Ask your difficult questions of an Atheist.

[Q

I don’t know how you could believe that a perfect God who is capable of making some rain so babies don’t die in agony, is a good God.I wonder if you think I am perfect if I allowed to watch a child drowned when I have the ability to stop it.

Then we have to change the words of the song that says “our father who art in heaven? Where is heaven and what gender is a father

How is an atheist an extremist? Because One doesn’t believe in the supernatural makes one an extremist? I think those who att tribute everything good to the supernatural man and nothing bad are the extremists

If you can’t say that this country was not a patriarchal country for over 200 years and accuse me of thinking it’s my imagination then I think you need to read a little history. Or do you really believe that women set the rules and the laws and they just decided that they weren’t capable of voting

 

I don't know.

 

What are you talking about?

No, we do not because there is a very good, archetypical reason behind the concept of God as a "father". However, Christianity regards God as immaterial and God is thus without a gender in the biological sense of the word because since God is pure actualisation and the mover of change, God cannot be anything but immaterial.

I already explained to you how that is.

This is not the Women's Rights forum.

 

I can't imagine how you could not know what you think. But, whatever.

But the bible frequently refers to "God the Father" as "He". But I agree with you, so I see the bible as more myth than spiritual guide.

 

I am not religious. I am a skeptic and my positivity towards Christianity and divinity derrives from my sociological and anthropological interest.

Nouns have genders in Latin. The Christian God is immaterial.

 

Interesting. Well Ritter, I'm a skeptic too. But I also gave spirituality a "chance" and dove into it some years ago for a few years as a devoted, persuaded "believer". My quest and involvement was not at all what the church teaches but rather I researched and practiced what the known Christian "giants" of the 14th through 18th centuries wrote and taught with some very amazing and inexplicable experiences that have been discussed by some of the most revered, spiritual Christian "masters". Then I compared what I had learned and experienced to Hinduism and Buddhism and was amazed.

In the end, I examined my experiences, looked into the psychology of it, summed up, and became a "non-believer" with developed conclusions regarding what I had experienced, the causes and the sources.

Based on those experiences I have specific and related views of many common ideas held by most "religionists" including notions of perfection, infinity, unconditional love, passing time, surrender, and MANY bible passages, all of which most Christians completely reject and usually aren't even able to comprehend. So I questioned you in order to plumb the initial depths shallowly of your views as I thought I may have discovered a fellow traveler. I don't know whether I have or have not. I have concluded nothing of that sort. But I thought I'd explain the reasons for my questioning.

Cheers.

 

Very interesting.

I am not sure if I am a "traveller" since it is an etiquette I have never used on myself before. I prefer "skeptic" over "agnostic" because the latter connotes that one is unknowing and I believe that there are actually things we can - and do - know about the existence of God and the socio-cultural realities of religion. My "journey" is one of studying socio-cultural anthropology and sociology which brought me to the conclusion that religion is a tool that serves the function of maximising positive social outcome.

I have not studied any scriptures specifically, although I do have a preference for Christianity because I regard it as the universally most applicable religion with the most novel truth since its message, norms and archetypes go beyond culture and mind and extracts a deeply hidden knowledge within our souls. To me it is not so important to believe in God as it is to uphold the Christian values and see Jesus as, if not a role model, at least an honourable man. Furthermore, having some sense of God means you find purpose and an ideal that evidentally has not been able to be put in place by secularism.

 

Guess you can't and if you can't how can you deny the possibility of existance of something you cannot even beging to define?

 

Thanks for the comments! I think our respective viewpoints can actually round-out and complement each other. My own conclusions based on my experiences are that they provide me the basis and insight to understand the bible in much greater depth, and according to the esoteric, and in fact actual, meanings intended by the original writer of the words, some of which the translators of the bible failed to grasp and so mistranslated. They tried to translate the Greek and Aramaic into words that "made sense" so they could be understood by "the natural man". The problem is that this necessarily meant "making sense" to the carnal mind of the natural man ("carnal" meaning "of the flesh" rather than sexual, i.e, of the human mind rather than the "spiritual mind"). And so that is how students of the bible understand the words. The spiritual esoteric meaning remains hidden from them, and in fact, when presented with those meanings the common reaction of "believers" is to reject them as demonic and evil........ --because they are spiritual ideas!

