Atheism: The reasons for it.

[talloola]

12]Good post, intelligent and thoughtful as usual, and I entirely concur with your sentiments.

I'm an atheist because it's the only position that makes sense to me. I grew up in a religious household and for years just accepted the parental pronouncements as received wisdom, until I learned to think for myself. The more I thought about it all the less sense it made. Burning bushes, talking snakes, "thou shalt not kill" followed by a campaign of murder and genocide with divine support and approval... It finally struck me that it doesn't really explain anything. It pretends to, but ultimately it ends up saying there are no explanations for some things beyond the mystical and unsatisfying pronouncement that god did it. To a student of science, as I was at the time (the first one in four generations of my family that we know about), that's anathema, a surrender to never really understanding. I became apostate, a process that was pretty painful both for myself and my parents, but I couldn't honestly do anything else.

I can see that for you it was a big troubling struggle, as I'm sure you felt guilty and left out
of the loop, in your family, as they were travelling in one direction and you, another, as far
as religious belief is concerned.
I hope they eventually accepted you, for who you are, and I'm wondering if they also learned
something from you, or are they very set in their belief, as most believers are. Sometimes
we just have to love one another, even though we believe different things, it's challenging
but educational as well.
I didn't have that problem with my family, they were pretty soft in their beliefs, and I think
they actually thought I was 'on to something', and they would think about it too, as no one
in our family had ever questioned the church, or dared to think they were wrong.

I'm convinced that a good scientific education is likely to be pretty corrosive to religious belief, but given the quality of my life I can't think that it's a bad thing.

I know it isn't a bad thing, we have escaped that trap, and it is kind of scary to think that I
could still be 'there' following along, doing what the church preaches, feeling guilty if I
don't obey their rules, I could have 9 children by now, and that is really scary;-)
We have one life to live, and freedom to take the road we 'truly' believe in is important,
not the road someone else pushes us toward.
I just really want to do it 'my way' in this one beautiful life I have, and I can see that my
daughters appreciate that.

As the true scientist you are, you obviously had to study the bible and other such books, to
thoroughly convince yourself that your ideas satisfy you, and the more you read the more
you cannot possibly go that route, I have never done that, I don't have the need, it wouldn't
make a difference, I am who I am, and I know it is right.
People of all countries are controlled by their governments, we have no power to have the
world live in peace as we would like, and religion is no different, they want to control
the people who believe what they preach, so at least that is one power we can walk away
from, and they can't do anything about it.

 

[In Between Man]

Cliffy,
On the I.Q. scale I would give you....145-151.
scratch

side note -- a smart person is very poor at playing dumb.
rgs

Scratch, why do post these things. You remind me of a coworker who is constantly playing Mr. Know-it-all. How would you possible know what his IQ is based on a couple posts. Gimme a break. :roll::roll::roll: I would have said his IQ could be as high as 151 and 3/8 :roll::roll::roll:

 

[Scott Free]

.....................................

 

[Cliffy]

One weekend during the summer of '67 I was visiting my girlfriend at her parents house. Sunday morning her parents decided we needed to go to church. (I suspect they thought there was a little hanky panky going on behind their backs - and rightly so!). These people were Francophones but in my honour they chose to attend an English Catholic church.
The church was a modern, for the 60’s, low dome shape. When we arrived that bright sunny morning we noticed everything was covered in a thick layer of fluffy dust. The explanation the priest gave us, before mass began, was that for some strange reason the air conditioner fans had gone on in reverse blowing all the accumulated dirt from the filters back into the church. Obviously they had not been cleaned in quite some time.
Well here we all were wallowing about in all our Sunday finery when at sermon time out comes this guest speaker. He was a priest from the Arch Diocese of Greater Montreal and, it turns out, he was very upset. It seems that in the previous year only one English Catholic priest was ordained in the entire Montreal area. He ranted and raved, spewing forth fire and brimstone for over half an hour. He pounded the pulpit and made everybody squirm about in the dirt filled pews.
Suddenly he took a deep breath, raised his arms and eyes to the ceiling, paused, then began to slowly lower them again. He fixed his gaze upon anybody who dared to look straight at him and sighed, “Perhaps this is a sign from the Holy Spirit showering His blessings upon us.” His now calm voice hissed
from deep in the back of his throat.
I looked around at everybody just staring at him in shock. When I realized he was referring to all this dust, I let out a high-pitched shriek of hysteria. The thought which flashed through my mind was “He just crapped on your head you moron!” I don’t know what anybody else got out of his attempt at metaphor but I noticed that suddenly the focus of attention had shifted to me. So I bolted from the church half laughing and half terrified they were going to tear me limb from limb.

