Oh... umm okay then
-
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"Why did God create atheists?"
- Thread starter Terry Sampson
- Start date
dfnj
Well-Known Member
We need small letters for small thoughts. Who's jerking who now **mod edit**?
Jesus was a Jewish rabbi. I think what is important here is not who is a rabbi and who is not. What is important here is the idea of causal chains. God created people. People become atheists. Therefore, God created atheists is the argument. Ultimately God is responsible for the creation of everything since God is associated to be the first cause. However, generally, responsibility is not accounted for by causal chains.
For example, has any parent of child who has committed murder been held accountable for their child's actions? Has the parent of any child who has committed murder been tried and convicted of murder and sentence to death because of the actions of their child or children? Generally, we do not charge the parent with a crime when it comes to the behavior of their adult children. If you can cite a case where a parent was given the death penalty for their adult child's actions please post the link.
In the same way of thinking I do not think God is responsible for atheists. People who become adults, think for themselves, then decide become atheists. Once human consciousness enters the equation God's responsibility is superseded.
I'm surprise you did not mention nihilists as well. At least the atheists have some shreds of humanity. The nihilists are just a bunch of mentally unhealthy depressed psychopaths.
God did create everything on purpose. The purpose of the Universe, our purpose, is so God can realize His omnipotence. God realizes His omnipotence by sharing in our experiences of joys, frustrations, and sufferings. We exist so our omnipotent God can experience the thrill of having limitations. We most likely live in a cyclical Universe. So we also exist so God can realize His omnipotence by experiencing the result of every possible choice each of us can make. This time around we all have one set of choices. The next time around we all will probably make some slightly different choices. Try not to get hung up on time. God has lots of time to get the results of all our choices worked out!
Regardless of the evidence or lack thereof, God as a word exists as the tension in a Unity of opposites between nothingness and every possible thought and experience that will ever happen. Despite the chagrin of the nihilists, somethingness exists as opposed to nothingness. Since somethingness exists, it has meaning on some level of thought.
Unity of opposites - Wikipedia
Of course, if you are philosophical illiterate then just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride! Just take solace in God loves you! And if you are atheist or nihilist then just know it takes almost ALL of God's omnipotence to do so!
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dfnj
Well-Known Member
The old atheist argument religion did it. Well, I think you have it backwards. Religion did not create human nature. Human nature was already corrupt on its own. If religion did not exist, or never existed, and the World was only filled with science loving atheists, then there would be just as many wars, murders, and unnecessary senseless acts of violence. This is because human nature is the cause of all our sins in the World.
Supposedly, part of the reason why religion exists is to help people live their lives according to their the "better angels of our nature."
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." Abraham Lincoln
dfnj
Well-Known Member
Opinions are not facts.
I don't think that was his point. He didn't accuse religion.
Her comment was, "An atheist spends far more resources (time, energy, happiness) in the acquiring of things. In point of fact, the acquisition of stuff results in extremely destructive behavior (as an analogy, my nephews were fighting over plastic Easter eggs today). A religious person understands that this is all just stuff."
The implication is that religion makes one a better person - less materialistic, and that being an atheist leads to "extremely destructive behavior" such as disputes over plastic Easter eggs.
This was rebutted with allusions to crook Christians like Bakker and the wealth accumulated by many religious institutions. The argument wasn't that religion made Bakker a crook or made the Vatican interested in accumulating the wealth of Solomon, but that it didn't prevent Bakker from being a crook or the Vatican (and Mormon church) from being just as materialistic as the poster accuses atheists of being.
She was probably told that atheists are materialsts and misunderstood that to mean materialistic.
“Science loving Atheists” is a misnomer. Not all atheists love science.
Science is just a tool, it doesn’t really do anything, it’s just something that’s used. Sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. Kind of like religion, really.
Humans don’t need religion and indeed religion isn’t the only avenue to argue morality and ethics. Philosophy has been doing that for eons.
“Human nature” is another in a long line of excuses to justify past atrocities. It’s just in our nature to be war mongers. It’s just in our nature to slaughter minorities. It’s just in our nature to burn gay people alive.
But atrocities also come with so called “religious justification.” It’s a sin to be gay, it’s a sin to be mixed race, Jews rejected Jesus and so on.
I mean how many atheist bakers would deny a gay couple their wedding cake? Seriously, the actions by so called religious folk (not all, to be fair) appal me. And they’re supposed to be bettering themselves? Religion is such an easy curtain to hide behind.
