Why Are You an Atheist or a Believer?

[BigRedBuster]

OK....I guess I thought you would be talking about the people who are passionately and openly to one side or the other that in their minds, they know that what they believe is fact and there is no reason to question it.

From what you said, you're talking about the people in the middle who really don't care. Sure, they might say they are either a believer or a non believer but they really don't care and are not going to take the time to even discuss or think about it.

With them...I guess you have a point.

 

[zoogs]

I don't consider theism to be different in any important way from atheism. The distinction is about whether or not we believe in the existence of something for which there is no proof. I don't, on the basis of that, but I also understand that as far as we come on the "how", we may never come so far on the "why", and there is a basic yearning in all of us to assign meaning to existence, and to (try to) understand our own consciousness.

Religion is...interesting. Religions often seem to result in folks making specific claims about the earthly lives which we all share -- whether it's human ethics or the physical nature of the world -- and submitting that these are divine truths and not merely one among many of the different, fluid human schools of thought. This doesn't apply to all religious people or maybe even most. Certainly not to the well-spoken folks of this forum, who articulate their points very well.

Among these are for example, views traditionally passed down about nonbelievers. Or nowadays, vies on homosexuality, which vary from church to church even within a religion.

I think there are good reasons for religion and good positive effects that come out of it. Religions are a strong way of maintaining cohesion, unity, and values among a widespread group of people over time. By having these debates internally, updated values spread slowly, but safely (akin to the U.S. model for laws? Adopt later than earlier and avoid caprice). I mean, that is generally how things work and for any organization it's sensible to have a high bar for change. The downside is that it results in people sometimes being severely locked into being behind the curve, because to change a view, they would have to reinterpret their holy book. In the meantime, they often take those who have adopted the change as partakers in an ideological assault on their own divine institution.

I don't think this is the only way to go, for us humans. I think the modern world is connected enough to start tearing down these barriers and perhaps building new ways forward? Humans are very good at developing and updating our social institutions. We made religion, the greatest instrument in our written history to date, and we can surely update and transform it for future ages. Along the way, we'll never really lose the best teachings and traditions developed in our past, and we'll never stop grappling with the curious questions of meaning and theism -- though hopefully, we'll no longer have need one day for these lines in the sand.

 

[Redux]

Husker X put into words what i have felt for a long time. I don't call myself an Atheist but instead an Agnostic. I can't prove God doesn't exist nor can I prove that he does. I assume nobody else on this board or even earth can do the same.

If faith is all you need to know God exists, more power to you. Religion is a dying custom in the age of information yet people die daily in the belief their religion is the right one.

So either no religion is correct, or they all are. Maybe there are a thousand Gods in some other dimension playing a complex game of RISK with Earth. You look at all the war that has plagued our history as a species and you wonder how we have survived this long. Man creates fire. Then other man in different cave thinks Sun God made fire. Both men bludgen eachother to death after a dispute via grunting. Same thing happening today with more advanced weaponry.

My issues with Religion are mainly that instead of using Religion as a tool for a way of living, man uses it as a way to kill others who disagree with their particular interpretation.

 

[ZRod]

Child like faith brother.

I don't need strong scientific fact to come to the conclusions I have about there being a God. I know there is one. I can feel it in my heart. I don't believe in Random or coincidence.

True story, my wife and I gave money (Not a large sum) to the church a couple weeks ago. 2 days later she finds cash on the ground when out for her daily run. I look at things like that as God rewarding us for being obedient to the call of giving. Some people don't. It's ok, people choose for themselves. In my belief I just feel sorry for those who go through life believing that everything is chance and that there is no reason why we are here.

And I feel sorry for those who believe that their fate is predetermined and they can't shape their destiny.I also wish I knew what happened to that cash I had in my pocket a few weeks back. I know I didn't spend it, but for the life if me I can't find it. I could really use it right about now...

Isn't it kind of funny how you think that I believe I can't shape my destiny but yet atheists believe that everything is chance and randomness...Didn't Steven Hawking say that the universe was formed because it needed it self to be? Sounds like a pretty predetermined "destiny".

