Atheism As A REJECTION OF--Not Disbelief In--An Evil God (miracle, existence, Revelation)
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Hi ThrilloByte - It's interesting that you equate rejection of an evil god with atheism, since atheists know there are no god/s, good or evil, to reject.
You also seem very angry at this evil god, as if it is somehow responsible for all the horrible things in the world, when ultimately, doesn't the responsibility for man lie with man himself?
For example, if the children are starving, is that the fault of the god/s, or the fault of the parents who decided to bring them into this world?
We all know that the true drivers of poverty lie in geopolitics, wealth inequality & man’s inhumanity to man, so is there any point getting angry at these non-existent god/s, when they don't come down with their magic wands to fix everything?
If you’ve been led to believe that is their purpose, perhaps your teachers are at fault, because such a belief would only serve to absolve mankind of the responsibility to fix his own problems.
Even Jesus made it clear that if you want to build a kingdom of heaven on Earth, it can only be achieved through loving deeds of mutual cooperation, so it's only natural to feel let down by all those who fail/ed to abide by this simple instruction, leaving us floundering in societies awash with selfish imperatives.
But to feel let down by non-existent god/s who refuse to do your bidding, can only diminish the joy in your experience of this existence, where the physical realities dictate those wishes will always remain unfulfilled.
Non-denominational? AKA whatever we are free to imagine? All good perhaps? No bad?
Reminds me of a quote I once heard about how our greatest blessings are what doesn't happen to us. Not a God-believing or -fearing person myself, but it's easy to also imagine a God who is actually preventing even greater evil and misfortune to fall upon us. We just don't know what they are. Right?
Perhaps growing impatient, however, given this Coronavirus business She's decided to have us contend with now...
Quote:
Originally Posted by LearnMe
Just gets more interesting by the post! Or is that confusing?
A man who fears anything fears something, and a man who has no fear is simply lying...
I don't believe in God and I've never feared the world, but no doubt I have certainly feared some people and their way of thinking more than just a little!
A person who possess the immense power God does and doesn't use it for good ("good" being the eradication, or at the least keeping evil in check) becomes evil--or a "monster" if you will--by default. God Himself doesn't perform evil acts but when He for example witnesses the sexual enslavement of millions of innocents or stands by while whole tribes in Africa get exterminated, to my mind He's acting monstrously by His inaction--no better than a judge who deliberately turns thousands of rapists and killers out onto the streets to pillage. If the judge is derelict in his duty, then God must be derelict all the more so. The two just follow.
Reminds me of a quote I once heard about how our greatest blessings are what doesn't happen to us.
Sort of like "No news is good news." It's a hell of a world we live in. Who's fault is that? Mink would say ALL the blame belongs to man, which is ridiculous because man doesn't cause tsunamis that wipe out a quarter of a million men women and babies. If God is preventing anything (and I don't believe He is) it's probably keeping an asteroid from striking earth and wiping out all life. But it WILL happen one day. Statistically, it has to. And it doesn't really have to because in two hundred years or so climate change will kill off most of us anyway.
A person who possess the immense power God does and doesn't use it for good ("good" being the eradication, or at the least keeping evil in check) becomes evil--or a "monster" if you will--by default. God Himself doesn't perform evil acts but when He for example witnesses the sexual enslavement of millions of innocents or stands by while whole tribes in Africa get exterminated, to my mind He's acting monstrously by His inaction--no better than a judge who deliberately turns thousands of rapists and killers out onto the streets to pillage. If the judge is derelict in his duty, then God must be derelict all the more so. The two just follow.
Reminds me of a quote I once heard about how our greatest blessings are what doesn't happen to us.
Sort of like "No news is good news." It's a hell of a world we live in. Who's fault is that? Mink would say ALL the blame belongs to man, which is ridiculous because man doesn't cause tsunamis that wipe out a quarter of a million men women and babies. If God is preventing anything (and I don't believe He is) it's probably keeping an asteroid from striking earth and wiping out all life. But it WILL happen one day. Statistically, it has to. And it doesn't really have to because in two hundred years or so climate change will kill off most of us anyway.
