What's your story of why you're an atheist?

Debate Room
102

It shouldn’t be–it should be the default stance.

I grew up in a household where religion wasn’t mentioned and we never went to church, so atheism was the order of the day. I was a natural skeptic, and figured out that Santa Claus wasn’t real when I was about five years old, so extending that to god(s) wasn’t much of a stretch.

Why do I continue to be an atheist? Because there’s no evidence for the existence of any gods, therefore I have no reason to start believing. I live in a liberal blue state, and there’s no societal pressure to be religious, and I can do things like read The God Delusion in public without repercussions.

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103

Same here but it wouldn’t make any difference if I were, for some reason, stranded someplace like, say, Alabama, other than that I’d be more circumspect than I already am, and would strive to live in a major urban center just for my general sanity.

I don’t lead with my unbelief in NY state less because it’s dangerous or would get overt pushback, than that nobody cares.

And that is in my observation what honks off Christians most about unbelievers or “the unchurched” – it’s not that we’re antagonistic or something, it’s that we aren’t interested. We don’t seem to need it. Boy does that butt-hurt them.

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104

I’m a atheist begins with why I’m I a Raelian.

105

I am still waiting for @beach_side to explain why he thinks this. It appears I have waited in vain.

106

I have something of interest to contribute about out of body experiences.

When I was a paramedic, I transported a man with an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer from the hospital to hospice.

We were carrying on a conversation with him while we were wheeling him through the hospital, and he stopped talking when we got on the elevator, and began laughing uncomfortably when we got off on the ground floor.

I asked him to share the joke, and he told me that he thought he had died, because he just had an out of body experience and described the phenomena of floating above his body while looking down at himself.

He was a retired lawyer, so he was very articulate, and his account was so vivid that he made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I couldn’t get this conversation out of my mind . . . and here is the punchline: We returned to the same hospital later that night for another call, and this is when I discovered that the elevator had a mirrored ceiling.

True story.

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107

It’s not unlikely when we are severely ill, that our senses, which can be so easily deceived even when we are at our best, can be more easily deceived.

Thanks for that, it amply illustrates why leaping to magic as an explanation is unhelpful, in the absence of a ready natural explanation.

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108

I don’t place a lot of credibility in testimony.

  1. Innocent people are often wrongly convicted of crimes that they didn’t commit because of testimony. This is especially true if the suspect is Black (at least here in the USA).

  2. There is a demon-possessed haunted house in Amityville New York which has–literally–spawned approximately 70 movies. There have been hundreds of people who claim to have had experiences connected to this house . . . when the original source of the supernatural phenomena was a cynical scam dreamed up by people wanting to cash in with a best-selling book. The scam worked.

  3. Human senses are flawed and have limitations. Professional magicians and illusionists are well aware of this, and they earn a living by making a science out of exploiting these weaknesses for the entertainment of the masses.

And so on.

What testimony should be good for is to guide further investigation with better tools.

As an example, if everyone believes that a house is haunted, then spend the night there with cameras, infrared imaging equipment, test animals, and so forth, and maybe something might come of this.

Otherwise, testimony is little more than gossip.

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109

Jesus Christ is real, Jesus is so kind and not evil at all. I do not want to scare everyone but Jesus Christ is real. Exorcisms work, I felt the holy spirit it is unlike this world. Atheists please listen to me. I can debate anyone really.

110

If you have something specific to debate about, feel free to start a thread. But be advised that your post here, and your other posts I’ve seen, are 100% bare assertions. You cannot just tell us about your personal experience of your faith, you must demonstrate that (1) a god exists, (2) that it is your specific god as you understand him and (3) he can be evidenced to a rational skeptic.

Otherwise, trust me: you’re wasting your time here.

111

I don’t believe you, please offer something beyond the bare claim.

I don’t believe you, nor would I accept an any entirely unevidenced claim.

What is it that you want to debate?

112

Hello nanap,

If you would like to debate anyone here, are you familiar with how debate works?

For instance, could you tell us why personal testimony, on its own and unsupported by independent corroborating evidence, is insufficient to win a debate or to be persuasive in this forum?

Could you also tell us why things believed only by faith and unsupported by independent corroborating evidence are insufficient to win a debate or to be persuasive in this forum?

Could you also tell us why ancient writings that are unsupported by independent corroborating evidence are insufficient to win a debate or to be persuasive in this forum?

Could you also tell us why emotional appeals that are unsupported by independent corroborating evidence are insufficient to a win a debate or to be persuasive in this forum?

Thank you,

Walter.

113

it’s pretty simple. I just don’t want to “believe” that gods don’t or do exist. I want to know for sure if they do. so far, they don’t.

Also, I don’t like the notion of the afterlife and prefer to stay dead if I were to die.

