What do you believe and why do you believe it?

[UnderGrace]

Do you consider God's support of genocide and slavery a sin or not?

Sure pal.....assuming = jack crap.......think on that a bit........the bolded is your assumption that I am some Hill Billy "bakwerds" "unsedakated" commoner that just shoot from the hip with a long gun missing the rear sights......

Wake up pal......many on this site are highly educated and wise based upon maturity and experience.....sure some just lip flap with no understanding, education, and or any comprehensible cognitive reasoning.....BUT make no mistake.....there are some highly educated people on this site that don't just shoot from the hip!

One would think with his highly educated mind he could defend atheism without slandering a God he does not even believe in?

This is not about education or intelligence, in my humble opinion and experience, as with most atheists they are prideful people who think they know better .... just waiting for one them to create a universe.

 

[posthuman]

This is rubbish. Humanism isn't devouring itself at all. In fact some figures would suggest that religion is on the decline and humanism is on the up, particularly in America. This may be because people are beginning to wake up to the fact that religions have empty promises.

you misunderstand what is meant by 'devouring yourself'

it's not a measurement of # of adherents.

 

[posthuman]

You essentially said I had traded truth for nihilism. Whereas from my POV I traded incorrect information for what I perceive to be reality. We are all in the same boat unless you can demonstrate otherwise.

what you call 'reality' is nihilism. from your point of view you rejected nothing in favor of nothing, and you are nothing.
the nothing that is the cloud of dust with a temporary EM wave in it that you call your brain, which you think is yourself, was temporarily mixed with a larger cloud of endorphin-nothings when your nothing entertained one idea, which is nothing, than when it was temporarily giving the illusion of perception of a different cloud of nothing that your temporary-nothing-cloud-brain called 'thought' about God.

you are nothing; you are a temporary cloud of dust with a temporary EM wave. you, nothing, are deceived into perceiving the random EM waves in your temporary-nothing-cloud of organic mud as 'rational thought' and the illusion of self your nothing-consciousness tricks itself into thinking exists for some scant decades, glorifies itself, having some illusion of importance and right/wrong and so-called-logic. you're just a temporary mass of temporary organic material with a psychosis, moving a few different types of liquid around in a mass of dust that's been steadily rotting into nothingness since you were born from your mother, another temporary illusion of existence, in reality just another dead lump of mud fooled by the temporary EM waves in its dust-cloud 'mind' into perceiving itself as a person.

i'm not giving any arguments at all.

i'm just describing what humanist, atheistic evolutionary monism is, without the sugar-coating self-grandeur that you found so appealing when you swallowed it.

nothingness. deception. temporary lump of mud, sera & gristle pompous enough to think it has 'life' -- vanity, vanity of vanities.

it doesn't sound so great. dunno why you prefer it.

 

[posthuman]

i'm just describing what humanist, atheistic evolutionary monism is, without the sugar-coating self-grandeur that you found so appealing when you swallowed it.

i thought you'd be smart enough to recognize what your stance really is. maybe you haven't gotten over the horror of the truth of it, or maybe the vanity of your own intellect is just too strong for your mind to allow you to accept it - because revealing your psychosis for what it really is, would be too dangerous to your emotional well-being. evolutionary defense mechanism? or total human depravity. that's devouring yourself. humanism, too vain to see itself destroying itself.



perhaps it really does take a Higher Power to open a mans eyes; he can't do it himself, and he can't be persuaded.
my hope is this: mercy on you from the One who is able to make you see.

 

[kneemailer]

spectrox must really be lonely to continually come here, inspite of it being entirely contrary to his ideology, and after years of being shown that he is in error on so many levels.

 

[kneemailer]

spectrox, how was your day?

 

[JamOn]

I originally posted this message in the New Member Intro section but a member said I should post it here. So here goes...

Colloquially speaking I am an agnostic as I don't know whether or not a god exists. Technically I am an atheist as I don't believe any god claim I have heard. Although I used to be a Christian. I was brought up in the Church of England but properly self-identified as a Christian in my twenties and believed I was saved. I had my doubts after several months as a result of speaking to atheists and ex-Christians. Some things in the Bible stopped making sense to me. Some of the Bible was immoral, some of it was inconsistent and some of it was not credible. I prayed for answers but no answers came. I now consider myself to be an ex-Christian. Every so often I like to challenge my beliefs as I think it is healthy. In that spirit I would like to ask all Christians here what do you believe and why do you believe it?

Outside of the Bible what proof or evidence do you know of that God does not exist? calamities misfortunes isn’t enough that’s part of life as we know it for Christians and non Christians.

 

[no1]

Thank you for sharing this, although I find it a bit vague to discern what's really going on. I asked for a rough, brief transcript. Maybe that's too personal? I had similar experiences when I was a believer. I would open up The Bible and read and feel that my prayer or concern had been answered. But at the time I was unaware of the concept of "the Cold Reading" - the vague, very general script that means something to everyone. See Derren Browne's explanation of this. In reality, my experience was much more random than I originally thought.

