Hi /his/.
Lets make a thread that presents the arguments for having faith and reasons for lacking it.
First argument: If God is omniscient, and he creates a universe, then that universe must have one specific timeline of events.
If that is the case, then free will cannot exist because it creates possible outcomes for any set of options and God's omniscience only allows for there to be one viable choice, the one that he planned.
That also means that God would have chosen for evil to come into existence, not Adam and Eve, and making a timeline in which horrific things happen to creatures as well as designing the animal eat animal system would mean that God is a sadist.
He had the power to choose between the infinite number of possibilities at his disposal and yet he chose this one.
Therefore, the concept of the Christian God is a paradox and belief in it is unjustified.
Faith doesn't make sense because in order for an idea to have been create, somebody must have had an experience of certainty at some point.
>>402019
or you could just create something like in comic books.
>I ate a mindless chicken therefore God is a bad guy
>>401980
God doesn't exist in a realm that is bound by a human sense of morality. Animals do not have sentience like we do and therefore are not bothered by this apparent disparity in justice.
Why specifically the christian God? Why not argue against the existence of God in general?
>>401980
you do not need faith once you enter the stream.
faith is needed when you have one foot in one doctrine and the other foot in another doctrine. Hedonism is likely one of these doctrines, since most people are believe in self and identify with their aversion of pain and avidity of pleasures, and with pains and pleasures themselves.
faith occurs by lack of praxis of the new doctrine you are looking at. faith occurs when you let your mind run since you learn the new doctrine through books or discourses and think that it is necessary and sufficient. faith happens because you never reflected on anything and you are scared to leave hedonism, even though you want to leave it.
faith happens when you are nihilist.
>>402200
>Why specifically the christian God?
Because we're on a Sinhalese Sock Sewing Site with a majority population of Americans/Europeans with a smattering of Asia and South America in there, and the largest religion amongst Europeans/Americans/South Americans is Christianity.
I mean we can discuss why Amaterasu doesn't exist, but so fucking what, the only people who would argue he does are Japs and we can't understand a word they'd say anyways.
The biggest argument against having Faith is, where do you put your Faith in and why.
Sure. There is as much evidence proving there is no God as there is evidence that there is a God. But the decision about whether the real God is YHWH, Ahura Mazda, Brahma, or Azatoth depends exclusively on your personal views.
Wow another religion thread!
Fuck off OP
>>402288
What empirical evidence exists for a god?
>>401980
I was thinking of an argument like this. Tell me how bad it is.
If an omnipotent being has the potential to exist at all then, given enough time, that being will eventually exist (think infinite monkeys writing a Shakespeare play). An omnipotent being can, due to its unlimited power, exercise its influence across all time. So, if one can exist and the opportunity to come into existence lasts long enough then one does exist right now.
>>402288
Never saw this as a problem. Would you worship a shit-tier god just because it existed? That whole 'many gods' answer to Pascal assumes that simply because some god could exist you ought to worship it. Worshiping a shit-tier god is a 'negative' that could change that cost-benefit analysis Pascal came up with.
>>402144
What... is that supposed to mean anything?
Suffering exists, we dislike it and label it as bad, if everything is created by an omniscient god then it is planned to occur. we must label God accordingly.
>>402200
How does not having sentience affect the problem of feeling suffering? Don't forget that humans are part of the equation to.
>>402233
Incorrect. I was a Catholic for about eight years and believed. Then I started applying skepticism to the faith and after understanding how justification in a belief is accomplished and how key parts of faith like the concept of the belief itself are paradoxical, I moved away from it.
>>402288
There is no evidence proving and disproving God. There are things which people can assume are done by a God but they are just assumptions and are always unreasonable.
>>402340
The whole origin of everything thing is just wtf. It makes no sense to think that something has always existed as well as to think that something just came into existence. Then there's the problem with something that is all knowing and yet randomly gets motivated to create one possible version of a universe out that it already knows infinitely well among an infinite number of other universes in infinitely small levels of difference that he too knows perfectly.
>>402496
>>The whole origin of everything thing is just wtf. It makes no sense to think that something has always existed as well as to think that something just came into existence.
it makes no sense to even think that your reason will lead you to something relevant for your life.
>First argument: If God is omniscient, and he creates a universe, then that universe must have one specific timeline of events.
No, it does not
>>402496
What does that have to do with what I was trying to say? I'm sure there's some sense in there, I just need you to elaborate some more.
I am just making the argument that IF God can exist then He does exist.
