Yeah, I know, BIG question right? Sorry, I’m just wondering though - to all you atheists out there, I am just curious - why are you atheists? I’m not trying to debate, just looking for some input - personal reasons, etc - doesn’t matter - just if you could tell me that would be great. thanks!
For the Christian Jesus Christ is the central antecedent of existence.
For the non-Christian this is not so: being alive is.
(I am not an Athiest)
Hi, christianthinker.
Before answering your question, permit me to ask you another. Do you consider that religiosity precedes atheism in the core of human beliefs, or that it is innate and anticipates any formal experience ? Do you think that atheism is a gag foisted upon the natural inclination of man to venerate God ?
Because I think it is the opposite. Atheism is the dominating trend in human biology; if you may, it is comparable to the secure feeling of solid ground - a runway, off of which one may choose to engage in flight or not. Except for those who entertain perpetual praying, as described by Paul, we are all practical atheists when we perform this or that mundane task and gently shove the prospect of God from our perspective.
Being a theist requires a leap and being a Christian demands a considerable effort. Remaining atheist is more convenient and those who argue for atheism are adamant that the path of intellectual moderation is sacred. Opting for God, Son of God and redemption brings about it a complex dialectic and treacherous maneuvres. First, it is denying yourself, then arduously wanting to be yourself before God. It’s hard, I’m tellin’ you.
I don’t believe in Moby Dick. Do you need an explanation as to why I don’t believe in Moby Dick?
God is a litterary character.
Immanuel Kant was a Christian but his quote rings so true
"There is no justice in this lifetime."
The way I interpret this as an atheist is “if there is a god, why would he allow things to happen to people in such a manner?”
My father is a Police officer he tells me how often people destroy others and leave a scarred psyche and battered body.
To me God is a nice thought. Some people need that safety of reward or that their life means something. I on the other hand don’t need my life justified by a great being but rather live for my own reasons.
God is a necessary entity who is recorded in literature. The God that you choose to believe in is of another sort of debate. Most assuredly, you do believe in a god! You deify nature by giving it the qualities and abilities of self-creation, and assign to it eternal attributes. The most remarkable difference is that your god of choice has no intelligence. There are obvious leaps of faith, greater than my own, that are necessary to believe in your god. The whole theory of evolution is a convoluted entanglement of lengthy explanations and suppositions. The most obvious philosophical complication with the atheistic religion of evolution is the idea of absolute origins. Do you believe in eternal matter and energy or in eternal transcendental being? More complications arise when one considers the initiation of life from non-life. Scientists have yet to create the “simple” cell in their vast knowledge and wisdom, but have fallen far short with their creation of amino acids. Of course, the scientists had the elements to work with. What if I werent so generous and demanded that they create something out of nothing? This is where the faith of atheistic evolutionists comes in. Not only do they believe that life can come from non-life, but they believe that life can come from non-life which can come from nothing! This is the deification of what is tangible. The very essence of atheism is therefore idolatry. Atheists worship the creation rather than the Creator. Let us suppose that scientists one day do, in fact, create life from non-life. What would this prove? It would indicate only that generations of research combined with Intelligent Design could create life from the elements in the closed environment of a laboratory. The obvious rule to not here would be that INTELLIGENCE can create life. The creation of life in the laboratory would be an amazing scientific accomplishment. However, there is no guarantee that life could or would develop outside of the laboratory and without intelligence in the life manufacturing process. Let us again suppose that random processes did in fact create a simple cell. What then? Many, many simple cells would have to be created. This fact just increases the already insurmountable odds that life would come from non-life. In order for higher lifeforms to be created, such as a housefly, many multiple cells would have to combine in the right sequence to create the complex structure of this small creature. Why should the cells strive to create higher lifeforms? How would these cells determine that various body systems need be created or formed? How would a partially developed body system survive to the next generation. Natural Selection is against this.
Which literary character do you choose?
Cause I think I can make up something better.
An an athiest in the sense that… it would appear that way from the Christian standpoint.
Basically instead of believing in a God I put myself in that role. You gotta put things in perspective a little bit. Jesus did what any other dumb ass, uninformed person would do at that point in history would do – he got poetic.
If we’re all Gods then of course he’s the son of God.
