What will it take for you to Stop Believing!? (Deity)

reply to post by Pappa_Bear


I at first was very 'agnostic' at aliens, and strictly one party orientated politically.

yet through ats, and looking at others opinions have changed my thoughts not necesarrily by seeing what they said, but by question me and who I am.

I've obviously changed quite a bit, and some members on here attack me on that, but I always like to be able to change my mind on a subject, aliens have been fun experience though, not as much as politics. lol.

I adore the discussions and opinions, although most of the newer threads are all, "I don't want another discussion it's pointless". Which is discouraging, because discussion is needed. And can be fun!

reply to post by Republican08


Yeah you've got a point, heh good thing they haven't done a study like that. Maybe they have, idk, I probably don't want to know the answer to that question haha.

Yeah sometimes I wish we would evolve faster so some of these darn questions could be answered, like do Aliens exist? It seems to got to take so much on the hopes that your belief is correct. I suppose the only way to know anything for sure would be time travel. I guarantee today the first time frame people would go to is the lifetime of Jesus.

I don't know why I believe, I have a lot of reason not too. I don't like believing in delusions and lies, but I guess I'm a pretty heavy right brainier so I suppose that makes it easier.

I think everyone likes to have lust in what they believe, or they wouldn't believe it. People like to show it off too. I guess that's just human nature I suppose, I'm fine with it just as long as they don't kill one another over it. Or tell me what I should believe.

reply to post by Republican08

I adore the discussions and opinions, although most of the newer threads are all, "I don't want another discussion it's pointless". Which is discouraging, because discussion is needed. And can be fun!

That is at least, one thing we can agree on!

reply to post by asmall89


I wish we'd evolve but current times could make things better.
If people would turn the faith in god to something else like say, astrophysics, mountains could be crumbled and life on other planets could be discovered.

Can you imagine if all christians were asked to tithe 10% of their earnings to NASA *ya ya ya you hate nasa sneaky guys them but think ok*, what could we accomplish, and have them WANT! to tithe it to them. Life would ultimately change.

Now imagine that 30 percent wanted to be an astronaut with the passion of being a preacher or choir girl/boy, studied religiously as a child! Life could be so unimaginably great.

Yet, they pray to nothing, and don't do anything for civilization.

It's terrible. isn't it.

Imagine what this energy could be turned to, instead of this thing that offers nothing but a little bit of comfort, instead of facing the wound we have and embracing it.

I don't believe in a 'Godhead' so much as a (passive) 'Force'... I hope to become a Jedi one day.

If there is something, I don't really believe it IS anything particularly, or has any particular qualities. I think religious stories are probably stories that have been passed down through the rise and fall and rise of civilization time and time again.

Anyway, as I don't firmly believe in anything, I can't really answer your questions personally. All I know is that I don't know anything. I give an individual's personal perspective the benefit of the doubt... if they have found reason enough to believe in something, it's none of my business until they try to convince me of it. And when they do, I just agree with them on the grounds that I don't think anything is impossible.

I find it amusing that you like to challenge people's beliefs so much... but hey, I suppose you've experienced alot of bible-thumping, so you're entitled to do it back at them.

Really I think each individual belief would have to be subtly debunked one at a time... for instance, someone who believes we are the most intelligent life God created might have a hard time sustaining that belief if they saw a UFO land and an alien appear. Then again, they might try to convince themselves it's a demon. Ya know, the way God (or the Devil, I can't remember) put dinosaur bones in the ground to test people's faith, confuse them, whatnot.

One thing I am certain of, YOU can't change their minds. I'm pretty sure you know that already.

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.
~ Thomas Carlyle

We are all captives of the picture in our head -- our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.
~ Walter Lippmann

Originally posted by Republican08
reply to post by asmall89

Can you imagine if all christians were asked to tithe 10% of their earnings to NASA *ya ya ya you hate nasa sneaky guys them but think ok*, what could we accomplish, and have them WANT! to tithe it to them. Life would ultimately change.

I hate to do this but I gotta.. I'm not all for the whole "tithing" thing since a lot of "religious" organizations have ran with this and made a lot of money from their own greed etc...but NASA? Even if I was an atheist why would I invest my money in this? As an ATS member, I can tell you....it is my opinion that NASA knows more than they wan't to tell those taxpayers who fund their organization and some even think the illuminati is behind it. *ahem* lol.

