Of course god exists. She made me say this....religion is a funny thing. Either you believe in a god or you don't. Martial arts is not a religion NOPE!
With regards to the original question then I'd have to say no, especially when considering some creator deity. I'm Buddhist.
Good for him. There's much about Christianity that clicks with Buddhism. However there are also many notions about God and Buddhism can be very flexible.
No one can answer that with any degree of certainty. As far as I'm concerned, there is absolutely zero compelling evidence of a god or gods.
And there's a lot, more perhaps, that doesn't click. The free ebook Beyond Belief is quite an interesting read. Bit entry level and Silva comes across as a bit angry and obnoxious, but some interesting comparisons to Christianity and Buddhism.
Yep but the crossovers are interesting. Buddhism can be pretty mind blowing at times but overall I find it far more palatable than the Catholicism I had shoved down my throat at school, no comments please. I will take a look.
In fairness, though, isn't he attacking specifically one form of Christianity, the "fundamentalist" camp? That's how I took his book, anyway. I have never thought of fundamentalists as speaking for more than a small part of the religion; e.g., Catholics and Orthodox and Anglicans and Methodists are not part of that group (nor am I). Just saying. :dunno:
In all honesty....I can't remember! Read it years ago. I was thinking about rereading it tonight, but Silva's attitude is a quite sneering and rather off putting. Edit: ooooh...the answers in the subtitle.
No. Illustration from an unrelated field: So many of the US Supreme Court's decisions are split 6:3 or 5:4, yet they're reading the same statute, aren't they? Or they're reading the same clause in the Constitution, aren't they? How can they read the same thing and reach different holdings? Fundamentalists reject the authority of the old dead Church Fathers and of the Catholic Magesterium and of anybody else under the sun to interpret the Bible for them. Fundamentalists insist that individuals must interpret it for themselves -- individually. This guy Silva is playing the fundamentalist game when quotes the Bible, and that makes sense given his expressed goal of rebutting them, but it has no bearing on non-fundamentalists who don't play that game in the first place.
This puts my thoughts into form on the subject... Basically, when it's convenient, god can be there and make sure you are covered (milk, disease, etc) and when he's not there to save your butt, it must've been his will. Was it his will that six million jews were slaughtered during WWII, or was he just busy doing something else. He was there to free the jews from pharoh, why ? to save them for the germans ? TLDR: If God exists, he's kind of a jack hole and doesn't seems to play by his own rules. If he doesn't then that explains it. Bad things happen to good people by chance and there's nothing we can do about it.
If any of you have read the bible you guys would know that god is not here to 'hold our hands'. He is hear to guide and teach us. We as human being's have the free will to do what we want. Yes he does help us out from time to time. But he is not the one going around killing people and doing all of the evil's in the world. That is satin and the Lucifer. They are the one's reeking havoc in the world and tearing it apart. And yes he is playing by his own rule's. If you read the bible it clearly states that Lucifer was an overconfident angel who rebelled against god because he thought he could do better. Well god is giving him his chance to prove that he can do better and we humans are the one's suffering for Lucifer failure's.
If the bible is your only "proof" - and that word doesn't mean what you think it does - then you validate every single religion ever by the same logic
