How do people still belive in God?

Pittens

InTheTrees wrote: »

I believe in addition to the absurdity of the catholic church running the schools, the state pays for the running of protestant schools does it not?

Yeah. There not being too many atheists in 1921.

As I said before religion is essential to culture, if people pay taxes they would want to have their children brought up in their tradition, be that atheist, catholic, protestant, jewish, muslim or whatever. It becomes impractical in rural villages you say - well they would be mostly catholic. Plenty practical in cities.

Mickeroo

kylith wrote: »

I wouldn't be against kids being taught about various religions, but I am definitely against things like communion/confirmation being prepared for in schools. If you want your child communed/confirmed you should do it yourself and not waste time that could be used to teach something useful.

ditto.

ravendude

kylith wrote: »

I wouldn't be against kids being taught about various religions, but I am definitely against things like communion/confirmation being prepared for in schools. If you want your child communed/confirmed you should do it yourself and not waste time that could be used to teach something useful.

+1 Just to think my child could possibly be near fluent in a European language if these resources were used elsewhere.

kylith

Pittens wrote: »

As I said before religion is essential to culture, if people pay taxes they would want to have their children brought up in their tradition, be that atheist, catholic, protestant, jewish, muslim or whatever. It becomes impractical in rural villages you say - well they would be mostly catholic. Plenty practical in cities.

I disagree. I do not think that religion is essential to culture.

If people want their child brought up in their religion then that should be their responsibility, not the schools. The school should teach reading, writing and 'rithmatic (and geography, history, science, art and the rest) NOT religion.

Snake Pliisken

But they wouldn't be, they'd get the basis of each ethos to give them a broader view of the world and give them a better chance at picking whether they want to believe in any of it when they come to that bridge in their lives.

Plus, who needs a european language when they can learn chinese and bargain for bread with your soon to be worklords?

gbee

kylith wrote: »

I wouldn't be against kids being taught about various religions, but I am definitely against things like communion/confirmation being prepared for in schools. If you want your child communed/confirmed you should do it yourself and not waste time that could be used to teach something useful.

Of course, but as the schools were set up expressly for this purpose, to get a Catholic education, then you need to change the school.

ravendude

Pittens wrote: »

Yeah. There not being too many atheists in 1921.

As I said before religion is essential to culture, if people pay taxes they would want to have their children brought up in their tradition, be that atheist, catholic, protestant, jewish, muslim or whatever. It becomes impractical in rural villages you say - well they would be mostly catholic. Plenty practical in cities.

Its not plenty practical in cities. It makes no sense building N schools for N religions.
And who decides and sets the criteria on a threshold at which a particular minority religion (or atheism) is relevant enough to build a dedicated school, - You?
Its hard enough to get any school built not a mind building different schools for different religions.
Not to mention fostering a culture of exclusion and a "them and us" society and ghetto-isation, where we have christians at one end of the town and muslims separated out to another.

Your suggestion falls apart on many levels, primarily on the grounds of social exclusion it would cause. No Thanks.

MagicMarker

There should be no discrimination in schools.

So many parents are forced to baptise their child simply so they can get into their chosen school, this is absolutely ridiculous!

kylith

gbee wrote: »

Of course, but as the schools were set up expressly for this purpose, to get a Catholic education, then you need to change the school.

Except that most schools are Catholic, so the schools need to be changed and forced to provide a more secular education. Of course this won't happen until some brave athiest kicks up a hell of a fuss about their child being refused entry to school because they weren't christened.

Ah, but no one gives a damn about athiests, we can be discriminated against to the religious' hearts' content

NTMK

kylith wrote: »

I disagree. I do not think that religion is essential to culture.

If people want their child brought up in their religion then that should be their responsibility, not the schools. The school should teach reading, writing and 'rithmatic (and geography, history, science, art and the rest) NOT religion.

I agree with you for the most part but i do believe that a diverse religion class should be a part of the curriculum just to teach kids about the different world religions.

but the parents and the church should teach their children about their religion

storm2811

MagicMarker wrote: »

There should be no discrimination in schools.

So many parents are forced to baptise their child simply so they can get into their chosen school, this is absolutely ridiculous!

There's two muslims in my local catholic primary school, I don't know if they go by that "You have to be a baptised catholic" thing.

