I’m an atheist. So why can’t I shake God?

[God of Mr. Hanky]

Would god violate a rapists free will if he waited until the rapist had made the decision to rape, stepping in after that moment but before the rape occurs to protect the victim?  Nope.  No more than a cop who sees an assault-in-progress and prevents it before serious harm is done has somehow violated the free will of the perpetrator.  

These free wills excuses are just horrid.

All I can provide is a story my aunt told me. After a high school dance her date took her out behind the school. After a while he pushed her to the ground and tried to rape her. She resisted, but being a very petite female didn't stand much chance. She started praying to Jesus. Suddenly her date looked up and behind her with a startled face, and ran away. She had no idea why, but the next day talked with him who told her a very tall man glowing in light was standing behind her and scared him away.

This is a true story, and I have others. All it takes is a faith in God. I would recommend Jesus since there are many other stories I can share. All you have to do is invite Jesus into your heart, and ask for forgiveness. Jesus will save you. God is real.

Now why would an auntie tell a story such as that to a nephew? Maybe it's because the budding sociopath needs a deterrent from doing that to his classmates!

When you call it a "true story", this implies that the only part which is true is that it's a story.

[LadyForCamus]

Nor me.  Considering the statistics of sexual assault against women (is it one in three these days?) it's likely that -many- of our female atheist members have been victims of some form of sexual violence in their lives, so I'm not sure why scooby thought this anecdotal story would carry any weight at all.  Good for your aunt.  What about the rest of us?   Oh, wait.  God has a PLAN!   A rape-y plan!  I forgot.  [emoji848]

It's one out of every 4 women.  The RAINN website stats for 2015 said that an American was sexually assaulted every 107 seconds.  44% of the victims are under age 18.  This being America, at least half are also Christian.  But god never helps them.  Just Scooby's family, and whoever made up the original lie in the first place.  https://rainn.org/statistics

Thanks for the stats. I knew it was in that ball park. Yeah, I guess all the Christian victims just didn't pray as hard as scooby's family, so really it's their own fault they were assaulted; can't hold the all- powerful God responsible.

The egocentricity in these types of stories utterly is mind-bending. [emoji848]

[God of Mr. Hanky]

They are taught ego-centric ideas every minute that they spend in church, except for the occasional admonishment not to do good for selfish reward or ego-tripping. This effectively twists their minds into circular coils and keeps them under control. They believe they are unselfish in what they do for the good of their church or their theistic ideas, but the problem is they can recognize no good which does not serve the financial or political interests of their church or theism.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Never got an answer.

I guess we'll have to make do with category errors.

[athrock]

How would God be able to reveal His existence without impacting your free will to accept or not accept Him as your Lord?

For example, if He is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, then many (like Hitchens and many member of the forum) would resent Him as the ultimate Big Brother.

Others would choose to worship Him out of fear (the very thing that forum members SCREAM about every time the existence of hell is mentioned).

So, how does God strike a balance between giving you (a mere speck of material in a purely natural world) the ability to perceive the existence of the supernatural Creator of that world without so overwhelming you with His glory that you are coerced into worshiping Him?

(Oh, and the "different gods" bit? Theologians accept that Christians, Muslims and others do worship the same God - but they have different impressions of him based upon the paths they have followed to find him.)

Ok, none of that particularly addresses my points in the cited post.

So I ask again, how do you resolve the inherent and self evident contradiction of, on the one hand, assuming this as of yet undefined and un-evidenced being has ordaining free will to chose, with the idea that in fact we are also pre-wired/predisposed to believe in 'its' existence (also unsupported and demonstrably false in my case)? You may as well just force belief if you're going to do that.

Why is it a contradiction? Giving us a pre-disposition to believe in Him is pretty subtle, IMO.

And how does this even compute in a scenario where this celestial being has created an entire universe, including the life forms that reside within it and, importantly, every facet of their existence from behavioral to emotional, only to then stumble at the hurdling block (even taking into account Muslims and Christians and the relatively small number of Jews into account) of having a very large proportion of the planet both today and throughout history never worshipping it, or even knowing of its existence? I ask you how a rational mind can even consider that to be feasible let alone plausible.

How? Relatively simply, I think. More people believe in some sort of a supreme being than you apparently realize. If you add up the number of Christians, Muslims and Hindus alone, you're at about 5 out of 7 million people who are theists (monotheists or polytheists). So, God understands what the life experience of each person has been, and I personally believe He grades on a curve. And, FWIW, the Church teaches that all those who lived and died as "good" people before Christ were waiting for His day in a relatively pleasant place known as "Abraham's bosom" and had an opportunity to meet him during the three days his body was in the tomb. This is known as the harrowing of hell.

