I am an atheist thread 3

[Socrates4Jesus]

Welcome back, Socrates4Jesus, how have you been?

Were you going to respond to my posts that were in response to yours as well?

Sorry about the lack of posting today, in particular sorry to Natural Enquirer, you have some nice questions, just one of those days, you know?

Mind you, I still think there are many more points I’ve sent to you that haven’t been responded to yet!

Thank you for your warm welcome, Phooney! I would very much like to respond to your posts, but i’m afraid i will be unable to find them. This discussion thread is such an enormous monster that i feel like Hercules fighting the Hydra. For each head i cut off, two immediately grow in its place to take a bite out of me!

Will you please repeat your reply so that i can look that head in the eye before i take the swing of my blade? So many heads, so little time!

 

[_A]

I’m not sure i understand your meaning, A. I think you are claiming (perhaps facetiously) that i believe:

Faith = ignorance

My response is that i actually believe:

Faith = trust
I’m saying that you have faith (or trust) in the idea that some unknown cause created the genetic code of the first living creatures.

No, I admit ignorance, which is not the same thing at all. I don’t ‘have faith’ that there is no answer, I just don’t know what it is.

So, i pointed out (tongue in cheek) that you have blind faith in this god we might call Mystery!



In contrast, i have faith (or trust) in the idea that the God created the genetic code of the first living creatures.

Faith is your feeling, nothing more. There is no reason to presume a god in this gap in our knowledge.

My point was that there is no scientific evidence that natural occurrences over time can create the DNA of living creatures, so you or i have to rely on some other kind of evidence to prove whether or not God exists.

There is no evidence, so it must have been your god? That is a classic argument from ignorance. A logical fallacy so common, even I know about it.

Do you agree that science does not help us prove or disprove the existence of a God?

No, I think science would help a great deal. Everywhere there are quantifiable claims made about this god of yours, science can check those claims. If there are no claims which science can check, then that suggests to me that the claims are carefully phrased to avoid embarrassing facts from popping up and showing them wrong.

 

[_A]

Thank you for your warm welcome, Phooney! I would very much like to respond to your posts, but i’m afraid i will be unable to find them. This discussion thread is such an enormous monster that i feel like Hercules fighting the Hydra. For each head i cut off, two immediately grow in its place to take a bite out of me!

Will you please repeat your reply so that i can look that head in the eye before i take the swing of my blade? So many heads, so little time!

I know the feeling, S4J. I am going to make a fresh thread when this one is locked (I think the forum locks them when they get over a thousand replies) I will make another. Perhaps we could look at ways to ‘tidy up’ our meandering discussions a bit. I don’t want to discourage anyone from jumping in, either, so I won’t restrict my interaction to those who have read the whole thing.
Any thoughts?

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

No, I admit ignorance, which is not the same thing at all. I don’t ‘have faith’ that there is no answer, I just don’t know what it is…

Yes, i think i understand. Thank you.

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

… Faith is your feeling, nothing more. …

If someone were to unjustly accuse you, saying, “A is completely insincere!” I might respond, “I have spent much time talking with A, and i have complete faith in his sincerity!”

Would you say i’m basing my faith in you on the evidence of your conduct or on warm fuzzy feelings?

 

[c659smith]

I didn’t know there was one…do go on.

Pure Atheists
I am a pure atheist. I am against any form of dalliance with believers of any kind. Atheism cannot be reconciled in my mind with any weird beliefs in any form of the supernatural.

My creed is simple:

I don’t believe in God

I don’t believe in Gods

I don’t believe in Goddesses

I don’t believe in a human soul

I don’t believe in disembodied spirits

I don’t believe in reincarnation or any afterlife

I don’t believe that man is anything other than an animal with a high degree of self awareness

I don’t believe in fate

I don’t believe in destiny

I don’t believe there is a meaning of life

I don’t believe that irrational beliefs are ever right

I don’t believe that religion and superstition should go unchallenged

As a pure atheist I want to keep my creed pure. I have no time for any form of superstition, I will not refrain from mocking it whenever I come across it. Apart from that my mind is open! You may have noticed that mine is a reverse credo, I don’t believe, my beliefs are defined by the absence of wrong beliefs. Only the last two points of my creed can be expressed without a negative. I have no problem with that, I define my ideas as reasonable and reasoned, I differ from those people who have unreasonable and unreasoned beliefs.

Do you disagree on any of these. There are numerous organizations that are atheists and about 1/2 declaree a creed the other half declare there is no creed.

