Riddle me this Athiests...

Now as many may know, I'm agnostic, and I strongly oppose most organized religions. However, I'm sick of always picking on the "believers", Christians particularly. It's high time I pointed my "finger of blame", so to speak, away from those with faith, and towards those with an absence of faith. I'm talking about Atheists of course, those who try to argue "there is no God". Now, I can see exactly why you might be against religion, but why do you reject the whole idea of God, or a higher power, a super-consciousness, it doesn't really matter what you call it, I want to know how you can be so sure no such being exists. You proclaim those with faith have belief in something totally fictional and man-made - and that could be true, but you have no evidence of your proclamation either.

Bring me one science textbook which states God does not exist. At least Christians have a book (however laughable that may be) to back them up. Don't get me wrong, I believe the bible, and the teachings of any organized religion are probably wrong, but they still have a right to believe in a higher being, working for the greater good, from which they can draw strength. My problem is when they dilute what faith is all about, and turn it into an organization which manipulates and deceives people, which results in an army of brainwashed dummies storming around like the saviors of the Earth trying to force feed you a whole bunch of utterly ridiculous crap...but despite all this, it still gives you no right to claim there is no God.

You don't know there is definitely no God, and neither do I. No one on Earth does. You Atheists aren't as smart as you think, in fact, whilst claiming to be the most rational and down to Earth people, you are completely ignoring the scientific method all together, and jumping to conclusions. So how can you explain this? The way I see it, you need to refine your scope of scrutiny to the aspects of organized religion which are extremely detrimental to society and our collective growth. Until you do that, you'll look just as stupid as them, and be violently opposed. It's just as arrogant to say God does exist as it is to say he doesn't. In the end, you Atheists do nothing but promote the idea that you must be on one "side" of the team or the other.

You can tell them they are wrong about everything, but you can't tell them it's wrong to have faith.

[edit on 18/5/10 by CHA0S]

I just literally don't care if there is a god or not, it makes no difference to my life either way. I personally think its quite unlikely that there is a god.

However if there is one, thanks very much for creating us, although i shall not be worshipping you. And if there isn't one life go's on, and probabley in a more humane manner.

[edit on 18-5-2010 by Peruvianmonk]

I tend to disregard how others would want me to label them.

I place people in a hierarchy I've created based on more inexplicable characteristics.

[edit on 18-5-2010 by AProphet1233]

reply to post by Peruvianmonk

If there is one, thanks very much for creating us, however i shall not be worshipping you. And if there isn't one life go's on

That's...pretty much...how I feel...however, if you just don't care, that means you don't believe their is no God, and therefor you're not Atheist, you'd be more agnostic.

reply to post by AProphet1233

I tend to disregard how others would want me to label them.

I place people in a hierarchy I've created based on more inexplicable characteristics.

Very wise - because there is no one label that fits a certain persons belief 99% of the time.

[edit on 18/5/10 by CHA0S]

When people get into a mind set, they think in that mind set. Its called growth.
Most people change their minds 50 times about 1 thing in a lifetime.

I am not Atheist, but I do want to add this.

I believe that the reason people denounce God is this:

Because they don't want to be held accountable for their actions.

I can't get any simpler than that.
Look around, CHA0S, and see that society doesn't have morals anymore.
You can't tell people they are doing something wrong.
Children are getting more spoiled by the second these days and it is getting worse.

Gluttony, Greed, Lust, all the 'deadly' sins are more prevalent now than ever.
I guess if you don't believe these things are wrong, then you are not in the subject matter.

Now, there are genuinely good people on Earth. I am not saying everyone is evil.
But from what I see, 80% of the people I meet do not see the consequences in their actions. Good or bad.
Its usually the bad actions that have the worst consequences. Obviously.
SO if you don't believe in God, you don't need to believe that you will be held accountable for everything you do.
That makes life much easier.

Everything is based purely on beliefs.
I just believe that more people know the things they do are wrong, they just ignore the inclinations.

Of course, now a days, the bombardment of information is confusing more people everyday.

Just my $0.002 (adjusted for hyper-inflation)

Originally posted by CHA0S
Now, I can see exactly why you might be against religion, but why do you reject the whole idea of God, or a higher power, a super-consciousness, it doesn't really matter what you call it, I want to know how you can be so sure no such being exists.

