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What’s your main reason for being a theist or an atheist?
- Thread starter Dawnofhope
- Start date
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- Tags
- theism and athiesm
Poe.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
- Yeah, I have.- Have you ever studied the Bible or Quran?
- Moses was born 3,500 years ago, Christ I’ve 2,000, Muhammad 1,400 and Bahá’u’lláh 200 years ago. God knows what he’s doing so he doesn’t need as many updates as the Indian constitution.
- Abraham was born during the 2nd millennium BCE not too far from the Indus Valley so Abraham may have been influenced by Hinduism.
Abraham - Wikipedia
- Hinduism and Judaism are among the oldest existing religions in the world. The two share some similarities and interactions throughout both the ancient and modern worlds.
Hinduism and Judaism - Wikipedia
- "Scholarly consensus sees Moses as a legendary figure and not a historical person, while retaining the possibility that a Moses-like figure existed."
- "According to the Book of Genesis, the Midianites were the descendants of Midian, who was a son of Abraham and his wife Keturah: "Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah" (Genesis 25:1–2, King James Version)."
Midian - Wikipedia, Moses - Wikipedia
If Medianites were descendants of Midian, who was a son of Abraham, then Moses will be much after Abraham. Moses was the son of a Medianite priest and YHWH was a Medianite God.
- "Terah, the ninth in descent from Noah, was the father of three sons: Abram, Nahor, and Haran. The entire family, including grandchildren, lived in Ur of the Chaldees. According to a midrash, Abram worked in Terah's idol shop in his youth."
Abraham - Wikipedia
- "Henry Rawlinson identified Ur Kaśdim with Tell el-Muqayyar, near Nasiriyah in southern Iraq."
Ur of the Chaldees - Wikipedia
It is quite a distance between lower Iraq and Indus valley. You have the whole of Iran and Baluchistan between them.
- Hardly anything common between Judaism and Hinduism. One has its doors open to any number of Gods and, the other insists on one God. The Vedas and Vedic Gods were included in Hinduism at a later time. Sure there is a parallel between Zoroastrianism and Judaism. And many think that Judaism took its monotheism from Zoroastrianism during the exile.
Sure interested parties have always tried to associate Judaism and Christianity with Hinduism.
Judaism always stayed relatively small, but the reason Christianity and Islam "prospered" as well as they did is a long history of coercive proselytizing, conversion at swordpoint, and slaughtering of competing religions... all things I thought that the Baha'i faith strongly opposed, no?
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
That sure is OK, but one has to mention whom does one accept as the mediatory - Jesus, Mohammad, Joseph Smith, Bahaullah or Mirza Ghulam Ahmad among the notable ones. No go without that.
Bob the Unbeliever
Well-Known Member
You could say it-- you'd be 100% wrong, of course. That's the way it works, though.
The majority of theists appear to paint everyone else, with the same broad brush they paint themselves with: They have faith. Their entire worldview is faith.
They assume everyone else's is too.
Why not find a Non Strawman way to try to engage Rational People? No?
It has been explained to you over and over-- yet you persist on insisting that 'atheism' is 'belief there are no gods'.... It is as if you cannot see beyond that giant Straw Man you built...
Bob the Unbeliever
Well-Known Member
Breath-taking! Beautiful! Now.... think about what you just wrote.
Think carefully.
And apply the same logic to all God-Spokes-People. ALL.
NONE HAVE ANY EVIDENCE. NONE.
Bob the Unbeliever
Well-Known Member
But not by God.
Exactly! Because gods do not appear to exist in actual Reality.
God's self-proclaimed PEOPLE, however? Do.
And all those slaughtered in the 1800's? Were Self-proclaimed "God People".
Goodman John
Active Member
To my mind, the answer to this problem of 'evil in the world' isn't all that complicated- certainly less complicated than one trying to defend the 100% goodness of a god when evil obviously exists. The solution? Two gods, in opposition to each other, with one representing the Good Principle and the other the Evil Principle. (God and Satan, if that helps to set the scene.) If we take this position, then we can observe that as Evil exists on this world, the Evil Principle must have considerable sway over it. At the same time, if we take the position that the Good Principle should and does stamp out Evil, then we can see that this Good Principle has no, or at least very limited, power over the physical world. Perhaps (and I am a proponent of this) this can be extended to the argument that the Good Principle is not the Creator of this world at all, but rather it is the Evil Principle. Thus, such a flawed and cruel world reflects the nature of its Creator. (By the same argument, if the Good Principle were the Creator, we would not see any of this worldly evil and our lives would be far more pleasant.)
As for the 'dark forces' mention in the latter part of your post, I certainly believe those exist in both the physical AND spiritual worlds. There must be a balance in all things- Good/Evil, Light/Dark, Cake/Death, that sort of thing. (If one wants to apply a scientific idea to this, the one can do no better than 'for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction'- thus, balance is maintained.)
