I treat the soul as more of an embodiment of who you are as a person, a combination of everything that makes you human. Your faults, your strengths, your neutralities; all of these lead to you having a 'soul'. Our very being is our soul.
This sums up my beliefs as well^ Sometimes I wonder whether there will be ponies for me in heaven. But like Legion said, it is God making our home not us, even if I lived in a small tin shack! I would be honoured to be in the presence and house of God. The fact that he cares enough to save us and make a home for us is more then I deserve, yet he does it anyway. That's why sometimes, when I am telling someone about Jesus, I can come off as pushy, I'm sorry, but I just want people to enjoy what the Lord has in store for us! I love humanity, even though you get the odd ***hole, I want as many people to enjoy what God has created for them! Ok I went off track there xD but anyway
There's been nothing to suggest either way. It's not like we can ask the dead. We won't know till we get there, whether there's a "there" to get to or not. That's why it's kind of silly to even argue about it. Eeyup, pretty much this. Especially what Yami said.
I was not aware that we were "arguing." :I You see, the people that claim religion or an afterlife exist are the ones that have the burden of proof. Let me give you an example. Say, you say that you have a box, and you say that there's a kitten inside. You tell me about the kitten inside the box, and I don't believe you. I tell you to prove that there's a kitten in the box. You can't prove it, as the box is completely sealed (until 10:00am just to be humane) and so you tell me to prove that there is no kitten in the box. I can't do that. Now when it comes to a supernatural claim, one that wouldn't have a relatively good chance of being true, such as one religion out of thousands in the world being true, with not a lot to go by besides an old religious text and personal experience, the burden of proof is still the same. It's not up to me to prove you false, it's up to you to prove yourself true.
This post, I stand by it. It is impossible to claim that a deity exists beyond just having faith. Much like the cat, the only real way to prove it's in the box would be to move or in someway affect the box. To prove a deity is real you would have to in a sense mess with it's box, forcing it to react. That would then prove it is real.
At the end of the day, we all have to admit, it all boils down to what we believe makes sense. I believe spirituality makes no sense at all, thus I do not believe it.
Didn't I tell you that I already had to deal with this? Besides, basically what I just said in the post you quoted was that neither side can prove anything. And then you came along and said the same thing. ??? I don't understand what you were trying to prove, or if you were just restating my statement, or what. Anyhow, proving that neither side can prove anything proves nothing. On a tangent, here is something I don't understand about the Atheists who say there is no God or higher power. Atheism fights Religion with facts, correct? But when an Atheist says that they "can't prove whether God exists" and therefore don't beleive he exists...that makes no sense. That's like using facts to prove that you are justified in not using facts. How can you say you BELEIVE that there is no God and have no evidence proving it, when you mock others for being without evidence themselves? It boggles the mind, it really does. At least I have SOME respect for the Atheists who say that they don't know whether God exists, and that they chose to beleive that he didn't. They basically came to the same conclusion I did, they simply made a different decision. Because I don't beleive you can prove that God exists; it's completely faith-based.
It's faith based to believe in god. When it comes to facts on weather something is real or not. To prove that god is real I want to see real proof. Not a book, not stories, not faith. I want something that is there. When it comes to atheism using facts to say there is no god, it's different. The facts and proof are that god never really does anything to show that he is there. This to me is real proof. The lack of proof that god is real is the proof that tells me he isn't real.
You can have evidence without having evidence, you know. That 'SOME' sounds incredibly patronising. Please refrain from doing it.
And here comes the part where this thread begins to get offensive. Sad, really. I was enjoying it very much. You didn't get my point at all in that post. What I was saying is that Christians are the ones making the claim, and so they have the burden of proof. I thought I explained well enough what the burden of proof is. If I told you there were magical fairies that live in each raindrop and that a rainbow appears because the sun shines through their wings, you wouldn't believe that at all, because there's no evidence other than my say-so. And so when you tell me that you don't understand that, I tell you to prove that there are no magical fairies in the raindrops. It doesn't make the argument that there are fairies in the raindrops have any more of a foundation. It's an empty argument. Hopefully that at least is a little clearer, and understand I'm not saying that religion equates to claiming there are fairies in raindrops. It's just the kitten in the box analogy was clearly not clear enough. That is about the extent of why the burden of proof analogy is so important. Turning the argument around to say we have no facts to prove there is no God equates to us having no logical basis for atheism? I don't think I have mocked you at all, Legion. It seems that you keep getting heated over what others say, but none of it is actually mocking Christians. Now, you see, there are plenty of theories out there that go directly against the claims made in the bible, such as all the animals being created in the form they're in, the worldwide flood, the fact that the men and women that came off the ark only had roughly 150 years to generate enough people to populate all of Egypt by the time Moses was born... There is evidence. It's not a silly claim to be atheist. That is more or less agnosticism. Atheism means you pretty much believe without reasonable doubt that god does not exist. That's about the extent of what I have to say on that, as I already said everything else I wanted to before.
I respect anyone, Atheist or no, for following what they believe in. I am, however, tired of all of these fights among religious and atheist individuals. It's a pointless battle that will NEVER be solved.
I see terrible consequences if either are abolished. Good thing it'll never get to that point....*crosses fingers*.... Discussions like this one are useful, just not when thin-skinned people join in the more heated talks. I can't think of anything to contribute, but it's still interesting.