No sir, your experiences are not even close to what I said.
I didn't go looking until AFTER I was told.
For example, I desired to know how we are made, because some things written sounded and appeared to be more than one thing.
From there, I just followed what I was told by the voice I was hearing.
Mind you, I said hearing. NOT an impression or feeling, but hearing.
Not with my physical ears though.
My guess is, you are not reading this out loud but silently to yourself, and yet you can hear the very words you are reading right now without saying a word verbally.
I am now therefore speaking to you using your own inner voice.
Listen to yourself for a moment as you read.
Can you hear what you are saying?
Yes, you can.
If you were to purposefully speak your name within your self, couldn't you tell me exactly what you heard yourself say?
You might call it just a thought because it was so fast and yet you can quote the very words you heard.
Sometimes it is fast and sometimes it is the speed of normal speech.
Can you explain to me how you are hearing these so-called thoughts?
That is only one voice you can hear.
Now what about when you hear something you know nothing about?
You know your name and you can say it within yourself consciously and purposely, but what is it when you hear something you know nothing about, unexpectedly?
What if you were not the initiator of that so-called thought, but simply a recipient, listening to a teacher giving you instructions?
If you learn to LISTEN, there are other voices we can hear aside from our own.

 

[Spectrox]

I could say exactly the same thing about how you framed my position. We are all in this together. You seem to believe very strongly in the afterlife described in The Bible. And yet you did not provide one single convincing argument or one piece of evidence that:
a. an afterlife exists
b. your particular view of an afterlife is the correct one
c. all the other afterlife hypotheses were wrong

The only thing left is Pascal's Wager which is the worst apologetics ever devised.

 

[Spectrox]

Outside of the Bible what proof or evidence do you know of that God does not exist? calamities misfortunes isn’t enough that’s part of life as we know it for Christians and non Christians.

I don't know that God does not exist. I am not making (and have never made) that strong positive claim. So far, I do not accept the Christian God claim because I am convinced there are flaws in the Bible and flaws in Christian thinking. The burden of proof is on the Christian to demonstrate that their God claim is true or likely true.

 

[Spectrox]

You are correct, it is unrepeatable.
As some other members have pointed out, science is by itself empirical, which means it dabbles in measurable and relative matters.
While God may permeate the world, God is absolute and immeasurable by definition. So it's kind of a futile way to look for God.

I thought to not respond further since I know one does not come to God through debates, I mostly wanted to give you friendly support, but wanted just to add this as food for your thoughts:
The only experiment where science came close, is the double slit experiment.
The particles behaved differently based on whether they were observed or not.
You, as the observer, just by observing, are changing how particles actually behave, not imagining that they behaved differently. Think about it.
Could this be the reason that for an atheist skeptic observer life unfolds without supernatural occurrences, while for a believer's observer is filled with supernatural activity and miracles of God?
And based on this repeatable experiment, they might not "imagine" it as atheists always think, but miracles actually do unfold .
It's one thing I often thought about. And it's not because God is "mean" or something premeditated. God doesn't premeditate stuff in this way, in spite that it might be delivered so in the language of the Bible in a way that we can relate to. But really, God simply is.
Psalms 18:26 With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt shew thyself froward.
Ephesians 1:23 Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.

I appreciate this. The double slit experiment is very interesting and weird however I don't think it's comparable to supposed God-influenced phenomena which manifest in the real world, e.g. miracles and the effect of prayer.

 

[Spectrox]

That is a convenient, self-justifying way to frame the discussion.

The crime is not disbelief, but rejection of God. God offers you His life as a payment for your sin, and asks only your faith in Him in return. So far, you have rejected His offer. Die without accepting His offer, and your rejection remains without end. How is that finite?

Exactly. No justice at all. Justice is proportionate. I have good reasons for not having faith in the Christian God. If God was real and was all-knowing, he would clearly understand how important good evidence is to accept the fanciful claims in the Bible. And you talk as if there are no consequences for adopting this worldview, as if it's a gift you just accept. The real cost, is you would have to engage in cognitive dissonance to not accept Islam or Mormonism as well and you would have to deny your humanity and empathy to accept that genocide and slavery are ok. Your God allegedly set up the whole system so he has to take full responsibility for it.

 

[Spectrox]

I thought we agreed science cannot explain everything?

I'm not talking about science or methodological naturalism in that last point. I am asking you to present a formal logic argument. It's easier to look at than endless argument back and forth. Christians have attempted it with the Kalam Cosmological Argument so I am asking you to lay out a brief argument with premises and a conclusion then we won't make avoidable mistakes.

 

[Spectrox]

There is nothing in this chapter that states even remotely that Jesus was not the creator of the universe.

