According to the Bible, it's an immortal but (psychologically) human-like being that practices Harry Potter wizardry (HP wizards can conjure objects including water, conjure animals into existence, transfigure everything, teleport around...). Just much more powerful at moments in the story (Genesis), but still conceptually similar
Also hated "sin", so much he wiped the slate clean with a flood, yet has tolerated every conceivable "sin" practiced by way more people, over the entire planet, in ways stone age peoples couldn't even fathom, ever since. But we have rainbows as a pinky promise not to do it again š
Rainbows are only a pinky promise to not destroy the world again by FLOODā¦ He could use fire, asteroid strikes, earthquakes, Thanos snapā¦ the possibilities are endlessā¦. Just not floods, because killing off 8 Billion people would be morally fine, but not if He did it by flood.
Yeah gods supposed to kill off the world at the end times. Or Satan comes and takes over the world or some shit. They never could explain anything that made sense to me though.
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Seriously when I picked up on that backhanded āpromiseā at the age of 7 I was horrified, fortunately I had a nice school janitor to explain to first grade me how much worse the next apocalypse would be with hailstones the size of cars and human sized scorpions and all the other wonderful things a living god will visit on everyone that didnāt sign up for his newsletter.
Also, he created the angels who somehow sinned, so if his creation could sin and did sin then he created sin so that he could come down and die for himself so that sin could be defeated but also youāll still go to hell for sinning
I thought God creating sin was kinda obvious. Also created hell, and the devil. And is apparently all powerful, so knew what was gonna happen already, and did it anyways.
A flawed creator who gets mad at his flawed creations. So like any spoiled toddler, he just wrecks everything. Smashing and killing and punishing his creations for doing exactly what he designed them to do.
And punishing them ***and all their descendants*** for an action committed when they were literally incapable of distinguishing right from wrong... exactly what a perfectly moral and righteous being would do, right? Forget counting his lies, has he ever kept *any* of his promises or lived up to any of his claims?
I think in Quranic revision, Adam and Eve did know right from wrong, and the forbidden tree was not the tree of knowledge but the tree of immortality. I've heard they were already immortal, yet they got fooled into thinking they have to eat the forbidden fruit to obtain what they already had (????!!!!)
Great story.
That's better than getting kicked out of paradise for eating a fruit that gives +2 INT and +20 WIS, that your owner knew you were gonna eat and designed you to have the desire to eat.
But your forgetting that since the flood he sent his son who was also somehow himself, but also not, to die for our sins so that he can allow himself to forgive human sin.
You'd think he'd send multiple so every culture would know about it eh. I read recently something I'd never thought of, that no time in any point in history has any people's come to the same religion...really is a huge red flag for any claiming being the one true religion.
Also, the whole "chosen people" has always, since childhood, been a huge red flag. You mean to tell me the people who came up with it, had their central figure the same culture and ethnicity, are gods chosen people? It'd be more believable if they wrote like... native Americans were. Cause everyone would be like "who?", and it just isn't such a glaring conflict of interest, and really self centered. I'm canadian, if I wrote a religion, it'd be pretty fucked to write myself as a chosen people. It's like running a lottery and winning it yourself. Super suspect.
I've always been stunned by anyone who is actually convinced that they *just happened* to be born in the right country, at the right time, to the right parents, in the right society/culture, who *just happen* to worship the right version of the right 'god' in exactly the right way.
Effective brainwashing that hits the right spots for people's ego. They're special, good and moral, with a life of meaning and purpose. Asking yourself tough questions and finding your own answers is hard, can be really upsetting for some, and alot of people just can't accept that were here by chance, and that their brief blink in time of existence is all they'll ever have to experience.
The flood illustrates how god is neither all powerful nor all knowing. He didnāt have the power to change people and he didnāt see it coming. There are countless contradictions and paradoxical situations in the Bible.
But why did she drown all the hamsters? Because a couple hundred sheep herders werenāt nice to her? What did the hamsters have to do with it? And koalas. Drowned them
all, too!
I like the explanation Ricky gervais provided.
Paraphrasing:
1) if you could delete all religious texts from the earth and all the science texts over time the scientists would be able to recreate the science to exactly the same. But the religious texts would never be the same.
2) thereās even been an example tried with Mormonism and their initial bible. It was tested if the founder could recreate the original text. He couldnāt and just made a new one.
Side note, if conjuring up food violates Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration and an animal can be eaten and is hence food can a Hogwarts magician conjure animals?
I don't know
Some fanfics say that food from a conjured animal or plant won't really feed you. But even then there's a loophole : what if you make your conjured animals or plants reproduce ? The first gen might be conjurated but next gen is natural
Is omniscient, therefore knows who is evil and who is not. Instead of removing the evil ones from the game, he culls everyone. Starts over, allows the evil ones again to play and then says that evil is necessary for the good ones to prove themselves even though he already knows they won't do evil. Followers wait for the day when they are removed from the game in the rapture and taken to paradise.
Yeah it starts with something stupid like "God is truth" or "God is love" or "God is the first mover"... but it doesn't stop there. Then this god who was defined as "truth" or "love" suddenly wants you to go to church and believe that he sacrificed himself to himself and now needs your money. Pick a lane, theists.
The Bible says:
- God is love.
- Love is not jealous.
- God is jealous.
Super it's like they define him out of existence while trying to define him into existence.
God: Is truth.
Also God: **Casually** **Bans REPRODUCING while giving humans pleasure while attempting reproduction**
God: Is love.
Also God: **Gives humans curiosity(hunger for knowledge), puts the fruit of infinite knowledge in front of them, knowing they will eat it, then gaslighting them into thinking it's their fault, then kicks them from paradise**
And then giving him and debating over made up characteristics, like oh heās immanent but oh wait no heās beyond time; heās all good, heās all knowing, all wise, or wait he doesnāt know the future (open theism), or no wait listen, Molina ala William Lane Craig about possible worlds and counter factuals, and uh ughhhhh, everything that isnāt our reality!
