Ask an Atheist

[royalscot]

in my humble opinion, you cant be atheist. in this modern day, we were taught to count, read, and write.
for example, a sum say 1+ 1= 2
it must hold true, to whoever else believes its 2, and to whoever taught you, the structure to use, that will lead to an answer.

so in simple terms, there is a structure, in place, ie all the planets spinning round the sun. so I gess, the game is now, who done it. lol

hence, you are only as good as your teacher, not better.

 

[Sirk]

Deep down, what was your intention in coming here? Is there an intention further down that you haven't considered?

 

[SkepticJosh]

Does an Atheist start off been "against God "(as ppl say) Or does it happen later ..Like are they normally Christian first then Atheist or what?..I am just wanderin because I honestly think that is is cool to learn what other belifs/religons think and all..

Well its funny because technically we are all atheists at birth. I mean atheism is the lack of belief in any gods, and babies don't have any knowledge of that stuff until they can comprehend it years later. I'm sure most people here would disagree though. It's impossible to say what atheists start out as because it's different depending on the person. There are many atheists who just never became religious usually because they're parents never attended church or taught them religious things so they kinda just stayed atheists. Others were extremely religious at one point and later became atheists for whatever reasons. In my case I was pretty religious and just came to doubt things and when I researched more it became clear to me that I just didn't believe anymore. Ultimately it's different for everyone and you can't really generalize it as they were always atheists or if religion came first.
And I think it's great that you like to learn about religion and other beliefs. It really speaks volumes about your intellect and curiosity. And I'm not saying that like I'm happy you're talking to an atheist. By all means look at all religions. They're really fascinating and show us so much about society and history.

 

[myfriendtiny]

I honestly think it is cool to learn about other religons and their beliefs....But I have some atheist friends..And they are pretty cool...

 

[Deadtosin]

I know you've got your hands full but don't forget about me Josh, post 110 page 6

 

[MidniteWelder]

Why the false dichotomy? I'm happy to say I'm neither. I don't find joy I'm poking fun at Christians or any other belief set. And I do understand it better than most so I'm not ignorant. I'm also not an atheist by choice. My will had nothing to do with it because belief is an unconscious anomaly. I became unconvinced god exists over time and thus I came to a realization that therfore I'm an atheist. Just as you didn't choose to stop believing I'm santa or the tooth fairy. Not that I'm comparing those to your religion to disrespect you but you see what I mean? It'd be silly to ask you when you chose to stop believing in anything.

Are you sure it wasn't more like you rejected him over time because God didn't serve YOU.
When it should be the other way around...You serve him.
Did you follow Gods instructions?
God has this principle, if one turn their ears against him, so will he also turn his ear against them.

Proverbs 28:9
If anyone turns a deaf ear to my instruction, even their prayers are detestable.

Gotta play by God's rules my friend, not your own.

 

[AgeofKnowledge]

Read my last post. An atheist is not simply a person who holds no beliefs in any gods. They hold all sorts of beliefs besides in addition to their disbelief in any god and many of those other beliefs correspond to and are dependent on atheism. They have a belief system. Remove atheism and many of their other beliefs, which are dependent on atheism to work, fall like a house of cards.

This is why your statement that "this definition does not speak volumes about anything else an atheists believes" is a false assertion. Of course, their atheistic belief influences their other beliefs.

You're not even being logical.

If someone came up to be and said that Zeus is a real god, I would simply refute their false assertion with empirical evidence and then introduce them to the living true God and the empirical collaborative evidence that exists for Him which is exactly what the apostles were doing in the first century.

They didn't think the pagans they encountered who wrongly believed in a fabrication (e.g. zeus) were "nuts" but rather misinformed like you are. Read the Book of Acts.

An atheist is simply a person who holds no beliefs in any gods. That is where the definition ends and that's all there is to it. It is not someone who believes there is no god, or one who believes in evolution. Just the lack of belief in gods.
This definition does not speak volumes about anything else an atheist believes. So really aside from a god an atheist can believe in anything. An atheist can believe in evolution or not, that vaccines are bad or not, they can be pro choice or pro life, anything.
Atheists do not know there is a god. We don't believe in any so how would we know one exists? We also don't claim god doesn't exist. We're just not convinced is all. When a person claims atheists know God is real and just deny it that is blatantly absurd and quite offensive. How would you feel if I went up to you and told you that you KNOW Zeus is the real god and you just deny it. You'd think I'm nuts and have no right telling you what you belive.

 

[Jda016]

This is why many non-believers do not accept biblical prophecies as evidence for God or the inerrancy of the Bible.

