I am an atheist thread 3

[_A]

My assertion is that the bible has done this.
Israel in the 1967 war used many of the maps and geographical landmarks in the bible to fight and win the war. (detail)

Rulers and Kings named in the bible uncorrelating withh the message.

witness testimonies.

The bible’s history matches up to any world history book published today in producing evidence beyond a reasonable doubt
making the bible fact unless it can be proven otherwise.

The bible places the age of the earth at around 6000 years. Modern scientific evidence shows that this figure is wrong by several orders of magnitude.
There is one glaring example of the bible being incorrect. How many do you need?

 

[_A]

I hope my last several posts had better grammatical structure for you.

Thanks, they have been a little easier to understand.

 

[psyche23]

I don’t know how to make a god. If you don’t kno whow to either, you might try phrasing this in a way that is more clear to me.

I do value freethinking. I just wonder why you would think that a being who tortures over six billion beings for the mistake of one man is worthy of worship.

For that matter, why would a supreme being want worship?

I think of it this way…

a 4 year old little girl gets sick with leukemia and has to undergo a series of tests and radiation treatments to cure this disease. Her parents are sick with grief over it and every time they take their girl to the hospital she starts shaking and crying out of fear. They absolutely dread these hospital visits. She pleads and pleads to her parents not to take her to the awful doctors who make her feel sick. What she does not know is that going to the doctors “who make her feel sick” will likely save her life. If her parents accepted the child’s pleas and did not take her to get treatment, that little girl will die. Instead, they have to practically drag her in in hopes that her life might be saved. God does the same thing for us. We may not understand why we have to go through pain, but when it’s all said and done, we’re happier, healthier and holier people.

 

[_A]

NE:

What it does mean is that there is no scientific evidence (i.e., no results of scientific experimentation) that demonstrates that functioning DNA can be created by natural occurrences.

What it does mean is that there is no scientific evidence (i.e., no results of scientific experimentation) that demonstrates that functioning DNA can be created by intelligent beings?

 

[_A]

… only a few possible grounds to explain its beginning:

1. 
   *]God
   *]Aliens
   *]Mystery

1. 
   I was just wondering why you put the first two options in there? Is there some evidence that a god, or aliens had a hand in it?
   If not, then we are loft only with your last option, which I find acceptable.

 

[Pax]

The bible places the age of the earth at around 6000 years. Modern scientific evidence shows that this figure is wrong by several orders of magnitude.
There is one glaring example of the bible being incorrect. How many do you need?

You misunderstand the bible as do many fundamentalists.

 

[FaithofAbraham]

The bible places the age of the earth at around 6000 years. Modern scientific evidence shows that this figure is wrong by several orders of magnitude.
There is one glaring example of the bible being incorrect. How many do you need?

You can’t really go by the age of Adam since if he ate from the Tree of Life in the Garden wouldn’t have started aging until the point he was cast from the Garden.

So Adam may have been there for millions of years while evolution was going on outside the Garden, which may also include other humanoids from apes, etc.

And the days previous to Adam may have just been setting evolution and such into motion, not the actual days of having the final product.

So there is really no way to refute Genesis since it can be explained a number of ways to agree with modern evidence.

 

[_A]

I am curious on something–I have read through this thread…and also have atheist family members, who seem to chant the same mantra…‘a loving God would not punish us.’ So, as a parent–do you let you child(ren) do whatever they like?

The difference here is that a parent is not claiming to be all-knowing, all-powerful and omni-benevolent.
Also, if a parent found a child to have done something worthy of punishment, would it be fair to punish the next few generations for it?
How about punishing hundreds of generations of descendants for one transgression? Does that seem fair?

 

[FaithofAbraham]

If you are not fit to rule yourself then maybe it is best that you continue to believe. It sounds like, without your belief in your god, you would not be moral.
I am the way I am without a fear of a supreme being.

I’m not saying that, I just posted that atheists are not automatically immoral. I’m saying you put your faith into things that die and can’t save themselves from death. If the highest intelligence for you is man, then by default men are the gods here for you.

What for? What specifically did he do? I say even if he does exist, he hides his tracks so well it suggests that he definitely doesn’t want credit.What I do for people, I do because I decided that I want to. I mean that, according to your mythos, Yahweh made everyone have sin as a punishment for this tiny infraction of Adam.

If God gave you life that’s pretty much all you have, and all credit goes to God. If you blew me off I wouldn’t really want to do much to keep helping you along either.

I just look at this life like a dream, then we wake up to reality in Heaven. All the bad things will be like part of a bad dream, easily forgotten. All the good things will be good memories. So God isn’t torturing anyone.