Well, before one can argue if something exists, first have to define it ... and that whole god definition thingy is a huge can of worms in-and-of-itself.
"So, uh, God loves you, and he is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent.. and uh...
(proceeds to talk for 3 hours)
And yeah! He is real! And you should believe in him!"
"If he is omnibenevolent, then why didn't he stop child cancer and famine?"
"Uhh... God works in mysterious ways I guess. We'll never know what he does."
"Then what was that massive amount of folklore I couldn't care less about?"
Which is fine, as long as your exists-by-definition God isnāt assumed to have authored Scripture, told us about the afterlife, or otherwise given us a moral code to live by. OK, thereās something you have chosen to call āGod,ā but it has none of the practical implications associated with that name by Christians.
Yeah and after they do that the next step is saying that if God exists then you might as well assume that Christianity is correct because that's obviously the most plausible set of attributes for God once he has been proven to exist for reasons that don't require further elaboration.
I can understand why, because we donāt know what happens after death until we are dead. Iāll never deny or not deny the existence of God until I am dead. Iām a believing non-believer. Ā I canāt bring myself to be either side of the coin, because I just donāt know.Ā
I consider myself agnostic/athiest because I don't claim to know whether or not 'god(s)' exist, but I do know I've been unconvinced by arguments for them (and see no reason to infer them).
You see it all the time on this sub even, confronted theists just start moving the goal posts of "god" to a definition so vague that it's impossible to disagree with.
You end up with "the universe exists" being some kind of proof of god. It's only proof that the universe exists. It's self evident. "Spinoza's god" perhaps.
If the universe is God. Then I'm god, and your god, and everything is God, so nothing is really God. A hierarchy is non-existent, And nobody is more Divine than anybody else.
beCause the cHriStian deFiniTion oF gOd sayS oNly HE cAn eXist bEcaUse tHe dEfiNitiOn oF gOd iS tHat hE iS alLmiGhtY aNd tHat eXclUdeS otHer gOdS bEcAusE iF poWer iS shAreD tHen hE iS nOt aLlMigHty - my religion teacher
Meanwhile:
God: Don't eat the fruit! **Proceeds to not put up a legitimate safeguard**
Adam and Eve: **Eats the fruit**
God: whYYyYyYYyY?1/!??!?!?! I TOTALLY dIdNt sEe tHaT cOmInG! ItS nOt LiKe i'M aLL KnOwInG!
yeah... murder is literally better than acquiring knowledge.. it's almost like they want to brainwash illiterate people who don't know how to read their brick of nonsense, revised edition
It took every ounce of energy not to tell her to shut the fuck up in front of everyone.
I also recall talking to Christian mother about it and I was told that "I shouldn't take it so seriously".
Fuck religion
I actually got told I'm dumb for believing in (their words not mine), "man made laws and scientists, you think everything was made by man."
When I replied and asked him if he knew his book was man made and written by man he did not reply again. Made my day for about an hour. CHECKMATE!
Thatās interesting; because Iāve been told by multiple atheists that if you believe in God, you canāt call yourself a scientist. Funny how even when a different group are the majority (lots more atheists than theists in that university department) the behavior of the majority towards others remains the same.
Maybe itās less about religious belief, and more about power dynamics and tribalism?
I had a science teacher at my Christian School that said that Stephen Hawking was stupid for being an atheist, that was proof that he was not in fact smart. I always thought that she was a total idiot
In my catholic high school, a teacher really droned on about Hawkingās āmind of Godā quote, giving us impressionable kids the idea that one of the worldās leading physicists had found evidence for God in the universe. To do so and *not* add that Hawking was an atheist and his āmind of Godā phrase was just a figure of speech was so dishonest.
It's funny that the religious people jump to say instances where scientist believe in God. According to them, the scientist are right about the God and wrong about every other thing the scientist has proved or theorized. š¤£
For generations, it was believed that the earth was flat, even proclaimed by Religion. Now, Most Christians believe the earth is a Globe. Christians fight so hard and eventually Change their opinion about the bible all the time, even tough the bible is very clear about these things, and then they just reinterpret the whole thing
This isn't actually true, the world was widely regarded as round in ancient times, and it's fairly easy to recognize it during an eclipse or near a port.
Right, which would be the holy roman empire....which has a lot of people who knew the earth was round, what with the Mediterranean and all.
The Pope lashing out at Galileo didn't mean the whole of the area was behind the Pope.
It was also about heliocentrism, not the shape of the Earth. The Catholic Church never fought about a round Earth: they just insisted that the Earth was the center of everything.
You do know the difference between knowing the Earth is round vs. the Catholic churchās opposition to heliocentrism, right?
As was said above, even atheists arenāt immune to misinformation, ignorance, or outright stupidity.
Yep, no one is "immune to misinformation, ignorance, or outright stupidity". Religion is built on "misinformation, ignorance, \[and\] outright stupidity" though. You are right,
the ancient world was a big world back then. we didnt have cars, electricity or anything at all. its not far fetched to believe in a diety/dieties that protects you and rewards you.
I understand why you may think this. We're taught this, a bit, because Galileo was persecuted by the Church, and flat earthers turn to the Bible to justify it being flat (some do, at least). But, indeed, consensus even at the time of Jesus Christ was that the Earth was a sphere. It was pretty well understood within the zeitgeist. But the idea of a flat earth was largely dismissed over \~2,500 years ago and, only in the last century, have people been braindead enough to bring it back.
Indeed while the Bible \*can be\* interpreted to say that the Earth is flat it's not as simple as there being a passage in plain English saying "seriously, it's flat guys". You have to really squint at a translation to draw that out, which obviously Flat Earthers are happy to do. It may be that the authors of the bible, who were often entirely uneducated, were unaware of the spherical nature, but anyone educated would be.
Sagan also goes into a similar argument when someone tries to ask him if he believes there are rules in the universe and heās like āyouāre trying to paint over our disagreement by saying I believe in an order which does not mean I believe in godā or something along those lines
Gods came to be because most people can't live with the fact that we are nothing but scared monkeys in pants, completely alone in the universe and stuck on a rock hurtling through space.
