Honestly MK, if you would chill out about a lot of your attempts to preach to us, I doubt many people here (even me) would have much of a problem with you. I know you've been a popular theist here before. If we can find some common ground somewhere, I'm more than willing to work things out with you. We're human first before we're anything else, and I'd like to see you that way.

(March 30, 2017 at 10:21 am)MysticKnight Wrote: You don't believe Theists when they testify they know God exists. I understand that and you shouldn't simply believe due to their testification.

But why should Theists take seriously that you actually are justified in not believing in God? Why should we not believe it's the fault of yours and not God's or anyone else?

Why should we take your testification that you sincerely sought to know whether God exists or not seriously?

That's why I prefer people to learn how to use rational thought, they'd come to non-belief on their own.

(March 30, 2017 at 10:29 am)MysticKnight Wrote:

(March 30, 2017 at 10:27 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: One of them real? Why that one?

That's a good question. But why should I believe you actually sincerely thought about it? Why should I believe you should not believe in it?

This is diverting the subject. So I won't answer the question which I have answered many times.

How about common fucking courtesy you fucking asshole. I don't come flying onto your angry desert gawd sites to point out how wrong you are. Why are you so fucking obsessed with telling us how fucked we are. It's absolutely fucking repugnant behavior. If you absolutely have to shit on the carpets, please do it in your own fucking house, not ours.

I, for one, am absolutely sick to death of you proselytizing shit flinging mental rejects trying to convince me your special invisible asshole in the sky is really, really real.

(March 30, 2017 at 10:29 am)MysticKnight Wrote: But why should I believe you actually sincerely thought about it? Why should I believe you should not believe in it?

I really don't care what you believe.  I care what you say.  The moment you assert that you know my thoughts better than I do, you prove yourself to be a liar in my eyes.  It's a logical next step to assume that you cannot be depended upon to tell the truth about anything else -- including your god.

(March 30, 2017 at 1:32 pm)Astreja Wrote:

(March 30, 2017 at 10:29 am)MysticKnight Wrote: But why should I believe you actually sincerely thought about it? Why should I believe you should not believe in it?

I really don't care what you believe.  I care what you say.  The moment you assert that you know my thoughts better than I do, you prove yourself to be a liar in my eyes.  It's a logical next step to assume that you cannot be depended upon to tell the truth about anything else -- including your god.

^^^ This, in spades ^^^

Anyone who presumes to know better than I what I think, is someone who's opinion I will not value not one little bit.

(March 30, 2017 at 10:21 am)MysticKnight Wrote: You don't believe Theists when they testify they know God exists. I understand that and you shouldn't simply believe due to their testification.

But why should Theists take seriously that you actually are justified in not believing in God? Why should we not believe it's the fault of yours and not God's or anyone else?

Why should we take your testification that you sincerely sought to know whether God exists or not seriously?

"I understand that and you shouldn't simply believe to their testification"....... 

Good young Skywalker, let the skepticism flow through you...... Join the dark side.

Glad you understand you shouldn't simply buy. That is a good thing, so go with it.

Now try these  examples and see if this claim would be a good thing to blindly swallow.

"I am dating Angelina Jolie"

Or

"I can fart a real full sized Lamborghini out of my butt"

Or

"The tooth fairy is real and brings kids money when they put their extracted teeth under the pillow"

I'd bet you already dismissed those claims rightfully as you should. And the reason you did is because I didn't provide any evidence for them. Nothing hard at all about rejecting claims without evidence.

(March 30, 2017 at 10:43 am)MysticKnight Wrote: By the way, if most of the world claim to see an invisible unicorn in a garage, I would be prone to investigate their claim and not dismiss it.

Been there, done that. Didn't get the t-shirt.

Seriously, your insistence that there are only people that believe in god and people that haven't looked is super fucking annoying. You've been corrected so many times about all of this nonsense that you insist on spouting that your persistence really reeks of desperation.

(March 30, 2017 at 2:11 pm)Faith No More Wrote:

(March 30, 2017 at 10:43 am)MysticKnight Wrote: By the way, if most of the world claim to see an invisible unicorn in a garage, I would be prone to investigate their claim and not dismiss it.

Been there, done that.  Didn't get the t-shirt.

Seriously, your insistence that there are only people that believe in god and people that haven't looked is super fucking annoying.  You've been corrected so many times about all of this nonsense that you insist on spouting that your persistence really reeks of desperation.