So all together, I see the bible as providing the grounding in values and ideals that you refer to for the "natural man", but also as actually revealing deeper "spiritual" truths to those who "have an ear to hear". It's nothing short of amazing to see a person with that spiritual aptitude for the esoteric read a bible passage and just light up with joy and say "yes! yes!" as they see beyond the written words and experience the hidden meaning that they find they are then unable to explain to anyone who lacks that same sensitivity. And that deeper truth is of a human capacity of mind to perform amazing feats of awareness, responses, neurological reactions even to the point of new awareness that the human conscious mind cannot fathom. Hence, all the "spiritual" experiences of God, and "receiving teachings" from the spirit, and "feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit" are all different tricks of the brain and explained by modern neurological science.

Example: Every evening for one month while in prayer and meditation I experienced "the anointing". Exactly as described by some ancient Christian writers and monastic masters, I would suddenly FEEL the distinct sensation of something, like a bucket of warm honey or oil, being poured on the top of my head and it would slowly run down the sides, back and front (face) of my head, and as it went to would sweep away all traces of turmoil, anxiousness, worry, doubt, etc. and leave me in perfect peace. THEN!... I each time experienced a definite and unmistakable Presence (my eyes were closed) face-to-face as though noses were nearly touching. I could FEEL it! There was no imagination involved. You can get a tiny, minor impression of this if you close your eyes and hold your palm up to your face without touching.

Then it would end.

After a month it stopped completely "forever".

Later I learned that this exact experience is called a "temporal lobe seizure" that can be induced in a laboratory. Scientists did this with a group of "believers" and a group of "non-believers". It was found that all of them experienced this same event, but the believers could not be convinced that it was not actually God face-to-face with them.

So it went with my other experiences like "the peace that passeth understanding" and unconditional love.

So I see both aspects of all this: yours and mine.

 

Yeah God has no gender but we call him father and we referred to him not her for it. If I kept referring to someone as she you would assume it’s a woman
Oh I see, when pointing out that we were a patriarchy and you have no response, you dismiss it. You shouldn’t have brought up misogyny. If you can’t deal with it why don’t you just be quiet

 

Then why isn’t god she?

 

So, you think lies are the truth.

 

Impregnating an underage girl (Mary) is neither beautiful nor positive.

Drowning virtually almost every air breathing creature on the planet is neither beautiful nor positive.

Causing famines, diseases and other misfortunes up to and including the mass slaughter of children is neither beautiful nor positive.

Killing someone by crucifixion is neither beautiful nor positive.

Conducting "holy wars" for centuries is neither beautiful nor positive.

Terrorizing entire populations during the centuries of the Inquisition is neither beautiful nor positive.

Falsely accusing people of being witches and burning them alive is neither beautiful nor positive.

Covering up the molestation of choir boys is neither beautiful nor positive.

Exploiting the unfortunate to proselytize is neither beautiful nor positive.

Using psychological torture to "pray out the gay" is neither beautiful nor positive.

Denying women and gays their Individual Rights is neither beautiful nor positive.

Those are just some of the examples that occurred to me off the top of my head. Yes, there is some aspects of religion that are positive but NONE of them are EXCLUSIVE to religion. People who want to help others do not need to be THREATENED with Hell and Damnation if they don't do it. Secular volunteers do exactly the same good deeds as theists.

I have previously posted about how Bishop Desmond Tutu managed to RECONCILE and OVERCOME the decades of HATRED that were created by the Apartheid Regime in South Africa. It was INSPIRATIONAL in what it achieved. But when viewed in the CONTEXT of the FACT that Apartheid was originally "inspired" by the Christian Bible it was the very LEAST that could be done by theists to make up for the UGLY and NEGATIVE things that had been done all too RECENTLY in the name of religion.

 

While I have not experienced a "temporal lobe seizure" such as you describe above I am able to reach a meditative state of mind akin to what theists of all religions have called a "spiritual state".

