Did it ever occur to you that God works through science? If God helps somebody, he doesn't shove a giant hand through the clouds, he acts in a way that can not be seen. He acts through nature. I would tell you about my "devine encounters," but you are just trying to make me look foolish so there would be no point.
If he only acted through nature it wouldn't even matter if he exists or not, and it definitely wouldn't serve as proof of anything.
Although, tell me that you haven't heard of strange occurances: a child falling from a three story window onto the pavement and surving without any complications, a person somehow gaining the strength the lift a two ton car to save their son, a worker getting sucked into a jet engine and be able to climb out with minor damage. Did your science do that?
Three stories? That's hardly miraculous. Lifting a two ton car? Have you heard about this natural hormone called adrenaline? Living after having been sucked into jet engine? Although unlikely, it did happen without any apparent godly intervention (his helmet jammed the rotor blades). Let's rhetorically say that these were all acts of God, though. That would only mean that God acts very randomly and that he isn't as just as the Bible makes him seem.
People are dying from hunger all over the world, children are being tortured and raped and thousands of people kill themselves out of loneliness. Isn't it strange that God acts not by saving these people, but by letting some guy (working on getting a war machine ready to fire some missiles at people, none the less) survive being sucked into a jet engine?
I'm saying that if God exists and is almighty and all that, he is either
1. Passive (out of curiosity perhaps) and has no real impact on or lives at all. That means that it doesn't matter if he exists. It also means NO MIRACLES!
2. Active, in which case he is a very cruel and inconsiderate being, showing that he
can in fact act through miracles but only does so occasionally, and on a seemingly random basis.
And why do you have little respect for people who believe in God? What did we do to you?
I never said that. I said that have little respect for anyone who believes that God created the world. To elaborate, I find it hard to respect anyone who believes that God physically does stuff at all. It's not because you did anything to me at all; it's more like you would disrespect an idiot. Not out of hate, but because you wouldn't trust him to do anything because he's stupid.
You blindly accept that he doesn't exist because that is the way you were raised. So how does that make you different from us, if that logic is to be believed?
The difference is that I don't
blindly accept anything. My beliefs are based on logical conclusions that I can draw from what I see myself.
It is a fact that when truth is recognized, competition is created. Everyone believes in reality because they experience it thorugh their senses, but nobody can prove that reality exists outside of our minds. But, go ahead and don't believe in God just because you can't sense him.
Reality is always real because the word essentially means "how everything actually is". What we perceive as reality might -- while unlikely -- be different from what is actually real, though. Does that even matter? In the end it's only what we percieve as real that matters.
To all those arguing that religion dictates moral and that chaos would ensue if the Bible didn't tell us what's wrong: Are you really that cynical? People in general are more empathetic and considerate than you seem to think. It's not like everyone acts nice and friendly out of fear of being smitten by God or sent to hell. Modern western philosophy has taught me more about morals and ethics than the Bible ever could, anyway.
