(December 14, 2016 at 8:33 am)operator Wrote:

(December 13, 2016 at 8:50 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Pffft

"You're unattractive because you're Catholic. No offense though!" 

That was incredibly rude.

(December 15, 2016 at 9:03 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(December 14, 2016 at 8:33 am)operator Wrote:

That was incredibly rude.

"incredible" means "not believable"... as long as you don't believe it, it doesn't exist!

How can something that doesn't exist be rude?

(December 12, 2016 at 10:17 pm)Simon Moon Wrote:

(December 12, 2016 at 9:40 pm)Balaco Wrote: If Catholicism for example turns out to be the "correct" faith (or if it simply has the most accurate teachings out of all religions), meaning that we as humans are supposed to love and worship God, then I would want to make sure I'm fulfilling that. Not only to avoid Hell, but to genuinely love God and genuinely fulfill the lifestyle that we would "have" to live.

So, you could actually love and worship a being that set up a system, knowing ahead of time, that the vast majority of humans will be punished for eternity?

Even if the Christian god did exist, I could not or would not love and worship such a moral monster.

I could not even consider Heaven a place I would want to be, knowing that so many of my fellow humans are being tortured for eternity for finite thought crimes.

The worst possible universe I could imagine, is one where the Christian god actually existed.

(December 13, 2016 at 4:29 am)robvalue Wrote: I don't understand how you could love something because you're supposed to love it. If we've simply been designed to mindlessly fulfil this worship role, then clearly we've broken our programming and have a choice.

Why? Why would a "God" need worship or love? Stop and think how ridiculous that is for a minute. Go outside and demand worship from an ant, and when it doesn't give it to you, pick it up and put it in the oven. (Don't really do that ) That's what we're talking about here. Why would you do that?

Also, you've described Catholicism as a mugging. Join, or burn. That's essentially what it is. Yet you're also expected to love the mugger. I find this whole thing absolutely disgusting and I, personally, refuse to bow down to it.

If we really are at the mercy of such an egotistical monster, then I can't trust anything it has to say. I can spend my whole life doing whatever shit it says, and saying how much I love it, and it can turn round and bin me for no reason at all. What can I do about it?

Such a thing deserves no respect in my opinion. I'd rather do what I think is right, and if it decides to punish me, so be it. I'm not going to waste what precious time I have pretending to love a monster and following its rules. There's definitely nothing to love about it.

I definitely can see how many consider the Christian God to be morally horrible. Obviously (and expectedly) Christianity teaches us that God is the complete opposite of that...anything he does that we as humans perceive as evil or wrong supposedly has a "perfect" justification for it. I won't deny that this seems like it could merely be a convenient way to justify claims that God is purely good -- but of course growing up with a mind conditioned to interpret every single one of his actions as absolutely perfect makes it hard for me to accept the opposite. I'm sure this is at least partially why so many theists are so confident in their faith in God's goodness, regardless of if God is real. The theist mind is trained to immediately interpret events in favor of God/their faith...whether their interpretations are rational or irrational.

God's "need" for love/worship again seems to be in accordance with his supposed nature. He wants us to worship Him so that we may grow closer to Him, strengthening ourselves morally by obeying Him. Why exactly God would send us to Hell for not sufficiently worshipping Him (rather than making it optional to live "immorally" without the consequence of Hell)...I'm not sure, and I don't even know if any theists I ask will have an answer that extends past simply claiming something like "we don't know, but God has a perfect reason."  

As for Heaven, I've had thoughts in the past about how we'd feel knowing so many people would burn in Hell for eternity. Christians justifications claim that in Heaven, even though we can't understand it right now, we'll be completely without negativity/negative emotions. We'd fully understand God's reason for sending so many people to Hell and be able to move on. Of course, this is based off of the basic ideas of Heaven and doesn't necessarily support the idea of Heaven.

(December 14, 2016 at 12:05 pm)robvalue Wrote: It's interesting that the experiences are almost always interpreted in such a way that they reinforce beliefs that are already held. Christians experience Christian miracles. Muslims experience Islamic miracles. They'd probably come to those conclusions about the same event.

And whatever way you slice it, millions of people are wrong in their interpretations due the contradictory nature of different religions.

It's interesting because I've had a friend of mine, on multiple occasions, defend his claim that he saw a UFO with the same zeal that a religious person would defend their claim of 'feeling god' when they go to church or something.

There is something in human nature about reaffirming previously held ideas and beliefs that tends to appear in all of us at one point or another. I think many of the skeptical thinkers of the world tend to overcome this need to reaffirm the old model, so to speak, and learn that if something happens that doesn't fit the model, it is the model (or our thinking) that needs to change to fit reality, not the other way around.

Most people, however, do not think like this.

If my dear friend sees lights traveling across the sky, he immediately identifies these unidentified flying objects as extraterrestrial life forms zipping about in spacecraft because, well, he already believes that extraterrestrial life forms visit our planet on a regular basis! So it cannot be that the lights zooming across the horizon are shooting stars, military aircraft, satellites or something, because those perceptions of the events he witnessed do not fit the old model.

It's very interesting that humans do this and this is where I find 'experiences of god' or miracles to be no different from any other perceived supernatural phenomena.

(December 15, 2016 at 9:03 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(December 14, 2016 at 8:33 am)operator Wrote:  

That was incredibly rude.

Wow I was only kidding... I don't actually think someone being a catholic makes them unattractive.

Haha, ok. I thought you were serious! I'm sorry.

