I really hope you'll read this.
I'll respond since you asked so politely, but first I have to adress one thing, you aren't asking atheist what they believe, you are telling them what they believe.
Instead of stating your questions like "why do you believe A?" you should try "Do you believe A, and if so, why?".
Since most of what you seem to think Atheists believe is wrong.
1. Why are you an atheist? I am curious why you would close your mind to the possibility of something more then just us and that there is any existence after death.
I am an atheist for 1 reason and one reason only, the god hypothesis has not met it's burden of proof, so I can't accept it. I was an atheist when I was born, and years of religious upbringing never managed to change that.
We haven't closed our minds to the possibility of a god, or life after death, we simply don't think there is enough evidence at the moment. We are very open to being proved wrong, infact, I'll wager we are much more open to the idea that a god exists than you are to the idea that he doesn't.
2. Why do some atheists put so much energy into something they don't believe in? By this I mean I know and have met some atheists that have their beliefs and don't care about my beliefs and are happy to do their thing and let me do my thing belief wise. Then there are atheists I have met that feel that it is their life mission to bash God and bash peoples belief in God and I just don't understand why you would put so much energy into something you don't believe in. I'm not talking about defending your beliefs as an atheist. I am talking about atheists that go out of there why to bash God or someone's belief in God. When no one is putting down their beliefs.
Just because god isn't real doesn't mean his folllowers aren't. The belief in a god has very real effects ont he world, along with superstition in general. I care about people, so when I see for instance that a school is having mandatory prayer, I care about the seperation of church and state, and I care about the children that feel uncomfortable by this. I also care about the children whose parents have scared them with tales of hell, this is child abuse in my mind, and the fact that it's based on a lie makes it even worse.
I never understand this question, why would anyone think I need to believe in a god in order to care about the effects that beliefs have?
3. I have herd a lot of atheists say that they don't believe in a universal creator or God because they believe in evolution. My question here is why can't you believe in a universal creator and evolution. I believe in both.
You can, I just don't also, the idea of evolution simply contradicts many theistic origin stories, it proves them wrong unless you suddenly throw them overboard and say everything is a metaphor, which I always think is a very weak and sad excuse people make up because they don't want to face the fact that their religion is a lie.
e now that evolution is true because things change and evolve. What we have not been able to prove is the theory of evolution as to how everything was created. So with the theory of evolution and the theory of creation both being unproven I don't see any reason why we can't look for proof of both. I mean if there is a universal creator who's to say that they didn't create everything by evolution. I mean the father of the big bang theory was Georges Lemaître a catholic priest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre He discovered it before Edward Hubble. If some of our greatest scientists have been catholic or catholic priests and they believe in a universal creator why don't you? http://www.realclearscience.com/lists/priests_who_were_scientists/scie nce_and_religion.html
Just because a lot of great scientists were religious is no argument for religion. It has to stand on it's own, we need more reason to be religious than just "well, you can be, these people were". Back then everyone was religious, we didn't know better, and the people who weren't religious would still say they were for fear of prosecution.
Again, the only reason I would ever become religious is if it became the more reasonable stance. And at the moment, there is simply no rational justification for being religious, not even close.
Also, although scientists can be religious, they can't be scientific about god and be religious, because science is built on the idea of testing hypotheses and not accepting that something is true until it has been proven. Being a religious scientists just means you are a hypocrite really, plenty of people are.
. Why don't atheists believe that a man named Jesus lived?
See this? This is not something atheists believe, some do, some don't. I don't know, I think a man called Jesus or some variant on that lived around that time, of course, many did probably. But not one that did all the miracles that the bible speaks of. Perhaps there was even some spiritual teacher named Jesus that inspired the stories, I don't know, but from the lectures by Richard Carrier I have to conclude that it's not very likely.
I understand why an atheist would not believe that Jesus was the son of God but I am curious to know why many of you say that Jesus is a myth or never lived. First I would like to start with the bible. I know the bible is not 100% fact. What I am getting at is that the bible was all written as separate books before is was all put together as one book so why would four different people. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John write four separate books about their lives with Jesus if he never lived. And why would the apostles go out and spread the message of Jesus and start a church based on his teachings if he never lived
Like I said, I don't know enough about this particular subject to tell you what we know and don't know exactly, but I do know that just because a book says it was written by multiple people, does not make it true. I also know I can talk to people TODAY who would all swear to have been abducted by aliens. If you want to use the rapid growth of christianity as an argument you have to do the same for Islam, scientology, the church of the flying spaghetti monster, and many others. Also, I know that several accounts from several of the "authors" of the bible contradict each other. And I know that there aren't any reliable second hand accounts from other parts of the world that talk about these great things happening.