 

[MHz]

So when are you going to stop running. Running only means you'll die tired.

Good post, intelligent and thoughtful as usual, and I entirely concur with your sentiments.

I'm an atheist because it's the only position that makes sense to me. I grew up in a religious household and for years just accepted the parental pronouncements as received wisdom, until I learned to think for myself. The more I thought about it all the less sense it made. Burning bushes, talking snakes, "thou shalt not kill" followed by a campaign of murder and genocide with divine support and approval... It finally struck me that it doesn't really explain anything. It pretends to, but ultimately it ends up saying there are no explanations for some things beyond the mystical and unsatisfying pronouncement that god did it. To a student of science, as I was at the time (the first one in four generations of my family that we know about), that's anathema, a surrender to never really understanding. I became apostate, a process that was pretty painful both for myself and my parents, but I couldn't honestly do anything else.

I'm convinced that a good scientific education is likely to be pretty corrosive to religious belief, but given the quality of my life I can't think that it's a bad thing.

Shouldn't there be some sort of disclaimer to this sort of thinking, it could be totally different at some point in your future. No disrespect to your parents, but their knowledge would only have been as good as their Church allowed.
Like the day you see those deaths as having a purpose, you might even swallow a bit when you realize that their place in Heaven is going to be greater than your (or mine). They were the first example of the power of God's scythe. Almost like being beheaded for the word of God, Re:20:4. What do you feel for them, sorrow? If they could look at our generation they would probably bow their heads a bit and slowly shake it back and forth in utter disbelief.

It is as corrosive as a writer wants it to be. Use science to point to it's (apparent) flaws, most likely on the version your parents you gave you. You still think the Bible points to a young earth creation, science says that the earth is a lot older than that. That is as far as you allow yourself to go, you don't bother think your current view (of the Bible) is not the way it was meant to be understood. That isn't rejecting the Bible, that would be rejecting your parents word.

 

[VanIsle]

One weekend during the summer of '67 I was visiting my girlfriend at her parents house. Sunday morning her parents decided we needed to go to church. (I suspect they thought there was a little hanky panky going on behind their backs - and rightly so!). These people were Francophones but in my honour they chose to attend an English Catholic church.
The church was a modern, for the 60’s, low dome shape. When we arrived that bright sunny morning we noticed everything was covered in a thick layer of fluffy dust. The explanation the priest gave us, before mass began, was that for some strange reason the air conditioner fans had gone on in reverse blowing all the accumulated dirt from the filters back into the church. Obviously they had not been cleaned in quite some time.
Well here we all were wallowing about in all our Sunday finery when at sermon time out comes this guest speaker. He was a priest from the Arch Diocese of Greater Montreal and, it turns out, he was very upset. It seems that in the previous year only one English Catholic priest was ordained in the entire Montreal area. He ranted and raved, spewing forth fire and brimstone for over half an hour. He pounded the pulpit and made everybody squirm about in the dirt filled pews.
Suddenly he took a deep breath, raised his arms and eyes to the ceiling, paused, then began to slowly lower them again. He fixed his gaze upon anybody who dared to look straight at him and sighed, “Perhaps this is a sign from the Holy Spirit showering His blessings upon us.” His now calm voice hissed
from deep in the back of his throat.
I looked around at everybody just staring at him in shock. When I realized he was referring to all this dust, I let out a high-pitched shriek of hysteria. The thought which flashed through my mind was “He just crapped on your head you moron!” I don’t know what anybody else got out of his attempt at metaphor but I noticed that suddenly the focus of attention had shifted to me. So I bolted from the church half laughing and half terrified they were going to tear me limb from limb.

