Questions for atheists

1. Okay, well I'd like to start by saying I don't view it as a choice. Belief is not a matter of choice in my opinion. Saying I "choose" to be atheist is like saying you can wake up every morning and "choose" to be Muslim, or Wicca, it simply does not work that way. Similar to if I were to say "I believe that Isaac Newton could manipulate gravity at will", despite what I might i say, inside myself I truly know that that statement is a lie. I do not believe in any religious deity, and nothing has occurred in my life to sway that belief.

2. Now this question can be aimed at any group of people. Every group has its extremists. Muslim extremists attack buildings, Christian extremists attack gay people, and atheist extremists attack faiths. Similar to the above examples, there are people who think a certain way and believe certain things are wrong. Like people who shun gay people because they do not agree with it.

3. Well I can't speak much in this regard as I do not use evolution as a means of debunking religion. I do find the creationist theory rather silly, admittedly. But it is not my place to answer this as this question does not apply to me.

4. I don't necessarily doubt that a Jesus ever existed, but I believe that people are most often objecting to the commonplace idea of Jesus, who is the savior and such. As for why people like Plato and Aristotle are not given the same treatment, I would say that it is because their accomplishments are realistic and can be performed by actual people, unlike rising from the dead or walking on water.
"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." This question is a little backwards to me. You say that people spreading a belief means that there must be some fact behind it. There have been many religions and most of them were popular prior to the times that Jesus became known. By your reasoning, Zeus, Horus, Odin and all their pantheons should have had some fact preceding their worship. I ask why should God and Jesus be real while these others are merely stories?

5. Well your just arguing points of view here. Your placing your opinion of God and Jesus on others, and not recognizing that that is how they view these beings. Of course the people saying such are doing the same, but nonetheless.


-I realize that you have gotten tons of replies and likely won't care enough to read my post, but I still wanted to share my side of things.

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1) I, like everyone else, was born an atheist. I was brought up in a catholic home, went to church every week and had religious classes in school. Still, it never made sense to me. Things like having Jesus on a cross when the bible prohibits the worship of idols. The concept of faith felt like the priests were trying to hide something. Christmas and St-John Baptist conveniently falling on the winter and summer solstice, then learning about all the rituals borrowed from paganism. Seeing as different religion were pretty much location based. All that and more just looked made up. There's no evidence for any God.

2) It's reactionary. Religion is constantly invading people's private lives. I had to put with it during my youth. They still knock on my door on the weekends and fly into buildings on weekdays. I won't say that religion is the source of most conflicts but it creates conflicts where there were none. There's also daily oppression made in the name of religion, especially towards women.

There's also some entertainment reading religious people's crazy talk.

3) If some of our greatest scientists have been catholic or catholic priests and they believe in a universal creator why don't you?

I don't believe people just because they say so. Newton had some crazy ideas and Einstein was wrong about Quantum Mechanics.

4) There isn't much evidence for Jesus, if any. Even if he was just some preacher, you'd expect some traces. But then, if he was just some preacher, he's not much of a God, is he?

5) "Sky Daddy" is a derogative term, but think about this: people in those time believed stars and constellations were actual beings. The reason people today see God as a spirit instead of a real being is because we know the latter is BS.

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I hope to have some good conversations about the questions I have asked.

No you don't. That's a lie. You can tell by the boilerplate phrasing and commonality of your "questions". Try harder next time, bucko.

-----
WORDS MEAN THINGS!

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I'll avoid going after each topic in the bullet point fashion since they overlap each other.

I did approach it with an open mind and it didn't make any sense, also, science requires an open mind, everything is a hypothesis until proven false. Strangely the believers are the close minded ones that simply give the answer of "well it's written in the bible!" which, unlike good science, removes the ability to hypothesize.

The bible is a book full of interesting tales but a person has to keep in mind that it's been edited and translated multiple times by kings over the past few thousand years to fit their needs, yet people want us to look at it now like it's written in stone. heck there's even multiple versions floating around today with each group of followers claiming they have the right version. The real purpose of the bible was to keep the ignorant peasants in check, they were too stupid to think something was a bad idea unless you tell them that an all father would cast them into a fiery brimstone for eternity if they didn't pay their respects.

