(December 2, 2015 at 10:55 pm)marko Wrote: But I believe, and also believe Athiests are driven to their beliefs firstly by rejecting God.

Why are you asking questions when you already insist you have the answer?

That's how preaching works. Set up the problem,sell you the cure.

(December 4, 2015 at 7:08 am)Quantum Wrote: I think I got it figured out! God is in the course of Ferberizing his creation!

I read that as Febreezing. Still perfectly suitable.

marko Wrote:I'm sure this has been covered plenty, but I'm a newby. ( But not an athiest basher)
What drives one to Atheism, or perhaps evolution. Is it that one rejects God, then finds comfort in something else, or do you look at evolution and determine it to be closer to the truth?
Or, are there athiests who also reject evolution, and just don't know what to make of life.

Hm. I was a Bible-believing, tongues-speaking UPC Pentecostal. Then I read the Bible cover-to-cover twice, which didn't make me an atheist, just pretty sure the men who wrote the Bible were not inspired by an omniscient and omnibenevolent being. I suppose I became a 'Somethingist' at that point: I didn't believe the Bible was inspired by the Creator, but I still though their was one, largely because I couldn't imagine how the universe and life could come into existence without the intention and action of some powerful entity.

Learning about science acquainted me with plausible alternatives to 'someone must have done it', and learning about logic, especially burden of proof, made me realize that it was reasonable to withhold belief in something until the people proposing that thing support it existing to a point that it is not more reasonable to not believe. In the nearly 20 years since, I have not been presented with evidence or argument that is not fatally flawed, so my atheism remains.

marko Wrote:I don't claim personal appeals, or quote holy books. But I believe, and also believe Athiests are driven to their beliefs firstly by rejecting God. Not that theres anything wrong with that. Whether evolution is factual or not does not interest me. I was raised Christian, have altered what I believe, and am looking for Athiests to be honest how they arrived at what they believe.

You know that some people were never taught to believe God is real in the first place, right? How would 'rejecting God' even apply to them?

And the phrasing 'rejecting God' implies we're rejecting a real thing. We're rejecting the claim that God exists, and apparently if there is an omnipotent God, it has chosen not to help the people claiming it is real prove it.

marko Wrote:Lets hope you dug a little deeper than Santa and the tooth fairy in determining if God exists, Most people believe it carrys a little more weight. As I said, I am looking for what brings one to Athiesm. I do not believe Atheists are doomed, or damned, or going to hell. I do not believe God cares, anymore than a parent would doom their child for hating them. As for evidence for God, there is good and bad in the world. It is a cause of our free will. You can't have good without bad. We all have choices, challenges, hopes and regrets. And none of it would work if we knew Dad was home. You don't have the kegger at home if mom and dad are around. The fact that there is no evidence is how its supposed to seem, THATS THE POINT.

Weight is irrelevant. If you send me $5, you will receive a million billion dollars in the next seven days. That is a very weighty reward for $5. Are you interested in sending me the money due to the incredible promised reward?

I can't hate God any more than I can hate Krampus, for similar reasons, even though the God many people subscribe to is pretty horrible, to me it's a fictional character. There are plenty of concepts of God that aren't morally problematic, if there is one, I hope it's one of those. Like a Creator God who is omnibenevolent but only nearly omnipotent and omniscient doing the best it can in a very big universe. I suspect that your idea of God is similar, since you don't believe God is capable of providing a universe with the good without the bad. Edit: Which would seem to bode ill for any heaven.

The parent analogy seems a poor one, given that we actually do learn most of what we know about choices, challenges, hopes, and regrets from the adults, especially parents, in our lives as small children. Children left to figure these things out on their own without any guidance become feral, and it is considered criminal to deliberately leave a child in that situation. You don't leave a one-year old on an island full of other one-year olds with automated feeding stations and expect them to come out civilized. If you don't even know there is a Mom and Dad and you only have your sibling's word for what their rules are supposed to be (and they don't claim to have ever seen Mom or Dad in the flesh either), Mom and Dad say so might not be a very good reason not to have that kegger.

marko Wrote:

ignoramus Wrote:Marko, you were an atheist too before your parents shoved the bullshit down your throat.
Not believing is the default position.

Do you understand that concept?
Being driven to atheism is what happens when you're not driven to church and brainwashed....
Sad but true...

This is good, a lot of you have said this, but I like how this is worded. " Not believing is the default position". Now if only it can be said without the baggage of evolution following behind. I have a question, do you believe in evolution as a fallback to believe in something, as the National Acadamy of Sciences tells you to, or do you believe in evolution for the sake of evolution itself.'' Not believing is the default position'' can stand on its own. I think it would do atheism better to leave it out.

I accept the basic claims of evolution as being the best explanation for the diversity of life because I studied it and found the evidence convincing. My assumption going in was that it was false. Instead, I found that literally everything I had been taught as a young earth creationist was untrue. However, that did not rule out a God who initiated a universe conducive to the development of life, it just ruled out Christian and Muslim and as far as I know, all the other religious creation stories about how we got plants and animals.

Atheism does leave it out. It is a separate topic. Atheism and theism are contrary opinions on a single topic. But you're trying to get at why people become atheists, and finding out that creationism is false can be a contributing factor, if you were raised to believe that not only is creationism true, you have to believe it to be a Christian (or Muslim and so on).