Chance and randomness would be the polar opposite of predestination so I'm not sure what would be "funny" about that. To an extent the universe is predefined by the laws of physics, but that doesn't mean that "intelligent" life can't introduce a little chaos by altering the natural interaction of matter in the universe.

 

[Husker_x]

Thanks for sharing, Husker_X. Do you think part of your break with believing in God was due to rebelling against your fundamentalist upbringing? I don't ask you because I think *that* makes your atheist views wrong. (Although I do think your atheist views are wrong. But for other reasons. lol)

I ask about this because, if true, I agree with you that investigating and challenging is good. When I was a kid, maybe junior high age or so, I recall being turned off by ministers who trotted out their particular flavor of Christianity to be the one true flavor. I reasoned that most people are Baptists (or Catholics, Quakers, atheists, Muslims, etc.) solely because their parents held those particular beliefs. My parents and grandparents were Baptists. But I took it upon myself to investigate and experience other views. Unlike you though I became stronger in my faith. Even though I ended up adopting a church family with beliefs much different than those of my parents' Baptist church.

In any case I applaud you for taking it upon yourself to investigate and challenge the beliefs you grew up with. But I feel sorry for you inasmuch as I think you reached the wrong conclusion.

You think I reached the wrong conclusion, but neither you nor anyone else I've met that's of a religious persuasion can say why, or provide a logical alternative. I hear a lot about feelings and "I just can't understand how X . . ." logic (which technically is a fallacy called the argument from ignorance), but that's about it. Since the burden of proof is on the believer, I need more.I suppose having a fundamentalist aspect to my upbringing makes it easier to put cracks in the foundation, but I don't want to give you guys and gals the wrong idea: I wasn't living in the Phelps household exactly. Like I said, my change of mind was based on a lot of research and debate. I haven't met many Christians who can say the same going the other direction.

My question would be is, How do you research the unresearchable? Also, debate is intelligent opinion. Not fact. You can bring fact into the debate but the debate itself is a stance of opinion because fact is not debatable.

Christian theism makes claims about science and history that can be debated and researched (like whether or not the Jesus of the gospels is actually a historical figure, for instance). I think your question unintentionally commits a kind of sleight-of-hand. A deistic god and the Christian god are not the same thing, and the range of the discussion varies widely depending on which one you're talking about.

 

[NUance]

Christian theism makes claims about science and history that can be debated and researched (like whether or not the Jesus of the gospels is actually a historical figure, for instance).

More books, writings and literature have been written about Jesus than anyone who ever walked the face of the earth. Including prophesies written before he was alive, writings from people who were alive at the time of Jesus and met him, and an immense body of literature following his death. Yet at least some atheists still doubt that Jesus was a real flesh-and-blood human being. Mmmmkay.

 

[Husker_x]

Christian theism makes claims about science and history that can be debated and researched (like whether or not the Jesus of the gospels is actually a historical figure, for instance).

More books, writings and literature have been written about Jesus than anyone who ever walked the face of the earth. Including prophesies written before he was alive, writings from people who were alive at the time of Jesus and met him, and an immense body of literature following his death. Yet at least some atheists still doubt that Jesus was a real flesh-and-blood human being. Mmmmkay.

There's a lot written about Achilles, too.

The trouble with verifying the existence of ancient figures (especially poor anonymous peasants) is that you have no primary sources. The gospels are anonymous texts written decades after the guy allegedly was crucified. They're also technically speaking propaganda. And most of the stories contain what we would call "magic" in English.

Just FYI: there is a real debate about this in the scholarly community. Look at the work of Richard Carrier or Robert Price for a start. My opinion is Jesus probably does correspond to one or several real historical people. That's my hunch. It's very difficult to say either way.

 

[Redux]

I don't doubt that Jesus lived, not for a second. It's the interpretation that is vastly open to embellishment that I question.

Perhaps he was simply a magician. Maybe he was truly the spawn of a higher power. What that higher power is we cannot know. God could be an all powerful being, god could be a race of extra terrestrials in another galaxy.

 

[NUance]

Christian theism makes claims about science and history that can be debated and researched (like whether or not the Jesus of the gospels is actually a historical figure, for instance).

