Why is it now that we have developed rational inquiry we hear only a deafening silence from a god who once supposedly engaged regularly in human affairs? Why does god not simply speak to us or appear before us as he supposedly used to? Why are we the losers in the dice roll of time? If a god places such a high value on us worshipping and believing then why not simply make its existence obvious to us? If one accepts the prevailing scientific understanding of the development of the universe, yet also believes in one of the major religions, then presumably a god sat idle for 13.7 billion years
If Jesus is God then presumably he is omniscient. If this is true, then when he allowed himself to be sacrificed, didnÂ’t he do this with the knowledge that he was immortal? If so, then how exactly was it a sacrifice for him? What did he sacrifice?
Let me pose some questions for you to ponder here... What does time mean to something which resides outside the spacetime continuum we experience in our universe? Why would an omnipotent and immortal entity have "wants and desires" or place "value" on anything?
Try to wrap your mind around it, God is not a physical entity. God does not exist as part of a physical reality we experience through time. There is no invisible man sitting on a cloud. Until you can grasp the concept of what a spiritual entity is, you can't rationalize any of this because it makes no sense.
People worship and believe in God not because God commands it, but because they feel it will please God for them to do so. But does God experience pleasure? You see, everything we try and relate to God simply doesn't apply to God. We create an incarnation of something that is like humans, has human attributes and emotions, is effected by time, has desires, needs, wants, gets angry or shows compassion... these are humanistic attributes that do not apply to a spiritual entity. But since we can't comprehend it, we create these things to supposedly help us better understand it. We're flawed... totally fucked up creatures. Sometimes our worst adversary is our own minds.
The use of burial rituals is evidence of religious activity, but there is no other evidence that religion existed in human culture before humans reached behavioral modernity.
In this set of theories, the religious mind is one consequence of a brain that is large enough to formulate religious and philosophical ideas. During human evolution, the hominid brain tripled in size, peaking 500,000 years ago. Much of the brain's expansion took place in the neocortex. This part of the brain is involved in processing higher order cognitive functions that are connected with human religiosity.
More than half of adult Americans report they have had a spiritual experience that changed their lives. Now, scientists from universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins are using new technologies to analyze the brains of people who claim they have touched the spiritual — from Christians who speak in tongues to Buddhist monks to people who claim to have had near-death experiences. Hear what they have discovered in this controversial field, as the science of spirituality continues to evolve.
Is This Your Brain On God? : NPR
The appearance of complexity and order in the universe is the result of spontaneous self-organisation and pattern formation, caused by chaotic feedback between simple physical laws and rules. All the complexity of the universe, all its apparent richness, even life itself, arises from simple, mindless rules repeated over and over again for billions of years. Current scientific theories are able to clearly explain how complexity and order arise in physical systems. Any lack of understanding does not immediately imply ‘god’.
Using ‘god’ to explain something explains nothing. God’s supposed powers and how they work are a mystery. An explanation is intended to clarify and extend knowledge. Attributing a phenomenon to the magical powers of a supernatural being does neither. Worse still, this presumption acts to prevent any deeper investigation, being little more than a form of blissful ignorance.
Note: By using ‘god’ to fill gaps in their knowledge theists inadvertently provide a shrinking role for their god as science advances. They also predicate god’s existence on a lack of knowledge, not on any positive argument or evidence.
Until we understand something we “do not know”. Positing a ‘god’ in place of admitting personal ignorance is an unfounded leap which demonstrates a fundamental lack of humility.
The existence and non-existence of a god are not equally probable outcomes. The majority of things we can possibly imagine do not exist. Thus, belief is not as valid a position as skepticism when dealing with unsupported or unfalsifiable claims. Agnostic atheism is the most rational position.
There is a truth and reality independent of our desires. Faith simply reinforces your belief in what you would like to be true, rather than what really is. In order to better under understand this reality and discover the truth we must look for evidence outside ourselves. Faith isnÂ’t a virtue; it is the glorification of voluntary ignorance.
Being open-minded does not mean accepting claims outright, it means demonstrating the willingness to consider new ones. An open-minded person is receptive to new ideas, opinions and arguments and wants to discover their real truth-value before accepting them. Atheists are generally very open-minded.
Unjustified belief in the supernatural does not automatically make someone open-minded and, conversely, disbelief – pending further evidence – does not automatically make someone close-minded.
Athiests simply do not usually exhibit gullibility or credulity. They maintain a standard of evidence proportional to the extraordinary nature of certain claims. They are usually open to the idea of god, but so far unconvinced by any evidence or argument put forward to support it.