This is one I found that in my opinion woild pretty well wrap up atheism in it’s true sense

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

…
My creed is simple:

I don’t believe in God

I don’t believe in Gods

I don’t believe in Goddesses

I don’t believe in a human soul

I don’t believe in disembodied spirits

I don’t believe in reincarnation or any afterlife

I don’t believe that man is anything other than an animal with a high degree of self awareness

I don’t believe in fate

I don’t believe in destiny

I don’t believe there is a meaning of life

I don’t believe that irrational beliefs are ever right

I don’t believe that religion and superstition should go unchallenged
…

CS:

Do you believe in truth?

 

[1234]

Got any documented miracles of Zeus?

There are no documented miracles of any god.

The one miracle that no god has every performed is that of restoring an amputated limb-- growing it back. When this is done as a response to prayer and thoroughly documented, then one can call it a miracle. I am amazed at what passes for miracles used in the twentieth century canonizations, especially by John Paul II, who loved to canonize. Cures of neurological illness and other poorly documented diseases, usually not in the US or England or other vanguards of modern medicine. No amputated limbs grown back, at last report.

Gods come and go when the civilizations which developed them rise and fall. The gods of ancient Egypt disappeared when Egypt declined, but those gods were in force for thousands of years, longer than Christianity. When the West declines, as it is probably doing, Christianity will decline with it, and as the Middle East rises, Islam will probably rise with it, like it or not.

 

[1234]

I* think it is a much greater arrogance to think that the creator of the whole universe has a concern for you personally, and cares what you eat on Sunday morning.*

Actually the creator USED to care about what you ate on Friday, that is not eating meat!! You could go to hell for that! THEN the Vatican II council came along and decided that you didn’t have to go to hell for eating meat on Friday–I wonder if all the people sent to hell for eating meat were let out?

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

NaturalEnquirer;3229785:

Got any documented miracles of Zeus?

There are no documented miracles of any god.

The one miracle that no god has every performed is that of restoring an amputated limb-- growing it back. When this is done as a response to prayer and thoroughly documented, then one can call it a miracle. I am amazed at what passes for miracles used in the twentieth century canonizations, especially by John Paul II, who loved to canonize. Cures of neurological illness and other poorly documented diseases, usually not in the US or England or other vanguards of modern medicine. No amputated limbs grown back, at last report.

Gods come and go when the civilizations which developed them rise and fall. The gods of ancient Egypt disappeared when Egypt declined, but those gods were in force for thousands of years, longer than Christianity. When the West declines, as it is probably doing, Christianity will decline with it, and as the Middle East rises, Islam will probably rise with it, like it or not.

How about a dead guy who got up and walked? It’s the most well documented historical fact in ancient history, 1234.

 

[1234]

CS:

Do you believe in truth?

…yes, and I don’t think that anything should stand in the way of trying to ascertain it. I believe in searching for the truth, questioning almost every assumption, and in relying on the most highly developed ways of verifying it, especially through modern science and investigation.

 

[c659smith]

I don’t know if it will help you at all, but I was close to putting you on ignore also. I think if your were to post more like S4J, NE or Psyche, you would be getting more of the answers you seek.
As it is, I don’t feel like answering you (other than to joke) because you don’t seem serious.
Read those posters I mentioned, who all disagree strongly with me, yet aim for respectful discourse. I don’t expect you to listen to les or myself, but perhaps these others will be able to lead you.

Show me where I lie other than to insist as others have that questions be answered and not danced around or answered with another question.

I can see where we have gotten hot and heavy on the previous Atheist 2 forum with the abortion issue and you wanting that area dropped in this forum and have agreed as was seen answering a question in regards to that issue when it was brought up.

I have answered as many of the posts directed towards me as directly as one can to include many of my facts and ideas through corrobarating web sites.

Ikddav has called many dishonest and liars to include N.E. throughout these forums.

Personal attacks should not be tolerated.

To attack an idea or someones thought process is a given when in a forum.

Now let him show the evidence I (personally) am a liar or dishonest.

 

[c659smith]

CS:

Do you believe in truth?

Yes I do

 

[1234]

1234;3272282:

How about a dead guy who got up and walked? It’s the most well documented historical fact in ancient history, 1234.

Nothing in ancient history is well-documented.

There were many ‘miracle-workers’ in Judea in the 1st century, AD and many other great prophets, including the Buddha, were alleged to work miracles. Some of the ‘miracles’ described centuries ago, such as levitation, described by Christian and non-Christian religious alike, have vanished–not too many clips of levitation are on YouTube now. Ancient writers were notorious for embroidering their sagas with miraculous occurrences.

Re rising from the dead, if such a thing were actually observed, it is probable that the dead person wasn’t really dead. This still happens when people in the morgue wake up. In recent times, people have been so worried about being buried alive that there were bizarre inventions, including breathing tubes in coffins and commands to wait a certain number of days before burial.

