The Case for Atheism

[pineapplebunnybounce]

@AnaMejiaP, thanks for replying.

I'm less concerned with what god commands and more concerned about the truth claims the bible makes. According to what you've said, you take the creation story and Noah's ark to be literal? And when jesus chased out demons from possessed people, is that literal too? Or does he mean metaphorically and was actually giving them counselling and antipsychotics for their mental illnesses?

A lot of Christians would say these are metaphorical stories. The bible doesn't say any of these are visions or laments and they don't even involve a lot of fantastical things in the possessions story, but hindsight is 20/20. A lot of atheists/christians think that it's fine to be a christian and not believe in the creation story, that doesn't work for me. If god has a book, he doesn't get to make so many mistakes, it's all or none.

I asked because your belief sounds very rooted in the bible, and I wanted to see how you view things. And I'm tired of being told bad things are metaphorical while good things are literal.

All the mistakes in the bible is why I'm convinced that even if a god truly exists, Christianity certainly got it wrong. But if you look closely enough in nature, it becomes clear that it's highly, highly, highly improbable that any god exists.

[Captain Colostomy]

...what he actually meant was that...

This type of preface by an apologist always cracks me up. Were you there? Did he clarify this to you? (Did he tell you to shut up...because your a woman?)

I realize some things can be reasonably inferred and by and large agreed upon...but to say so with an authoritative aire of certainty is overreaching.

The bible's claim to truth takes hit after hit...I think it would be better served if people didn't try to understand it so well.

[Mister Agenda]

Frankly, if a Christian isn't a literalist, and doesn't think their religious beliefs should be something public school science class curricula should be based on, I don't have much of a beef with them. They do what they have to do to reconcile their faith and modernity. It's inconsistent, but it's impossible to be a consistent literalist, too. I'll take the Christian who has noticed it's the 21st century now any day.

[Minimalist]

Frankly, if a Christian isn't a literalist

That's a good point but for another reason. Any xtian who dismisses the Adam and Eve tale for pious bullshit has no reason to believe the rest of it.
If there was no "fall" of man the rest of the story is pointless.

And let's face it.... a person has to be a G-C class schmuck to believe that the Eden tale is literal!

[pocaracas]

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I was wondering on what logical premise do you have to not believe in a God? I know that a lot of atheist have different opinions and arguments. I'm only asking to get a better understanding on the matter, and I'm not here to argue against Atheist (not yet that is) just inviting a friendly conversation.

I simply look at the world around me.
I see no god, I hear no god, I feel no god.

People talk about a god, but I haven't experienced said god.

Then, I take a step back from the people in my vicinity and notice there are other people claiming similar things, but about some other god.

I do not experience that other god, either... nor any other god claimed by people all over the world.
What gives?
How have these people come to experience any god, if I can't?

Then I notice something else: it seems that claims concerning a specific god are geographically localized. If you're born in Europe or the Americas (which were colonized by europeans) you get christianity; if you're born in the Middle East, you get islam; is you're born in India, you get hinduism, etc, etc, etc... (just to name the best known ones)
What's going on here?

Is there only one god presenting itself in different ways to different people?... or multiple gods presenting themselves to specific groups of people in specific locations of the planet? Why don't I experience any of those?...
OR... OR... are people just convincing themselves and their children about the gods that they hear about from their relatives and acquaintances?
I mean, it looks like people convince their children about the story of god. These children grow up to convince their children thus creating an endless cycle.
Why do people do this?
What reason is there to teach your kids about some god for which you have no experience, except that which you convince yourself of?

Drich, a fellow forum-monger, says you need to have a mustard's seed worth of faith to believe... so faith is required to have faith.... sounds like circular reasoning, doesn't it? That's because it IS!
If you manage to mold a child's mind to accept something as truthful (and this isn't difficult), then that mind will grow with that belief ingrained, and convincing itself that it is right.... couple that with a lot of peer pressure and you get the religious movements.