The point is he saw the inner truth – the power that we all have to shape the world around us. To be Gods. Jesus always preached he was no better than anyone else… that’s all that matters in my mind. The rest is the institutional garbage of the ages… it always accumulates. I’m named after him and Matthew was a fundamentalist crazy person that grossly misrepresented truth the bible is supposed to convey.
The true bible is the ability to read between the lines… Jesus seemed to be able to do that all too well… as he saw between himself.
A great guy no doubt, albiet a little confused about the afterlife. This confusion spawned a whole religion of people who walk through life, scared, with their eyes on the end of the road.
Athiest/Thiest…
we’re all striving towards the same goal whether we realize it or not.
Hooray! Everything in the world is your fault, but all that means is that you can fix it, right? Hooray!
ok, this post was not meant to be turned into a discussion, but so be it. Jesus came to save us through the fact that he was both perfect (divine) and imperfect (human), and thus changed the rules. the only catch was, it is for those who BELIEVE. those who say he was an ordinary man are right, in that he succumbed to death, and needed food/water/shelter to live and operate. he was divine in that he ROSE AGAIN, performed miracles, and was transfigured and GIVEN RECOGNITION BY GOD HIMSELF.
why so many people like to call him a fraud is beyond me. all He did was proclaim the truth, WHICH IS SOMETIMES HARD TO SWALLOW, EVEN OUTSIDE RELIGION/WHATEVER, and become the way to salvation. and yet so many people today simply write off His existence/the credibility of the Bible just because it “seems” to contradict itself and it doesn’t allow everyone to live the way they want to.
explain.
And please stop using caps lock every other sentence… it’s not going to make your point better.
We’re not calling him a fraud. We’re just saying he never existed, that you are misled, and that we don’t need god to be good people.
ok sorry about the caps, but this still wasn’t meant to be a discussion.
anyway, the point there is when he was baptized and during the transfiguration - when God came down and literally said “This is my son, with whom I am well pleased.” That’s what I meant. He recognized Jesus as His one and only son. that’s all.
oh and please define “good person” - just clarify what you mean by that please. thanks.
If you heard that God had deemed me to be the son of God and to listen to me, would you?
Even if I told you to get into the kingdom of heaven you had to act like an athiest?
Dan says:
To get into the kingdom of heaven, you must move into that area of dimensional space and get your citizenship after passing a few tests…
Alternatively, you could go to a different heaven, if you want, or you could stay on earth. It’s up to you.
Mucius.
I was, intrigued by this affirmation:
“Atheism is the dominating trend in human biology”
Given what we see from anthropology and history, this does not seem to be correct. The general condition of man has been belief in the Supernatural. Mankind has a flair for establishing meaning. From this affinity come most of your systems of belief.
Atheism is not at all a natural inclination. It takes training, education, and even then, the feeling persist, the need persist, to assign reality meaning and thus you find educated persons, whom should have rejected God based on the consequences of their expertise, but who still are theists.
Christianity demands very little indeed. The demands increase with the education of the believer; yet desire generally wins. The demands are negligible if one maintains a division, but if one applies to their faith the same rigor they apply to empirical “facts”, then one is made, by the command of his/her desire, to redefine and redesign his beliefs so that Athens and Jerusalem fit within one picture. Not easy, but it is attempted.
Is it so hard to understand why we crave meaning? Why we need to believe in something in a world such as ours?
It is not so much that I don’t believe in a more powerful or maybe more intelligent being, that perhaps created our life form. I just don’t believe in religions and I think the word “believe” is inacurate. I respect that you view this creature as a god and worship it. And I really have nothing against religion, Priests and priestesses helped evolve literacy for the masses, and good solid ethical laws.
But religion is not suitable for me. It falls well away from the things I know to be true to me. Its kind of like Okra. If there is a hell then Okra came from it. But I have enough sense to know different from that, and that many people like Okra and that Okra is healthy for people, just not me, it causes internal problems and mental problems,Yech.
Religion is healthy for some people, for some people it is unhealthy. Some people take too much religion and become unhealthy.
Go be religious if that is what it takes for you to be happy, just don’t force me to believe and force me to follow religious laws and morals. We can discuss and argue, I am always happy to argue. but, I won’t change a lick, not even a tick. I will learn though and that is most important.
Life’s not about being happy. You know who’se happy all the time? My friend mark. He’s mentally handicaped. He doesn’t know anything about the world, but he’s always got a smile on his face.
Even if life’s not about being happy, suppose that’s all most people really want?