Welcome @Russoguru …we’re you raised as a JW? How long have you been out? Were you baptized?
I was raised a witness. I’ve been out for almost 7 years now,
I was baptized back in 1990, mostly because of peer pressure.
I was raised in the truth. Baptized at 14 (1982). Been out the last 20 some odd years 
Welcome to Atheist Republic Russoguru , you are in friendly company.
As you now know, Whitefire13 was a JW too, so although you took different paths, each of you escaped that religion/cult.
In here we have frequent discussions on the harm religion inflicts on people. And although I was incredibly fortunate to be brought up in a very soft and benign religion (United Church of Canada), I am now very aware of the pain and suffering religion inflicts.
This is a place to heal, share stories, to learn and hopefully become a better person.
WELCOME
Welcome from sunny South Australia, where it is presently raining.
Going by another recovering JW we have here, they’re one of the nastier and ignorant, sects around.
Gee, you’re the third hard atheist to find his way here recently.
I’ll say the same to you as I said to them: You have made an affirming claim. That attracts the burden of proof. So far no one in recorded history has been able to provide empirical evidence that a god does or does not exist.
As far as I’m aware, god(s) cannot be argued into or out of existence. If god could be argued out of existence, the world population of atheist would be much larger than 13% existence
Like most members here, I’m an agnostic atheist; I do not believe, but am unable to claim knowledge. That’s the best I can do. Not sure it makes a great deal of practical difference. I live my daily life as if the are no gods and no non material world.
According to D. Adams they can, but be careful:
“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don’t. QED.”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
“Oh, that was easy,” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
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BUT "The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that something so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.”
Cherry picking! What you just quoted is what immediately precedes my quote above, in which God disappeared in a puff of logic and thus ceased to exist by being argued out of existence. As proven by your own link. Q.E.D.
I found this interesting. An example of (some) human thinking and mind-set… I had never heard of this, but I had delved into the John Titor claims… there is an amount of commonality to these that lead some to believe them as “true”. I think
the storylines and outrageous claims in these provide some insight into religious/ideological thinking.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NIG3x3kVtos
In the ‘80s a story (local) at first was distributed via pamphlet for “fun”
HOW it grew AND has “true believers”. Fascinating.
IN Oz, we have’ Picnic at Hanging Rock", which is pure fiction. Sometime after the film, people who believed it was based on fact began turning up.
The film was shot here in South Australia, in the Clare Valley, 90 odd miles from Adelaide. The mansion is Martindale Hall, one of the better old piles in the state…
HEY
… the one I posted was based on Chaos (yours has Chaos and Order)
Woah!!!
maybe there is an Order of Chaos
Edit: Peterson’s definition (?) explanation of Order/Chaos … 
@boomer47 Sounds like the Universal Translator in those Star Trek movies. LMAO!
@Get_off_my_lawn He will NEVER find work at a Cherry farm, at this rate! ![]()
The first thing that I failed to realize is that there is no ‘evidence as such’ for the existence of a God or gods. In fact this has never been the central thrust of ANY religion including Budhism (a cult favorite of the many new age religious people) (many of these people actually believe in things that have FAR LESS evidence than the biblical God, which is the divine God that is the fabricator of objectivity and truth, which is true. I posit that the evidence you seek is not at all physical, material, or literal…ie a letter written from God to you with special swirls that ONLY God could have made, but something far simpler and less convoluted or conjecture related. For even if you met an angle of God who took you to heaven and showed you the entire heavenly realm it seems to me that most atheists would not choose to believe in The God at the root of this mess we call existence.
I posit that there is little evidence as such to PROVE God’s existence but there is AMPLE evidence to suggest that He IS. Firstly Cause and Effect. There can be no cause and effect without an initial cause. For we can assume that all things were brought into existence by a cause as that is the most clearly observable and directly obvious fact that anyone can tell you of. As such it is an adequate starting point for any discussion about God.
There is no explanation for the beginning of the universe that is intelligible besides a radical cause of creation. Something happened, and this is the central fact of all science. Now as to the evidence of who caused this fact, that is up for debate. Perhaps it is the personification of nothingness that is cleverly crafted in the minds of many atheists these days, or perhaps it is a meaningless cause of the universe and entropy is the heart of reality. This is perhaps better explained as a projection of people who feel this way inwardly meaning a sense of ever greater LACK and dissipation which is to be expected of a creation that is apparently Dying as it stands currently and not growing or ‘evolving’ towards better and more fulfilling outcomes at first glance.
