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Maybe you believe in your religion, but that is a leap of faith into something you have no way of knowing.
I don't deny that. But there is plenty of evidence.
Why do so many atheists deny that they are making a leap of faith into something they have no way of knowing? So many speak with such derision of religion when they have no way of knowing that it isn't true.
Agnostics are different. They aren't claiming to "know the truth." Most atheists do.
Anything is possible. It is possible that we are all living in The Matrix. It is possible that gravity will stop working in five minutes. It is possible that the Greek god Zeus will show up in my living room tomorrow. It is possible that you will turn into a Jell-o Monster next Wednesday. Why shouldn’t you believe in any of that?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Horn of ‘83
Likeliness
Why is the existence of the Christian God any more likely than the things I mentioned above?
That’s what I don’t understand. If you’re going to believe the Christian God exists, than why not also believe in the existence of fairies, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and simulated reality?
Why is the existence of the Christian God any more likely than the things I mentioned above?
That’s what I don’t understand. If you’re going to believe the Christian God exists, than why not also believe in the existence of fairies, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and simulated reality?
For me, personally, I've had "experiences" that I later found line up exactly with what's written in the Bible. The kinds of "experiences" even most Christians would have a hard time believing, let alone agnostics and especially atheists. I figure that if everyone were meant to have them, then they would. I've never told anyone the specifics.
1. Enabling is not logical or healthy. And it's not compassionate.
2. There's more to the Old Testament than hate and violence. Of course, what we humans view as violence can sometimes be done out of love. After all, killing another human being in self-defense is violent, but if it's to protect someone we love, then we did so out of love, not because we wanted to commit violence.
3. No, not when we have free will.
4. I personally believe that Hell is reserved for the most wicked (i.e. murderers, rapists, etc.) But, going to Hell is not his guidance. It's the consequences of not following his guidance. I very well could be wrong, in that more souls go to Hell than I currently think, so that's why I do what I can to help ensure that I am not sentenced to an eternity in Hell. But, whether I am or not isn't really up to me.
5. God can "look" into the future. He knows all, despite our free will, because we are often creatures of habit. We're predictable.
1. It's not always enabling. There are things that seem beyond our control...such as world hunger. But I'm glad for you that everything in your life has been so easy.
2. Stop making excuses for the OT.
3. You don't really have free will if you have to worry about hell.
4. Yes, you are very wrong. Hell is a definite pillar of christianity.
5. He knows all and does next to nothing. Close to worthless.
I like religion. The different stories / myths, the different practices, that they form communities, that they can help people. Not so bad for an alleged anti-theist.
It is fundamentalism I do not like.
Are there any counterparts of Religious Fundamentalists in Atheism?
For me, personally, I've had "experiences" that I later found line up exactly with what's written in the Bible. The kinds of "experiences" even most Christians would have a hard time believing, let alone agnostics and especially atheists. I figure that if everyone were meant to have them, then they would. I've never told anyone the specifics.
That is fascinating, but lots of people from every religion have religious experiences. Religious experiences can even be triggered by drugs / chemicals in the brain.
That is fascinating, but lots of people from every religion have religious experiences. Religious experiences can even be triggered by drugs / chemicals in the brain.
I don't doubt that some people's "experiences" are drug induced or a side-effect of a mental illness. Not that you're implying anything against my judgement, but I've never had more than a sip of beer and wine in my entire life and have never taken any illegal substances. I keep medicines to the bare minimum. I won't even take Tylenol for a headache. I was not on any medications at the time of my experiences, nor had I recently taken any.
I've tried to rationally and logically think of explanations for my "experiences" that were not supernatural in any way. I failed to find any, after ruling out many. That's when I got curious about whether there was any religious basis for them and found that there was.
There actually is one experience that I have physical evidence of. It's the only one that completely baffles me, not that the other don't baffle me somewhat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freak80
How do we determine whose religious experiences are from the One True God?
I think that's best left for each individual to decide.