(December 15, 2016 at 8:37 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Haha, ok. I thought you were serious! I'm sorry.

Never! Catholics are the sexiest

Quote:Atheists, why do you reject the idea of God, and why should I? I know that your answers will include "there's no evidence" and all that, but please try to explain.

Sorry that I missed this thread!!

I am an ex-Catholic -- baptized, confirmed and sacramentally married in the Catholic Church.  My wife and I have 5 kiddos.

I no longer believe in the existence of God, which is why I am an atheist.  But, it was a slow process.  But, here is why you should leave the Catholic Church:

1)  The Catholic Church has contradicted itself time and time again throughout history, and most recently, with Francis' allowing of "public adulterers" (the Church's term) to receive Holy Communion.  If that so-called "dogma" is reformable/changeable, then so is every other "dogma" within the Catholic Church.  All religions are man-made, which is why they contradict not only each other but themselves.  If a true religion existed that was divinely inspired, such would not happen.

2)  The so-called Catholic miracles, as well as all the other miracle claims, are downright frauds.  Just look at the recent "miracles" of Blessed Mother Theresa; just out and out fraud.

3)  Science does not need God to explain the Universe, its origins and fate, neither does Science need a soul to explain consciousness and/or free will.  The existence of God is superfluous to Science.

4)  God, as a "timeless, changeless, omniopotent, etc.," Being is self-contradictory.  As William Lane Craig likes to say, actual infinities are an absurdity in Nature, however, if God exists, then God must be in possession of some "actual infinities," such as His knowledge (e.g., "knowing the set of all natural numbers").  While Craig is wrong about actual infinities (as he is wrong about many other things), "Can God make a rock so big that he cannot lift it?"

5)  The argument from evil presents a logical problem to the existence of God.  Not only the fact that there is heartless suffering in the World, but the quantity of natural suffering throughout evolutionary time.  Is God a perfectly Good Being who allows so much suffering for the sake of a "higher good" or is God a perfectly Evil Being who allows some good, so that there may be even more suffering?  Or, is God neither?

6)  By Occam's razor, we should not multiply hypotheses beyond necessity, and so, we ought to be content with naturalism.

7)  The Universe seems ordered to naturalism and not the product of any intelligent design.  If fact, the Universe appears to have not been designed.

8)  Darwinian evolution is incompatible with a Creator.  Evolution by natural selection is neither good engineering nor is it good art.

9)  There is no reason to prefer theism over polytheism or over deism.  In fact, existence is more compatible with a multitude of gods than a single God.  Perhaps they are gambling on us? Why not just "suspend judgment" on what amounts to an infinite set of differing and contradictory beliefs?

10)  Extraterrestrial intelligence, which probably exists elsewhere in the Galaxy and Universe, is incompatible with the idea of a Redeemer Savior.  After all, how many Worlds does Jesus need to die on?

11)  Human beings did not descend from two individuals, an Adam & Eve, which explicitly contradicts the Bible, the Council of Trent, Pope Pius XII's Humani generis and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (which also contradicts Francis' Amoris Laetitia.)

I could go on, but I'll stop here.

Balaco: Indeed, it's a catch-all excuse to say that whatever God does, he must be justified.

Why it's assumed God would have our best interest at heart, I don't know. Evidence points very much to the contrary, and that's all we have. I guess if people are going to imagine something into existence, they want it to be comforting.

This is the problem with a dictatorship though. You can easily say the same about Mental Guy X who takes control of a country by force. Propaganda is then spread to the effect that anything he orders is justified, because he's the ruler, and the ruler "has your best interests at heart". Anyone who disagrees is taken away and killed. Kids are indoctrinated into this mindset for their own safety.

God doesn't even get the "means to an end" excuse though, because he's usually all powerful. That means he could achieve whatever the goal is without giving AIDS to babies.

---

(December 15, 2016 at 9:12 pm)operator Wrote:

(December 15, 2016 at 8:37 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Haha, ok. I thought you were serious! I'm sorry.

Never! Catholics are the sexiest

I am married to a catholic. From personal experience, yes.

(December 15, 2016 at 7:55 pm)Balaco Wrote: God's "need" for love/worship again seems to be in accordance with his supposed nature. He wants us to worship Him so that we may grow closer to Him, strengthening ourselves morally by obeying Him.

Reading this out of the blue I have to wonder if his supposed nature is that of a flaming narcissist. I mean who else expects/wants our worship. I am not even sure what "strengthening ourselves morally" even means. This is just so foreign to my experience.

(December 15, 2016 at 7:55 pm)Balaco Wrote: Why exactly God would send us to Hell for not sufficiently worshipping Him (rather than making it optional to live "immorally" without the consequence of Hell)...I'm not sure, and I don't even know if any theists I ask will have an answer that extends past simply claiming something like "we don't know, but God has a perfect reason."

I'm glad you can appreciate why this strikes so many of us as glib.

  

(December 15, 2016 at 7:55 pm)Balaco Wrote: As for Heaven, I've had thoughts in the past about how we'd feel knowing so many people would burn in Hell for eternity. Christians justifications claim that in Heaven, even though we can't understand it right now, we'll be completely without negativity/negative emotions. We'd fully understand God's reason for sending so many people to Hell and be able to move on. Of course, this is based off of the basic ideas of Heaven and doesn't necessarily support the idea of Heaven.

Again, a fairly glib response. Hell should be a non-starter for believers. It is just a whack idea. Reading the bible literally must be such a nightmare.