Meanwhile in secular nations we are striving to be above such petty divisions. The way I see it, we’ve outgrown religion as a species. If we even needed it in the first place. Not that I’d hold it against anyone who found meaning in religion, of course. I’m religious, in a sense. Just that I don’t think the world is separated into “good religious folk” and “immoral atheists.” I think all humans have the capacity for either, regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof.
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rational experiences
Veteran Member
I know that I am a human sacrificed and in my suffering.
I ask my Father, who invented O his pi God science, for what reason Father did you sacrifice my life.
And he told me his spiritual story.
He inventing the theist/theo rist and the ISM status his own self for his own male group, cult mentality brotherhood agreed thinking concept.
For males today are all first ONE self.
Which is what you overlook.
The first human male population, same one BODY, DNA owner all thought alike.
Yet they were a multi male population....what the teachings were about.
The ownership of conscious human awareness in its living sacrifice, to live and then be given self death is one of contemplating reason and meaning of self against the group status.
For science factually owns and identifies in human reasoning as being the chosen act against our original holier human being spiritual life and body presence.
Which past life memory says was a living spiritual being, but in a higher form than the bio life we inherited in conversion.
For we were given a removal of our spirit body.
We once spiritually as a human were owned of a 3 form of spirit as a natural self.
One, from the eternal spirit not in creation that owns a living spirit presence in the body surrounding the holding of space O emptiness, how God O the mass removed self from being with eternal.
Space proves that it is circular itself, a holding of the form by pressure to maintain holding of form O, the circle.
We know that spiritually our owned living spirit was communicated out from the natural eternal body only due to gases, the spirit of GOD O the mass returning by filling in emptied out space.
So gas only took up half of space.
In eternal, we owned rationally the body that had sent creation into its destruction and conversion. So we got forced out.
We were factually originally only in transition.
When science was introduced it cut us off from being whole....so we no longer could return to our spirit as a human back into eternal.
We were given death instead....by the fact of becoming like God...what science looked at and compared self spirit to....God the stone...the reactor.
And sadly as said....extra UFO mass of cold out of space held cold radiation, was heated up and forced to come back into our burning gas mass....heated and dispersed a huge radiation input....and the UFO then trapped us on Earth....just as we taught.
One of our spirit selves was separated and became as God....bones. And that is how we got our image placed as males/humans into the CLOUD mass.
The other one spirit became as our bio life form....life continuance by cellular body presence.
So 2 spirits owned the presence of image of feed back, recording of natural bio life by voice and image of self...and we had been spiritually sacrificed and given life death.
How the story of our past spiritual awareness said....so when we die....the other one part of our spirit, the Creator self in eternal is given back to being a spirit.
What most of humanity believe in, naturally.
Then humans are proven spiritual circumstance to support what we believed in....our owned self history as a story.
The theist was against what natural spirit had given us....manifestation, so theoried how to remove God O stone a mass by pi O, not stone and not mass, a manifested spirit in science, and believed that if they could transport the mass of God O the stone back into a spiritual body then we would be released from living on Earth.
What the original science meaning/story, reason that a male group invented the state SCIENCE is about.
It was not originally applied for a civilization resourcing science machination.
It was applied for self removal....how it was taught.
Therefore the theist was against natural and also spiritual concepts and only tries to impose that their thinking stories are real.
And any human can own thinking and the telling of a story.
So storytelling is the actual first place where humans own natural argument, without some scientist then trying to preach to us that a male with a machine invented the natural state creation, for he is surely proven to be a liar.
For he never did. Yet he imposes that just because he can cause reaction by O his science God that previously did not exist the statements pi O that he is correct.
When natural says.....since when did any human own a commentary/conditioned thinking and making comments relative to existence existing...for surely he would be a proven liar....which he is.
For great big huge separate forms in separate states in natural bodies in the same 2 of one natural body...space either extremely empty and cold or irradiated due to heated bodies sitting in it.....is not any owner of a theme of how to create.
Every comment made today is by a male in his human egotism claiming that as he says he owns a mentality of extreme intelligence, it makes his God O pi....owner of that self imposed status.
All natural humans own is their ability to look at him and see what a lying destructive male claim as a self that he owns...….as informed, group mentality rules his self belief.
When a human can think for self, as a self, is when proof against the origin of group mentality is overthrown as being the reason why the self was harmed.
What the story about a group versus one human is real as a conscious teaching concept idealism about realizing that the group mentality is a liar.