As for Yeshua, A proper atheist wouldn't say he didn't exist but they would think that all the miraculous stories surrounding him are just stories, this is just like Noah, there's been some pretty good research done showing that there was a very wealthy farmer who tried a daring business move of shipping his livestock across the sea and took a hit when a storm and flood rolled in, and through time it became the story of Noah.

And there you go, my reason for not buying into it.

The picture the police have of you doesn't do you justice.

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1. Why would you close YOUR mind to the idea that "god" is just a story that humans made up to make themselves feel better about death? My mind is not closed. Rather, after 40+ years of this life my mind OPENED.

2. We don't. I am an atheist with a small "a". Don't confuse us with Evangelical Atheism, which is a RELIGION. And an especially intolerant one. I have no problem with religion or religious people as long as they mind their own business and let me mind my own. I'm only answering you because you asked.

3. I never saw a reason why religion and science were necessarily at odds. I obviously rejected the evangelical Christian, LITERAL interpretation of the Bible. But your arguments would be perfectly valid if there were a god. I don't believe in god because I find the premise absurd.


4. You are creating a straw man. Atheists don't deny the possibility that the story is based on a real person. Merely the idea that he died and then came back to life again. A nice guy names Jesus who told everyone to be nice to each other? I have no problem with that.

You DO understand that none of the Gospels were written by any first-hand witnesses, right? They were written over a century later.

5. Your defnition of "god" is not universally accepted, even among Christians. It is the NICENE Christian definition.

And no, I do not believe there is an invisible person spending all his time watching me. No matter how you spin it, I find the idea silly, and a bit childish. Since you asked. You may believe whatever you wish to believe. I don't require you to agree with me. I don't worry about your beliefs. I don't think about it at all.

When a deer is fleeing from a pack of wolves he has no idea WHY he's doing so. His fear is instinctive. Visceral. He has no concept of "death." When humans evolved this big brains of ours there came a point where we COULD understand that "death" is. We KNEW why we feared the wolves. That was an intolerable situation. Our own mortality became a CONSTANT, instinctive terror from which we could not escape.

So we invented the idea of an "afterlife." Simple at first, then we added more and more complexity and ritual. The most primitive form of religion is ancestor worship. We refused to believe that our loved ones were really gone in part because that suggested that WE would be gone one day. We cannot imagine ceasing to exist. It's a feeling like vertigo. Like peering over a cliff into oblivion. Our minds cannot grasp it, and recoil in instinctive horror.

Later, we started to ask questions about the origin of the world that our primitive "science" couldn't begin to answer. Naturally, we ascribed it to supernatural forces.

Today's major world religions are just Bronze Age creation mythology that has survived the millennia. It gives humans comfort. I'd go so far as to say that, without it, the human race would be a total mess. The average human is not a nice creature. I'd hate to see what we'd be like with no religion at all. But that doesn't magically conjur god into existence.

I wish I DID believe. It obviously gives a lot of people comfort. But I don't believe, and cannot convince myself to do so. The basic premise is absurd. I'm an accident of organic chemistry, and when I die I'll be dead. Period.

But believe whatever you like.

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This should be simple.

Why are you an atheist?

There is no reason to believe in the supernatural.

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 wouldn't, and you should ask your questions with an more open mind.

Why do some atheists put so much energy into something they don't believe in?

Why would I know? It's not a club, and we don't meet every week to exchange views.

I have herd a lot of atheists say that they don't believe in a universal creator or God because they believe in evolution.

You have? I have not. Next time you meet one, ask him.

So with the theory of evolution and the theory of creation both being unproven

Whoa, did you want that to slip by us? The Theory of Evolution is amazingly well documented, with literally millions of pieces of evidence. The theory of creation is fiction.

Why don't atheists believe that a man named Jesus lived?

