lst

I can only speak for myself, and this is the way I see it (but this is already Faith):

"God" is defined this way: the only one not caused by anything else.

So, if God is the only one not caused by anything, but simply cause of Himself, nobody can reach God, if He doesn't allow to be reached.

So, the only possibility for us to know something about God is that He deliberately decided to communicate Himself to us.

From this premises, it's clear that there can only be one real Religion, and that all the other ones are simply negations of some parts of the real one...

And you know what "logic" means?

You can't act against "logic" without hurting yourself. If you are a hacker (like me), you never ever can act against logic, otherwise your program won't work (and exactly the same happens with life itself).

Sorry to correct you, but you're actually kind of shy (that is, not really determined):

You simply confirm that if 3 persons of human species are exposed to the same reality (yes, reality, because the impressions may be different, but the reality is well defined and precisely one):

So, if 3 persons of the same species are all concluding more or less different things, then you have the definite answer that none of them is seeing absolutely everything, that is: the whole reality:

So: you can't be God, because:

If you were God, you would know it (together with the exact reality of all things...)

I only explained the basic principles of logic...

If you say: "I cannot know whether a god exists or not.", you already say that you are not cause of yourself (otherwise you would know), and, consequently, there must be another cause outside yourself:

And this is exactly the definition of "God".

Yes, you are always free to misunderstand.

The interesting thing is: some do, some do not.

(We have physics, chemistry, and others, exactly to distinguish different levels...)

Agnostics are shy atheists.

If the answer is either yes or no, and you say "maybe", you say "no", substantially.

Why? Because every "no" is simply a refuted "yes" (philosophically speaking).

I have a (simple) question to all atheists:

If you didn't create yourself (and you didn't, otherwise you would know/remember/etc.), and (consequently) some other one did, how do you call it?

Let me explicitly repeat your statement:

You say that the human brain would (in theory) be able to create something more intelligent than itself?

(Are you aware of the irony?)

BTW:

I really love the "0 karma" feature from sites like this one: It helps very, very much not to waste too much time here, given that I never learned anything substantial on places like this one. May I cite some better teachers:

    - books
    - real persons
    - live discussions
    - pubs
    - restaurants
    - (last not least) my family(!!)

That's not the point.

The human brain is quite "infinitely" interconnected, and this is something which not only would be really, really hard to solve with a physical machine: it's simply impossible.

I understand the fascination of a real super computer, but it's simply nothing compared to a single human brain...

Intelligence can't be measured in huge numbers, and every single human brain is infinitely more intelligent than any possible computer.

It's not me saying this, but science.

I said "physical" to exclude the misunderstanding.

...and is it finally coming close to .00001 % of a human brain?

If someone is excited about that, what about the human brain itself? Just a simple information:

The human brain is the most complex thing in the whole universe, or: all of physical universe is less complex than a single human brain.

Another really important feature is missing:

For people like me, who every now and then make completely unpopular comments (with some negative consequences, at least mathematically speaking), it would be nice if we could get more and more invisible (I mean the user name), because unpopular folks really deserve absolute invisibility! (Take that, lst!!)

Please down vote if you agree!

I seem to recognize the pattern:

Everybody seems to encourage (even in a contradictory way) the proper opinion, and refutes quite absolutely the proper change of it...

Poor humanity, if everybody thinks like this...

Thanks, personally I never take any citation literally, both parts (agreeing and opposing) could have, even subconsciously, changed some parts.

As for the book I mentioned: it didn't influence or change my mind, it has only been a very, very interesting read (because there are opinions from a few christian people, but most are from non-religious people, who recognized the geniality of the New Testament, and the absolutely unique position of Jesus Christ in history (in both past and present).

Few people know how deeply the whole european history has been positively influenced by christianity. One of the best statements of the book is: christians don't ask people not to be rational, but to be it profoundly!

(If you only stay on the surface of the things, everything seems possible. Only a deep understanding shows the whole reality...)

