Which was first: Atheism or Religion?

[fr0d0]

Whatever god this fr0d0 guy believes in is a useless god that doesn't hold him accountable for anything he says. He even ignores Scripture.

You are indeed a bad testimony for the Lord, fr0d0. Because you have failed to amend things between us, you and I are no longer on speaking terms until/unless you do so.

Not a big loss for me since you never really say anything intellectually worth addressing.

Yah I know bro. Just waiting for you to shut up about it

---

So we're back to...

Atheist: "I'll believe it when I see it."

Theist: "I'll see it when I believe it."

Precisely. One side is about intellectual honesty despite one's biases, the other side is about strongly conforming to one's biases.

You got some serious bias going on there too bro.

Intellectual honesty if you call being intellectually honest refusing to think lol

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh now that's harsh. Frodo says plenty of things worth addressing. In fact, getting Frodo to follow his own claims to their logical conclusions is one of the few carrots-on-a-stick that actually motivate me on these boards.

[fr0d0]

Intellectual honesty, as far as they have intellect..

If the best you can do is "you're dumb!" then fuck off back to Legoland, okay? You could at least attempt rational discourse, even if we both know you'd fail.

We can believe intellectually by the power of deduction. You've seen how it works so don't go acting dumb on me now. The rewards of belief are evident. Here's the tricky bit, be sure to concentrate..... to a non believer those effects can be explained away.

Okay, serious question: when you talk about the rewards of belief, what do you mean? I ask out of politeness, because I don't want to put words in your mouth for my next question, which is: how do you know those rewards are from the god you believe in, and not some other source? You say they can be explained away, what are you using to verify that the source you attribute them to is correct, over the secular alternatives?

The trouble with using deduction alone is that it's very hard to be sure you're stripping out all the biases that come with being human, that's why evidence is preferable. Now, I see elsewhere you say that your beliefs are verified by the fact that other christians have similar experiences, and I somewhat accept that as valid reasoning, the problem I come across is the huge variations between individual christians and, more broadly, christian denominations. The variance of reported experiences is quite wide; at what point do we say that it's too wide to draw any meaningful trends from?

A commendable post Esq. Respect.

I don't find variance in the core experiences of all of who I would call mainstream Christians. ie Trinitarian Christians. The experiences I'm talking about are those promised in scripture. Church services depend upon testimony to prove that there's still life in their beliefs. The fruits of the spirit. Church goers can be very skeptical until they see evidence of what corroborates as God's work in someone's life. That's open to abuse too by those that might know what the group want to hear.

Sorry I can't give you a better, I mean more thorough or exact answer as you deserve. Really busy working a 16 hour day here.

[Esquilax]

A commendable post Esq. Respect.

Well, I was bound to get one eventually.

I don't find variance in the core experiences of all of who I would call mainstream Christians. ie Trinitarian Christians. The experiences I'm talking about are those promised in scripture. Church services depend upon testimony to prove that there's still life in their beliefs. The fruits of the spirit. Church goers can be very skeptical until they see evidence of what corroborates as God's work in someone's life. That's open to abuse too by those that might know what the group want to hear.

Okay, I gotcha. So, how do you resolve conflicting experiences? I mean, you've got christians on every side of politics, social issues, religious positions, many of whom claim revelation from god or personal experiences that justify those positions they've chosen. Now, I agree with you that evidently someone is wrong when they say that, because obviously they can't all be right, but what do you use to tell? Scripture is kind of problematic, since I guarantee every side of every issue can provide some scriptural reference for what they believe, and as for their fruits... well, that leads to further questions, about why those other people feel the fruits of incorrect beliefs are scripturally consistent, where you don't.

I guess what I'm asking is, is there a way to discern the correct set of beliefs here that works- from an outside perspective- for only that one set of beliefs?

[Dystopia]

If atheism was first, then religion was created by atheists.

I guess atheists came first, this doesn't mean religion was created by an atheist. Probably the first religious or theistic beliefs were a kind of pantheism mixed with deism, religion and theism were created much later.

[Cyberman]

Sorry to be nitpicky, but you can't really have pantheism without theism. Perhaps you meant monotheism?

[Dystopia]

Sorry to be nitpicky, but you can't really have pantheism without theism. Perhaps you meant monotheism?

I thought deism, theism and pantheism differed from each other. But if what you are saying is correct, then I meant theism.

[Cyberman]

Well, they do differ of course, except inasmuch as they all require belief in at least one god or entity of equivalent distinction. Basically what I mean is that all sub-genres of religious affiliation are theism. It's sort of like the way atheism is a specialised subset of scepticism.

[GrandizerII]

Oh now that's harsh. Frodo says plenty of things worth addressing. In fact, getting Frodo to follow his own claims to their logical conclusions is one of the few carrots-on-a-stick that actually motivate me on these boards.

Have you succeeded in trying to get a satisfying answer from a dodger? Trying to get people like him to actually think deep is a challenge.

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh if only Frodo would satisfy me.....lol, no, not really. See how quickly we've forgotten about empirical evidence and its relationship to the supernatural - and justification for belief in the supernatural (and I've watched him repeat that same self defeating claim for years now without any acknowledgement). Resolution on that is not likely to be forthcoming, and I'm okay with that. I don't think it's much of a challenge to get Frodo to think deeply, more of a challenge to get him to share with you what the contents of those thoughts are. They're his thoughts, after all, and he gets to decide where he leaves them.

@Frodo