it exists. The good it does for us can also be proved. In those thousands of years we have gone from worshipping something (admittedly pointlessly) that at least actually exists to making up new things that require a stretch of the imagination to even be deemed plausible. Why do you think this is?

I think the term god is meant to represent Thomas Aquinas' interpetation of it:

1. God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or matter and form.
2. God is perfect, lacking nothing. That is, God is distinguished from other beings on account of God's complete actuality.
3. God is infinite. That is, God is not finite in the ways that created beings are physically, intellectually, and emotionally limited. This infinity is to be distinguished from infinity of size and infinity of number.
4. God is immutable, incapable of change on the levels of God's essence and character.
5. God is one, without diversification within God's self. The unity of God is such that God's essence is the same as God's existence. In Aquinas's words, "in itself the proposition 'God exists' is necessarily true, for in it subject and predicate are the same."

As anything that is beyond comprehension, is god. Too many people confuse this concept with dogma and equate the term god with a figurative man.

To that extent, believing in god is being in anything.


I don't know what I think of it honestly. I won't deny the possibility of a god, especially not one simply consisting of everything in existence past comprehension, but I won't embrace one either; especially not a dogmatic god.

There is an extremely good George Carlin quote about him worshipping the Sun which would be so fitting right now.
I found it, yay.

It's in amongst this.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNy6ziOyxoA"]YouTube - George Carlin: Religion is Bullshit[/ame]

That video was excellent.

George Carlin <3

that video was good. >_<

The interpretation is fantastic.

Ok I think I understand what you're asking...maybe I don't, but I'm answering anyway.

The creation of the universe, the meaning of life and so on are huge questions that are, frankly, mind boggling. Before the Big Bang theory and evolution could be explained, it must have all been very confusing for us mere humans to comprehend. If you can't explain our origins with proof, then something symbolic or metaphorical will have to be used instead to give people a sense of purpose and understanding.

I guess the concept of a spiritual God didn't jsut appear out of nowhere. Often aspects of nature and our lives in general have been personified...Hades gave sense to Death; Apollo gave sense to the rising and setting of the sun; Persephone gives sense to the seasons. It was a way of understanding aspects of our world before science could explain it. Egyptians had god's for fertility, for life, for harvest and death and so on.
None of these god's were physical beings, they simply represented certain things in order to give control and purpose to them.

This concept simply evolved into various religions and god's we are familiar with today.

We may have science these days, but a belief in god/s has been around for a long long time and in times of pain and hardship is something to find comfort in.
As an example: Science explains what happens to a person when they die..but it's not pleasant. I think people want to believe they wil be reunited with their loved ones in a beautiful place. If that is made up then so be it, because no one really wants to feel that their existance has been for nothing. I think a stretch of the imagination is what it takes for people to get out of bed in the morning.

Doesn't look like a very good evidence to me.

Wait... 2% of them believe in heaven but don't believe in life after death?
What? :confused:

People can disbelieve in a god but still believe in irrational things that can be just as damaging as the virus of religion. But rejecting the super-natural is a good first step on the road towards empirical enlightenment (:

Science can explain how, but not why. I think that is the reason people turn to religion, regardless of how illfounded they may be.

There is only a "how".
To say that there is some kind of reason to the universe implies that there must be a creator-only things done by intelligent beings have "reason" to them, so it's no surprise that people who wonder "why" we're all here come to some conclusion about God.

good old god. loves to watch us contemplating his existance over a cup of tea. i believe he takes 10 sugars (for energy).

Indeed, what need is there to ask why, unless you are implicitly assuming that the thing you are observbing is guided by consciousness?

It is valid to ask why when you are dealing with the affairs of humans, we know it to be the case that people have intentions behind their actions, and that the actions are a manifestation of intent. If you start asking why about the physical world then you are assuming the existence of consciouness a priori to the evidence.

Ok, you could say "when I do a, I observe b, why is this the case?" but actually, this is a how question, since it is asking how a brings about b, you are seeking to find a process, not a reasoning.

teehee

Also, is a study of 2,000 people really a good measure of the world as a whole? Or even of a nation?