More books, writings and literature have been written about Jesus than anyone who ever walked the face of the earth. Including prophesies written before he was alive, writings from people who were alive at the time of Jesus and met him, and an immense body of literature following his death. Yet at least some atheists still doubt that Jesus was a real flesh-and-blood human being. Mmmmkay.

There's a lot written about Achilles, too.

The trouble with verifying the existence of ancient figures (especially poor anonymous peasants) is that you have no primary sources. The gospels are anonymous texts written decades after the guy allegedly was crucified. They're also technically speaking propaganda. And most of the stories contain what we would call "magic" in English.

Just FYI: there is a real debate about this in the scholarly community. Look at the work of Richard Carrier or Robert Price for a start. My opinion is Jesus probably does correspond to one or several real historical people. That's my hunch. It's very difficult to say either way.

I guess it's possible that no humans existed 2000 years ago since 99.9999% are documented less than Jesus.

 

[knapplc]

We have the four Gospels, written specifically about Jesus 20-70 years after his death, and the rest is essentially fan fiction, expounding on what those four Gospels said. The fact that there are "a lot" of books written about Jesus does not bolster any argument, it's simply a fact of his being the dominant religion in the area where the printing press was invented, and that religion being perpetrated through the centuries. If we wrote 10,000 books about Popeye, that wouldn't legitimize Popeye in any way.

Paul's Epistles are essentially fan-fic about the Gospels. They are not primary-source material for Jesus, and in fact, Paul never met Jesus, and he is not primary-source, either. He's telling us nothing different than what Martin Luther told us - his opinion on the teachings of Christ.

None of this is documentary by nature. It's likely that Jesus existed, and that he was a religious leader of the era ascribed to him. But as "evidence" goes, the Bible and subsequent writings are paper thin.

 

[Husker_x]

We have the four Gospels, written specifically about Jesus 20-70 years after his death, and the rest is essentially fan fiction, expounding on what those four Gospels said. The fact that there are "a lot" of books written about Jesus does not bolster any argument, it's simply a fact of his being the dominant religion in the area where the printing press was invented, and that religion being perpetrated through the centuries. If we wrote 10,000 books about Popeye, that wouldn't legitimize Popeye in any way.

Paul's Epistles are essentially fan-fic about the Gospels. They are not primary-source material for Jesus, and in fact, Paul never met Jesus, and he is not primary-source, either. He's telling us nothing different than what Martin Luther told us - his opinion on the teachings of Christ.

None of this is documentary by nature. It's likely that Jesus existed, and that he was a religious leader of the era ascribed to him. But as "evidence" goes, the Bible and subsequent writings are paper thin.

Also to my knowledge Paul never mentions anything about Jesus's ministry except for the resurrection. He does not seem to have been aware of the gospels. I'd be interested to hear a historian dig into that a little.

 

[NUance]

We have the four Gospels, written specifically about Jesus 20-70 years after his death, and the rest is essentially fan fiction, expounding on what those four Gospels said. The fact that there are "a lot" of books written about Jesus does not bolster any argument, it's simply a fact of his being the dominant religion in the area where the printing press was invented, and that religion being perpetrated through the centuries. If we wrote 10,000 books about Popeye, that wouldn't legitimize Popeye in any way.

Paul's Epistles are essentially fan-fic about the Gospels. They are not primary-source material for Jesus, and in fact, Paul never met Jesus, and he is not primary-source, either. He's telling us nothing different than what Martin Luther told us - his opinion on the teachings of Christ.

None of this is documentary by nature. It's likely that Jesus existed, and that he was a religious leader of the era ascribed to him. But as "evidence" goes, the Bible and subsequent writings are paper thin.

So there are four books in the bible written about Jesus. Four, if you disregard the 23 other books of the New Testament and other apocrypha about Jesus that weren’t included in the bible. How many books written during that era survive today? Can you name any other person from that era—let alone a humble carpenter— who had four books written about them by people who personally knew them? Like I said above, there are few, if any, people from that era whose existence was more well documented than Jesus.

