Atheism-vague thread.

[rojse]

The Bible is a very unimpressive and underwhelming work.

Maybe it's the reader?

Out of interest, what parts of the Bible impress and overwhelm you the most, Jay?

 

[Hospitaller]

But I never said I expect anything from god. I'm just saying that, if 'he' desired, he wouldn't have any difficulty communicating or conveying messages to people. God wouldn't need all of your self-appointed middlemen and interpreters in pointy hats and gaudy robes to turn 'him' into their sock puppet.
However you are saying that god expects to receive our worship yet it's he who is not "giving anything back"; reasons to believe or worship. You have it backwards.

believing in God's religion is an act of faith and trust.
i dont base my beliefs on evidence or reason.
i just believe.
you wouldnt understand because you probably havent experienced something so deep that makes you want to believe.
its another kind of life

also, if you dont want anything then nothing is going to come to you. you obviously believe that life is good and God/religion is irrelevant. besides i cant make you change, so ill leave you alone.

 

[Autodidact]

I'll go out on a limb here Auto, but is this a rhetorical question ?

No.

if not ....."What evidence is it that would satisfy your inquiring mind, Auto" ?

The same kind of evidence that you use every day in other area of your life. For example, if I said that there was an invisible dragon in my garage, what kind of evidence would persuade you that was true? Would it be enough if I said that I had seen it, and I was really sure it existed? Or would you need more?

If I said I had discovered a cure for the common cold, what kind of evidence would persuade you it was true? Would it be enough if I said I had a personal revelation, and was really sure, or would you need more? If so, what? That's the kind of evidence I would be looking for. You know, regular old evidence evidence.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Stand corrected again. An ad hominem is an argument. I did no more than make a perfectly valid observation, that being that one's appreciation of something depends in great part on one's understanding and bias. I have a plethora of young grandchildren who wold almost certainly find Shakespeare or ee cummings "underwhelming." There was no ad hominem.

Then your comment suggested something completely useless and self-evident. Obviously statements of opinion depend on the person stating the opinion; this goes without saying. The more interesting question is whether or not people who have read many great books and given them careful thought will tend to agree with a given opinion. If someone says TV Guide is the most inspiring, fulfilling work he has ever read, I might reply "Maybe it's the reader" in order to suggest not the obvious fact that his opinion depends on himself, but the non-trivial statement that anyone who has been exposed to a variety of literature would find TV Guide "underwhelming". This reflects the fact that there really is a difference between TV Guide and real literature beyond arbitrary individual biases.

 

[GiantHouseKey]

you wouldnt understand because you probably havent experienced something so deep that makes you want to believe.

There is a difference between wanting to believe something and it being the truth. I want to believe that if I sing Stairway to Heaven backwards in latin I will summon a dodo from the depths of the earth, but of course it wouldn't actually be true. Just wanting to believe doesn't make you consider it to be the truth.

I love the irony of a theist saying 'You wouldn't understand'.

(Oh and calling us shallow and inexperienced is also ironic and oddly amusing)

GhK.

 

[Alceste]

you wouldnt understand because you probably havent experienced something so deep that makes you want to believe.
its another kind of life

But I do understand because I have experienced something so deep it made me believe.

I don't usually talk about this, but I've been drinking, so I might as well splash out:

Here's the sum of my revelation:

I sat on a beach. I watched the tide come in. I fell into a trance. I saw the underlying "light" that permeates matter and makes it "aware". I knew everything that was knowable.

In the following months, I tested my "revelation" empirically and found that it was sound.

I have experienced something so "deep" I can never "believe" again.

Yeah, it is another kind of life.

 

[linwood]

The Bible is a very unimpressive and underwhelming work. Besides chronicling the savagery of primitive goat herders, it portrays god as a petty, infantile, and brutish ogre. Definitely not something worthy of my worship. Of course we know any real god would be nothing like the sort.

I now approach the Bible with a different mindset.
It used to **** me off too but now I only get angry with those who would use it as something other than the literature it is.

I began reading it as it was written/told, not as a complete single work but book by book for the story itself within each book.
I no longer read the canon it as a comprehensive piece of literature.
It`s interesting to compare one writers outlook on any certain story or concept with the often subtle different outlook of the writer of a different Biblical book.

I find the attitude of the God/Hero in the canon to be a reflection of the culture that conceived of the character in many ways.
I`m pretty sure life then was itself pretty brutish and those living it were obviously very ignorant of the world they lived in through really no fault of their own.

The stories are a great insight into what that life was like.

 

[fantome profane]

In the following months, I tested my "revelation" empirically and found that it was sound.

I would be very interested to hear how you were able to test this empirically.

 

[Alceste]

I would be very interested to hear how you were able to test this empirically.

