question always asked... where is/was god

I was just watching a movie called The Unloved, about a little girl in the foster care system. It was very sad. It's a harsh world out there. If Christianity, as a source of hope, is defeated by atheists, then what? What is left to give us hope? Cold reason? Intellectual snobbery? What?

So your faith is reducible to your fear of the unknown? Interesting.

And since when can't Christians be intellectual snobs? I mean, okay, you and your brethren here at sciforums tend to be uneducated and ill-suited for these discussions, but there are many devout Christians (and others) who are very smart and extremely well-educated.
 
I was just watching a movie called The Unloved, about a little girl in the foster care system. It was very sad. It's a harsh world out there. If Christianity, as a source of hope, is defeated by atheists, then what? What is left to give us hope? Cold reason? Intellectual snobbery? What?

No more Christianity? You mean millions of people no longer burdened with the guilt and self-hatred of imaginary sins? People actually respecting themselves and each other without the fear of some omnipotent tyrant threatening them with the threat of eternal torment? People no longer pining for some pie-in-the-sky afterlife and instead focusing all their energies on making this life better for themselves and their posterity. Imagine all the people, living for today. We can only hope..some day maybe.
 
So your faith is reducible to your fear of the unknown? Interesting.
Making stuff up are we?
And since when can't Christians be intellectual snobs? I mean, okay, you and your brethren here at sciforums tend to be uneducated and ill-suited for these discussions, but there are many devout Christians (and others) who are very smart and extremely well-educated.
What do extremely well-educated people have to do with you?
 
Making stuff up are we?

You just said that a world without the hope Christianity provides frightens you. This was in response to a post by another member who voiced a preference for a world without Christianity.

What do extremely well-educated people have to do with you?

I'm certainly not talking to one right now, that's for sure. The point I was making was obvious (or at least obvious to anyone who isn't an idiot): your claim that an atheist world is necessarily one with cold rationality and intellectual snobbery can just as easily be a Christian one. Your very narrow view of your own faith is stunning. Do you not know any well-education Christians? Did you know the man who decoded the human genome is a Christian? I mean, cold rationality and intellectual snobbery exists wherever rationality and intellectualism exist. Okay, so maybe Christians get stupid when it comes to God and the afterlife, but that doesn't mean they can't be cold rationalists and intellectual snobs in every other facet of their lives.

Perhaps you should leave the commune every now and then. Or, you know, read a book.
 
Magical Realist,


No more Christianity? You mean millions of people no longer burdened with the guilt and self-hatred of imaginary sins?

Can you elaborate on this, or show where this is what Christianity means?


People actually respecting themselves and each other without the fear of some omnipotent tyrant threatening them with the threat of eternal torment?

Same as above.


People no longer pining for some pie-in-the-sky afterlife and instead focusing all their energies on making this life better for themselves and their posterity. Imagine all the people, living for today. We can only hope..some day maybe.


What do you mean by ''make this life better''?

Religion is about ''living for today'', and (human) materialist life is about planning for the future (hoarding, hankering, greed, lust, and envy).
Materialist life for humans is glorified animal life where pure selfishness is inevitabely a must, as everything is about survival.

jan.
 
Religion is about ''living for today'', and (human) materialist life is about planning for the future (hoarding, hankering, greed, lust, and envy).
Materialist life for humans is glorified animal life where pure selfishness is inevitabely a must, as everything is about survival.

jan.

More detached, unrealistic views on atheism. It's almost as if you've never actually met one before.

Also, there doesn't seem to be much "living for today" is Christian culture. Sure, Jesus teaches you to abandon your family and your responsibilities, which makes sense considering that he was under the impression that the apocalypse was imminent, but as the centuries have dragged on and tomorrow always comes, there seems to be much less of that, and much more emphasis on dictating how others can live their lives.
 
Magical Realist,
Religion is about ''living for today'', and (human) materialist life is about planning for the future (hoarding, hankering, greed, lust, and envy).
Materialist life for humans is glorified animal life where pure selfishness is inevitabely a must, as everything is about survival.
jan.


Christians aren't materialists? I don't know what planet you're living on. The christians I observe are all about gaining rewards, whether thru God's special blessings or an eternal life on streets of gold. It's all about getting something for yourself and damning anyone who happens to get in your way.



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/us/16gospel.html?_r=0
 
Ooo..me so scared! lol! Save your curses and threats for gullible children cuz I have no fear of your imaginary monster. But then that's all you christians have left after being refuted--sadistic fantasies of what your divine henchman is going to do to anyone who so much as just questions your infallible authority. Just another amusing demonstration of the childish and spoiled temperament of christians who just never grow out of their pathetic missing daddy complex.