Finally, I refuse. I refuse to believe. I want to know.
Belief requires that I accept other people's claims on face value... And that's not generally a very good idea.

If there is any god, I want to know about it. I refuse to accept other people's claims, so I would only accept it from the origin itself. I've been waiting for decades.
I am aware of other people who have been waiting for far longer than me.
I am aware that some people have lived in the far past and died of old age waiting for such experience.
So it seems that, if there is such an entity, it is not interested in making us know about it.
We then carry on with life under the assumption that it doesn't exist. The realization that believers are simply that: believers. They don't know. They believe.
It's all in their minds... those minds that were molded when they were young.

If it's all in their minds, then... it is not a real entity... It is an imaginary entity. It has been imagined in different ways, in different places, at different times, hence you got all the different religions and myths we got throughout human history.

PS: I am aware that some people do become theists at adulthood, but most believers are indeed indoctrinated as kids.
PS2: Oh, damn... Wall of text... sorry! And I know my walls of text tend to have little continuity, because they took too long to write.... sorry guys and gals!

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Ahhh... to be ignored. It's always an awesome ego boost

[AnaMejiaP]

@AnaMejiaP, thanks for replying.

I'm less concerned with what god commands and more concerned about the truth claims the bible makes. According to what you've said, you take the creation story and Noah's ark to be literal? And when jesus chased out demons from possessed people, is that literal too? Or does he mean metaphorically and was actually giving them counselling and antipsychotics for their mental illnesses?

A lot of Christians would say these are metaphorical stories. The bible doesn't say any of these are visions or laments and they don't even involve a lot of fantastical things in the possessions story, but hindsight is 20/20. A lot of atheists/christians think that it's fine to be a christian and not believe in the creation story, that doesn't work for me. If god has a book, he doesn't get to make so many mistakes, it's all or none.

I asked because your belief sounds very rooted in the bible, and I wanted to see how you view things. And I'm tired of being told bad things are metaphorical while good things are literal.

All the mistakes in the bible is why I'm convinced that even if a god truly exists, Christianity certainly got it wrong. But if you look closely enough in nature, it becomes clear that it's highly, highly, highly improbable that any god exists.

The reason I decided to join here is to grasp the different point of views. I did not say that I hold all knowledge of the universe and if I indirectly implied so I am sorry. I can be ignorant at times. I do, hold the opinion that Noah and, the casting out of Demons Jesus perform and among other things were literal. (Can I prove it? No, all I have to go by are through eye witness accounts that Luke claimed it came from and his personal voyage with Paul, his disciples, Jesus's brother, the time gap that all of the gospel were being written, the historical knowledge, outside sources and among other things. Even in the OT, despite its claim (and yes like it has been previously mentioned that most books in the OT were written after the fact. But there's no scholars whether liberal or traditionalist who deny that the OT is a historical book. Like cities in the ANE that once thought to be myths were found to be true in externaI records, the Egyptians names were used accurately etc. (Notice I do not say that they were Israelites in Egypt) I agree most Christians hold the Bible to be more figuratively, and actually about 20% of Christians don't believe in Christ resurrection, and some don't believe that the Bible was inspired by God. I never said that I am complete certain that I am correct in my thoughts and logic in fact I may be wrong. (I did however say that I do believe Christianity to be more apparent than others but then again, I can be wrong) Among other things the Bible does encourage it to be tested and also states if evidence of Christ resurrection is false then consider it as rubbish. My roots are not merely based on The Bible, it's also about my own personal experiences that seems to difficult to explain. It's the most hardest thing that I believe any human can experience and follow. If any Christian says that being a Christian is easy than they are either A) lying or B) never experience truly what a Christian is about. Every Christian struggles whether it's sin, temptation, doubt, disbelief etc. I struggle, most to many Atheist would label me as "holy, bigot, ignorant, intolerable, jesus freak, etc" ( I say that may come from Christians who are thought to be holy art thou, intolerant, who are legalistic (like Christians can't smoke, drink, use profanity or have sex)that's bullshit by the way)) but really they're Christians who are not like that, they just give us a bad rep. I'm not holy, I won't ever consider myself as if I were, I'm not special or perfect. I won't try to shove my theology, religion, or Jesus inside someones throat, no why would I? The same questions you have asked about God and the Bible, I have asked myself countless time, all I have is to learn more, research and keep looking, oh and that thing called faith lol. By the way, thank you for answering my previous question.

