Does everyone start out an atheist?

uscitizen said:
No mosquitoes!
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That's fine with me.

We could do without tics as well, otherwise the heavenly version of JPP would feature an identical thread where angelic versions of ourselves all discuss the best way of removing angel tics from angel dogs.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
I certainly don't take on a pet because I want him spending all his time at the neighbors......is the analogy that much beyond you?.....I'm disappointed.....
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The analogy sucks. The better analogy would be children, but even that one is poor. Do you have them because you can control them and make them worship you, or do you teach them to be what they can be and let them grow up?

If God has a father's love as it is expressed in the Bible, he doesn't seek worship, he wants his kids to do well. If God has the Compassion of a mother as Amida Buddha expresses, then God seeks for his children to learn to overcome suffering, again he wouldn't seek worship. If God indeed is seeking constant praise and adoration, and has aspects of human emotions as described in the Bible I would not say it is healthy or adult to seek that kind of affirmation from others.

It makes no sense that God would want unending worship, even if you buy pets because you want some approval you don't get from your kids you don't want the danged thing sitting constantly licking you in adoration.
 
Damocles said:
The analogy sucks. The better analogy would be children, but even that one is poor. Do you have them because you can control them and make them worship you, or do you teach them to be what they can be and let them grow up? .
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okay....then how would you feel if your kids told their friends the neighbor was their father........
 
PostmodernProphet said:
okay....then how would you feel if your kids told their friends the neighbor was their father........
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Again, a bad analogy. Not worshiping god =/= saying somebody else is their god that's silly. I might be upset if they truly just didn't believe in me, that would be kind of tough considering my actual physical proximity and the considerable effect that proximity holds over their lives.

A better analogy, since we're talking about some more specific god than I was before, would be an absentee father who simply had a one night stand then left the woman to fend for herself. Would he be insulted by them claiming a different man as their father? How would he ever know? Why would he care?

Then when you look at the distance this indefatigable god puts between his creation and himself. What would the need for worship be? Why would I want my kids to worship me? I don't even want them to always do what authority tells them to do, let alone do I want worship from them.

Let's take it further, what would you think of a man who created "Commandments" for his children, and if they didn't follow them would torture them? That in order to get anything from him you would need to form a psychic connection with him and even then he'd say no most of the time?

What if that man wrote books of rules on what you could or couldn't eat in order to remain "clean" before him, and if you ate the wrong ones you could have rocks thrown at you by the other kids? That on some specific day you had to meet with all surviving relatives and sing praises to him and have somebody read the rules again so that you could follow them better?

All of this is nonsense. Why would a god care what kind of meat you ate or whether you wore a blend of fabric?

It is illogical, IMO (as I said earlier), for any God to need this kind of thing.
 
charver said:
That's fine with me.

We could do without tics as well, otherwise the heavenly version of JPP would feature an identical thread where angelic versions of ourselves all discuss the best way of removing angel tics from angel dogs.
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Angel ticks are easy. You just run a bit of wire thru their little halo and pull them out.

And in heaven, Guiness and chocolate are the two best antibiotics.
 
Damocles said:
Let's take it further, what would you think of a man who created "Commandments" for his children, and if they didn't follow them would torture them?
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I would think it sucked....but then I realize you've fucked up your understanding of the Christian religion again.....that ain't how it works....the Commandments aren't a standard to determine torture.....
 
PostmodernProphet said:
I disagree.....all people worship something.....if not a deity, then themselves, an idea or power or money
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I disagree entirely. What you describe is only the first conclusion that Buddha came to before he found the path away from that. Desire begets suffering. You also confuse desire with worship.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
I would think it sucked....but then I realize you've fucked up your understanding of the Christian religion again.....that ain't how it works....the Commandments aren't a standard to determine torture.....
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It doesn't matter, could God do that? My statement that it would be illogical for God to want you to worship isn't really based in any one religion.