You are the one dealing with an imaginary monster. I described to you Someone quite the contrary, and supplied a suggestion on how to deal with one's perplexing thoughts concerning those things which one finds hard to understand with respect to Him. You ignore all that, instead remaining hell bent on manifesting a peculiar form of self hatred, i.e. stubbornly clinging to a grotesque caricature of your own making, at the [unnecessary] expense of your own self. This is in truth the real childish behavior... I will refrain from offering speculation concerning anything beyond that.
 
Come one! Come all! Join the church of the Big Bang. It is a magical church where something can come from nothing! Our whole universe came from the mysterious nothingness! Come discover the new reality of something from nothing! Abandon you common sense because it is wrong! Believe in us! Buy your two dollar wands at the beverage counter, and you can make "something from nothing" happen in your life.
 
You are the one dealing with an imaginary monster. I described to you Someone quite the contrary, and supplied a suggestion on how to deal with one's perplexing thoughts concerning those things which one finds hard to understand with respect to Him. You ignore all that, instead remaining hell bent on manifesting a peculiar form of self hatred, i.e. stubbornly clinging to a grotesque caricature of your own making, at the [unnecessary] expense of your own self. This is in truth the real childish behavior... I will refrain from offering speculation concerning anything beyond that.

Oh don't worry. I'm not dealing with ANY imaginary monsters anymore. 20 years of life on this planet as a devoted biblethumper like you taught me the misery and fear that such delusions reek on the human mind. I know it won't exactly please you to know that I've become much happier in my life since dispensing with religion, especially since your entire agenda as a christian is to make people like me look like dark and evil malcontents. But that's the facts. Maybe one day when you've seen both sides of the fence like I have you can dispense some useful advice to me. But not till then..
 
I was countering your caricature of God...such a caricature finds its origin in the heart, soul, and mind of the 'artist'.

For the record, I wasn't raised a Christian, I know what it is to live [and think] as an unbeliever. I'm sorry for your experience and will pray for you. Take care now.
 
I was countering your caricature of God...such a caricature finds its origin in the heart, soul, and mind of the 'artist'.

For the record, I wasn't raised a Christian, I know what it is to live [and think] as an unbeliever. I'm sorry for your experience and will pray for you. Take care now.

Uh no. Being a child without a belief system before you were brainwashed by religion didn't make you an atheist. You have to be able to consciously and rationally consider a belief system and then reject it deliberately to be an atheist. Nice try though..
 
Come one! Come all! Join the church of the Big Bang. It is a magical church where something can come from nothing! Our whole universe came from the mysterious nothingness! Come discover the new reality of something from nothing! Abandon you common sense because it is wrong! Believe in us! Buy your two dollar wands at the beverage counter, and you can make "something from nothing" happen in your life.

Wow..so in spite of all the evidence and math supporting the Big Bang, you say it never happened? That it was all poofed out of nothing by a big magical ghost. So what evidence do you have to support this fairy tale? Oh right. You don't. You just have your big book of jewish goatherder fables telling you that it happened. Sorry, but scientists will need more than that to consider your alternative.
 
Atheism and those that follow god have interacted with each other since man learned to talk. Some false gods and false ways were narrowed down. Even Vikings changed to follow Christian ways. And religious people change to other religions and some to none at all. We would worship like....um, wizards,other humans for special things they do oh ya some kinda do already(athletes), the stars, the sun, drugs,and other things... False idols come to my mind. But why do people always claim "its gods fault". Get so angry at god.
Things sometimes happen. And we have free will, if I don't have free will I would not be typing. The mods of sciforums. They keep it going for us to use, they ban "members". But we choose to be here we have some free will. Its how we use it. It is limited. And with the Christian god we are limited in our free will. We can not change to a animal for example. We are "let loose". But we have limitations. Direct our anger not directly at god or gods but where it needs to really be placed. Like be mad we built a damn and the weather destroyed it. And so the house got destroyed and flooded. Get mad over the government for limiting a road that was going to be built to help your business. And for not doing more to keep it going yourself.
 
Christians aren't materialists? I don't know what planet you're living on. The christians I observe are all about gaining rewards, whether thru God's special blessings or an eternal life on streets of gold. It's all about getting something for yourself and damning anyone who happens to get in your way.



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/us/16gospel.html?_r=0


What makes you think that these people you observe are following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ (the meaning of being a Christian)?

Being something means actually being the the ''something'' the title suggests, not acting contrary to it.

jan.
 
More detached, unrealistic views on atheism. It's almost as if you've never actually met one before.

