christian looking to understand athiests

[SteelCurtain]

Right. Then there's that part about Christians failing to provide compelling evidence or arguments.

Both the evidence and arguments have been provided throughout history. You atheists just come up with excuses for not accepting them. The Holy Spirit is reaching out to you but you will not listen.

Missed out on that compelling part, Chad. But I know reading comprehension isn't your bag.

[downbeatplumb]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZeWPScnolo

[Minimalist]

Jesus does not cause any of this. because of our fallen world the Devil is constantly causing bad in the world.

When you can produce evidence...and not your bible bullshit...for either a devil or your godboy then I will take you seriously.  Until then, you are just one more blind fool and we get plenty of them showing up here.

[Chad32]

You'd think he would make exceptions when his followers ask for something. There's even a verse in the bible that says as and you shall receive, for what parent would give a child a stone when he asks for bread? If praying isn't consistent, there's no reason to pray. If following someone doesn't give you results, there's no reason to follow someone.

God wont automatically grant any prayer you pray just because your saved.  if he does not answer a prayer how you want immediately it means he has a plan that could be better then what you prayed

How are we supposed to tell the difference between a god that doesn't consistently answer prayers, to a god that doesn't actually exist? The problem with this idea is that there's no failure state. You either get what you want, or you chalk it up to god having a different plan, so it can't be used as evidence. You could pray to anything, and you either will or won't get what you want. If you ask Vishnu for something, and you get it, all hail Vishnu. If you don't, then that just means Vishnu has a different plan for your life.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Right. Then there's that part about Christians failing to provide compelling evidence or arguments.

Both the evidence and arguments have been provided throughout history.  You atheists just come up with excuses for not accepting them. The Holy Spirit is reaching out to you but you will not listen.

One good excuse is that all the 'evidence' provided to date is in fact total bullshit and doesn't meet even the most basic requirements needed to convince people who don't believe the claims made of the given deity.

I see you trollin', I see you hatin'. but come on chad, up your game mate. It's weak.

[Mister Agenda]

hello,  i am a born again christian who is looking to understand and discuss your reasons for being an athiest. i am NOT here to argue or change your mind.

Welcome to the forum. Your interest in finding out what we think instead of telling us is refreshing. If you keep that attitude, you will be fine here.

When I was a devout Pentecostal, I read the KJV cover-to-cover. Then I read a modern English version to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding what I had read. That experience did not make me an atheist, but it did cure me of being a Christian. One issue that kept coming up as I read was that God seemed to often make moral choices that were nonsensical or inferior to those a decent human being would make. I still believed there was a God, but no longer believed that the authors of the Bible were in communication with that being.

I still had a lot of bizarre beliefs (pretty much everything: Big Foot, Nessie, ghosts, ESP, ancient astronauts, etc.) having little idea of critical thinking or rational skepticism; but gradually, after some experiences actually investingating some weird things, I began to realize that one should not believe things without sufficient evidence to support them. I stopped believing in UFO abductions, cursed jewelry, and possession; at least until such time as they were supported by enough evidence to make belief in them reasonable. I must have started applying the same standard to God, because one day I realized I no longer believed in God at all.

[I_am_not_mafia]

There is pretty good evidence that our "choices" are actually an illusion. Your brain, on the quantum level, is a machine which operates by certain parameters. There is evidence that everything you do is inevitable.

then this whole conversation is just being typed out by some other force that is controlling our lives so if that is true then there is really nothing we can do about that and our lives would have no meaning

[Minimalist]

You atheists just come up with excuses for not accepting them.

That's because it isn't "evidence" Chad.  It's just your absurd brainwashing being verbalized.

[Mister Agenda]

i see that most of you believe what you do because of lack of evidence that there is a God.  Personally i am a christian because of all the evidence ive seen and the ways ive seen him answer prayers.  ive had people come up to me and pray for problems that i was having that i hadnt told anyone.  ive had many prayers awnsered in ways that could only be explained by God.  I also completely understand everyone heres point of view

I appreciate your civility.

Members of other religions make exactly the same claims about deities mutually exclusive to yours. I think your experience is largely the result of confirmation bias (remembering the hits and forgetting the misses) and incorrect assessment of the odds of something happening regardless of whether or not you prayed. What you've actually 'seen' is desired events occurring after someone prayed for something, which is not the same thing as seeing God answer prayers. There are a lot of other possibilities which you've excluded. I have just as many good things happening to me now that I don't pray as happened when I did.

If you think about it, Christians getting prayers answered above the rate of probability would constitute at least weak evidence of their claims. We would all take notice if, all other factors being equal, Christians had notably higher rates of remission from cancer than, say, Shintoists. It wouldn't prove God, but it would be worthy of attention. If Christians could get back missing limbs by praying, it would defintely be evidence of something mysterious favoring them, because no one gets those results in the real world.

[Mister Agenda]

Yeah, to be "explained" by something you can't see or detect in any way whatsoever is a pretty poor kind of explanation.

i know i will probobally never convince you to believe that it was God who do those things but i will always know its true and believe.  do any of you believe in the big bang?

I think most of us accept that the available evidence points to the 'Big Bang' as having happened. If evidence comes up that is sufficient to justify a different conclusion, most of us would probably accept the new conclusion (though it is hard to imagine what kind of evidence could do that given the quantity and quality of evidence for the BB).

No worries on conversions either way, you are welcome to retain your beliefs, people believe that of which they are convinced, and that is mostly a personal process.