This is the convenient part I am talking about. It's pretty easy to just say "I don't know" to everything. You don't have to stand for anything. You can make all of your decisions on the fly and you are able to justify it with "Because I felt like it". It's impossible for me to explain to someone why I don't drink or smoke or go to clubs and carry on without getting into a religious debate. The Dawkins link above reminded me of his debate with John Lennox. It's about an hour long in total but it is definitely worth watching. I'd love to know what you think of it. Wouldn't surprise me if you have already seen it. YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
I didn't need much evidence for that. I could use some deductive reasoning. Rinse and Repeat with other various religious topics.
It's not very fun debating with people who constantly insult your intelligence. I've been through this a million times with friends on another board so my skin has thickened a bit. "There is no logic in religion", "It's up to religion to prove itself to me", "Why does God let bad things happen". It's the same thing every time. People cannot and will not ever get around the stereotype of Christians. Ignorance is bliss and laziness is easy. All I can do is tell people what God has done for me but people only hear what they want to hear. It's really not hard to be a Christian. Whatever though. We all have our own free will. I live according to the Bible now for the possibility of the greatest reward ever. If I am wrong then I haven't lost anything. If I don't live that way and I am wrong, hell is gonna suck. I've got nothing to lose and everything to gain.
i think that is the major point. i have no problem with christians, but if christianity makes a better human being out some people, then so be it. I would never try and trample on someone else's religion, nor would i ever try and push my views on this matter upon anyone else. I remember a time when people thought of atheists as evil people, but we aren't. We may just be lost, who knows. All i know is that i believe in the big bang, i believe in evolution, what happened before the big bang, i have no clue. Let me ask this, if we were visited by another form of intelligent life, would people's faith falter? How would religious humans deal with the fact that they aren't the only form of intelligent life in the universe.
This sounds great and all and if it helps you throughout life that is fine. But the greatest reward ever for me is my family. My wife and my daughter. I don't have to wait for it because they are here.
this was actually one thing that i stuggled with when i was a believer and was somewhat responsible for me becoming a heathen. i found myself doing all this stuff (trying to be righteous, have a relationship with god, follow his will) because i wanted eternal life. (well, later i figured out it was more because i had been constantly told believe this or you go to hell.) but this makes no sense. it should be done out of love. all this stuff (religion, christianity anyway) is about god wanting to be worshipped. i cant understand how he gets off on people that "believe" because they are scared. i never understood the emphasis in the bible and christianity on heaven. it should be on god and his character and that he is worthy to be praised. pushing the reward is bribery----the whole heaven and hell thing created (long before judiaism and christianity) just to get people to buy into your god story.
Forgiveness, in the Christian sense is NOT "just overlooking crimes", but not feeling anger about a sin. You seem to be suggesting that Jesus assumed the guilt of criminals rather than the guilt of religious sins. Indeed, it seems that the vengeful Old Testament God once again has demanded a human sacrifice in return for forgiveness. Yet Jesus teaches that one must forgive and be generous because it is the right thing to do. What is wrong with this picture?
God did not write the Bible. Men did. The Bible is a remarkable and singular piece of literature and ancient history of the Jewish people, but it is a many-time edited and many-times copied and frequently re-written work of human beings. Not the word of God, but the word about God. There are thousands of religions in the world. Why would The One God give each of them a different origin myth, God concept, worship rituals, taboos, and holy books? Why did he stop doing this? Why would God speak to Moses and not to you and me?