OK, in the first chapter of the book (page 19), there is this paragraph (I'm not good in translating to English, but I'll try):

"Einstein said that the natural laws are revealing such a superior reason, that all of human thinking and ordering are only an insignificant reflection, compared to them."

The next paragraph explains that Flew has been influenced decisively by the opinion of Einstein. It informs that many people said Einstein to be atheist or spinozistic pantheist. Then it cites Einstein again:

"I'm no atheist, and I don't think that I could define myself as pantheist. We are in the situation of a child which enters a huge library, full of books written in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written these books, but doesn't know how. And it doesn't know the languages the books are written in. The child suspects being a mysterious order in the disposition of the books, but doesn't know which. This seems to me the human position, even of the most intelligent ones, in front of God..."

(there follow some other sentences, but this should already be enough).

Happy now? The book is full of citations and annotations (they are counted, and the last one has the number 529). The author collected the material for the book in several years, and he's a really meticulous writer, I know him quite well.

...and sorry for this annotation:

The US certainly suffers 'superficiality' more than any other country. If you want to find really scientific stuff about religion, you often need to go back to good old Europe...

Do you know Italian? If yes, it's a book I'd recommend to everybody:

Author: Antonio Socci (a really good and meticulous italian journalist)

Name: "Indagine su Gesù"

It's a plain scientific research about the life of Jesus (with many many citations from every direction, including many atheists).

The book sells very well these days...

Even if you succeed, you will not be happy. Peace and porn are not friends.

You cite from 1929? There are many many citations, and often contradictory ones.

He certainly changed his opinion during his lifetime.

My source is a book (here in Europe, from 2008, not english). If you google a bit, you can find any kind of contradictory stuff, so internet and truth are not always friends (and we all know this).

Einstein explicitly stated to believe in God (but not in the christian or hebrew one), and he explicitly derived this from the supreme intelligence which he found in natural laws.

And philosophy is science, but it's no natural science. And Flews book "There is a God" seems written in a really intelligent way, no signs of "brain damage".

Many many good scientists convert from atheism to some kind of deism. Yes, they convert, because it's a radical change of the very base of our thinking.

Atheism is getting older and older. I know that I'm offensive now, but atheists seem to me like people offending their own intelligence.

Let me cite Louis Pasteur: A little bit of science moves away from God, but much science makes return to him.

Do you know the definition of (christian) faith?

Faith informs us: God himself talked to us (see the Bible), and even visited us (see Jesus Christ). But you need faith for that, and faith is not something that we can produce or create, it's something we only can accept or deny.

So, it's not that it's impossible (as you say) to tell anything about God. It would even be enough to observe Nature.

As I said in another comment, many of the best scientists converted to some kind of deism, because they saw the great Intelligence inside Nature, and they could not find any other explanation than the existence of a Supreme Intelligence.

2 examples? Albert Einstein; Antony Flew.

(I'm simply too curious to listen to some convincing argument against my poor expositions... is there really no really convinced atheist out there willing to contrast my poor opinion? If it is really this way: poor poor poor atheism...)

Ego gratification is not bad: it's good and even necessary to grow.

But we can't always (by ourselves) distinguish between gratification (read: elevating growth) and egoism (destructive growth).

So we need some 'illumination', which is, in another term: Religion.

Religion is always referring to something that we can not reach with our own intelligence.

It's in the nature of this concept that it can be faked in infinite ways...

So you mean that I mean that atheists are close-minded?

What does 'atheist' really mean? It's the negation of God, OK?

Many of the best scientists out there initially were atheists, and have been convinced by science itself of the existence of some kind of 'God'.

So please don't try to convince me, try to back-convert them to atheism!

A real religion is elevating the best part of yourself, without encouraging some too human inclination (I could make examples, but I don't want to).

All 'fake' religions are (in reality) some kind of auto-idolatry (let it be violence, egocentrism, and so on, it's a never-ending list...)