Well Cliff, over 30 yrs. ago, many priests/ministers were fire and brimstone and had many of us too afraid to darken the doors of a church. The RC church has always been too heavy for me. I cannot respect a church that will not have the grace to share holy communion with visitors to their church who are non-catholic. Depending on the church and the minister, churches today can be quite enjoyable. We loved our church in our previous city but have never found one we want to stay with in our current one. This time it's not the minister but the congregation itself.
I think anyone with a brain knows God did not drop the dust into the church and the priest probably lost a lot of believers in that incident. If I am going to attend church it is to pray with other people and to worship together but not in the sense that I feel fear. When I attend church I am seeking a sense of community. The only sense of community we found here was people pouncing on us wanting us to be a part of the running of the church and we were hardly through the doors. We wanted at least a year to become familiar with all of that. There was another couple there that not only wanted to leap right in, they wanted complete control and for about a year they got it. Then I think people got fed up and we heard they moved to another church - same religion - just another church. Any minister who practices fire and brimstone these days would have most of the congregation walk out instantly and for those polite enough to stay, it would be their last attendance in that church. We left for the reason I stated along with the fact that there was zero sense of community within the church. If I am going to feel like a stranger every Sunday, then I don't want to be there. I believe in God and I believe in the power of prayer. I'm also old enough to know that prayer doesn't mean you get everything you want.

 

[Vereya]

Please try to understand my view. What I believe to be the inerrant word of god states that christ death was suffice to defeat all evil. As difficult as it is to understand, even if Hitler TRULY repented, and accepted christ's death as salvation, God would forgive. God's love and mercy is just that great. His perfect love and perfect justice is bigger that any evil, ever commited.

I've got an offer for you. :smile: Why not go to some counselling centers for people, whose family had been killed and who have to live alone now and cope with their loss. I'm sure there are some institutions like that. Why don't you tell them that their loved ones' murderers are saved by the love and mercy of Jesus Christ? I wonder, what would they say?

 

[In Between Man]

I've got an offer for you. :smile: Why not go to some counselling centers for people, whose family had been killed and who have to live alone now and cope with their loss. I'm sure there are some institutions like that. Why don't you tell them that their loved ones' murderers are saved by the love and mercy of Jesus Christ? I wonder, what would they say?

I don't understand how you keep misconstruing my point. A murderer can only be saved --> IF <-- he truly repents for his crime in his heart --> AND <-- accepts Christ's death as his salvation, forgiveness for his sins. A reconciliation with God. Any sin is forgivable, mine, yours. God actually is that loving he would forgive if you truly repent.

Even if a murder was saved, why gloat to the victims that he's saved? What would that accomplish?

 

[MHz]

Forgiveness from Christ does not commute any earth given punishments for those crimes.

 

[Cliffy]

"Forgiveness from Christ..."
Does that mean christians need to be forgiven for their beliefs?

The reason for atheism is religion. I think that is obvious to all atheists.

The only thing I would personally add to this is that nothing is black and white. People are not either religious or atheist. There are a billion gray areas in between. It is not a choice of one or the other. Each person needs to come to their own conclusions based on investigation. Do not accept anybody else' authority. It is your life and you are your only authority. Anybody who tries to impose authority over your life is an 'A'hole. - Thus spoketh I.

 

[Colpy]

To my mind there can be only one reason for atheism:

Willful blindness.......

look around.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

You still think the Bible points to a young earth creation, science says that the earth is a lot older than that. That is as far as you allow yourself to go, you don't bother think your current view (of the Bible) is not the way it was meant to be understood. That isn't rejecting the Bible, that would be rejecting your parents word.

I reject both the Bible and my parents' word on the subject of religion. The Bible quite clearly does point to a young earth creation, that was the conventional view for most of the Bible's existence, until science gave the lie to it and made it necessary for people like you to turn to more metaphorical interpretations rather than taking what it plainly says as literally true. You are implicitly claiming the Bible has not been properly understood for most of its history, which is true but not for the reasons you think. It is not the work of god, it's the work of men, and you have to understand that before you can understand the Bible. As long as you persist in your god delusion, you're never going to get it.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

To my mind there can be only one reason for atheism:

Willful blindness.......

look around.