It's clear from all of the overwhelming various real-world evidence we have observed, that all life on this planet (including us) shares a common ancestor in 3-4 billion year old microbes that we've observed the signs of in rocks. That was us, and we gradually evolved over billions of years into our current form.
Therefore the various bronze age creation stories make no sense in a real world application. Heaven and Hell are imaginations of a cultural/sociological narrative. God is a character that is often ascribed whatever crazy qualities people want him to have. These concepts don't make any sense, but that was never the point- it's fiction that served a purpose.
But now we've outgrown that purpose, and religion is providing more net negative than positive in this century, IMO. Especially fundamentalism. It's the opiate of the masses, at best (see: mega churches full of scientifically illiterate people). And it's often also a lot of worse things. Like... a reason to suppress human freedoms and execute people in certain Islamic type countries.
It's clear from all of the overwhelming various real-world evidence we have observed, that all life on this planet (including us) shares a common ancestor in 3-4 billion year old microbes that we've observed the signs of in rocks. That was us, and we gradually evolved over billions of years into our current form.
Therefore the various bronze age creation stories make no sense in a real world application. Heaven and Hell are imaginations of a cultural/sociological narrative. God is a character that is often ascribed whatever crazy qualities people want him to have. These concepts don't make any sense, but that was never the point- it's fiction that served a purpose.
But now we've outgrown that purpose, and religion is providing more net negative than positive in this century, IMO. Especially fundamentalism. It's the opiate of the masses, at best (see: mega churches full of scientifically illiterate people). And it's often also a lot of worse things. Like... a reason to suppress human freedoms and execute people in certain Islamic type countries.
And those 100 upon 100’s of gazillions of transactions that perfectly had to happen for us to evolve from a common ancestor to an ape and then to a human - the entire universe and everything in it - ALL came together by itself?
And what happens next?
Water levels are rising - in a few million years, we will learn how to live in water and become Dolphins. And what happens to current Dolphins? They evolve to become Aliens and fly UFO’s?
Last edited by GoCardinals; 12-17-2023 at 09:39 PM..
And those 100 upon 100’s of gazillions of transactions that perfectly had to happen for us to evolve from a common ancestor to an ape and then to a human - the entire universe and everything in it - ALL came together by itself?
What's the question? We only know of this reality and this existence, so why would it be anything else other than exactly what it is? Why's any other reality any more or less likely?
I don't know how existence came to exist, or why it exists as opposed to not existing. That's a big mystery.
I believe that what we call the universe that we live in, started from the singularity initial state of extreme density and temperature, from which the big bang happened, and hundreds of billions of galaxies formed. All of this (and everything that happens), happens according to how physics works. There are forces which govern how the matter and the energy all interact and do their thing. This causes stars to form, and planets to gradually form out of clumps of orbiting debris, etc.
Earth was one of those planets that formed, it had the right conditions for the most basic form of microscopic single cell life to emerge (the details here are unknown to us at present), and that life did its thing trying to survive and thrive, natural selection, yada yada yada, conditions and environment of the Earth changed over different geological eras, life eventually spread from the ocean to the surface, life very gradually became more complex, some species died out, some thrived, etc.
We were ape type creatures that became really good at using our brains. We figured out how to use tools, and communicate via language and drawing symbols, etc. We figured out how to make fire happen, and all kinds of other things we eventually figured out over thousands of years. We harnessed this knowledge and formed civilization.
It's not really some perfect elaborate design that we're here, breathing air, being exactly the creatures that we are. We breathe oxygen because we evolved to breathe the oxygen in the environment that we evolved in and live in.
The first early humans figuring out fire and the wheel and all that, was a direct consequence of the big bang event. Based on direct event causation and/or random quantum interactions or some combo of the two, everything happened the way it happened, and here we are, talking on the internet. Just because we are very complex creatures now, with this experience of consciousness, and this complex society we've built, doesn't mean that fundamentally we're not still the same matter as the tiny little basic-intelligence creatures we were millions of years ago.
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