Well, see, it does matter what you call it, and how you define it. Just what are you asking us to believe in? That there's a big, white-bearded Grandpa in the sky watching over us? That there's some kind of infinite, omnipresent being out there who for some paradoxical reason is somehow motivated to create stuff like us? After all, if God is everything, why would have any motivations or needs at all? Is it a warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you pet a puppy? Or that feeling of vastness you get when you look at the stars?

You, yourself, can't even define what you're talking about. In some ways, you're implying something so infinite and powerful and all-encompassing in multiple unseen dimensions that it's essentially beyond the ability of our small monkey brains to comprehend. How can you believe in something you can neither define nor comprehend?

So God is really a blank, a cypher, a placeholder you use instead of saying "I don't know." It can't be defined without generating illogical and unworkable paradoxes. An infinite being with wants and needs. A being that is everything, but also separate enough to be considered an entity unto itself. A being in the image of a human, yet vast as infinity. A being external to time and space. Paradoxical. Undefinable. Incomprehensible.

Do you believe in (........................................)? How? What are you even talking about? That is the problem.

[edit on 18-5-2010 by Blue Shift]

Like all relgions and beliefs, we atheists have our extremists. I dont give a damn about what you do or dont believe in, just stop critisicing us for our beliefs. Its only a small minorty that give us a bad name.

Dont generalise....PLEASE

reply to post by CHA0S


Absent proof or even evidence of something, why would anyone believe it? I understand about faith, however many people have objective minds and can not go on faith alone. You can hardly fault them for that. A lot of people, myself included, don't believe in the god that religions create, though that doesn't mean that we think god couldn't or doesn't exist. I haven't seen proof either way so I will refrain my judgment and believe in only what I have proof or overwhelming evidence of.

If you grew up hearing that the universe was supported by a column of turtles, would you believe it? Why wouldn't you? There isn't any proof that the universe isn't held up by a column of turtles. If turtles aren't doing the job, then what is?

I personally have not yet seen any proof that god exists but that doesn't mean that I believe a god doesn't exists because I haven't seen proof of that either. I can only say for sure whether something is in existence if I have proof of that something. However, if evidence absent of absolute proof exists, then I can believe that something is plausible. With that being said, many people havn't even seen such evidence.

Just my 2 cents.

--airspoon

Edited to add the word "evidence" into the first sentence.

[edit on 18-5-2010 by airspoon]

[edit on 18-5-2010 by airspoon]

reply to post by havok


Absolute rubbish. I do not need a God or Religion to know that Murder is wrong, Stealing is Wrong (Apart from in a survival situation), Adultery is Wrong, Gluttony is Wrong, Greed is Wrong. There is nothing wrong with lust however. We are Human Beings.

Your average person is much more accountable for their actions (Police, fellow peers, family) than Corporations and Governments.

Originally posted by Peruvianmonk
reply to post by havok

 

Absolute rubbish. I do not need a God or Religion to know that Murder is wrong, Stealing is Wrong (Apart from in a survival situation), Adultery is Wrong, Gluttony is Wrong, Greed is Wrong. There is nothing wrong with lust however. We are Human Beings.

Your average person is much more accountable for their actions (Police, fellow peers, family) than Corporations and Governments.

Not absolute rubbish.
I said that not everyone is evil.
I never said you need God to believe these things either.
My personal opinion is pretty clear.

I am glad you see the rights and wrongs of things, it makes you smarter than most.

I agree with you on corruption in gov't.

reply to post by havok


You pretty much did say that you need a God in your life to be held accountable. It was the whole basis of your post.

Oh how good of you to conclude that not everyone is evil?!!

[edit on 18-5-2010 by Peruvianmonk]

reply to post by Blue Shift

So God is really a blank, a cypher, a placeholder you use instead of saying "I don't know." It can't be defined without generating illogical and unworkable paradoxes. An infinite being with wants and needs. A being that is everything, but also separate enough to be considered an entity unto itself. A being in the image of a human, yet vast as infinity. A being external to time and space. Paradoxical. Undefinable. Incomprehensible.

And it's for reason like that, plus many others, that I'm agnostic. I wont subscribe to any set belief, because none have been confirmed. But what I'm asking here, is how Atheist can so casually conclude God does not exists whilst claiming to be rational and scientifically minded at the same time.

How can you believe in something you can neither define nor comprehend?

Faith.

Personally I don't think it should matter to anyone else what anyone else believes. It should only be what you believe. We spend so much time arguing against someone else's beliefs that it makes me wonder if people really believe what they admit to, or if they're just trying to strike down someone else's because it seems absurd to them. Just think about what you believe and why, and not what someone else believes and why not. Whats the purpose? you still won't convince them.