Those untaught ordinary people who lack faith in the Tathāgata will not find an end to dukkha within this lifetime. It must be realized for oneself that the aggregates should be abandoned, but without confidence in his teachings, this cannot be achieved.
>>401980
>Alright /history/
>Let's argue about religion!
Fucking religiousfags.
What part of the bible is a good place to start?
I feel like faith is something you got or don't got, myself being the latter
I wish I was capable of faith though, I feel like it'd be somewhat comforting
>>402897
Read the sticky you mouthbreathing troglodyte
>>402923
The beginning. What kind of question is that?
>>401980
Genuine question, is there actually a decent argument against this?
>people blamed for eating the fruit
>God made people in the way so that they would eat the fruit
>could've done anything within the blink of an eye to make people in the way he supposedly wanted
>doesn't do it
>get punished ever since
>people say God is love
>>401980
There is a difference between Faith and Religion.
Faith is the relation of an individual towards the existential concept of Divinity.
Religion is the institution which manages this.
Religion can influence faith, although it should up to a point. From there on, any emancipated being can go on his own searches and callings.
To take scriptures and other dogmatic ideas as literal is equal to stupidity; or lack of ambition.
1. Free will and Determinism represent the huge paradox of existence. Try to sink the fact the they coexist as such.
2. Abrahamic Religions turned idolatrous and antropomorphize the Divine in the likes of the human being. God is not a guy that play dice in heaven with humanity's destiny.
3. The Story of Adam and Eve is, as most Christian reference works, a syncretic text which fuses many other Genesis myth from all around history. To understand it in the sole conception of the Church is bound to create discrepancies. Again - if you take the text literal - you are an idiot.
One take may be that God created Adam and Eve flawed, giving them Free Will - even though this meaned that they could Fall. They did, and maybe that the Fall could be the sole process through which Humans can evaluate and develop their relantionship to God. It's just one theory, explore others.
TL;DR: You are a self-entitled ant that believes his race as the center locus of existence. You think your ant-hive rules and laws of morality and ethics apply to everything else. You are the definition of pride, you are blinded by your ignorance and lack of humility.
>>403365
Also, to answer to your question:
You can have Faith, or you can't. Either you are conditioned to have it (which can turn against you), or you can choose to have it (which can also fall as a house of cards).
The core idea is that Faith is (one of) the major pillars of human development. Lack of Faith means an individual it floating in a sea of uncertainty. If society does that as a whole - it means we lose our sense of purpose.
Faith is an instrument.
You can believe in the cause of a Religion, of some science, or some guy with a cape. It's all the same in terms of process. The implications may be different.
Yes you can say it's a social construct, or it is an invention with no concrete basis, and one may go against the other (as science can go against religion). But it the end, the merciful matter is that man's only meaning is to create a meaning for himself.
>>403380
Why is meaning necessary?
Seems like religion is loosing hard, in pretty much every highly developed country (safe for the US). Go figure.
>>401980
>Arguments for and against Having Faith
Wouldn't an argument for faith be an oxymoron since it's purely a personal belief that isn't bound to empirical evidence?
>>403301
In relation to the whole fruit thing. You're right. God literally developed the quantum magic laws that influence how a mind forms decisions.
>>401980
I'm a Pantheist so the question of omniscience is moot. The application of anthropocentric ideas; good, evil, are also moot. On the grand scale of things, moral theory itself is another area. And don't really factor into my theology.
I have faith in Pantheism, because it is my belief that the "divine" does not exist outside of the "universe" in terms of being "all the exists".
E.g. As soon as that position is argued (God and the universe as separate), the terms of the "universe" as being "all that exists" are redefined as the "universe" + "the divine" and so on ad infinitum. So the Universe (as "all that exists") supersedes the concept of a separate divine being, in my belief.
Just feels right for me
>>403419
So you believe in a thing that came to be God in our universe and has influence on us or is just chilling somewhere in space?
>>403070
I'm sort of one of the people arguing for the separation of History from the cancerous Humanities.
There's a reason why to this day people still struggle with placing history in either the social sciences or the humanities
>>403421
>>403421
I tend to believe that the universe and God are one and the same.
But the idea of a material "God" as "a thing that came to be God in our universe and has influence on us" is acceptable if the "thing" came to exist in accordance as one and the same as existence itself but continues to exert influence on matters within it.
>>402340
>Would you worship a shit-tier god just because it existed?
How do you define a shit-tier God outside of a personal level?
I mean, to me a God that demands humans to follow rituals to be considered officially part of his cult, and a God that considers that acquiring of any kind of knowledge to be bad would be shit-tier gods. I would personally like the Paternalistic, Shepherd-like Christian YHWH without those characteristics (and a few smaller ones). Should I just make up my own God?
