What do you think of this conversion from Atheism

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TheOldColonel said:
It seems to be their singular goal to remain in a darkness of sorts
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TheOldColonel said:
Atheists willfully seek to avoid such deeper meaning
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TheOldColonel said:
But for the devout atheist, the eyes must remain closed to such exploration of meaning
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TheOldColonel said:
what atheists resist the most. Indeed, simply stating this often evokes their harshest opposition and condemnation since it confronts them with exactly that which they are trying to avoid
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Of course you may be right and atheists are engaged in a devout, wilful attempt to remain in darkness. Or, I suppose, they might just have thought about it and decided they don’t believe. Somehow the latter seems more likely.
 
Hi Damian
When Christianity teaches you have to die to the flesh and become born again in the spirit what is your understanding of this?

This is what the video explains, it is a journey home and what she had to overcome.
 
sevenswords said:
When Christianity teaches you have to die to the flesh and become born again in the spirit what is your understanding of this?
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No idea, I haven’t got to that point in the video yet. Also, I have no idea what a spirit is. I know what it isn’t but not what it is.
 
Good a comparison word. Good in reference to what? Just like saying you have a positive or negative number. Positive or negative in reference to what? To zero.

Objective good is in reference to the goal of your reference point, just like zero on a number line is your reference point. Why use zero? Why not any other number on the number line? The math still works right? But you have to have a reference point for your objective comparison to work. So just pick a reference point. Once you do, then you can have objective good and bad standards. In reference to what is good, we always leave off the end of that statement, it’s what is good in reference to people. Otherwise you can have slavery as an objective good if your “good” is not in reference to people, right? Good and Bad moral assessment is always in reference to what is “good” and “bad” for people. So, from that subjective reference point of “people”, we can have objective good and bad moral assessments and boundaries right? Socialization is objectively good, slavery is objectively bad, etc.
 
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Yet, one must persists is such a decision. Indeed. It is an act of the will.
 
PickyPicky said:
Nope, it’s just an opinion, and it either changes or it doesn’t. No effort of the will required.
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Opinions formed without effort might not be trustworthy. Indeed. Opinions formed and decisions made in the absence of due discretion should always be highly suspect if, in fact, truth is the goal. Yet, for one who wishes to avoid the process of insight and circumspection leading to truth, such willful unseeing is quite necessary.
 
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TheOldColonel said:
Opinions formed without effort might not be trustworthy. Indeed.
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But then I said nothing about the effort of forming an opinion, I said it did not require an effort of will to maintain, once formed, an opinion as to belief or unbelief in religion.
 
I’m quite intrigued. Do you hold many opinions that require no actual will to believe or maintain? Does that not seem a rather indolent approach to life?
 
Her story has never resonated with me. And for a time I considered myself atheist. It has always sounded to me like she didn’t know religion and therefore considered herself atheist. From what she’s written and said in lectures, she never really understood the arguments in favor of atheism to begin with.

And then, yeah, I’m not into the cult of personality that surrounds her.
 
I disagree with her “atheist” assessment of her child for why it has value in relation to its physical make up and its limited time to be alive. My car is very valuable to me, regardless that it is made of leather and steel and paint and that it will eventually rust away. It allows me to have a better life through access to goods and services that I wouldn’t have access to otherwise. I can take my family to the beach on the weekend. I can relieve stress on the ride home, I can pick up my kids from soccer practice, etc. The time that something stays with me is irrelevant to the quality of life I have with it while it is here. And since it has a limited life span, I have to care for it as much as I can to maximize that time. That limited time my car is improving my life is actually teaching me how to learn about what it takes to care for things in my life that have a limited time with me. I learn how to plan my day to include taking time to care for the things that are important to me because those people, relationships, and goods require maintenance to maximize our time together. My family is valuable to me, regardless of how they are made and/or that they will die some day and not live forever.
You can reduce “feeling good” to chemical processes in the brain, but understanding that physical process does not diminish that value to want to feel good or need to feel good or goal to feel good. Actually, since we understand that physical process, we’ve now developed drugs to induce that feeling for people whose brains are not functioning properly and are able to help them with their depression or other chemically imbalanced mental states. What was religion’s answer to this? Oh cast out those demons, beat the unruly child, animal sacrifice for mental illness, etc. Because behavior is a soul or spirit issue, not a chemical mental state right?
 
