The universe doesn't seem designed to me

yeah, that would work if the god in question wasn't a jealous, angry, rape-tolerating genocidal lunatic, partial to the mass slaughter of babies and slavery.

 

what bible or religion did you study or read?..i was catholic and i was never told that garbage...

 

What a kind, calm individual you are. Your friendly demeanor and impeccable logic are sure to win the minds and hearts of millons. How arrogant I was to express my confusion at the chaos of existence in a public forum in an entirely innocuous and nonhostile way. I can see now that the accusation that I am a prick was entirely warranted and accurate.

As Vicariously I makes his fallacious assertion that arrogance is claiming knowledge of the unknowable and that atheism is the disbelief of a positive assertion, you bravely reiterate the same exact poorly supported point you made in your last post, blindly insulting and bashing your way to glorious victory for your god and for your people. You are the face that the modern church needs.

I'm far from arrogant. Rather, my existential nihilism only makes me more aware of my insignificance in the universe, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a blank slate for me to project my own sense of purpose onto. That's beautiful.

 

there's a bill maher/Marilyn manson clip at the end of that one - well worth watching. that pompous, strident, self-righteous dumbarse of a woman made him look EXACTLY like Christ. Christians are so horribly seduced into thinking it's all about sex and haircuts, they forget what real goodness actually looks like.

 

very well said. this is possibly the thing some people are unable to see .. and which may well be motivation to seek 'extra'. or they see it, but miss the point. the very inconsequential nature of our being is what lends it so much magic and liberation

 

And chaos somehow resulted in organized predictable functions such as gravity and orbits. Chaos does not lead to predictable things like knowing that when you merge a human egg cell with sperm the single cell egg will multiply; and you can predict through some intelligent process that the cell will continue to multiply over and over and assign every part in its proper place – legs, fingers, toe nails, every hair follicle, every brain cell, the heart, etc… and each of these parts work together to make a functioning human being with a brain that is able to process things intelligently. This does not happen out of chaos. Such chaos took lifeless matter through ‘chaotic’ processes to result in life. How does that happen in a chaotic universe? Little bits of matter cluster together, through gravity, gathering more and more matter to eventually create masses in space called planets and suns. This is a predictable process. This cannot happen in chaos.

 

Atheists are just the opposite side of the same coin as religious people. Instead of claiming with 100% certainty that their god is the one true god Athiests simply say with 100% certainty that there is no god at all. I agree with Einstein that both of them are arrogant.

 

have you been at a silent retreat, where communication devices are banned?

atheists do.not.claim.there.is.no.god, they merely reject the positive claim that there IS one (on lack of evidence). I'm as hardcore an atheist as you're likely to meet, and I have no idea whether gods exist or not, and frankly don't care. until such time as they show up and start regrowing limbs, their existence (or not) is irrelevant.

edited to add: even if some atheists do assert there are no gods, who, based on likelihood (weight of evidence) is more justified in such a position - the theist, or the atheist?

 

That is a load of hogwash because I know some atheist and they ALL say that there is no god period, with no qualifiers. I have yet to meet an atheist either on this forum or in real life that says. "Well, there might be a god but I don't think so as the evidence is lacking". It is always "There is no god". Agnostics are the ones that claim that it is unknowable whether or not there is a god.

Einstein nailed it when he said that atheists were just as pig headed and myopic as the religions that they constantly deride.............and yes as some people have mentioned atheists are just as dismissive and downputting of other people's beliefs as people that still believe in the Pantheon or in Christianity or Islam as the only true religion. You are all the same. Your assumption with 100% confidence that there is no god is no more intelligent than someone who believes that sacrificing a goat will allow their wives to "bear fruit".

 

true, Atheists only believe in one less God then Christians do

 

That would mean they believe in two of them. They goofy thing about Christianity (and I say this as a Deist who tends to view the religious world through the eyes of a Christian since that is how I was raised) is that Christianity teaches monotheism yet clearly there appears to be three completely separate and unique "parts" of God that all act independently of each other.

 

Uh....are you Atheist?

 

You are projecting!

Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an Atheist. I repeat, not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an Atheist.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

1Sa 15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.


Is 13: 15 Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword.
16 Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.


De 2:34 And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain:


De 3:6 And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city.


Ez 9: 5 And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity:
6 Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women...


Hosea 13: 16 Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.