What if, as a father, he let the rest of his kids throw rocks at a daughter who was pregnant before marriage? Your analogies suck because they do not actually express the relationship anybody has with an absent Deity who demands belief without evidence yet worship and praise. Why would the ultimate being need "praise". Praise is what you do to train your dog to poop in the back yard, not something you do to the ultimate being.

Again, you are getting specific while I am being more general. It makes no sense that any God would do that. The magical determination of eternal torture for your particular Deity would be to simply not believe in His Boy. By this standard the vast majority of humanity will burn in eternal Hell fires.

I personally believe in a Deity, mine however is nothing like yours and worship would be redundant.
 
Damocles said:
I disagree entirely. What you describe is only the first conclusion that Buddha came to before he found the path away from that. Desire begets suffering. You also confuse desire with worship.
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it's only a matter of degree....
1.a. The reverent love and devotion accorded a deity, an idol, or a sacred object.

anything can become an idol.....money, power, modernists are prone to creating idols....it shows in their penchant to capitalize....Big Business, Science, Humanity!
 
Damocles said:
It doesn't matter, could God do that? My statement that it would be illogical for God to want you to worship isn't really based in any one religion.

What if, as a father, he let the rest of his kids throw rocks at a daughter who was pregnant before marriage? Your analogies suck because they do not actually express the relationship anybody has with an absent Deity who demands belief without evidence yet worship and praise. Why would the ultimate being need "praise". Praise is what you do to train your dog to poop in the back yard, not something you do to the ultimate being.

Again, you are getting specific while I am being more general. It makes no sense that any God would do that. The magical determination of eternal torture for your particular Deity would be to simply not believe in His Boy. By this standard the vast majority of humanity will burn in eternal Hell fires.

I personally believe in a Deity, mine however is nothing like yours and worship would be redundant.
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you've strung together so many errors, I don't even know where to begin....
first, let's finish with the eternal torture error....you said
The magical determination of eternal torture for your particular Deity would be to simply not believe in His Boy. By this standard the vast majority of humanity will burn in eternal Hell fires.
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1) there is no logical reason to conclude that the vast majority of humanity will not choose to believe, and 2) the only ones who do are those who freely made that choice for themselves.....the choice and the consequences of the choice are clear....why are you complaining that there are consequences for the choice when it's their free choice to take the consequences?.....
 
PostmodernProphet said:
it's only a matter of degree....
1.a. The reverent love and devotion accorded a deity, an idol, or a sacred object.

anything can become an idol.....money, power, modernists are prone to creating idols....it shows in their penchant to capitalize....Big Business, Science, Humanity!
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Anything can become an idol, but not everybody worships something. I disagree with that statement specifically.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
you've strung together so many errors, I don't even know where to begin....
first, let's finish with the eternal torture error....you said

1) there is no logical reason to conclude that the vast majority of humanity will not choose to believe, and 2) the only ones who do are those who freely made that choice for themselves.....the choice and the consequences of the choice are clear....why are you complaining that there are consequences for the choice when it's their free choice to take the consequences?.....
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No, I was demonstrating the poor equivalence of your analogies. If a father did the things your Deity does they would be labeled criminals and severally suffer for their crimes. He is a Deity, and you are trying to explain why he would demand praise and worship in some logical fashion.

No sane father, whether the kids go next door and claim another man to be "Daddy" would torment the kids forever for it, and it wouldn't make it less of a crime if he warned them they better believe in him and worship him or he would torture them. Nor does any father expect worship and praise, and if they do they are ill equipped for fatherhood.

And also, logic determines that since there are a bit more than 6 Billion people, and only 2 Billion of them believe in your Deity's boy, the vast majority of the world will burn in Hell.
 
Damocles said:
No, I was demonstrating the poor equivalence of your analogies. If a father did the things your Deity does they would be labeled criminals and severally suffer for their crimes. He is a Deity, and you are trying to explain why he would demand praise and worship in some logical fashion.

