Current Events > This virus serves as a great example of how God couldn't...

(+) Yeah! (+)

"prove" his existence, even if he wanted to.

Think about it. Here we have a plethora of evidence that proves the existence of the virus, and all the damage it's capable of, but still a huge chunk of the population refuses to acknowledge it. As you can see, it's never about the proof. People only believe in what they want to believe. God could come down here in flesh and blood, and conduct the biggest light show the world has ever seen, and there will still be deniers. "Oh, it's just movie magic. Oh, they put something in our water so we hallucinate."

Basically, God can't be proven, in the sense that you can convince 100% of the world that he exists. Now think about it, if you were an omnipotent being, would you even bother trying to prove anything to these kinds of people? Why would you? Would you want to be friends with someone who was coerced into being your friend?

Food for thought.

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Someone who is omnipotent, by definition, would always be able to prove there existence to everyone. Kind of fits under the ol' "omnipotence" umbrella.

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Pogo_Marimo posted...

Someone who is omnipotent, by definition, would always be able to prove there existence to everyone. Kind of fits under the ol' "omnipotence" umbrella.

Ok then why do so many people not believe in god?

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i will succeed where god failed

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God has millions of worlds to oversee why would Earth be important to him

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If God were all powerful he could just plant the thought of the Truth in every single person's head. I don't think he would have to worry about people believing a "light show" they saw on Youtube.

Chicken posted...

Ok then why do so many people not believe in god?

Because he's not real.

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Most of the time God in media isn't even Omnipotent

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If God is All Knowing like the bible mentions, he could easily know what kind of proof each human would need to prove his existence and not use a fucking book that can be interpreted in bajillion different ways.

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I believe in God. I believe God does not wish to prove His existence and that it cannot be proven against His will. When dealing with someone wiser and more powerful than yourself, there's no way to prove God's existence against God's will.

That being said, if God appeared and started performing miracles, there would absolutely be atheists assuming it was aliens messing around with us. The supernatural cannot exist because it is unscientific. Therefore, anything seemingly supernatural must have a logical basis. By the same token, if there were a way to conclusively prove there was no God, there would still be religious people finding means of saying "But, but..."

People believe what they choose too.

In the case of the virus, some people choose to believe it's lab created or that it's a hoax. That's the version of the truth which is in line with what they want to believe. They want enemies they can identify be it Big Evil Government or Evil Foreign People. The latter is particularly ugly because those people want an excuse to view others with hostility.

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VideoboysaysCube posted...

Food for thought.

Incredibly fatting and shitty fastfood, sure.
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https://youtu.be/wxs1xoq7y2I?t=90
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God is a real prick if he does exist. He just sits and watches us suffer and does nothing about it.

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The Wheelman1 posted...

God is a real prick if he does exist. He just sits and watches us suffer and does nothing about it.

But how much of that suffering do we bring upon ourselves? As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.

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Saying if God should just plant the perfect thought in every person to believe in him is like saying God should stop humans from doing bad things and make them act perfectly.

What would be the point of that? Why would God create humans out of vanity?

TC brings up a good point though. Holy books claim this sort of thing all the time (people of a certain era were directly sent a messenger from God, but they still rejected the message). And people are literally rejecting the danger of Covid 19 right now. Not exactly the same thing, but it's pretty easy to see how people would reject God's message even if it was made plainly obvious to them.

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Many of the people that disbelieve scientific things even with proof are the ones that believe in God. People that believe in things with proof would accept God.

Then there are wackjobs that are in their own crazy bubble about almost everything. Everything is a conspiracy to them. Even your posts are a part of the conspiracy.
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VideoboysaysCube posted...

But how much of that suffering do we bring upon ourselves? As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.

But how many people with terminal cancer can God fix? How many severed spinal cords and broken necks can God fix? How many cases of ALS can God cure? The answer: all of them! How many actually get fixed? None! Not even the most fervent believers of any given religion receive what would be genuine miracles, and neither do heroes and moral paragons. If God knows all that can be known, then he can teach us to be better than we are. If God is all powerful, than he can in a single instant perform a gigantic miracle and erase whole classifications of human suffering that humans can't erase for themselves. Yet he does nothing. Either he doesn't exist, or he is a gigantic ass.

