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The Atheist Experience


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1 minute ago, NUance said:

 

Not that complex??  Ha ha!   You've got to be kidding.  How much money would it cost to make a pair of grasshoppers?  I don't mean mechanical toys.  I mean small animals that can survive in harsh conditions and preproduce year after year to carry on for thousands of years.  

 

The technology of grasshoppers is far beyond human comprehension.  

All true. But the simple answer of "uhh... he did it <points at sky>" is a ridiculous conclusion to a very complex question.

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22 minutes ago, NUance said:

 

Maybe it's all part of the sorting process.  I'm just spitballing here.  


Sorting process? So we, as humans with our flawes thinking, logic and language barriers are suppose to sort through a 2000 year old book not knowing what is correct and what isnt and if we are wrong, we are sent to hell to be tortured for all eternity. Your god sounds evil. 

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15 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

All true. But the simple answer of "uhh... he did it <points at sky>" is a ridiculous conclusion to a very complex question.

Okay, so you’re skeptical about the watchmaker’s analogy.  Fine.  I guess it’s possible that a watch lying in the forest could have been created by lightening striking a vein of iron ore, then trees falling and twisting in just the right manner to create the springs and gears of the watch.  It could  happen, sure.  


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But since you don’t know who made the watch, I ask:  Who keeps the watch wound and running?    


The ecosystem that is earth is incredibly complex—far beyond any technology that mankind has come up with so far.  We can’t even make a grasshopper!   Yet the complex systems of plants and animals just keep ticking right along, interacting and reproducing and living, year after year, millennium after millennium.  

 

Why doesn’t the earth’s ecosystem degrade and fall apart like any other complex piece of machinery?  Maintaining all this complexity seems to defy the Third Law of Thermodynamics.  What’s special about the world that staves off entropy?  Or don’t you believe in the Third Law of Thermodynamics either?  
 

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4 minutes ago, Frott Scost said:


Sorting process? So we, as humans with our flawes thinking, logic and language barriers are suppose to sort through a 2000 year old book not knowing what is correct and what isnt and if we are wrong, we are sent to hell to be tortured for all eternity. Your god sounds evil. 

Ha ha!   Maybe you're not the one doing the sorting.  Maybe you're the one being sorted.  

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15 hours ago, Decoy73 said:

Comparing the believability of the writings of Jesus to those of the Greek Gods?

This isn't directed at you Decoy, but I think this sums up a lot of my experience as an atheist. Christians and their beliefs aren't really any different from the Greeks or the Romans beliefs as far as I'm concerned. If faith gives you something that makes life better, good for you. But don't expect me to think your god of everything is anything more than the previous god of thunder.

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3 minutes ago, NUance said:

Okay, so you’re skeptical about the watchmaker’s analogy.  Fine.  I guess it’s possible that a watch lying in the forest could have been created by lightening striking a vein of iron ore, then trees falling and twisting in just the right manner to create the springs and gears of the watch.  It could  happen, sure.  


=====================================  

But since you don’t know who made the watch, I ask:  Who keeps the watch wound and running?    


The ecosystem that is earth is incredibly complex—far beyond any technology that mankind has come up with so far.  We can’t even make a grasshopper!   Yet the complex systems of plants and animals just keep ticking right along, interacting and reproducing and living, year after year, millennium after millennium.  

 

Why doesn’t the earth’s ecosystem degrade and fall apart like any other complex piece of machinery?  Maintaining all this complexity seems to defy the Third Law of Thermodynamics.  What’s special about the world that staves off entropy?  Or don’t you believe in the Third Law of Thermodynamics either?  
 

The ecosystems of earth have fallen apart many times. There's been 5 mass extinctions in the last 500 million years, and we're probably living in the sixth: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mass-extinction

 

The reason that the earth can have systems that organize is because there's abundant energy from the sun. If you look at the combined system that includes both the sun and the earth, then entropy is indeed increasing as predicted by thermodynamics.

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31 minutes ago, NUance said:

The people who knew him best during the three years of his ministryhis apostlesleft their homes and jobs after his death, and spent the rest of their lives spreading his message.  Nearly all of them suffered horrible deaths rather than renounce their faith.  So there's that.  


Wheres the evidence? Second hand accounts from people decades later doesnt count. 

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15 minutes ago, NUance said:

Ha ha!   Maybe you're not the one doing the sorting.  Maybe you're the one being sorted.  