There has been a lot of sociological research about how unreliable an oral history is. This can be verified by sitting 12 people in a circle and having the first whisper a story to the second, the second to the third, and so on and then listening to the final story that #12 tells–usually very different from #1’s story in many respects.

People believe because they want to believe, not because what they want to believe is believable.

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

…yes, and I don’t think that anything should stand in the way of trying to ascertain it. I believe in searching for the truth, questioning almost every assumption, and in relying on the most highly developed ways of verifying it, especially through modern science and investigation.

1234:

I’m impressed by the strenght of your faith in the truth that there is no God. Please tell me what evidence lead you to acquire such a strong confidence that you are right?

 

[_A]

If someone were to unjustly accuse you, saying, “A is completely insincere!” I might respond, “I have spent much time talking with A, and i have complete faith in his sincerity!”

Would you say i’m basing my faith in you on the evidence of your conduct or on warm fuzzy feelings?

I would say that it depends on what the information will be used for. If you accept my sincerity with regards to our discussion here, you would only need evidence of my own offering. If, however, you were going to put me in charge of an orphanage, you might want stronger evidence. Not that you don’t accept what I have presented here, but that you need to get more than *just *my opinion if you want to make sure of the efficiency of management in something as important as an orphanage.
Small decisions or claims can be met with a small amount of evidence. Terribly important decisions or claims need a much larger amount of evidence, for me

 

[c659smith]

Socrates4Jesus;3272301:
Nothing in ancient history is well-documented.

There were many ‘miracle-workers’ in Judea in the 1st century, AD and many other great prophets, including the Buddha, were alleged to work miracles. Some of the ‘miracles’ described centuries ago, such as levitation, described by Christian and non-Christian religious alike, have vanished–not too many clips of levitation are on YouTube now. Ancient writers were notorious for embroidering their sagas with miraculous occurrences.

Re rising from the dead, if such a thing were actually observed, it is probable that the dead person wasn’t really dead. This still happens when people in the morgue wake up. In recent times, people have been so worried about being buried alive that there were bizarre inventions, including breathing tubes in coffins and commands to wait a certain number of days before burial.

There has been a lot of sociological research about how unreliable an oral history is. This can be verified by sitting 12 people in a circle and having the first whisper a story to the second, the second to the third, and so on and then listening to the final story that #12 tells–usually very different from #1’s story in many respects.
People believe because they want to believe, not because what they want to believe is believable.

But it is apparent that many of the Apostles of the New Testament do not differ in the facts of these miracles and only differ in the paticular message they want the reader to understand.

Mark, Matthew, Luke, Paul, Peter, John

this is what makes evidence credible.

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

I would say that it depends on what the information will be used for. If you accept my sincerity with regards to our discussion here, you would only need evidence of my own offering. If, however, you were going to put me in charge of an orphanage, you might want stronger evidence. Not that you don’t accept what I have presented here, but that you need to get more than *just *my opinion if you want to make sure of the efficiency of management in something as important as an orphanage.
Small decisions or claims can be met with a small amount of evidence. Terribly important decisions or claims need a much larger amount of evidence, for me

Agreed. Then faith, in this case, might not be based on feelings but on objective evidence. We might cite many other examples of where a person has faith in something or someone based on evidence other than her feelings.

Do you agree?

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

1234;3272332:

But it is apparent that many of the Apostles of the New Testament do not differ in the facts of these miracles and only differ in the paticular message they want the reader to understand.

Mark, Matthew, Luke, Paul, Peter, John

this is what makes evidence credible.

Very well, but i’m much more interested in your reasons for not believing in God. Will you tell me what you believe is the strongest evidence that He, She or It does not exist?

 

[1234]

1234:

I’m impressed by the strenght of your faith in the truth that there is no God. Please tell me what evidence lead you to acquire such a strong confidence that you are right?

I’m an agnostic, not an atheist.

I have no quarrel with atheists or with those who prefer to believe in a god. People will look at a body of evidence and some will decide as I do and others will decide differently. Many people really feel a need to believe in an all-wise, all-loving god. Some of the latter find their beliefs bitterly dashed when terrible things happen to them, as happen to everyone. I find it a lot easier not to believe in anything, as there is no credible evidence supporting any of it.

As an agnostic:

**I **don’t know. No one knows. It is unknowable.

…but I have a real debate with those who try to force their religions down other peoples’ throats; who use their religion to defile our Constitutions and our Bill of Rights, which I do believe in, as one of the only bastions in this world against tyranny.