theism

I mean, what the hell? Once you settle on God or Zeus or Chac or Bigfoot or whatever, where do you go from there? What have you accomplished? What can you learn further? What have you explained? Seems to me you're just praying to the ceiling to bless and keep you.

Everyone who has actually read them and not deliberately ignored it knows that the first two chapters of Genesis do not tell the same creation story. Or seem not to. I think that they do deliver together a consistent account of creation, once one accepts that the writers were polytheistic...

There seems to be a rash of atheism vs theism threads going on right now. Several have requested atheists support their conclusions about the non-existence of gods. I could ask what evidence do god believers have for their theist conclusions but I already know the usual answers. I'm not...

The James Randi Educational Foundation forum presents itself as "a place to discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly and lively way." This statement reminded me of something that Michael Martin wrote called "Friendly Atheism". In his essay, so...

Silliness. Some theists have apparantly converted an octogenarian former atheist to the Intelligent Design theory, and point to this as evidence for the existence of God. I say it is evidence of nothing more than the fact that people sometimes lose their mind as they age. An unfortunate, but all...

I posted this on the rational responders board. Just curious as to how jrefers view the claim that "believing in god is a form of mental illness". Here's the link; my post is below...

I recently put an essay I wrote on my blog, "Arguments Against Theism". Maybe you guys are interested in reading it, though it's a big essay. If you guys see any problems, let me know, please. http://theheliotrope.wordpress.com/2007/04/29/arguments-against-god/

I know there's at least one Deist on the board. Hopefully there are more - or this'll be a short thread. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism I stand as pretty much a 'pre-inflationary-period-agnostic.' We have no data, so it's not possible to make a really scientific, rational guess. Using the...

We often hear, as an attack on both, the issue of 'comfort' being discussed in regards to atheism and theism. There are many variations, but most of the strawmans I hear go something like this: Atheist strawman: a theist likes the comfort of knowing that he'll live forever Theist strawman: an...

I didn't ask this question. A...less discriminating person on another board did. He wanted to know why all prosperous societies have been theistic if atheism is so great. And if you mention communism he says that communist countries inevitably collapse.

This is a redux of the previous thread, on atheism. It's bogging down, so I want to crystalize my argument into one comprehensive post. First off, we have to use a few definitions for clarity. These are purely to avoid pointless semantic bits of talking past each other and is not part of the...

Right? Isn't that what theism is? Good feelings or experiences: Good deity's will. Bad feelings or experiences: Evil deity's will. Also sometimes one deity is responsible for both good and evil, but I think you get my point. It seems some people personify reality and phenomena, and we call...

Okay, I've been wanting to try this for awhile. I think it'd be really interesting. If you're an atheist (or the equivalent), try to make a convincing argument FOR the existence of God, as you think a Fundamentalist might, or in any manner that suits your fancy. And if you believe in God, argue...

I just finished reading a book about the collapse of Enron. It turned out to be a fascinating read, particularly since it was written as the company was starting to tank. What really got my attention was the fact that even at that early date, it was clear that Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew...

I was channel surfing last night when I saw something you rarely see on TV. It was Larry King and he had a panel of people discussing the question, "What happens after we die." Much to my surprise, King asked the hard questions, and not at all to my surprise, the theists (one catholic, one...

When I saw this I had to check if it was posted April 1st: I rarely see contentions so astronomically separated from reality (except for Creationists' claims). The worrisome thing is, such people have political power.

You decide. This is also a "private poll", whatever that means...

Which makes perfect sense, since this is the "Show Me" state. The set-up: I have constantly expressed tolerance for theists, even though some of them (the fundamentalists in particular) have not been so good as do likewise. I have argued that since theists are not making any testable claims...

Any thoughts on Open Theism? I had heard something called Chaos Theology. Someone @ RR exposed me to this. http://www.carm.org/open.htm http://web.syr.edu/~nmagee/chaos.html

(I’ll take epistemology for $1000, Alex.) In his oft-cited study God and Other Minds, the theistic philosopher Alvin Plantinga develops the so-called “parity argument”. I don’t have ready access to the original work, and my recollection of precisely how Plantinga proceeds is a hazy at best, so...

I'd like to start a thread discussing the benefits of theism.

If so, theists sure like arguing with fallacy and invalid points... moreso than any valid arguments. I've had more than enough "You can't prove God doesn't exist!", and such.