They don't? Did you ask them all?

I believe that a Jewish preacher of the name Yeshua existed (maybe even more than one). I believe however that he is so different from what you mean by Jesus, that we could question whether they are actually the same epistemological object.

why would four different people. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John write four separate books about their lives with Jesus if he never lived.

First of all, the gospel was not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The names of the authors are unknown. Second, neither of the authors lived anywhere near Jesus' lifetime. Third, they copied a lot from each other, so we do not have four seperate accounts.

Why did they write it down? Because they thought is was a great story.

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.

It's not, that's the point. All of these figures have evidence that matches the claim: Was there a philosopher or king living in that time who did the things reported? Sure, why not. There is evidence enough to show that. With Jesus, the claims are not nearly matched by evidence (eg. no non-Christian sources), and you need to apply a different standard before you could believe it would be.

those of us who believe in a universal creator don't believe God has any magical powers

Please explain the functional difference between magical powers and whatever God uses.

those of us who believe in a universal creator don't believe [...] that God lives in the sky. We believe that the spiritual plane that God exists in is in a whole other dimension.

Are you speaking for every single one of "those of us who believe in a universal creator"? How can you?

The Bible clearly states that the Christian god lives in the sky.


Let me ask a question in return:

I do believe that there is a universal creator and an after life.

Why?

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1) Some people are just too scientifically-minded and can't wrap their heads around the notion of faith in a higher power and a preternatural creator of the universe.

Which is perfectly fine, by the way

2) Those are only the rare, militant atheists. Most atheists live up to their 'creed' and don't care and respect your right to believe in God.

3) You CAN believe in both. I'm sure there are plenty of deists who do.

4) Most do believe there was Jesus of Nazareth-just not the divine Son of God. Others believe that he may have been an amalgam of many religious leaders that founded Christianity. There's more historical evidence written by contemporaries of other ancient figures.

5) Those are just those obnoxiously ignorant militant atheists that are rightly few and far between. Pay them no mind.

When the stars are the only things we share
Will you be there?

-Benjamin Francis Leftwich

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Hi!

I am answering these without looking and slugging through the replies and no doubt arguments in this thread; so hopefully the OP still will see this. I will start with stating that yes, I am an atheist, and here, to the best of my abilities, are my (key word my) answers to your questions...

1. I am an atheist for a very simple reason. Or simple for me at least... I have seen to much bad things, and have experienced too much trauma and horrible things to believe someone, or some powerful being is responsible for it all. It's easier for me, and makes me feel so much better about life, to believe that there is no creator of this earth, and that when I get hurt in life I'm not somehow being punished for my 'sins', but that sometimes crappy things happen. Additionally, a career in science has shown me no proof of any higher being.

2. I agree with you that it's annoying when people shove their faith, or lack there of, at people. Which is why I don't do that. If someone asks me if I believe in God, I politely say that I don't, and leave it at that. I don't personally care what anyone else believes in; whatever makes their time on this earth best for them-- but I don't like, and don't practice, the art of announcing to the world what my beliefs are.

3. This I explain with science. I don't believe in a universal creator, but I believe in evolution simply because it's easier to make something out of something rather than something out of nothing. I have seen and witnessed adding two things together to make a third (think a fun chemistry class, lol), but have never witnessed something just magically being created out of thin air. Therefore, I find it easier to believe that life on this earth was created when just the right amount of one element combined with just the right amount of another element and like a perfect recipe life began.

4. This one, to put it simply, is false for me. I do believe that there was a man alive approximately 2000 years ago named Jesus Christ. He was probably a great guy who did a lot of amazing things for people in need. But that's it. And like a fairy tale saying that the knight in shinning armour scaled the highest tower at the top of the highest mountain before killing the dragon and saving the princess... the tale of Jesus Christ was exaggerated to create a store of entertainment and comfort.

5. Again this is one that is not true for me and I think is a bit of an exaggeration towards atheists as I know quite a few who don't think this or say this.

I hope this helps enlighten you!

~*~ Peace! ~*~

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