ForumsWEPRTheism and Atheism

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thepyro222
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thepyro222
2,150 posts
Peasant

I grew up atheist for 16 years. I had always kept an open mind towards religion, but never really felt a need to believe in it. My sister started going to a Wednesday night children's program at a church. Eventually, I was dragged into a Christmas Eve service. Scoffing, I reluctantly went, assuming that this was going to be a load of crap, but when I went, I felt something. Something that I've never felt before. I felt a sense of empowerment and a sense of calling. Jesus called upon my soul, just like he did with his disciples. he wanted me to follow him. Now, my life is being lived for Christ. He died on the cross for my sins, and the sins of everyone who believes in him. He was beaten, brutalized, struck with a whip 39 times, made to carry a cross up to the stage of his death. This I believe to be true, and I can never repay him for what he has done.
I still have my struggles with Christianity, but I've found this bit of information most useful. Religion is not comprehensible in the human mind, because we cannot comprehend the idea of a perfect and supreme being, a God, but we can believe it in our heart, and that's the idea of faith. Faith is, even though everything rides against me believing in Jesus, I still believe in him because I know that it's true in my heart. I invite my fellow Brothers and sisters of the LORD to talk about how Jesus has helped you in your life. No atheists and no insults please

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Bobthebest
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Bobthebest
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Shepherd

People want to follow the god in the bible because they need to know that some one or something will/can save them. It's called faith. And it's stupid.

EmperorPalpatine
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EmperorPalpatine
9,439 posts
Jester

Where are you quoting from EmperorPalpatine?

That's what I'd likely say if I were still in it and arguments I've heard, not necessarily my personal views.

Why would anyone want to follow such a god as portrayed in the Bible?

"Because the rewards are great."

I'll do some research and get back to you on the rest of that.
TheMostManlyMan
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TheMostManlyMan
5,835 posts
Chamberlain

Well you guys are seeming all high and mighty, so answere this. How was life supposed have have come from inamate objects (the origins of said objects you can only explain as &quotoof, objects&quot that have no will, intelligence or power to do anything other than the basic nature of rocks, gasses etc. furthermore how we're they supposed to have gotten any energy in the first place? Or did they get that when they randomly appeared out of nowhere? And remember, after you say to yourself or to me "I don't know" or "not a clue" when we say something like that then you go ahead and say that all of Christianity is idiocy because the bible doesn't expressly say just how every single animal in the ram was fed.

TheMostManlyMan
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TheMostManlyMan
5,835 posts
Chamberlain

Ark, not ram. It makes more sense this way.

Kasic
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Kasic
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Jester

How was life supposed have have come from inamate objects (the origins of said objects you can only explain as &quotoof, objects&quot that have no will, intelligence or power to do anything other than the basic nature of rocks, gasses etc.


Chemical reactions which were formed through coincidence (although on the scale of the universe, inevitability) that replicated.

Google Abiogenesis. No, it's not the same thing as spontaneous generation.

furthermore how we're they supposed to have gotten any energy in the first place?


If you mean energy as in food, chemicals don't eat.
If you mean energy as in thermodynamics, there's a big thing in the sky called the sun which is constantly having nuclear reactions within it.

Or did they get that when they randomly appeared out of nowhere?


Spontaneous generation has been thoroughly disproved.

after you say to yourself or to me "I don't know" or "not a clue"


Well, seems I didn't do that.

when we say something like that then you go ahead and say that all of Christianity is idiocy because the bible doesn't expressly say just how every single animal in the ram was fed.


1) I never said that all of Christianity is idiocy.
2) It is idiotic to believe that two of every kind of animal could fit onto a boat as described in the Bible, eat and drink for 40 days without killing each other off, after the amount of water on the world increased something around 20 times over in volume and then disappeared again, and THEN breed from just two of each animal to the current amount of animals there are today, all of which occurred just around 5000 years ago.
TheMostManlyMan
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TheMostManlyMan
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Chamberlain

Yes, I know what that is and no there isn't any real proof now is there? Another but of guesswork because that's the only thig to fit the agenda.

It's pretty obvious that it's been disproved, a 3 year old could have told you that. But now what's your theory since it had to come from somewhere, oh that's right, there is no God so there is no explanation since it wasn't created by a higher being and it didn't just appear.

I don't suppose that there's any actual profe of that (back to abiogenesis)? Or what chemicles or how much etc. if we can't even figure that out or recreate it than how did it happen so perfectly on accident? I just looked up the definition of that on my IPod's dictionary and it says "the technical term for spontaneous generation" so there you go, stuff randomly appearing just like you said was disproven.

