Atheists - prove it.

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Never bothered reading any of those guys tbh. I've never felt the whole topic was important enough to warrant reading books about some other Atheist's opinions on the whole thing. I guess I'm pretty apathetic about the whole debate. Actually, I don't even think there is a debate, any more than there is a real debate between geographers and the flat-Earth society. More of an Apatheist myself, than anything, I suppose

Atheism is not a belief.
Off is not a TV channel.
Bald is not a hair color.
Not playing the violin is not a talent.
Lack of ability to fix computers is not a skill.

A LACK of belief in god is "correct" in the empirical sense because NOT A SCRAP OF EVIDENCE SUGGESTS GOD EXISTS OUTSIDE THE HUMAN MIND.


That is all.

First, I have to state that I am not Christian, nor am I atheist.. BUT....

I think there is a misconception here. Why do you assume that atheists have been "convinced .. this was the right way to go"? Did someone convince you that God was the right way to go?

Both sides of this debate are completely without proof. A "belief" is intangible and only "real" to the person that holds that belief. As a Christian, the proof of your truth is apparent to you only to you because it is internal, tied to your emotions or feelings. When you think about God, you "feel" it. Atheists don't. Sure, you can demonstrate your beliefs by going to church, living righteously, proselytizing. You might cry when you feel God with you, but that is an experience unique unto you. For an atheist who doesn't have that personal "proof of truth", there is often a need to rationalize and try to understand the logic of it all, hence the falling back on science. (I think) This might cause them to rationalize that your emotional proof of God is the result of endorphins and, or other chemical releases that occur in your body when you think about God and therefore doesn't prove the existence of God, but simply proves your belief in that God.

I may not be correct here, but when questioned about proof of God, if instead of quoting Bible verses you just said, "I feel it", I don't think any rational person could say that you're wrong because no one else can say what you feel. Sure, they might point out the chemistry of what you feel.. but they can't definitively say what causes those changes to occur.

That's just my thought, standing here on the fence.

QFT

Not really...no. You see, you're trying to invoke divine command theory. Here's the problems:

1) You're trying to invoke it to debunk commonsense morality, the problem being that our moral language inherently refers to commonsense morality, and as such most of the praises of God are using commonsense morality to talk about God's character, even the label of "good" in most framings accept this, rather than calling it "J-good" for "Jahweh good".

2) The claim that commonsense morality is false isn't that exegetically sound. Romans tells us that God's morality is written on the hearts of men. Very little actually promotes the strong divine command theory needed.

3) (to overlap 1) God is described in more concrete terms than just "good". He is described as "loving", "just", and all of these other terms, many of which have definite references that we can all refer back to for our own personal understandings.

4) Theistic morality is incomplete to a degree where it relies on commonsense morality to make it work. If God's morality disagreed so strongly with common sense, he'd have to provide a supplementary and extensive ethics text to tell us how he changed all them words.

5) To destroy our knowledge of God's goodness, we'd have to destroy our knowledge of goodness outright. This is stupid. This is exactly what you propose entails. It destroys theism and basically everything to be valued in theism, even destroying the very possibility of our own humanity.

This entire effort is silly. It's a waste of time. It's just stupidity put forward as if it is meaningful by people who are willing to arbitrarily use skepticism because they wanted to commit mental suicide, but it makes no sense in the larger context, whether this context is theological, or philosophical.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-FyKoU2uRo[/youtube]

You are not entitled to not having your beliefs ridiculed.

Part of having a belief is the duty to stand when ridiculed.

You don't sound like the kind of person that ever wants to change his mind.

I prejudiciously decline to make any attempt to convince you that your beliefs are wrong.

It's like trying to teach a dog how to drive a car. It's a waste of my time and only annoys the dog.

My own atheism is the end result of a long term effort to be honest with myself.

If the same effort leads you down a different road, bully for you. We'll celebrate it. Hell, we'll have a parade.

There is definitely some strong, respectable, scientific logic there, yet the matter of my permanent recovery from chronic alcoholism nevertheless still remains unexplained either by or within it ...

I think its because you yourself are a strong person and it was the right time, perhaps. Some people need God to get them out of it, others stop for different reasons. Putting the emphasis on an external source is sometimes necessary if one doesn't have faith in their own power to change. But if it helped you, then I see nothing wrong with that belief. In fact I have no real issue with anything anyone believes so long as it doesn't involve hurting others or preventing the advancement of Human knowledge (some do say religion does that but I am not inclined to agree in all respects)

You bet, and I did and he did ... and that blows the 'ell out of "NOT A SCRAP OF EVIDENCE SUGGESTS GOD EXISTS OUTSIDE THE HUMAN MIND."

Eppur si muove -

Don Ricardo comes along and impressively tells me that what I feel sitting in the living room with my wife in the other chair is a chemical reaction resulting from cosmic radiation impacting a body which has had its appendix removed, compounded by Oedipal repressions tied to that episode in Third Grade.

Fine. SO scientific and brainy, he must be right.

Eppur ... Was ich weiss, das weiss ich ganz genau.

You don't know what you're capable of until you push your limits. I doubt God has anything to do with it. I think you're just simply stunned.

I can respect your speculation there, but all of that "pushing my own limits" stuff had already been completely exhausted by around 3AM on September 27, 1981, where I sat at the bar nursing my last beer -- closing time had passed at 2AM -- and I realized I was like "sitting on the edge of a long, dark tunnel-like 'chute'" into oblivion ... and that is when I finally just "gave up" altogether and walked into a police station asking to be locked up until I could get some help I had heard about just the day before.


Again, I can respect your speculation there ... and yet I just cannot think of a single reason anyone would be so stunned by some kind of self-accomplishment that s/he would then refuse to take any or all credit actually due.

You make one of my points for me. Christ is the example to follow. Many Christians are not. All of the arguments you condemn so-called Christianity with are condemned in the Bible as well. For example, Christ and his followers did not advocate partiality to each other or others.

"If you continue showing favortism, you are working a sin."
James 2: 8, 9

"I perceive that God is not partial but in every nation the man that fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him."
Acts 10: 34, 35

"All things therefore that you want men to do to you, you also must likewise do to them."
Matthew 7:12

Just because a group of people claiming to be Christians get it all wrong, that is no reason for you to assume that the fault must rest with the teachings of Christ. You must look into the Bible, not any denomination's dogma or actions, for what Christ was all about.

Very well. You've told me what you think is wrong about Christianity. Now please answer my question. What is right about atheism?

Pretty sure you recovering from alcohol AFTER you start believing in god as opposed to BEFORE
PROVES my point, if anything.

Almost any thread with this topic you bring up your magical recovery from addiction,
and yet fail to cite any definitive separative mechanism differentiating god's actual existence saving you at that (quite arbitrary) point
from the well-known psychological processes at work when someone converts to a religion.

From what I've seen, this is what happened to you:
1. Addiction
2. Conversion/religious vow
3. Recovery from addiction
4. Stronger belief in god
5. Start interpreting even MORE things as "evidence" of god

and so forth. You'll notice an increase in religiosity always PRECEDES seeing "evidence" of a god.