The self however is not ignorant enough to claim, but I can accept singularity...for you also would be proven a liar unless you apply that choice, remove self from group living and go and be just by your own self.
So a self in a group is meant to be self supportive in the group and idealize what the sort of self should be in the life of living with groups, without that group dictating the removal of self expression as a single self and the freedom of the self in its owned will.
To be considered to be a life equal.
Yet in the group our Elders always given the respect of having lived and owned experience before us.
So the family unit, the Elders cared for the very young to allow the healthy to care for everyone.....how the group function was meant to exist.
And science and technology owns no true support of that life continuing in the natural format...so we own a teaching evaluation right here and now, that is titled the Destroyer concept....detailed and stated actually to bring to our attention that evolution is not technology...evolution is about self and the healing of self....natural.
I ask my Father, who invented O his pi God science, for what reason Father did you sacrifice my life.
And he told me his spiritual story.
He inventing the theist/theo rist and the ISM status his own self for his own male group, cult mentality brotherhood agreed thinking concept.
For males today are all first ONE self.
Which is what you overlook.
The first human male population, same one BODY, DNA owner all thought alike.
Yet they were a multi male population....what the teachings were about.
The ownership of conscious human awareness in its living sacrifice, to live and then be given self death is one of contemplating reason and meaning of self against the group status.
For science factually owns and identifies in human reasoning as being the chosen act against our original holier human being spiritual life and body presence.
Which past life memory says was a living spiritual being, but in a higher form than the bio life we inherited in conversion.
For we were given a removal of our spirit body.
We once spiritually as a human were owned of a 3 form of spirit as a natural self.
One, from the eternal spirit not in creation that owns a living spirit presence in the body surrounding the holding of space O emptiness, how God O the mass removed self from being with eternal.
Space proves that it is circular itself, a holding of the form by pressure to maintain holding of form O, the circle.
We know that spiritually our owned living spirit was communicated out from the natural eternal body only due to gases, the spirit of GOD O the mass returning by filling in emptied out space.
So gas only took up half of space.
In eternal, we owned rationally the body that had sent creation into its destruction and conversion. So we got forced out.
We were factually originally only in transition.
When science was introduced it cut us off from being whole....so we no longer could return to our spirit as a human back into eternal.
We were given death instead....by the fact of becoming like God...what science looked at and compared self spirit to....God the stone...the reactor.
And sadly as said....extra UFO mass of cold out of space held cold radiation, was heated up and forced to come back into our burning gas mass....heated and dispersed a huge radiation input....and the UFO then trapped us on Earth....just as we taught.
One of our spirit selves was separated and became as God....bones. And that is how we got our image placed as males/humans into the CLOUD mass.
The other one spirit became as our bio life form....life continuance by cellular body presence.
So 2 spirits owned the presence of image of feed back, recording of natural bio life by voice and image of self...and we had been spiritually sacrificed and given life death.
How the story of our past spiritual awareness said....so when we die....the other one part of our spirit, the Creator self in eternal is given back to being a spirit.
What most of humanity believe in, naturally.
Then humans are proven spiritual circumstance to support what we believed in....our owned self history as a story.
The theist was against what natural spirit had given us....manifestation, so theoried how to remove God O stone a mass by pi O, not stone and not mass, a manifested spirit in science, and believed that if they could transport the mass of God O the stone back into a spiritual body then we would be released from living on Earth.
What the original science meaning/story, reason that a male group invented the state SCIENCE is about.
It was not originally applied for a civilization resourcing science machination.
It was applied for self removal....how it was taught.
Therefore the theist was against natural and also spiritual concepts and only tries to impose that their thinking stories are real.
And any human can own thinking and the telling of a story.
So storytelling is the actual first place where humans own natural argument, without some scientist then trying to preach to us that a male with a machine invented the natural state creation, for he is surely proven to be a liar.
For he never did. Yet he imposes that just because he can cause reaction by O his science God that previously did not exist the statements pi O that he is correct.
When natural says.....since when did any human own a commentary/conditioned thinking and making comments relative to existence existing...for surely he would be a proven liar....which he is.
For great big huge separate forms in separate states in natural bodies in the same 2 of one natural body...space either extremely empty and cold or irradiated due to heated bodies sitting in it.....is not any owner of a theme of how to create.
Every comment made today is by a male in his human egotism claiming that as he says he owns a mentality of extreme intelligence, it makes his God O pi....owner of that self imposed status.
All natural humans own is their ability to look at him and see what a lying destructive male claim as a self that he owns...….as informed, group mentality rules his self belief.
