Atheist vs Atheist

[themonkeyman]

Hi Folks,

I came on this forum a few months ago and I have learned allot from both the Christians and atheists. A Good friend of mine is a Christian and his father is a Pastor. I haven't hung out with him since I told him I became an Atheist. Because when I did he fought me down and won the argument for God.

So In-order for me to strengthen my Belief -> UnBelief I am going to propose a few topics that I would ideally like to be challenged upon. I know deep down that the arguments that people here make will be correct. But I would like to see the tought pattern and process so I can learn from it.

My First Statement:

With all the wars / famines / earthquakes and tidal waves going on alongside all the Doom's day prophecy that seam to have stepped up a gear. What is to say that we are not indeed living in the end times according to several religions. The argument you can make is that this happened through out history however the undeniable truth is that for the Christian Bible account to be rendered true it must happen in several places and most importantly Israel and Palestine. Many of these events have occurred so does this prove God Correct?

Your Rebuttal:

[Captain Colostomy]

A more compelling prophecy would have been aeons of peace, plenty and stable geology. Since people fight, eat, and exacerbate situations through population increases and CO2 emissions, etc..., a god foretelling accurately of an impossible utopian future would be more impressive. As it stands, it doesn't take a psychic to guess 'rough seas ahead'.

I can see the rationale for arguing the inanery of the bible, but you have to wonder sometimes if 'fire on fire' arguments will sway true believers™. They often have a solid grasp on their interpretations, and that makes inroads a PITA. Dismissing the relevance of that bundle of rolling papers from the get go takes away the thunder in their voice. They can quote scripture til they are blue, but if it doesn't hold water with their audience, they have nothing.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

What is to say that we are not indeed living in the end times according to several religions. The argument you can make is that this happened through out history however the undeniable truth is that for the Christian Bible account to be rendered true it must happen in several places and most importantly Israel and Palestine. Many of these events have occurred so does this prove God Correct?

The 'prophecies' relating to the end of the world (especially the Christian ones) tend to fall into one of three categories: 1) wrong; 2) self-fulfilling; 3) nebulous in the extreme. Given that, I'm not terribly sanguine about these things being able to 'prove God correct'.

Boru

[pocaracas]

Hi Folks,

I came on this forum a few months ago and I have learned allot from both the Christians and atheists. A Good friend of mine is a Christian and his father is a Pastor.

You know what the word "pastor" means in most latin derivative languages?
Shepherd.

Yes... the people seem to enjoy being called sheep directly to their faces.

So In-order for me to strengthen my Belief -> UnBelief I am going to propose a few topics that I would ideally like to be challenged upon.

Strengthen?
You either believe what other people tell you about the afterlife, or don't.
Do you believe them?

I know deep down that the arguments that people here make will be correct. But I would like to see the tought pattern and process so I can learn from it.

Don't believe unsubstantiated claims.
Try to understand what makes those people come up with those claims.

My First Statement:

With all the wars / famines / earthquakes and tidal waves going on alongside all the Doom's day prophecy that seam to have stepped up a gear.

A few million years ago, some 90% of life on this planet was annihilated...
more than once!
A few thousands of years ago, there was an Ice age... and it seems there have been quite a few before that...
Weather has these cycles...
Wars are caused by human greed... famines exist because there are too many people and too little food... earthquakes have always existed... maybe there ware even more in the past than now...

What is to say that we are not indeed living in the end times according to several religions. The argument you can make is that this happened through out history however the undeniable truth is that for the Christian Bible account to be rendered true it must happen in several places and most importantly Israel and Palestine.

For some reason that I can't fathom, that particular geographical location has become a hot bed.
Perhaps, it's because there's oil around there?
Or it's part of the traditional silk road? Access to the far-East?

Many of these events have occurred so does this prove God Correct?

Your Rebuttal:

It proves that history repeats itself, and if you write enough guesses, some are bound to be relatively accurate, as long as your guesses were minimally sound.