In 6th class though the priest told me I couldn't do my confirmation because I didn't go to mass.
I told him to feck off as all he did was fill my family with false hope when my dad was sick,nearly got suspended for that so I did.:pac:

Pace2008

Pittens wrote: »

It "oppresses" people who want a bit to pay their taxes and get schools which represent their values. In other words a muslim wants his school to teach Islamic values and the ciriculum - not some secular mishmash about the universality of religion.

So why don't they shoulder some resposibility and teach these values themselves?

kylith

NTMK wrote: »

I agree with you for the most part but i do believe that a diverse religion class should be a part of the curriculum just to teach kids about the different world religions.

but the parents and the church should teach their children about their religion

Yes, I said that upthread a bit.

Sorry, brain shuts down at 1am.

NTMK

storm2811 wrote: »

There's two muslims in my local catholic primary school, I don't know if they go by that "You have to be a baptised catholic" thing.

It depends on the parish priest really. some are lenient others arent

Snake Pliisken

Which means the system is even messier because it's not cut and dry fascism :P

Davidius

ravendude wrote: »

The challenge to "disprove the existence" of god is the really frustrating one for me. In no scientific, academic or learned circles is it acceptable to back up your standpoint with the nonsensical "disprove it" retort.

If you are taking a positive standpoint as to the state of something (lets say the earth revolving around the sun, or the existence of a particular god) the burden of proof is firmly on you. If Galileo, Newton or any other such luminaries based their assertions on nothing else other than "disprove it" argument no one would take them seriously and rightly so.

I can make the assertion that a variety of blue leprechauns exist and ask you to disprove it. It is only right not to be taken seriously.

Just to clarify I wasn't taking a position as to whether God exists or not, I was merely meaning to point out that most science isn't motivated with disproving God in mind. I agree with your line of thinking in that if somebody is to claim that a hypothesis or conjecture is true then the burden of proof is on them.

starbelgrade

mcmoustache wrote: »

To be fair to the guy, as much as I think that his beliefs are crazy, he's alway prepared to be challenged on those beliefs, he responds to questions and he never gets rude in his responses. You can't really fault him for being interested.

Very true indeed. I don't hold the same beliefs as Jakkass, but he is a gentleman, always ready to engage in debate & has a good sense of humour too.

CCCP

caseyann wrote: »

Yes i do,my husband lived in it.

Nice to see another spouse of a former soviet citizen on here Dont listen to pace2008, this person cant understand the difference between what communism actually is in practice and what the communist ideals are on paper. Its very nice that he has read about communism on Wikipedia but to live with someone and hear first hand about life in a communist state is a different story, and I would listen to you over him on the subject anyday.

Anyway, this thread is about God and why people still believe in Him.

I explained why I believe in god and they verbally attacked and mocked me,
and they are the ones saying the religions are intolerant:rolleyes:

I answered the ops question as best I could and it was used as an excuse for people to insult me.

I still stand by what I said, and for the few atheists who were mature enough to enter into discussion, thank you for being open minded and mature, I enjoy reading others world views and opinions.

For the rest of the atheist posters however, well, its a shame that you are living with such a closed mind, although I respect your opinions, there are ways to express yourselves without resorting to insults and rudeness.

I am appalled that someone here insinuated several times that another poster was a pedophile and the mods didn't do or say anything about it. There is no place for that here.

Although I know the mods have lives also, maybe they just missed that one.

Pace2008

CCCP wrote: »

Nice to see another spouse of a former soviet citizen on here Dont listen to pace2008, this person cant understand the difference between what communism actually is in practice and what the communist ideals are on paper. Its very nice that he has read about communism on Wikipedia but to live with someone and hear first hand about life in a communist state is a different story, and I would listen to you over him on the subject anyday.

That is not communism in practice, that is a totalitarian regime and having a partner who's lived under such a system does not make you right.

I don't agree with the communist ideal, even applied correctly, by the way.

I am appalled that someone here insinuated several times that another poster was a pedophile and the mods didn't do or say anything about it. There is no place for that here.

You know full well I didn't imply anything of the sort. The poster claimed that it was up to us to prove god didn't exist, so by the same token the onus should be on her to disprove my (insincere) claim that she is a paedophile - though she copped out shortly afterwards rather than admit she'd compartmentalised her logic to suit her religious beliefs.

Although I know the mods have lives also, maybe they just missed that one.