When a human can think for self, as a self, is when proof against the origin of group mentality is overthrown as being the reason why the self was harmed.
What the story about a group versus one human is real as a conscious teaching concept idealism about realizing that the group mentality is a liar.
The self however is not ignorant enough to claim, but I can accept singularity...for you also would be proven a liar unless you apply that choice, remove self from group living and go and be just by your own self.
So a self in a group is meant to be self supportive in the group and idealize what the sort of self should be in the life of living with groups, without that group dictating the removal of self expression as a single self and the freedom of the self in its owned will.
To be considered to be a life equal.
Yet in the group our Elders always given the respect of having lived and owned experience before us.
So the family unit, the Elders cared for the very young to allow the healthy to care for everyone.....how the group function was meant to exist.
And science and technology owns no true support of that life continuing in the natural format...so we own a teaching evaluation right here and now, that is titled the Destroyer concept....detailed and stated actually to bring to our attention that evolution is not technology...evolution is about self and the healing of self....natural.
Yerda
Veteran Member
Hi.
Let us imagine eating broccoli. I love it. It tastes really good to me and I don't think I'm choosing that it tastes good or bad but simply shovelling into my gob and enjoying the result.
Likewise for God. I don't choose to not believe. I apprehend what seems to be the relevent info and it comes out negative. Arguments for God go in and out comes
!!bzzzzZZZ Not Likely!
It's something to do with who I am.
If it is the case that God is real (and I wouldn't rule it out) then why has He made me so that I find Him unlikely?
Martin
Spam, wonderful spam (bloody vikings!)
God created atheists so that theists and atheists could get together and make agnostic babies. It was all for the sake of agnostics... naturally
I wonder what sort of baby two agnostics would produce? Does it depend on recessive genes?
dybmh
ויהי מבדיל בין מים למים
Hmmmmm.... I think that requires further study..I wonder what sort of baby two agnostics would produce? Does it depend on recessive genes?
Invisibilis
Member
To find something unlikely, is a choice between what is likely and what is not.
Yerda
Veteran Member
Oh ok. I don't agree but that's how it is I guess.
So you could choose to believe or not believe in God is what you're saying?
pingpongpal
New Member
First of all, man evolving from a one-celled animal never happened. No scientist has ever generated new information by random chance which is what you need to create man from a one-celled animal. Darwinian evolution is historical science which is different from operational science. Theories of operational science can be verified such as gravity. To prove if there is gravity all a person needs to do is drop something on the floor and if he still doubts, he can drop it again. Evolution cannot be repeated like that because the process supposedly required 5 billion years. So faith is required to believe in evolution.Betcha the title of this thread jerks a heathen cage or two, eh?
I recently came across Dominic Thompson's article "What are atheists for? Hypotheses on the functions of non-belief in the evolution of religion", published in Religion, Brain & Behavior, Vol. 2, No. 1, February 2012.(Dedicated to my favorite RF Reprobates)
I found it interesting and I dare to hope that others in RF will too.
The article opens with the allegation that a lot of recent research (as of February 2012) suggests that religious beliefs and behaviors:
- Are universal,
- Arise from deep-seated cognitive mechanisms, and
- Were favored by natural selection over human evolutionary history.
So, If religious-belief formation and behavior is a “fundamental characteristic” of human brains (as by-product theorists and adaptationists agree) and/or is an important feature of Darwinian fitness (as adaptationists argue), then
“how do we explain the existence and prevalence of atheists even among ancient and traditional societies?”
Thompson tells us that one possible answer is that, like other psychological traits due to natural variation, there will always be “a range of religious-belief degrees”, and atheists simply represent one end of that range.
But he goes on to suggest that an “evolutionary approach to religion” raises several other “adaptive hypotheses” for atheism, such as:
1. Frequency-dependent selection meaning that atheism as a ‘‘belief strategy’’ is selected as long as atheists do not become too numerous;
2. Ecological variation meaning that atheism outperforms belief in certain settings or at certain times, maintaining a mix in the overall population;
3. The presence of atheists may reinforce or temper religious beliefs and behaviors in the face of skepticism, boosting religious commitment, credibility, or practicality in the group as a whole; and
4. The presence of atheists may catalyze the functional advantages of religion, analogous to the way that loners or non-participants can enhance the evolution of cooperation.
Since evolutionary theorists ask what religious beliefs are ‘‘for’’ in terms of functional benefits for Darwinian fitness; Thompson says we should also consider what atheists might be for.