Don't make the jump from keen observation of human nature to god... that's not how it works... but it is how they make you think... they know human nature, they know how humans respond particular stimuli, in a particular sequence...
Enjoy this example:

---

Answer the first two questions below out loud, and then blurt out the first thing that pops into your mind in response to sentence 3:

1. What continent is Kenya in?

2. What are the two opposing colors in the game of chess?

3. Name any animal.

Roughly 20 percent of people answer "zebra" to sentence 3, and about 50 percent respond with an animal from Africa. But, when asked to name an animal out of the blue, less than 1 percent of people will answer "zebra."

---

[pineapplebunnybounce]

Hi Folks,

I came on this forum a few months ago and I have learned allot from both the Christians and atheists. A Good friend of mine is a Christian and his father is a Pastor. I haven't hung out with him since I told him I became an Atheist. Because when I did he fought me down and won the argument for God.

So In-order for me to strengthen my Belief -> UnBelief I am going to propose a few topics that I would ideally like to be challenged upon. I know deep down that the arguments that people here make will be correct. But I would like to see the tought pattern and process so I can learn from it.

My First Statement:

With all the wars / famines / earthquakes and tidal waves going on alongside all the Doom's day prophecy that seam to have stepped up a gear. What is to say that we are not indeed living in the end times according to several religions. The argument you can make is that this happened through out history however the undeniable truth is that for the Christian Bible account to be rendered true it must happen in several places and most importantly Israel and Palestine. Many of these events have occurred so does this prove God Correct?

Your Rebuttal:

If I'm not mistaken lots of things need to come to pass before the bible is fulfilled. For example jesus was supposed to return before the disciples died. If by your standard of evidence, one fail prophecy doesn't disprove the bible, then one correct prophecy doesn't prove it either. You can't have it both ways.

So what you're asking is, does this prove god correct. Well, are you saying this is all god is? That god is boiled down to one prophecy about Israel and Palestine? Then ok, that was a hit. But that's all there is. You cannot expand god to mean master of the universe/creator/whatever, those claims need to be substantiated as well. Unless you can show that all those properties are necessarily tied to correct prophecies, in which case as I've mentioned before, all failed prophecies disprove god.

And I think whoever wrote about Israel and Palestine in the bible weren't talking about what is going on right now, I think they had something much simpler in mind.

[daandaan]

Hi Folks,

I came on this forum a few months ago and I have learned allot from both the Christians and atheists. A Good friend of mine is a Christian and his father is a Pastor. I haven't hung out with him since I told him I became an Atheist. Because when I did he fought me down and won the argument for God.

So In-order for me to strengthen my Belief -> UnBelief I am going to propose a few topics that I would ideally like to be challenged upon. I know deep down that the arguments that people here make will be correct. But I would like to see the tought pattern and process so I can learn from it.

My First Statement:

With all the wars / famines / earthquakes and tidal waves going on alongside all the Doom's day prophecy that seam to have stepped up a gear. What is to say that we are not indeed living in the end times according to several religions. The argument you can make is that this happened through out history however the undeniable truth is that for the Christian Bible account to be rendered true it must happen in several places and most importantly Israel and Palestine. Many of these events have occurred so does this prove God Correct?

Your Rebuttal:

If I'm not mistaken lots of things need to come to pass before the bible is fulfilled. For example jesus was supposed to return before the disciples died. If by your standard of evidence, one fail prophecy doesn't disprove the bible, then one correct prophecy doesn't prove it either. You can't have it both ways.

So what you're asking is, does this prove god correct. Well, are you saying this is all god is? That god is boiled down to one prophecy about Israel and Palestine? Then ok, that was a hit. But that's all there is. You cannot expand god to mean master of the universe/creator/whatever, those claims need to be substantiated as well. Unless you can show that all those properties are necessarily tied to correct prophecies, in which case as I've mentioned before, all failed prophecies disprove god.

And I think whoever wrote about Israel and Palestine in the bible weren't talking about what is going on right now, I think they had something much simpler in mind.

some tips :

check ur maiboxl...im not gonna put the recipy on here where the trolls can read them as well..

