And when you say 'God" of course you mean Bathala right?
1 Like
Glad you brought that up, Dave. It reminded me of something that might be of interest to our new friend…
Eli,
I grew up in a Christian family, in a tiny Christian town, in a Christian state, smack in the middle of The Bible Belt. Church every Sunday, most Sunday nights, and frequent Wednesday nights. Baptized at age 8. I’m 53 now, and it has been barely over four years since I was finally able to “escape” my religious indoctrination and realize/accept that I am an atheist. Want to know how/why? Here we go…
From the earliest memories I have of going to church (long before I ever studied any real science or knew anything about evolution or the Big Bang), the things I was taught about the bible, god, jesus, heaven, hell, and Satan NEVER MADE ANY SENSE to me. Let me repeat: As a little kid in grade school, there were just too many inconsistencies, contradictions, and outright nonsense stories in the bible that simply made zero logical sense to me. No science required. The problem, though, is at that early age I had no experience and not enough knowledge/education to explain WHY it made no sense to me. So, basically, I just went-along-to-get along. (Besides, the koolaid and cookies in Sunday school were always pretty good.)
So, time rolls on, and I get older, better educated, and gain more life experience. And that caused the bible and all therein to make even LESS sense. Unfortunately, by that time the fear of Satan and hell had been implanted so deeply within my conscious it severely handicapped my ability to question the religious nonsense. Therefore, I spent a majority of my life in near-constant varying levels of anxious uncertainty. Only after my Mom died in 2017 did I finally feel like I could start the serious questioning. And it was my wife who suggested I join an Atheist chat site. Found the AR by plain random luck. (It was the first site that popped up in my search.) And it was only after joining the AR that I started learning about the different fallacies, and detailed bible history, and more in-depth Evolution and Big Bang theories. It was THEN that the pieces started falling in place for me. It was THEN I started to realize why the bible and its teachings never made sense to me. It was THEN when I was finally able to fully free myself from those oppressive shackles of religion that kept me so terribly indecisive and confused for so many years.
So, you see, while all the science and stuff is great to have around, it is NOT the reason I do not believe in any god(s). My lack of belief started when I was a young child strictly because of the teachings from the bible itself. All the science and stuff merely helped reinforce what I already knew as a kid. Namely, religion is ridiculous. However, I hold no grudges against those who choose to practice their religion of choice. Provided, of course, they do not try to force their beliefs on me or others.
3 Likes
Seriously, Locke? Bathala? Really? You’ve gotta be kidding me. Damn, EVERYBODY knows Odin or Zeus, either one, could easily kick Bathala’s ass. Well… 
… Unless, of course, Bathala is in an iron chariot. Then Odin and Zeus are shit outta luck. Oh, wait… My bad. It’s the god in the bible that cannot defeat iron chariots. Oops. Sorry. Disregard. Carry on…
I was going for a more “eclectic” creator deity. Because, you know, according to him I wouldn’t want him to dismiss the idea of something, like we evil atheists do! 
1 Like
No, they are an excuse for not having your own ideas.
1 Like
NO, for most atheists we are honest enough to state “I do not know” instead of making up shit just to fill in the gaps.
Religion inhibits human progress. When faced with a difficult question many in religion will just come to “god did it” instead of accepting that our present knowledge base in incomplete. They put up a barrier to further investigation.
What is the preferable scenario?
-
Daddy, whey is there thunder and lightning? Thor is a god, he lives in the sky and is having a wild party. NO further need to investigate.
Because option 2 led to our understanding of electricity, leading you and I to have computers and communicate on the internet. Do you comprehend that if mankind followed your suggestions and the ideologies of your religion, you would not have a car but be riding a horse?
Children are encouraged to make up shit instead of saying “I do not know”. If little Johnny in school answered a question with “I do not know” he would be chastised by the teacher and his fellow students. But if he make sup shit, the teacher will giggle and he would get an easy pass. Too many of us are trained to never admit we do not know, when it should be practiced as a means to a more honest life and keeps the door open for better understandings and development.
Our understanding of the far side of the moon led us to understand why one side is constantly presented to the Earth. I was in a christian forum, and guess what the answer was? Yes, god did it. Sheesh, the classic argument from ignorance, the god of the gaps.
2 Likes
You obviously don’t know shit about Atheism and much of your argument has been “God of Gaps” and not giving evidence for your “god claims”. Atheism is the disbelief in the existence of all deities and the rejection of all religious belief. That’s all there is to it. You’re mouthing off misconceptions that Atheists believe in “nothing”.
Here’s some examples: I believe my kids love me, I believe my girlfriend loves me, I believe my family loves me, I believe I’m going to get paid next week, I believe that when I get off from work today I’m going to go home and play on my XBOX.