I am ignoring all these deflections of materiality, 'what other forum members think' (I don't particularly care) and further assertions until you can provide a satisfactory answer to that.

Done.

[athrock]

I'm a bachelor with respect to all women on earth except for my wife.

I'm homeless with respect to all dwellings on earth except for the house I live in.

I'm unemployed...

This is an emotional appeal but there isn't much substance to it.

Do you understand what a category error is?

The wife/bachelor analogy fails because you are confusing facts of existence with terms of relationship. This analogy only works for you if by being married all other women cease to exist. Similar for the home analogy. The only other way out of this for you is to acknowledge the existence of all the other gods, but claim you don't worship them.

Curious. How could you possibly have thought this bullshit reasoning would work?

Do you understand how stupid it is to call a monotheist an atheist with respect to all gods but one?

[The Valkyrie]

You shouldn't shake gods. It can cause brain damage.

[Ravenshire]

Do you even understand how vile this concept, or a "god" that would allow it is? The criminal has "free will" to do as much evil as they wish, but at the cost of the "free will" of the victims. The victims get to suffer and die, or worse, but your gawd gets a pass "'cuz free will!!!" The very idea is repugnant.

Free will is essential to the learning of all souls, which we all are in human form, and to other souls in the spiritual realm spectating. Experience leads to wisdom. Earth is just a temporary place for us to experience and learn. When we leave we go back into the spiritual realm. It's actually perfection once you start to understand the grand plan. God is in control. Although some say that there is any suffering on earth means God is vengeful being simply means they don't fully understand the purpose of life which I hope to help explain. Life is to experience, and it allows those at various level to interact with others, as in multiple vibrations can exist on this plain. When we leave our host which acts as an anchor and identify with as our body we will gravitate to where we are based on our vibration level at that time.

Why do bad things happen? The answer is to learn lessons. Life on earth is finite, that's a guarantee. Why are people allowed to harm others? Well, the simple answer again is that this is just a school, and not heaven on earth. It has to be fair to those who are also in need of learning, and unfortunately they are the people that harm others. Ironically we chose to come here to exist in this realm and experience the physical, and we understood what we were getting into, but for this experience to work we were required to forget where we came from. Life is really just a cycle of souls that are not perfect yet, which is why we are here.

In the spiritual realm it's completely segregated. Birds of a feather will flock together. Jesus is also a powerful being that can help if you invite him into your life.

(emphasis is mine)

Demonstrate there is such a thing as "souls" and maybe I'll give your drivel marginally more attention. Until then you're just making noises that sound suspiciously like air being passed through a sphincter.

[Ravenshire]

you have nothing of value to me.

Rhythm, I think I've distilled you post to it's salient point.

[scoobysnack]

All I can provide is a story my aunt told me. After a high school dance her date took her out behind the school. After a while he pushed her to the ground and tried to rape her. She resisted, but being a very petite female didn't stand much chance. She started praying to Jesus. Suddenly her date looked up and behind her with a startled face, and ran away. She had no idea why, but the next day talked with him who told her a very tall man glowing in light was standing behind her and scared him away.

This is a true story, and I have others. All it takes is a faith in God. I would recommend Jesus since there are many other stories I can share. All you have to do is invite Jesus into your heart, and ask for forgiveness. Jesus will save you. God is real.

Now why would an auntie tell a story such as that to a nephew? Maybe it's because the budding sociopath needs a deterrent from doing that to his classmates!

When you call it a "true story", this implies that the only part which is true is that it's a story.

I heard it from my my dad and later verified by eventually her. When you don't think it's not a true story you think they are lying because it doesn't fit your belief system. Kind of like many religious people I know. The more I'm on here the more I realize that atheist have faith just like religious people do, however their faith is based on what the scientific community allows them to know. Then you learn there is a lot of science in the classified realm that you don't know about, which will not be known, or anything they don't talk about is lies. I guess that would make sense as to why it's important to restrict information and classify it. Oh that's right, nothing can be kept secret, and anything that doesn't fit in the paradigm is a lie, although anyone who questions them is paranoid because they can't lie, or a liar themselves. I'm starting to understand this belief a lot better now, which is why i'm here.

This makes me start to wonder who the atheist has faith in. And once that's understood, how can it's manipulated. Come across many different variants while here, although all claim to be atheists. I'd say it's more like variations of religion, where you have different sects, like Lutherans, Catholics, etc. The only thing in common I've read is that whatever is verified is what you personally have verified, which is just like everyone. So far the difference more than I thought, but not surprised to find the variations. Afterall, like I continue to say, perception of reality, is what we perceive.