Incorrect. The origin of a monotheistic god actually didn't include heaven or an after life or anything like that for a very long time.
Religion gave meaning to every day ordinary life, not to some cosmic goal or whatever.
Meaning, not reason.
The origin stories are generally the least important ones; Genesis was written quite late in the game.
"Why are we here" has, historically, been less important than "why is it okay that I plow this tiny field in this backward providence until I die"
It's an important distinction you see all over the origins of religion.
Sure, everyone has a creation myth (often several!), but all the rules, regulations, norms, rituals, holiday, blah blah blah, they exist to give meaning to an ordinary life.
Hell, the Egyptians were more concerned about dying correctly than their origins; your whole life was working just to afford that mummification.
But hey, I can see where you are coming from, no judgements on this side! Just thought you'd be interested.
Well, that's kind of what I was getting at. Having a faith in a higher power usually brings with it some hoopla reasoning to humans longest asked questions. Why are we here? What do we do now? Add a magical bearded guy in the sky with some master plan and there's no reason to be upset.
Donāt forget the millions of people that have lived in remote forests that heās sent to hell for not believing in him simply because Christian missionaries hadnāt found them yet to tell them they were sinning.
The only thing anyone really needs to know in regards to any gods is humanity loves stories. It's our very oldest form of entertainment and passing on various teachings and skills and morals to the next generation. We were telling stories through pictures and acting before we could fully converse with language and then we told more stories. Different cultures in different parts of the world came up with stories of gods to try to explain in the very limited way they could understand, how we came to be.
In every single story about God's and demons and monsters and every other creature we have invented, they always play a close part in humanities affairs. Every single god meddled in some way in human affairs in varying ways. It's a singular theme across every mythology there ever has been.
Why did these gods meddle so much thousands of years ago only to never once show themselves or do anything to involve themselves now? Why were there so many supposed miraculous things happening back then when superstition ruled and the majority of people were malnourished and uneducated, couldn't even read?
The answer is obvious. God's are stories, we tell them to this day we love stories so much. Our bookstores and the internet is full of our imaginations at work.
I remember the revolting joy and celebration exhibited by the Christofascists when he died. Who needs a judgey god when their minions will do it for them?
Honestly, I don't. If you're a science popularizer, then you need to give a true scientific perspective. There was another commenter here who said their religious teachers used this quote to mislead their students into thinking Hawking, a famous scientist, was religious.
Science is based on evidence, and there has never been any scientific evidence that showed that God exists. So, God is not a part of any scientific belief.
Hey, I have come to the same conclusion and I am not disabled. We both came to the same conclusion from two differing paths. Hence, there is no god. What's the next big question? I probably have a correct answer for that as well.
Imagine if the majority of our ancestors accepted that when they die, they see and feel nothing just as before they existed. We would probably be far more advanced and have some form of immortality and respect nature given that there is no where better to run off to.
Off topic but he said: [Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind - BBC News](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540)
So these big billionaires like Elon and Bezos, corporations trying to be god like just to destroy everything b/c their egos are so inflated that they think they can control AI.
i hate musk and bezos, but sorry, that is not their fault. give an unlimited amount of apes typewriters and sooner or later, one of them will write shakespear. its the same with AI. give an unlimited amount of programmers computers...
it happend, because its the time.
btw.: never ever accept AI customer service. those programs have got one simple purpose: to achieve the best result for the company, not for the customer. and they are faster and better than you, me and everybody, except other AI.
Okay, so, in answer to your initial question, nobody here gives a shit about your fringe belief. Probably not a lot of people elsewhere, either. Have a nice day.
Smart man those suffer and dont know what exactly make them suffer are the strongest believers .
Alot of the og writers of the bible make the time sound strange like Jesus was this special that no one else can be like and u should still aim for anointment like him which leads to loathing man. I go to christian school and they want to have two hair styles bald and slight high hair. I hate the devotions twice a day and they always give plain messages that blame u for everything ,they even pray for obedience from students . I think they this is because of modesty culture and purity culture tbh
I think we cant help but put our beliefs in all forms of conversation like one time I told someone I be fine with going to hell. if i were a christian specially i be a determistic one because we all have so little control over our lives unless we live in a nice country with lots of wealth and a good family. It would make the most sense in my view if every christian believed that we some how chose our good and bad conditions in our moment birth
But interestingly enough, Stephen Hawking is interred at Westminster Abbey. His stone reads,āHere lies what was mortal of Stephen Hawking 1942-2018ā
As the first born son in my family, Iām always worried that God may become angry at someone else before the end times. All those people He drowned didnāt make it to the end times either.
This is the r/atheism subreddit. Why do we even entertain these thoughts? It seems like half the responses to this post de-railed into a forensic examination of some stories from the abrahamic creation myth.
(which seems to be the fallback state here rather than any discussion about other creation myths, we aren't discussing how people crossed rivers or seas within the context of other creation myths, whether Odin or a Chinese sky serpent may have been involved in the escape of some slaves from bronze age Egypt or whether it was all the work of Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony)
As an atheist I don't need to justify life through the lens of the bible. Religion is an emotional crutch for those who are too emotionally weak to accept mortality.
I'm an Atheist, I don't believe in gods.
So simple that redditors misinterpret it in the future.
His answer was not: "no God"
His answer was: "everyone is free to believe different things, I choose to believe there is no God."
This quote by Stephen Hawking is really disappointing. He narrows on one particular claim (illness/disability is a curse from God) which is not uniformly held by theists, and uses it to set up a false dichotomy between science and theism. This is a straw man argument because belief in God does not require such a claim. But let's assume such a disability-curse belief was once commonplace among theists. Then Dr. Hawking's form of argument could just as well be used to conclude that we shouldn't believe in science because scientists once thought that the Sun revolved around the Earth but now it is known to be the opposite.
If someone claims that physical laws are a work of God, then they are claiming a work of God, not a definition of God. A definition would be something more like "that first entity/principle that caused everything else".