I did, and it made me an atheist.

 

[VanIsle]

Wrong.

I grew tired of the tyranny and hypocracy of god. I also grew tired of the godoholics around me. I also noticed the claims the religious were making weren't true. I also spent about 10 years trying to prove there was a god and wasn't able - a task that should be relatively simple if it were true.

So basically I just woke up.

Thousands have spent years attempting to prove God does not exist. Certainly not all but many of them have wound up as christians. It's impossible to prove God does exist. Why do you think it should be easy? That's like saying you get to test Him and see if He responds. You don't test God, you accept Him or you don't. I just see it as your loss. I choose to believe He is "there" a part of my life. You choose to ignore Him. I don't care what you choose. It's all up to you.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

You don't test God, you accept Him or you don't.

It's not that simple, and I seriously doubt that many of the people who've tried to prove god doesn't exist ended up embracing Christianity, but that's really not the point. The point is that a cosmos with a god in it, particularly a god with the characteristics usually ascribed to him, like his interest in us, ought to be obviously different from one without. It's not, and the more we learn about it the less willing we are to assign a role to the supernatural in it. Religion has had to retreat from making empirical claims about the nature of reality in the face of the scientific revolution over the last few centuries as rational investigation has provided better explanations. You've heard of Copernicus, and Galileo? Any rational person faced with such a consistent trend wouldn't hesitate to conclude god most likely doesn't exist. You're quite right that god's existence cannot be proven or disproven, but the weight of evidence is against him.

 

[Cliffy]

Any rational person faced with such a consistent trend wouldn't hesitate to conclude god most likely doesn't exist.

Dexter,

... or doesn't care or have time to be concerned with the mental masturbation of pesky little demanding carbon units!One can wonder at the beauty and symmetry of the Universe and life and ask whether some form of intelligence caused it all come together without religion or dogma. There does seem to be an intelligence to it all but does it care what we think... I would think that if there is an intelligence behind it, it is at least so far beyond our comprehension that even to speculate is a colossal waste of time and energy.

 

[VanIsle]

It's not that simple, and I seriously doubt that many of the people who've tried to prove god doesn't exist ended up embracing Christianity, but that's really not the point. The point is that a cosmos with a god in it, particularly a god with the characteristics usually ascribed to him, like his interest in us, ought to be obviously different from one without. It's not, and the more we learn about it the less willing we are to assign a role to the supernatural in it. Religion has had to retreat from making empirical claims about the nature of reality in the face of the scientific revolution over the last few centuries as rational investigation has provided better explanations. You've heard of Copernicus, and Galileo? Any rational person faced with such a consistent trend wouldn't hesitate to conclude god most likely doesn't exist. You're quite right that god's existence cannot be proven or disproven, but the weight of evidence is against him.

Sorry - I still disagree with you. I believe you have a right to your own beliefs and I have a right to mine and after that we are miles apart. That's okay - Cliffy, Spade and SirJoe don't agree with me on this either. I'm alright with that.

 

[VanIsle]

Any rational person faced with such a consistent trend wouldn't hesitate to conclude god most likely doesn't exist.

Dexter,

... or doesn't care or have time to be concerned with the mental masturbation of pesky little demanding carbon units!One can wonder at the beauty and symmetry of the Universe and life and ask whether some form of intelligence caused it all come together without religion or dogma. Their does seem to be an intelligence to it all but does it care what we think... I would think that if there is an intelligence behind it, it is at least so far beyond our comprehension that even to speculate is a colossal waste of time and energy.

Cliff:
Are you humming "Rock of Ages"?;-) Or - "I am a rock, I am an Island. lol

 

[Cliffy]

American aboriginal people used to consult rocks all the time. They believed they were repositories of the history of the region. By communicating with them the people could learn a lot. Of course the more practical use for them was in the sweat lodge.

I like "I am a Rock..." but in my case has more to do with the content of my brain pan.

 

[scratch]

Inukshuk