Legitimate reasons not to believe in God

[muhammad_isa]

So your religious beliefs, that are unlike those you have rejected, were not a result of evidence and reason? I took your prior answer yo mean you determined your beliefs are true and through evidence and reason, and also was the basis for you rejecting others.

Can you clarify?

It is you who needs to clarify..
..again, you give me the religion/creed, and I will try to answer why I reject it.

My basis for belief, is that God exists .. it then becomes a matter of creed.
Your starting point seems to be that God does not exist, and are not convinced by any claim that He does.

 

[TLK Valentine]

Some might, but I choose to obey so as not to take any chances.

A wise course of action... but "not taking chances" means therefore that God is not so much ever-forgiving and closer to probably-forgiving...

 

[muhammad_isa]

Except it's already been given that the parent's response will be what causes the harm.

..that is how you see it.
Many people see that a parent who chastises their child is guilty of cruelty, but it might not be true.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

..that is how you see it.
Many people see that a parent who chastises their child is guilty of cruelty, but it might not be true.

Well, then explain how you know that?

 

[TLK Valentine]

..that is how you see it.
Many people see that a parent who chastises their child is guilty of cruelty, but it might not be true.

It might not, indeed -- but in order for it to not be true, the chastisement must be lesser than the consequences had the parent done nothing.

The God I've read about has one all-purpose punishment: eternal damnation. What is that lesser than?

 

[muhammad_isa]

The God I've read about has one all-purpose punishment: eternal damnation..

That is the worst case scenario, yes.
It is truly horrific. and it would be nice to think that such a state/place did not exist.

From what I understand, satan is the deceiver, and causes us to fall into temptation and evil.
Why does satan not quit doing this, when he knows the consequences?
I just don't know..

 

[TLK Valentine]

That is the worst case scenario, yes.

That is the only case scenario.

It is truly horrific. and it would be nice to think that such a state/place did not exist.

But religion makes a poor tool of sociopolitical control without both a carrot and a stick.

From what I understand, satan is the deceiver, and causes us to fall into temptation and evil.
Why does satan not quit doing this, when he knows the consequences?
I just don't know..

What consequences? Satan is already damned, with no chance of redemption.

The ultimate example of "nothing left to lose."

 

[wellwisher]

Religion, in many Atheists circle, has been replaced by psychology. Psychology is the study of the human psyche. Religions deal with the same things; human needs and weaknesses, but in different ways.

The Priest used to give the same comfort to the confused, that is now done by psychologists and psychiatrists. The main difference is the psychologist tries to comfort and then self actualize the ego, while religion is more about the inner self; which is a deeper natural part of us. To do this, religions use ancient symbolism; work as command lines for older natural parts of the brain's firmware.

Think of it this way; say you believe in evolution and natural selection. In religion we have a situation where millions of humans have repeated the same prayers, for thousands of years; willful human selection. Through repetition and procreation these selected sounds will become engrained in our DNA; selective advantages in the group. Religions have symbols old enough and repeated long enough to be part of our human DNA, and thereby able to reach the inner self, via the DNA connection.

Fad things may be good for the ego, but they lack the same long term impact on the DNA; part of the neural foundation. This multi thousand year neural symbolism and foundation is less the realm of the ego, and more the realm of the inner self.

The late psychologist, Carl Jung demonstrated the nature of collective human symbolism and how these symbols have commonality between culture and describe our collective human nature. The symbols of various religions follow similar symbolic schema, even if different on the surfaces. There is a connection to the operating system of the brain, at deep levels, due to selective longevity.

This is not just for prayers, but also the same visualizations; nirvana, mecca and heaven, over thousands of years starts to become engrained in the matrix of the brain. Atheists have yet to find balance; not to believe the literal, while accepting the inevitable impact on human DNA of long term spiritual programming over thousands of years. This is why it would hard to just erase religion from the world. These genes and inner self will attempt to recreate the foundations again. If the ego is too involved in this process and makes it short term gain, it may become a hybrid type religion. Luckily the programming is firm on the DNA and some will have the charisma to reverse engineer.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

As an ex-Christian, I believe that if a religious man named Yehoshua (Yeshua, Jesus) ever existed, the stories about him in the Bible, written by his followers or others who believed the stories they heard about him, were most likely embellished, and more folklore was later added to make him appear to be more than he actually was.

We know that to be the case. We can see the evolution of the narrative by comparing the synoptic gospels. You've probably seen this before, showing that the gospels of Matthew and Luke, which follow Mark (purple), are influenced by three other sources - M- and L-documents informing just Matthew (green) or Luke (teal), and a Q-document informing both (blue):

Why then do no Baha'is listen to what I have to offer and make an effort to understand my perspective? Why am I always the one who needs to make an effort to change?

