(May 15, 2015 at 2:21 pm)Freedom4me Wrote: If there is no god, why do so many atheists care so much about the non-existence of a supposedly fictional deity?

I have not read all the posts yet and this may have already been stated, so, just to reiterate, we could give a fuck about god and the delusions of believers.  It is religion to which we are opposed.  Religion uses the god thing to control the masses through direct and indirect processes.  If all the religions would just keep it to themselves and not force their ideas on us through proselytization, politics, TV, Bulletin boards, etc., we would have no problem with that scenario.  But the religions will not get out of our faces. Religion is only about money, power and control. Take that away from them and religion would fade away.

Quote:Hello everyone!  I'm a new member to AF.

Welcome.

 

Quote:At the age of 27, one of my friends loaned me a book called "Evidence That Demands A Verdict" by Josh McDowell.  That book changed my views completely.

I've read McDowell's book.  What, specifically, did you find so compelling?

 

Quote: Since then I've seen lots of additional reasons to believe in the God of the bible.

Could you list a few?

Quote:The universe is orderly and purposeful in certain ways.

  

I'll grant 'orderly'.  To claim that the universe is 'purposeful' is simply chauvinistic.  In order to support that claim, you would have to know what the purpose of the universe actually is.

Quote:How could impersonal stuff like matter and energy "obey" laws of any kind?  Where do the laws of nature and the laws of logic come from?

You seem unclear about what a scientific 'law' actually is.  I'll try to help.  Law are statements, usually (but not always) mathematical in nature that describe the way a certain portion of the universe works.  It isn't as if human beings create physical laws and then the universe is constrained to follow them.  By way of example, Robert Boyle didn't dictate the behaviour of gases; he observed that pressure decreases as volume increases.  However, the universe was going to behave the same way, regardless of what Boyle had to say about it.

Laws of nature and laws of logic come from extremely bright men and women who do long, painstaking, often under-appreciated work to figure things out.

 

Quote:If there is no god, why do so many atheists care so much about the non-existence of a supposedly fictional deity?

I don't presume to speak for other atheists, but I care about godism because it causes me a degree of emotional and psychic pain to see the horrors that godists get up to, and to listen to them prattling along, blissful in their stunning ignorance about the world.  To believe in gods is to switch off your brain.  Anything you either can't or won't trouble to learn about is simply swept into the god-box, along with all the nonsense that intellectually lazy people get up to.

When you and your co-religionists decide that it is cruel to deny condoms and polio vaccine to the people who need them then most, when you realize that prayer does fuck-all for a village buried under an avalanche, when you wake up to the brain-shattering irony of millionaire priests and pastors, and when you finally get your head round the fact that the world is what it is, not what your fluffy-bunny Bible dreams tell you it is, then I may care a little less about godism.  I don't fancy the chances.


  

Quote:Please don't take any offense to my words.  I'm not trying to offend anyone here.  I'm just asking a few questions that seem to be fair.

Of COURSE you're trying to offend people.  Why else would you visit an atheist message board?

Boru

Somebody starts a thread called "Nature's Law", but only wants to talk about unnatural shite!
FE FI FO FUM,

(May 19, 2015 at 5:46 pm)Esquilax Wrote: None of those things require a god, let alone the specific christian one you're appealing to. Truth is merely a concept for that which corresponds most closely to objective reality, and lies are the antonym of that. Justice is similarly conceptual, denoting our sense of fairness, and injustice is merely another antonym. They don't exist objectively, they are highly context-driven conceptual elements of reality. If you're going to argue that these things come from god, you cannot do that by asserting that they're absolute, asserting that absolutes can only come about supernaturally, and asserting that god is the arbiter of them. The fact that you believe those things is not evidence that they're true, and you have not given anyone else reason to believe as you do, just because you say they are so.

The same is true of bible verses, by the way; that's why I'll just be ignoring the one you posted. It's not true just because the bible says so, either.


Please don't poison the well.

I think my point is valid.  It's true that what is "the most just" is often impossible for us to ascertain with perfect precision, but we strive for justice because we are certain that it truly and objectively exists, and that we ought to seek after it.  That, IMO, is the reason why race-based slavery is no longer tolerated in most of the world.  Things that are purely subjective, such as "cashews taste better than peanuts" would be silly to argue about.  But human beings will always argue about what is more/less just.

(May 19, 2015 at 8:29 pm)Freedom4me Wrote: I think my point is valid.  It's true that what is "the most just" is often impossible for us to ascertain with perfect precision, but we strive for justice because we are certain that it truly and objectively exists, and that we ought to seek after it.  That, IMO, is the reason why race-based slavery is no longer tolerated in most of the world.  Things that are purely subjective, such as "cashews taste better than peanuts" would be silly to argue about.  But human beings will always argue about what is more/less just.

