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Post by spraidor on Nov 19, 2011 14:27:41 GMT
I know quite a few atheists. They all seem pretty reasonable but when I ask them what's the reasoning behind their belief (or whatever you like to call it, I know some atheists don't like to call it a belief) they can't really explain it. I hope someone here can give a summary. Thanks.
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Post by Rational Roy on Nov 19, 2011 16:58:06 GMT
I know quite a few atheists. They all seem pretty reasonable but when I ask them what's the reasoning behind their belief (or whatever you like to call it, I know some atheists don't like to call it a belief) they can't really explain it. I hope someone here can give a summary. Thanks. We don't believe in gods. Next question.
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Post by waymarker on Nov 20, 2011 1:40:49 GMT
[We don't believe in gods. Next question. Okay but do you believe the flesh-and-blood Jesus existed?
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Post by thunderridge on Nov 20, 2011 2:39:17 GMT
Jesus is a fictional character. God's are imaginary.
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timo
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Post by timo on Nov 20, 2011 2:47:56 GMT
The reasoning behind my atheism is this. I know of no good reasons to think that a god exists. And I know of good reasons to think that the sorts of gods people seem to believe in probably don't exist. Conversely, I've heard some very bad arguments for believing in a god. Perhaps more importantly, I've made attempts to try the whole Christian thing. I prayed for some kind of sign from God, just to know that He's there, and I got...nothing.
If you'd like me to sketch out some of those arguments--the good, the bad, the ugly or whatever--I'd be happy to.
As for the question of whether or not there was, in fact, a historical Jesus, I take the position that there's not enough evidence to say with any certainty that there was. I take the position that if there was indeed a historical Jesus, he's completely lost to us since all we know about him is what his followers had to say about him.
Peace
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Post by waymarker on Nov 20, 2011 8:42:34 GMT
Jesus is a fictional character. God's are imaginary. Prove it..
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Post by waymarker on Nov 20, 2011 8:54:27 GMT
The reasoning behind my atheism is this. I know of no good reasons to think that a god exists. And I know of good reasons to think that the sorts of gods people seem to believe in probably don't exist. Conversely, I've heard some very bad arguments for believing in a god. Perhaps more importantly, I've made attempts to try the whole Christian thing. I prayed for some kind of sign from God, just to know that He's there, and I got...nothing. If you'd like me to sketch out some of those arguments--the good, the bad, the ugly or whatever--I'd be happy to. As for the question of whether or not there was, in fact, a historical Jesus, I take the position that there's not enough evidence to say with any certainty that there was. I take the position that if there was indeed a historical Jesus, he's completely lost to us since all we know about him is what his followers had to say about him. 1- Isn't life and the universe enough evidence to at least suggest the possibility of a God? 2- Sadly God doesn't do stunts to give us 'signs'. In fact when people said to Jesus "Show us God", he replied- "You've seen the miracles i can do because of the power he gives me, what more do you want?" 3- The whole of Israel and the Roman army garrison saw Jesus strutting his stuff for 3 long years, he was too BIG to be a myth. And when his disciples and mates wrote the gospels, they were warts and all jobs that often showed him (and them) in an unflattering light, for example on the night before his execution he asked God to get him off the hook. And the gospels also tell how some of his disciples ran off and deserted him when he was crucified, for fear of the Romans. See, nobody ever tried to edit out jarring bits like that, which means we can trust the writers..
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Post by ungod on Nov 20, 2011 10:22:54 GMT
Jesus is a fictional character. God's are imaginary. Prove it.. Prove you don't owe me ten thousand dollars.
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Post by samuelxcs on Nov 20, 2011 12:23:33 GMT
Some people don't want to accept their is someone/thing that created them, others just think God deserves bad things happening on his planet and some are deluded enough to believe that they are God themselves. I believe that there are at least two possibilities: God is real (but a flawed God) or that God is actually fiction..