[IAmNotHere]

With all the wars / famines / earthquakes and tidal waves going on alongside all the Doom's day prophecy that seam to have stepped up a gear. What is to say that we are not indeed living in the end times according to several religions. The argument you can make is that this happened through out history however the undeniable truth is that for the Christian Bible account to be rendered true it must happen in several places and most importantly Israel and Palestine. Many of these events have occurred so does this prove God Correct?

Havent people constantly claiming we are in endtimes? They predict when it is going to end...the date passes and they claim they miscalculated. They try to make this calculation according to what was recorded in the bible in relation to this.

There have been natural distasters for a very long time and do not indicate anything supernatural but instead are a part of how the earth operates. There are storms etc on other planets for as long as they have been discovered so I think that trying to use natural events like earthquakes, storms etc to claim the end of the world is coming makes no logical sense.

My understanding is that a lot of the predictions made in the bible about things that were to happen were logical predictions and had nothing miraculous about them.

I am not sure what you mean about god being correct though. If he is the designer and makes everything happen then wouldnt he be the one making every single prediction happen that he supposedly told the authors of the bible?

[themonkeyman]

Strengthen?
You either believe what other people tell you about the afterlife, or don't.
Do you believe them?

procaracas - I dont generally believe but these people who say there is a heaven and hell are the people I have trusted and knew my entire life so at times it really does feel that I am going out on a limb when they are so persuaded otherwise.

If I'm not mistaken lots of things need to come to pass before the bible is fulfilled. For example jesus was supposed to return before the disciples died. If by your standard of evidence, one fail prophecy doesn't disprove the bible, then one correct prophecy doesn't prove it either. You can't have it both ways.

Pineapple - You are correct in what you say however my response to this would be the fact that Science even now cannot disprove God and generally within science when we cannot prove or disprove something we leave it with a big question. Therefore based upon this God's existance cannot be proven either way so how can we say it is wrong.

How do we know that a prophecy has failed? Do we look behind in history and say it failed. Thats the same as science saying the speed of light is 200,000,000 + m/s then revising it later it is not a concrete definitave method to say that just because the timing is incorrect does not render the foregone conclusion incorrect.

Havent people constantly claiming we are in endtimes? They predict when it is going to end...the date passes and they claim they miscalculated. They try to make this calculation according to what was recorded in the bible in relation to this.

dgirl1986 - People have predicted the end times however one thing that is more visible now than there has been is the ability to connect dots quicker. Many moons ago people in different parts of the known world had localised events. But I am sure their endtimes views did not match up.

One thing of prominence is that more people were worried about the Myan Prophecy than they were about any other end times event.

[pocaracas]

Strengthen?
You either believe what other people tell you about the afterlife, or don't.
Do you believe them?

procaracas - I dont generally believe but these people who say there is a heaven and hell are the people I have trusted and knew my entire life so at times it really does feel that I am going out on a limb when they are so persuaded otherwise.

My nick sure is messed up, huh?

About those people whom you've grown to trust... well, think that they had to go through the same thing with people in whom they trusted.... who got it from people in whom they trusted... and so on and so forth... with minor alterations with each iteration.

Note that those people may have had the best of intentions, but they were themselves led to believe.... it's messed up.

You are now at a point where you can stop this chain of misinformation and delusion... or carry it to the next generation.

[Tonus]

procaracas - I dont generally believe but these people who say there is a heaven and hell are the people I have trusted and knew my entire life so at times it really does feel that I am going out on a limb when they are so persuaded otherwise.

And yet they were unable to persuade you. Why? Surely there must be some reason, or number of reasons, why you're conflicted? In spite of apparently being surrounded by religious believers and their reinforcement for years, you've come to doubt their views so strongly that you're asking for help in fighting off their arguments.

Find the reason for that, and you'll probably realize just how weak their whole belief system really is.

In any case, people have been predicting the end of the world for a very long time. Also, keep in mind that bad news always draws the most attention and in a world where there is more media coverage and accessibility than ever, it's easy to be overwhelmed by bad news and think that things are worse than ever. And that theme has been going on for as long as there have been people making end-of-world predictions.