I won't argue about hell since it's obvious that you've already decided what you want to believe and it makes you feel good, therefore you are not willing to change.

I am willing to change, if I want to of course. You don't really think I will change because of your arguments, do you? Don't flatter yourself, everything you have said to me, I have thought of too, and said to others, in past times. It's not like it's a groundbreaking argument. "We haven't seen god, therefore there isn't any reason to believe he exists". I've took that under consideration and, after a long process, I decided my personal philosophy for myself, with all the contradictions and unanswered questions that come with it.

I think that's the main difference between us. I care about the truth regardless of emotions attached to it.
[/quote]

Well, that's good. As long as you accept that it's only what you perceive as "truth", and not the objective one.

LMAO!!
[/quote]

I won't pretend I don't care what caused this. Care to elaborate, if possible?

[quote name='mikeman' timestamp='1311369377' post='4839120']
Seriously? Scientific method? Maybe I should use science to tell me what kind of girl I should marry, you know, make a graph, statistics about the success of marriage, compatibility charts, gather evidence that she's the one.

The scientific method is not about graphs etc. It's about reasoning in order to understand reality.

As for marriage, that's your personal choice.

Existence of god is a scientific claim and therefore has to be decided using scientific method.
[/quote]

What? How is the existence of god is a scientific claim?

[size="1"]PS: I didn't bother to read a 10-page long thread. just point it out to me if this is a reference to the previous discussion.

[quote name='mikeman' timestamp='1311369377' post='4839120']
We can always talk, but a meaningful conversation would require for 2 parties to have a minimum amount of respect for the other's opinion(note: Not for the right to have an opinion, for the opinion itself). I don't think your worldview is laughable, just different. But you do. I don't perceive myself smarter than you, but you do. Therefore, you're right, a conversation cannot happen.

As for free will, the subject interests me very much, and it's one of the reasons I believe in God. You said it, without an extra-physical soul, there are only impersonal natural laws and randomness. I believe there is something more, hence, the Creator God and his gift to humanity, free will.

LMAO!!
[/quote]

Well at least you proved you are willing to converse as equals with your reply. Didn't you say you were leaving this thread? Were you upset that people were actually furthering the discussion and there wasn't enough bigotry motivated trolling going on?

You know, with all respect to all posters,I think the thread ran its course and has gotten pretty off topic. It is inevitable that it will be closed, so I'm going to go ahead and ask a moderator to do it now, please.

I'm amazed we are still talking about this in "modern" age. I find studies about cults and brain washing to be fascinating. How to make people believe and follow whatever is told. Large religions are especially interesting, becouse it's a global issue that touches us all in real life. With millions of followers it kind of feeds itself.

Also I think the globalization is the cause of the misinformation. I don't mean to point blame, but I do think the now popular thing of questioning the evolution is mainly coming from US. It's been approved fact in europe for decades. The religion is cannot be let in politics. Also at some point I thought the Vatican was crazy, but now there seems to be alot of churches in US who doesnt listen or follow what pope says about their religion.

I think we should just quit talking about this.

You know, what's with this all "I think we should quit talking about this" and "I can't believe we're talking about this God thing". This is the Lounge, ffs. We had a thread about peeing at the bathtub. You can indeed not talk about this, by not posting in this thread. What, it annoys you that much to have a discussion thread in the front page that has something to do with religion?

[quote name='rozz666' timestamp='1311371262' post='4839127']
I won't argue about hell since it's obvious that you've already decided what you want to believe and it makes you feel good, therefore you are not willing to change.

I am willing to change, if I want to of course.
[/quote]
I am willing to change to what evidence points to, regardless of what I would like.

"We haven't seen god, therefore there isn't any reason to believe he exists".

You've changed the meaning. "We haven't seen" is very different to "We have no evidence of". If you accept things on faith without evidence you can just accept anything - all options are equally valid.

I've took that under consideration and, after a long process, I decided my personal philosophy for myself, with all the contradictions and unanswered questions that come with it.

For me unanswered questions are fine, we just have to look for more evidence to answer them. Contradictions are however a sign that a hypothesis is wrong. Unfalsifiability is another sign.

I think that's the main difference between us. I care about the truth regardless of emotions attached to it.

Well, that's good. As long as you accept that it's only what you perceive as "truth", and not the objective one.
[/quote]

All we know is from what we perceive (directly or indirectly). You can't claim to know an objective one. You can, of course, believe that you know, but that does not matter.
I'm curious how your "thruth" is "more objective".

All we know is from what we perceive (directly or indirectly). You can't claim to know an objective one. You can, of course, believe that you know, but that does not matter.
I'm curious how your "thruth" is "more objective".

This is way I went on the "Free will" tangent, and I never got a clear response from you. Do you think we have free will, or do you think out actions are simply results of deterministic natural laws, no more "free" than my computer's software, coupled maybe with random chance? If you answer with a simple 'yes' or 'no' I can explain in more detail why I'm asking that.

[quote name='rozz666' timestamp='1311404621' post='4839223']
All we know is from what we perceive (directly or indirectly). You can't claim to know an objective one. You can, of course, believe that you know, but that does not matter.
I'm curious how your "thruth" is "more objective".

This is way I went on the "Free will" tangent, and I never got a clear response from you. Do you think we have free will, or do you think out actions are simply results of deterministic natural laws, no more "free" than my computer's software, coupled maybe with random chance? If you answer with a simple 'yes' or 'no' I can explain in more detail why I'm asking that.
[/quote]

I do not know. Why are you asking?

[quote name='mikeman' timestamp='1311429854' post='4839276']
[quote name='rozz666' timestamp='1311404621' post='4839223']
All we know is from what we perceive (directly or indirectly). You can't claim to know an objective one. You can, of course, believe that you know, but that does not matter.
I'm curious how your "thruth" is "more objective".

This is way I went on the "Free will" tangent, and I never got a clear response from you. Do you think we have free will, or do you think out actions are simply results of deterministic natural laws, no more "free" than my computer's software, coupled maybe with random chance? If you answer with a simple 'yes' or 'no' I can explain in more detail why I'm asking that.
[/quote]

I do not know. Why are you asking?
[/quote]

To prove there are things that are valid to believe in because your intuition pushes you there. I believe, for instance, in free will because, well, it sure damns seems like I have the ability to make my own decisions and I'm different from a TIVO. I have no evidence, but empirically, that's what makes sense to me.

Regardless, if someone said clearly 'I believe in free will", would you say to him that it's as unproved as Santa or the Easter Bunny?

People do things without evidence, simply because of intuition. All the time. Countless man hours have been spent the last decades on string theory, regardless of it being mostly unverified and has yet to make predictions that can be experimentally tested. Elementary particles are made of 1 dimensional strings? 10 or 11 dimensions? Where's the experimental evidence of all that? Yet many many scientist go down that road, hoping that it'll get somewhere. Do you understand? Hard scientific work goes into it, without evidence that it will actually lead somewhere. For all we know, it could be bollocks. The "God hypothesis", if you will, is falsifiable, at least for me. If you can prove that our brain functions are nothing more than products of deterministic natural laws, that is,say, build a machine/simulation that, given the correct data, can fully predict a human's behaviour, then it clearly follows that there is no such thing as a "soul", there is only matter, which settles the issue, as far as I'm concerned: There is nothing else but natural laws and matter. It proves the idea that "God breathed into [Adam's] nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul" is simply false. I would give up the idea of God at that instant.

Speaking of scientists, people like Newton and Leibnitz were strong believers. Just a note.