I don't believe that humans have souls.

I also don't believe that science and religion are not mutually exclusive. It seems pretty obvious to me that science is all about only believing something after you've exhaustively experimented and drawn conclusions from your work, where religion is about faithfully believing in spite of lack of evidence.

I don't think the discussion about the various powers of God are very useful. If God is actually a being that is allowed to violate casuality then there's no conceivable way to prove or disprove His existence and so the entire discussion in that respect becomes moot. As long as one believes in God's supernatural powers in this way there's no way to convince him/her otherwise since he/she will always be able to invoke God's magic powers to answer any inquiries.

I hold that while it's impossible to disprove His existence, that doesn't mean that he exists. Google Russell's teapot, flying spaghetti monster, and invisible pink unicorn.

Whoo controversy! Discuss.

All of this depends though on what you consider evidence, and that varies from person to person.

I agree. For me, I would consider evidence to be miracles. But that might not be the same for everyone.

When it comes to souls, perhaps we are flashed like EEPROM chips??? We will never know, if someone has died and asked him, they haven't come back yet.

Maybe the reason no one has ever come back, is because whatever is after death is so good, that you would never want to. In the bible, heaven is explained (in various places) that the roads are paved of gold, all the walls are made of glass because there is no reason to be ashamed, and there are colors humans have never even seen before. I don't know about you, but I would never want to go back.

I would like to throw in a very awesome saying I leant today:
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Goes for both the existence of God and evolution.

@Mdr1, I may have used the wrong wording. This post explains it quite well: http://bible.org/question/what-purpose-did-god-create-world

@ElementCoder, I'm sure the God who created boredom, or any other annoying emotion can take it all away and perhaps replace it with a better one.

Iirc it never really came from Jesus's own mouth who he was. But by His works it was seen.

I'm pretty sure it did(in the bible) some believed him, but many people didn't .

Sorry. Everything having a beginning must have an origin.

Ok, fair enough.

Just as in Christian faith, something had to cause god to create the universe.

Nope, God isn't in time. He invented it. So he didn't create universe "at a certain time".

That's not really what I was saying, but I'll respond. The universe as we know it came into existence at some point(if you believe in intelligent design or the big bang). So I guess you could say at that point time began. A decision had to be made, other wise we would have no universe (again this is if you believe in intelligent design).

There is no "there might be" here, this proposition takes place on the philosophy debate. Do you think it is only a "there might be" when you think about Jesus, about what apostles did, about marvelous lands on Earth, about the fact you are you and not only material?

I'm not sure where you are going with Jesus and his apostles.

As best I can tell the Earth exists and is how we observe it to be. I myself exist and am a living thinking being as far as I can tell. However, if I accept these as possible out comes I also have to consider the fact that perhaps I am wrong. I also have to consider: Perhaps the earth does not exist and neither do I. Perhaps the earth exists and so do I, but I interpret them differently from what they actually are in reality because I lack the proper sensory input to observe reality as it actually is.

Well, God didn't create the world in 7 days so its quite possible. God is not bound by time, so 10 billion years to us could seem like 1 day to God. Of course we will never know or be able to understand this.
When it comes to souls, perhaps we are flashed like EEPROM chips??? We will never know, if someone has died and asked him, they haven't come back yet.

You're right. According to Genesis, god created not only the world, but everything in 6 days. On the seventh day he rested and saw that it was good. Regardless of whether or not you believe gods existence to be infinite or not, 6 days is pretty clear. This suggest that the act of god creating the universe began time and his work took a measure of six days. Even if a being exists outside of the existence of the universe as we know it I find it extremely difficult to believe the that being would not be able to grasp a concept like the measure of time, and that furthermore it would be reported incorrectly.

Quote from: jwalker on May 22, 2013, 09:59:51 pm

Well, God didn't create the world in 7 days so its quite possible. God is not bound by time, so 10 billion years to us could seem like 1 day to God. Of course we will never know or be able to understand this.
When it comes to souls, perhaps we are flashed like EEPROM chips??? We will never know, if someone has died and asked him, they haven't come back yet.

You're right. According to Genesis, god created not only the world, but everything in 6 days. On the seventh day he rested and saw that it was good. Regardless of whether or not you believe gods existence to be infinite or not, 6 days is pretty clear. This suggest that the act of god creating the universe began time and his work took a measure of six days. Even if a being exists outside of the existence of the universe as we know it I find it extremely difficult to believe the that being would not be able to grasp a concept like the measure of time, and that furthermore it would be reported incorrectly.

What I meant was that the people who wrote genesis put the story of how we were created into 6 days so that people would be able to have a grasp of it since 6 days is basically a work week.

Quote from: Ki1o on May 21, 2013, 08:07:04 pm

As a generalization, Christians believe that they are the only religion and that all other religions are completely false.  They feel they will be the ones to live while everyone else suffers in H E double hockey sticks.  Zero tolerance...
At Muslims have some sort of respect for Christianity because of the same sort of belief in one supreme being.

It is a real generalization. And I don't know where you find your statistics, but it is completely false. Catholics really respect other religions. And when you speak about "They feel they will be the ones to live while everyone else suffers in H E double hockey sticks", I think you're confounding christians with some sects that use bible to have some credibility.

First off, forgive me if I seem offensive in any way.  I hope that doesn't make you hate me or anything.  With that being said, I think, and maybe it may be due to the fact that this is what I'm exposed and have witnessed as an African-American, Catholics are excluded from my perception of Christians.  My opinion of a Christian is your streotypical white American Protestant who is completely intolerant to all other religions including Catholics and especially Muslims, and is somewhat racist.  That's a generalization and I don't mean that all Christians are like that.  This opinion is also partially due to the influence of my history teacher who is a great teacher and his ideas are interesting and he portrays America in an interesting way.

There no evidence that flying spaghetti monsters exist. But they probably don't.

Quote from: Justin Pope

"there's no more scientific basis for intelligent design than there is for the idea an omniscient creature made of pasta created the universe"

A joke response I've seen to this one is, "Then why are all the planets spherical and meatball-shaped?"