Psalms 137: 9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

 

Interesting. Maybe it's a side effect of americas fairly recent adoption of atheism? In places where it's been around longer, and has matured, few atheists care one way or the other, as any gods which might exist are utterly silent.

 

Maybe it is just here in America but most of the atheists I know are bitter insufferable pricks. I am a Deist, I believe that something got the ball rolling considering the odds of even simple replicating RNA forming by accident are astrononically high much less DNA and alongside that are the odds of gravity and the other three forces just happening to be the right levels for life to form. Gravity and such could have been different at the formation of the universe. However, I have a hard time believe that something that created the universe gives a crap if we sacrifice goats or perform certain rituals in honor of it or cares if lesbians make out. I imagine that the universe is more like a supercomputer and that it keeps things going but doesn't get into everyone's personal lives, similar to how Einstein viewed it. What I don't do is assume automatically that I am 100% right about my position like most theists and atheists. I actually hope that I am wrong because if the universe is indeed just a supercomputer that means that more than likely there is no afterlife. Unfortunately I just find the traditional religions hard to take at face value.

 

No, I think that there is some validity to Crank's observation. Atheism (and even the casual announcement of agnosticism) are relatively recent developments inside the United States from the standpoint of one being able to make such an announcement -- or present such an argument -- without automatically suffering job and social standing related consequences. Come to that it's still not a brilliant idea to be too open about one's negative perspective regarding religion outside of a large city setting.

My point being that just as with the homosexual movement (I'm including both genders) the emotions are still tender pro and con, and the battles are still being waged. In the case of homosexuality I figure that the war is won by the Gay and Lesbian and Transgender and Bisexual (and whatever else there is) crowd, but the right for one to openly be agnostic or atheistic without suffering some form of dire repercussions remains an iffy proposition. Thus the atheistic crowd tends to be more 'in your face' pugnacious about it inside the United States; that is among those who will profess their belief.

Now I write this from the standpoint of someone who was raised Catholic, became an atheist, then drifted into agnosticism, became sort of a universal Christian, drifted back into agnosticism, and finally seem to have halted at atheism once again, who also admits to being a non-standard philosophical Taoist.

Thus I am an easy going atheist and I quite like religion in general and I heartily approve of it as a stabilizing and civilizing influence on people. Finally I am still agnostic enough to concede that I might very well be wrong about all of it. Nonetheless I believe that I comprehend why U.S. atheists tend to be aggressive in their assertions.

 

they believe God is like water and those are the three states of God

 

Clearly you also never read the Bible.

 

i was never that obsessed with it..too many doing more important things in life

 

Yeah. Last week I sat down at my computer and designed a Universe. Way better than the one we have now. Whomever did this one was an amateur. Could be this one is just a model. Build it, take a good study and refine the design. Make the next one better with the bugs worked out. Like when Detroit makes those clay cars and does those crash tests. Maybe our Universe is merely a prototype. And if so, why do we bother wasting all that time and money trying to figure it out?

 

Once you do, you might find that you can no longer worship such a blatantly evil deity.

 

Wrong about that. " if the universe is indeed just a supercomputer that means that more than likely there is no afterlife". When things are deleted on a hard drive, they don't cease to exist.

 

Darwin and Franklin and others didn't seem to have any issues being atheists. I bet if I google atheist I will get a whole bunch of people in prominent positions. About the only thing that you might not be able to do as an athiest is run for politics where all of a sudden everyone is a devout Christian on the campaign trail, but outside of that there wasn't any point in US history where atheists were actively persecuted. You would have to go to medieval Europe for that probably. I also have to google if Atheist is capitalized or not since I keep seeing it both ways from various posters.

I agree with the assessment of religion.....at least if its a benign religion. Christianity (now that it has matured past the Inquisitions and stuff), Bhuddism and others seem to have a generally beneficial impact on society. Other religions like Islam are not beneficial to society and will either have to be discarded or they will have to change similar to how Christianity changed and pagan religions were discarded. Even if I did become an atheist I would still want concepts like rights coming from something higher than man to be imbedded in the law simply because governments are fickle.

Thank you for proving me wrong about all atheists being overtly hostile to theists on this forum. I literally only knew one other one (my cousin) who wasn't constantly ripping on others for their beliefs in my real life.

 

That talks to himself. Jesus talked to the Father a lot in the Bible if I recall. I was raised Lutheran and that stuff still confuses me. Guess I should have paid more attention in Sunday school.