TnAtheist

Yes, it’s possible. It’s just not very likely.

There’s a big difference between ‘possible’ and ‘probable’ … It’s possible that there is a God. It’s also possible that there are thousands. Just like it’s possible the moon will self-destruct tomorrow evening. But none of these things are very probable.

Science works because of predictive probability. We generate ideas and then test them to the point where we can predict, with high accuracy, what is and what will be. Religion, on the other hand, has a horrible track record of making valuable truth claims. It can do good things and it can lead people to do good things… but none of that reflects whether or not its claims about reality are actually true. Given that, throughout history, religion’s claims about the nature of reality have been proven false time and time again, I find it much more ‘probable’ that its remaining claims are also false.

I think the most honest answer I can give is “I don’t know” and I haven’t seen anything that has led me to conclude anyone else does either. In a line of pure speculation and probability… I think It’s much more probable that our brains simply turn off when we die and that’s that. I’ve never seen anything to convince me of the existence of an afterlife. 

Just thinking of what an existence would be like without a body boggles my mind. I am my body. I can say I’m sitting in this chair and not standing in the doorway because my body is sitting in a chair and not standing in a doorway. 

It’s all great food for thought, but at the end of the day I just don’t know. Which I think is a perfectly acceptable position on the matter given the lack of evidence or even the means or a method for gathering evidence.

The idea that God is some kind of arbiter of Good and Bad or Right and Wrong is an old argument. Ask your friend if Right and Wrong are a matter of God’s choosing. Can God change what is right and wrong? If God said murder was right, would that make it right to murder? If God says something is right which isn’t right, then God is wrong. God (or anyone else for that matter) can’t make something right just by saying it’s right. Things are either intrinsically right or intrinsically wrong whether God says so or not. All God can (and does) do is reflect what we already know (or knew).

One also wonders, if God is the ultimate judge of Good and Bad, on what set of guidelines, laws or rules is he using to make his judgments? WHY does God judge this to be right and this to be wrong? We don’t let Judges go around arbitrarily deeming people Guilty or Innocent. I have a serious problem with the idea of someone judging me based on a set of guidelines I don’t have access to.

Your friend seems to be using God as a moral kick in this case. He knows the difference between right and wrong, but he also knows he doesn’t always do what’s right, so he’s got God there to give him a moral kick every once in a while. 

I don’t know how to pray either… I know how to talk to myself and that it can be a very powerful thing. Meditations and affirmations are well documented as being powerful mental forces. It’s like publicly declaring how you plan to change yourself… having made that declaration public (or at least promised or known to someone else) gives your drive to make that change for unconscious fear of guilt. (You DID say you were going to do that) … but I don’t think there is a supernatural entity listening and making changes to the world after being convinced by our thoughts. We, however, have the power to make those changes ourselves, once we have convinced ourselves it’s the proper course of action.

“don’t go that way… there’s no water” ? … OK seriously …  I honestly don’t find the existence of a devil any more probable than the existence of a god. But if you just want me to recite 3 statements made by the devil in Matthew, I can… but I assume you’re not using me for reference. Instead I’ll summarize… The devil asks Jesus to turn some stones into bread, commands Jesus to throw himself down because God will supposedly call on his angels to keep Jesus from being hurt, and he tempts Jesus with material possessions - All of which, Jesus denies for reasons that, actually, aren’t very reasonable.

I’m not defying God, as I don’t think it’s very probably that there’s a God to defy. I also don’t know what “eternity” is or whether a benign or malevolent version of it exists much less that there’s someone responsible for deciding who goes where. So I’m not really concerned with it. I have no path of knowledge to understand ‘eternity’ or what may/may not exist beyond death. Why assume anyone knows something that they have no path of knowledge to?