Why I am an atheist

[janesix]

An awful lot of fools out there.
And in here.

Yes.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

Indeed, that reasoning applies to both God and the spiritual world (heaven).
Not known by current knowledge of law or science does not mean does not exist.
How many solar systems are there that we know of?....................
How many solar systems are in our galaxy? - NASA Space Place
As to thy question concerning the worlds of God. Know thou of a truth that the worlds of God are countless in their number, and infinite in their range. None can reckon or comprehend them except God, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.” Gleanings, pp. 151-152
“Verily I say, the creation of God embraceth worlds besides this world, and creatures apart from these creatures. In each of these worlds He hath ordained things which none can search except Himself, the All-Searching, the All-Wise.” Gleanings, pp. 152-153

Thank you for your ^ above ^ reply. ( Yes, Not known...... does Not mean does Not exist )

In Scripture, first the ' sin issue ' has to be settled here on Earth first before there will be intelligent life elsewhere.
If there was faithful life elsewhere then at this time there would be No need to first settle the ' sin issue ' here on Earth.
This issue will Not be completely settled until the end of Christ's coming 1,000-year governmental reign over Earth ends - 1 Corinthians 15:24-26

Right now, Satan challenges all of us as he did Job - Job 2:4-5
' Touch our 'flesh'...... ( loose physical health ) and we would Not serve God.
Both Job and Jesus under adverse conditions proved Satan a liar and so can we.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

He supposedly went about doing miracles.
That ain't logic. It's been pure blind faith ever since.

You're far from alone in your thinking, especially since we have never seen them.
Jesus' powerful works (miracles) were a small sample, a preview or coming attraction of what is to come.
Come on a grand world-wide scale.
In Eden there was No polluting of Earth, there was No food shortages, there was No sickness and No enemy death.
What Jesus did on a small scale he will be doing on a GRAND global scale.
This is all part of why we are all invited to pray the invitation of Rev. 22:20 for Jesus to come!
Come and undo all the damage Satan and Adam brought upon us.- 1 Corinthians 15:24-26
To me the logic of 2 Timothy 3:1-5,13; Luke 21:11 is Not blind or hidden from us.
Coupled with the fact that the good news of God's kingdom ( Daniel 2:44) is now declared earth wide just as Jesus said - Matthew 24:14; Acts of the Apostles 1:8 to me, this is highly visible in our day or time frame, so what is as written so it is and so it shall be.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

The earth is a book that does not lie.

Interesting that other than Earth the other planets are named by men, whereas God named this planet : EARTH - Genesis 1:10

 

[URAVIP2ME]

Its a fantasy, man. Get over it.

I wonder what you find fantasy about Luke 21:11 that there will be GREAT earthquakes and in one place after another food shortages and pestilences......

 

[Audie]

Interesting that other than Earth the other planets are named by men, whereas God named this planet : EARTH - Genesis 1:10

You sure believe some goofy things

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Then maybe you are looking at the wrong God.

Then present the "right God."

 

[Audie]

I wonder what you find fantasy about Luke 21:11 that there will be GREAT earthquakes and in one place after another food shortages and pestilences......

Like that is hard to predict.

There's facts in the Bible. Like
"egypt".

There are facts in "Goldilocks and the three bears" too.

 

[janesix]

Then present the "right God."

I will when I figure it out.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

Like that is hard to predict. ...................

However, chapter 21 of Luke and chapter 24 of Matthew was written for our day or time frame 2,000 year ago for us.
ALL the pieces now fit together coupled with the international declaring about God's kingdom now nearing its 'final phase' as Jesus said - Matthew 24:14; Acts 1:8
Even the year 2020 should have shown us that ' Hind Sight is 2020 ' especially in connection to Scripture- Luke 21:11; 2 Timothy 3:1-5,13

 

[Audie]

However, chapter 21 of Luke and chapter 24 of Matthew was written for our day or time frame 2,000 year ago for us.
ALL the pieces now fit together coupled with the international declaring about God's kingdom now nearing its 'final phase' as Jesus said - Matthew 24:14; Acts 1:8
Even the year 2020 should have shown us that ' Hind Sight is 2020 ' especially in connection to Scripture- Luke 21:11; 2 Timothy 3:1-5,13

You're drifting too far from the shore

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Its a fantasy, man. Get over it.