Prophecy - Iron Chariots Wiki

According to the wiki prophecy needs these things to be true.

A valid prophecy must meet several criteria:
It must actually be a prophecy. Not a documentation of events that is misinterpreted as a prophecy after a similar event occurs later.
It must be written before the events that it predicts.
The predicted events must actually occur.
The prediction must be both falsifiable and verifiable.
It must not be overly vague.
It must not predict a likely event.
It must not be self-fulfilling.

Let us apply these standards to

Ezekiel 37:21-22
New King James Version (NKJV)
21 “Then say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Surely I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, wherever they have gone, and will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land; 22 and I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all; they shall no longer be two nations, nor shall they ever be divided into two kingdoms again.

As history shows Israel became one nation again in 1948 with one king (prime minister) and Jews were gathered throughout the world to Israel.

However, athiests say this is a "self-fulfilling prophesy." They say that it came about simply because it was written in the Bible.
if one studies the history of Israel becoming a nation again, they would quickly realize this could not have come about simply, because a group of people wanted to fulfill prophesy.

first one must realize that the original plan by the United Nations was to establish a Arab/Palestinian land and a Jewish land. This was not received well by the Arabs because they hate no other people greater than they do the Jews. Palestinians even sold some of their to Jewish settlers because they had ever intention of taking it back once war was declared after the time of the British mandate came to a close.

Over 6 countries went to war against Israel after only hours of being declared a nation. Though being not as well equipped as the Arab nations, Israel won the war and again won a war in 1967. It. Not like the Arabs planned to lose, because they were apart of some giant conspiracy to keep Israel as a nation. After the war, all the surrounding Arab countries expelled all Jews, which totaled in the hundreds of thousands. These Jews moved to Israel. Again, the Arab nations had no care to fulfill prophecy, they did it because they hate the Jews.

also there was huge opposition against Trueman in the United States toward making Israel a nation again.

lets look at Hitler. Hitler would have exterminated every last Jew in all of Europe. The only reason he did not succeed was because Japan (who had no care to fulfill Biblical prophesy) attacked Pearl Harbor, thus bringing the reluctant USA into the war. Only because the USa got involved were the Jews saved.

lets go back further. Jews, through out history remained a unique and individual people. Though they were severed from their homeland for 1900 years, they remained seperate and were not assimilated into other societies as every other defeated nation was.

I have only touched the tip of the iceberg here. There are far too many "coincidences" and oppositions for this to be a "self fulfilling prophecy."

 

[AgeofKnowledge]

Your assertion is false. We are born unaware but with a predisposition to believe to believe in god/gods and the afterlife.

Here's an international Oxford study showing it: Humans 'predisposed' to believe in gods and the afterlife - University of Oxford in which Dr. Justin Barrett, an academic research at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind stated, “Children are born believers in God and do not simply acquire religious beliefs through indoctrination.”

Children are born believers in God, academic claims - Telegraph

Even Dawkins admitted that much in 'The God Delusion' though he wrongly attributed it as an evolutionary by-product of various useful psychological adaptations.

So you're wrong. We are born unaware but with a predisposition away from atheism as one would expect to see in a species possessing the design attribute of Imago Dei.

we are all atheists at birth.

 

[Sinnner]

How do you explain the existence of complex information in DNA?

 

[Jda016]

Your assertion is false. We are born unaware but with a predisposition to believe to believe in god/gods and the afterlife.

Here's an international Oxford study showing it: Humans 'predisposed' to believe in gods and the afterlife - University of Oxford in which Dr. Justin Barrett, an academic research at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind stated, “Children are born believers in God and do not simply acquire religious beliefs through indoctrination.”

Children are born believers in God, academic claims - Telegraph

Even Dawkins admitted that much in 'The God Delusion' though he wrongly attributed it as an evolutionary by-product of various useful psychological adaptations.

So you're wrong. We are born unaware but with a predisposition away from atheism as one would expect to see in a species possessing the design attribute of Imago Dei.

This is absolutely true. I have never heard of an indigenous tribe being discovered that did not believe in a god, gods, or spirits. I have never heard of a tribe being discovered that believed in nothing at all.