(December 4, 2015 at 1:22 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

marko Wrote:I don't claim personal appeals, or quote holy books. But I believe, and also believe Athiests are driven to their beliefs firstly by rejecting God. Not that theres anything wrong with that. Whether evolution is factual or not does not interest me. I was raised Christian, have altered what I believe, and am looking for Athiests to be honest how they arrived at what they believe.

You know that some people were never taught to believe God is real in the first place, right? How would 'rejecting God' even apply to them?

And the phrasing 'rejecting God' implies we're rejecting a real thing. We're rejecting the claim that God exists, and apparently if there is an omnipotent God, it has chosen not to help the people claiming it is real prove it.

My upbringing was basically secular. God or gods did not figure unless I had to go to a wedding or funeral.

(December 3, 2015 at 11:09 pm)marko Wrote: You guys are funny. You really believe you are outside the box. We all believe what makes us comfy, to a point. I have no evidence, but neither do you. You don't even know you need evidence, "I am an athiest". You think that is a catch all phrase. We all need evidence. Mine is found inside myself, yours is found outside yourself. We all wonder why bad things happen to good people, why do we love, where does hate, justice, etc. come from, whats it all about. You put on a front like it dosn't matter, or you never think of such things. You think its from our neurons or whatever. I'm sure you believe in evolution, talk about your mental masterbation. But you do believe its from something. Come back down to Earth. And one more thing, thanks for the comment about my english--Public Schools

I wonder how many Christians have to come through this site, make threads where they claim that there's "no evidence for no God", and then completely ignore or refuse to acknowledge the responses given to them, before they realize THEY are the ones with the burden of proof. Research Russel's Teapot, marko. It gives detailed explanation as to why atheists don't need to "prove" anything.

marko Wrote:You guys are funny. You really believe you are outside the box. We all believe what makes us comfy, to a point. I have no evidence, but neither do you. You don't even know you need evidence, "I am an athiest". You think that is a catch all phrase. We all need evidence. Mine is found inside myself, yours is found outside yourself. We all wonder why bad things happen to good people, why do we love, where does hate, justice, etc. come from, whats it all about. You put on a front like it dosn't matter, or you never think of such things. You think its from our neurons or whatever. I'm sure you believe in evolution, talk about your mental masterbation. But you do believe its from something. Come back down to Earth. And one more thing, thanks for the comment about my english--Public Schools

You seem fairly reasonable compared to many of our theist visitors, but you make a lot of assumptions about us, which apparently also come 'from inside yourself'. Pro tip: feelings that come from inside yourself aren't always true.

You have a point about comfort. Trying to hold contradictory views simultaneously causes cognitive dissonance, which is uncomfortable. Having a consistent position that aligns with what you are able to determine about reality reduces that dissonance. Many people report feeling like a load has been lifted from them when they realize they've become an atheist.

The person who claims something exists is the one who needs to have the evidence, not the people who don't believe them. I don't need evidence that there isn't man's leather work boot orbiting Neptune for not believing that to be the most reasonable position to take if no convincing case to the contrary can be made. Otherwise we'd have to believe every proposition that can't be proved not to be true, and that's no way to go through life.

There's no reason to wonder why bad things happen if you don't believe in some power capable of preventing those bad things from happening. Hate is an emotion that has obvious evolutionary advantages. Justice is a concept that has obvious social advantages.

I'm sure we think of such things as often as the next person, we've just reached different conclusions than you have reached.

You'll have to be more explicit about your evolution and mental masturbation comment for me to understand what you're trying to say. I'm certain you meant it to be insulting, though.

The things I believe in have evidence. Sometimes I find out that something I thought was true, I was misinformed about, and then I change my view to correlate with the new information. I like finding out I'm wrong about something, because after, I'm wrong about fewer things than I was before.

(December 3, 2015 at 11:09 pm)marko Wrote: You guys are funny. You really believe you are outside the box. We all believe what makes us comfy, to a point. I have no evidence, but neither do you. You don't even know you need evidence, "I am an athiest". You think that is a catch all phrase. We all need evidence. Mine is found inside myself, yours is found outside yourself. We all wonder why bad things happen to good people, why do we love, where does hate, justice, etc. come from, whats it all about. You put on a front like it dosn't matter, or you never think of such things. You think its from our neurons or whatever. I'm sure you believe in evolution, talk about your mental masterbation. But you do believe its from something. Come back down to Earth. And one more thing, thanks for the comment about my english--Public Schools

I seriously, just cannot believe how obtuse this is.

There is a claim that X exists. There is no evidence that X actually does exist, and every line of inquiry into X brings up nothing. As such I cannot honestly say that I am convinced that X does exist. I do not need proof that X does not exist, because if the claim was never made then I would still by default not believe in X.

You are also posing several other things that you are compounding into the god question, many of which have NOTHING to do with it. There can be a god and the universe could still be unjust. There could still be a god and the brain would still be responsible for mental functioning such as emotions. Most theists also accept evolution (as I did when I was a christian). It does not have ANY bearing upon the god concept. The existence of god must stand or fall on its own merit. And IT HAS NOT GOT ANY.

If you honestly believe that a god exists then you have to first provide a solid definition of this god, and then provide reasons to believe that this thing exists. And a feeling inside yourself does not count as evidence. If you want to be believed you have to provide some reason that can be independently verified. I need some thread that does not unravel as I follow it. If you can't do this, if you can't explain WHY you believe what you do, then you can not fault anyone for not buying into it.