Apostates versus converts

Hume said:
God is only what people think it to be.
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You must be a politician.

Let me lay out what I THINK your position is, but are afraid, for some reason, to articulate.

1) You BELIEVE (blindly guess) that there are no gods. None of any kind. None of the kind I suggested...a creator GOD.

That is the sum of it. All the rest is just decoration...used to shield you from having to defend that position.

And I acknowledge that you may be correct...just as I acknowledge to the people who BELIEVE (blindly guess) that there is a god...the god they worship...that they may be correct.

One of you is wrong. Either there is at least one GOD or there are no gods.

Also there is nothing wrong with guessing on the matter. Earlier, in response to someone who seemed to want me to "take a position" on the issue (make a blind guess)...is did. The coin I tossed (Mr. Coin, a coin my wife and I use to resolve differences in our opinions about who will win in an NFL contest) came up heads...and I had pledged to blindly guess that at least one god exists if the toss ended in a heads.

Can't help but wonder how Mr. Coin did on that toss.

By the way...what about that link I asked for...the one that defines "agnosticism" the way you suggested?
 
Ross Dolan said:
You must be a politician.

Let me lay out what I THINK your position is, but are afraid, for some reason, to articulate.

1) You BELIEVE (blindly guess) that there are no gods. None of any kind. None of the kind I suggested...a creator GOD.
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No, I do not believe in a creator god.

But that is just one of many ideas about god.
 
domer76 said:
Those that rejected their faith were typically head over heels believers. To their core. Evangelical. Hallelujah, praise Jesus, Bible thumping believers.

Then, they began to exercise some real thought and observation rather than accepting everything that had been fed to them.

As I said and these studies validate. Knowledge over faith. Intellect over emotion.
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/shrugs....every atheist is irrational......they say they will only accept that which can be proven......and deny the existence of deities without proof.........
 
PostmodernProphet said:
/shrugs....every atheist is irrational
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You're an atheist when it comes to Zeus or about a million other gods. The only difference between you and any atheist is only one god's worth.

PostmodernProphet said:
......they say they will only accept that which can be proven......and deny the existence of deities without proof.........
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No one is required to prove a negative. You don't have to prove there isn't an invisible unicorn living in your garage to not think there's an invisible unicorn living in your garage.

Learn some basic logic before posting.
 
Obtenebrator said:
You're an atheist when it comes to Zeus or about a million other gods. The only difference between you and any atheist is only one god's worth.
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comments like that prove just how irrational atheists are........"The fact you believe in a deity is proof you don't believe in deities"........incredible.....did you get that brain in the American public schools system?......
 
PostmodernProphet said:
more irrationality....."there are no gods" is as positive an assertion as "there is a God"....../cope.......
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If that was my form of atheism I'd agree. But I'm not that type of atheist. You wouldn't understand. You don't even understand the faith you supposedly hold, how could you understand the lack of that faith?

/cope
 
One question.

If a god exists and influences you without your knowledge, why post god's existence?
 
PostmodernProphet said:
/shrugs....every atheist is irrational......they say they will only accept that which can be proven......and deny the existence of deities without proof.........
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Knowledge over faith. Intellect over emotion.

The smarter ones seeking truth left. The emotional ones needing warm fuzzies joined.

You validate that with your every post.
 
Obtenebrator said:
You're an atheist when it comes to Zeus or about a million other gods. The only difference between you and any atheist is only one god's worth.



No one is required to prove a negative. You don't have to prove there isn't an invisible unicorn living in your garage to not think there's an invisible unicorn living in your garage.

Learn some basic logic before posting.
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The irony is that his Yahweh, the god emerging in the OT as his god, was nothing more than a minor storm god among a pantheon of gods.

In Genesis, “let US make man in OUR image”. There’s his Yahweh speaking to the other gods.

In Genesis, after A&E ate from the Tree of Knowledge, the gods were afraid “they would be like US”.

You can call him Zeus or you can call him Yahweh. A rose by a different name,
 
domer76 said:
I listened to an interesting podcast this morning. Studies that looked at the differences between people who left their religion versus people who joined one.

