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Atheists have many different lifestyles and many different ethical stances. Most of the atheists I know are people who have a strong belief that they must maximize what they consider to be good including helping other people. Atheists belief in you rather than in god.
Aside from that Christian morality is full of contradictions and historical myths. I know many people who profess to be Christian who are good people. I know many people who profess to be Christian who are not good people (in particular those fundamentalists who abuse children and having worked with the children, I have not yet found any of the abusers to be good people though they often went to Church and prayed and forced their children to pray as well).
There are a hundred verses in the Bible that are immoral, including rape, pillaging, all kinds of sexual violence, murder, stealing, parts that state you must hate your parents, kin, etc.
Published studies indicate that a child's risk of sexual abuse by a family member increases as the family's religious denomination becomes more conservative, that is, when the teachings of scriptures and other doctrines are taken more literally. Evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general.
I'll only join a religion that is "God-endorsed." So I'm basically sitting on the sidelines and watching all the religious folk fight it out. War after war after war, one religion HAS to win; either Muslim, Jew, Christian, Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, Mormon, etc. Until then, I'll remain an Atheist and watch all the drama play itself out - God HAS to lend his support to the correct religion EVENTUALLY, lol.
I'll only join a religion that is "God-endorsed." So I'm basically sitting on the sidelines and watching all the religious folk fight it out. War after war after war, one religion HAS to win; either Muslim, Jew, Christian, Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, Mormon, etc. Until then, I'll remain an Atheist and watch all the drama play itself out - God HAS to lend his support to the correct religion EVENTUALLY, lol.
An atheist claims something doesnt exist just because they cant see it, yet and agnostic acknowledges that it could possibly exist but wont be convinced until seeing it firsthand!
first-off, I'm reading your OP and skipping past the.... what is it? "X" pages of posts, to go right to the bottom line. This is a Thanksgiving Day gift to yah, bj!
Also: Note: I'm going to take the liberty of speaking for most all atheists because I've been one for well over 35 years, have discussed the philosophy and reasons for this major life-choice, and also, some of it is, after all () just common sense, unlike most of the life-altering decisions within any religion.
Note 2: If I make a major philosophical mistake with any atheist's personal perspective, please excuse!
The reason atheists claim something doesn't exist is not a decision taken superficially, lightly or out of some nasty, arrogant disrespect. Most of us were religious to begin with, but many (all that I have know, for a fact, but still let's say "many"...) were not yet at that horrible point of no return, where the mind seals itself shut, like the rock ofer Jesus' tomb.Most cannot then escape, sadly.
If you accept that most of what we see or have to deal with in this world should be judged by some sort of conscious logic and at least a tiny bit of concern, then we soon enough start to see some glaring gaps in the biblical and pre-biblical history and claims. Then the eyes of a critical thinker open a bit more. Why should a person logically believe, literally, in stories about water into wine, Noah's Ark, an Instant Beginning, God confering a life=energy into literally every lonesome bacterium and viral particle, every ant, snail and orangutan? It simply does not jive, but still, we go forward, testing our disbelief.
But then, education can rear it's ugly pesky head, bringing tools into this thought process, where we know, reliably, that some things are fact. That there is DNA, that there are cells ,that they multiply, and that we can kill them with, say, fire, or antibiotics or drinking 5 liters of Bay Rum quick-like under a bridge...
WE also have learned that DNA mutates. Proven. But that some of the offspring do survive, and with improvements, and that complexity builds over long periods of time, which we have also proven. And that we can also now back=trace through a modern organism's DNA, through to ancient ancestros, and thus, that Evolution does occur.
I'm not diverging into a rant about Evolution. I'm just saying that lal teh evidence points inexorably away from some magic man in the sky. I do not crave or demand an afterlife as a shield against the terror of my inevitable death. Nope; I don't look forward to hat day, I just know in my heart that it's a part of life, and that I should learn to enjoy what I've got now, and not purposefully bypass reality soz I can sit around in Heaven eating bon-bons with "grammy" and stroking a lion's head.
(Q: Why would grammy want to exist up there as an old person, just as I lovingly remembered her? Why wouldn't she put in a request to be, let's say, 6 yrs old again? I don't get to have heaven's miracles all my way, after all... Do you not begin to see the exponentially growing irrationality of it all? I certainly do..).