I dont even know what this means, but if I am reading between the lines you are laughing that I will be sent to hell. Which makes you as evil as your god. 

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14 minutes ago, NUance said:

But since you don’t know who made the watch, I ask:  Who keeps the watch wound and running?    


The ecosystem that is earth is incredibly complex—far beyond any technology that mankind has come up with so far.  We can’t even make a grasshopper!   Yet the complex systems of plants and animals just keep ticking right along, interacting and reproducing and living, year after year, millennium after millennium.  

 

Why doesn’t the earth’s ecosystem degrade and fall apart like any other complex piece of machinery?  Maintaining all this complexity seems to defy the Third Law of Thermodynamics.  What’s special about the world that staves off entropy?  Or don’t you believe in the Third Law of Thermodynamics either?  

^ Good breakdown of why I'm agnostic. I don't pretend to have all the answers. It seems odd though that you acknowledge all these complexities but still have confirmation that your god is behind all this. 

 

To be clear I don't discount the possibility of your god, I don't discount the possibility of anyone's god, I don't discount the possibility of there being no god. It just seems crazy to me with how complex the universe is, and extreme lack of evidence - anyone can act like they have the sole answer to everything. 

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8 hours ago, NUance said:

 

Not that complex??  Ha ha!   You've got to be kidding.  How much money would it cost to make a pair of grasshoppers?  I don't mean mechanical toys.  I mean small animals that can survive in harsh conditions, eat many different kinds of food, and reproduce year after year to carry on for thousands of years.  

 

The technology of grasshoppers is far beyond human comprehension.  

Again we're talking billions of years, not developing something in a couple years or even a lifetime. The laws of science dictate the interactions of subatomic particles, elements, and substances. Given billions of years and the right conditions the formation life would be inevitable.

 

We can see with our own eyes how cells, plants, and animals mutate to form new species. We ourselves come from two single cell organism that grow and mutate into a full human.

 

 

 

Also think about this: The earth is 4,543,000,000 years old. Life began at least 3,500,000,000 years ago. Homo sapiens appeared 300,000 years ago. Cell theory was discovered about 360 years ago. 331 years later we created the first clone. 25 years later we can grow a human embryo in a lab; create organs and appendages, grow food synthetically in a lab, and engineering cells to attack/elminate certain viruses or diseases. So in 0.000036% of the time it took life to form we have gone from discovering it's basic unit of existence to effectively engineer it to our liking. It's only a matter of time until we can create it from basic elements (by scratch), and it will still be fractions of a decimal of the time it took for life to form naturally. And man will be more efficient than god and nature.

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3 minutes ago, FrantzHardySwag said:

^ Good breakdown of why I'm agnostic. I don't pretend to have all the answers. It seems odd though that you acknowledge all these complexities but still have confirmation that your god is behind all this. 

 

To be clear I don't discount the possibility of your god, I don't discount the possibility of anyone's god, I don't discount the possibility of there being no god. It just seems crazy to me with how complex the universe is, and extreme lack of evidence - anyone can act like they have the sole answer to everything. 


Spot on! I named this thread atheist experience due to the video I posted, but like Ive said earlier in the thread im more spirtual and agnostic than religious. I tend to lean more towards a higher power and creator, but I just cant get behind religious, man made gods that send people to hell for no reason other than they question things. But I dont know for sure. And its very liberating to say I dont know. 

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As an agnostic, it frees me up to believe that life is beautiful, intricate and mysterious, and perhaps I'll never have answers to its biggest questions, but I never assume I was owed that.

 

There are many different religions and religious texts, but they all revolve around the Golden Rule: treat others as you would treat yourself. It's that simple. But because we often want to treat people badly, and forgive ourselves, we create complex religions that let us feel superior to others. Religion has a really bad track record that way. 

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1 hour ago, NUance said:

I see posts like yours and @Omaha-Husker 's post and it saddens me.  Not because I think you're wrong, but because the churches and religion you've experienced has clearly done you a disservice.  

 

Many churches and religionsnot all, but manyare in the business of self propagation and wealth gathering.  For these churches worship and learning about God is of secondary importance.  It's a sad state of affairs.  

 

 

 

I grew up in an ELCA Lutheran Church.  I stand true to all the values my congregations have shared over the years. But I just got tired of pretending I believe in things I don’t as far as the “religion” part goes.  I can share grace and peace without giving up rational thought.

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