I Think, Therefore I Am (an Atheist)

In looking through the responses, I didn't see any that addressed the questions I just asked.

You say you believe in God. Terrific! And what God did you choose? (from the tens of thousands of available choices?). Why did you choose to believe in your own particular form of voodoo?

From your responses, you seem partial to the Christian God described in the Bible. Well God knows there's plenty of Christians around, so you'd be in numerous company. But what does a Christian think about the billion Muslims in the world? Are they as hopelessly deluded as atheists such as myself? Any "proof" that you can point to as justification for believing in your religion.... Muslims have the same amount and type of "proof". Does this cause cognitive dissonance in a Christian's head? Or does it not even register as a problem in your opinion?

Just curious.

OK Vendetta, happy to answer that one. I think the argument, if it's what you're getting at, that there can't be a God because there are so many religions lacks basic logic. Its like saying there can't be a genuine item because there are lots of counterfeit items. To me its a no brainer that the argument doesnt really go anywhere.

As I see it, God isn't big on religion, he's big on people. I'm not really a fan of the notion of religion. I can brush my teeth religiously, it really just has connotations of habit. God is big on people caring for one another, trying to do doing good, staying away from things that are wrong, and accepting that we all miss the mark he set and ask his forgiveness, the forgiveness that Jesus purchased for mankind. You can call your religion what you like, but if you live that way then I believe you'll be on the right side of God.

I think you Vendetta would call me a Christian. Why do I go along with that? Well of all the belief systems I've looked at it makes the most sense to me. The most sense when I consider my personal experience, things written in the Christian Bible when interpreted properly and compared with science (I know there is room for argument there), the historical record (again I know there is room for argument) and the impact it's had in the world.

Bible says there will be wrong doctrines, and to be careful what you follow, so its not surpising there is more than one religion in the world.

You said Muslims have the same amount and type of proof. The thing is I don't believe they do, not by a long shot.

Lack of belief does not require faith. Do you need faith to not believe in the Tooth Fairy?

@Kim

“To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, “I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge” ― Ravi Zacharias

Except, as you are well aware, Max (remember the story 'Burden of proof' in this group?), atheism isn't the claim 'there are no gods'... atheism is the statement 'I have no gods'... which is tantamount to nothing.
That you know this, yet continue to act as if you do not, is corrupt behaviour, Max

Atheism is different things to different people newjane. I've heard loads of atheists say "there is no God".

Atheists who say that needlessly incur a burden of proof, whereas the statement 'i have no gods' places the burden squarely on the theist who claims that there are gods, so must show proof (and, of course, cannot).
The advantage of the 'i have no gods' statement is that it defuses and disconnects the conflict that the making of claims and counter-claims engenders

@Scooby

Then you have those who say their agnostic atheists but behave like gnostic atheists. These, conspicuously , reject any and all evidence for God's existence simply because it does not conform to their materialistic philosophy of Scientism.

These forget, thou, that there are all manner of truths that don't conform to their hidebound doctrine either: http://bit.ly/12MH5YV

agnostic atheist, max? Please define this term (the nonsense you offer above assumes the existence of evidence for the existence of gods, without which your entire posting makes no sense)

One of the most compelling reasons why millions of reasonable people the world over believe that the Bible is the inspired word of Jehovah God is the fact that it contains many, many highly specific prophecies that were fulfilled exactly as predicted. No other text – religious or otherwise – holds such an esteemed distinction. Given that it's humanly ** impossible ** for anyone to predict with full accuracy what's going to occur from one hour to the next it's clear that Bible prophecies are not of human – thus divine – origin :)

I'm unaware of these fulfilled prophecies even though I was a Christian for about 10 years and attended a private Christian school. I'm just shocked that I missed them. What are they?

Here are but a few preeminent examples: http://bit.ly/14Ckccl

Well, the first one was not anything surprising, just people carrying out an action. nothing supernatural or surprising

The other stories are surprising, but they don't prove God's existence.

What, that's it? "Here's a quick overview of what's likely to happen in the bronze-age Middle East (don't worry... we can edit it afterwards - as often as necessary)"
Add a coating of rhetoric about how the gods are wonderful because they say they are and then market the resultant concoction with hype and fanfare while hoping that nobody notices the complete lack of substance.
Risible!

@Kim

How, then, do you explain the preternatural ability these Bible amanuensis had to accurately predict specific events hundreds of years in advance?

Can you do that?

They seem like "self-fulfilling" prophecies to me. Maybe observation of the culture led them to predict it. I don't know, but neither do you.

"That seems unlikely and therefore God exists"? No, it doesn't work like that.

here's an offer... i'll make a series of predictions, but then my descendants get to modify them, and the modifications will be accepted as part of the original predictions. Of course, the predictions won't be about anything relevant or unforeseeable, but a bit of hype will cover that over.
Here's one for starters... the Earth will lose its moon.