I'm likely missing something here or the word game is getting too funny. I can only comment on what I have witnessed in my short life. I have come across a few people that say they've seen/heard enough to know that god certainly doesn't exist (in their own mind anyway, I don't really know what brought them to that certainty and if it would be convincing for anyone else). So I don't know if you were somehow trying to say that an atheist in that sense couldn't exist because of a certain definition or what. But as I see it, you're just saying you don't think they're out there. For additional evidence of people that say that they have knowledge that God does not exist, you can go to RichardDawkins.net and view the Theist-Atheist Scale survey. You can see below that 25% of the people that took it rated themselves a 7 (Strong Atheists): 7:00: Strong atheist. 'I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung 'knows' there is one.' 1078 votes 25% 6.00: Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.' 2765 votes 65% RichardDawkins.net Forum • View topic - The Theist-Atheist Scale: Where are you? (Part 3) And let's face it, Dawkins said he was a 6 at first, now a 6.9 I believe...I think we can basically see where he's at...although he claims he wouldn't be a 7 because he couldn't be certain. Well, I think Wikipedia is generally accurate on things, but I don't and wouldn't use it for everything. If you looked at the sources and notes from that same Wikipedia page on atheism, you would see this toward the bottom: ^ Theism is used here in its most general sense, that is belief in one or more deities. This would then define atheism as the rejection of belief that any deities exist, regardless of whether the further conclusion is drawn that deities do not exist. -Nielsen, Kai (2009). "Atheism". Encyclopædia Britannica. atheism -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2007-04-28. "Atheism, in general, the critique and denial of metaphysical beliefs in God or spiritual beings.... a more adequate characterization of atheism consists in the more complex claim that to be an atheist is to be someone who rejects belief in God for [reasons that depend] on how God is being conceived." -Edwards, Paul (1967). "Atheism". The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Vol. 1. Collier-MacMillan. p. 175. "On our definition, an 'atheist' is a person who rejects belief in God, regardless of whether or not his reason for the rejection is the claim that 'God exists' expresses a false proposition. People frequently adopt an attitude of rejection toward a position for reasons other than that it is a false proposition. It is common among contemporary philosophers, and indeed it was not uncommon in earlier centuries, to reject positions on the ground that they are meaningless. Sometimes, too, a theory is rejected on such grounds as that it is sterile or redundant or capricious, and there are many other considerations which in certain contexts are generally agreed to constitute good grounds for rejecting an assertion.". ^ Rowe, William L. (1998). "Atheism". in Edward Craig. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ^ religioustolerance.org's short article on Definitions of the term "Atheism" suggests that there is no consensus on the definition of the term. Simon Blackburn summarizes the situation in The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy: "Atheism. Either the lack of belief in a god, or the belief that there is none." Most dictionaries (see the OneLook query for "atheism") first list one of the more narrow definitions. _________________________________________ So just right there you have a few definitions (which you may not identify with) and another statement about a site suggesting that there is no consensus on the definition of the term. Apparently, the definition is used by some real world atheists... Well, let me say this, the dictionaries I use have never failed me. I've never had a professor or editor tell me that a definition I used from one of them was inaccurate. NEVER. But there is always a first time for everything (I can admit to that). But I don't think that's the case here. Because there are more than a few dictionaries that basically say the same thing mentioning denial or disbelief... Looking at the definitions all over the web, etc., it seems to me that the term IS unclear in meaning. I think the term has been going through changes in meaning and that's why you're saying the definitions in the dictionaries I look at are faulty. It seems to me atheists are not clear what atheism really is or that they just haven't communicated it very well to those who make dictionaries. Don't blame the dictionaries. I don't think the people who make them are purposely trying to slant anything one way or the other. There might be one or two out there, but not that many. And I don't want to get into word usage vs. meaning... Let's just say there's at least a little confusion (you don't see the same thing across the board). I just think the term has been changing. The "strong" and "weak" terms used for atheism only really started popping up in the 1990s, etc. Actually, I read the passage about babies and children and the whole thing was focused on raising consciousness for children. He was basically saying that a child should be able to make their own informed choice based on reasoning rather than being identified as something they haven't chosen (because they aren't aware of it yet). And of course, he calls it abuse (which is being extreme...surprise). I would call it ridiculous maybe, but I don't think it would do awful harm to the child (at that age they don't really care anyway). Anyway, here is an interview with Dawkins discussing this and you'll see that he waits until the last line to say what he curiously didn't say in his book: Interviewer: You've said that raising children in a religious tradition may even be a form of abuse. Dawkins: What I think may be abuse is labeling children with religious labels like Catholic child and Muslim child. I find it very odd that in our civilization we're quite happy to speak of a Catholic child that is 4 years old or a Muslim of child that is 4, when these children are much too young to know what they think about the cosmos, life and morality. We wouldn't dream of speaking of a Keynesian child or a Marxist child. And yet, for some reason we make a privileged exception of religion. And, by the way, I think it would also be abuse to talk about an atheist child. The atheist - Salon.com ____________________________________________________________ So according to Dawkins, you're a child abuser of some sort. I don't agree with him. But I do agree with him that the child can't really be labeled anything because they aren't aware of anything yet. I've seen people put his statements as support for the "baby atheists" theory and have seen this as an argument against the theory. Again, if he would have just added that last line to his book, it wouldn't have left people with different impressions. Unless of course the interviewer just added that in and he never said it. But I think there is very little chance of that. This could be true I suppose. But that doesn't mean there aren't a good number out there. Apparently they're all hanging out at RichardDawkins.net. Really? You're telling me that you don't get different answers in different places as to what atheism actually is? "The exact meaning of 'atheist' varies between thinkers, and caution must always be shown to make sure that discussions of atheism are not working at cross purposes." This quote is from the same page you used that talked about atheism being a complex term to define. It's in the next paragraph. But even without that, go look around on the web or on atheist forums. I saw with people saying they were confused and stating that they (believed-to-be atheists) should redefine atheism because it's hard to understand what it actually is with different people having different meanings, etc. I think Dawkins' scale is pretty clear cut. I don't think I need to talk with the 25% that claimed to be a 7 (strong atheist). I think they make themselves very clear. There is nothing more to ask.