Yet, they pray to nothing, and don't do anything for civilization.

It's terrible. isn't it.

Terrible according to you. You believe in "nothing" so why pay for anything at all?? This is a matter of pure perspective and just happens to be your opinion.

[edit on 1-8-2009 by Wookiep]





[edit on 1-8-2009 by Wookiep]

reply to post by eMachine


I've received my bible thump, and quran thumping, and have done my own bible thumping.

If you look at the religions, they all preach repeatedly to tell everyone of that religion, Quran perhaps is interpreted to kill, and so does the OT bible.

But they all have a main purpose of "Speak The good news to everyone!".

Well us atheist have nothing like that to stand on, no ancient texts.

Imagine reading a book from 2,000 years ago saying, there is no deities there is just us on a bluish planet just beginning our adolescent part of our existence.

That is borign! I even know it is, yet it's true.

But now say unicorns are real and angels guarding you from evil spirits are real, You know its fake but its altered in child indoctrination, the crucial parts in a childs learning to where it becomes real, and everyone else believes it so its reinforced as real. Sickening to me.

For me to believe in a god.

I would need the same evidence as I would for aliens.

Me a group of people, and tons of photographs and videos to appear while i and the group see them.

Kinda why I lean toward aliens existing, yet, if I asked people 2,000 years from now that this did happen millenia ago, I'd respect them for not believing, not damn them to eternal hell, and preach they die for not believing.

reply to post by Wookiep


You did it, you brought conspiracy to NASA, although say it was made of purely honest people doing honest things, such as churches claim.

Noone dare say the gov't is behind religion, no no no, religion is from god, and god is not government, unless we're in a theocracy. lol

or necrocracy. lol hitchens is amazing.

Yet just imagine the possibilities of it!

I'm stunned, this hasn't turned into a complete hate bashin thread.

I love my Religious friends, just wish to persuade, and/or understand their ideologies.

This may be to my full Ignore list, or by purely great members posting, But i'd like to not I do appreciate it.

I will give you an answer, but it's not theoretical as in "what would it take" but practical as in "what did it take" for me to stop believing in "God" as such is commonly understood in the majority of the US.

My Mom was and still is a practicing Episcopalian. My Dad was a Protestant, who converted to Episcopalian when he married my Mom. However, Dad was also a Philosophy major who later wound up with his PhD and teaching Philosophy at University.

As a kid growing up, my parents took me to church regularly. My parents also sent me to visit my grandparents in the summers who also took me to church regularly.

My main question for my church at that time was "if the Jews were God's chosen people, then why aren't we all Jewish?" which none of my Sunday school teachers ever answered satisfactorily (I later learned about the history and divisions and politics of the church). Common conversation in my house or on our weekend bike rides revolved around ethical issues such as "you are in a mine and it collapses - only one person can get out - do you get out or do you let your best friend get out?" And this involved hours of debate about the answer, and why we chose what we chose, and how that choice could be right or wrong or how we could understand the choice if someone made the alternative choice from the one that we made ourselves. We also took a trip to England during which time my Mom told me the story of Henry VIII which completely confused me. How could he go to so much trouble to declare himself holy head of the church and divorce his wife and marry Anne Boleyn, and then just a few years later declare her guilty and have her beheaded and go on to marry and kill several others?

THEN, my faith in Christianity was already in serious distress, but what came next was the end. Whenever I would go to visit my Grandma in Virginia, she would take me to church with her, and she would record the service for the "shut-in's" who could not get to church and would take the recordings around to them later. She would quiz me on the apostles names and so on, and take me to Sunday School. I felt good when I earned her praise, she was the best and most respected person I knew. My Aunts and my Dad clearly had the utmost respect for her. Grandpa had died of cancer when I was very little, and she was the matriarch of the family.