Mods, please note for future reference. I tend to use the word "woo" to mean, "wow, yes I approve," but also to mean -- well you know, pure "woo."

So if I reply to a post with just "woo," you have no basis to know in which sense I am using it.

 

[metis]

To be entirely honest, Metis, I simply do not see the need even for more "naturalistic" approaches to belief. I am content in assuming that the world is natural and in no need of anything that would resemble a deity. It is true that we don't know everything about that world yet, for example whether it always existed, came from nothing, or what have you. But I do not find inventing an unlikely solution to explain what we don't yet know is reasonable. I am content to say, "I don't know, but I hope the geniuses find something soon while I'm still here to learn about it."

I understand, and I in no way can refute what you say above. In my case, I think you probably remember what I went through that led me to reaffiliate with Catholicism even though I'm very much of the lunatic left-wing fringe of it.

IOW, I got far more questions than answers.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

This seems like a post that was built with a lot of thought. Don't feel 'obliged' to respond if you don't want to, I am just sort of 'writing notes in the margins' of what I read

The intent of that question, if I understand it correctly, is rather more “how is it possible you gave up god?”

In noting that you divided believers into two groups, one that thoroughly 'believes,' and one that pretends, do they both ask this same question from the same motivational root .. The group that pretends I suppose, might ask the question with more empathy in mind. Actually, I am unsure

I read the book (yes, that book, the Bible), from beginning to end, before I was 11 years old.

What horrors I found there! And what nonsense!

Now, as it happens, I was also a big fan of National Geographic

That seems very young to have read the book from start to finish, though I don't disbelieve you. Some people simply are born with more ability than others. I had not read it from front to cover until I was in my early twenties, and it took me a long time. Though I had read the bible with the catholic canon in it. I also had stacks of national geographic magazines I got into that were in my parent's attic, they were from the 70's and 80's. Perhaps similarly, reading the bible and then reading science would change my outlook. I drifted into agnosticism / atheism for a long time

Or rather, I should say that they may (I couldn’t tell) have held some belief about the existence of god, but they most assuredly did not give much evidence of believing any of the Christian dogma that I was learning about.

And does this change at all when you think about the more fundamentalists types? I noticed that you are from Canada. I am from the U.S., and I intuit that things of this nature might be markedly different around here. I have one aunt that is an extremely devout believer, (or was, I haven't seen her since I was a kid) and got my cousin to read sermons at church and all that, and she believed in hell etc. Constant talk of Jesus whenever I was sent to visit.. She once hosted foreign exchange students from Vietnam, and she freaked out when they were blessing the walls of her house somehow

I know that people believe that they actually have a chance at winning the lottery, else they wouldn’t buy a ticket, which given the actual odds is pretty much exactly like tossing your two dollars over that precipice.

So something I came across in reading psychology the other day was this idea of intermittent reinforcement. That is, your brain actually gets more dopamine if the odds of you succeeding go down a bit .. Well, I am simplifying it greatly, there are a lot of mechanisms in play I think, but that seems to be something that occurs, if I perceive science correctly

There is wildly inconsistent use of Bible texts. Leviticus is used to label gay people as sinners worthy of death (or at least hell, perhaps), but seems remarkably ineffective in getting its message about the evils of pork chops, bacon and shrimp out to the masses.

It seems to show the temporal effect on divine revelation, that is to say that time will eventually chew up even those things that people thought of as 'divinely inspired' standards. This kind of chemistry is hopefully a good thing, ultimately. What it says about anything can't last, it can't stand the test of all the minds that hit it throughout time. Therefore, the hope is that unpalatable views will become antiquated

And I was told that faith, not good works, was needed to please god. Except, of course, when it was good works, not faith.

Seems like it is a division between Jesus and Paul here, and probably many thinkers between then and now. What gave cause to question either in light of the other? It seems somewhat odd

Every believer seems more concerned about his own soul, its disposition after death, then about the condition of his fellow humans who are still alive.

Part of that issue is the Christian notion that everyone is judged for their own sin, and this means that the collective vs. the individual dynamic is an underlying dynamic. The problem is, that I think that a lot of secular or non-Christian thinking tends to consider the collective as the more appropriate mode of analysis. Your hardship, in the Christian setting, is more thoroughly perceived as being your problem. It was your own faith in god that faltered, or it boils down to some way that you did not act correctly. This seems to be the way it is in western Christian styles anyway, I'm not sure if the Orthodox think of it the same way

The Bible is chock-a-block with prohibitions and "though-shalt-nots," but how much better than “don’t get your hands dirty” might be the enjoinder to soil them dreadfully helping those in need?