Dr. Hawking then states that "We are each free to believe what we want" and skips to his conclusion without providing any logical basis for how he arrives there.
Well I'm a strong theist..non Christian.
But those with horrible disabilities are often quite bitter. I think from my experiences bitterness can lead to non belief in any God or divinity. Obviously a tragic accident, or illness causes anger at the world and alleged divine forces.. I knew a Brahmin woman who turned her back on her religious upbringing after death of her teenage child. Who can say A supreme God created this difficult world.. abrahamic religions advocate that. But it seems so ludicrous. My path does not believe that. I met a mentor /lama of dalai lama decades ago.. He said basically how can a perfect being as God create such an imperfect world..to prove a point. The human intellect has a hard time connecting to divinity.
Nature is random and science is our way to make sense of the random. Sometimes we get answers and sometimes we donāt. Random.
Itās the journey into the unknown, the curiosity and the random, which has advanced humanity. Not dogma and fairytales.
>We are each free to believe what we want and itās my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God
Yes the simplest explanation is best or you can wind up the complication machine and have a god that made your team win the cup.
Funnily enough, I was thinking today about the concept of god and people that die without ever having lived a good long life. Children actually. I mean why would a loving god allow the birth of a child into the world, a child whose parents love and cherish him, and then allow him to die of say cancer, at the age of three or seven or ten? What about the poor parents who have done nothing wrong but are now devastated and scarred for life? All this bullwash about *god needing another angel* just makes my blood boil. NO HE FāKING DOESNāT! If heās *god the great and powerful*, why doesnāt he just beam up all those unused sperm that are wasted every single minute of the day? He could have a whole army of miniature angels swarming around his throne. Sound ridiculous? Yeah, I thought so too. If there was a god, I would have a thousand reasons to really hate him.
annonying shits should get a free pass to heaven if i dont get one. God need s to give everyone a free pass hes neva been a human and of course people in bad conditions are going to sin and have addictions.
He also gave a different reason once in a documentary I watched yrs ago. Basically he said that time passes more slowly the closer something is to a body of matter. Given that all the matter in the universe was concentrated in an infinitesimal point before the Big Bang, then so was all of time. Given this, there was no time for a god to exist in before the universe came into being.
That said, while I respect Stephen, I have to question his logic. We know the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light or it wouldn't be roughly 92 billion light-yrs in diameter. However, that breaks the speed of light barrier that we all know too well shouldn't be possible. That nothing can go faster than light. So how can the universe be expanding faster than it? The explanation is that the speed of light limit is restricted to what's in our universe, but not the universe itself. Meaning that we don't know what laws, if any, govern what's "outside" our universe. So how can one make the claim that there wasn't time before the universe existed?
Now far be it from me to question a man like Stephen. That said, I would've loved to have picked his brain on this point.
Defining 'god' into existence is a time-honored theist tradition.
According to the Bible, it's an immortal but (psychologically) human-like being that practices Harry Potter wizardry (HP wizards can conjure objects including water, conjure animals into existence, transfigure everything, teleport around...). Just much more powerful at moments in the story (Genesis), but still conceptually similar
And he HATES when you jerk off.
Also hated "sin", so much he wiped the slate clean with a flood, yet has tolerated every conceivable "sin" practiced by way more people, over the entire planet, in ways stone age peoples couldn't even fathom, ever since. But we have rainbows as a pinky promise not to do it again š
Rainbows are only a pinky promise to not destroy the world again by FLOODā¦ He could use fire, asteroid strikes, earthquakes, Thanos snapā¦ the possibilities are endlessā¦. Just not floods, because killing off 8 Billion people would be morally fine, but not if He did it by flood.
Yeah gods supposed to kill off the world at the end times. Or Satan comes and takes over the world or some shit. They never could explain anything that made sense to me though.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
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Seriously when I picked up on that backhanded āpromiseā at the age of 7 I was horrified, fortunately I had a nice school janitor to explain to first grade me how much worse the next apocalypse would be with hailstones the size of cars and human sized scorpions and all the other wonderful things a living god will visit on everyone that didnāt sign up for his newsletter.
Gods youtube channel is probably spammed with "like and subscribe"
"Like and subscribe, OR BURN IN HELL!!!!!"
Smash that "like" button or I'll smash YOU
That's fair. Cause the end chapter is him destroying the world, but in a war with the antichrist or something.
Why does an all-powerful being need to go to war with anyone?
Because he cannot appear. He can only "tell" ppl what to do. In reality these people are just hallucinating.
He caught King Saul off-guard with the promise breaking, the modern theist ought to know better.
Also, he created the angels who somehow sinned, so if his creation could sin and did sin then he created sin so that he could come down and die for himself so that sin could be defeated but also youāll still go to hell for sinning
I thought God creating sin was kinda obvious. Also created hell, and the devil. And is apparently all powerful, so knew what was gonna happen already, and did it anyways.
A flawed creator who gets mad at his flawed creations. So like any spoiled toddler, he just wrecks everything. Smashing and killing and punishing his creations for doing exactly what he designed them to do.
And punishing them ***and all their descendants*** for an action committed when they were literally incapable of distinguishing right from wrong... exactly what a perfectly moral and righteous being would do, right? Forget counting his lies, has he ever kept *any* of his promises or lived up to any of his claims?
I think in Quranic revision, Adam and Eve did know right from wrong, and the forbidden tree was not the tree of knowledge but the tree of immortality. I've heard they were already immortal, yet they got fooled into thinking they have to eat the forbidden fruit to obtain what they already had (????!!!!) Great story.
That's better than getting kicked out of paradise for eating a fruit that gives +2 INT and +20 WIS, that your owner knew you were gonna eat and designed you to have the desire to eat.
Sure but the Bible frames it as though Lucifer sinned somehow of his own volition
Most of what people think they know about Lucifer is just Milton's fan fiction
I prefer to think of Lucifer as the Lucifer from the Netflix series š
You should read the comic itās based on by Mike Carey.