When I was in 7th grade, after I returned home from spending the summer with her, my parents came knocking on my door one night to have a family talk. I thought I was in trouble for figuring out that I could get X rated movies on our (very early) cable box by sticking a magnet in the keyhole. Instead, they needed to tell me that my Grandma had just been brutally murdered by her next door neighbor. He had previously done some handy work for her and his phone was out so he had come next door to ask to use the phone and she made the mistake of asking after his family. He choked her with her typewriter ribbon, slit her throat, and then brutalized her body. There are more gruesome details, but I've supplied enough already and don't want to expose my family further. At any rate... My family lived in fear that he was coming after us next for several months because he had left my Grandma's residence with her purse and her car, and several letters from us were in her purse. Eventually, they discovered him in a different state and were able to apprehend him and bring him back to VA for trial. After many years of appeals, he finally received the death penalty. I will never forget my father sending me a letter where he talked about cleaning his mother's blood from the floor so they could sell her house. My father has told me he has been able to forgive. My aunt is a born-again Christian, and her comments make it clear she has not been able to forgive. I have left Christianity for a mixture of what makes sense to me, cross between many beliefs, mostly centering around love, self-discovery, and non-violence.

Originally posted by Republican08
reply to post by Wookiep

 

You did it, you brought conspiracy to NASA, although say it was made of purely honest people doing honest things, such as churches claim.

Noone dare say the gov't is behind religion, no no no, religion is from god, and god is not government, unless we're in a theocracy. lol

or necrocracy. lol hitchens is amazing.

Yet just imagine the possibilities of it!

lol I totally believe the gov't is behind many aspects of religion. In fact I think the word was twisted a long time ago. You could read my thread about it if you wanted too.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Tho I highly doubt you would be interested, besides it's kind of off-topic? The possibilities are endless, in fact it kind of makes me sick even! :p

I for one could care less if there is a god or not. I find it hard to believe someone on this forum would question anothers belief in something that has no proof and not question the belief on the NWO/aliens and other such nonsense. Thier beliefs have just about enough proof as these others. Supposed eyewitnesses, pictures and other things...you can honestly bitch and moan about thier beliefs and not question the other beliefs on here. If someone believes in God let them....all you can do is offer your opinion and nothing else. If it was possible to change anothers beliefs then the skeptics on this forum would have done it long ago.

Well... I'll share with you a little of my experience which led me to almost complete neutrality on the subject...

I used to be very "new-agey"... thought I was "spiritually enlightened"... I went around all brightness and positivity, believing that God was with me, in me, around me, all the time. It sure felt like everything was a'right in the world back then.

Then I met my husband, a conspiracy theorist even then. He told me about politics (mostly the Patriot Act at the time) and his "shadow government" theories etc... he was a real bummer.

One day, I was trying to share with him stuff I was learning about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the traits of a "self-actualized" person, trying to inspire him to "self-actualize" with me, and he got all defensive about it. He basically said it was just another sort of dogma to make some people feel superior to others, and I argued with him, and it re-enforced his argument.

It was our first fight. In fact, I lost my temper, which I didn't even know I had one to lose. I then realized that, hard as I tried to believe I was oblivious to "negativity", I was not spiritually enlightened at all. My belief that "positivity" somehow made me impervious to all things bad, was shattered. To put it simply, my "god" could not make my future husband believe.

After that, I was never able to be as completely positive. I would try, and he would tell me about the horrors of the world, and I would fail. I lost faith in myself, my flawed philosophy, and my "god", in consequence.

The things we endure for love... he and I still have some awesome debates though, even when we agree (one of us will play devil's advocate, for fun), and that's taught me more than my positivity ever could. It's taken me almost 6 years now to come to terms with all that.

reply to post by Republican08


The formulation of Gods and myths is merely the human mind attempting to explain the unknown elements within the nature and themselves. There is no shortage to the mysteries that still remain because for every answer we get there seem a dozen new questions attached to it that boggle the mind.

Deities are also necessary for human psychology, as the first creatures to come along with consciousness we have to find someway to come to grips with our mortality.

Most people, I find, are agnostic because the word atheist seems cold to them. Atheism seems like the refusal to believe in a higher power, it seems just as closed minded a belief as those who cling so desperately to religion and it is defended just as fervently when it is attacked or bothered by opposing views.