His logic annoys me, but so does the logic of every religion and god claimant. Steve and Roadrunner and Neo are in other threads here arguing different god claims. Don't single him out as the only one.

I am quite sure everyone here as atheists have family or at least friends and co workers that drive you nuts with their god claims too, but you like them outside that issue don't you?

MK and Atlas don't strike me, and have never struck me as wanting to be like the worst in their bunch. I also dont think Steve or Roadrunner or Neo are WW2 German Nazis or KKK members. Yea we have repeatedly corrected MK as well as Christians and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists. 

All theist claims annoy me, not our species ability to be good. We simply disagree as to where that good comes from.

@MK. I was a strong Christian until the age of 18, when cognitive dissonance finally did its thing and out of the blue it clicked for me 'there is no God'. I remember exactly where I was when that happened, such is the imprint it left. Up until then I stubbornly and ignorantly defended Christianity at every turn, much to the annoyance and mockery of my atheist friends... because pretty much everyone except me was atheist. If this site had been around back then and I'd come on it, Min and everyone else would have had a field day with me as a chew toy but it wouldn't have made any difference to how I felt. Now like they do in things like AA, I wish I could go round all my old school friends and say 'you were right, there is no God (and Nintendo is better than Sega... [another bad call I made ])'.

In my case there was no desire to leave Christianity when my click happened... no intellectual quest to disprove it; I was happy enough being a Christian and I didn't know anything else. I knew I was gay, and that was in conflict with it and the main cause of the cognitive dissonance I felt... but I accepted the consequences and implications of being gay and a Christian, and still had no (conscious at least) desire not to be a Christian... if anything, I wanted to be both. And that's ultimately what cognitive dissonance is... trying to make compatible that which is not compatible... the first-person experience of being gay compared to the third-person way it is portrayed in the Bible... one thing telling you you're wicked and unnatural vs experience telling you you're just in love. In the end, the mind cannot handle holding two contradictory world views at the same time, so it clicks, and settles on one or the other. And that's what happened for me. And once it had, I saw the world from a completely new perspective and saw all the things I had ignored as a Christian, and more and more stuff started to click, gathering momentum in leaps and bounds.

So regarding your OP I assure you I have no hope or expectation of changing the minds of emotionally entrenched theists; no-one could change my mind back then, only my own mind. In my opinion, the only way out of a comfortable delusion is initially through cognitive dissonance... then it is only a matter of time before it just implodes under it's own weight of contradictions, as it did for me.

(March 30, 2017 at 3:05 pm)emjay Wrote: @MK. I was a strong Christian until the age of 18, when cognitive dissonance finally did its thing and out of the blue it clicked for me 'there is no God'. I remember exactly where I was when that happened, such is the imprint it left. Up until then I stubbornly and ignorantly defended Christianity at every turn, much to the annoyance and mockery of my atheist friends... because pretty much everyone except me was atheist. If this site had been around back then and I'd come on it, Min and everyone else would have had a field day with me as a chew toy but it wouldn't have made any difference to how I felt. Now like they do in things like AA, I wish I could go round all my old school friends and say 'you were right, there is no God (and Nintendo is better than Sega... [another bad call I made ])'.

In my case there was no desire to leave Christianity when my click happened... no intellectual quest to disprove it; I was happy enough being a Christian and I didn't know anything else. I knew I was gay, and that was in conflict with it and the main cause of the cognitive dissonance I felt... but I accepted the consequences and implications of being gay and a Christian, and still had no (conscious at least) desire not to be a Christian... if anything, I wanted to be both. And that's ultimately what cognitive dissonance is... trying to make compatible that which is not compatible... the first-person experience of being gay compared to the third-person way it is portrayed in the Bible... one thing telling you you're wicked and unnatural vs experience telling you you're just in love. In the end, the mind cannot handle holding two contradictory world views at the same time, so it clicks, and settles on one or the other. And that's what happened for me. And once it had, I saw the world from a completely new perspective and saw all the things I had ignored as a Christian, and more and more stuff started to click, gathering momentum in leaps and bounds.

So regarding your OP I assure you I have no hope or expectation of changing the minds of emotionally entrenched theists; no-one could change my mind back then, only my own mind. In my opinion, the only way out of a comfortable delusion is initially through cognitive dissonance... then it is only a matter of time before  it just implodes under it's own weight of contradictions, as it did for me.

That last paragraph says it all. Just like a smoker or drinker wont quit until they want to. The believer will stay where they are at until that light bulb pops with cognitive dissonance.