Another Atheist...

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Hi everybody,

I’m Phooney, and I’m an atheist. I’ve happened across this site thanks to random middle of the night browsing, and I thought I might just join and see if any thought provoking conversations might develop.

I look forward to talking to you, but for now, it is very late and I have to get some sleep!
 
If you are here because you are seeking God, I think you’ve come to a decent place. If you’ve come to play…perhaps not. Atheism is a word which I guess means a person who does not believe in God. How or why people get to a point where they don;t believe in God is an interesting question. I hope some of your questions are answered here, but know that not all of your questions cannot and will not be answered.

You have faith that there are many galaxies and that they exist even though we can see them, this is faith, faith in science. Same thing with Christian faith. There is abundant evidence that Jesus is who He say He is, but faith bridges some of the gaps.

God Bless you.
 
Fancy Lucy came to play. But God loves her just as much as He loves anyone else. Smile Lucy. God Loves you, even if you don’t believe He exists.
 
Hi

I would like to present some rational arguments for belief in GodAllahYHWH presented in Quran by GodAllahYHWH Himself, to start with the first argument ( this would also make a comparison with the OTBible and NTBible, which are though voluminous as compared to Quran, yet they don’t have any such arguments to present.):

The Holy Quran : Chapter 14: Ibrahim
[14:11] The Messengers said, 'Are you in doubt concerning Allah, Maker of the heavens and the earth? He calls you that He may forgive you your sins and grant you respite till an appointed term.’ They said, ‘You are but mortals like us, you desire to turn us away from that which our fathers used to worship. Bring us, then, some clear proof.’
[14:12] Their Messengers said to them, 'We are indeed only mortals like you but Allah bestows His favours on whomsoever He wills from among His servants. And it is not for us to bring you a proof except by the permission of Allah. And in Allah alone should the believers put their trust;
[14:13] 'And why should we not put our trust in Allah when He has showed us our appropriate ways? And we will, surely, bear with patience all the harm you do to us. So, in Allah let those who trust put their trust. ’
Unquote

Thanks
 
A 40 year Atheist myself till my converstion. Welcome to the forums phooney, but be careful, just look at what happened to me:D
 
Welcome to the forum, Phooney! You will find that this particular forum has atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Protestant Christians, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Jewish people, and others. You’ve come to the right place to get a wide range of ideas.

You have probably noticed there is a conversation already started by another atheist here: forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=198820

Feel free to join that dialog or start one of your own.

👍
 
Hello again!

Thank you to everybody who has extended their warm welcomes. I did indeed notice that there was another conversation already underway, but it was so late when I signed up that I didn’t have a chance to read through the entire thing in any real detail Since there are already many talking points already raised here while I was at work today, I think I’ll probably not disturb the other conversation unless I happen to find myself with a lot of extra time on my hands (not that likely!)

I suppose I am seeking God in a way, in the sense that if I ever came across compelling evidence for such a thing, I would be happy to consider it. However, I have been looking at this particular question in reasonable detail for a few years now, and I think it is FAR too important to accept on faith, so my hunt continues.

I understand the rules here say that my replies must not be too lengthy, is there a word limit? I already fear I may be pushing it with this!

I’ll start addressing the various questions that have been asked of me in a notepad file, and hopefully in the meantime somebody can reply to this and tell me just what and how much I am allowed to post.

May rationality be with you 😛
 
phooney said:
… May rationality be with you 😛
Click to expand...
Phooney:

You’re an extremely friendly atheist! 😛 Seriously, please don’t let any confrontational remarks from some of us put you on the defensive. Keep the friendly attitude (i hope most of us will do the same).

Regarding your remark, i believe rationality was with Socrates, and he found it completely rational and reasonable and necessary to believe that there was one perfect being who was the source of all wisdom.

Regarding your search for answers, what would you say are the questions that, if answered, would best help you make up your mind about whether God exists?
 