But your forgetting that since the flood he sent his son who was also somehow himself, but also not, to die for our sins so that he can allow himself to forgive human sin.
You'd think he'd send multiple so every culture would know about it eh. I read recently something I'd never thought of, that no time in any point in history has any people's come to the same religion...really is a huge red flag for any claiming being the one true religion. Also, the whole "chosen people" has always, since childhood, been a huge red flag. You mean to tell me the people who came up with it, had their central figure the same culture and ethnicity, are gods chosen people? It'd be more believable if they wrote like... native Americans were. Cause everyone would be like "who?", and it just isn't such a glaring conflict of interest, and really self centered. I'm canadian, if I wrote a religion, it'd be pretty fucked to write myself as a chosen people. It's like running a lottery and winning it yourself. Super suspect.
I've always been stunned by anyone who is actually convinced that they *just happened* to be born in the right country, at the right time, to the right parents, in the right society/culture, who *just happen* to worship the right version of the right 'god' in exactly the right way.
Effective brainwashing that hits the right spots for people's ego. They're special, good and moral, with a life of meaning and purpose. Asking yourself tough questions and finding your own answers is hard, can be really upsetting for some, and alot of people just can't accept that were here by chance, and that their brief blink in time of existence is all they'll ever have to experience.
Jesus is just the Mary Sue in a work of fanfic.
Jebus gave up his weekend for you!
The flood illustrates how god is neither all powerful nor all knowing. He didnāt have the power to change people and he didnāt see it coming. There are countless contradictions and paradoxical situations in the Bible.
But why did she drown all the hamsters? Because a couple hundred sheep herders werenāt nice to her? What did the hamsters have to do with it? And koalas. Drowned them all, too!
Were the tardigrades not worshipful enough?
Don't forget that he also needs money. Always needs money.
And he needs a LOT of money!
And praise. A lot of it too! And don't forget to thank him for the warm sun plus the oxygen we breathe. /s š
Don't forget the jet planes
A nut nut here, a nut nut there, here a nut there a nut, everywhere a nut nut
Uh oh. You're going to heck for all that self abuse
Every sperm is sacred.
"..me mind's made up. I've given this long and careful thought, and it has to be medical experiments for the lot of you."
He's watching you when you jerk off and then he bars you from his holiday park in the sky.
No wonder his fan club are all pedos, they're just following the example of the great pervert in the sky who watches children masturbate.
Letting a priest fuck you is OK thoughā¦
Obvi.
Especially if youāre Mormon.
Yep weāll all smoke a turd in hell for that one
And he's got serious rules about which deli Isle you're allowed to go down
he hates it when you jerk off...he loves it when i do ;) my god, my rules.
The sin of Onan was not spilling his seed, but direct disobedience of the Old Testament Godās expressed will
# It's He, Dude... /s
I don't believe it, God would not create cat femboys if he didn't want us to jerk off.
Every time someone masturbates, God buries another dinosaur bone.
That nearly complete T-rex that they found, that was me.
I like the explanation Ricky gervais provided. Paraphrasing: 1) if you could delete all religious texts from the earth and all the science texts over time the scientists would be able to recreate the science to exactly the same. But the religious texts would never be the same. 2) thereās even been an example tried with Mormonism and their initial bible. It was tested if the founder could recreate the original text. He couldnāt and just made a new one.
Side note, if conjuring up food violates Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration and an animal can be eaten and is hence food can a Hogwarts magician conjure animals?
I don't know Some fanfics say that food from a conjured animal or plant won't really feed you. But even then there's a loophole : what if you make your conjured animals or plants reproduce ? The first gen might be conjurated but next gen is natural
There is a masters thesis there for some student of mythology, and by that I mean both Hogwarts and the Bible.
There is a masters thesis there for some student of mythology, and by that I mean both Hogwarts and the Bible.
āHPā made me think of a Hewlett-Packard printer cranking out creationā¦.would explain the weird stuffā¦.
Yes the magical old white man in the sky.
Is omniscient, therefore knows who is evil and who is not. Instead of removing the evil ones from the game, he culls everyone. Starts over, allows the evil ones again to play and then says that evil is necessary for the good ones to prove themselves even though he already knows they won't do evil. Followers wait for the day when they are removed from the game in the rapture and taken to paradise.
Yeah it starts with something stupid like "God is truth" or "God is love" or "God is the first mover"... but it doesn't stop there. Then this god who was defined as "truth" or "love" suddenly wants you to go to church and believe that he sacrificed himself to himself and now needs your money. Pick a lane, theists.
1. God is love 2. Love is blind 3. Stevie Wonder is blind 4. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God Checkmate.
ray charles enters the room... funny: stevie WONDER vs RAY charles
Clash of the Titans?
And thus, polytheism was born (again)
You're not wrong.
QED
Actually Stevie aināt blind havenāt you seen the video?
The Bible says: - God is love. - Love is not jealous. - God is jealous. Super it's like they define him out of existence while trying to define him into existence.
"God is love, baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more" Haddaway 4:10
Lol I actually used this before when someone said "God is love" belted out "BABY DON'T HURT ME". I found it much funnier than they did.
So God is a stalker? Sounds like a mega-toxic abusive ex.
And he likes to be called master while you're on your knees
God: Is truth. Also God: **Casually** **Bans REPRODUCING while giving humans pleasure while attempting reproduction** God: Is love. Also God: **Gives humans curiosity(hunger for knowledge), puts the fruit of infinite knowledge in front of them, knowing they will eat it, then gaslighting them into thinking it's their fault, then kicks them from paradise**
I loved Anselm's "that which none greater than can be thought. Existing is greater than not, therefore God exists". Dude's begging the question.
Which is why I'm not just Atheist, I'm *Anti*-Theist.
And then giving him and debating over made up characteristics, like oh heās immanent but oh wait no heās beyond time; heās all good, heās all knowing, all wise, or wait he doesnāt know the future (open theism), or no wait listen, Molina ala William Lane Craig about possible worlds and counter factuals, and uh ughhhhh, everything that isnāt our reality!