I am afraid you seemed to have lost me with your language here

And sex! Don’t even get me started on the religious view (at least the Christian one I grew up with) of sex. (Yet, as a science reader I knew that sexual reproduction was only one of the options god had open to him. Nature, however, needed sexual reproduction as the surest route to evolution and the continuation of life through changing conditions.)

This sort of loses me a bit as well.. Then again, I am unsure if nature did take the 'surest route' to get through time.. Though it does seem to be a goal directed activity, I think it may have been, or may still be, faced with subjective options. There is no reason it needed to sacrifice efficiency in order to produce thinking beings, 'thinking' is something that is clearly imprecise and inefficient. Ordinarily, it just produces something that can physically chase the bison and kill it. How does it get to something that has to struggle to think up how to make the spear or arrow... It doesn't really make a lot of sense

 

[amorphous_constellation]

And then I began to see that the world – supposedly the work and pride and joy of a loving god – while often beautiful, awe-inspiring, grand and mysterious, was also a world of unspeakable horror, visited without rhyme or reason upon the just and unjust alike, as were all its many pleasures. And I wondered how it was possible to lay all of the beauty – yet none of the horror – to god’s account. And there were no answers.

It might be a question of power and responsibility, who or what has it, and how much of it is had by each node. If all the power is consolidated in one source, then that source is responsible for every judgement or action. I tend to think that by merit of our existence alone, this cannot really be quite the case. Assuming that we do think, at that thinking is empirically a process that occurs as a verb , that leads to panjective ends, then the species can be said to make decisions. So we get a share of good/evil decision pie, and I don't see how it would be fair to any deity, who wasn't putting man in a state of possession, to be ascribed with the totality the motivation behind our choices. Without free-will, then I don't see the point in thinking. The hope is that we can keep thinking using our sciences, to come up with better solutions to get to more good

Religion, it seems to me, teaches that we should be satisfied without bothering to try and understand, to accept without questioning. All I ever have is questions, and magisterial answers, fully dependent on authority and nothing else, leave me completely unsatisfied.

I don't really see it quite in that way, I don't see anything wrong with being unsatisfied with the answers we are often given. Spirituality seems better thought of as a journey, rather than an end, to me. History has often created religions were authority became calcified, and where no one could have their own testament. Part of this thinking has led us to the creation of western culture, as we now know it.. A note though on individuality, which sits oddly in all this: the 'individual' is to be goaded into conformity.. You come to god, via being an individual. The exploratory possibility of being an individual is not underlined in the positive sense.. You are an individual to show that you can restrain what you are as an individual

But it’s not just the evil that men do. It’s the sheer bloody stupidity of so much of the race. Watch the football hooligans in the stands, or in the streets after the game. See this creature, a little lower than the angels, this “piece of work...so infinite in faculty,” as it watches endless hours of “reality television.”

I don't think that is the stance of most bible based religion, nor is it really my stance

Spirituality is not aided by unwarranted fear nor unjustified hope, but rather by deeper understanding of ourselves and our universe. For true spirituality, put aside your scripture and turn instead to art – any art.

I agree here to a degree, I practice art (music) and see it as trying to get to a connection that is in some way ineffable

What a tragic notion must be held by the faithful that if, by some calamity, they lost their faith in god, they would suddenly be unable to restrain themselves from theft and murder. The atheist is in no doubt at all that – should he suddenly believe in god – he should continue to behave as morally as he did before.

I diverge in that, I think that the individual's sense of morality is probably a separate thing from either of those, but in each of those structures, they could finds the material for good or bad morality. If it helps the theist in the moral sense to become an atheist, then maybe he should, and vice versa, if helps the atheist to become a Christian, then it may be better for the world if he would.

I could never believe in both Hell and a merciful god. Mercy is not needed at all except by those who are not worthy of it. It is completely wasted on those who don’t need it.