You just called it idiocy.

Has man ever created life? A livig cell, a single love cell? No. And even if by chance it is done all that proves is that of takes great skill and knowledge to create it.

TheMostManlyMan
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TheMostManlyMan
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Chamberlain

Sorry about yet another double post, I frequently to see things after I post.

Yes sure you didn't say I don't know, but you also didn't say anything else, like how it actually happened so you basically said I don't know without actually saying it.

Bobthebest
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Bobthebest
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Shepherd

Has man ever created life? A livig cell, a single love cell? No


Yes and no, we have cultured cells and made more, but we have not made a new cell from scratch.

I never said that all of Christianity is idiocy.


You implied it.
TheMostManlyMan
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TheMostManlyMan
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Chamberlain

Thank you twice bob! Exactly my point, never been created from scratch even as advanced as we are but yet you think it's perfectly logical to think it happened by accident despite this fact and the lack of facts supporting it.

And yes you most certainly did imply it on many an occasion.

Kasic
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Kasic
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Jester

Yes, I know what that is and no there isn't any real proof now is there?


Depends what you consider "real proof."

Scientists have emulated what we believe to be early earth conditions and self replicating amino acids formed.

Another but of guesswork because that's the only thig to fit the agenda.


Back to guesswork are we? Good. Then you won't have any trouble giving me that "guesswork" in evolution, which you said there was so much of.

. But now what's your theory since it had to come from somewhere


Abiogenesis doesn't have to do with the Big Bang theory either. Please pick another card.

there is no God so there is no explanation since it wasn't created by a higher being and it didn't just appear.


There are explanations. We've told you some of them.

I don't suppose that there's any actual profe of that (back to abiogenesis)?


It's currently the most widely accepted theory, but there's not nearly as much evidence for it as evolution.

Mostly where it is at is "if conditions were like this then it would have been possible for it to occur this way." in terms of definitively proven.

Or what chemicles or how much etc.


I see you didn't google it.

if we can't even figure that out or recreate it than how did it happen so perfectly on accident?


Well, let's take a look at the whole picture.

How many galaxies are there?
How stars in each galaxy are there?
How many planets are around each star?
Out of those hundreds of thousands of trillions, it's pretty much inevitable from an odds perspective on those chemicals being combined.

I just looked up the definition of that on my IPod's dictionary and it says "the technical term for spontaneous generation"


Your IPod needs a new dictionary. Like I said, google it. Read the wiki at least.

stuff randomly appearing just like you said was disproven.


Spontaneous Generation has been disproved.
Abiogenesis is not Spontaneous Generation. If it was, it would be called Spontaneous Generation.

You just called it idiocy.


I called one literal interpretation of an event in the Bible idiocy.

Has man ever created life?


Depends what you mean by created life. If you mean an entirely new creature that you can hold in the palm of your hand, no.
If you mean manipulating genes and what not to create something different, yes.

A livig cell, a single love cell?


...what is a love cell?

And even if by chance it is done all that proves is that of takes great skill and knowledge to create it.


Actually, from what I know the problem isn't that we don't have the knowledge. We don't have the tools to work at such a level as to &quotut together" a cell.

like how it actually happened so you basically said I don't know without actually saying it.


If you mean I didn't assert something as 100% fact without having enough evidence behind my claim to say such, you're right, I didn't.

That's because I'm not a fool. We can only go with what we know.

If we don't know something, we try to learn it. We don't just ascribe every unknown thing to some magic man in the sky with absolutely no reason to do so.

I can tell you right here, when you say "know" and I say "know" we're not saying the same thing.

You're using "know" as "irrefutably to be such" while I'm using it as "from what we can see and logically infer."

You implied it.


Again, I said the literal interpretation of a single event in the Bible was idiocy.

Exactly my point, never been created from scratch even as advanced as we are but yet you think it's perfectly logical to think it happened by accident despite this fact and the lack of facts supporting it.


Abiogenesis does not state that a rabbit hopped out of the primordial ocean.

And yes you most certainly did imply it on many an occasion.


I won't deny many parts of it are idiotic.

Most of what isn't idiotic comes in the form of advice or wisdom. Almost all of the stories are logically bs if you take them literally.
EmperorPalpatine
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EmperorPalpatine
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Jester

...what is a love cell?