Within 20 years, India will be the most populous nation on Earth

This is great fun... and, as a bonus, apparently such totally trivial prognostications make me a god!

@Kim

How specifically do they seem self-fulfilling?

In the 20th century you need to be careful of a guy called Adolf Hitler... that would have been helpful...

But instead we got... one lot of middle-eastern bronze age tribes is going to beat up another middle-eastern bronze age tribe.
Heady stuff?

I'm reminded of something John C. Wright once said, “If atheism solved all human woe, then the Soviet Union would have been an empire of joy and dancing bunnies, instead of the land of corpses.”

I don't know why you would expect atheism to solve all human woe, when it is simply the disbelief of one idea. I haven't seen Christianity or Muslim solve all human woe, either.

*Islam

"When your country and mine shall get together on the teachings laid down by Christ in this Sermon on the Mount, we shall have solved the problems not only of our countries but those of the whole world." - Ghandi

The world is the way it is, not because it is without divine guidance, but because it shirks it.

@Scooby,

Precisely my point! Nice work!! :)

He's conflating moral ontology with moral semantics. Our concern is with moral ontology, that is to say, the foundation in reality of moral values. Our concern is not with moral semantics, that is to say, the meaning of moral terms. We have a clear understanding of moral vocabulary like “good,” “evil,” right,” and so on, without reference to God. Thus, it is informative to learn that “God is essentially good.”

Problem is, their definition of "good" and "evil" is still broad enough to fall victim to subjective opinion. Per the atheistic world view, "good" and "evil" are just social conventions akin to driving on the left versus right side of the road or mere expressions of personal preference akin to having a taste for certain foods or not.

If they try and claim morals are valid independently of our apprehension of them, what is their objective foundation? Moreover, if morality is just a human convention, then why should we act morally, especially when it conflicts with self-interest?

Or are we in some way held accountable for our moral decisions and actions? More particularly, what is the basis for the value of human beings? If God does not exist, then it is difficult to see any reason to think that human beings are special or that their morality is objectively true.

Moreover, why think that we have any moral obligations to do anything? Who or what imposes any moral duties upon us?

The atheist has no meaningful answer to any of these questions. Thus, they teeter on the edge of moral bankruptcy similar to that which has devastated every single totalitarian regime that has experimented with atheism on a national level.

God is evil. Religion is evil. And therefore I would conclude the religious followers are inherently evil. Max is evil, so is scooby doo.

How can God be evil if he doesnt exist??? Why am I evil?? I never accused you or anyone on this site of being evil or imoral or anything of the kind. Its easy to write defammatory rhetoric, anyone can do that.

I agree but I don't feel very entitled to calling religious people "evil". I don't think anything is evil, and I don't think anything is good. ANYTHING is neither of the two. Whatever you might choose to describe to be good or evil, is always going to be different things to different organisms and different people. CO2 for example, is bad for us and we would die in a room full of it, but on the other hand it is great for plants and they would die without it. They make oxygen for us that would be deadly to them if they were trapped in a room full of it, but we wouldn't be able to live without it. Snake venom can kill AND save lives. Bees can be a pest or danger to some people, but are also extremely important in many ways. People need to stop trying to put labels on everything and everyone. Religious people who don't intend on doing bad only end up being offended by other religions that oppose their thoughts and decide to let it control what they think of that other person. They don't take time before hand to get to know that person that they now view as "evil". These two people could've been two peas in a pod for all we know. Considering how many people have died in religious wars over the years, I'm not going to dedicate my precious time in church on sundays, etc., even if i wanted to.. and I don't. My grandpa baptized me when I was a baby and spends his whole life at church practically but it doesn't make me want to join in on religion at all. When people find out I'm atheist they think "Ooh, an opportunity to convert someone to my religion." I absolutely hate it! I was a christian up until I was able to speak, then I made it very clear that I wasn't going to live by the rules of any religion. There is suffering in ANY religion. The only reason that most elderly religious people are still thinking atheists have no idea what we are talking about is because they've had a church longer than us and we've had no place to meet and talk about what we think. We now have a "church" called the internet, and more and more people are realizing that priests and old books don't have all of the answers. They also have a negative view towards atheists because all they ever hear about is the loud obnoxious atheists that never shut up (I don't even think they are atheists, I think they just want to look tough). They make the other atheists look bad because people don't know about the level-headed quiet atheists that exist. I don't want to waste my life thinking about what I'm going to do after I die. I don't want to go anywhere when I die, I want to become part of the earth. And I don't know where people get the idea that their lives are more important than the lives of other people or another species all together. I don't usually talk about this stuff. I could go my entire life without even thinking about it, but I have never shared any of my thoughts on it before and this website seems like the place to do it, so there you go. And Scooby, you need to take your arguments someplace where people agree because this website isn't for creating comment wars, that's what youtube is for. This website is for people sharing experiences, personal thoughts, and learning that you aren't alone in stressful situations.