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I simply look at the world around me.
I see no god, I hear no god, I feel no god.

People talk about a god, but I haven't experienced said god.

Then, I take a step back from the people in my vicinity and notice there are other people claiming similar things, but about some other god.

I do not experience that other god, either... nor any other god claimed by people all over the world.
What gives?
How have these people come to experience any god, if I can't?

Then I notice something else: it seems that claims concerning a specific god are geographically localized. If you're born in Europe or the Americas (which were colonized by europeans) you get christianity; if you're born in the Middle East, you get islam; is you're born in India, you get hinduism, etc, etc, etc... (just to name the best known ones)
What's going on here?

Is there only one god presenting itself in different ways to different people?... or multiple gods presenting themselves to specific groups of people in specific locations of the planet? Why don't I experience any of those?...
OR... OR... are people just convincing themselves and their children about the gods that they hear about from their relatives and acquaintances?
I mean, it looks like people convince their children about the story of god. These children grow up to convince their children thus creating an endless cycle.
Why do people do this?
What reason is there to teach your kids about some god for which you have no experience, except that which you convince yourself of?

Drich, a fellow forum-monger, says you need to have a mustard's seed worth of faith to believe... so faith is required to have faith.... sounds like circular reasoning, doesn't it? That's because it IS!
If you manage to mold a child's mind to accept something as truthful (and this isn't difficult), then that mind will grow with that belief ingrained, and convincing itself that it is right.... couple that with a lot of peer pressure and you get the religious movements.

Finally, I refuse. I refuse to believe. I want to know.
Belief requires that I accept other people's claims on face value... And that's not generally a very good idea.

If there is any god, I want to know about it. I refuse to accept other people's claims, so I would only accept it from the origin itself. I've been waiting for decades.
I am aware of other people who have been waiting for far longer than me.
I am aware that some people have lived in the far past and died of old age waiting for such experience.
So it seems that, if there is such an entity, it is not interested in making us know about it.
We then carry on with life under the assumption that it doesn't exist. The realization that believers are simply that: believers. They don't know. They believe.
It's all in their minds... those minds that were molded when they were young.

If it's all in their minds, then... it is not a real entity... It is an imaginary entity. It has been imagined in different ways, in different places, at different times, hence you got all the different religions and myths we got throughout human history.

PS: I am aware that some people do become theists at adulthood, but most believers are indeed indoctrinated as kids.
PS2: Oh, damn... Wall of text... sorry! And I know my walls of text tend to have little continuity, because they took too long to write.... sorry guys and gals!

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Ahhh... to be ignored. It's always an awesome ego boost

I'm sorry, I did not mean to ignore you. I'm still trying to get a handle on these forums and it still confuses me. Anyway, thanks for answering my question, it's much better than the usual "no evidence" response.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

The reason I decided to join here is to grasp the different point of views. I did not say that I hold all knowledge of the universe and if I indirectly implied so I am sorry. I can be ignorant at times. I do, hold the opinion that Noah and, the casting out of Demons Jesus perform and among other things were literal. (Can I prove it? No, all I have to go by are through eye witness accounts that Luke claimed it came from and his personal voyage with Paul, his disciples, Jesus's brother, the time gap that all of the gospel were being written, the historical knowledge, outside sources and among other things. Even in the OT, despite its claim (and yes like it has been previously mentioned that most books in the OT were written after the fact. But there's no scholars whether liberal or traditionalist who deny that the OT is a historical book.

I'm not a history scholar, but do you mean historical book as in it's an artifact of history or it's an accurate record of history?