You see? I don’t need faith for those beliefs. I’m sorry that you can’t think beyond your Christian Indoctrination. You say we’re limited? Puh lease. That is a Reductio Ad Absurdum and you know it. You live in fear every day because you’re afraid you’re gonna piss off your god if you get outta line. You can’t do shit without thinking you’re gonna upset your Sky Daddy and lose your gold ticket into OZ.
Go read your Bible and instead of coming on here and judging us Atheists. Read Matthew 7:1 and Luke 6:37. Your Sky Daddy would be awfully disappointed in you if he found out you were judging us. But that doesn’t apply to us Atheists because we don’t believe in your man made religion. Just like we don’t practice Sharia Law because we don’t practice Islam or believe in that bullshit religion. So who is the one that is limited? I don’t have a book of silly rules and threats to be locked up in a boiler room for eternity telling me what I can and can’t do with my life unlike you.
So I’d say you’re the one who is far more limited than we are.
2 Likes
Unless you believe Santa IS a god, then sure you can believe in Santa and still be an atheist. Watch…
I do not believe a god exists. I’m an atheist.
I do not believe a god exists, but I do believe Santa exists. I’m still an atheist.
I believe Santa is a creator god who made the world, and delivers presents on December 25th. I’m no longer an theist.
2 Likes
God is just the adult version of Santa. Children are encouraged to believe in Santa because it gives parents (adults) another means of maintaining control/discipline.
Santa:
- Jolly ol’ soul who loves all the little children
- Always watching. Knows who has been naughty or nice
- Maintains a naughty/nice list of every child in the world
- At the end of the year, rewards the nice children with presents. Punishes the naughty children with a lump of coal
- Lives in a mystical land far away in a massive workshop that nobody has ever seen
- Has magical flying reindeer that help him deliver presents/coal all over the world in just one night
Children eventually grow up, though, and realize Santa is not real. Yet, they still play along and pass the fantasy along to their own children, because it can be an effective means of control at times. “If you don’t obey me, Santa will not bring you any presents for Christmas.” And while the adults may no longer believe in Santa, they simply swapped him out for a god who does the same thing.
God (of the bible):
- All-benevolent entity that loves all of humanity
- ALWAYS watching. Knows who is good and who is evil. Actually, already knew who would be good and evil long before the beginning of time.
- Maintains a book of those who are good and evil
- At the end of life, rewards the good people with eternity of peaceful bliss. Punishes the evil people with an eternity of agonizing torture.
- Lives in a Land of Paradise way up in the sky above the clouds
- Has legions of winged angels flying to and fro that help him keep his precious human pets safe all around the world
4 Likes
Oh dear …
I told you. If you bother to read actual peer reviewed scientific papers from the cosmological physics literature, you’ll learn what the authors thereof postulate on this matter. Two papers I’m particularly familiar with are these:
Colliding Branes In Heterotic M-Theory
Generating Ekpyrotic Curvature Perturbations Before The Big Bang
Now, these two papers propose an elegant mechanism for the instantiation of the observable universe and its contents, via braneworld collisions. The mechanism in question possesses three elegant features, namely;
[1] It eliminates the singularity problem from standard Big Bang cosmology (which unlike you I can spell);
[2] It provides a mechanism for donation of energy to the newly instantiated universe, to facilitate matter synthesis;
[3] It provides a testable prediction, in the form of the power spectrum of primordial gravitational waves left in the wake of the collision process.
Indeed, [3] above is one of the reasons scientists have been busy building gravitational wave detectors, so that they can perform this test. The moment that power spectrum shows up in the data, Steinhardt & Turok pick up a Nobel Prize.
Of course, there are plenty of other papers on this topic, arXiv lists 208 of them if you want some bedtime reading matter covering the ekpyrotic postulate.
Oh, by the way, the branes in question are regarded [1] as having existed eternally, and [2] by implication, as being the source of the multiverse, courtesy of the fact that said collisions need not be restricted to one instance.
That’s the “how” dealt with. As for “why”, well every time I see a mythology fanboy use the word “why”, this is usually the lead-in to some apologetic fabrications to the effect that a teleology is in place (for which genuine evidence has never been provided), and that said teleology purportedly requires his favourite species of cartoon magic man, for which again no genuine evidence has ever been provided.
So, let’s move on to some of your other hilarious offerings, shall we?
This is implicit in my statement about suspicion of unsupported mythology fanboy assertions. Or did your reading comprehension fail you at this point?