[T.S. Comments: Neat, huh? I think so.
- I'm especially intrigued by Hypothesis #1, because it evokes the notion that, from time to time, it may be appropriate "to cull the herd".
- I also liked the Jewish story about the rabbi and his disciple's exchange.
- "Do you believe," the disciple asked the rabbi, "that God created everything for a purpose?" "I do," replied the rabbi." "Well,"
asked the disciple, ‘‘why did God create atheists?’’
Dominc Thompson's article is attached for the benefit of the literate among you.
Religion originated because man was made in God's image and He gave us a desire to worship. The best thing to worship is the one true God. Blaise Pascal said that in everyone's heart there is a God-shaped hole. Only the one true God can fill that hole to make us whole.
Yerda
Veteran Member
A Neon Gadfly
New Member
Hello there!
I just have a couple of questions:
1. Which god?
2. Why that god?
I just have a couple of questions:
1. Which god?
2. Why that god?
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
I think it was CS Lewis who said through his character Ransom that the skeptics keep us honest.
I did like his space trilogy. I'm a sucker for sci fi.
I did like his space trilogy. I'm a sucker for sci fi.
firedragon
Veteran Member
Have you considered that there is one, but we have our own perspectives?
ClimbingTheLadder
Up and Down again
Betcha the title of this thread jerks a heathen cage or two, eh?
I recently came across Dominic Thompson's article "What are atheists for? Hypotheses on the functions of non-belief in the evolution of religion", published in Religion, Brain & Behavior, Vol. 2, No. 1, February 2012.(Dedicated to my favorite RF Reprobates)
I found it interesting and I dare to hope that others in RF will too.
The article opens with the allegation that a lot of recent research (as of February 2012) suggests that religious beliefs and behaviors:
- Are universal,
- Arise from deep-seated cognitive mechanisms, and
- Were favored by natural selection over human evolutionary history.
So, If religious-belief formation and behavior is a “fundamental characteristic” of human brains (as by-product theorists and adaptationists agree) and/or is an important feature of Darwinian fitness (as adaptationists argue), then
“how do we explain the existence and prevalence of atheists even among ancient and traditional societies?”
Thompson tells us that one possible answer is that, like other psychological traits due to natural variation, there will always be “a range of religious-belief degrees”, and atheists simply represent one end of that range.
But he goes on to suggest that an “evolutionary approach to religion” raises several other “adaptive hypotheses” for atheism, such as:
1. Frequency-dependent selection meaning that atheism as a ‘‘belief strategy’’ is selected as long as atheists do not become too numerous;
2. Ecological variation meaning that atheism outperforms belief in certain settings or at certain times, maintaining a mix in the overall population;
3. The presence of atheists may reinforce or temper religious beliefs and behaviors in the face of skepticism, boosting religious commitment, credibility, or practicality in the group as a whole; and
4. The presence of atheists may catalyze the functional advantages of religion, analogous to the way that loners or non-participants can enhance the evolution of cooperation.
Since evolutionary theorists ask what religious beliefs are ‘‘for’’ in terms of functional benefits for Darwinian fitness; Thompson says we should also consider what atheists might be for.
[T.S. Comments: Neat, huh? I think so.
- I'm especially intrigued by Hypothesis #1, because it evokes the notion that, from time to time, it may be appropriate "to cull the herd".
- I also liked the Jewish story about the rabbi and his disciple's exchange.
- "Do you believe," the disciple asked the rabbi, "that God created everything for a purpose?" "I do," replied the rabbi." "Well,"
asked the disciple, ‘‘why did God create atheists?’’
Dominc Thompson's article is attached for the benefit of the literate among you.
As far as I'm concerned, Atheism is just following properly following the first three of the ten commandments.
Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
I think you are committing an error of category. Your analogy of parents and children does not seem to stand up.
Parents are not creating children in the same manner as the supposed god created the universe or humans. Parents do not possess omnipotence nor omniscience. If the parents created the child with foreknowledge of everything the child would become and do, and could control everything the child could become or do, then yes, they should be held accountable for everything the child becomes or does.
I searched for "jerked cage".
Those images were inappropriate.
But for "rattled cage", I found....
Neither he (she?) nor I like being caged.
This aversion, like atheism, is a human tendency which emerged from our
evolution (IMO). Now, let's assume that the gods intended for evolution
to be the mechanism for our creation. I'll wager that they foresaw this,
& created matter, energy, space, & physics toward this end.