Oh please Urban, this website is about discussion and even expressing different views, preferably politely. I don't have to go off anywhere. If people want to post big statements that other people don't agree with then they shouldn't be surprised when they get a reply pointing out where they are wrong. There is so much wrong with what you wrote, for example nothing is evil and nothing is good???!!! So, by your personal philosophy you'd say its not evil to rape and murder babies. I think what you wrote largely just evades reality. If I can show people on this site where their thinking is wrong then I am free to do it, this is not Nazi Germany and my intentions are good. I always try to do it politely and respectfully, but sometimes don't get that in return, but really don't care, if other people can't communicate with respect then that's their problem.

How do you know that animals don't have consciousness? This is false.

The character of God is evil. We can say Darth Vader is evil without believing in his existence.

Satan the Devil is evil but Jehovah God most certainly is not: http://bit.ly/11FdJKT

"If God does not exist, then it is difficult to see any reason to think that human beings are special or that their morality is objectively true"
And as you cannot prove that the gods exist, i can conclude that humans are not special (your anthropocentric hubris is showing, Max), and that morality is not objectively true.

Humans are part of the natural world. We are animals. We don't practice those things that you mentioned because they are not characteristic of the human species. Humans don't act like praying mantises, but neither do birds, pigs, etc.

Humans don't practice **********, homosexuality, scatological fetishes or rape?

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks of it like that lol :)

"Different morals from other species, therefore a higher power"? Uh, no.

@Kim

What other species are you referring to?

Max, I agree with what you wrote, the whole notion that something is not to be believed unless you can prove it by way of the scientific method is fundamentally flawed. There are so many things in life that the atheist just "believes" regardless of the absence of proof by the scientific method. Atheists can be a bit selective, in that they tend to be happy to just "believe" some things they have never proved and yet be hypercritical with others to disbelieve them. When it comes to God they often impose an unrealistic standard of proof. I guess God gives them freedom to do that if they choose to, to just write off whatever is put before them because it suits an alternative personal philosohphy.

Very nicely put Scooby! After all is said and done, anyone who can look at all the evidence for God's existence and just thumb their noses at it suffer from ignorantia invincibilis; it's noetical bigotry.

Oh yeah, and in atheistic argument you see a lot of criticism of God's character, the sorts of criticisms you wouldnt level at someone that doesnt actually exist. And many of the criticisms are, quite illogically, against the failings of humans who follow God and mess up, or against blatent misinterpretations of the Bible, rather than against the virtues that God says we should aspire to. I think all of this sort of thing reveals the real underlying and perhaps subconscious objection many atheists have, they just dont like the idea of a higher being telling them what is right to do.

What I find so extraordinarily hypocritical of atheists is that they have the gall to condemn another society's moral code based solely on their opinion, as if they had been named arbiters of what is good and evil, right and wrong, moral or immoral.

What's more, atheism is morally nihilisitic. In their view, nothing is objectively good or bad, right or wrong, moral or immoral. Yet, many can't climb up onto their soap boxes fast enough to condemn all those who, in their glorious opinion, are evil. It's ridiculous kettle logic, nothing more, lol.

Vendett, your take on that is a pretty polarised way to look at it all. Yep God is a God of love but also a just Judge. These 2 aspects of his being unedrgird the universe. He wont be all love to the extent that he ignores his position as Judge, and wont be all judgement and ignore his role as loving. Yes he may well send people to pretty bleak eternity if they fall short of his standard.

You seem to have a yard stick which measures one person's sin against another - one you say is really bad (Hitler) one not so bad because they didnt sin so much. God uses a different measure. According to his yard stick we all fall short. You are comparing good people with bad people, but that is not the right comparison. The comparison is how we line up against God's standard and no one measures up to that. That's God the Judge.

But God as the God of love made a way to get around the judgement that he said is just. You have a choice whether to avail yourself of that get of jail free card or reject it if you want. The smart person will take it. No you don't have to grovel, you dont have to beg, you just need to ask for forgiveness with sincerity and do your best to keep away from wrong doing after that. Why any atheist thinks that is so objectionable and so hard to do is hard for me to fathom. What could be easier.

Maybe you don't like Gods standard, maybe you think its cruel to send people to a lost eternity. Well unfotunately for humans dont get to tell God how he should operate. You can equate it to 3 year old behaviour if you like, but that's just rhetoric - just your human opinion. Its like a guilty person in a regular court of law telling the Judge he is unreasonable and that he shouldnt be sent to prison. It aint gonna help the person one bit.

Your assessment about someone who never heard of God not making it to heaven is wrong. But then so much of what atheists write about God is wrong. God will never send someone to a lost eternity because they havent heard of him. He judges people according to what they do know of him, not what they don't know.