As for the proof of a god, or designer being present: this should not matter so much either because if you think about history, much of what we know now, we didn't know before, and if you think about it, before we knew what we knew, we would have never believed it to be real becuase there was no "proof". Just because there's no proof doesn't mean something isn't real. Its just like someone said, there's no proof for a creator, but no proof against it either. It's one of those things that we are still searching for an answer, which is why this post was created. However, with all that we are starting to uncover in the world, the answer to this question may not be far off. Whatever the answer is, I believe it will be beneficial to all of humanity and will solve a lot of the problems that we have here on Earth.

reply to post by havok

Because they don't want to be held accountable for their actions.

I'm going to have to disagree on this one Havok. Well, not completely, that's obviously part of the reason, but a large portion of people have more respectable reasons IMO.

reply to post by CHA0S

Now, I can see exactly why you might be against religion, but why do you reject the whole idea of God, or a higher power, a super-consciousness, it doesn't really matter what you call it, I want to know how you can be so sure no such being exists.

I don't believe in God because I don't see any evidence that there is one or that the Universe would require one BUT I don't rule out the remote possibility of a higher power or consciousness we might call "God". So I'm more of an agnostic-atheist. Most atheists I've met are the same way, not entirely closed off to the idea of God but not willing to believe on blind faith or warm fuzzy feelings. The thing is though if you can postulate God by saying "how can you be sure no such being exists?" than you could say the same thing for giant space penguins or trolls or Unicorns or any other creature your imagination can conjure. Science really can never 100% disprove the existence of Space Penguins but since there is no evidence anywhere that they exist it would be fool-hardy to go around believing in them.

Bring me one science textbook which states God does not exist

Science is more concerned with the study of life, the Universe and everything. Science cannot prove the supernatural because the supernatural leaves no evidence or data and is most definitely NOT repeatable. Even if you do believe in God, and plenty of scientists do, that doesn't make the evidence you uncover any less real. For instance, evolution, even if God did exist it wouldn't stop being true. Science, in that way, is the study of "God's" Universe to find the truths that religion cannot give us. So believers should really look at science as exploring God's Universe and unlocking its mysteries.

You don't know there is definitely no God, and neither do I. No one on Earth does. You Atheists aren't as smart as you think, in fact, whilst claiming to be the most rational and down to Earth people, you are completely ignoring the scientific method all together, and jumping to conclusions

Once again I point you to the Space Penguins, or the famed Spaghetti Monster. Who are you to say there are no giant Penguins in space? Do you know that for sure

One does not have to be a scientist to be an atheist but it helps. If you study science you'll find that everything once thought to be supernatural has been found to have a natural explanation. For life, we found fossil and genetic evidence that clearly points to things evolving, things did not get conjured by magic words. We found that disease wasn't caused by spirits or demons (or body thetans for that matter) but by germs. The God did it label slapped on by the religious didn't work when we actually started learning about our world. So in a Universe in which there is no evidence for God WHY would someone believe in one?

The reason Christianity gets the brunt of the attack is that most atheists in the "Western" world are raised Christian and must wake up from that nightmare. I'm often very critical of Christianity but I assure you that if I had been raised in some other faith I would be more critical of that.

It's just as arrogant to say God does exist as it is to say he doesn't

Once again, Space Penguins. Its just as arrogant to say Space Penguins don't exist than it is to say they definitely do.

You can tell them they are wrong about everything, but you can't tell them it's wrong to have faith.

Faith and religion are double-edged swords. Religion is meant to unite people but then it does just as well at dividing them especially when people in power use it (which they have and still do). It is true that when we were still young as a species faith motivated us, belief that we had the favor of the gods drove us forward and we built great cities and monuments many of which stand to this day. Science and religion need not be at odds but religion must find a way to adapt to the modern world or to at least stomp out the plague of fundamentalism. See its one thing to take moral lessons from the stories in your religion but another entirely to believe everything the book says is absolute truth. Blind faith is dangerous as is being unable to separate deity from doctrine.

I don't think it is arrogant to reject the human notion of God. Even if there is a God out there what resemblance, if any, might he/she/it even have to our primitive myths? I'm guessing not much...