>>403392
Well then your meaning is having no meaning.
I don't think you understand the concept of "existence" very well
>>402510
You forgot to add your rebuttal
>>402722
just thinking out loud
>>403365
How can you say that free will and determinism exists together when they cannot and when there is reason to think that only determinism is real since matter and forces seem to be what makes things happen?
As long as the paradox exists and no empirical evidence shows up, I can't honestly believe in any type of God.
You are the one who is full of pride because you lack honesty and basic critical thinking skills it seems. You create this unfounded notion that a God exists for your own yearning for it to be real and then expect people to think that you have any honest reason for it to be real? Piss off
>>403380
I think that it is far more reasonable to say that purpose is something that people create for themselves, starting with satisfying the basic needs for survival and then setting goals for achieving higher status and happiness through other activities.
Also, faith is something that people can have for demonstrable things like the existence of another country and its landscape. When it comes to metaphysical concepts like Gods, you need to be able to justify it with a sound argument since it isn't apparent. You failed that already by brushing off your own reasoning and assuming whatever you wish.
>>403407
You can have justification for a faith by understanding what the concept is and if it is intellectually honest to have faith in it.
OP, do you mean explicitly religious faith? Tolstoy outlines an excellent reason for faith imo, but not necessarily religious faith.
Basically faith is one of the two approaches to living a contented life, as it avoids falling into the "trap of reason", realizing that everything in life is entirely meaningless... and the existential lack that follows. The faith can even be in some man made purpose, some ideal.
The other being that one simply lives and doesn't think of the meaninglessness of things, nor does one think about how one is not thinking about it. Not too far from some Buddhist approaches.
An approachable introduction:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/03/tolstoy-confession/
>First argument: If God is omniscient, and he creates a universe, then that universe must have one specific timeline of events.
Why'd you pull that out of thin air? Most probably God set a specter of rules, like a computer program reading and creating output for something that is going on through the lense of a camera.
>>403926
It is personal.
When people respond to Pascal's Wager they normally say something along the lines of, 'What if the real God will only reward those who DON'T believe in Him and will punish all of those who do?'. Naturally they use these extreme examples to show that, worship of God doesn't necessarily produce the greatest possible benefits (heaven) but could in fact, if this God was twisted enough, produce the greatest possible losses. While it's possible that this is true and this kind of God does exist, just because He exists doesn't mean you should necessarily follow Him and this is true even in the case that He is omnipotent. So when you ask,
>Should I just make up my own God
it's not quite that simple. It's not that you're 'making up a God' or creating anything at all; you're just outlining certain qualities that would have to be present in God in order for following him to have adequate positive returns for you at the time of the wager.
Unless you're Cypher from The Matrix, mindless delusion and worship of qualities that you currently hate, is something that you will see as inherently 'negative' even if a theoretical-you is experiencing bliss while doing it. So all these many gods that are damning acts of goodness and mercy, or damning all their believers, the ones that atheists use as an argument against the wager don't really amount to much. Because from our perspective, eternal ecstasy in and of itself is not an 'infinitely positive benefit', there are caveats that are determined by our own personal preferences and values.
>>402434
>Suffering exists, we dislike it and label it as bad, if everything is created by an omniscient god then it is planned to occur. we must label God accordingly.
Speaking as someone who has never had faith, but what if evil exists simply for us to prove that we can overcome it? Imagine it as a play in which we are all actors, except we have no understanding of it beyond our immediate part in it. We don't know how our individual roles will change in the future nor how they fit into the grander plan, but at the end of time, God will show us all the true magnificence of his creation and just how we never let evil conquer us.
I don't say it necessarily aligns with Christian theology, but it seems to me to be a plausible explanation of evil if there is indeed an all-knowing benevolent God.
>>401980
>Path of Sincerity
/thread
the reluctant messiah. It's a deep philosophy.
>>401980
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X7WkoEOqtY&list=PL966B5BE4DC18D06C&index=4
Case and point.
>First argument: If God is omniscient, and he creates a universe, then that universe must have one specific timeline of events.
>If that is the case, then free will cannot exist because it creates possible outcomes for any set of options and God's omniscience only allows for there to be one viable choice, the one that he planned.
>That also means that God would have chosen for evil to come into existence, not Adam and Eve, and making a timeline in which horrific things happen to creatures as well as designing the animal eat animal system would mean that God is a sadist.
>He had the power to choose between the infinite number of possibilities at his disposal and yet he chose this one.
