Most relevant difference between theism and atheism.

Theist: What would convince you of existence of God?
Atheist: A clear definition of God and adequate evidence.
Atheist: What would unconvince you of existence of God?
Theist: Nothing, I have total and unquestioning faith which I would never give up, regardless where the evidence is pointing to.

Think I’m strawmaning theists? Ask turtle or Ierrellus here, and fuck, even professional apologists like WLC say the same thing. Maybe this doesn’t apply to all theists, but it does to some, so those some I am addressing here. Basically, one position is based on reason, common sense and a practical standard of evidence, the other is based on faith, opposed to common sense, and desperately clings to whatever is claimed to be evidence, usually things they wouldn’t ever accept in any other situation (special pleading). One is open-minded about being proven wrong with evidence, the other usually either discards the possibility of being wrong altogether or defines God in such a way that we can in no way determine it one way or the other (beyond space and time lulz), but still should have unquestioning faith. Oh, and all the contradictions and atrocities committed in the Holy Scriptures are metaphors and probably taken out of context too.

I know I’m not a typical theist, so consider this a tangent to your post, but I would want to rephrase your questions-answers to something like the following:

Theist: What would convince you that the God-character portrayed in scripture speaks wisdom, and calls us to a way of life and truth?
Atheist: Nothing - I’m too stuck on the fact that scripture is not historical / scientific fact.
Atheist: What would unconvince you of the existence of God?
Theist: Nothing - it’s more about faith and hope in the possibility and veracity of the words spoken by this God-character and the way shown. Not dumb belief in the historical existence of some cosmic super-being.

It does to most you mean.

Heh, it’s fun because I’ve JUST spent at least half an hour writing a post of which a great deal of it is me explaining precisely WHY I personally don’t consider scripture isn’t valid historical evidence.

This is the post, to avoid repeating myself: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=187524&start=25#p2522675

Two relatively short (2-5 min) videos for those interested, demonstrating my point by the genius DarkMatter2525:

If God were a car - demonstrates the silliness behind giving arguments and papers to prove the physical existence of something which should be easily provable if true. If God existed, there would be few things, if anything, that would be less obvious and easily provable than his physical existence, just like if there is a car you have to sell, few things are easier to prove than the physical existence of the car. Also how people tend to interpret scripture how they wish and claim their interpretation is the right one, of course.
[tab][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qahB7mYhLxs[/youtube][/tab]

Don’t want to spoil this one, though it should be pretty obvious anyway:
[tab][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0EEKfTnfvA[/youtube][/tab]

He missed Scenario #0 : The gang members accept the merit of what Jesus preached and turn away from violence and destruction. They live lives of peace and happiness. They never shoot Steven.

And isn’t that what it’s really about?

If God existed then yeah, that would definitely happen

If you spend your time just thinking whether God exists, then you are wasting your time.

The difference between atheism and theism is trivial. The important question is ‘how ought I live?’.

I resent my name being brought up out of context I believe only what I have been shown. The parody that is this OP cannot understand what it means to believe from experience.

The difference between you and the OP, is the OP starts without preconceived ideas concerning existence.
What you do from the start is assume that god is a meaningful concept. You are not looking for truth but before you even start you have fallen for the position that no matter what the reason or evidence, you demand that there is such a thing as god.

Not really. No such group has ever existed that have not argued about what Jesus was supposed to have preached: and then spent the rest of time killing each other over it.
But even if this group did ever exist it would have nothing to do this the thread which is not about Jesus. Please check the title.

You find a lot of resentment it seems.

You find your beliefs challenged, and fear exposure.
But surely that is inevitable when you hold on to unfalsifyable and unsupported beliefs, then present them on a public forum.
What I do find troubling is your tendency to take offence and report people for asking difficult questions.

Please watch the video. It neglects to mention the scenario that I proposed : religion bringing people together and reducing conflict. It doesn’t have to be Jesus specifically but he did say “love your neighbor/enemy”.

I would think the most relevant difference between theism and atheism is that theism posits the existence of a God, and atheism does not.