As you make the point again, made over and over in this forum generally speaking, we're all free to think whatever we like, and I think it's high time for me to sign off this forum again today, but just one thought for you before I go...
It can easily be suggested that believing in a God having something to do with what's going on around us can also lead to another form of evil that should be avoided if not mitigated. When people don't properly "connect the dots" in order to intelligently understand cause and effect, we end up with parents not vaccinating their kids against disease. We end up with people going to the beach and ignoring social distancing during a pandemic. We end up with people flying planes into buildings...
And this is progress compared to what believing in God had us doing going back to the beginning. That's the evil more of concern to me in any case. Again having nothing to do with God, because there is no evidence there is a God having anything to do with anything. How people like me see it anyway.
I think you miss my point again,Mystic. God IS able. He chooses of His own will not to. And I imagine you choose not to call Him out on His evil inaction is because you're not brave or bold enough to stand in front of the Almighty and call Him a jerk to His face, because maybe you're afraid of retribution or something? You see, I'm not afraid to call God a jerk because I call them as I see them. And I know that He's not going to do anything to me if I do. And I don't buy this nonsensical argument Christians peddle, "Well, He's giving you a chance while you're alive but after you die that's when He'll throw the book at you." See? That's just another pass Christians give to their pagan god who's also a big fat do-nothing. The Christian pagan god is always threatening but never does anything because he doesn't exist. The real God does nothing as well, but the BIG difference is He never threatens. And I would agree with your rhetorical question, "A God who is Spirit and only intervenes spiritually IS useless and pointless. Epicurus certainly got that one right.
You forget that I met God and know His nature so there is zero chance I would fear any retribution. I just refuse to assign any abilities or attributes to God that I cannot validate through experience or science. Your assertion of what God is able to do is based on the erroneous teachings you have been indoctrinated with. The Omni's are human inventions designed to meet what humans require of their God to qualify as God, period.
As you make the point again, made over and over in this forum generally speaking, we're all free to think whatever we like, and I think it's high time for me to sign off this forum again today, but just one thought for you before I go...
It can easily be suggested that believing in a God having something to do with what's going on around us can also lead to another form of evil that should be avoided if not mitigated. When people don't properly "connect the dots" in order to intelligently understand cause and effect, we end up with parents not vaccinating their kids against disease. We end up with people going to the beach and ignoring social distancing during a pandemic. We end up with people flying planes into buildings...
And this is progress compared to what believing in God had us doing going back to the beginning. That's the evil more of concern to me in any case. Again having nothing to do with God, because there is no evidence there is a God having anything to do with anything. How people like me see it anyway.
Hi ThrilloByte - It's interesting that you equate rejection of an evil god with atheism, since atheists know there are no god/s, good or evil, to reject.
You also seem very angry at this evil god, as if it is somehow responsible for all the horrible things in the world, when ultimately, doesn't the responsibility for man lie with man himself?
For example, if the children are starving, is that the fault of the god/s, or the fault of the parents who decided to bring them into this world?
We all know that the true drivers of poverty lie in geopolitics, wealth inequality & man’s inhumanity to man, so is there any point getting angry at these non-existent god/s, when they don't come down with their magic wands to fix everything?
If you’ve been led to believe that is their purpose, perhaps your teachers are at fault, because such a belief would only serve to absolve mankind of the responsibility to fix his own problems.
Even Jesus made it clear that if you want to build a kingdom of heaven on Earth, it can only be achieved through loving deeds of mutual cooperation, so it's only natural to feel let down by all those who fail/ed to abide by this simple instruction, leaving us floundering in societies awash with selfish imperatives.
But to feel let down by non-existent god/s who refuse to do your bidding, can only diminish the joy in your experience of this existence, where the physical realities dictate those wishes will always remain unfulfilled.
Namaste ThrilloByte
You're a newbie, Jucalion so you won't be familiar with the position I have established over a decade in here. I'll reply to several of your points.
I'm not atheist per se for one reason only: the human genome and all the organized info contained therein. I don't believe something that complex could evolve on its own anymore than I believe odds exist that a tornado could blow through a junkyard and construct an aircraft carrier in its wake.
