Do you believe in God?

Every persons interpretation of any book and how you perceive it are totally different than others. So where you find in the book as proof of no God, to another person, its proof to them there is a God.

Which version? KJV or Revised? Or the Catholic Vulgate? Or the Eastern Orthodox text? Or are you talking about Erasmus's Greek New Testament?

Hmmm ... maybe you mean one of the thousands of individual papyrus scrolls with thousands of variant readings that were harmonized by Erasmus before the King James Committee re-translated them back into Latin from Greek so they could be re-translated into English?

Oh wait, nevermind. You must be talking about the Jesus Seminar Red Letter Edition.

No? Then perhaps you were referring to one of the hundreds of other Gospels and Epistles that never made it into the Catholic canon? Those were really, really popular for the first few hundred years of Christianity, you know. Ah, The Shepherd of Hermas, The Gospels of Barnabas, Phillip, Mary Magdelene, Judas and all the rest? Have you read those?

Good reading, for sure.

I like the ones where Jesus preached about reincarnation. And equality of the sexes. Or the one where he got mad at the neighbor kid and slew him... then resurrected him when he got grounded.

Those are definitely my faves from the NT. For the OT, I really love the story about the kids who mocked the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 2:23-24) for being bald, so Elisha calls down a curse upon the children and summons two she-bears to tear the little lovelies apart.

Oh, yeah, that's another good one.

I find the OT most interesting for the one-to-one plagiarisms from older sources.

Pick the version of your choice. I am speaking of basic christian dogma. The concepts shared by all christians in common are self-contradictory. So if there really were a god, as you percieve of the term "god," and this god really did cause man to write the scriptures on his behalf, (and that right there presents a question of wisdom of the judgement of this so-called god, but we won't get into that), that would mean that everything in these scriptures would have to be true, and I don't care what version you read, there are contradictions in any given version. Not one, not two, but countless contradictions. So why does your god contradict itself?

PS: I thought you were interested only in yes/no/maybe and not the comments...

LOL!

I only said that because I knew nobody would be able to resist expounding on a poll question like this. I figured if I didn't try to put the brakes on a little bit, someone would post the complete text of the Bible as a response, while someone from the other side might have posted the complete text of Origin of the Species.

Spoilsport! I would have loved to see an entire version of both bible and origin-of-species uploaded here! LOL

True!

I mean ... false? Or do I mean true?

False! For sure.

And true!

That's true. You're right. It's impossible to prove a negative.

I can't prove that unicorns and fairies don't exist either. And I could search all over the entire universe for ever and ever and still never find a single shred of evidence to prove that fairies and unicorns DO NOT exist.

So you got me on that one, I guess ... or did you?

Aha! You just paraphrased the famous wager of Pascal! Fantastic! Awesome!

Unfortunately, I hate Pascal and Pascal's wager as well. His version of the argument basically said we should believe in God because the consequences of betting wrong (eternal hell) were worse than betting right (eternal heaven).

Awful argument. One of the worst ever. And not just my opinion, either.

Check it out for yourself. You'll find no shortage of condemnation for Pascal's psychological blackmail argument for the existence of god.

Yes

No... its silliy, another imaginary friend

only, this time for adults

God all the way!

simple enough.

Sometimes yes sometimes no.

Perfect! That way, you're covered in any eventuality, right? Awesome!

"The (empty-headed) fool has said in his heart, There is no God." Psalms 14:1

The smart guys pick up an ancient book and live their life around it and its fictional characters.

A hit dog will holler-anonymous

"A hot dog will get eaten" - Korinthian.

Put some chili on mine

pass the mustard and relish, please

Ugh.

Please try again, this time with arguments and preferably without scriptures? I've already seen the scriptures ... everybody has.

My bad Dan, didn't mean to disgust ya. Well ,believing in God just comes as common sense to me. I don't have an extensive theological argument to accompany my beliefs, just that I look around and see the beauty of His creation everyday and think to myself, all this couldn't have happened by chance. It had to be purposely done by God.

Oh, don't get me wrong. You didn't "disgust me" at all. I'm glad to hear your comment. I wouldn't have asked for it if I didn't want it. Thanks for your input, sincerely.

Thanks for answering.

True.

Also a lot of really stupid people have said "There is a God" too. I sent out a press release ... you should have received it.

No?

Well, then nevermind.

Carry on.

You don't find it mildly self serving for a passage in a book explaining that if you don't agree with this book you're an idiot?

Interesting deduction...

There should be a law (something like Godwin's Law re: Hitler) which states:

"The first person to quote the bible in a logical discussion loses."

I'm still seeking the truth!

C'mon now, there's no need for that type of thing.

Yes, Jesus may have been hot indeed. But I'm pretty sure that isn't the point of Jesus ...

A nasty little atheist at that!

I'm just trying to keep it civil in here ... no need to detonate the J-Bomb with a comment like that ...