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114

ps i don’t really like being called an atheist because I see a lot of them having copious amounts of hubris and arrogance like the theists they criticize. But not believing in gods is enough to qualify for an atheist, so I really don’t know what to call those ‘atheists’ i keep seeing.

115

My wife would agree; she dislikes the label also, though more explicitly for how it gums up social lubrication – I’d argue it doesn’t require anything but the label for some people to be highly reactive to it, even absent the hubris you mention. Before she knew me, she would have rejected the label, now she embraces it, but still privately.

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117

Here’s just one of many examples where you change to an argument I’m not trying to make. I’m not trying to get anyone to believe anything based on evidence, especially flawed evidence. You moved the goal post.

I did provide a lot of citation from Long’s study which you ignored regarding why NDE’s, an example of consciousness without matter is more worthy of investigation than fictional characters such as the tooth fairy. That’s been my only real argument.

“Hardly remarkable…” your subjective opinion.
You changed the goal post again– “not evidence it’s real” I never argued that.

“Given how many will likely share the same subjective religious beliefs” I addressed that and so did Long, debunking it.

There’s a lot in your post I can respond to, but too often you address arguments I never made so it’s not productive. You also have no problem going to insults. I do. So for those reasons, won’t be responding to your posts in the future. Peace out.

118

Where in that sentence did I remotely suggest you were making that argument? That’s my argument about how poor an evidentiary standard you are setting, and the consequences thereof.

Nope, you just missed the point entirely.

That’s untrue, go back and read my objections.

There has never been any such example, but by all means break it here first in a tiny corner of the internet, I have to say I am naturally beyond sceptical, and a more plausible explanation is you have again simply accepted woo woo claims with words like research and investigation in the title, because you are biased in favour of the idea.

Dear me, that is my observation, I am not assigning it to you, it is a response that what you posted is just a bare anecdotal claim. What exactly do you want here, to endlessly repeat the same unevidenced woo woo claims, and not have anyone comment?

I never saw that addressed by you or anyone else, by all means knock yourself out, but the claims remain entirely subjective as presented thus far.

They’re my arguments about your claims, things you clearly can’t or won’t see, you can’t dictate how people judge your claims. They’re the usual anecdotal unevidenced woo woo we see presented after the term NDE or OBE is offered up.

You must do as you are minded to, as will I. Meanwhile since you brought the study up again lets take another look:

“The core of Long’s research is a collection of thousands of self-reported experiences (read unevidenced and anecdotal) submitted via his website. Sceptics argue that these are anecdotal, and thus prone to memory biases, embellishment over time, and a lack of precise medical verification at the time of the event.”

This is a very poor standard for research, and it goes on.

“Critics highlight the lack of controlled studies, where researchers are present during medical emergencies to verify perceptions in real-time. Empirical paradigms using hidden visual targets have been proposed, but results have been limited by practical constraints and the low occurrence rate of NDEs under controlled conditions.”

“a scientific viewpoint maintains that subjective experiences, however vivid, do not necessarily provide information about an objective, non-physical reality. “

When your man is on the telly accepted his Nobel prize I will duly acknowledge his work has any merit, until then it’s not different to any other collection of anecdotal claims.

119

It is true that controlled studies for this kind of thing are particularly difficult and expensive to pull off, and the only attempt to do so basically failed to reach a conclusion due to the alluded-to “practical constraints”. But I totally agree that doesn’t mean that you can replace it with anecdotes and thus “prove” anything.

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120

The bias is also hard to miss, both from the author of the “research” as this is exposed in widespread criticisms of both the lack of scientific and objective rigour, and by his champion here, who clearly lacks objectivity, the very acronyms are themselves leading and biased of course. Though obviously the title “objectively unevidenced anecdotal clams” has less of a ring to it than “near death or out of body experience”.

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121

Athiest Cause??? What is that??? I must have missed the memo (as usual). I swear, sometimes I think these yahoos around here PURPOSELY make sure I’m not included in any of the Atheist Games. Even after I got rid of my shiny red nose, they still have a tendency to snub me at times. (I admit, I do miss that nose sometimes. :disappointed_face: ) So, I have not doubt they have been having all sorts of Atheist Cause meetings behind my back every chance they get. Although, to be fair, I know I’m not around here as much as I once was. Having a 5 y.o. grandson tends to limit the free time I once had. (But I digress…) As for the arguing part, who the hell else do you expect us to argue with around here? We don’t get nearly the influx of theists as we did a few years ago. Yep, Those were some good times. The trickiest part of all of that was having to sort out all the trolls that would slither in on a regular basis. Anyway, uh…. Where was I going with all of this? :thinking:

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122

The next meeting is in Wales in Shelleys old place before they turned into a McBurger place….8am on boxing day…

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