This concept we call God is more than some ignorant delusion conjured up by a bunch of superstitious sheep, at least for me it is. It is the quantification of existence, a personification of all the unknowns and of the Universe itself. It makes sense that we humans would put a familiar human-like face on the elements of nature...

The way I see it there is no proving or disproving the idea of a higher power or consciousness greater than our own, though disproving the established religions and their doctrines is an easy task (because those are made by human beings). I like to think that the Universe itself, in a way, is God. Because all knowledge, energy, and life does exist within and come from the Universe, and the Universe is omnipresent.

It will take a lot to upset the deep seated ignorance and indoctrination of religion across this planet but I think the first thing to do is stop being angry at each other, once the groups stop fighting over it and being defensive about it maybe some progress can be made. The religion can come to terms with some scientific facts they ignorantly reject and that their religious teachings are usually not to be taken literally and scientists can come to terms with the fact that they do not have all the answers and should not be so callous in the treatment of those who have faith...

I can answer your question, but unfortunately i am sure you will not understand, because it's not only logic i talk about but much more.

What will it take for a believer to give up god? Simple, it is the inner knowledge, the feeling down in the soul that there is a god and the deep experience of love and beauty that can't be explained without the concept of "god" or, more precise, a loving universe that cares for every single being.

But since you are an "atheist", you most likely forgot the feeling long ago that i am talking about or you just don't admit that you know it very well or at least knew it some time ago in your childhood.

whatever.

reply to post by Republican08


You try to rational God with human thinking. You can never know God by simply using human Logic.

His ways, are far beyond human comprehension, that is why you can only understand in that new life he gives in the spirit. Its in His Love.

Rom 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Rom 8:36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Rom 8:37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
Rom 8:38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Rom 8:39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So unless you are born of the spirit He offers, you can never know His Love. Because it is in and through that spirit, that you KNOW, beyond any doubt.

Just what I believe, just what I know!

[edit on 1-8-2009 by DarksDeception]

reply to post by Pappa_Bear
Thankyou for sharing your losses and what I would refer to as your revelation.
I cannot understand why atheists are so afraid to let those who believe in a higher power, no matter how it is referred to, have those beliefs. It seems they have an innate need to question the intelligence of those who believe in God, or gods, something I cannot understand.
I don't question their right to disbelieve.

reply to post by Republican08

What would make me renounce my belief in God. I don't think anything could make me do that, because I have spent a great deal of time contemplating the existence of a Creative Force, which I choose to call God. It is my belief that God chooses, at various times, to interact with the people of Earth, and, if I assume the existence of intelligent life in other parts of the Universe, then I would assume He/She would interact with them as well.
I choose to follow the moral teachings of Jesus, as did Thomas Jefferson, although Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus.
I have answered yu question.
Now, I have questions for you, and others on this thread who do not believe.
1. Why do atheists get incensed over people who believe in God, but do not try to force their beliefs on others.
2. Why do atheists have a problem with the phrase, "under God," in the pledge of allegiance, or "In God we trust" on our currency? If you do not believe these are only words, and can do you absolutely no harm. These words will not indoctrinate your children, and they are appropriate, since our country was founded on Judeao-Christian principles.
3. This is a question and a challange. I do not ask that you "give your heart to Jesus," but what would be the harm to read the four gospels and the Book of Acts, learn the teachings of Jesus, and then live by them for one year? What harm would it do you to live by the Golden Rule, study the Beattitudes, and the parables and apply them to your own lives?
I have issued the challenge several times, and have yet to get an aswer to my questions.
If you are not willing to accept the challenge can you at least tell me why?

[edit on 1-8-2009 by kettlebellysmith]

reply to post by TurkeyBurgers


There is nothing you could ever do to make me disbelieve Jesus. It is because of my faith. Simple as that. Why do you not respect that? I respect your belief that there is no God. I might say my peace to one in hopes of delivering the gospel to them, but if they do not receive my message, then I will respect their choice and move on. God bless.

Why do you care what other people believe?

I don't believe in the dogma of religion but I certainly believe there is a benevolent force that helps us along. To think all of this is just an accident is insane. Go study nature deeply.

We all live life and form beliefs from our own perspective and experiences...every one unique.

I don't preach to you to believe, why do you want to preach NOT to believe?