Now on to the question of why Evil has so much power here but Good doesn't, this is all part of the re-balancing of all things physical and spiritual. Evil is in power here, but eventually this physical realm will cease to exist- at which time the Evil Principle will return to the spiritual realm and order will be restored.
We Never Know
No Slack
Bob you walk out in your garden and see a snake, you kill it, throw it to the weeds, then a hawk snatches it up and flies off with it out of sight.
You saw it, killed it, saw the hawk fly away with it. That is all evidence to you.
Now is it "evident to you" that you killed a snake or do you now just have faith you did?
I suppose that in my case, it is all of them.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Isn't this all rather silly?
Firstly, snakes and hawks are things that we all can access evidence for, and the sequence of events is not exactly fantastical. That said, it is true that one eyewitness is not objective evidence (at least not reliable objective evidence) but this is not something that is likely to be of significant importance. If I claimed that I saw a fairy, killed it, and then it was carried away by a dragon, we'd be more in the area of god claims.
Secondly, and looking looking back at this discussion, things like claiming that the "simple beauty of nature" is evidence for a god to one person, is in a totally different category. The "simple beauty of nature" just isn't evidence for any god, and it's not a matter of opinion or point of view. Not only is "beauty" a subjective judgement, its existence does not help us to distinguish a god hypothesis from a no-god one. It's just a non-starter.
We Never Know
No Slack
My point has been if a person sees something/experiences something, that is evidence to them.
I've never claimed it was scientific or imperial, just that it is evidence to that person.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
That is what originally Zoroaster said. Ahur Mazda, the good one; and Angra Mainyu, the evil one. But by the time the Jews picked it up, it became one God, though not very good ("for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me"). They made the other God into a rebel angel.
Does the English word 'angry' have its roots in 'Angra'? Seems appropriate to me.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
That is not a good scenario. You can't satisfy all. We have a story around here (India) that a Hindu was in trouble and asked Gods to help him. One God thought that there are hundreds of others too, why should I take the trouble. Surely someone else will help. The second God also thought the same was and did not move, and the thired and the fourth. In the end, there was no help for the person.
When a Christian was in trouble, he called Jesus, and Jesus came and helped him to overcome that trouble. The moral of this story is that you should finalize on one, so that you are not left hanging.
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I can not satisfy all what?That is not a good scenario. You can't satisfy all. We have a story around here(India) that a Hindu was in trouble and asked Gods to help him. One God thought that there are hundreds of others too, why should I take the trouble. Surely someone else will help. The second God also thought the same was and did not move, and the thired and the fourth. In the end, there was no help for the person.
When a Christian was in trouble, he called Jesus, and Jesus came and helped him to overcome that trouble. The moral of this story is that you should finalize on one, so that you are not left hanging.
as if
What can I not satisfy?
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
Possible, Anger is destructive.
"In the one instance in these hymns where the two words appear together, the concept spoken of is that of a mainyu ("mind", "spirit" or otherwise an abstract energy etc.) that is angra ("destructive", "chaotic", "disorderly", "inhibitive", "malign" etc, of which a manifestation can be anger). In this single instance - in Yasna 45.2 - the "more bounteous of the spirits twain" declares angra mainyu to be its "absolute antithesis".
A similar statement occurs in Yasna 30.3, where the antithesis is however 'aka mainyu', aka being the Avestan language word for "evil". Hence, aka mainyu is the "evil spirit" or "evil mind" or "evil thought," as contrasted with spenta mainyu, the "bounteous spirit" with which Ahura Mazda conceived of creation, which then "was"."
Ahriman - Wikipedia
Gods and their prophets/sons/messengers/manifestations/Mahdis.
You sound as though a person must earn help from the gods if they existed. Thus, I do not wonder why you are an atheist.That is not a good scenario. You can't satisfy all. We have a story around here(India) that a Hindu was in trouble and asked Gods to help him. One God thought that there are hundreds of others too, why should I take the trouble. Surely someone else will help. The second God also thought the same was and did not move, and the thired and the fourth. In the end, there was no help for the person.
When a Christian was in trouble, he called Jesus, and Jesus came and helped him to overcome that trouble. The moral of this story is that you should finalize on one, so that you are not left hanging.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
It is not a question of earning, it is about correct targeting. Had that person worshiped only one God, the God would had to come. There are other stories when Lord Vishnu ran barefoot without waiting to put his shoes on, as a crocodile had latched on to the leg of one of his devotees, the King of Elephants. The story is known as 'Gajendra Moksha' (the deliverance of the King of elephants).
Gajendra Moksha - Wikipedia
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Regardless of science, if we are to approach things rationally, then we need to bring some objectivity to bear. We can't believe that everybody who hears voices is being talked to by a god, or demon, or whatever - regardless of their own opinion on the matter. We also can't accept trite nonsense like the existence of the world is evidence for a god that created it (always the specific god they believe in, of course), because it's obviously begging the question.