Hm, well my suspicion in reading the new testament, is that mercy sometimes was not as much of an agape concept as that. After all, it was written that you can only get to god narrowly through the son.. And the mercy is that such a narrow road was provided for you at all. With the myriad styles of human religion throughout the world, and the christian history where things went off the rails , I would tend to agree with what looks like a more agape version of mercy that you describe. As to hell, I tend to think that we make enough of it happen on earth at times. When ancient writers described hell, surely its a metaphor for the conditions we can create. So the good news is, we don't have to act in a way that creates hell

Few things offend me as much as the idea of “original sin” – that I (the child abused by those most accountable for my security) inherit guilt along with their genes. The Bishop of Hippo would excuse god for deformed and still-born children on such a vile supposition, but I will not.

Just as concerning, is what the theological reaction might be once science gets us farther along with gene editing. It's hard to say what fundamentalist Christians will say about it. The preservation of suffering is sometimes sort of lauded, it seems.. Doesn't it make sense to be able to abort, if things change suddenly and you can no longer afford it

Beliefs can, in fact, be much stronger than knowledge, for reasons that are so completely human. It's funny, but it's also a bit endearing sometimes -- as long as it doesn't get destructive!

Nowadays things are getting a little dangerous with that... if you follow the news, you might see that things seem to be getting a little conspiratorial

Still, I wonder sometimes if it isn't true that most people don't really spend a lot of time and effort really thinking about the things that they take for granted, and if they actually did stop and examine more closely, they might arrive at different conclusions.

Sometimes it can take a lifetime for someone to really think something through, to really get their own grip on understanding a concept. A lot of people don't go to forums for example, so what they're thinking might be that much more on the back burner. There is also a theme that runs through ancient writers, that too much knowledge can bring sorrow.. I think that was part of the wisdom of king solomon.. it talks about that in the poetic edda as well..

It would still be possible, I think, to believe in god and the message of Christ without believing that Mary was a virgin, that water turned into wine, or that the dead got out of their graves and wandered around town, and nobody thought to actually write a memo about it. Or that Jesus actually and literally died for our sins.

I think of Christianity, and all other religions, as just experiences that humans had somewhere in history. Those things which were once putting a heavy load on the whole system, are now just sub-theologies in a far greater system, and remain as sub-theological nodes in human history. They happened, and things happened a result of their stimulation to the human animal. And so they are phased from objectivity into subjectivity, and are there to be studied. Or as I alluded to be for, they can also remain as doors that can be populated by believers, if individuals so choose

 

[URAVIP2ME]

You're drifting too far from the shore

.... and what is found drifted too far from the shore, but the 'restless sea' (of humanity) the wicked people who are like a troubled sea.- Isaiah 57:20; Isaiah 17:12-13

 

[Audie]

.... and what is found drifted too far from the shore, but the 'restless sea' (of humanity) the wicked people who are like a troubled sea.- Isaiah 57:20; Isaiah 17:12-13

So thats who you identify with

 

[Kenny]

Then you've misread me. I don't dislike God -- I can't possibly, since I don't believe in any such thing. I don't hate anybody I don't know anything about.

What you might have read from what I wrote, if you had read it, is that the reason for my disbelief is that the god that was presented to me simply does not reconcile with the reality around me. Very simple, really.

And herein lies the problem... "that the god that was presented to me simply does not reconcile with the reality around me."

Reminds me of my wife who lived in the poor section of Caracas, Venezuela living in a dilapidated colonial style house. Her reality was no marriage lasted more than 7 years, living among mice was normal (I killed 21 with mouse traps in one night as we played dominoes), and there was no such think as a shrimp cocktail... for that matter what WAS a shrimp cocktail let alone a cat that can climb a tree.

Your reality doesn't establish truth.

Today, God has changed her reality into His reality.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Interesting that other than Earth the other planets are named by men, whereas God named this planet : EARTH - Genesis 1:10

In what language did God name this planet "Earth?" And what was its name in that language?

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Deism answers your objections quite nicely. It is a good reason why God doesn't answer prayers, why there is no evidence Jesus is alive today, why evil is so prevalent in the world, why there is so much suffering, why we seem to be on our own down here. God created something as magnificent as DNA/RNA code coded into every living thing. One cell contains more information than a set of Encyclopedia Britannica. That's too complex a thing to come about by random chance. Yet we are on our own down here. We get no help from a Higher Being. Children starving to death and dying horribly of ravaging diseases will not get any help from this extremely intelligent but completely uncaring Power. This is why I am a deist though my profile says pantheist. I didn't see deist as a choice.