If people want to cling to this life as being all there is, maybe that’s all you will have for eternity, memories of this life to treasure. To me that’s what hell is, being all alone with your thoughts, and if they are bad thoughts it won’t be that pleasant. But that would be your own choice, and your own torturing yourself.

You have the Bible, and people who say they have seen miracles. And prophecies like I gave you. And I bet you $100 if you prayed every day like I did for a year or two, when I used to be agnostic, you would see evidence of God for yourself. But if you don’t lift a finger to go looking then you may not see it. It’s like a treasure hunt, those who put out the effort to find it get the treasure, those who sit back doing nothing won’t. That’s basically what Jesus said, referring to his parables.

Sin is your gods temper tantrum for someone not listening to him thousands of years ago. I wonder if his message was vague and uncertain then, too.

If all that didn’t happen then you wouldn’t exist. So here you are just blaming God for things that resulted in your existence. Are you sorry you exist?

 

[whatevergirl]

The difference here is that a parent is not claiming to be all-knowing, all-powerful and omni-benevolent.
Also, if a parent found a child to have done something worthy of punishment, would it be fair to punish the next few generations for it?
How about punishing hundreds of generations of descendants for one transgression? Does that seem fair?

so, you’d believe if God (in your mind) did not do such things?

 

[NaturalEnquirer]

I am curious on something–I have read through this thread…and also have atheist family members, who seem to chant the same mantra…‘a loving God would not punish us.’ So, as a parent–do you let you child(ren) do whatever they like? Is that love? Do whatever you like, with no consequences? God actually doesn’t punish really–but there are natural consequences to doing the wrong things in life (sinning). If this is the typical argument for an atheist, which seems to be the trend here and offline–would an atheist believe in a god who just lets us do whatever we want–with no consequences? If I allowed my own children to run amuck, and just tell them I love them with no guidance or teaching of consequence…would that be loving? Is the issue of not believing in God, for an atheist, really about the inability to believe in a being who punishes for wrong doing?

This conversation is putting me in the position of devil’s advocate with alarming frequency. Having said that, several responses come to mind.

First is the eternal nature of hell. When my daughter misbehaves, I’ll put her in timeout for a few minutes. That way she learns not to do it again. But if I put her in timeout forever, what does she learn? Technically, I guess she does learn a hell of a lesson (so to speak), but she doesn’t have a chance to apply that lesson.

Second is the perception that hell is overpunishment. This makes sense to me, too. If hell is a place of punishment, created by a just god, then we can expect the punishment to relate to the crime. Being burned forever for one unrepented sin… I can totally understand people scratching their heads about that.

That’s why it’s so important to understand the church’s real teaching on hell. Hell is the state of deliberate, willful separation from God. No one goes to hell accidentally. We know that through God’s mercy, even the hardest heart can come to repent. That’s all it takes!

Sometimes it’s hard, in this life. We’re all operating on finite information, filtered through human senses. We don’t always understand why we should be called to repent for some things. I wish I could dig up the passage in Faustina’s (I think) writings, of a dialog between Jesus and a dying man. Bottom line – there’s no reason to think God is going to damn anyone without giving them all the information they need to make the right choice.

If, given all that information, they choose separation from Him… What more can be done?

 

[whatevergirl]

This conversation is putting me in the position of devil’s advocate with alarming frequency. Having said that, several responses come to mind.

First is the eternal nature of hell. When my daughter misbehaves, I’ll put her in timeout for a few minutes. That way she learns not to do it again. But if I put her in timeout forever, what does she learn? Technically, I guess she does learn a hell of a lesson (so to speak), but she doesn’t have a chance to apply that lesson.

Second is the perception that hell is overpunishment. This makes sense to me, too. If hell is a place of punishment, created by a just god, then we can expect the punishment to relate to the crime. Being burned forever for one unrepented sin… I can totally understand people scratching their heads about that.

That’s why it’s so important to understand the church’s real teaching on hell. Hell is the state of deliberate, willful separation from God. No one goes to hell accidentally. We know that through God’s mercy, even the hardest heart can come to repent. That’s all it takes!

Sometimes it’s hard, in this life. We’re all operating on finite information, filtered through human senses. We don’t always understand why we should be called to repent for some things. I wish I could dig up the passage in Faustina’s (I think) writings, of a dialog between Jesus and a dying man. Bottom line – there’s no reason to think God is going to damn anyone without giving them all the information they need to make the right choice.

If, given all that information, they choose separation from Him… What more can be done?

