If God of any of the mystical stories is hypothetically true (does not exist), He does nothing and makes people become Atheists because of the mass of evidence, contradictions. So people cannot fear mythical hell because in this way some will become completely atheistic taking our universe as a strikte scientific explanation. People would just be driven to this state of affairs themselves, and it would be 100% normal! If our world in science has more and more scientific explanations and all things can only be explained in this way, people will sooner or later become atheists with the time of education, because I think that religions are in a small part. evidence of the absurdity of these mythologies because it is normal for people to behave as they are.
Welcome to AR.
Some interesting ideas.
Welcome!
Ironically, those that have faith in god (believe) choose a popular one (eg. Allah, Jesus, Yahweh, etc).
They reject the gods of āmythologyā as real (eg. Thor, Zeus, Ra, etc).
In fact they will disbelieve in the existence of other current gods worshipped by current competing religions.
Simply put, being an atheist is just disbelief - taken to that final god one was raised to believe exists.
So many christians canāt understand why you donāt believe in their god when thereās a dozen gods they donāt believe in, largely for the same reasons you donāt believe in theirs.
Oops! Man is born into a state of sin. (According to the Bible - You are born an Atheist. That is Gods punishment for your fall from grace.) āSinā originally defined free of modern Christian interpretations is āSeparation from God.ā The actions are āsinfulā in that they create separation from god. This is the core meaning of the word and the idea.
So⦠God had nothing to do with āThe Fall of Man.ā He warned Adam not to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evel. If you are going to blame anyone, you have to blame Adam.
Next: And in his loving benevolence, god gave his only begotten son so that you might have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
If you are going to make an argument, at least make it cogent.
Well, welcome to AR, Iām not so sure about your assertion though, many theists and religions seem impervious to scientific facts, and have a variety of rationalisations they employ to preserve their belief in superstition.
I donāt think they choose anything. Probably 99%+ of religious people follow the same religion their parents did.
Indoctrinated. Choose their baptism or confirmations. Choose these ones when converting (in most cases - some join alien cults ).
I had lots of pressure to be baptized at 14. I caved. My choice. I had known a few that chose to leave the JWs before baptism growing up.
I went through the usual Catholic āfirst communionā and later āconfirmationā growing up as a kid. Even then, I didnāt believe any of it. Never have.
Indeed
From time to time, Iāve run through a list with christians: " Do you believe in Thor, Isis, Krishna, etc etc? No? Me neither. Why not? No evidence? Just so. Same reason I donāt believe in your god. In fact I disbelieve in only one more god than you". At this point they tend to become a smidge aggressive and defensive.
I donāt know who said this first or when but its still true: the world and the universe appear to operate exactly the way one would expect without any gods.
Iām afraid Iām unable to accept that claim as objectively true, although it seems about right to me subjectively. (insert a few dozen examples to make oneās point here.)
In my experience, believers tend to claim the exact opposite, with equally as many examples to make their point.
If either claim were objectively true, one could extend the argument to demonstrate the existence or non existence of god⦠Iām pretty sure all claims about god(s) remain unfalsifiable.
You are quite right Cranky. But I just find it so damn hard now as an elderly atheist to accept the supernatural as having anything at all to do with reality.
I never get to witness a miracle. No God will talk to me in dreams or visions (how come Adam, Moses, and Paul get to be called men of great faith when they all got to see and speak with their god? Jacob got to wrestle with YWHW while Abraham and Sarah had lunch with him. Meanwhile, I canāt remember the last time I met anyone who was more than three days dead.
My idea about relationships with gods is that their gods are meant to be invisible, ābeyond time and spaceā, inexplicable, ineffable. How else could the issue of faith be of any value between worshipper and worshipee?
But all that is just in my head. In polite company, I confess to being an agnostic atheist and agree I donāt know everything.
Well, I guess it depends on oneās point of view. I was downright amazed to discover Iād reached seventy without having killed anyone and with most of my marbles.
I was stunned when I managed to get into university as a mature age student (was was 29) even more so that I got straight Aās.
I truly believed I was rather thick until I was 65. That was when I had a proper IQ test, administered by a psychologist. All Iāll say about that is I was mistaken.
I once read that one meaning of the world miracle isā " a wonderful thing". That suits me. Means Iām able to say I have experienced many miracles in my life.
Me too. Also a sceptic, I avoid claims of 100% knowledge about anything. Instead , best I can claim is to know a bit about a few things. But, nothing about many thousands of things. Pretty sure the age of the polymath is long gone, so that applies to pretty much the rest of humanity.
My mother once told me to always keep in mind that most people one meets can almost certainly do at least one thing better than oneself.
I think itās ironic that people donāt bother to apply the morals the bible āteachesā to their big man in the sky. Of course itās always COMPLETELY okay for God to drown, burn, destroy countless people including women, children and the unborn⦠For this reason I always say that God is NOT pro-life.
Yet still insist their morals are objective and perfect, theists are irony impaired in my experience.
Not very efficient either, given it is claimed to have limitless power and knowledge.
Thereās the rub. According to whom?
There are literally hundreds of Christian sects, each claiming all the others are in error.
The bible is full of contradictions, so people can find just about any justification they like. Especially if they they take something out of context or use a mistranslation.
One of my favourite instances of using the bible to justify evil behaviour was slavery in the antebellum US south. The claim was that it was OK to enslave black people because they are āthe children of Hamā . Itās bullshit of course. Just for starters, the bible doe snot mention the colour of the children of Ham------.
My pet compliant is that it seems to me that the most egregiously ignored commandment is that which says ālove your neighbour as yourselfā.
Jesus himself is recorded as saying that second only to the commandment to love god, the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself is the most important commandment. To emphasis his point, Jesus then told the parable of The Good Samaritan. To me, the parable answers the question āwho is my neighbour?ā The answer is āEvery human being is your neighbourā . My interpretation may be quite/slightly wrong if only because I donāt read ancient Greek, the language in which the News Testament is written.
Mark 12: 28-29 28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, āOf all the commandments, which is the most important?ā
29 āThe most important one,ā answered Jesus, āis this: āHear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.ā[b] 31 The second is this: āLove your neighbor as yourself.ā[c] There is no commandment greater than these.ā
I am acutely aware how hard it is to accurately translate one language into another.
In Christianity we also need to contend with biblical hermeneutics and exegesis, which explain how the bible doesnāt actually mean what it says.
In conclusion I need to remind myself that imo hypocrisy is part of the human condition. Everyone lies, itās only a matter of degree. If we did not, imo human society could not function. I try to remind myself of what I think is a fair admonition attributed to Jesus. Matthew 7:5 āYou hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brotherās eye.ā (New International Version)
To see this in action, watch the movie The Invention of Lying with Ricky Gervais.
Yeah, Iāve seen about half of it. Interesting premise, even though I loathe Ricky Gervais. I think heās as funny as cancer.
If gods were real. Atheism wouldnāt exist. The deities could convince us themselves they were real instead of having their followers or a āpriestā who speaks for them on a weekly basis. Thereād be concrete evidence.