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Sciencism is not about stating you can now know what is true of reality, only what you can have justified conclusions about reality at that point. You can still land on a wrong fact about reality, but if all the data you can currently have access to concludes X when it’s actually Y, you are not justified in knowing it’s Y at all. You are only justified in concluding X regardless of how much you want it to be Y, Z, A, B, etc. Reality and our ability to study reality is the bar for what is true about reality, not our imagination or anything else. She claims that she believes her love of her child comes from an external source other than what reality reality indicates is actually there. Okay, how do you demonstrate that other than an assertion of want that to be true? Why is the power of an emotional bond, that reality currently indicates is chemical processes in the brain, soo boring to her that she has to invent something that is just as powerful as that bond to her child?
 
Love is a label we use to describe a mental state and loving actions are social behaviors that people do in order to induce a love state in someone. When Person A feels safe, secure, has predictable expectations of their social group members, physical touch, seen, heard, etc., that chemical feeling is labeled love and the actions their social group members do to keep that person in that chemical brain state is called loving that person through social behaviors that induce that feeling in Person A.
Emotions are physical chemical states of a brain. It’s not a thing floating around the ether. Just like how we describe what our stomachs do, is Digestion. It’s also a physical chemical state of the stomach. There is not thing called Digestion floating around in the ether either.
 
Demonstrate you are more than chemicals other than just stating you want that to be the case since that is what reality has actually demonstrated so far. What evidence is the host using other than an assertion for that statement? If that’s the bar for describing reality, then I’m superman. I am more than just human because I assert I am more than just human. Now that statement can go in the book that describes facts of reality for how reality actually is right? Not the book of how we wish reality was or what we would prefer.
Atheists don’t struggle with this because its irrelevant to us how we are made up for us to accept the truth of what reality indicates what is a person. Its like trying to struggle with the idea that gravity is 9.8m/s^2.
 
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Every atheist that I know has ran the experiment of prayer and, surprise, the results were no different than silent meditation. Reduced stress levels, time to reflect on thoughts, etc. But no miracles, no telepathy conversations, no change in the world’s diseases, infant mortality rates, world disasters, etc.
 
Same thing happens with any young zealot that finds an idea they like.
 
Here’s essentially a type-as-I-watch of the OP’s video:

Around 4 minutes they hit one my least favorite claims made of nonbelievers, that we believe in relative truth. Truth is absolute. Whether there is or is not god or gods is absolute, but since it can neither be proven nor disproven then believing in a god or gods is subjective. This is a topic that really deserves its own thread, but I didn’t want to leave that without remark.

Around 6:30 she claims that when she spoke to a lot of her atheists friends they were rather hostile to questions she asked about things like life’s meaning. Are there people like that? Sure, but I sense a bit of exaggeration on her part. I’m not one to mock someone for assessing the evidence and coming to faith. I’m not as forgiving if she’s painting with too broad a brush regarding those who come to different conclusions.

Around 7:30 she hits on whether a life without an afterlife can have meaning. There have been more than a few topics on CAF about it. If her position on it is that there is no purpose that’s up to her, although I personally disagree with her.

Around 9:30 she claims that “New Atheism” is very well-branded to make it seem like it’s for the “intelligensia”. First, while she claims there are fundamental differences in the so-called New Atherism versus the atheism of someone like Bertrand Russel, in my opinion there an no differences between the two with regard to logical, moral, and scientific underpinings. The only real difference – to me – is its public voice (as best outlined by this cartoon ) Second, while this is not direct correlation with intelligence. it’s known that based on certain test atheists have shown to be more versed in multiple world religions than people who hold to a single faith. Third, she likens atheists to people who buy an expensive purse to show they are rich. Again, are there people like that? Of course, just as there are people do certain things more to announce loudly that they are of a particular faith than because it’s good to do. There’s a reason everyone knows people with a “holier-than-thou attitude”. I am a bit surprised that this woman seems to know a great deal about Christianity, but seems to ignore the 8th Commandment.

Around 13:00 she mentions how when she was an atheist she had a stereotype of believers as being stupid. I have to give her credit for not claiming that all atheists think the same way. She does make one point that should be addressed: That “all of the founders of modern science were believers”. One, these were during times when there was little evidence to suggest a natural cause of things. Two, these were during times where one’s life or liberty could be threatened for espousing nonbelief. Three, their faiths played no roles in their discovery. For example, Newton’s faith didn’t assist in his study of things like math, gravity, or optics.
 
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