If that's the word he meant, I suppose he meant 'genetic material', babymaking cells, asking if humans ever synthetically made something that could be used to directly make life.
*mutters something about people being overly sensitive*
Bobthebest
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Bobthebest
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Shepherd

Almost all of the stories are logically bs if you take them literally.


Isn't that what we've been trying to say?
BigP08
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BigP08
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Shepherd

Well you guys are seeming all high and mighty, so answere this. How was life supposed have have come from inamate objects (the origins of said objects you can only explain as &quotoof, objects&quot that have no will, intelligence or power to do anything other than the basic nature of rocks, gasses etc.

Have you studied abiogenesis? Basically, what we can demonstrate at this point is that the building blocks of life, amino acids, can come from non-living material. So while we don't know exactly how life did form, we do know that it is possible for life to come from non-life.

furthermore how we're they supposed to have gotten any energy in the first place?

It depends on exactly what you mean by energy, but energy exists independent of life. But since I read later in your post that the answer you expect is "I don't know" so you can respond, we'll go with that for the moment.
And remember, after you say to yourself or to me "I don't know" or "not a clue" when we say something like that then you go ahead and say that all of Christianity is idiocy because the bible doesn't expressly say just how every single animal in the ram was fed.

The difference here is that when we reject the claims of Christianity, we aren't making positive claims that Christianity is absolutely impossible. So when we look at the things that we do know within a reasonable degree of certainty and then see that there are still question marks, the only intellectually honest thing we can do is leave them as question marks and investigate. Christianity, on the other hand, is a proposed hypothesis (at best) to the questions of life, but it only answers with more questions. God, by definition, is infinitely more complex than the universe, demanding that he need an even more complicated explanation than what he is trying to explain in the first place.
If it clarifies the point, my or anyone else's questions about the Bible don't necessarily mean that you have to be able to answer them or the Bible is absolutely false. But if the Bible was proven to be 100% accurate tomorrow, we'd go from investigating the questions that you've posed, and others, about the world we know, to investigating the "I don't knows" in the Bible. Asking questions about your proposed hypothesis is only natural, especially with many different denominations of Christianity alone and other religions.
Yes, I know what that is and no there isn't any real proof now is there? Another but of guesswork because that's the only thig to fit the agenda.

There isn't a formed explanation of exactly how it happened, but we've demonstrated that abiogenesis can happen, if that's your question. The Miller-Urey experiment showed that amino acids can be generated from non-living material under normal physical laws similar to earth. Again, we don't have a time machine to observe how it happened but from this experiment we know it can happen. We wouldn't know evolution is a scientific fact either if we had to know exactly how it happened, because all we can demonstrate with evolution is that it does happen now and that it did happen in the past.
It's pretty obvious that it's been disproved, a 3 year old could have told you that.

I'm not sure what you mean by disproved, particularily since a three year old doesn't have access to the related experiments. How would you go about proving that something can't happen? Do you just mean that it sounds really unlikely or impossible, because that isn't how science works. We investigate the truth before making any claims about it.
But now what's your theory since it had to come from somewhere, oh that's right, there is no God so there is no explanation since it wasn't created by a higher being and it didn't just appear.

By "it" I assume you mean the universe or matter or something equivilent. Again, atheism does not make claims about the origin of the universe or even science. It is the response to theistic claims as unsupported by evidence, nothing more. Science does not make claims to knowledge about anything until it has been investigated and confirmed.
I don't know how the universe was formed, but neither do the religious that claim to know it was God, because even if you did know God exists you weren't there and God most likely hasn't shown you how he created the world in a verifiable way. "I don't know" is better than "It was God, prove me wrong!" That's the argument from ignorance fallacy.
I don't suppose that there's any actual profe of that (back to abiogenesis)? Or what chemicles or how much etc. if we can't even figure that out or recreate it than how did it happen so perfectly on accident?

If you're looking for the exact way that abiogenesis happened, we don't have that. But what do you mean it happened "so perfectly"? There is no design in the way life formed and thereafter the way life evolved, and there's no reason to thing that the outline for life had any type of design. In fact, if anything, I'd say we're as far from perfect as life could be. Our reality revolves around life taking other life to survive (animals, plants) or losing its own life. Surely an omnibenevolent god could have come up with a way to live and let live?
I just looked up the definition of that on my IPod's dictionary and it says "the technical term for spontaneous generation" so there you go, stuff randomly appearing just like you said was disproven.

It's life coming from non-life material. The definition you're using is not the definition that scientists investigating abiogenesis use.