WRONG. All I have to do, in accordance with the proper rules of discourse, is sit back and watch mythology fanboys FAIL to support their assertions. And in case you’re unaware of those proper rules of discourse, important pertinent ones are:
[1] Every assertion, when first presented, possesses the status “truth value unknown”;
[2] Every assertion remains in this epistemological limbo, until proper test of the requisite assertions is both devised and conducted;
[3] Every assertion remaining in this epistemological limbo is safely discardable, until the test mentioned above is devised and conducted
Oh, and the reason I don’t have to jump through duplicitous hoops put in front of me by mythology fanboys, is because [1] THEY are the ones required to support their assertions, and [2] suspicion of said assertions does NOT imply asserting the contrary, another of those elementary concepts mythology fanboys fail to understand.
Actually, my position is more sophisticated than that, but I don’t expect a mythology fanboy to understand this.
Quite simply, I recognise the elementary fact that the existence of a god type entity in its most general form is an unanswered question, not least because if a genuine answer has been provided in the past, this answer would now be a part of our body of knowledge. However, I can be certain that the cartoon magic men asserted to exist in pre-scientific mythologies are incompetent candidates for the role, and can be dismissed on that basis, as well as the basis that they are constructed in a manner involving absurdity, contradiction and paradox.
This, of course, does not eliminate any non-mythological candidate for an actual existing god, but mythology fanboys don’t want that, they want a magic man in the sky that shits on people they don’t like.
Oh, and I’ve covered possibilities that mythology fanboys are frequently incapable of even fantasising about. Such as the possibility that the above braneworld collision scenario might permit scientists in the future to launch their own brand new universe experimentally, and by doing so, become the “god” of that universe. But do keep pretending that you’ve thought more about this than I have.
The authors of those scientific papers are laughing at you.
Dealt with that. On what basis does there need to be a “why”, other than to satisfy mythology fanboy wishful thinking?
Once again, there doesn’t need to BE a “why”. There is NO evidence for a teleology, and NO evidence for any entity imposing a teleology.
Bollocks. Variables conforming to a probability distribution and Markov chain processes do NOT support the “fine tuning” myth, which IS a myth. I have two papers in my collection destroying this myth.
You’re nolt anywhere, sunshine. Except floundering in the quicksand of your own fabrications.
Once again, there doesn’t need to BE a “why”. There is NO evidence for a teleology, and NO evidence for any entity imposing a teleology.
And the obvious response to the end of your post is “grow up”.
4 Likes
The actual evidence for the non-existence of your god thing is overwhelming. Absence of evidence (IS) evidence of absence when we expect empirical findings.
For example, You tell me that there is a cookie in the cupboard. I tell you that I do not believe you. How will we find out? We go to the cupboard and we look for the cookie.
Finding no cookie, we look for evidence of the cookie. We smell the air. We look for crumbs or traces. Is there a cookie plate? Are there any markings of any kind that would suggest a cookie was there? Each and every one of these non-discoveries is evidence that there was never a cookie in the cupboard.
Now you can make up post hoc rationalizations. “The cookie was invisible. The cookie was magic. The cookie was odorless. The cookie was stolen by Jesus.” Your excuses do not matter. The evidence is, that there was never a cookie in the closet.
The evidence for your god thing is no different. We have no reason to believe there was ever a cookie in the closet and no reason to believe your god thing was ever real or that it started the expansion of the universe.
5 Likes
Incorrect. What is the issue is that theists use such wording as “soul”, and even “god” and are incapable of offering a concise definition.
4 Likes
Hilarious because no one tells me what to think or say. I am an independent agent, and as long as I obey society’s laws, I answer to no one, including some dude floating on a cloud in the sky.
My snarky reply to your comment would be “theists are not allowed to say “I do not know”.”
2 Likes
YET …
2 Chronicles 15:12-13
12 And they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and with all their soul, 13 but that whoever would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, should be put to death, whether young or old, man or woman.
History is rife with many examples of atheists being horribly murdered by theists just because they were atheists. I can not state that the reverse is not true, but I can not find or remember any examples.
The theist world declared war on atheists, and that is still going on.
2 Likes
I see a lot of comments here and you’re still not reading or understanding.
This makes me a bit sad and tired.
Cognostic, why are you such a moron?
This isn’t about the ability to dream, it’s about Language usage and staying true to your beliefs.
If you believe that God doesn’t exist and you believe that consciousness is a by-product of the brain then you can’t give me an opinion about what do dreams mean, because dreams are just a by-product of the material brain.
But I, on the other hand, can have meaning of dreams because I believe in things you don’t.
So you need to stay true to your beliefs just like I stay true to mine.
If you don’t then you’re an idiot.
Kelli the topic and evidence of Jesus Christ is a long topic where we’re going to go into tired old debates where your Key point as an atheist is that you won’t believe testimonies of others while believing your testimony of an event. Where I will ask questions such as : If you don’t believe others, then why believe when someone says “I’m in pain”? Why react at all? And then you guys being atheists are going to say “duh but we call a doctors so he can verify” and I’m going to say “no no you idiot we’re not even at the doctor phase yet. We’re at the first step:acknowledgment”.