Also, there doesn't seem to be much "living for today" is Christian culture. Sure, Jesus teaches you to abandon your family and your responsibilities, which makes sense considering that he was under the impression that the apocalypse was imminent, but as the centuries have dragged on and tomorrow always comes, there seems to be much less of that, and much more emphasis on dictating how others can live their lives.

There's nothing to atheism, it is simply the opposite of theism.

Can you cite verse and chapter regarding Jesus teaching and other points you raised?
Thanks.

jan.
 
Atheism and those that follow god have interacted with each other since man learned to talk.

The earliest known religions were animist, giving human-like powers to the wind, the sea the earth, and so on, and did not fuse them into a single entity for probably at least 1,000 years after the dawn of writing. There is even a theory among archaeologists the that main Hebrew God Yahweh (there were others) was a mistake, based on stories Canaanite goatherds got from travelers about a great city of a similar name, but mistook it for a god (due to language issues) and then adopted it as their own, with the stories of its feats. Yahweh is also the name Phoenician god, which is why, in the Bible, Yahweh is married to the Phoenician goddess Asherah. (Thousands of Asherah figurines have been unearthed in the area where the earliest versions of the Bible stories probably took root in the oral tradition.)

The first known case of atheism is Plato's account of Socrates, thousands of years later, tried for atheism because he believed (more as a matter of logic) that there must be only one God. Let me say that again: the first known atheist was taken to trial for refusing to accept the full pantheon of gods in ancient Greece, believing in just one God. (He voluntarily committed suicide by drinking hemlock from a cup, in a scenario that in some ways is imitated in the Passion of Christ. In many ways the Jesus story seems to be a rewrite of Socrates.)

Some false gods and false ways were narrowed down.
The Babylonian/Sumerian gods, many of those of Egypt, and those of India and China, were or have been around as long or longer than the Judeo-Christian ones. Besides, if you put all the Christians, Jews and Islamists in one place, you would have to concede that they all believe in the same God. Yet you would observe thousands of versions of beliefs in that same God, thousand of ideas how He is to be served, and genuine strife and conflict among them -- even to the point of violence -- with each group believing it has the one true version.

Even Vikings changed to follow Christian ways.
They were conquered. It's unclear how much Christianity was forced on them, and how much they adopted by osmosis. I think there are some records that show that they were allowed to merge their animism with Christianity at first.

And religious people change to other religions and some to none at all. We would worship like....um, wizards,other humans for special things they do oh ya some kinda do already(athletes), the stars, the sun, drugs,and other things... False idols come to my mind.
It's simply a matter of history and chance, particularly the successions of wars and who won what turf. If the Moors had not been stopped in Spain, Ferdinand and Isabela might just have well been the Caliphs, and Columbus perhaps Omar the Navigator, and all of this discussion would hinge around the question of why so many infidels are congregating online.

But why do people always claim "its gods fault". Get so angry at god.
I doubt that there's any anger. Atheists are speaking against the policies of Christianity. One of them is that God loves his creations. Another is that God intervenes in and controls every detail in everyone's lives. The issue that atheists consider logical fallacy is that if these premises are true, then God must be responsible for all of the murder, mayhem and calamity in the world. It's not anger, it's simply an appeal to logic.

Things sometimes happen.
That would admit randomness, not a well accepted idea in many Christian circles.

And we have free will, if I don't have free will I would not be typing.
That's pretty much a religious concept. A biologist would trace these to primal urges, motivations and the evolution of speech and reason.

And with the Christian god we are limited in our free will. We can not change to a animal for example. We are "let loose". But we have limitations.
Psychotic patients probably reveal the true underlying structure of the human mind and some of the complexes of ideas involved in concepts of freedom, choice and constraints. The problem with interpreting free will in a religious context is that it avoids the underlying biological causes for human behavior.

Direct our anger not directly at god or gods but where it needs to really be placed. Like be mad we built a damn and the weather destroyed it. And so the house got destroyed and flooded. Get mad over the government for limiting a road that was going to be built to help your business. And for not doing more to keep it going yourself.
The question in my mind is whether it is ethical to persuade ignorant and vulnerable minds to adopt a religion at all. Missionary programs have done incredible damage throughout history in erasing indigenous cultures and promoting war and genocide. Worst of all, religion encourages fallacy upon fallacy, and enslaves minds, leaving the victims unable to consistently apply right thinking. Thus, it may not even occur to you that the debate over whether to put a highway through your back yard was cut short and put to a vote, because another bill concerning prayer in the classroom, or the teaching of evolution, or abortion, or any of 100 things the Christian politicos want to do, has stolen your time from the legislative process. If there is any anger at all, I think it's all pointed in that direction.
 
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