Proving the existence of God is also hard to prove.

Until something is proven, it's up to you to believe what is true- and in that sense, God is the biggest conspiracy man has ever made.

More a force of nature that seems to take the opposite view of whichever I take. It's creepy. While on the topic, I've decided that even though the Israelis don't deserve their land, they're generally better people than Palestinians and we should kill the Muslims. Largely because I discovered that some from my family moved there. Will you do a 180?

As for God vs no God, I actually find it fun to argue for the thiests sometimes. Here's my favorite:

Why doesn't god heal amputees? (There's a website dedicated to this question which is a major hub of adult thiest-bashing)

God, if He exists, cannot prove His existence, because then it wouldn't be "faith". If He showed that He is real, humanity would develop an inferiority complex...but that's unrelated. If God were to show He exists, people would stop believing and start knowing. "Faith" would have no meaning in a religious context, because we would have positive knowledge of His existence. Ultimately, we would argue not over whether He exists, but over which religion is "correct", if any one religion is.

I'd love for God to come down and tell us that no religion is correct. That would make me the happiest person in the world. Unfortunately, I'm of the firm mindset that if something cannot be proven without doubt, it doesn't deserve my faith. Consequently, that's why debates have never changed me, just broadened my views.

TL; DR: If God proves His existence, it would make the people who refuse to believe like the people that think a closed reactions can lose/gain mass. "Faith" would no longer matter in a religious sense, and God would lose His mystery.

/me explodes lol

Because of your emphasis on "without doubt" I feel oblidged to comment. Every day I imagine, as with anyone, you accept certain assumptions as truth. You think that when you leave a room, everything in that room will be there when you get back. Does this happen every time? Yes. Is it proven that everything will be there when you get back? No. Everything in your room could get up and walk away and only get back right before you open the door again, because we have no way of proving otherwise. Just because we haven't observed an instance of a table springing to life and walking out of a room does not mean its never happened. There are many things we take for granted that cannot be proven without doubt, and instead of proof we comfort ourselves with the statistical likelihood of what we have observed. If I observe a sunrise a million days in a row, its very likely that on the million+1th day, the sunrise will happen again, but it does not prove it will happen. Be careful to distinguish appropriately which principles you actually live by.

That is not rape.

fix't.
Because of your emphasis on my emphasis, I'm mentioning that I don't live by a set of principles saying that, statistically, something or other going to happen. I know this isn't completely possible, but I rely as little as possible on preconceptions and inferences. We all have various, random differences in our lives, but I usually tend to take these in stride.

You're insatiable.

Beat me to it by a long way.

Debates, or more generally, discussions do make me change the way I view things fairly frequently, and I like trying to at least make the person I'm discussing with alter their way of looking at a topic. Formal debate just pisses me off and I don't gain anything from it.

People only change if they have an open mind and more importantly WILLING to listen and comprehend. Already having a mindset full of hate or disdain towards one side is not having an open or willing mind.

When it comes to more "touchy" subjects like politics, religion, etc people almost never have open or willing minds. When you say "Oh person A TOTALLY dominated person B," someone else with an equally qualified mind as you can say the exact opposite, it's all based on your opinion and how you look at things. Say I make a comment regarding atheism. If it's something that might offend atheists no matter how true it is, ego-driven atheists aren't going to accept it. Maybe in the back in their minds they might be like "well, actually that may be true in a way..." but because they don't want to sound wrong they will pretend that it never happened and probably say something else or change the subject.

Most "debates" we see nowadays aren't debates. Rather more like rants or comments intended to rile up your opponents or anger the other side just so that you feel better. See mainstream media for examples of this (Fox news, MSNBC, radio, etc)

holy shit did i lol hard at that. I wanna see some flash video depicting this.

You do realize that knowledge has no impact on choice? Whether you know he exists or not, you still have the CHOICE to follow God's words or not. Unless, of course, God reveals to us that hell is a place of unfathomable physical and mental torture for all eternity. Then it's pretty much a reluctant compliance to convert to Christianity, based on the threat of eternal torture by an evil sadistic god.

Oh yeah, and if God reveals himself to us, the world would be FAIR.

I find it funny that, at least as old SEN is concerned, the people who responded in along side of my views are the ones I appreciated debating with/along side of (ie MA and Captain). Too bad I didn't ask this question three years ago...

Maybe it was how I worded it. But the purpose of a debate is not to decide which way is right and which way is wrong. If there is a definite answer, it does not deserve to be debated.

So all of you who say "I always win debates" are debating for the wrong reasons. I don't debate many things on SEN for a good reason: religion and politics has been beaten to a bloody barbaric pulp. The same five people state the same five points. The same people pick apart a person's argument based on grammar and qualifying statements. Many discussions are rooted in non sequitor, or solely appeals to emotion. Which, while I am not 100% guilt free of this, is an automatic turn off to debates. This is a long tangent to describe that you should debate for the joy of debating, for the intention of opening your mind to what your opponents are trying to say.

Oh, and Captain Will...you know that health care/Obama discussion we had in the shoutbox? I'm still trying to refute you on one of your points. So far I have come up empty handed.

Then what does it 'deserve'?

It deserves to be called hard fact.

I'm usually the neutralist in debates. I never pick a side, I sit and accumulate information. So yes, I change by getting more information.

You're like Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs. What was stopping you?

Nope, not usually, but I ALWAYS WIN.
Took me a minute, but I lol'd.