 

[penknight]

I don't know you, but you seem like an intelligent man. Having said that, can you honestly say that the answers you gave are resonable? Pay very close attention to the questions I asked and compare to them to how you answered. From your side, value holds no value, merit holds no merit, be it just for the present or eternity, it doesn't matter. From your side everything that ends, making everything you do pointless. Being created randomly means we have no purpose, and things like meaning, value, emotion means absolutly nothing. From your side, existence was never meant to happen,that it was completely accidental. Time has no meaning then, me and you having a conversion about is meaningless, eating is meaningless, happiness is meaningless, everything is meaningless, so why bother? Because you can? What does that mean?: nothing. I'm not trying to be a jerk, and I'm not trying to say I'm the smartest man in the universe, but this is the reality of your side.You can argue against, you could do reseach, you can do whatever you want but this fact won't
change.

Sorry, but I couldn't go easy on you.

That is a lot of questions... many I feel may be unanswerable, either because there simply is no answer or I'm not smart enough to know the answer.

Love is a feeling you get when interacting with someone you care about, love is a combination of chemicals in the brain (the release of pheromones), love is showing empathy, love is being selfless, love is commitment.
For any society to grow and prosper, for relationships to flourish, love is necessary.

Sadness is a feeling you get, sadness is the release of chemicals in the brain, sadness is a byproduct of love in many aspects.
Sadness is a negative human feeling that tells us to strive not to be sad.

Life is the energy in our brain, that powers our body, that enables our consciousness.
The act of living is the meaning of life itself.
To live is better to not live.

Our purpose at the most basic level is to live, to survive, and have more good moments than bad.
A grander purpose is to learn and pass on that learning so that more people can benefit and then more people will have more good moments than bad.

The fact that things may hold no value after death is irrelevant to the present. We should do things for the merit they give us in this life. Its not pointless, it just may seem pointless when looking at it from an eternal perspective.
Also we don't live in a vacuum, the things we do may have merit to others even after we die. This is true selflessness, working to benefit those who remain even though it does us no good when we are dead.

As far as why do anything...well try not doing anything for any period of time. We are active beings with an active mind, simply do things for the sake of doing things if there is no better reason.

I will not get into free-will here because its highly controversial and debated among both religious and non-religious.

Please dont over scrutinize these answers, they are just my honest opinions off top of my head.

 

[Red_Tory]

I don't know you, but you seem like an intelligent man. Having said that, can you honestly say that the answers you gave are resonable? Pay very close attention to the questions I asked and compare to them to how you answered. From your side, value holds no value, merit holds no merit, be it just for the present or eternity, it doesn't matter. From your side everything that ends, making everything you do pointless. Being created randomly means we have no purpose, and things like meaning, value, emotion means absolutly nothing. From your side, existence was never meant to happen,that it was completely accidental. Time has no meaning then, me and you having a conversion about is meaningless, eating is meaningless, happiness is meaningless, everything is meaningless, so why bother? Because you can? What does that mean?: nothing. I'm not trying to be a jerk, and I'm not trying to say I'm the smartest man in the universe, but this is the reality of your side.You can argue against, you could do reseach, you can do whatever you want but this fact won't
change.

Sorry, but I couldn't go easy on you.

Really? In future, try asking one or two questions at a time instead of over a dozen.

 

[penknight]

Really? In future, try asking one or two questions at a time instead of over a dozen.

Its not like I'm asking you, so chill out sheesh. I had questions I wanted answers to so sue me.

 

[Agricola]

How do you explain the existence of complex information in DNA?

DId you not read what I siad? Trying to argue God exists by using DNA creation or whatever will not work.

The only interest I have is WHY are you an athiest? I asked this numerous times to every atheist who comes on here and hardly get a proper reply.

One thing which happens is break down in these kind of threads as atheists get rather annoyed quickly when a genuine Christian rejects every argument they come up with. Seems like many think that having spent some time reading up on "101 ways to show a Christian why they are wrong" they can then bring us out of our delusion and backward thinking, drag us into the modern world.

YEs they maybe able to argue a religious person out of following the religious practices they find they have to follow out of peer pressure and social requirements, but with genuine believers who know Jesus personally, they will fail every time. Even if someone put a gun to my head and said deny Jesus or God exists or I will shoot you, I will just say go ahead.

I will know that if God still wants me to live, the gun will mis-fire or bullet misses, or God will do something to the person holding the gun. If God has finished with me on this earth and my death is not before my time, then I know any second now I will be entering Heaven.

If people genuinally want to know about relationship with God, I will tell them, but if they are just trying to be clever and ask loaded questions to try and bring me out of my delusion, I will always spot that and refuse to play.

 

[penknight]

Its not like I'm asking you, so chill out sheesh. I had questions I wanted answers to so sue me.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have responded this way. But I'm going to ask whatever questions I feel like answering. Would you like to answer one of my questions? They're on the fifth page of this thread.