Then, we question the intricacies of a Christian or Muslim life and afterlife (72 virgins? Are you guys nuts? What a wildly chauvinistic perspective! What do Islamic women think of that?) .
As we expand our philosophical investgations, it all comes tumbling down, ass you'd expect from a fantasy text and story fabricated by dehydrated scientifically illiterate desert nomads who made it all up to explain the things they could not begin to. Of course, in such a "sitch", it's always magic and spiritual, but that doesn't cut it any more with an educated, open-mined, and critically thinking individual.
(BTW, individuality doesn't seem to be a characteristic hallmark of the devoutly religious either, so perhaps much of this has to do with individual neediness as well as being potentially open-minded..)
So, I don't buy it, just as I wouldn't buy into ANY specific fairy tale, and we could be here all week making them up as we go. Why would any one of them be better than the previous one, except if we used a little LSD or whatever to enhance our "perspectives" and creative imaginations?
So, the fact is... there's literally no good reason to buy into some One True Religion, and to top that off, you know that even the Christians fight amongst themselves as to which story is The Right One.
Open-mindedness is not a disease. Instead, it's a means to evaluate ones' surroundings and one's life spiritualities, and to avoid getting sucked in, without any judgments whatsoever, to the thinking of others minds.
Because that, my friend, is a straightforward recipe for mental and spiritual puppet- and parrotism.
False analogy fallacy...You are ascribing characteristics to the first suitor that you THINK applies to atheists, when they do not apply at all.
Why you are being allowed to troll this forum continually bashing atheism is totally beyond me, but I do find your posts quite entertaining since you have absolutely no understanding of atheists and what we believe.
Just applying atheistic constructs to an atheistic scenario !
Do you ever bash The Christian Faith or Christians ?
Glad the posts are entertaining.....informative too. I know atheism well caused i lived it for 10 years., like ive told you before. One need only look at our present secularized culture to see the fruits of atheism.
An atheist claims something doesnt exist just because they cant see it, yet and agnostic acknowledges that it could possibly exist but wont be convinced until seeing it firsthand!
This allegation is simply,not true. Atheists do not believe in any of the gods because there is no valid reason to believe in any of the gods. The only claim an Atheist makes is "there is no evidence or proof that any of the gods exist". By in large, most atheists believe in air, even though we can not see it either.
Just applying atheistic constructs to an atheistic scenario !
Do you ever bash The Christian Faith or Christians ?
Glad the posts are entertaining.....informative too. I know atheism well caused i lived it for 10 years., like ive told you before. One need only look at our present secularized culture to see the fruits of atheism.
You have never been an atheist...If you had been you would understand what it means be one...You do not have a clue.
You have never been an atheist...If you had been you would understand what it means be one...You do not have a clue.
I had the worldview of an atheist, I lived my life as an atheistic Secular Humanist , I made choices based on atheistic man-made relativistic morals, I didnt believe in the afterlife, I persecuted Christians, mocked God, and matched the results of this 2006 University of Minnesota independent study on Atheists :
'A 2006 study by researchers at the University of
Minnesota involving a poll of 2,000 households in
the United States found atheists to be the most
distrusted of minorities, more so than Muslims,
recent immigrants, gays and lesbians, and other
groups. Many of the respondents associated
atheism with immorality, including criminal behaviour'.
What else would i have had to do in order to be a real Atheist, at the time , in your estimation ? Is it mandatory to stay an Atheist for life in order to have been a bonified one of 10 years ?
I'll only join a religion that is "God-endorsed." So I'm basically sitting on the sidelines and watching all the religious folk fight it out. War after war after war, one religion HAS to win; either Muslim, Jew, Christian, Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, Mormon, etc. Until then, I'll remain an Atheist and watch all the drama play itself out - God HAS to lend his support to the correct religion EVENTUALLY, lol.
Its encouraging to see you as 'an atheist' speak of God as a reality and to place your trust and hope in God for a particular outcome
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"Polly Needs A Reason to Live!"
) just common sense, unlike most of the life-altering decisions within any religion. 