I do not disagree that this is the outward state of humanity and the mind, it is the default state, but what I anticipate is that rather than believing that the universe has Transcendent origins, which is the simpler and easiest explanation, that there will be hollow rebuttals about how the universe perpetually grows and then collapse and creates a multiverse, which of course is the most faith based kind of conjecture that anybody can come up with because it is again MUCH simpler to posit INTENTION to the creation of the world than ascribe a multi-infinite - Ad infinitum mechanism to the universe which can NEVER be proven or observed. I do not buy into the arguments that science will account for these things either, because the age of man is nearly over even according to his own beliefs and when therefore will man see the end of his works? I do not believe that mankind has it within them to prosper beyond ethical morality and the framework of existence in this era we have created to self-create ourselves in whatever image we desire or inwardly feel inclined towards. yes this is a nod against homosexuality.
You, being an atheist surely also believe in the Truth, which is the superseding reality that constrains all people who exist as self-described ‘sovereign entities’ in this world. So I wonder where the Truth is attributed to for people who don’t attribute it to the divine creator who supersedes this creation. As i have stated, I believe this is the simpler conclusion to make about the truth.
Now God in particular is our creator, and He has created us to understand and to know him, therefore it is not hard to understand Him. He speaks plainly and knows all the thoughts of people and their hearts. Even from a literal perspective God is an inevitability. Things are arranged in a certain fashion, regardless of what that fashion really IS. But there is no logical constraint on that existence from being self aware. God is fully self aware and sees everything that people do because He is truly the only one that IS. We are merely replicas of that divine spark. Therefore let it not be said that it is not obvious to people that the Creator Could not exist or even LIKELY doesn’t exist, for the very possibility of human intelligence precludes the nature of intelligence is likely not original to this creation. This is also proven now with the understanding that intelligence itself is not divine, even artificial intelligence can perform Pattern recognition needing to inform rational decision making, but nowhere is there any hard evidence of sincere conscious awareness in any of the ‘literature’ nor can it be proven except by inference and assumption of other’s opinion. In fact an atheist is totally at large to believe they are the only one who is truly aware and that everyone else is merely a part of their simulation. This is the dreadful truth about no knowledge of God and claiming to have no part with God, you deny your very soul.
Let me not take up the entire space of this forum and continue to rationalize in the response section, but I will defend that rationally God is most probable, despite our apparent “lack of evidence” and that even children understand what it means that “God exists”, this will be under attack in the near future as well to ensure the very root of human identity is suppressed. I am not taking aim at you but trying to guide you through a series of steps to understand who God is and just what the nature of reality is by mere inference. My evidence itself is your own nature to deny evil and to affirm good, even at your own risk. The definition of God is not my concern as I genuinely believe everybody has a good sense of who God is, as we are all spirits and God is a spirit.
Obtuse or acute? ![]()
Welcome to Atheist Republic
Then what is the cause for your assumed god?
Good, then since you claim to know the nature of your god, I have a question almost every theist attempts to ignore or squirm out of.
Why does this loving god give innocent children cancer, to die suffering deaths?
Do NOT tell me what I am thinking, do not put words in my mouth. If you choose to go down this road, I will reciprocate.
Says who?
So its all about YOUR belief? Hardly a reliable measure.
Stick around you might find out if you drop your silly assumptions.
What? Who or what is going to “:suppress the root of humanity”?
Gin and tonic please. Easy on the tonic.
There are many natural disasters incoming to this planet and you will be witness to them now and forevermore. They will be at your very doorstep. So I will let time be my witness for these statements about society and be content with my opinions based on truth.
Just as Jesus predicted we are seeing the many signs of the incoming doom of this planet.
Matthew 24:4 " you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of sorrows."
You should know what the end of the next Great conflict will be. Nuclear obliteration of Earth. Do you claim nuclear war is never going to happen, it is likely in fact. What hope is there but God?
I believe we will soon reach a peak of natural disasters which are being ‘mitigated’ under the directives of the U.N. and international groups claiming to be “fixing global warming” by removing gas of course and claiming false sciences to protect the atmosphere or other types of scientific gaslighting. This is needed to keep peace for a while between the many parties of government who might otherwise overthrow one another and therefore create the circumstances for war.
But none of this is my point, I am simply addressing your questions about what is currently going on in the world and why it is happening as well as how it ties into God.
See:
Global number of natural disasters increases ten times
13 ways the Earth showed its wrath in 2020
This planet began life as a boiling cauldron of melted metals and compounds. It has always been, and always will be in a state of turmoil.
So this statement only reflects what any informed person already knows.