I said I was staying out of this and yet I find myself having to answer your post SLB because your arguments are so naive I just can't leave them hanging out there like the exposed flesh they are without pecking - however - I will attempt to reply responsibly and with as little bias as possible.
You think they give "proper answers"!?!?!
That's like asking Bush for the reasons for going to war in Iraq! One word: bias.
Obviously a lot of people are getting upset about this and don't want to have their beliefs questioned.
I think what northwestone meant was theologians with a detailed knowledge of the religions and doctrines in question. Believe it or not some of the most non-biased (and yet still persuasive) arguments I have heard have been from rabis, priests, vicars, monks, nuns, shamen, etc. - in other words those that take their faith and the religion to which they subscribe seriously and have a good grounding in academic theology.
I would like to know what believers in God think about the thousands, perhaps even millions, of other gods there have been since prehistoric times that have been proven or at least accepted to be made up?
God takes the form that people need Him to. In prehistoric times people had much simpler lives and simpler thought processes - so gods were expressed more literally. Many peoples (completely independantly) worshipped the sun and moon, for obvious reasons - you can't say those have been proven to be made up - we just know an awful lot more about astronomy and the physical make up of these things. People chose those things to embody the concept of a 'greater power'. As humans evolved their societies and cultures so the 'greater power' evolved with them.
And I would then like to ask if they know what probability is. Let's say the chance of god existing is 1/1,000,000 - that is a million-to-one.
I have no idea where you are getting that, or even what you mean by it. How can you possibly work out the possibility of the existence of something that is not proveable one way or the other. God either exists or He doesn't - probability doesn't enter into it.
Add to that the fact that supposed 'facts' in the bible have been proven to be false, the veracity of the bible as historical fact is questionable. By association, so is the existence of God, which is a pretty fantastical story anyway, like a lot of religious/supernatural fables are.
The idea, to a person living 5000BC, for example, that the Earth was a ball of rock and sundry other matter floating in an essentially infinite universe, rotating round the sun, with a satelite moon would be inconceivabley fantastical - and yet we now know it to be fact. Who is to say what we will know is fact and what we wil believe is fantastical in another 7000 years.
My guess is the answer will be 'you cannot possibly know something as high and mighty as God, its a matter of faith'.
We don't understand all the forces of the universe. God is the name for one of those forces we do not understand - it always has been. The difference, I suppose, between Faith and Faithless is putting a persona on that force some chose to call God and choosing to believe the interpretation of certain events.
Well actually I think its a matter of deduction; an educated guess. I think it is very strong evidence that there have already been millions of gods that don't exist and were imagined only to give answers to the unknown and comfort to the afraid. Why would God suddenly be any different?
That is your interpretation. I believe all of the gods that existed before were the same God, as indeed is Allah, God, Jehova - I have explained that above. I think you are confusing the belief that certain
natural things were
supernatural before the science of them was understood. The movement of celestial bodies being one of the most obvious examples. Prehaps, at some point, the science of miracles will become apparent. That still won't prove the non-existance of God, however. People often forget that the men (and it has been predominantly men) who claimed to represent God in the time of Copernicus, for example, were products of their time and based their Faith and understanding of natural versus supernatural on the flawed scientific understanding of the time. Carrying on that example, when Copernicus's theories were brought before them they felt their authority challenged and naturally chose to disbelieve Copernicus because it was easier to stick with the 'established' - that is human nature. Don't get confused between Religion and Faith, or even between Religion and God. they are not one and the same.
Then you have the elements of falsehood in the bible. So I am led to believe that the bible is nothing but a popular fairytale. It should only be believed as much as you would believe the fairytales of Jack And The Beanstalk or Snow White
There is a difference between falsehood and allegory. The Old Testament can be said to be allegorical in a large part - it is a tradition of stories to exemplify notions. The New Testament has elements of that as well and the proof of a two thousand year old story, muddied by time and the constant interpretation of so many human minds is just not possible.
My main point is, I suppose, just because you cannot prove that something does exist does not mean that it does not.
Why do people believe in the virgin birth? Why is the sky blue? Why is it we can put a man on the moon, a robot on Mars, yet we can't figure out a way to stop world hunger and homelessness?