Originally posted by CHA0S
Now as many may know, I'm agnostic, and I strongly oppose most organized religions. However, I'm sick of always picking on the "believers", Christians particularly. It's high time I pointed my "finger of blame", so to speak, away from those with faith, and towards those with an absence of faith. I'm talking about Atheists of course, those who try to argue "there is no God". Now, I can see exactly why you might be against religion, but why do you reject the whole idea of God, or a higher power, a super-consciousness, it doesn't really matter what you call it, I want to know how you can be so sure no such being exists. You proclaim those with faith have belief in something totally fictional and man-made - and that could be true, but you have no evidence of your proclamation either.

Bring me one science textbook which states God does not exist. At least Christians have a book (however laughable that may be) to back them up. Don't get me wrong, I believe the bible, and the teachings of any organized religion are probably wrong, but they still have a right to believe in a higher being, working for the greater good, from which they can draw strength. My problem is when they dilute what faith is all about, and turn it into an organization which manipulates and deceives people, which results in an army of brainwashed dummies storming around like the saviors of the Earth trying to force feed you a whole bunch of utterly ridiculous crap...but despite all this, it still gives you no right to claim there is no God.

You don't know there is definitely no God, and neither do I. No one on Earth does. You Atheists aren't as smart as you think, in fact, whilst claiming to be the most rational and down to Earth people, you are completely ignoring the scientific method all together, and jumping to conclusions. So how can you explain this? The way I see it, you need to refine your scope of scrutiny to the aspects of organized religion which are extremely detrimental to society and our collective growth. Until you do that, you'll look just as stupid as them, and be violently opposed. It's just as arrogant to say God does exist as it is to say he doesn't. In the end, you Atheists do nothing but promote the idea that you must be on one "side" of the team or the other.

You can tell them they are wrong about everything, but you can't tell them it's wrong to have faith.

[edit on 18/5/10 by CHA0S]

So, all they have to do is prove a negative? Sorry, but the default position is "there is/are no god(s)," since nothing shows existence of any deities except books written (and repeatedly translated) thousands of years ago.

Like prosecutors in court, believers have the burden of proof. Atheists can't prove there isn't a god any more than a defendant can prove that he didn't commit the crime. You show evidence that you were somewhere else? Perhaps it was manufactured. Eyewitnesses can be mistaken or liars.

And you're agnostic - you apparently don't think there is evidence of a deity, so where do you get off criticizing people who embrace their lack of belief, rather than projecting their own inadequacies onto others?

What I find most amusing is the lack of faith inherent in believers who are so threatened by the concept of doubt. They attack atheists almost as much as they attack believers in different dogmas.

The most ridiculous thing in that post? "despite all this, it still gives you no right to claim there is no God." Oh, really? People don't have a right to say there isn't a god...but people DO have a right to say that there is one. Thanks for clearing that up for us, final arbiter of what rights we have.

Besides, "riddle me this?" That wasn't a riddle - it was a rant.

Your cognitive dissonance is mind-boggling.

Here is an actual riddle:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

And I say that as someone who DOES believe, but with many doubts. Any sentient creature SHOULD have doubt. About EVERYTHING.

[edit on 5/18/10 by mothershipzeta]

Rational atheists don't 'reject God.' They don't see or experience anything at all that persuades them to accept the idea of a God or gods.

It's that straightforward.

Originally posted by Peruvianmonk
reply to post by havok

 

You pretty much did say that you need a God in your life to be held accountable. It was the whole basis of your post.

Oh how good of you to conclude that not everyone is evil?!!

How quite judgmental of you.
Thanks for the assumption.

All I said is that people don't feel the need to be held responsible for their actions.

Whereas, I do think people need to feel responsible...

Hmm...not sure where you are getting the resentment from.
I am not preaching...

Originally posted by CHA0S
reply to post by Blue Shift

 

So God is really a blank, a cypher, a placeholder you use instead of saying "I don't know." It can't be defined without generating illogical and unworkable paradoxes. An infinite being with wants and needs. A being that is everything, but also separate enough to be considered an entity unto itself. A being in the image of a human, yet vast as infinity. A being external to time and space. Paradoxical. Undefinable. Incomprehensible.

And it's for reason like that, plus many others, that I'm agnostic. I wont subscribe to any set belief, because none have been confirmed. But what I'm asking here, is how Atheist can so casually conclude God does not exists whilst claiming to be rational and scientifically minded at the same time.

How can you believe in something you can neither define nor comprehend?

Faith.

Faith is belief in something with no evidence to support it. Yet you demand that atheists supply proof, and say that absence of that belief is not rational or scientific?

You really could use some lessons in logic, because you obviously have no idea what that word means.