Yes prison populations may have a lot of people who turned to God. Hitting the bottom in life can make a person see what really counts. Its just unfortunate that so many people need to hit the bottom before they see sense.

Atheism makes no attempt to explain biogenesis and for good reason. We do not know. No one does. Frankly, few care. So this straw man argument is just ridiculous. So since religion cannot explain it, since it is unexplainable, they make up stories and claim to know things they do not. One day we might know is the best ANYONE can do.

Oh its no straw man argument, and plenty do care. And plenty of atheists do try and explain the biogenesis with science, although I take it from your comments that you quite wisely don't go that far. You seem to prefer to believe that science will solve the biogenesis one day, and based on what I have seen, heard, learned and experienced I prefer to believe it won't and that whatever science comes up with God will still be there - he invented science. We both have our beliefs. No the theist's belief is not based on stories or fables, at all even if you catergorise them as that. There is plenty in science and history and experience to lend support to what the theist believes. Does it scientifically prove what the theist believes - mabe not, but the theist nonetheless has good reason for his or her belief.

Well the biggest point is no one cares. It neither breaks our legs nor picks our pocket.

No-one cares? Speak for yourself masterLee.

I do. Thanks.

Usually when abortions take place, the thing that is being removed is nothing but a mass of cells stuck together and is about as human as a tumor. When it has no functioning organs, it isn't alive.

I must also ask you, if you are even still a user on the site to answer my question, if you are so against abortion because you view it as the mass-murder of human lives, then why do you believe in and worship a god that is a genocidal maniac who has no problem killing or ordering for the death of babies and children of any age that are already alive?

I. I'm appalled by how much your philosophy has dehumanized you.

II. Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't Elizabeth Bathory, Talat Pasha, Josef Mengele, Reinhard Heydrich, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, Kim Il Sung, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Emperor Hirohito, Nero, Caligula, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Leopold II of Belgium, Tomas de Torquemada, Mao Zedong, Ivan the Terrible, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Vlad Dracula once children too?

You gotta be kidding Kindasorta, atheist belief and doctrine isnt all that. For every piece of science the atheist says supports atheism the theist can cite a piece of science that they say supports them. Science has never decided the God issue one way or the other and probably never will. In most cases science only gives people pointers one way or the other when it comes to God things, it then falls to interpretations and that's where people have to decide what they want to believe for themself. Tired of hearing atheists claim they are all about science. I think it's science viewed through pretty much one way spectacles. If the atheist doesn't want to believe in God that's their choice but for the atheist to make out like the theist doesn't have a decent reason to believe in a God is to be pretty narrow minded in my view.

Hey wandering, oh I never noticed any 'poke', I've got a thick skin. Have a great day.

Hey Wandering, thanks for that. Well to be honest I'd like to see that overwhelming evidence because I know it doesn't exist. With respect, do you have a reference to a peer reviewed scientific paper on that. I suspect not. I've learned that when atheists say things like there is overwhelming evidence they don't really have any evidence, except perhaps something they've gleened from what another atheist wrote who himself got it from another atheist, etc, etc. I did a degree in chemistry, with biochemistry, and have a pretty good idea for how chemicals work. Its nothing like just jumping together to make DNA let alone the rest of the parts of a cell as a random blind thing of chance.

What you wrote, with respect, just isnt right. You mentioned mutations of amino acids but amino acids don't mutate - they cant because they are base chemical compounds. Chromosomes can mutate, but you can't get mutations of them until you first have a strand of DNA (DNA goes into a chromosome) and you cant get a strand of DNA until many thousands of base pairs of amino acids have formed a helix strand in precisely the right code, etc, etc, etc, and you can't get amino acids untl the atoms that make them up have comnined in the right way. What you wrote, with all due respect, just aint right. Its not science at all. To explain the wonderful high level of complexity in the universe and on earth by saying an intellegent designer must have done it is not a 'fill in the gap' guess, its an explanation which is just a logical conclusion to come to. Such high levels of organisation don't just randomly happen - just dissemble a car into its thousands of parts and leave it on the ground for 100 billion years and It'll never reassemble itself. It takes intelligent life form to make that happen. But that of course is not where it stops because there is so much other evidence for God in science and history and archeology and from first hand accounts by people alive today (but I know the atheist will just discount them all, no mattter how numerous, by imposing supercritical standards that wouldnt be applied to any other issue in life, not even in a court of law). I'd put my money on those things as far more credible than the notion life all happened by chance.

Vendett, the well worn number of relions argument just doesnt wash. The first issue is is there a God. Whether there are lots of religions has nothing to do with whether God exists. And yes I think we all know there is a lot more evidence to support the Bible than there is for Zeus so its not really a very realistic comparison.

What does that mean?