The thing is, I’m not a big pusher of discussing hell. I believe in sin and the need for repentance–but God is all merciful, and it is up to Him to judge. I don’t subscribe to telling people–if you don’t believe, you’re heading for hell…if you do this or that–you’re heading to hell…I know many people who do ‘preach’ in this way, and not only can it be destructive, but it’s not helpful to someone trying to understand the loving mercy of God. (which supercedes our human minds in my estimation)

So…your post is not falling on deaf eyes. I agree…but really, does God place us in Hell? I think that if we live a life apart from God…why would we expect to spend eternity with Him?

 

[NaturalEnquirer]

So…your post is not falling on deaf eyes. I agree…but really, does God place us in Hell? I think that if we live a life apart from God…why would we expect to spend eternity with Him?

Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. Again: deliberate, willful separation from God.

 

[_A]

You just don’t seem to be able get it… God did not create sin! He did not create death!

Your god is supposed to have created all. It’s like miracles - I have heard people call a person who survives a plane crash a ‘miracle’. If that is true, then all the people who died in the crash were also a miracle. If your god did not want sin and death, it would either not exist, or he could not be called all-powerful.

He is not planting sin into souls, that is simply false, they do that themselves. I think you really do not know christianity as much as you seem to assume.

The way I was led to understand it, even a fresh newborn baby has that ‘sin’ on them - though they have not done anything yet.

I typically look at the description of a furnace of fire and gnashing of teeth in the bible, the same way I look at descriptions of heaven as being the sky in the same text. I think these are useful descriptive devices which were meant to educate a religious meaning and not a scientific one.

But the bible is (so I am told) the word of a god, while you are just a guy interpreting it. There are many interpretations, just because yours ‘feels good’, does not mean it is the right one.

I do understand hell the way the Lord describes it, it is a place of eternal misery, pain and gloom. It is such a place because it is filled with sin and God is not present. God does not intend that any person should go there… why is that so difficult to believe?

Because someone suggested that he was all knowing and all powerful.

I would recommend (not that you would although you have now suggested it) you put greater stock in to the words of the Lord, but I do not think that what I have told you contradicts it, but is in fact in conformity with it.

Furnace fire suggests torture by fire. Gnashing of teeth suggests pain. This is his promise, and threat. Your gentler interpretation is warm, but I see no reason to believe that it is anything other than common sense on your part. The bible is full of nonsense.

 

[_A]

I think of it this way…

a 4 year old little girl gets sick with leukemia and has to undergo a series of tests and radiation treatments to cure this disease. Her parents are sick with grief over it and every time they take their girl to the hospital she starts shaking and crying out of fear. They absolutely dread these hospital visits. She pleads and pleads to her parents not to take her to the awful doctors who make her feel sick. What she does not know is that going to the doctors “who make her feel sick” will likely save her life. If her parents accepted the child’s pleas and did not take her to get treatment, that little girl will die. Instead, they have to practically drag her in in hopes that her life might be saved. God does the same thing for us. We may not understand why we have to go through pain, but when it’s all said and done, we’re happier, healthier and holier people.

Your god *likes *suffering, sin, pain and death, it is easy to see this if you look at what his creation is. If he couldn’t do it any other way, then why call him all-powerful?

 

[_A]

You misunderstand the bible as do many fundamentalists.

I refuse to accept that the catholic church is honestly interpreting the bible. They have too much money to lose to be considered an impartial source.

 

[_A]

You can’t really go by the age of Adam since if he ate from the Tree of Life in the Garden wouldn’t have started aging until the point he was cast from the Garden.

So Adam may have been there for millions of years while evolution was going on outside the Garden, which may also include other humanoids from apes, etc.

And the days previous to Adam may have just been setting evolution and such into motion, not the actual days of having the final product.

So there is really no way to refute Genesis since it can be explained a number of ways to agree with modern evidence.

So then Adam is not the ‘father of our race’, and since he is not, then none of us are stained with his sin.

 

[oneGODoneCHURCH]

So are the pyramids.

Not quite true. We do not have the ability to build the some of the pyramids to the mathematical precision that they were built. But we do know what they are built from and how they were built, we could also replicate them.With the Shroud we not only can not replicate it but have know idea how it was made to begin with.

 

[NaturalEnquirer]

I refuse to accept that the catholic church is honestly interpreting the bible. They have too much money to lose to be considered an impartial source.

Universities have a lot of money to lose, but I still trust them to teach. You haven’t reached any kind of standard to establish wrong-doing. Heck, you’ve hardly established an allegation of wrong-doing. You’ve only said that you won’t accept it.

 

[FaithofAbraham]

So then Adam is not the ‘father of our race’, and since he is not, then none of us are stained with his sin.

Adam is supposed to be the father of humans, not Neanderthals which died out or were assimilated through breeding with Adam’s children.