Maybe they knew I wasn't calling her a paedophile.

MagicMarker

CCCP wrote: »

I am appalled that someone here insinuated several times that another poster was a pedophile and the mods didn't do or say anything about it. There is no place for that here.

If you'd read the thread properly you'd know full well that's not what was going on.

Jamiekelly

IBTL? lol

gbee

CCCP wrote: »

I am appalled that someone here insinuated several times that another poster was a pedophile and the mods didn't do or say anything about it. There is no place for that here.

Although I know the mods have lives also, maybe they just missed that one.

Not, quite. One poster [A] asked in reply to my answer that as he was a Catholic, was I implying that he was a Paedophile as well.

Another posters posted a link: Now you need to follow that link and read it: [I am not relinking it here, go back and find it, it's important.

Then the poster [A] said he was retiring and poster said then it must be true so then.

It is the classic case of check mate in the debating game: But I don't think anyone was accused of anything: they were challenged to prove or disprove it:

ravendude

CCCP wrote: »

For the rest of the atheist posters however, well, its a shame that you are living with such a closed mind, although I respect your opinions, there are ways to express yourselves without resorting to insults and rudeness.

Please give us some specific examples of the posts that you find offensive and insulting. The "attrocious paedophile" remark is completely taken out of context and is actually making a logical point if you read properly. Numerous other people have covered this already so I won't go into it further.
There are over 680 posts now on this topic so I hope you can come up with more than a few example of these base, appalling "insults". Virtually all threads on internet forums have some level of curtness and "smartness". I'd say if you want to characterise the thread as offensive, maybe 10% of posts might be reasonable, - say 60 offensive posts? - hell, just give us 5 or 6 as digging out 60 is a lot of work.

IMO, its the last bastion on the theist to take offence to reasoned argument in the absence of any reasonable counter argument. People are generally putting reasoned, logical arguments forward in this thread and its getting twisted into some kind of dirty, offensive violation of rights. A cheap tactic
Then again, I guess its not an option to just go burning books these days.

gbee

ravendude wrote: »

Then again, I guess its not an option to just go burning books these days.

Might be a thought though. On the other hand it's a pity knowledge was suppressed ~ there have always been people who could instil doubt in the establishment.

There have always been assassins.

The upshot is we have no way of knowing what Jesus Christ's message really was, I think we can accept he walked the earth and was a magician, along with several others and his name would have been common in those times, so there are many possibilities and possibly multiple Christs'.

But what we have in all religions is a heavily censored text to enforce third party, fourth party, fifth party ideologies, for their own good and not for the greater good of mankind.

caseyann

Simple answer,because they do shouldn't even explain to people who dont.

gbee

caseyann wrote: »

Simple answer,because they do shouldn't even explain to people who dont.

I dunno,I mean I might be convertible with the right argument, at the moment I have a choice of Heaven, Hell, 7 Virgins, Total Enlightenment. Zen State and I'm sure I have not covered them all.

Now the problem is, only one is right apparently.

caseyann

gbee wrote: »

I dunno,I mean I might be convertible with the right argument, at the moment I have a choice of Heaven, Hell, 7 Virgins, Total Enlightenment. Zen State and I'm sure I have not covered them all.

Now the problem is, only one is right apparently.

Have to warn you they never said what age them virgins are,they have been waiting hell of a long time

Find your own dont look for others;)

Blindside87

Great site:

http://www.godandscience.org/

MagicMarker

Blindside87 wrote: »

Great site:

http://www.godandscience.org/

This site provides answers to questions about God, evidence for God's existence

I bet it doesn't.

ravendude

Blindside87 wrote: »

Great site:

http://www.godandscience.org/

Without getting drawn to going down the rabbit hole on this one, that site gives some pretty paltry arguments and draws some very, very tenuous logic at best based on religious premises.

The answers seem pretty well worded and almost sound convincing if you don't think about what it is actually saying too much.
Take one example from here:
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/racism.html

"God's choice was not simply to play favoritism, but He chose one people through whom the Messiah would come to offer salvation to all peoples of the world."
This is a rubbish explanation at best and makes no sense at all. Its blatant favouritism by any intelligent standard.
Many, many other examples of nonsense statements dressed up as logic.

As I say, don't want to go down the rabbit hole on this because that site is just a bottomless pit of nonsense dressed up as "logic".