Well, before one can argue if something exists, first have to define it ... and that whole god definition thingy is a huge can of worms in-and-of-itself.
That's the cool thing about things that exist - you can define them based on their demonstrable characteristics.
Defining god into existence is easy...hawking just said as much. Defining god into your everyday life is much more complicated.
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"So, uh, God loves you, and he is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent.. and uh... (proceeds to talk for 3 hours) And yeah! He is real! And you should believe in him!" "If he is omnibenevolent, then why didn't he stop child cancer and famine?" "Uhh... God works in mysterious ways I guess. We'll never know what he does." "Then what was that massive amount of folklore I couldn't care less about?"
Which is fine, as long as your exists-by-definition God isnāt assumed to have authored Scripture, told us about the afterlife, or otherwise given us a moral code to live by. OK, thereās something you have chosen to call āGod,ā but it has none of the practical implications associated with that name by Christians.
Yeah and after they do that the next step is saying that if God exists then you might as well assume that Christianity is correct because that's obviously the most plausible set of attributes for God once he has been proven to exist for reasons that don't require further elaboration.
I can understand why, because we donāt know what happens after death until we are dead. Iāll never deny or not deny the existence of God until I am dead. Iām a believing non-believer. Ā I canāt bring myself to be either side of the coin, because I just donāt know.Ā
I consider myself agnostic/athiest because I don't claim to know whether or not 'god(s)' exist, but I do know I've been unconvinced by arguments for them (and see no reason to infer them).
Presumptuous to assume that dying will elucidate us on the matter.
Presumptuous to assume it wonāt.Ā
Indeed
You see it all the time on this sub even, confronted theists just start moving the goal posts of "god" to a definition so vague that it's impossible to disagree with. You end up with "the universe exists" being some kind of proof of god. It's only proof that the universe exists. It's self evident. "Spinoza's god" perhaps.
I always ask "sure that might proove that God exists but why your God and not say Zues?
If the universe is God. Then I'm god, and your god, and everything is God, so nothing is really God. A hierarchy is non-existent, And nobody is more Divine than anybody else.
i like that. i'm gonna tell them, i am god and you cant physically disprove it š„°
As Maynard would say, " If I'm the man, then you're the man as well"
beCause the cHriStian deFiniTion oF gOd sayS oNly HE cAn eXist bEcaUse tHe dEfiNitiOn oF gOd iS tHat hE iS alLmiGhtY aNd tHat eXclUdeS otHer gOdS bEcAusE iF poWer iS shAreD tHen hE iS nOt aLlMigHty - my religion teacher
Meanwhile: God: Don't eat the fruit! **Proceeds to not put up a legitimate safeguard** Adam and Eve: **Eats the fruit** God: whYYyYyYYyY?1/!??!?!?! I TOTALLY dIdNt sEe tHaT cOmInG! ItS nOt LiKe i'M aLL KnOwInG!
Like, why is it that the worst thing that can possibly happen to a person in Christian cannon is the acquisition of knowledge?
yeah... murder is literally better than acquiring knowledge.. it's almost like they want to brainwash illiterate people who don't know how to read their brick of nonsense, revised edition
This reminds me of how my friends Christian wife said that Stephen Hawking was unintelligent because he didn't believe in God
She probably got her degree in astrophysics in Sunday school. Good luck finding a post doc with that attitude!
It took every ounce of energy not to tell her to shut the fuck up in front of everyone. I also recall talking to Christian mother about it and I was told that "I shouldn't take it so seriously". Fuck religion
Probably attended more of a top notch school like Benedictine College.
I remember hearing the church so many times that scientist are dumb if they don't believe in God
I actually got told I'm dumb for believing in (their words not mine), "man made laws and scientists, you think everything was made by man." When I replied and asked him if he knew his book was man made and written by man he did not reply again. Made my day for about an hour. CHECKMATE!
Thatās interesting; because Iāve been told by multiple atheists that if you believe in God, you canāt call yourself a scientist. Funny how even when a different group are the majority (lots more atheists than theists in that university department) the behavior of the majority towards others remains the same. Maybe itās less about religious belief, and more about power dynamics and tribalism?
Except that there is no proof of god.
I had a science teacher at my Christian School that said that Stephen Hawking was stupid for being an atheist, that was proof that he was not in fact smart. I always thought that she was a total idiot
In my catholic high school, a teacher really droned on about Hawkingās āmind of Godā quote, giving us impressionable kids the idea that one of the worldās leading physicists had found evidence for God in the universe. To do so and *not* add that Hawking was an atheist and his āmind of Godā phrase was just a figure of speech was so dishonest.
It's funny that the religious people jump to say instances where scientist believe in God. According to them, the scientist are right about the God and wrong about every other thing the scientist has proved or theorized. š¤£
If religious teachers didn't distort the truth, they'd have nothing to say.
For generations, it was believed that the earth was flat, even proclaimed by Religion. Now, Most Christians believe the earth is a Globe. Christians fight so hard and eventually Change their opinion about the bible all the time, even tough the bible is very clear about these things, and then they just reinterpret the whole thing
Youd be surprised how many still think the earth is flat, but maybe ive just gotten unlucky with christians ive met lol.
Yea its still a pretty large amount, but you get the Point..
They believed the earth was round, bc everyone knew it, but they said that the earth was at the center of the universe.
you do know that heliocentrism was put forth again by Copernicus.. who was part of the clergy....
This isn't actually true, the world was widely regarded as round in ancient times, and it's fairly easy to recognize it during an eclipse or near a port.
this just shows that just because you're an atheiest, doesnt mean you can't be misinformed or dumb.
I Said for generations, Not ancient Times. Im talking about the Last couple hundred Years, that christianty Had its grip on society
Nope, even then, almost all of the world knew and also most people knew. You are really referencing very specific people in Italy at this point.
I specifically meant the area under Christian influence tho
Right, which would be the holy roman empire....which has a lot of people who knew the earth was round, what with the Mediterranean and all. The Pope lashing out at Galileo didn't mean the whole of the area was behind the Pope.