 

[Percepi]

So you essentially just said… we believe in objective morality, we have nothing to base it on (we don’t need to know)… we just know it’s real.

We base morality on our surroundings. It's real because we make it real.

I disagree that we don’t need to know why.

We should come to understand where our morality comes from, but we don't need to know every single detail. For example, we should understand whether our morality comes from what we are taught by our parents, and whether there's a real basis to hold those moral values. We don't, however, need to understand where morality first came from. We know morality exists in conjunction with human emotion.

To assume morality to be baseless without it being objectively declared by a higher entity is to ignore the fact that as humans, we have emotions in which we base our morals on.

I don’t understand how this is relevant to the topic at hand? You’re giving some hypothetical situation and basing your reasoning on that.

First of all, what I said is relevant because it shows how morality doesn't depend on whether or not it's objective or subjective. Morality is always subjective, even if a divine entity deems it objective.

Morality is abstract, and therefore can't be objective. That's like saying the rules of chess are objective. Even with the official rules of chess, it's a man-made concept. One can change those rules how they please. So debating whether or not morality is subjective or objective is rather pointless since, even if morality is deemed objective, what difference would it make? None.

Wait what? Hold up… Objective means independent from human opinion. So if you claim it stems from man, it is subjective.

As I said before, objective and subjective morality are pointless phrases.

Yes, actually it does lose meaning. Of course none of us live out our lives this way even if we claim to believe this. In fact, I would claim humans cannot live independently of morality.

I believe it's wrong to rape and kill babies. This position is meaningless without a God telling you this is good?

You're right! Our emotional experience, or moral environment tells us it is real… but if naturalism is true, then all morality is subjective and, therefore, illusory.

Morality is a concept humans have adapted naturally.

That's like saying, "If naturalism is true, then math is subjective, and therefore illusory."

Whether or not you refer to it as an illusion or not doesn't change the fact that it benefits society, whether you're talking about morality or math. These are abstract concepts, not physical objects.

An illusion hoisted upon us by evolution and social construct to help us propagate our DNA.. Nothing more. (Which is why I find naturalism so unconvincing! That's the whole point.)

Nothing more?

If there's no God, then everything we have become as the result of evolution becomes bland to you?! We simply become "chemical reactions"?

Isn't this enough?

Just this world?

Just this beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable, NATURAL world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it with the invention
Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?

-Tim Minchin, Storm

Morality doesn't lose meaning just because it wasn't granted to us by a God. It gains meaning because it is that morality that makes our natural bodies and our natural lives able to enjoy life, to live, and to enjoy helping others!

You have this idea that without God, there can be no appreciation for anything natural. If you see a man jump in a lake to save a child, you appreciate it because the man is doing good, as according to God. Without God, would your heart fail to burst with appreciation for this man at such a sight? Would you honestly consider it meaningless since we're all "just matter"?

If anyone else can offer an alternative explanation for objective morality apart from God, I would be interested in hearing it.

Luckily, I'm not arguing for objective morality.

"The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Full paragraph:

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

And, before you comment, understand that Dawkins is referring to objective good and evil, objective purposes, etc.

"The central question about moral and ethical principles concerns their ontological foundation. If they are neither derived from God nor anchored in some transcendent ground, they are purely ephemeral."

- Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit: the Ethics of Secularism

It appears Paul Kurtz doesn't understand morality. Morality is a concept developed by humans, and it's something that changes constantly. He's appealing to Christians who praise the glory of unchanging, objective, morality. But as soon as you let go of such notion, you realize how pointless Paul's comment becomes - because all he's doing is telling us what naturalists already know: that morality is changing.

All Paul is doing is appealing to an idea that's already been established by his audience - that morality is meaningless unless it's unchanging.

Granted, I'm basing all of this on what you quoted. If I took him out of context, please quote more of what he said.

Mmm. Yes, that’s pretty much the entire basis for the moral argument for the existence of God. We all somehow know objective morality exists or at least live our lives as if it did.

Evolutionary speaking, we evolved to feel sympathy for others, to empathize, to want to help those who are in need. This is generally what we base our morality on. Of course, some cultures find it immoral to not worship a certain God, or to be gay, or for women to expose their face in public without their husband being present. If you look at morality, you'll see that it is precisely the creation of man.

I’m just asking on a naturalistic worldview how rationality can tell us anything about these kinds of questions?

Through our developed senses. That's how.

Yes, our senses are flawed and we uses our existing senses and abilities to think to better see through all the areas in which our senses and logic fails us. That's called science.