People who left their religions did it after long and careful study. It was an arduous and difficult journey for most, to abandon everything they had been taught. And suffer the potential ostracism that followed. Ironically, it was the very religion that encouraged them to “seek the truth” that brought them to leave that faith. It was an intellectual decision rather than an emotional one. One didn’t choose to become an atheist. They merely discovered they were one.

The reverse was the case for those joining a religion. It was typically to fill some sort of an emotional or social need at some point in their lives. They had a crisis and the church people or their peers were comforting to them. There was no study of the faith or really knowledge of its teachings. Merely an emotional choice.

Makes perfect sense. Intellect versus emotion. Knowledge versus faith.
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This doesn't surprise me. Religion is best taught to children so they don't approach the claims critically before they can be established as a "given". I find that long after I deconverted and became an atheist it is still hard to shake some of the old "training".

The thing I despise the most is when a person of faith can't accept that someone could possibly wind up an atheist after being exposed to God. So they denigrate the atheist's journey. They suggest the atheist wasn't a "real" Christian to begin with or they think it was because the atheist didn't get a bike for Christmas when they were 10. It makes a mockery of what was actually a very long and painful process of self reflection and study.

But that is a defense mechanism for the faithful. They know they cannot convince an adult on the merits of their supernatural claims so they have to attack anyone who fails to accept the ex cathedra claims. And they are terrified that someone COULD have faith and then lose it. That, for them, would be the worst fate possible....to lose faith and then wind up in hell.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
more irrationality....."there are no gods" is as positive an assertion as "there is a God"....../cope.......
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Obtenebrator said:
This doesn't surprise me. Religion is best taught to children so they don't approach the claims critically before they can be established as a "given". I find that long after I deconverted and became an atheist it is still hard to shake some of the old "training".

The thing I despise the most is when a person of faith can't accept that someone could possibly wind up an atheist after being exposed to God. So they denigrate the atheist's journey. They suggest the atheist wasn't a "real" Christian to begin with or they think it was because the atheist didn't get a bike for Christmas when they were 10. It makes a mockery of what was actually a very long and painful process of self reflection and study.

But that is a defense mechanism for the faithful. They know they cannot convince an adult on the merits of their supernatural claims so they have to attack anyone who fails to accept the ex cathedra claims. And they are terrified that someone COULD have faith and then lose it. That, for them, would be the worst fate possible....to lose faith and then wind up in hell.
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That’s exactly what was covered in this podcast and revealed by the studies.

I had never heard it before because I was never a fundamentalist, but some that were refer to the “4 to 14 window”. There’s even a website “414movement.com. Those are the years that kids are the most vulnerable to the religious indoctrination.

Or, as right wingers put it, “grooming”.
 
domer76 said:
Atheism is the belief that no gods, or in my case, the Christian god, exist.

Agnostic refers to knowledge. With respect to these gods, can we know the unknowable? Nope. Again, in my case, I don’t know that some other power does not exist.

Neil DeGrasse-Tyson puts it well. He keeps looking for the evidence of a god, but has yet to see any. He’s not quite so blunt as others, but his conclusion is the same.
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In the sciences when we test for the effect of a certain treatment we approach it by first assuming that the treatment we are testing has NO EFFECT. This is called the "Null Hypothesis". Then we test AGAINST the null to see if we can find evidence that it does have an effect.

If insufficient data come to the fore we simply FAIL TO REJECT THE NULL HYPOTHESIS. It's always an estimation, there's the possibility that we did insufficient testing or that we didn't find the data that may be there in support of rejecting the null, but at the end of the day we fail to reject the claim that there is no effect.

This is how I approach atheism. As a scientist.

It doesn't make a positive claim "There is no God" as that could always be flawed (perhaps I simply didn't find him in my limited time on the earth, or perhaps he was hiding, etc.)

But I can fail to find sufficient evidence for the positive claim and fail to reject the null hypothesis of "No God"

I feel this is the best I can do.
 
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