You're an outlier. You hold heretical views the Baha'i god. Unity here apparently means conformity.

Why do you think I chose the word fear?

I know why. You first used in this context with me when I mentioned that people who hold god beliefs find some kind of comfort there. You pointed out that belief was uncomfortable, at which point you offered the phrase the fear of the Lord as a counterexample. I mentioned that that point supported my contention - belief and obedience to dogma was to mitigate dome of that fear.

Not just that. There's also the fact that if he gets miffed at your judgment, he's a mile away and barefoot, so what's he going to do about it?

how could the Bible be consistent, given how many different authors contributed to it? That would be logically impossible.

Not if they were all channeling the same deity faithfully. You're sounding more like me now. None of this is difficult to understand when understood naturalistically. As you note, with multiple human inputs, there will be contradictions and errors not expected from a god. Remember this:

"Cumulatively, these various observations make a powerful argument against an interventionalist god. You've got a variety of situations that might have been otherwise had there been such a god, but turn out always to be the way we would expect were there none. Flipping a coin to see if it is a fair coin or a weighted (loaded) coin illustrates this. A fair coin can come up heads or tails. A coin perfectly loaded to come up tails will come up tails every time. How many times does one need to flip the coin and have it come up tails before he realizes that it is loaded? No single flip suggests that, but considered cumulatively, 1000 consecutive tails without a single heads is pretty good evidence that heads was never a possibility. This is what we see in our universe. Every time we look, we find the universe behaving as a godless one must, just like the coin."

That's 87 tails in a row now.

I choose to obey so as not to take any chances.

You've accepted Pascal's Wager. Is that why you never disavowed the Baha'i doctrine on homosexuality?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

that is like saying that religious people are not being rational, if they think that God is likely to exist.

That is both irrational, and not what they say. They say God DOES exist, which is not likely, just logically possible, unless by "God" one means one of the deities that can be ruled out logically or empirically using scripture alone in the first case, and by comparing scripture to observable reality in the second.

Your idea of "critical thinker" is more one of "materialist thinker".

A critical thinker is an empiricist. That poster's idea of what critical thinking is is the standard one, which is the application of valid reason to evidence in order to arrive at sound conclusions. The evidence is not arbitrary, nor is the inference drawn from it using fallacy-free reasoning.

Critical thought is what characterized the Enlightenment and ushered in modernity and its great advances in science and human freedom. Materialist thinkers as you call them removed faith from both arenas, improving the human condition in each case, although religious thinkers are making inroads battling each.

"experts" in science are not gods, but human mortals like ourselves. Why should God show them the unseen, but not us?

That's the question I ask in reverse: what special senses or neural circuits do theists have to find a god not evident to critical thinkers? None.

The Qur'an is not "ancient", relatively speaking .. and nether is the NT.

Both books refer to a time long ago. Neither is adequate source of moral guidance today. We don't need to be told that killing and stealing are immoral, nor to be kind to one another. Both are filled with references to gods and their commandments, which are irrelevant outside of those religions. Jesus failed to condemn either slavery or homophobia. Neither has much use for a secular state, democracy, or guaranteed personal freedoms such as freedom from religion. The books are ancient in that sense.

Nothing can come from naught, without something else being responsible.

Except a god, right? A god can exist uncaused, correct? If so, that's special pleading. There is nothing one can say about a god that cannot also be said about a multiverse or the universe. If a god can exist uncreated, uncaused, undesigned, and without a beginning, so can a multiverse or a universe.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Yes, I was wrong. I am often wrong about things since I am fallible, not infallible, like God.

What a very honest expression! Very humble, my cousin!

 

[muhammad_isa]

What consequences? Satan is already damned, with no chance of redemption..

..yes, but why?
Why can he not be redeemed?
Why doesn't he change his ways?

Is G-d preventing him from doing so?
..or is it because the deeper one gets in to sinfulness, the harder it is to get out?

 

[muhammad_isa]

They say God DOES exist..

That is what their "heart" tells them, yes.
..and then creed is dependent on many factors.

The evidence is not arbitrary, nor is the inference drawn from it using fallacy-free reasoning..

..and neither is the believer necessarily being "arbitary".

Both books refer to a time long ago. Neither is adequate source of moral guidance today.

The world and it's people change, but that is not always for the better. It might seem like it, in the short term.

Except a god, right? A god can exist uncaused, correct? If so, that's special pleading..

No, it isn't. God is not a finite person but the universe and all it contains arguably is.

If a god can exist uncreated, uncaused, undesigned, and without a beginning, so can a multiverse or a universe.

..meaningless words. What difference does it make whether the universe/multiverse is 13 billion years old or a trillion trillion?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

neither is the believer necessarily being "arbitary".