Yes, there's always a real chance every single thing we know is wrong. But, if that's the case, we would never know. natualists don't waste time pondering whether everything is a lie or not. Naturalists focus on what we can observe and rely on our senses to the best of our abilities as a means of making life better for others, even if that happiness is just a series of chemical reactions in the brain.

You just made up your own definition of naturalism. Look up the philosophy of naturalism in any dictionary.

I should have said "naturalism is based off of".

Naturalism asserts there is no such thing as “super” natural.. SUPER being outside of nature.. natural laws… That’s the whole point of naturalism. =/ If you want to claim you are not a naturalist… that’s fine by me. But my question was posed to naturalists….people who don’t believe in God or the supernatural.

Here's a wonderful video that illustrates the problem with dualism.
<span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">[video=youtube;RS4PW35-Y00]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS4PW35-Y00[/video]

 

[Agricola]

One of the points that comes up time and time again is that "you are only a Christian because your parents were". Yes I understand why the authors on athiesm come up with this reasoning, I touched on it in my previous post. Being the core theory as to why I am a Christian and why Muslims follow Islam, because they are told to and brought up in the culture where it is taught it has to be something you have to do in order to be accepted and fit in , then take this into consideration when I ask this for your consideration.

Take Northern Pakistan, a region where just about everyone is a Muslim and Islam rules with harsh penalties for blasphemy and practices which are forbidden in the Quaran, quite a few times delivered by mob justice with the blessing of the local Imam.

Why is it then, someone who is a devout Muslim, attends to all prayers , studies his Quaran, has a good job, wonderful family and has a nice life in general, decides to then become a Christian? People say "so what", sure in democracies we can be whoever we like, so why do people chose whatever they want to follow?

However it is not quite that simple in places like Pakistan. A Muslim giving up his faith and converting to Christianity is signing his own death warrant. He has to keep it secret, if anyone finds out he could be dead within the week, certainly if found out that he is a Christian by his family they could dis-own him, especially in fear of their own lives if people thought they had followed the head of the households example. If he was found out by his employer he would most likely be sacked and depending on their personal relationship his conversion reported to the authorities.

Why then would a person who grew up knowing nothing but Islam, was happy going to prayer everyday, enjoyed reading the Quaran, then give it all up knowing he could be killed for doing so and that his world will be now made very difficult to survive. Normally to stay alive a person who has converted has to literally disappear, this means moving to a new town where they are known by no one and even then living in secret , not being to tell anyone that he is a Christian? Why would someone do that?

 

[penknight]

I meant to put asking not aanswering.

 

[ob77]

Well its funny because technically we are all atheists at birth. I mean atheism is the lack of belief in any gods, and babies don't have any knowledge of that stuff until they can comprehend it years later. I'm sure most people here would disagree though. It's impossible to say what atheists start out as because it's different depending on the person. There are many atheists who just never became religious usually because they're parents never attended church or taught them religious things so they kinda just stayed atheists. Others were extremely religious at one point and later became atheists for whatever reasons. In my case I was pretty religious and just came to doubt things and when I researched more it became clear to me that I just didn't believe anymore. Ultimately it's different for everyone and you can't really generalize it as they were always atheists or if religion came first.
And I think it's great that you like to learn about religion and other beliefs. It really speaks volumes about your intellect and curiosity. And I'm not saying that like I'm happy you're talking to an atheist. By all means look at all religions. They're really fascinating and show us so much about society and history.

I started out believing in something. I thought there was a God, but I did not know what kind. I was shipped off to sunday schools of varying flavors and thought it was B.S. What the teachers were teaching WAS B.S. as I learned much later.
I had always had a interest in science...astronomy, paleontology, archaeology, geology . When I was in second grade I could name all the known dinosaurs at the time and I could recite the planets from the closest to the farthest from the sun without blinking. I became what I thought was an atheist early in my teens up until my twenties. Something made me dig for truth and I wanted nothing but truth, no more nonsense. I found that one could indeed find truth if one is equipped with the tools to do so. I tackled the Bible and my sole purpose was to prove it wrong. The further I dug the more truth I discovered, which pissed me off, as I thought myself as one of the enlightened ones living in the modern world. To my dismay, then later to my delight, I found that there was truth to be had after all. I had real answers for once. Combining what I already knew with what I was learning, I discovered that science was playing catch up. I cannot attempt to convey all the different things I have learned in one single post, and I have chastised others for posting mini- books. I will leave this post as it is. I do not expect to leave much of an impact.....I am just telling you how it was for me.