But yeah, maybe armchair psychology about some theists the OP met is the real answer. Surely there are no atheists who hold their atheism for a stupid/inadequate reason, surely.

You are absolutely correct that I “assume that god is a meaningful concept.”

But that assumption absolutely does not extend to (or emerge from some preconceived view I have of) reality, in the sense that I “demand that there is such a thing as god” (which I don’t and never have).

To be clear, my assumption, which I believe we all need to make as sympathetic readers of any text, is that the concepts, characters, etc, portrayed are meaningful - a meaning that the text itself has been crafted to express (we have to give the text the benefit of the doubt…). That the god-character in scripture is a meaningful concept is an assumption that will be validated only through reading, and really working to understand what is, in this case, an extremely complex and challenging concept and text…

This exercise is no different from reading, for example, Nietzsche, and encountering in Thus Spoke Zarathustra the concept of the overman, and assuming, to give Nietzsche and his text the benefit of the doubt, that it is a meaningful concept that the rest of the text, through careful study, will either yeild or not yield…

Now once you have that meaning, should it exist, then we can start looking at the real world, to see if anything there corresponds with it… (Which Nietzsche did eventually do to some extent: the overman as a Cesare Borgia with the heart of Christ…)

But right now, my biggest concern is with the meaning of the god-character in the text. When it comes to the final judgment that the god-character is some kind of all-controlling super power, that’s where I start to rankle (against theist and atheist alike). So if jumping to the question of real-world-correspondence, I would also agree in this case - there is none. But this is not the God of Biblical scripture, or at least not the one that I think careful study will yield.

Put short, let’s get the god-character right before we start talking existence.

You DID say that though, that you will never let anything get in the way of your faith in God. Most of us atheists, including me, openly say that we aren’t biased about God one way or the other - we simply require him to abide by the same standard of evidence that everything else does to avoid committing the special pleading logical fallacy. Give us evidence, we will believe, just like we do in the existence of anything else supported by evidence.

Well yeah, that would be the most obvious reason too, just like it should be obvious that I didn’t mean that, but something else, which goes beyond the mere definition of the word.

Stupid/inadequate reason for atheism? Somehow I have the suspicion that your any my standards are drastically different when it comes to judging what are stupid/inadequate reasons. You might consider personal revelation as adequate, I will say it’s more likely that the person is lying or hallucinated. I might consider evidence presented (bible) as insufficient, as I argued in my response to you in the Pastafarianism thread, you might not.

The concept of God presented in the Bible is rife with contradictions, and can we really say that a contradictory concept is meaningful? If meaningful should translate to “possible” in reality, then definitely no.

I don’t think we should make any assumptions before reading the text, but rather start with an open mind ,open mind meaning to be critical but open to new ideas at the same time, not just mindlessly accepting everything. Don’t make an assumption that a text is contradictory (meaningless) if you haven’t read it, or at least some excerpts from it. Sure, you can always listen to what other people tell you about it, but it’s better to check for yourself IMO.

Atheist say that a lot, but it it true? Would an atheist accept evidence without bias or would reasonable evidence be dismissed as inadequate?

Atheist can’t have stupid/inadequate reasons for making decisions? Why not? Aren’t atheists human?

Is this about theism or is it about Christianity? You need to make up your mind.

I don’t think we’re saying anything different when it comes to, my words, having an assumption of meaningfulness until proven otherwise, and you, keeping an open mind…

However the “rife with contradictions” part is more concerning. So let’s play with one. What, in your mind, is the most glaring contradiction?

“Those bad guys do everything bad and us good guys do everything good”.
Same ole, same ole.

There are sooo many. The first group on this evil bible page:

evilbible.com/Biblical%20Contradictions.htm

This is a good page too:

infidels.org/library/modern/jim_ … tions.html

So you’re saying everybody and everything is absolutely equal and there is no possibility that one group of people is doing one thing better than another group? That’s very unlike you James.

I’ve noticed that you use this excuse only when somebody criticizes a group YOU belong to - you had no problem at all making an Anti-Atheism thread you hypocrite.