Did God make us? Then he has some responsibility for how we turn out. If he didn't make us, I still can't imagine what divine morality would have to look like for him to do nothing for us. It's no good passing the buck to humans in either case, though. For most of our history, humans lived a hand to mouth existence as hunters and gatherers, with no advanced science or technology. How could we have done better for ourselves? Electricity wasn't invented until 1879. Until around 1840, only the rich had indoor plumbing. Modern living--and all of the luxuries it offers, like time to think and widespread education--is incredible recent. Life sucked for most people for most of history, and even still, there have always been altruistic people working to make things right. Most people are in no position to do big things like stop wars or cure diseases or fix social problems.

How is humanity sucking the fault of the common people, or even the species itself? If God is all-knowing and all-powerful (or even anything close to such grandeur), what can it cost him to help us? Haven't you ever given money to a needy family or a homeless person in your community? An all-powerful, supposedly good God can't give even display something as simple as basic charity, to at least a chosen few?

FortuneCookie posted...

I believe in God. I believe God does not wish to prove His existence and that it cannot be proven against His will. When dealing with someone wiser and more powerful than yourself, there's no way to prove God's existence against God's will.

I don't have a problem with this initially (my idea of a God is a dude who was doing an experiment and just left us to our own accord), until you get to the bible where God wants people to actively praise and worship him or face sudden consequences (both living and the afterlife). If he doesn't want people to know his existence but still wants people to praise and worship him, that's an incredibly faulty premise that something as Omnipotent as God should see an absolute problem with.

FortuneCookie posted...

That being said, if God appeared and started performing miracles, there would absolutely be atheists assuming it was aliens messing around with us. The supernatural cannot exist because it is unscientific. Therefore, anything seemingly supernatural must have a logical basis. By the same token, if there were a way to conclusively prove there was no God, there would still be religious people finding means of saying "But, but..."

As I stated before, if God truly is Omnipotent, he should be able to know what kind of evidence would suffice for us to believe in him. Yes there is a possibility that there will still be non-believers (because there are those who ardently believe there is no God), but there are still many ex-Christians like me that are still open to the idea of a God, but the reason we reject the claim because there is no proof. You can't provide a claim that can't be falsified.

FortuneCookie posted...

In the case of the virus, some people choose to believe it's lab created or that it's a hoax. That's the version of the truth which is in line with what they want to believe. They want enemies they can identify be it Big Evil Government or Evil Foreign People. The latter is particularly ugly because those people want an excuse to view others with hostility.

I get what the TC was going for and you're right in that there is some similarities, but I still consider it an apples to oranges comparison because the Virus doesn't give a shit if you believe in it or not, and doesn't asked to be praised and worshipped like the Abrahamic God.

VideoboysaysCube posted...

But how much of that suffering do we bring upon ourselves? As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.

So I guess we are to blame for things like natural disasters like Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Tsunami, Tornadoes, etc... you know what people call a literal act of God.

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VideoboysaysCube posted...

Food for thought.

I'm famished actually.
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God doesn't exist, therefore he can't or couldn't do anything...NEXT!

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The empty tomb was there.

The historians didn't write that the tomb had a body.

The jews at the time who hated the christians at the time didn't say his body was there. They said it was stolen.

And yet, many did not believe.

Actually TC, youve shown the opposite of your point. The people who dont believe in the virus despite the proof are, by and large, the same people who believe in God with no proof whatsoever. They cover both ends. The people who dont believe in God probably consist much more of people who are aware of the severity of the pandemic, and would be much more likely to respond to proof.


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I don't think too many don't think COVID exists so much as think the impact of it is being grossly exaggerated out of fear and political ends.

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I find it funny that the group that doesnt believe it the virus is the same group that believes in god.

and you chose them as the focus for both points.

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I think everyone believes in God. It may not be outwardly expressed by some, but they do.

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EnterTheTekken posted...

I think everyone believes in God. It may not be outwardly expressed by some, but they do.

That is, frankly, an incredibly stupid thing to think; doubly so if you meant the Christian God specifically. Plenty of people have absolutely not one shred of belief in the supernatural.