I agree with all of this. For those interested, there's a book written by Richard Dawkins titled The God Delusion. It is a pretty fascinating read. I won't pretend that it isn't somewhat biased (Dawkins is an atheist) but he does at least try to keep his bias from popping up throughout the book. Reading that book confirmed to me that I am Agnostic, I had thought so for some time but that book made me certain I was.
It looks like it may be some type of intro to the book. I'm really not sure though, I've never seen it until now. I just watched the first few minutes of the video and it seems like it'll talk about some of the same stuff. I would watch the video, or most of it. Then you could get an idea about whether or not you'd like to read the book as well. I'm sure he goes more in-depth in the book than he does in this video. Thanks for the video though! Once I get a little free time I'll probably watch the whole thing.
I'm a huge Dawkins fan. I have been an atheist since I was around 13 or 14 and reading his book was an instrumental step towards becoming self-confident enough to share my sincere thoughts about religion openly and honestly.
Sadly, Richard Dawkins was one of the most miserable, misanthropic human beings known to man. I have heard accounts of this from people who either directly or indirectly him. He took his hopelessness to the grave with him. Faith in God is a completely rational, sane idea. You can take the most ancient remnant of civilization and find evidence of faith in God. Now much of the time, in various cultures, this manifested itself in paganism or faith in many "gods" (lowercase 'g'). In reality, there is only one God, one Creator of everything that exists apart from Himself. (Religious pluralism contradicts itself.) Not only this, but more to the point, God is relevant to us because we are made in his image. We are not just some ugly mess consigned to some crummy, pitiful, meaningless existence. We suffer because we walked away from Him and caused sin to enter in and corrupt everything. All the suffering in the world is a consequence either directly or indirectly of sin, either our own, or the sin the world. But God had a plan from the beginning to rescue us, and this work was completed 2000 years ago when He send His son into this world to be born into a poor Jewish family, live the perfect life none of us has been able to live, die for our sin, and then be raised from the dead to give us hope for ourselves beyond the grave. To me, it takes more "blind faith" to believe that everything seen -- including our own bodies, the Earth, sky, solar system etc. -- and unseen (e.g. the mind, heart, spirit, soul of man) came from absolutely nothing, was just "always there", or somehow "spontaneously generated" from absolutely nothing with no higher power / Creator behind it.
Excuse for what? What are George Carlin's "answers" and "argument"? For him to say anything critical about Jesus or anybody who believes in him is pretty much a joke. For him to equate any of his own delusions or ideas to Jesus is laughable. There is nobody on Jesus' level, nobody close at all. (For football fans, it would be like comparing Vernon Gholston to Jerry Rice, to say you put your trust in what George Carlin has to say versus what Jesus says.) There were eyewitnesses -- Jews and non-Jews alike -- who testified to the miracles he performed. He walked on water, healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, raised the dead. You can disbelieve (which is probably the natural inclination of most men until you have actually experienced what He is like), mock or scoff if you want, but all you really accomplish by that is to risk hardening your heart even more. If God doesn't exist, nothing matters. Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. If nothing matters, being a militant atheist is ridiculous and a complete waste of time. If a Christian turns out to be wrong, he hasn't really lost anything. If he has really followed Jesus (which isn't easy, but God makes it possible), he has lived a life of self-sacrifice, of caring for others, of not cheating, stealing, hating, murdering. If God doesn't exist, he hasn't really lost anything because we are all just going back to dust anyway. But if you are an atheist and you are wrong, you are in big trouble.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, 4-bags make a home run. Holy Mary, mother of God, chase the chickens outta the yard. Our Father, full of grace, the Russians are in 2nd place. Respectfully yours,
Religion and the particular concept of an omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (all-good) God, has been used for centuries upon centuries by humanity to explain the unknown and seemingly inexplicable. Don't know where lightning comes from? No problem, God did it! Don't understand why some people get diseases while others don't? It's simple, God punishes some of us some of the time, for a variety of reasons, and more generally, works in mysterious ways. etc. etc. As we attain more and more scientific insight into the physical laws which govern our natural universe (i.e. We now have things like atmospheric thermodynamics and the human genome project to shed light on my two aforementioned examples of historical human ignorance), the need for an all-powerful, all-knowing, mysterious, spooky creator becomes less and less pressing. This same concept transcends scientific knowledge about the natural world and applies to moral and philosophical axioms, as well. (In the context of George Carlin's spiel, he was making a point about human rights) You are entitled to believe anything you want about a man who (supposedly) existed over 2,000 years ago. You couldn't be more wrong: If God doesn't exist, EVERYTHING MATTERS. If God doesn't exist and there is no afterlife, then this is the only crack at a conscious existence that we get. Our life is the ONLY life. We aren't all going to live in paradise for all of eternity as long as we are good. This is it. Therefore, we really SHOULD do everything we can to optimize this world as much as possible for as many people as we possibly can. After all, this is the only chance we get. So, in point fact, if there is no God and no afterlife, then everything we do on every second of every day that we exist matters that much more. This may be true, but has no bearing on whether or not there actually is a God.
Seems to me the Christian is in the same world of trouble as the atheist if he choose the wrong God. You do realize that is a possibility, right? but you probably got it right ... no worries.
Dawkins is an insecure boy who thinks screaming is the equivalent of a sound argument. I've tried reading his work and found he doesn't even understand his own arguments. as an atheist that believes in evolution, and thus would have to believe in our psychological evolution as well, the belief in God, at worst, could only be an evolutionary adaptation, much like jealousy or any other psychological process, that provides or provided some function. But Dawkins doesn't carry his beliefs logically into this realm, instead preferring to rant and rave about anyone who would believe in such. If I recall he equates the belief to a disease that is destructive to mankind, but that ignores that if not true the widespread psychological dependence on the belief throughout human history can only indicate that people did and continue to believe in a God because it provided a psychological benefit. of course, exploring that direction of supernatural belief wouldn't provide him a platform to scream how superior his is to those dumb people infected by the God disease.
I disagree. If there's God, what we do now echoes for eternity. If there's no God then nobody gives a shit we just live and die like every other organism.