And no, I didn't mean to say that you were wrong about how Christians view the bible, I was just saying most Christians I know are not very literal so I'm interested in your viewpoint .

I'll contest the Noah's ark story:

1. He couldn't have gotten 2 of each species into the ark. Because to do so would require that he travel to many different climates. Islands especially have animals and plants that cannot be found elsewhere, for example, kangaroos and koalas in Australia. Madagascar also has a lot of species unique to that island. So if Noah were to actually do this, he'd have to travel all around and even pick up the penguins and polar bears at the poles. That would have taken him forever with the technology of the time, and he clearly didn't do that.

2. Supposing he did do 1., for the sake of the argument, he would require high tech air conditioning to keep all the animals healthy and alive during the flood. And these animals don't just eat anything, you feed them the wrong things and they'll get sick. What about the carnivores? Do they eat other animals? Are we suggesting that there's enough food to allow for such rapid reproduction?

3. Even supposing all the animals had things to eat, who's going to have time to feed them?

4. According to http://beyondflannelgraph.wordpress.com/...lood-last/, the flood lasted for 1 year. This is madness, we're talking about a lot of water with only 1 place to go: evaporation. If this much evaporation took place, it'd form clouds and rain. (Actually, correct me if I'm wrong, the water couldn't have come from anywhere to begin with. We're talking about worldwide rain for 40 days and nights)

Like cities in the ANE that once thought to be myths were found to be true in externaI records, the Egyptians names were used accurately etc. (Notice I do not say that they were Israelites in Egypt) I agree most Christians hold the Bible to be more figuratively, and actually about 20% of Christians don't believe in Christ resurrection, and some don't believe that the Bible was inspired by God.

I actually didn't know this. Interesting.

I never said that I am complete certain that I am correct in my thoughts and logic in fact I may be wrong. (I did however say that I do believe Christianity to be more apparent than others but then again, I can be wrong) Among other things the Bible does encourage it to be tested and also states if evidence of Christ resurrection is false then consider it as rubbish. My roots are not merely based on The Bible, it's also about my own personal experiences that seems to difficult to explain. It's the most hardest thing that I believe any human can experience and follow. If any Christian says that being a Christian is easy than they are either A) lying or B) never experience truly what a Christian is about. Every Christian struggles whether it's sin, temptation, doubt, disbelief etc.

I actually do understand. ExChristian here, and although hard to believe now, I used to buy the creation story and noah's ark. But my circumstances were very different, I grew up in a religious (Islam) country where evolution has been kept out of school for so long that I've only heard the words "theory of evolution" once or twice by the time I was 16 or so. (I left the country after).

I struggle, most to many Atheist would label me as "holy, bigot, ignorant, intolerable, jesus freak, etc" ( I say that may come from Christians who are thought to be holy art thou, intolerant, who are legalistic (like Christians can't smoke, drink, use profanity or have sex)that's bullshit by the way)) but really they're Christians who are not like that, they just give us a bad rep. I'm not holy, I won't ever consider myself as if I were, I'm not special or perfect. I won't try to shove my theology, religion, or Jesus inside someones throat, no why would I? The same questions you have asked about God and the Bible, I have asked myself countless time, all I have is to learn more, research and keep looking, oh and that thing called faith lol. By the way, thank you for answering my previous question.

Some atheists are aggressive towards the religious for a good reason. Because religions have a kind of buffer in society where it's protected from reality and common sense, and it gets dangerous because everyone takes them seriously. Given my background, I don't care too much about Christianity, but everything about Islam is rather personal to me because I've been oppressed by their laws for a large part of my life. But for atheists who grew up in places where the major religion is Christianity, I think it's personal for some of them (especially for LGBT I would think?), too, I don't know. But it certainly doesn't make religion any less bullshit if we're aggressive about it.

To me Christians can be as ridiculous as they like, as long as no one takes them seriously when they're ridiculous. But we know that's not how things work :/

And thanks for answering mine. .

