~why johnny (atheist) can't beleive ~ and the cure~

It's good you can laugh since, as you noted earlier, atheists are more miserable than theists.

 

I'm Brian and so is my wife!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SYc_flMnMQ

The only real religion, phythonism.

 

he's not the messiah !

 

Disagreed. He/she doesn't have to say "(*)(*)(*)(*) you" to be insulting. Just denigrating one's intelligence because they have a differing belief is enough. How many times have I stated that neither atheists nor theists know what is beyond this Universe, if anything, or what came before it? Yet both you and Vicariously continue to assert that you are right and that anyone who thinks of God or an existence beyond this mortal one is as delusional as a 9/11 truther or someone who believes in fairies and pixie dust.

My entire line of logic as been no one knows what came before or what lies after. Both you and Vicariously have the opinion that you can throw spitballs at the opinions of others yet do not bear any responsibility for substantiating your opinions as you place on others.

 

what are we asserting that we're right about? that no one knows? then, yes, probably. since no one DOES know, that's a fairly reasonable assertion, I would have thought.

let me ask you something, do you think someone who believes in pixie dust and fairies is delusional? or do you think pixie dust and fairies are a reasonable and likely reality?

 

Your entire line of logic is common to almost all atheists, so I'm not sure what you're driving at here. The very reason many atheists ARE atheists, is because they accept that no one can possibly know, so likelihoods are about as close as we can get.

What opinions are we not substantiating?

 

Disagreed since I was an atheist. A person who admits no one knows is an agnostic. An atheist, as they so often like to say, "disbelieves" in an afterlife, God/gods and all things supernatural. They only believe in what they can see and touch in the Natural Universe. That's fine, but for them to deny that something happened before the creation of the Universe or that there is anything beyond our existence in this one without evidence is as illogical as any theist beliefs.

 

Embarrassment.

 

well you're one of the few, in that case. few atheists I've ever met (and I'm a lifelong atheist, in an atheist nation, amongst atheist friends and family) have asserted that there are no gods. not seriously, at least. and we don't 'disbelieve' in an afterlife, we reject the claims made by people who assert that they know such a thing exists. BECAUSE we know that they don't know. you keep missing that vital point!

of course it's illogical to assert knowledge either way. but that really isn't the point, is it ... the point is it's absurd to imagine that SOMEHOW, all that mystery was created by none other than your own personal favourite godhead - described very specifically, even given attributes, by bronze age goat herders from the middle east. any ideas or thoughts you (or I, or those bronze age goatherds) might have about the 'creation' of the universe will be merely imagination driven vanities.

in the meantime, what do you mean by 'beyond our existence'? do you mean things which are invisible, undetectable, unknowable, and which have no impact whatsoever on our existence? things that seem uncannily like .... nothing?

 

I've been on several "secular" forums dominated by atheists. While I agree some who claim to be atheists are not, such as believing in pantheism, many are ardent believers in the finality of physical existence. Like conspiracy theorists, they won't even consider questions they cannot or do want to answer such as what came before the Big Bang and why.

However, as the link below notes, not even atheists are agreed on defining themselves.



http://atheism.about.com/od/definitionofatheism/a/definition.htm

 

But this does represent one of the major problems many of us have with the Christian religion. God telling us that we must behave in ways that represent required moral behaviors that are different from the ways God chooses to behave. My minister could never actually give a satisfactory answer and so I ended up leaving the Protestant Religion. And to this day I have never heard a good answer other than " God is God and Man is Man"

 

The problem with this arguement is fairies and pixie dust are expected to exist on a physical plane while God is not. False choice I am afraid.

 

Thanks for admitting no one knows. Was that so hard?

Delusional is a specific psychological term. If they believed in them, probably not. If they claimed to have seen them, then I'd have to investigate more closely for any definitive determinations.

 

Once more for those at the back of the queue ... many atheists are atheists BECAUSE we can't know. And such atheists are very happy to acknowledge that. Do you feel that it's something we ought to be ashamed of, is that why you posture so?

 

It's not, actually. They're both supernatural mythical creatures, just like gods. Arguing semantics won't disguise your aversion to addressing the point made.

 

No, you used a bad choice to illustrate your point. We can use our experience to show fairies don't exist because if they did we would see them because mythology gives them a physical presence. God does not have a physical presence in our belief system so we cannot use the evidence of our senses to dispute his Existance. Therefore your comparison is invalid and if you want to use examples to prove your point you will have to come up with a more appropriate example.

 

The studies show that on average religious people are happier than skeptics, not that skeptics aren't happy.

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” - George Bernard Shaw

 

Then why aren't you agnostic? What do you see as the difference between the two?

 

That's true and that's why an atheist is one who does not believe in a god or gods, PERIOD.

There is NO consensus among atheists as to OTHER beliefs such as an afterlife or belief in the supernatural or whether elves live in their garden, or "nobody knows".



Have you ever asked yourself why there HAS to be only two choices?

A god or no god?

Someday maybe people will wake up to the FACT that there may be other alternatives.


I do not believe in a god especially not the christian or muslim man- made "god".

I believe there may be an afterlife but it doesn't HAVE to have anything to do with a god.

Another atheist may not have that belief...see how that works? Atheist by their nature think independently .

 

Most atheists are agnostics in fact I've never met an atheist who wasn't and I've been doing this for 14 years.

I myself am an agnostic, atheist, anti-theist.

I'm agnostic because when it comes to the possibility of something we might call god existing that is something I cannot know. Because of the fact that no one can know I have no choice but to reject all the claims of those who say they do know and I'm an anti-theist because religion is a tool that is no longer useful to humanity, a tool that has always been inefficient, cumbersome, and dangerous.

To say that no one can know, i.e. agnosticism is to say all the religions who claim they do know must be false. To say otherwise is to reject the idea that no one can know.

 

Agreed. They believe....so what's the argument here?

 

If you're just going to mash words together and define them in whatever whimsical manner you wish, it becomes impossible to have a coherent discussion.

 

No, argument , I was pointing out that atheists only have ONE thing in common.

 

Because there are different definitions for believe in
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/believe-in
1. Have faith in the truth or existence of:
those who believe in God

2. Be of the opinion that (something) is right or acceptable:
I don’t believe in censorship of the arts.

So when a theist says they believe in God, they are expressing their faith in God.
Where as an atheist who says they do not believe in God, they are merely expressing an opinion on the existence of God.

As we know faith is required to believe in God
strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=f...d=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=faith+definition

 

Exactly, it was a different mind-set.

They didn't mind...or even LIKED that God was portrayed as a vicious monster who would kill or order killed THEIR enemies ...even to slaughtering the children and babies.

They saw no immorality to that.

Where it gets the modern Bible believer stuck is...trying to explain how an "eternal and unchanging" God was an infanticidal psychopath.....and ALSO a "loving, merciful" God in the next section of the book.

They try to blame it on US (mankind)....to get God off the hook. But again, if we are to believe in the Bible....it wasn't the Israelites ordering the slaughter of the Amalekite children.....it was God. (Obviously to us non-believers, the real story was...the Israelites were claiming "God ordered it" to give themselves some sense of "righteousness" in their genocide).

But if we are supposed to believe the Bible and believe that "God is God...never changes"......then He comes off as a murderous lunatic no matter how "open-minded" you try to read 1 Samuel 15:3.