Do not mistake conceptual for subjective; conceptual things can still refer, in part, to objective reality, without existing as objective entities beyond the minds that consider them. Justice is one such concept; it is itself not objectively real, but it refers to several objective facts about reality and how we interact with it, and using those facts as a yardstick we can determine the quality of justice that a given scenario has.

The far larger issue, however, is that you continue to merely assert that things like justice are products of, or inextricably tied to, your god, without ever feeling the need to argue or support that claim. This is why your point is not valid; what you've said so far is no more impressive than if I'd simply argued back that moral absolutes are evidence of Vishnu. Are you ready to become a Hindu because I said that?

If not, then why would your simple assertion that moral absolutes are evidence for your god make anyone else a christian?

The bible endorses slavery, it gives you instructions on where you're allowed to buy slaves from, how much you can beat them etc. It never once says it is wrong. And the bible is not shy about saying what it thinks is wrong.

Any civilised person would hopefully agree slavery is immoral. Therefor, the bible supports either immorality, or a bygone morality system of no relevance today. The only way to find out which bits are moral and which aren't, is to apply our own morality. Blindly accepting it would lead us to continue with slavery, so I think that's a very bad idea.

The result? People justify what they think is moral by finding bits of the bible they think sound similar. They find excuses for why the bible doesn't really mean what it seems to mean in all cases where they disagree. In other words, they are entirely ignoring the bible and using their own morality. They are saying they know better than God, and they are right, in most cases. But sometimes, a good person may do a bad thing because religion endorses it, that they wouldn't otherwise do.

(May 19, 2015 at 7:14 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

Quote: Since then I've seen lots of additional reasons to believe in the God of the bible.

Could you list a few?

I've listed a few in some of my earlier posts here, but I should mention that there is one very practical thing that convinces me strongly that the bible is truly God's word, and that is changed hearts and minds leading to changed lives.  What's even more amazing about it is that in many cases (including my own) people become converts who were not seeking God at all.  See Isa. 65:1  

“I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me.

Islam changes hearts and minds. Hinduism changes hearts and minds. Buddhism changes hearts and minds. Wiccans report changed hearts and minds. A tab of acid has been known to change hearts and minds.

Your point?

(May 19, 2015 at 8:51 pm)Esquilax Wrote:

(May 19, 2015 at 8:29 pm)Freedom4me Wrote: I think my point is valid.  It's true that what is "the most just" is often impossible for us to ascertain with perfect precision, but we strive for justice because we are certain that it truly and objectively exists, and that we ought to seek after it.  That, IMO, is the reason why race-based slavery is no longer tolerated in most of the world.  Things that are purely subjective, such as "cashews taste better than peanuts" would be silly to argue about.  But human beings will always argue about what is more/less just.

Do not mistake conceptual for subjective; conceptual things can still refer, in part, to objective reality, without existing as objective entities beyond the minds that consider them. Justice is one such concept; it is itself not objectively real, but it refers to several objective facts about reality and how we interact with it, and using those facts as a yardstick we can determine the quality of justice that a given scenario has.

The far larger issue, however, is that you continue to merely assert that things like justice are products of, or inextricably tied to, your god, without ever feeling the need to argue or support that claim. This is why your point is not valid; what you've said so far is no more impressive than if I'd simply argued back that moral absolutes are evidence of Vishnu. Are you ready to become a Hindu because I said that?

If not, then why would your simple assertion that moral absolutes are evidence for your god make anyone else a christian?

I'm just telling you what I find convincing.  I can't convert anyone.  Just as my conversion was a miracle, so it is for all who, by faith, are saved in Christ.  As I've said, God brought me to a point at which it began to require vastly more faith to remain an atheist than it took for me to believe in the God of the bible.  As I began to evaluate my atheism after reading "Evidence" I began to realize that atheism isn't something positive (like an explanatory and conceptually fulfilling world view), it is merely the negation (or rejection) of theism.  Since atheism is nothing more than that, it doesn't contain or support, and it isn't trying to contain or support, any kind of philosophical foundation for morality, the origins of life, or anything else.  Atheism is highly prized as if it were really something wonderful by those who reject theism, but it is nothing but the rejection of theism.  It is nothing!  How can "nothing" make a person free? 

So that's what counts for a miracle these days? A conversion? A couple thousand years ago, miracles were turning water into wine and parting the sea. Why have they become so mundane to the point where miracle can mean 'an unlikely event' in this modern time of analysis and cameras?