"Jesus is the creator of the universe. You are making a serious error by denying this as it is most definitely contrary to scripture."
I never actually wrote that originally. A Christian wrote it and I made a mistake in my editing on post 698. Sorry about the confusion.

 

[Spectrox]

Sure pal.....assuming = jack crap.......think on that a bit........the bolded is your assumption that I am some Hill Billy "bakwerds" "unsedakated" commoner that just shoot from the hip with a long gun missing the rear sights......

Wake up pal......many on this site are highly educated and wise based upon maturity and experience.....sure some just lip flap with no understanding, education, and or any comprehensible cognitive reasoning.....BUT make no mistake.....there are some highly educated people on this site that don't just shoot from the hip!

Are you one of those people then?

 

[Spectrox]

One would think with his highly educated mind he could defend atheism without slandering a God he does not even believe in?

This is not about education or intelligence, in my humble opinion and experience, as with most atheists they are prideful people who think they know better .... just waiting for one them to create a universe.

Just waiting for one of you guys to demonstrate that your God created the Universe. Now what was that order of creation again?

 

[Stranger36147]

I consider myself a misotheist.


Don't bother asking me any questions about my views because I'm not saying anything more than that.

 

[Noose]

I consider myself a misotheist.


Don't bother asking me any questions about my views because I'm not saying anything more than that.

Misotheism is the "hatred of God" or "hatred of the gods" (from the Greek adjective μισόθεος misotheos "hating the gods" or "God-hating" – a compound of μῖσος "hatred" and θεός "god"). In some varieties of polytheism, it was considered possible to inflict punishment on gods by ceasing to worship them.

 

[Spectrox]

what you call 'reality' is nihilism. from your point of view you rejected nothing in favor of nothing, and you are nothing.
the nothing that is the cloud of dust with a temporary EM wave in it that you call your brain, which you think is yourself, was temporarily mixed with a larger cloud of endorphin-nothings when your nothing entertained one idea, which is nothing, than when it was temporarily giving the illusion of perception of a different cloud of nothing that your temporary-nothing-cloud-brain called 'thought' about God.

you are nothing; you are a temporary cloud of dust with a temporary EM wave. you, nothing, are deceived into perceiving the random EM waves in your temporary-nothing-cloud of organic mud as 'rational thought' and the illusion of self your nothing-consciousness tricks itself into thinking exists for some scant decades, glorifies itself, having some illusion of importance and right/wrong and so-called-logic. you're just a temporary mass of temporary organic material with a psychosis, moving a few different types of liquid around in a mass of dust that's been steadily rotting into nothingness since you were born from your mother, another temporary illusion of existence, in reality just another dead lump of mud fooled by the temporary EM waves in its dust-cloud 'mind' into perceiving itself as a person.

i'm not giving any arguments at all.

i'm just describing what humanist, atheistic evolutionary monism is, without the sugar-coating self-grandeur that you found so appealing when you swallowed it.

nothingness. deception. temporary lump of mud, sera & gristle pompous enough to think it has 'life' -- vanity, vanity of vanities.

it doesn't sound so great. dunno why you prefer it.

I am not nothing. I am something. That something that occupies my physical space will die and eventually decompose. All the evidence I have is that my consciousness, my identity and my personality is in my brain. Once that dies I, in my current form, will cease to exist. There may be an afterlife where we free ourselves from our meat suits to rejoin the spiritual dimension. I am not expecting any reward for participating in this life which one of your early posts wrongly asserted. In fact I don't currently believe in an afterlife because there is no reliable evidence. What reliable evidence do you have for one? If you can't demonstrate that then you are in exactly the same position as me. I don't like it either. I don't relish the prospect of ceasing to exist. If it's no worse than my life now I would rather continue, although the thought of eternal life scares me nearly as much as mortality. Sometimes I appreciate people and animals more because I know they won't last forever. But I am opposed to death and dying and pain. They are horrible. So I believe it is our moral duty to improve the quantity and quality of people's lives and try to be kind to animals. What you've written doesn't bear much resemblance to reality or rational thought.

 

[Spectrox]

i thought you'd be smart enough to recognize what your stance really is. maybe you haven't gotten over the horror of the truth of it, or maybe the vanity of your own intellect is just too strong for your mind to allow you to accept it - because revealing your psychosis for what it really is, would be too dangerous to your emotional well-being. evolutionary defense mechanism? or total human depravity. that's devouring yourself. humanism, too vain to see itself destroying itself.



perhaps it really does take a Higher Power to open a mans eyes; he can't do it himself, and he can't be persuaded.
my hope is this: mercy on you from the One who is able to make you see.

How do you know any of this? As I've already said, religion (particulalry your one) exploits people's fears around death and dying. Humanism attempts to improve wellbeing and reduce harm. Even Jesus and the Good Samaritan did that from a practical point of view. But your argument seems to be that if you believe The Bible strongly enough you will guarantee escaping from the horror of annihilation, which I find ridiculous. How do you even begin to demonstrate this absurdity?