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B
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Post by B on Nov 20, 2011 13:29:17 GMT
Sure, which god? Okay, so why aren't there miracles today? Say, like the healing of amputees? God revealed himself awfully a lot to a lot of people over the years, but now he doesn't! Furthermore, the Bible says that if you have the faith the size of a mustard seed (somehow you can measure faith! Perhaps in delusion-meters?), then you can move a mountain. Praying in reality however does little to actually help the world much less moving a mountain. And once Christians are confused at why prayers don't work, they point out the story of Jesus and the Tempter, where Jesus says you can't "test God". Ooookay? So prayers are testing God now or are they genuine pleads for help? Seems like God is indecisive on this one. Yet he is not recorded by contemporary historians. Strange. What? Anyway, the authors of the gospels NEVER knew Jesus. They got their sources from people who allegedly knew the people who met Jesus. The Bible is neither a book of "history" or "science", take the global deluge or the fall of Jericho for examples. The writers also say that dashing babies and pregnant women to the ground is a-okay as long as God sanctions it. The writers also say that genocide is a-okay as long as God sanctions it. The writers also thought bats were birds, insects had four feet, a man lived in a fish for three days, an omniscient God blamed humanity for doing exactly what it intended for them to do and that you could reproduce striped sheep by placing striped sticks in front of sheep while they have hot, steamy sheep sex. You're going to trust a primitive book that contradicts itself dozens of times and was made by primitive men hundreds of years ago which were then edited to fit the dogma of the early Church? Anyway, if you're genuinely curious about atheists, many in America being former Christians (myself included, for more than a couple of decades), then you can visit here and ask whatever you want: whywontgodhealamputees.com/forums/index.php
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Post by dawnus on Nov 20, 2011 17:36:52 GMT
Having being brought up in a totally non-religious household I never eally thought about it that much as I was growing up, religion was something other people 'did'. Apart from a very brief time as a wiccan (I got better!), I have always been an atheist and, to be honest, when you're on the 'outside looking in' all religions are so obviously made up by someone (whether they be Bronze Age goatherders or dotty old men in the 1950s) x
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timo
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Post by timo on Nov 20, 2011 21:10:46 GMT
1- Isn't life and the universe enough evidence to at least suggest the possibility of a God? I don't see why it should. I guess I buy into the notion that our universe may be contingent, that prior to the big bang it may not have existed. And that this should suggest that there may be something greater from which we emerged. But I don't think that makes a god any more plausible per se. It could be that our universe is a part of a larger multiverse. And there are physicists that take that view. It could be that our universe emerged essentially uncaused and from nothing. No really. www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/31_02/nothing.htmlSo yeah.... But really, my position isn't that a god's existence is impossible. I just don't see a reason to believe in one. 2- Sadly God doesn't do stunts to give us 'signs'. In fact when people said to Jesus "Show us God," he replied- "You've seen the miracles i can do because of the power he gives me, what more do you want?" That doesn't really make sense as a response. Jesus is speaking to people who have already felt the presence of God in the person of Jesus. Jesus is speaking to people who've already witnessed remarkable miracles. And no, elsewhere in the Bible, Yahweh does indeed give people signs when it's asked of Him. Have you read the book of Judges? Gideon demands that Yahweh give him proof of His will before he agrees to follow Him. And He does. But really, there's not much in the Bible that's analogous to my situation. In Gideon's case, he knew that God existed. And he was speaking to Him. He just wanted to make sure that it was really God that he was speaking to. It seems that at nearly every point in the Bible, people are speaking with or speaking for God. These are all people that already knew He was there. And that's all I was praying for. To know He's there. 3- The whole of Israel and the Roman army garrison saw Jesus strutting his stuff for 3 long years, he was too BIG to be a myth. But where, outside of the Bible do we find these stories? I mean, if he were really as big as he's made out to be, we should find some independent witness of his ministry somewhere. He's supposed to have forcibly taken over the Temple and expelled the money changers in what would have amounted to something like a paramilitary campaign. And yet there's no mention of it anywhere outside of the New Testament. 1And when his disciples and mates wrote the gospels, they were warts and all jobs that often showed him (and them) in an unflattering light, for example on the night before his execution he asked God to get him off the hook. What is the evidence that the gospels were actually written by the disciples? As far as I can tell the only evidence that they were actually written by the people they're named after is church tradition. In any case, it's clear that we're probably not really dealing with eye witness accounts. After all, the writers of Luke and Matthew appear to have been using Mark as their source. And if we're not actually dealing with the disciples themselves, I'm not sure why it would be surprising that an author might use a disciple as a foil to Jesus, so that he could work in a saying of Jesus or have Jesus make some point to set him straight. I also think it's important to remember that there were competing factions within early Christianity. Hell, the development of the first canon came about as a response to Marcion, a heretic who had developed his own canon. Marcion took the view that Jesus was the son of a god but not the god of the Hebrew Bible, which he rejected in its entirety. With respect to the disciples, Marcion believed that it was Paul alone that had correctly relayed the message of Christ. As such, his canon included some of Paul's epistles and a version of Luke. There are even scholars that believe Marcion's version of Luke was the basis for Luke Acts. So it shouldn't be surprising if we find that there are attempts to portray certain disciples in a negative way. They were figureheads for competing factions. And so some of the bad portrayals of the disciples may have come about as an attempt to denigrate an author or redactor's rival. And this is something that we can find even in the Hebrew Bible, which many scholars believe preserves competing Aaranoid and Mosaic traditions, which were then quilted together by an editor. You can read more about that in Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliot Freidman. So yeah...I'm not really sold dude. And the gospels also tell how some of his disciples ran off and deserted him when he was crucified, for fear of the Romans. See, nobody ever tried to edit out jarring bits like that, which means we can trust the writers.. You can trust them? They claimed that there were graves that opened up and dead people went around talking to people. No one else at the time seemed to have noticed. They claimed that there was a systematic slaughter of newborn babies that took place. No one seemed to notice that either. And I'm not sure that going into hiding to avoid persecution is really even a shameful thing to do. And it's not something that the audience for the gospels wouldn't have understood, being subject to fits of persecution themselves. So yeah, I don't think there's all that great of evidence for a historical Jesus. I guess I should give the caveat that this doesn't mean that I think I can conclusively say that he never existed as a flesh and blood person. I just don't think we can say for certain. And in any case, I think that as a figure he's lost to us since we only know about him through his followers. Peace
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Post by ungod on Nov 21, 2011 19:08:01 GMT
2- Sadly God doesn't do stunts to give us 'signs'. In fact when people said to Jesus "Show us God", he replied- "You've seen the miracles i can do because of the power he gives me, what more do you want?" www.ftarchives.net/holbach/good/gs3.htm#126
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Post by ungod on Nov 21, 2011 19:10:23 GMT
2- Sadly God doesn't do stunts to give us 'signs'. So much for prayer, then eh?
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Post by Darius on Nov 22, 2011 14:14:47 GMT
Atheism is just another belief system as far as I'm concerned. They believe that there isn't a god, and yet they refuse to acknowledge that it's a belief. Amazing.
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