No sane father, whether the kids go next door and claim another man to be "Daddy" would torment the kids forever for it, and it wouldn't make it less of a crime if he warned them they better believe in him and worship him or he would torture them. Nor does any father expect worship and praise, and if they do they are ill equipped for fatherhood.
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The point you seem to be overlooking, and PMP may be as well, is that "God" doesn't have emotional feelings that humans possess. That is an attribute WE have, WE want to be liked, WE expect to be 'worshiped' and WE think that it's important in the Big Picture. God the Deity doesn't give one rip if you worship Him or not, he couldn't care less because He is not a human with human emotions and attributes. He is not vain, He doesn't require validation, He would have no apparent reason to "need" those things. Likewise, God doesn't have "compassion" because, again, this is a human attribute, and God is a Deity. It doesn't "bother" him to destroy every living thing on the planet because he doesn't feel "remorse" or "guilt" as humans do. Often we hear anti-Godders say... Why does your God let the little children die? Well, it's because he doesn't care, because "caring" is a human attribute. We tend to want to prescribe human attributes and emotions to God, as if He were a human being, and that is silly and impractical.

I have to disagree with something you said earlier as well, you maintain that everyone doesn't worship something, and whether you realize it or not, that is patently false. We all have a human inclination to worship something greater than self, and this has been apparent in mankind for as long as mankind has existed. A noted psychologist once observed, if God didn't exist, man would have to create one. It is part of our hard-wired psyche to worship something, whether it is ourselves, nature, God, Allah, little green men that only we can see, science, Micheal Jackson, or a political party! And "worship" can be a subjective term... just because we don't define what we do as "worshiping" doesn't mean that isn't what we are doing in practice. But all humans have this instinctual inclination to 'worship' something, it's part of who we are as humans, and ironically, what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
 
Dixie said:
The point you seem to be overlooking, and PMP may be as well, is that "God" doesn't have emotional feelings that humans possess. That is an attribute WE have, WE want to be liked, WE expect to be 'worshiped' and WE think that it's important in the Big Picture. God the Deity doesn't give one rip if you worship Him or not, he couldn't care less because He is not a human with human emotions and attributes. He is not vain, He doesn't require validation, He would have no apparent reason to "need" those things. Likewise, God doesn't have "compassion" because, again, this is a human attribute, and God is a Deity. It doesn't "bother" him to destroy every living thing on the planet because he doesn't feel "remorse" or "guilt" as humans do. Often we hear anti-Godders say... Why does your God let the little children die? Well, it's because he doesn't care, because "caring" is a human attribute. We tend to want to prescribe human attributes and emotions to God, as if He were a human being, and that is silly and impractical.

I have to disagree with something you said earlier as well, you maintain that everyone doesn't worship something, and whether you realize it or not, that is patently false. We all have a human inclination to worship something greater than self, and this has been apparent in mankind for as long as mankind has existed. A noted psychologist once observed, if God didn't exist, man would have to create one. It is part of our hard-wired psyche to worship something, whether it is ourselves, nature, God, Allah, little green men that only we can see, science, Micheal Jackson, or a political party! And "worship" can be a subjective term... just because we don't define what we do as "worshiping" doesn't mean that isn't what we are doing in practice. But all humans have this instinctual inclination to 'worship' something, it's part of who we are as humans, and ironically, what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
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Again I will still disagree with your assessment. While mankind may have the inclination to believe in what they cannot see (needed it to avoid predation, you must believe that something is hiding in the bush, even if you don't have much evidence), it does not mean that they always fall for this inclination.

I believe that you too have mistaken desire for worship. While some people who liked Michael Jackson for instance may have brought it to the level of worship, the vast majority of them never did. Not everybody worships something. The "thing larger than me" that I believe in seeks no worship, nor praise and cares nothing for your attempt at psychic communication with it.

We are all connected, each life its own piece of that "thing larger than myself". I don't worship God, because it is worthless to do so. Deists would be another group who wouldn't worship God, because God doesn't care. Belief in something "larger than yourself" does not necessarily equate to worship.
 
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