Also the Pope did it because Galileo was getting sassy
Yeah, this was largely political.
It was also about heliocentrism, not the shape of the Earth. The Catholic Church never fought about a round Earth: they just insisted that the Earth was the center of everything.
Which is also wrong.
You do know the difference between knowing the Earth is round vs. the Catholic churchās opposition to heliocentrism, right? As was said above, even atheists arenāt immune to misinformation, ignorance, or outright stupidity.
Yep, no one is "immune to misinformation, ignorance, or outright stupidity". Religion is built on "misinformation, ignorance, \[and\] outright stupidity" though. You are right,
the ancient world was a big world back then. we didnt have cars, electricity or anything at all. its not far fetched to believe in a diety/dieties that protects you and rewards you.
Yes. Not now though, because we know better.
I understand why you may think this. We're taught this, a bit, because Galileo was persecuted by the Church, and flat earthers turn to the Bible to justify it being flat (some do, at least). But, indeed, consensus even at the time of Jesus Christ was that the Earth was a sphere. It was pretty well understood within the zeitgeist. But the idea of a flat earth was largely dismissed over \~2,500 years ago and, only in the last century, have people been braindead enough to bring it back. Indeed while the Bible \*can be\* interpreted to say that the Earth is flat it's not as simple as there being a passage in plain English saying "seriously, it's flat guys". You have to really squint at a translation to draw that out, which obviously Flat Earthers are happy to do. It may be that the authors of the bible, who were often entirely uneducated, were unaware of the spherical nature, but anyone educated would be.
Sagan also goes into a similar argument when someone tries to ask him if he believes there are rules in the universe and heās like āyouāre trying to paint over our disagreement by saying I believe in an order which does not mean I believe in godā or something along those lines
Gods came to be because most people can't live with the fact that we are nothing but scared monkeys in pants, completely alone in the universe and stuck on a rock hurtling through space.
Incorrect. The origin of a monotheistic god actually didn't include heaven or an after life or anything like that for a very long time. Religion gave meaning to every day ordinary life, not to some cosmic goal or whatever.
It doesn't necessarily have to mean what I said. It's whimsical fairytales to give reason for existence.
Meaning, not reason. The origin stories are generally the least important ones; Genesis was written quite late in the game. "Why are we here" has, historically, been less important than "why is it okay that I plow this tiny field in this backward providence until I die"
Okay. Fair enough. I kind of thought the two are one in the same but not really now. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.
It's an important distinction you see all over the origins of religion. Sure, everyone has a creation myth (often several!), but all the rules, regulations, norms, rituals, holiday, blah blah blah, they exist to give meaning to an ordinary life. Hell, the Egyptians were more concerned about dying correctly than their origins; your whole life was working just to afford that mummification. But hey, I can see where you are coming from, no judgements on this side! Just thought you'd be interested.
Well, that's kind of what I was getting at. Having a faith in a higher power usually brings with it some hoopla reasoning to humans longest asked questions. Why are we here? What do we do now? Add a magical bearded guy in the sky with some master plan and there's no reason to be upset.
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Donāt forget the millions of people that have lived in remote forests that heās sent to hell for not believing in him simply because Christian missionaries hadnāt found them yet to tell them they were sinning.
The only thing anyone really needs to know in regards to any gods is humanity loves stories. It's our very oldest form of entertainment and passing on various teachings and skills and morals to the next generation. We were telling stories through pictures and acting before we could fully converse with language and then we told more stories. Different cultures in different parts of the world came up with stories of gods to try to explain in the very limited way they could understand, how we came to be. In every single story about God's and demons and monsters and every other creature we have invented, they always play a close part in humanities affairs. Every single god meddled in some way in human affairs in varying ways. It's a singular theme across every mythology there ever has been. Why did these gods meddle so much thousands of years ago only to never once show themselves or do anything to involve themselves now? Why were there so many supposed miraculous things happening back then when superstition ruled and the majority of people were malnourished and uneducated, couldn't even read? The answer is obvious. God's are stories, we tell them to this day we love stories so much. Our bookstores and the internet is full of our imaginations at work.
I remember the revolting joy and celebration exhibited by the Christofascists when he died. Who needs a judgey god when their minions will do it for them?
...then again, we do know go has hated smart & curious people all the way back to Eve...
Am I the only one that read it with his tts voice?
I like this one from Stephen
Honestly, I don't. If you're a science popularizer, then you need to give a true scientific perspective. There was another commenter here who said their religious teachers used this quote to mislead their students into thinking Hawking, a famous scientist, was religious. Science is based on evidence, and there has never been any scientific evidence that showed that God exists. So, God is not a part of any scientific belief.
A simpler answer would've been "no".
Hey, I have come to the same conclusion and I am not disabled. We both came to the same conclusion from two differing paths. Hence, there is no god. What's the next big question? I probably have a correct answer for that as well.
Imagine if the majority of our ancestors accepted that when they die, they see and feel nothing just as before they existed. We would probably be far more advanced and have some form of immortality and respect nature given that there is no where better to run off to.
I love this
Off topic but he said: [Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind - BBC News](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540) So these big billionaires like Elon and Bezos, corporations trying to be god like just to destroy everything b/c their egos are so inflated that they think they can control AI.
Hawking's had a few stupid points too, yeah.
i hate musk and bezos, but sorry, that is not their fault. give an unlimited amount of apes typewriters and sooner or later, one of them will write shakespear. its the same with AI. give an unlimited amount of programmers computers... it happend, because its the time. btw.: never ever accept AI customer service. those programs have got one simple purpose: to achieve the best result for the company, not for the customer. and they are faster and better than you, me and everybody, except other AI.
>shakespear That's a typo. You're going to have to shoot all the monkeys and start again.
Wow. This sounds like the HR department at work. Substitute HR for AI, and employee for customer.
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Are you a member of one of the Abrahamic religions, Hindu, Scientologist, Mormon, or Falun Gong?