>Therefore, the concept of the Christian God is a paradox and belief in it is unjustified.
>what is incoherence for 500 Alex?
>>401980
Multi dimensional string theory uniferse...i think they plotted that to trick einstein. God exists in everything but that also mean everything must mirror him to the point he or she is a living being or entity. Good and evil thats just emotional output input. God must replenish him or herself through death. For us to live. god knows whats better for you. Time devours itself.
Are you talking about faith or religion OP?
I can see arguments that religious institutions benefit a society but I've yet to see a single one that presents a good case for ignoring evidence.
It is proven from a Positive Psychology that Faith leads you to more productive and happy live. You just need to not blindly believe in shit. Which can be very damaging for you in long terms. Same for usage of Faith as tool to deny intellectual activity, mean for escapism, method of deception, etc. So you just doesn't need to be stupid about your faith.
>>401980
>First argument: If God is omniscient, and he creates a universe, then that universe must have one specific timeline of events.
Implying....
An evolving universe set within certain rules. it evolves.
as for earth, same thing, but free will is the big issue here so that one is out of His hands.
Based on His own rule.
>If that is the case, then free will cannot exist because it creates possible outcomes for any set of options and God's omniscience only allows for there to be one viable choice, the one that he planned.
See above
>That also means that God would have chosen for evil to come into existence, not Adam and Eve, and making a timeline in which horrific things happen to creatures as well as designing the animal eat animal system would mean that God is a sadist.
See above
>He had the power to choose between the infinite number of possibilities at his disposal and yet he chose this one.
He chose the only possibility worthy for his creation. free will
>Therefore, the concept of the Christian God is a paradox and belief in it is unjustified.
All you really did was assume a bunch of things and therefore.....
nice try though.
This might be a better place to ask but what exactly is the difference between faith (religious faith specifically) and delusion?
And I don't mean that in a fedora way. Just curious as to what the technical difference is because both have the same definition only one is a negative connotation while the other is generally good.
>>409586
Not sure if that is a fair question though.
Assuming for argument sake He does exist, it's better to separate the man-made religion aspect and faith itself.
Man-made religion is about institutionalized dogma's in order to ensure people will follow it without (much) questioning, and succeeding that gain more control and power.
Basically that has nothing to do with faith, its just the same system humans use everywhere to gain power and leverage over others and/or other systems.
If anything is evil in this world....
Faith on the other hand is a much more personal and individual thing.
You see this in every movement and even religions, the internal search for enlightment and such.
Which cannot be institutionalized (because that would require a group-effort)
So the difference would be pretty easy,
Delusion comes from insta-religions
Faith is internal.
Faith is great to give people hope in seemingly hopeless situations. If you have a village dying of famine, you can bet that they will be praying for crops to return. It's a nice concept, but that doesn't mean that a higher being actually did it.
It's like morphine. It eases the pain but doesn't necessarily cure it. It's a feel-good bandaid instead of performing surgery and removing the root of the problem via not putting all your economic eggs in one basket or simply implementing crop rotation.
>>409586
>And I don't mean that in a fedora way. Just curious as to what the technical difference is because both have the same definition only one is a negative connotation while the other is generally good.
indeed, the two are the same for anybody who is not a rationalist. the rationalist must distinguish between what he thinks is cogent amongst all of his deliriums and what his not, even though a speculation is just a speculation. so according to the rationalist, there is good speculation [and he puts that into common sense and logic] and bad speculation.
>>402510
I agree.
A universe is a fucking universe.
Hell, we have no idea how things work outside our solar system, and even that's pushing it.
Multiple time lines could be intertwining at once, we have no way of truly knowing.
Likewise, Science cannot prove or disprove the supernatural, it all relates to our human expirience.
It's like ghosts, we have evidence both for and against their existence, but who the hell can tell if they are in fact real or not? We'd need information outside of human knowledge.
>faith
>not direct spiritual experience
Step it up.
>>405149
There's no inherent virtue in overcoming anything, this is an ad hoc rationalization of the world we live in under a pre-existing belief in a benevolent God.
>>410231
>There's no inherent virtue in overcoming anything
Of course not. The thought is that it might still be purpose of evil given the assumption that a benevolent god exists -- to prove the beauty of his creation, but not be shown until it's all over.
>this is an ad hoc rationalization of the world we live in under a pre-existing belief in a benevolent God.
Of course it is. I never claimed otherwise. I've never believed in a god or anything supernatural and hold to no superstitions as far as I am aware. I'm simply playing the part of the Devil's Advocate in this case.