Logic, mostly. Everything I observed fit into the picture I'd developed. I also experimented with lucid dreaming and OBEs. I dreamed things that happened on the other side of the world, then confirmed they had really happened. I made an OBE plan to tell a good friend and a guy I barely knew each to wear a particular shirt the next day and they did. I experimented with manipulating the force / light / life I had "seen" using intent and found it was effective, and that dense concentrations of it could be physically felt. (I later learned about the qi of Taoism and now use this word for it). I had a lot of synchronicity going on at the time as well, and a lot of psychic phenomena. To this day I usually know who's calling most of the time when the phone rings. My world view, which emerged from that vision, explains all these things to my satisfaction. I keep it to myself for the most part, since the only way to "prove" such things is to prove them to ourselves through our own efforts. I don't want to get into a whole "Oh yeah? Prove it!" scenario - I find it really tedious - so I normally don't bother sharing.

 

[fantome profane]

I don't want to get into a whole "Oh yeah? Prove it!" scenario - I find it really tedious - so I normally don't bother sharing.

Then I just want to say thank you very much for sharing this time.

 

[Magic Man]

Maybe to the Atheist it's just a reason to enjoy the pleasures of this carnal life for a season,......eat drink and be merry, for tommorrow we die, and denying God seems to only allow one to have a clearer conscience when doing so.

How so? Are you saying that you're only moral because of the possible reward/punishment when you die? That seems pretty childish to me...and frankly, not very moral at all. I'd much rather you were moral because of how it affects others in this life, but maybe that's asking too much.

Maybe it's the fact that this "season" is the only shot we get, and we don't want to waste it. That doesn't mean we go around killing people and having sex with anything and everything that lives. It just means we don't prohibit ourselves from doing reasonable things that we enjoy.

 

[Magic Man]

well, no offense, but its not like you're accepting his invitation either. see, the problem is that you want a God that fits your own life, even if you do so unconciously, you do. you want a God that fits in with your time schedule, your wants, and your preocupations. hate to burst your line of "security" here, but God certainly isn't going to change for you. you got the whole thing backwards, buddy. It's you who must change for God.

I've heard this so many times, and I still don't understand it. Why do you people always assume it's because we don't want to live like you "good Christians"? Where does the assumption that atheists are just trying to rationalize to themselves so that they feel OK doing "bad things" come from?

I don't want God to change for me. I don't need him to fit my schedule or my wants or my preoccupations. (I do like the "even if you do so unconsciously, you do", as in "I don't care what you say, you're wrong and I'm right".) I just want a reason to believe in him other than because some other people told me so. Actually, I don't really want that, but it's a prerequisite for me believing in him.

 

[Sunstone]

I have experienced something so "deep" I can never "believe" again.

Well said!

 

[Magic Man]

Maybe it's the reader?

Of course it's the reader. Some people find the Bible very impressive. To them it is. To others it's not at all. However, we all know this was more of a dig at FH, and as such was stupid and worthless.

 

[Sunstone]

As for atheism being the philosophy of death, I wonder whether life would be worthwhile without death. At least death in a spiritual or psychological sense.

 

[Magic Man]

I don't, which is precisely why I have such disdain for your comments.

OK, and now back to reality. You have such disdain for his comments simply because he gave his opinion on a major piece of your cultural heritage, and it hurt your feelings, not because his comments were drivel. The bible is unimpressive. You're welcome to think otherwise, but that's only your opinion. As always, great contribution to the world, though.

 

[Magic Man]

Now that you mention it I see it too, and it is quite entertaining. But that blunt “nose tweaking” sense of humour does not put him in a good position to complain about Jay’s directness.

Oh, really? It's not Jay's directness that the majority of people on this site abhor. It's the fact that he doesn't add anything. He uses one liners to take jabs at people, not arguments. Like his jab at FH "Maybe it's the reader". That's an ad hominem because it's saying there's something wrong with FH. With that comment he doesn't add anything to the conversation. He simply vents his frustration at having someone "desecrate" a piece of his heritage (even though he doesn't believe in God literally). When FH replies, he actually adresses something other than a personal problem with a poster.

I am also a fan of Jays and admire his intelligence, knowledge and bluntness. I was quite enjoying these two going at it.

I would be a fan of his intelligence and knowledge, too, if I had ever seen them. All I ever see is one liners that attack people and hinder the conversation.

 

[Magic Man]

...evinces nothing so much as an adolescent and petulant ignorance enlisted in the service of a sadly superficial atheism.

As Dopp would say, I think you need to clean your mirror.

 

[Magic Man]

i dont base my beliefs on evidence or reason.

Hallelujah! Well, at least you admit it openly. That's a start. Now we just have to work on the reasoning behind this mindset.

 

[Magic Man]

Then I just want to say thank you very much for sharing this time.

**** that! I want her to prove it!