RE: 10 Questions for Every Atheist
July 16, 2014 at 9:22 am
(This post was last modified: July 16, 2014 at 10:31 am by Chad32.)
Ok, I'll bite.
1. How Did You Become an Atheist? Not all atheists start out as religious people that leave the faith at some point in their lives, but I was raised christian. The more I learned about the darker parts of the bible, the less I liked it. I think the final straw was when I found out that Jesus wasn't the only guy that supposedly was born from a virgin, and rose from the dead three days after he died. He wasn't the first either. Older religions had myths like that, but I'm not going to start worshiping Horus.
2. What happens when we die? Our brains shut down, along with everything else, and our bodies decompose and return to the earth. That's as far as anyone knows for certain.
3. What if you’re wrong? And there is a Heaven? And there is a HELL! Even if we could narrow Yahweh down to the one true god, we still have to pick between the Jews, Muslims, and Christians to figure out the true path. Even if we picked Christianity, there are thousands of mutually different groups to choose from. Personally if I wanted to worship a god, I'd pick Vishnu from Hinduism. Vishnu encourages us to reach personal enlightenment. S/he doesn't tell us we're pieces of shit for not meeting a standard that's impossible to meet, and demands that we beg him to save us from something he made for not meeting that impossible standard.
4. Without God, where do you get your morality from? The same place everyone gets it. The people around them, and their life experiences.
5. If there is no God, can we do what we want? Are we free to murder and rape? While good deeds are unrewarded? Do you believe that Jeffrey Dahmer is in heaven right now, just because he repented before he died? Do you believe that Anne Frank has less of a chance to get into heaven than Hitler, because Hitler said the right things to the right god? We may have a messed up justice system around here, but I'd argue that your god's justice system is even worse.
6. If there is no god, how does your life have any meaning? I'm not sure why I'd get meaning in life from anything external.
7. Where did the universe come from? For all we know, the particles that created stars and planets and such have always existed. At one point they were condensed, but now they're expanding. It seems to be a self replicating system.
8. What about miracles? What all the people who claim to have a connection with Jesus? What about those who claim to have seen saints or angels? That's all they are. Claims. The bible, by itsself, doesn't even prove that Egypt existed. Much less Yahweh or Jesus.
9. What’s your view of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris? They were outspoken atheists. I'm not well read on any of them, so I don't have much to say. I will say that we needed more people like these before christianity corrupted our secular nation so much. Some people don't even know that many founding fathers were deists that disdained christianity because of what happened in Europe. The only time religion is mentioned in the constitution or bill of rights is when it says religion should be separate from government.
10. If there is no God, then why does every society have a religion? Because people want answers for things that don't understand. They once thought lightning comes from the sky because Zeus or Thor or whoever was throwing thunderbolts at the ground. Yet here we are harnessing electricity in our daily lives. We would be gods to those ancient people, and we're not done advancing.
1. How Did You Become an Atheist? Not all atheists start out as religious people that leave the faith at some point in their lives, but I was raised christian. The more I learned about the darker parts of the bible, the less I liked it. I think the final straw was when I found out that Jesus wasn't the only guy that supposedly was born from a virgin, and rose from the dead three days after he died. He wasn't the first either. Older religions had myths like that, but I'm not going to start worshiping Horus.
2. What happens when we die? Our brains shut down, along with everything else, and our bodies decompose and return to the earth. That's as far as anyone knows for certain.
3. What if you’re wrong? And there is a Heaven? And there is a HELL! Even if we could narrow Yahweh down to the one true god, we still have to pick between the Jews, Muslims, and Christians to figure out the true path. Even if we picked Christianity, there are thousands of mutually different groups to choose from. Personally if I wanted to worship a god, I'd pick Vishnu from Hinduism. Vishnu encourages us to reach personal enlightenment. S/he doesn't tell us we're pieces of shit for not meeting a standard that's impossible to meet, and demands that we beg him to save us from something he made for not meeting that impossible standard.
4. Without God, where do you get your morality from? The same place everyone gets it. The people around them, and their life experiences.
5. If there is no God, can we do what we want? Are we free to murder and rape? While good deeds are unrewarded? Do you believe that Jeffrey Dahmer is in heaven right now, just because he repented before he died? Do you believe that Anne Frank has less of a chance to get into heaven than Hitler, because Hitler said the right things to the right god? We may have a messed up justice system around here, but I'd argue that your god's justice system is even worse.
6. If there is no god, how does your life have any meaning? I'm not sure why I'd get meaning in life from anything external.
7. Where did the universe come from? For all we know, the particles that created stars and planets and such have always existed. At one point they were condensed, but now they're expanding. It seems to be a self replicating system.
8. What about miracles? What all the people who claim to have a connection with Jesus? What about those who claim to have seen saints or angels? That's all they are. Claims. The bible, by itsself, doesn't even prove that Egypt existed. Much less Yahweh or Jesus.
9. What’s your view of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris? They were outspoken atheists. I'm not well read on any of them, so I don't have much to say. I will say that we needed more people like these before christianity corrupted our secular nation so much. Some people don't even know that many founding fathers were deists that disdained christianity because of what happened in Europe. The only time religion is mentioned in the constitution or bill of rights is when it says religion should be separate from government.
10. If there is no God, then why does every society have a religion? Because people want answers for things that don't understand. They once thought lightning comes from the sky because Zeus or Thor or whoever was throwing thunderbolts at the ground. Yet here we are harnessing electricity in our daily lives. We would be gods to those ancient people, and we're not done advancing.
Poe's Law: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."
10 Christ-like figures that predate Jesus. Link shortened to Chris ate Jesus for some reason...
http://listverse.com/2009/04/13/10-chris...ate-jesus/
Good video to watch, if you want to know how common the Jesus story really is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88GTUXvp-50
A list of biblical contradictions from the infallible word of Yahweh.
http://infidels.org/library/modern/jim_m...tions.html
10 Christ-like figures that predate Jesus. Link shortened to Chris ate Jesus for some reason...
http://listverse.com/2009/04/13/10-chris...ate-jesus/
Good video to watch, if you want to know how common the Jesus story really is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88GTUXvp-50
A list of biblical contradictions from the infallible word of Yahweh.
http://infidels.org/library/modern/jim_m...tions.html