If he is violating the rules of critical thought, he is being arbitrary. There is only one way to conform to them, and an uncountable number of ways to arbitrarily go off the reservation.

It's exactly analogous to addition, where the rules of reason are applied to addends rather than the evidence of the senses. If you want to arrive at a correct sum, there is only one set of rules that can do that - one right way to add. Any arbitrary deviation from orthodoxy here results in errors.

You are taking the role of the adder who wants his way of adding respected. If you believe in gods, you have not done so using reason. There is no evidence or sound argument that gets us to, "therefore God."

The world and it's people change, but that is not always for the better.

Maybe, but that doesn't rebut my contention that ancient moral codes aren't adequate for dealing with modern problems. Look at how badly American Christians are handling reproductive rights based in ancient values chosen to result in the greatest number of births possible, an ancient need. That was relevant when so many babies didn't make it to two years of age, so many mothers died in childbirth, so many men were killed at war, and so many of each died of infection and food poisoning.

A high rate of childbirth correlated with survival and prosperity. So, maidens were encouraged to marry at puberty, never to deny their husbands sex, not to use the rhythm method, don't be gay, and don't masturbate. With technical and social advances, we add don't divorce, don't use contraception, and don't get abortions. Today, it's the opposite, and this set of ideas has become immoral, which is the objection of American humanists. It is immoral to force the birth of an unwanted baby in this overpopulated world which now, unlike the worlds in which these ancient religions arose, respects human rights and autonomy. As the world changes, so do the choices that benefit or harm people.

God is not a finite person but the universe and all it contains arguably is.

So what? How does that rebut the statement, "A god can exist uncaused, correct? If so, that's special pleading." You're simply doing more special pleading here - invoking a double standard without justifying it.

What you have is an intuition that a god exists, and you argue to defend it, but you are forced to arbitrarily give that god special dispensation that you give nothing else, and the reasons that you offer are irrelevant. It makes no difference what God or the universe or the multiverse are. If one can exist without beginning, they all can. For you to say that the rules are different for the latter two is you being arbitrary.

meaningless words. What difference does it make whether the universe/multiverse is 13 billion years old or a trillion trillion?

You responded to, "If a god can exist uncreated, uncaused, undesigned, and without a beginning, so can a multiverse or a universe." If you wrote that, you didn't understand what was written to you. It doesn't matter whether the universe, the multiverse, or God is 13 billion years old or a trillion trillion years old or has existed without beginning for purposes of this argument. If a god can have existed eternally into the past, so can a multiverse and a universe.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

OK. Submit an example of a religion that you reject as true (despite its believers insisting it is true) because it lack’s evidence. And then contrast this to your religious beliefs that you consider true via evidence and reason.

This is actually pretty easy… although most people do not & will not accept this simple answer: love. Loving without man-made constraints or stipulations. What does this say about most religions, then? Do not most religions support the wars & conflicts of their respective lands?

We would expect a religion that is the “genuine article” to support such a love for people, even when it incurs the wrath of those warring politicians & countries.

Why would such a stance be expected? If, as the Bible says, God is the Creator of all people (Acts of the Apostles 17:26), what would God want us to do? Hate each other ? Or love each other (Matthew 5:44)?

As I said, the answer is simple; but hard to do, especially in times of conflict. That is why I stated most people will not accept that answer.

But there’s a religion out there, IMO, that does….’hated by the world,’ as Jesus prophesied.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

This is actually pretty easy… although most people do not & will not accept this simple answer: love. Loving without man-made constraints or stipulations. What does this say about most religions, then? Do not most religions support the wars & conflicts of their respective lands?

We would expect a religion that is the “genuine article” to support such a love for people, even when it incurs the wrath of those warring politicians & countries.

Why would such a stance be expected? If, as the Bible says, God is the Creator of all people (Acts of the Apostles 17:26), what would God want us to do? Hate each other ? Or love each other (Matthew 5:44)?

As I said, the answer is simple; but hard to do, especially in times of conflict. That is why I stated most people will not accept that answer.

But there’s a religion out there, IMO, that does….’hated by the world,’ as Jesus prophesied.

Yeah, I have another one than you. So now what?

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Yeah, I have another one than you. So now what?

“Another one” what?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

“Another one” what?

Religion.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Religion.

Does it meet the standard I posted in #415?
Do you apply Matthew 5:44 during times of unrest? Or do those standards get thrown out the window? With most religions, they’re conveniently forgotten.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Does it meet the standard I posted in #415?
Do you apply Matthew 5:44 during times of unrest? Or do those standards get thrown out the window? With most religions, they’re conveniently forgotten.

No, because I don't follow the rest. I just do love without Jesus, the Bible and the God in the Bible.