Has man ever created life? A livig cell, a single love cell? No. And even if by chance it is done all that proves is that of takes great skill and knowledge to create it.

That's the wrong conclusion. There are many things that man can't create because they're naturally occuring. We don't look at something and say that because we can't create it, something more intelligent than us is therefore required to create it.
It sounds like you're trying to go in the direction of the argument from design, and feel free to ignore this tangent if I'm mistaken. We don't recognize design by complexity or intuition. We recognize design by contrasting it with naturally occuring. When we see a painting and a tree, we have examples of paintings having been designed and no examples of naturally occuring paintings. When we look at the tree, we have examples of naturally occuring trees but no examples of designed trees. When we look at the universe, we have no other examples of universes having been created. So I don't know how we can say that everything requires a designer that is infinitely more complex than the universe. Doesn't that imply that God was created by an even higher power?
BigP08
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BigP08
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Shepherd

I'm gonna post a little about theism and atheism so we can get our definitions clear. Not all atheists or theists are going to agree with these definitions, but just so those with whom I converse know precisely what I mean when I say I'm an atheist.
Theism is the belief that a god or gods exist. Theists make a claim that a god or gods exist. Atheism is the lack of belief that a god or gods exist. Atheists reject that claim that a god or gods exist. Rejecting a claim is not the same thing as saying the claim is false. Atheism is not the assertion that no gods exist. Some atheists may assert that no gods exist, and if they do they are required to present evidence because they are making a claim. Atheism is not a claim, but a response to a claim.
What this means is that you can't prove theism by disproving evolution, abiogensis, or the big bang. These are attempts to disprove atheism. Even if all these things were false, we would be in a position where we do not have an explanation. We are not in a position where we accept the god hypothesis for lack of something better. That's an argument from ignorance fallacy, meaning that "I am ignorant of any other explanations so I'm going with this one" (and ignorant meaning lacking knowledge, not stupid btw).
Agnosticism and gnosticism go to what you know, while atheism and theism go to what you believe. Someone who is agnostic does not claim to know whether or not a god exists, while someone who is gnostic does claim to know whether or not a god exists. So, a gnostic atheist claims to know that there are no gods. An agnostic atheist lacks belief in a god or gods but doesn't claim to know there are no gods. An agnostic theist believes in a god or gods but doesn't claim to know that a god or gods exist. And a gnostic theist claims to know that there is a god or gods.

When we're talking about the possibility of a god, what we need to realize is that when we talk about the existence of anything, the time to believe is when existence has been demonstrated. There might be a god for all I know. But until somebody demonstrates that a god exists, I am justified in rejecting theistic claims as unsupported, because they are.

Finally, let's talk about arguments from incredulity. These arguments basically assert that because the odds are unlikely that the universe would happen this way, therefore god. First off, when we're talking about probability, the odds of the universe happening this way are equal to the odds of it happening a specifically different way. It's the equivilant of saying "what are the odds that I flipped a coin three times and got heads, heads, heads?" The same as the odds of getting tails, heads, tails. Just because the universe forming this way is a 1/1000 chance (I'm just using a number that's easier to quantify, but pretend it's a trillion if it helps) that doesn't mean that the odds of the universe forming with a god are 999/1000. It means that we had one thousand different 1/1000 ways the universe could have formed and it formed this way.
Secondly, when we're discussing the probability of a god or gods existing, we can't put numbers to that. We can't even demonstrate that the supernatural is possible, so there is no way to verify how likely or unlikely a god is. So even if the probability of the universe forming was one in a trillion, the probability of a god could be anywhere between 1/1 and 0/1, and we have no way to compare the two.

Anyway, that's what I've got for right now. I'll be back on the forum in a couple hours to respond to any posts, so if you respond immediately I may not see you right away.

Kasic
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Kasic
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Jester

I notice that we often ask what religion someone follows when debating them, but we never get asked what we believe. I wonder if this is the theists simply not looking at things from the other side, if they aren't knowledgeable about the terms, or if it's that they simply don't care because they think they're right.

Anyways, I'm going to go ahead and state what I am for the sake of the discussion.

What I would be termed as is an agnostic atheist. As of yet, there is no definitive evidence disproving the existence of some type of supernatural being. However, in regards to specific beliefs, I am a gnostic atheist. We can examine claims made by people and look at scripture and such logically to conclude that gods which we humans worship were created by our imaginations.

To put it simply, I think all religion's specific beliefs are bs but I don't defenestrate deism.

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