But none of this matters, because even if the bible was a great book with perfect references that proved 100% that a man named Jesus lived as a prophet 2000 years ago then that still would prove NOTHING about the veracity of his claims.
Why is it that people have no problem believing that historical figures like Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, King George III, lived but when it comes to Jesus, suddenly a different standard is offered. Even though the historical evidence for Plato and Aristotle is in written form and people have no problem with that when it comes to the same standard for Jesus, many people won’t accept it. Why the double standard?
Because it doesn't really matter if these people existed, and it the claim that they did exist is less big. By which I mean, if someone tells me he has a dog, I believe him, if he says he has a dragon, I don't. Why the double standard? Because one requires more evidence, because it is more unlikely.
And the thing is this, it doesn't matter if Socrates really existed or if Plato invented him (as some believe) because the truth of what Socrates said does not really on him really existing. They are true in and of themselves. If Jesus didn't exist, then his claims were false. The teachings of Socrates aren't dependant on the existence of Socrates, and if Socrates didn't really exist, it wouldn't change much about the world. The same can not be said about Jesus.
5. Lastly I would like to address some terms I have heard atheists use that make no sense to me so please explain. 1. "They believe in a talking dead guy" God is a spiritual being who has never lived a physical life so therefore he has never died. And if they mean Jesus Yes, we do believe in a ‘guy’ that died. No, in the 3 days he was dead, his body did not produce any speech however after he rose from the dead, he spoke. So who is the talking dead guy that we believe in? 2. "Magical sky daddy" those of us who believe in a universal creator don't believe God has any magical powers or that God lives in the sky. We believe that the spiritual plane that God exists in is in a whole other dimension.
The problem is that your version of christianity is new, for instance the olympians did believe the gods ACTUALLY lived on olympus. But more to the point, these are relaly arbitrary distinctions to us. Sky, spiritual plane, who cares? It's meant to make fun of the entire concept and I don't think explaining the joke really gets us much further. I would also like to mention that your signature is "look up in the sky", I don't know if that is in reference to god, but if so, that kinda proves the joke.
I'll add some more things I think you probably don't know. A little intro into atheism.
First of all, atheism does not mean "the belief that gods don't exist", it's actually "the lack of belief that gods do exist". This seems like an arbitrary distinction to many but this distinction is the basis of science, of our justice system, and of all Atheistic arguments.
I'll try to explain the difference. Say we made a bet, I toss a coin, heads, you give me 10 bucks, tails, I give you 10 bucks. I toss the coin, but it falls where we can't see it.
I say "it's heads, give me 10 bucks".
You say "I don't believe it's heads".
I say "well, prove that it is tails".
You understand that this is not fair, just because you don't accept that the coin landed on heads does not mean you accept that it landed on tails, even if there are only two options. And it's unfair to say you should prove it, when I am the one making the claim.
Atheists are the same, we don't make the claim that gods don't exist. Theists make the claim that one does, and we say we are unconvinced, it's unfair to expect us to prove the opposite when we are not the ones making the claim, and not accepting your claim does not mean we accept the opposite claim, or have to prove it.
The same goes in science, you think of a hypothesis, then you and others try to prove it falls. Just because others don't accept your claim untill you prove it does not mean they believe it is wrong. And if we are unable to prove that it is wrong, does not mean it is right, it just means that as far as we know, it is "not wrong".
Same goes with courts, we don't have to prove that a defendant is innocent, the prosecution just has to fail to prove that he is guilty. When they fail, we don't declare the defendant "innocent", we declare him "not guilty".
Remember this when you hear a theist saying "prove that atheism is correct".
This is disingenuous, atheists make no claim, so this sentence makes as much sense as saying "prove that potato is correct".
This comes from a way of thinking about ourselves, we are not a group, not really.
To us, we are just the people, then a group comes to us (theists) and tells us "gods exist". Now we don't really want to be our own group, I think it's ridiculous to define a group by what they don't believe in. Really all you are saying is "this group consists of the people that don't belong that the other group".
You don't have a group of people who "don't play chess". You don't have a group of people who "don't believe in alien abductions". These are just the "normal people", and that is what we atheists are.
Every baby is an atheist, because he "lacks a belief in god", every tribesman who has never heard of the concept of a god is an atheist because he "lacks a belief in god", the fact that they also don't believe that gods don't exist is irrelevant, because that's not what Atheism is, it's not a group.
And you see this when you look at the things they protest, they don't protest to have "there is no god" to be taught in schools, they simply protest again "there is a god" being taught in schools. Atheists never protest to force non-belief, they simply protest again forcing "belief".
And ofcourse there are atheists who believe gods don't exist, I am one, but that is not the argument I am making, because I don't have to, all I have to argue is that you have failed to prove that there is one.
Hope you read it and found it interresting.
reply
share