[Simon Moon]

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Yes, if you accept that a magic deity exists, you can explain anything with magic. Circular logic much?

Isaiah 34:13 mentions dragons in Babylon

Isaiah 11:8 - "And the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den." A cockatrice is a serpent, hatched from a cock's egg, that can kill with a glance. They are rare nowadays.

Jeremiah 39:33- Jeremiah predicts that humans will never again live in Hazor (false), but will be replaced by dragons. But people still live there and dragons have never been seen.

Jeremiah 59:37 - "Babylon shall become heaps, a dwellingplace for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant. They shall roar together like lions: they shall yell as lions' whelps."


You have a great ability to miss the point.


According to Exodus 1:5 the Israelite population was 70. In only 400 years, there were at least a couple of million (600,000 adult males, not counting women and children ( Exodus 1:45-46, 25:51). A population increase of 70 to a couple of million in 400 years is an impossibility. You know that, right?

40 years in the desert for a couple of million people, animals, carts, encampments, etc would have left archeological EVIDENCE (there's that 'E' word again). There is none. Archeologists are able to find remnants of much smaller populations from longer ago than the Exodus story supposedly took place in harsher conditions, yet not a shred of evidence for the Biblical story.

According to 1 Chronicles, David had an army of 1,100,000 from Israel and another 470,000 from Judah. There was not near the population to have armies this size in an area that was pretty much just tribes.

in Joshua 1:6, Joshua says that those who try to rebuild Jericho will be accursed by God, and will have to sacrifice both their oldest and their youngest sons in its construction. But Jericho still exists today, and is often considered to be the world's oldest, continuously occupied city.

Oh yeah, there is not a shred of archeological evidence that Jews ever lived in Egypt, let alone were enslaved there.


This has already been refuted.


i wasn't only speaking of Daniel 'prophecy'.


Wrong.

The oldest known piece of the NT is a credit card size fragment of Mark from about 125 CE. There is nothing older. The originals do not exist.

The OT wasn't written for centuries after the events supposedly occurred. It wasn't written until 1200 BCE and 900 BCE.


It seems that you don't

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You have made a point. Thank you.

I seem to have made quite a few.

Please let me know which one in particular you are commenting on.

[Esquilax]

I'll contest the Noah's ark story:

You forgot that the whole ark would have become a hive of disease very quickly; bacteria and viruses would still be present on and around the animals (and that's assuming that microbes don't count as necessary passengers aboard the ark to begin with) and with so many animals from across the globe locked up in a confined space, all of them would be dealing with illnesses they'd have no immunity to, extremely quickly. None of this would be helped, of course, by the fact that flies and mosquitoes tend to breed, and I'd like to see how Noah intended to stop that from happening.

And how would parasites work? Would he have had to purposefully infect one of only two examples of a species with them to preserve the parasites? What about all those horrible flies and wasps that use other insect larvae as incubators for their own? Wouldn't that be an intolerable level of competition when there's only one breeding pair apiece?

So, Noah lets loose the eagles, and the first thing one of them does is swoop down and kill one of the rabbits. Well shit, that's one extinction event within the first minute. How does one account for the incredible vulnerability of an ecosystem where every species in it is critically endangered?

Noah walks carelessly through the ark and bam, one of the snails is gone. It only takes one fuck up, and you've practically committed genocide; these guys were on the boat for a year? How many accidental deaths could that be?

Were the animals that don't have year long lifespans breeding on the ark? How did the place cope with a sudden influx of mayflies? Can't let them out into the rain, after all!

And so on.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

lol, Esquilax, I'm sure I left out a lot of things, the Noah's Ark story is really detached from reality as we know it. The deaths of freshwater fishes due to exposure to seawater, is another that just popped into my head.

@AnaMejiaP, I got your private message, but it says you have PM disabled so I can't send one to you. To answer your question, to start a new thread to discuss what we've been talking about, just go to Religion> Christianity and there's a "new thread" button on the top right corner.