I'm not angry at this God because that would be silly. God has made His position known since the dawn of man: He doesn't want to get involved. When someone in here says, "I don't want to converse with you anymore, Thrill" do I get angry at them? Certainly not. It's their prerogative. God runs the show. He can do what He wants. I can only call Him what I believe He is, which is a heartless deadbeat dad. Is a heartless deadbeat dad evil? If he sees his child suffering and dying and does nothing to help when he is capable, well I think you wouldn't have much difficulty finding people who would say, "That man is evil." Why is it any different with God?
Jesus words were said 2000 years ago when the population of the entire world is estimated to be 45 million. Today we have close to 8 billion. Poverty, starvation, abuse and sickness then were nothing then compared to now. And why is all this thrown on man's shoulders? If a man deliberately conceives a child and leaves its brothers and sisters to care for it, is that the duty of the siblings or is the baby's welfare the duty of the father?
If we however take the position there is no God, then the duty falls to us to do our best, which will be pitifully poor to no help at all given the numbers we are dealing with. Could you take care of a 1000 poor people? That's the ratio we're dealing with. Do you make the argument, "If I help only one person that is better than not helping anyone" well, I find that argument very specious. Helping one out of a 1000 is little better than helping no one from a practical point of view. It becomes nothing more than an idealistic argument but in reality it's of no use at all. Only God has such abilities; man does not.
As Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." It's a good atheistic observation. As a deist I'd just replace "good men" with "God".
I make a prediction: evil eventually WILL triumph.
It would be so easy for me to just stop believing there is a God were it not for this pesky detail:
"The 2010 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica contains 32 volumes, 50 million words and 300 million characters. It requires roughly 1 gigabyte (GB) of disk space to store. A single byte (or 8 bits) can represent 4 DNA base pairs. In order to represent the entire diploid human genome in terms of bytes, we can perform the following calculations: 6×10^9 base pairs/diploid genome x 1 byte/4 base pairs = 1.5×10^9 bytes or 1.5 Gigabytes, about 2 CDs worth of space!"
I hope you got that. The human genome could hold the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and still have room left over for another half of the set. To my mind this kind of gigantic organization of coded information could not have come about by accident. The odds of something like that happening on its own are so infinitesimal as to render the number virtually incapable of being written out.
So I personally can accept there is a Higher Intelligence out there and I can even accept that this Intelligence operates on a morality totally different from ours, but I cannot accept that this Intelligence chooses to foist its warped sense of morality on we who have to suffer under its pernicious set of evil laws.
So I may believe in God but I am under no obligation morally, religiously or otherwise to acknowledge Him or to hold Him in anything other than complete and total indifference. I think by that definition it makes me an atheist who believes in an evil God, strange as that may sound.
Could you call yourself a Deist?
"...the philosophical position that rejects revelation as a source of religious knowledge and asserts that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to establish the existence of a Supreme Being or creator of the universe..." (Wikipedia)
The only reason to believe in the Christian God is if you believe in revelation; ie, the Bible. You have used reason and observation to base your belief in a God (although I will dispute your reasoning). If you are a Deist, you don't have to feel bad about holding God in "total indifference", because after all He is indifferent to us.
In reference to your reasoning, nobody says that this gigantic organization of coded information, as you call it, simply appeared by accident. Consider instead that a much smaller, simper organization - probably a single molecule - came to appear by accident. After billions of years of selection, expansion, refinement and evolution it has grown to be this wondrously complex and sophisticated machine we call a human being. Perhaps God is the natural laws that make this possible.
Although improbable, the probability is not zero. In a Universe nearly infinite in space and time, anything that could happen will happen, somewhere sometime.
LearnMe claims that God doesn’t exist, yet he had his own experience of God when he was younger. Maybe his Ten Truths are his way of convincing himself that the experience wasn’t real.
LearnMe claims that God doesn’t exist, yet he had his own experience of God when he was younger. Maybe his Ten Truths are his way of convincing himself that the experience wasn’t real.
Why don't you let LearnMe speak for himself. Or perhaps you have a YouTube video of him.
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To my mind this kind of gigantic organization of coded information could not have come about by accident. The odds of something like that happening on its own are so infinitesimal as to render the number virtually incapable of being written out. 