@Sams Son

Atheism simply means a lack of belief in any God. Please don’t confuse this with the assertion that there is no God, as in my opinion that would be a very difficult claim to back up with the evidence available to anybody. However, that said, I think it may just be possible to claim that the God of current monotheistic religions doesn’t exist, just due to self-contradiction and incoherence of the story.

People certainly don’t start out believing in God, so I think a more interesting question is how people get to the point where they DO believe in God.

You may be working off a different definition of faith than I am. I would say that faith might be described as “believing in something without evidence, or without sufficient evidence” and the belief that there are many galaxies in no way could possibly fall under that category.

Just because you yourself may not have had the wonderful opportunity to look through a telescope of sufficient power doesn’t mean that believing there are other galaxies out there is anything like faith. Observations of other galaxies have been achieved by thousands of independent parties. If anybody wanted to check these previous observations, it would be remarkably easy. That’s the wonderful thing about science, it is self-correcting, always dynamic with the best evidence currently available. So if you were trying to somehow imply that scientists were lieing about the other galaxies, it would be a pretty dumb thing for them to do.

If you’re interested in this kind of stuff, buy a telescope and see what you can actually see. My breath was taken away the first time I saw the rings of Saturn.
 
@Charlie Zeaiter

I see this post you linked me to is part of another reasonably long thread, I haven’t read any other posts in that thread, just your one that you’ve linked to.

Let me get this straight, you’re taking prophecies from the bible, showing that the fulfillment of those prophecies in the bible, and taking that as proof FOR the events in the bible? It would be more compelling if the people who wrote the NT weren’t actually aware of any of the ‘prophecies’ of the OT when they wrote it wouldn’t it? It would even be nice if the writers were contemporary to when Jesus is supposed to have lived. But they did, and they weren’t.

One of the ‘prophecies’ you’ve mentioned, I do find quite amusing, the wise men following the star. “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east,…” (Matt. 2:1-2). Since the wise men were east of Jesus, how could an eastern star or a star east of them lead them west?

As for many other prophecies, they just aren’t specific enough to warrant as anything better than an educated guess. General wording, as you yourself pointed out, is not good enough to be considered a prophecy. They also shouldn’t be things that people can act out themselves in order to fulfil the prophecy, that’s just weak. Throw out enough prophecies and some of them are bound to be correct, just by random chance, I stopped trying to count the incorrect prophecies of the end of the world a long time ago, suffice to say there have been hundreds, probably thousands just in the last 2 thousand years alone. I find it very suspicious when prophecies are only deciphered AFTER the fact of the event they were supposed to foretell. Much like anything Nostradamus ever did.
 
@paarsurrey

No offence, but I don’t see anything there that could be regarded as an argument. As far as I can see, all it says is, in a very general way of course “You should believe in God”. And that’s it. This isn’t evidence or argument.
 
@Socrates4Jesus

Thanks! I hope everybody here can recognise that I’m not trying to attack them in any way, but I’m not all that concerned if I get a few confrontational remarks, it will take more than that to offend me. 🙂

As far as Socrates himself was concerned, sure rationality may very well have been with him. I seem to recall that the quote “all i know is that I know nothing” was from Socrates too though! However, regardless of his measure of rationality, what Socrates certainly didn’t have was the same wealth of information that we do today. It really would only be speculation on both of our parts to decide what any famous respected historical figure may have believed in regards to God if they had access to the same tools and information that we do today, as well as less pressure from society to believe, or at least profess belief, in a God.

Interesting question you raise… I’m not sure it’s answers I’m looking for per se, but evidence. But answers… there’s just too many really. Hmmmm… I don’t think any one question is really the most major one that would make up my mind…How about this one… how can we distinguish an entity that we can’t see, smell, hear, taste or touch or have any evidence of from an entity that does not exist?

Sorry if that’s not really the kind of question you were looking for?
 
As long as you aren’t running around killing and stealing, secure in the knowledge that there is no God judging you, I could care less.
 
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