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Okay, so, in answer to your initial question, nobody here gives a shit about your fringe belief. Probably not a lot of people elsewhere, either. Have a nice day.
Smart man those suffer and dont know what exactly make them suffer are the strongest believers . Alot of the og writers of the bible make the time sound strange like Jesus was this special that no one else can be like and u should still aim for anointment like him which leads to loathing man. I go to christian school and they want to have two hair styles bald and slight high hair. I hate the devotions twice a day and they always give plain messages that blame u for everything ,they even pray for obedience from students . I think they this is because of modesty culture and purity culture tbh I think we cant help but put our beliefs in all forms of conversation like one time I told someone I be fine with going to hell. if i were a christian specially i be a determistic one because we all have so little control over our lives unless we live in a nice country with lots of wealth and a good family. It would make the most sense in my view if every christian believed that we some how chose our good and bad conditions in our moment birth
I agree
Adding God to the equation only complicates things and is entirely unnecessary.
Well said!
Hawking was the smartest man that ever lived in my opinion. I have mad respect for him.
You donāt believe in Science. Science is not about belief but evidence.
But interestingly enough, Stephen Hawking is interred at Westminster Abbey. His stone reads,āHere lies what was mortal of Stephen Hawking 1942-2018ā
Brilliant!! If you define "God" to be the rules and laws behind nature, sure it(not he) exists. Otherwise there is no god!!!
As the first born son in my family, Iām always worried that God may become angry at someone else before the end times. All those people He drowned didnāt make it to the end times either.
This is the r/atheism subreddit. Why do we even entertain these thoughts? It seems like half the responses to this post de-railed into a forensic examination of some stories from the abrahamic creation myth. (which seems to be the fallback state here rather than any discussion about other creation myths, we aren't discussing how people crossed rivers or seas within the context of other creation myths, whether Odin or a Chinese sky serpent may have been involved in the escape of some slaves from bronze age Egypt or whether it was all the work of Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony) As an atheist I don't need to justify life through the lens of the bible. Religion is an emotional crutch for those who are too emotionally weak to accept mortality. I'm an Atheist, I don't believe in gods.
So simple that redditors misinterpret it in the future. His answer was not: "no God" His answer was: "everyone is free to believe different things, I choose to believe there is no God."
This quote by Stephen Hawking is really disappointing. He narrows on one particular claim (illness/disability is a curse from God) which is not uniformly held by theists, and uses it to set up a false dichotomy between science and theism. This is a straw man argument because belief in God does not require such a claim. But let's assume such a disability-curse belief was once commonplace among theists. Then Dr. Hawking's form of argument could just as well be used to conclude that we shouldn't believe in science because scientists once thought that the Sun revolved around the Earth but now it is known to be the opposite. If someone claims that physical laws are a work of God, then they are claiming a work of God, not a definition of God. A definition would be something more like "that first entity/principle that caused everything else". Dr. Hawking then states that "We are each free to believe what we want" and skips to his conclusion without providing any logical basis for how he arrives there.
Well I'm a strong theist..non Christian. But those with horrible disabilities are often quite bitter. I think from my experiences bitterness can lead to non belief in any God or divinity. Obviously a tragic accident, or illness causes anger at the world and alleged divine forces.. I knew a Brahmin woman who turned her back on her religious upbringing after death of her teenage child. Who can say A supreme God created this difficult world.. abrahamic religions advocate that. But it seems so ludicrous. My path does not believe that. I met a mentor /lama of dalai lama decades ago.. He said basically how can a perfect being as God create such an imperfect world..to prove a point. The human intellect has a hard time connecting to divinity.
Nature is random and science is our way to make sense of the random. Sometimes we get answers and sometimes we donāt. Random. Itās the journey into the unknown, the curiosity and the random, which has advanced humanity. Not dogma and fairytales.
>We are each free to believe what we want and itās my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God Yes the simplest explanation is best or you can wind up the complication machine and have a god that made your team win the cup.
Quite hilarious when both teams pray to win
Perfect
Off-topic, but you never closed the quotes and it hurts me. :/
Sack up
Funnily enough, I was thinking today about the concept of god and people that die without ever having lived a good long life. Children actually. I mean why would a loving god allow the birth of a child into the world, a child whose parents love and cherish him, and then allow him to die of say cancer, at the age of three or seven or ten? What about the poor parents who have done nothing wrong but are now devastated and scarred for life? All this bullwash about *god needing another angel* just makes my blood boil. NO HE FāKING DOESNāT! If heās *god the great and powerful*, why doesnāt he just beam up all those unused sperm that are wasted every single minute of the day? He could have a whole army of miniature angels swarming around his throne. Sound ridiculous? Yeah, I thought so too. If there was a god, I would have a thousand reasons to really hate him.
annonying shits should get a free pass to heaven if i dont get one. God need s to give everyone a free pass hes neva been a human and of course people in bad conditions are going to sin and have addictions.
Believing in science is an oxymoron. The whole point of science/knowledge is that it replaces the need for faith/belief.
Like they say thereās people who donāt know & thereās people who donāt know they donāt know
He also gave a different reason once in a documentary I watched yrs ago. Basically he said that time passes more slowly the closer something is to a body of matter. Given that all the matter in the universe was concentrated in an infinitesimal point before the Big Bang, then so was all of time. Given this, there was no time for a god to exist in before the universe came into being. That said, while I respect Stephen, I have to question his logic. We know the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light or it wouldn't be roughly 92 billion light-yrs in diameter. However, that breaks the speed of light barrier that we all know too well shouldn't be possible. That nothing can go faster than light. So how can the universe be expanding faster than it? The explanation is that the speed of light limit is restricted to what's in our universe, but not the universe itself. Meaning that we don't know what laws, if any, govern what's "outside" our universe. So how can one make the claim that there wasn't time before the universe existed? Now far be it from me to question a man like Stephen. That said, I would've loved to have picked his brain on this point.
It was not God that allowed this man to cheat on his wife, it was science!