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RE: Hello!
December 13, 2015 at 8:52 am
(December 13, 2015 at 12:34 am)Amine Wrote: Welcome! How long ago did you make your transition from religion to agnostic-atheist? What precipitated it?
It was a slow process over a few years. Several factors led to my deconversion:
1) Atheistic science has answered all of the claims of ID. Modern science simply does not need "god" to explain anything and everything. From the absolute origins of the Cosmos to consciousness and free-will, well-established explanations and models exist. The "god of gaps" is shrinking into nothingness.
2) The argument of evil. God, if he/she/it exists, is impotent on a cosmic scale. Natural suffering, which has occurred over the course of hundreds of millions of years, is more consistent with naturalism than even with a sadistic deity who gets amusement in the sufferings of conscious beings. The "laws of Nature" seem, to me, to be ones of pitiless indifference to the plight, good or bad, of conscious entities.
3) The argument of Dawkins. Complexity does not arise ex nihilo. Everything that Science has ever observed has been the story of going from simple to complex, including, "us," all of whom started off microscopic. "God," if he/she/it exists, demands an explanation of his/her/its origins, a standard which we apply to every single thing in our lives.
4) The Universe is, probably, eternal. As with the number line, time is probably eternal, without a beginning or an end.
5) Religious faith is driven by emotionalism. People don't like death, and religion is simply a coping mechanism, individual and societal, which helps people deal with death and loss. But, as with drug abuse, religious belief is selfish, because it posits an afterlife, where none exists, dishonoring the memory of those who have died and the lives which they had lived.
6) Religions are hopelessly contradictory. They contradict themselves and each other to the point where they are absurd; no one agrees on anything, and beliefs that were once widely held (such as the Limbo of the Children) are, today, virtually extinct.
7) Religions make no testable predictions. People used to believe things because "it was taught in the Bible". Bishop Ussher's calculation (4004 BC) for the Creation of the World was widely praised by churchmen across the World, both Catholic & Protestant, and English Bibles included it in their text for over 200 years. It was only after the rise of modern geology, that the "calculation" was dropped.
8) Religious worship is primarily social. It is not a source of truth for most people (to quote an episode of Futurama, "It's mainly a Christmas & Easter thing."); they don't even believe in it, except, perhaps, at a "high level." People go to church to meet other people, to have their kids play with other children, to find dates, spouses, etc. It's just another service which people buy and sell in a free-market. Most evangelical Christians know, for instance, that they (and, their candidates) do not have a "snowball's chance" of getting elected, but their politicking helps relieve the cognitive dissonance that they are experiencing with regards to their religious faith.
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RE: Hello!
December 14, 2015 at 2:15 am
I like the Problem of Evil in particular as an argument. Now, granted, it isn't my number 1 reason for not believing. That would be the lack of explanation or evidence behind there being a God. But the Problem of Evil is something that people are very blind to somehow. It is readily apparent that pretty much unjustifiable things happen all the time. To think a God watches passively as thousands of rapes occur every day is just offensive. They have lamely tried to give the answer of free will, as if God could not keep it intact and intervene, just like parents or police officers do. It's no argument at all.
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RE: Hello!
December 14, 2015 at 5:03 am
Hallo!
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
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RE: Hello!
December 14, 2015 at 8:50 am
(December 14, 2015 at 2:15 am)Amine Wrote: I like the Problem of Evil in particular as an argument. Now, granted, it isn't my number 1 reason for not believing. That would be the lack of explanation or evidence behind there being a God. But the Problem of Evil is something that people are very blind to somehow. It is readily apparent that pretty much unjustifiable things happen all the time. To think a God watches passively as thousands of rapes occur every day is just offensive. They have lamely tried to give the answer of free will, as if God could not keep it intact and intervene, just like parents or police officers do. It's no argument at all.
Yeah, and think about those poor dinosaurs for a few hundred million years, starving, freezing, drowning, and being eaten alive bit by bit. And, then, the Big One comes along! Where's the "cosmic lesson" in all of that?!
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RE: Hello!
May 19, 2016 at 10:27 pm
Hi. Yeah I know, I'm late. Welcome.
Your intro here is shorter than it is sweet. I'd be interested in the unabridged tale if that's available. Did you ever post anything to the Convert's Corner thread?
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RE: Hello!
May 19, 2016 at 10:36 pm
(May 19, 2016 at 10:27 pm)Whateverist the White Wrote: Hi. Yeah I know, I'm late. Welcome.
Your intro here is shorter than it is sweet. I'd be interested in the unabridged tale if that's available. Did you ever post anything to the Convert's Corner thread?
Thanks! My story is simple -- brainwashed in my youth as an evangelical Christian fundamentalist, which I renounced while in high school due to evolutionary theory, and especially, higher Biblical criticism. Got married and converted to my wife's religion, Catholicism, for a time, but could not stand all the contradictions from one Pope/Council to another, eventually coming to the conclusion that Catholicism is just a man-made meme, like the rest. Having never found any of the theistic arguments for the EoG to be at all compelling and modern-day "miracle claims" being fraught with self-deception, overt deception, mental illness, group hysteria, and sometimes, outright fraud, I see no compelling reason to believe. So, no evidence for "god" means the default position, which for me, is the absence of belief, or "agnostic atheism". However, over the last year, I have come to appreciate the Argument from (Natural) Evil to be a compelling argument against the idea of "all-good, all-loving theistic god". I also like Dr. Michael Shermer's approach of the "null hypothesis" ("Whatever you believe to be true isn't; now go convince disinterested strangers that your null hypothesis is false") to the God question, again, leading to the "default" position of agnostic atheism.
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RE: Hello!
May 19, 2016 at 10:48 pm
Well that makes sense. It seemed like you sometimes addressed catholicism but did so with a fundamentalist bent. Congratulations on escaping the early rapists of your mind.
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RE: Hello!
May 20, 2016 at 7:38 am
Religion is, to some degree, a form of mental drug abuse, and there's always a detox period that follows from its withdrawal.
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RE: Hello!
May 20, 2016 at 10:02 am
Looks I somehow missed this first time around!
Welcome! I'm glad you joined us 
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RE: Hello!
May 20, 2016 at 7:08 pm
(May 20, 2016 at 10:02 am)robvalue Wrote: Looks I somehow missed this first time around!
Welcome! I'm glad you joined us
Glad to be here!! 
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