 

[notherplace93]

The problem is the claims about Jesus are nothing less than extraordinary. And "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Granted there is much more information written about Jesus than any other historical figure, but most of it dates to at least (as mentioned earlier) to, at the very least, 30-70 years after his supposed death, and, more often than not, to almost 200 AD. Even in modern times, when first hand verification such as photography, incidents like Roswell still become urban legends of alien landings. So, even if the outlandish claims that are made about jesus are true, one has little to no justification to rationally accept them as anything more than hearsay or extrapolations of a legend of a man who may have existed in some form, but probably did little of what was said of him.

So even though we have more writings about Jesus than we do about someone like Socrates, (who i wholeheartedly admit may not have existed) it isn't as much of an irrational jump to say its easier to believe Socrates existed than did Jesus, because nothing about Socrates life is anything that i wouldn't be able to observe occurring in modern times as well, for no claims of miracles or divine intervention are attributed to him.

The evidence for Jesus being the Jesus we read of in the gospels is flimsy at best and cannot be accepted reasonably. Please note, I'm not saying the Jesus of the gospels could possibly have existed, but one has almost no comparable reason to accept it on anything that we would remotely call a reasonable basis. It can only be accepted in a certain Kierkegaard-ian fashion, where a "leap of faith" is clearly made.

 

[notherplace93]

We have the four Gospels, written specifically about Jesus 20-70 years after his death, and the rest is essentially fan fiction, expounding on what those four Gospels said. The fact that there are "a lot" of books written about Jesus does not bolster any argument, it's simply a fact of his being the dominant religion in the area where the printing press was invented, and that religion being perpetrated through the centuries. If we wrote 10,000 books about Popeye, that wouldn't legitimize Popeye in any way.

Paul's Epistles are essentially fan-fic about the Gospels. They are not primary-source material for Jesus, and in fact, Paul never met Jesus, and he is not primary-source, either. He's telling us nothing different than what Martin Luther told us - his opinion on the teachings of Christ.

None of this is documentary by nature. It's likely that Jesus existed, and that he was a religious leader of the era ascribed to him. But as "evidence" goes, the Bible and subsequent writings are paper thin.

Not only that, but also a large amount of outside literature was either neglected or not allowed, which means it isn't unreasonable to think there was a great deal written by or about individuals like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates..etc. But was no longer deemed important by "the church" and has been lost to the passage of time. Post-Rome Europe up until the renaissance looked much more like modern day Theocracies than we like to admit, where the bible was considered to be the only necessary literature as the Quran is in certain countries today. A lot of ancient literature of ancient Greece and Rome that we have was maintained or rewritten in Baghdad, which was the cultural center of the world at the time, from the 7th-10th centuries while Europe was careening backwards into darkness and stupidity.

Hell, in the past decade we found a second hand copy of a book written by Archimedes solving many of the problems of mathematics that were not re-solved for another 2 millennia after his death....and its content had been erased and written over as a 12th century monks prayer-book, and they were only able to read archimedes writing based on technology we have today that illuminated the faint marks that had been erased. For thousands of years the Western World cared only for religious texts, so its no surprise that all we have are books upon books about this Jewish Rabbi. All other aspect of human thought was stagnant during this time.

 

[Husker_x]

We have the four Gospels, written specifically about Jesus 20-70 years after his death, and the rest is essentially fan fiction, expounding on what those four Gospels said. The fact that there are "a lot" of books written about Jesus does not bolster any argument, it's simply a fact of his being the dominant religion in the area where the printing press was invented, and that religion being perpetrated through the centuries. If we wrote 10,000 books about Popeye, that wouldn't legitimize Popeye in any way.

Paul's Epistles are essentially fan-fic about the Gospels. They are not primary-source material for Jesus, and in fact, Paul never met Jesus, and he is not primary-source, either. He's telling us nothing different than what Martin Luther told us - his opinion on the teachings of Christ.

None of this is documentary by nature. It's likely that Jesus existed, and that he was a religious leader of the era ascribed to him. But as "evidence" goes, the Bible and subsequent writings are paper thin.

So there are four books in the bible written about Jesus. Four, if you disregard the 23 other books of the New Testament and other apocrypha about Jesus that werent included in the bible. How many books written during that era survive today? Can you name any other person from that eralet alone a humble carpenter who had four books written about them by people who personally knew them? Like I said above, there are few, if any, people from that era whose existence was more well documented than Jesus.

They were not written by people who personally knew him.