This has been scientifically studied and it can be detected and measured in all mammals, not just humans, which indicates that it is purely a physical mental experience that has been taken out of context by theists in order to promote their own agenda. The meditative state is an interesting experience with positive benefits for the individual but there is no imaginary deity necessary to achieve it.

 

The representation of God as the "Father" is not one referring to genitalia, but to a much more sophisticated archetypical truth. The biblical God transcends gender and is only masculine in the arachetypical way just as Earth and Nature is often referred to as "Mother" in old mythology.

 

Mother Mary was not impregnated (I guess you must be referring to some awkward fan fiction of the Bible) and that is, nonetheless, irrelevant since the Bible is not Playboy Magazine and it is not the act of procreation that is the focal point of the story of Mary (it is not even mentioned). Mary is a positive character and there is nothing negative in having her as a role model and cherishing her.

Not if you cherry-pick it out of its context and represent it as an isolated event with neither cause nor purpose and completely fail to understand the deeper meaning of the message. Interestingly enough, calamities are standard in most religious mythology of most cultures.

God did not do that.

It is and if you understood the basic cultural mythology and archetypes behind the concept of "scapegoating", you would realise why that is. And, again, if you cherry-pick and isolate the event from its context and meaning it will - obviously - seem crazy.

There is one religion that has conducted more Holy Wars than Christianity and that is the religion of Statism.

It depends how you look at it.

Are you done yet?

Yes, there are some big problems in the Vatican, but that does not mean that the Bible in itself is a bad guideline.

Depends.

How long is this random rant?

How does the Bible do this when it acknowledges that we are all created in the image of God and that we are all equally capable?

Living life according to the Bible brings more good than just charities and my point was never that secularism cannot bring any good. I only said that the biblical message is one that creates a better society. Additionally, it is not a coincidence that secularism came to existence in the Christian world because Christianity kind of encourages that.

 

That doesn't even sound logical.

Animals and humans alike have a spiritual mind, such that no spirituality can be true?!

This is pure speculation by faith. Or show us some scientific peer reports. Perhaps this is exactly your "physical mental experience that has been taken out of context".

 

Most true intellectuals are not intellectually capable in identifying what a fairy tale is. This is hard fact!!!

Logical Proof of the above hard fact:
A fairy tale is the lack of serious human testimonies from eyewitnesses accounts!

 

I never took lessons in meditation nor studied written instruction in it. I read the very generalized descriptions of what the monastics did and attempted to copy it. Along the way I had to develop my own methods, for example "breath suppression" I'll call it. So I am not familiar with what may be common terminology among meditators. Therefore, in order to try to relate to "the spiritual state" that you refer to, could you describe the experience of that state so I can see if it's anything I've also experienced?

 

I do this in my workshop where I change all the pronouns to be feminine and the image is always that of a woman and most me will admit that they feel left out.
Yes earth and nature is referred to as a woman but who controls all?HE!

 

I think most women out in the real world could not care less about what pronoun a given entity or profession has. The women I know and have met are stronger than that, but perhaps the sheltered college brats are different.

No.

 

Then I wonder why men get upset when the pronouns are feminine? Do you notice that the language has changed You referred to police officers and firefighters and speakers etc. it has nothing to do with being strong or weak it has to do with the raised consciousness. If a job is labeled she, men won’t do it but women will do jobs mentioning here because they usually pay well. And I’m sorry that you see educated women as brats and sheltered. Uneducated people seem to cast aspersions on educated people because they feel Inferior

 

God is vindictive, cruel, brutal and rather uncaring according to the Bible(s)….it is clearly female.

just in case folks...that was a joke

 

Does it even make sense for god to be male or female? Being non-physical it can't have any sexy bits, surely? I mean, who would it shag, even if it had the wherewithal? At least the ancient Greeks and Romans allowed their gods to shag a bit, sometimes with humans. I suppose there was Mary but that was immaculate and therefore not really shagging.

ETA: Muslims are allowed to shag in paradise which I suppose is better than heaven.