But as I’ve said previously we’re not even there yet. I’m at the first step, the very first thought process in asking Why do we exist?
I explained this to gentleman from Serbia who so far seems like one of the few intelligent ones among you here.
Whitefire, if you bothered to read, I haven’t even gone to the steps of asking What or Who from the gods created the universe, although being a Christian I confess that The Holy Trinity Christian God created the universe.
But as I explained, God is eternal. God is simply a super powerful force or being at this point in discussion. We haven’t even identified him yet.
Also to answer your next question (because you didn’t read): why is god eternal?
Because Infinity (a modern mathematical and philosophical concept) is eternal.
TinMan, I like your posts. They make me laugh and in the humor you show critical thinking and intelligence. I think that I would enjoy talking to you.
You had 2 questions.
- Do you believe your god is all-knowing (Omniscient), all-powerful (Omnipotent), and all-benevolent as described in the bible? Yes I do.
- What made your god? Nobody. God is infinite. Just like the multiverse theory says that we live in an Infinite numbers of universes which collide and create new Big Bangs. So God, is like the infinite concept in mathematics.
TinMan I also read your post regarding your journey and unfortunately like many people you were indoctrinated since childhood with religion instead of truly seeking God.
I, on the other hand was raised in an atheist family and my first walk into a church was when I was 15 years old.
MrDawn, I don’t think you’ve read a damn thing in here.
This makes me sad … and tired.
Calilasaia, I don’t think you’re able to read or understand. This makes me sad … and tired.
David_Killens, the claims of the universe coming from nothing are made by scientists who also delve into philosophy. Scientists who are agnostic. Scientists who aren’t atheist. There are various flavors here of what each group thinks and just like a religion with many denominations, “atheism” is also a church of many groups and my key points here are answers to the Whys and also understanding your (atheists) thought process.
You still haven’t understood my point entirely and you’ve shown me a video and your thoughts on Time after Big Bang not Before Big Bang.
And if you’re not allowed to ask what happened before, then you’re not allowed to participate in this discussion.
Then you give some dumb answers in relation to religious killings (all true) without even understanding my point. This DOES prove that you guys come from a factory.
There’s a lot to discuss here and as experience tells me, most of you are indoctrinated and unable to think clearly, and I’d like talk about things you’ve all mentioned here in different topics as time permits. But a lot of those topics are what I consider tired old topics and this is why my approach is different. I want to understand thought processes when we are faced with an unknown or a mystery. And if I have time to go through all the subjects, I am going to argue that things would be a lot better in being a mystery than being solved. But also, this is a fact because as I’ve said above, we will never know all the mysteries of the universe and existence.
Usually what happens (like in this topic) is that atheists are unable to live, act and speak according to the rigorousity of things they request from others and holding true to their beliefs and lifestyle.
But for now I’m going to open the first other topic which was the result of the interesting, honest and free-thinking discussion I had with the gentleman from Serbia.
The topic of “The consequences of a thought proven to be absolute true”
Can your god create a rock that your god can not lift?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A claim of (for example a tooth ache) is not extraordinary, and since we know people can have tooth aches, it can be casually accepted. But pertaining to the god question, probably the biggest and most important question for mankind, more than personal testimony is definitely required.
Name just one respectable physicist who agrees that this universe came from nothing. FYI I could fill out a form on a web site and have a PhD in my hands in an hour. That does not make me a scientist. Reference a RESPECTED physicist.
Excuse me?
YOU DO NOT DICTATE WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS FORUM.
Fuck, another theist attempting to stifle free speech because it does not agree with what they are saying. When I combine this crap with the utterance that was said in the “Are the rumors true?” thread …
Suddenly I understand you, Eli, are intolerant and probably racist, one who came in here pretending to be full of love and compassion, but are not.
2 Likes
Now you’re just stooping to deflection and evasion tactics like every other theist we’ve had on here who likes to make up shit. You were asked to provide objective evidence for the existence of your deity. You haven’t. What objective evidence can you demonstrate for the existence of any deity?
It’s not that hard. Either you can or you cannot.
1 Like
Not any more. Eli has been banned for threatening physical violence.
2 Likes
Good. It just seemed that with every post he made, he got crazier and crazier. From what I’ve seen with his posts. There was no arguing with him. If @Cognostic wasn’t getting through to him, no one else here was going to.
Ha ha ha ha.
If I was “unable to read or understand”, I would not have been able to present the contents of highly technical scientific papers … or did this elementary concept elude you?
Though I notice you threw an entirely typical mythology fanboy hissy fit while waiting for a simple technical issue to be resolved. The rest of us just exercised patience.
Congratulations on demonstrating that you’re incapable of adult discourse.
4 Likes