But you could if you wanted to.
Why do Americans still dislike atheists?
- Thread starter Fraggle Rocker
- Start date
kx000
Valued Senior Member
Who says I don't want to? Why do you care what I believe? People like you just need to shut up sometimes. I realize your stating an opinion, but I find it very offensive for you to constantly hack my faith. Stop. People use to go to war over this shit, God isn't going anywhere, get over it.
Well actually atheism will soon be the leading religion, yes, i see it as a religion, but that's only because people will buy into anything when they are afraid enough. This will only prove to me Satan walks the earth, and thus, God is real.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Wow. That's just another way of admitting that he's imaginary. Thanks.
How difficult would it be for you to start believing? Why do you think it would be any easier for them to stop?
Jung suggests that belief in the supernatural is a collection of archetypes, instincts most humans are born with due to the vagaries of evolution. This is something they have "known" since birth, which makes it feel more true than anything they have learned through reasoning, education or experience.
This is not to say that it's impossible to override. Like virtually all animals we have an instinct to fear a large animal with both eyes in front of its face because it's almost certainly a predator against which we have no defense. This is a survival instinct so it's really powerful. Yet we put a baby in a room where a Rottweiler is guarding him instead of trying to eat him, and he quickly gets over that instinctive fear and starts playing with the domesticated wolf.
If only we could get to the believers in the supernatural while they were still babies!
Because you're on a discussion board entitled "Comparative Religion" on a science website. Duh? We don't get many supernaturalists here because it's an extremely hostile environment. So when one shows up we put him under the microscope.
You're going to have to get used to it or leave--or at least stop making assertions which have no supporting evidence. This is a place of science and scholarship. Religion is pure antiscience and the way many people exhibit it it's also very nearly the anathema of scholarship.
Walking into a place that attempts to be an oasis of science and scholarship, and putting forth arguments that violate the rules of science and scholarship in myriad ways, is not the way to earn respect.
You supernaturalists have the world's other ten zillion websites where you're free to share your ridiculous, illogical little fairytales. This one is ours.
The reason we "hack your faith" is that it is an irrational faith. Rational faith, based on evidence, is okay, even if it may not be solid enough to treat as a genuine hypothesis. But faith based on nothing but what your momma and daddy told you twenty or forty years ago, when you were too trusting to doubt them and too little to ask intelligent questions, is not okay. ...or worse yet, based on an atavistic instinct that was passed down through a genetic bottleneck!
We're here to teach, and you obviously need to learn.
This is our place. You are an outsider. You don't get to tell us to stop. We have no use for irrationality.
What do you mean "used to"??? The fucking Christians, Muslims and Jews are on the brink of a nuclear holy war, because apparently believing in God, even the same bloody damn God, isn't quite good enough for you people!
As I noted in my other thread, God actually is slowly "going away." A sizeable percentage of Americans have outgrown that fairytale, and in many other countries the numbers are much higher.
Isn't that how religion got started in the Stone Age? People were afraid of everything.
Once again, you flout the rules and conventions of science and scholarship. Your argument isn't even coherent, much less rational. We will continue to make fun of you because you deserve it.
I don't care what you believe, but I'm interested in the mental processes that lead to faith and religion. You have the option not to discuss it, but I wish you would. What if I believed smurfs were real and felt that anyone that wasn't blue should be stoned to death? You might grow an interest in smurfism.
People do go to war over religion, which is one of my main objections to it. There are enough legitimate reasons for war without these irrational ones to add to it.
Speaking of buying into anything, you just used the existence of atheists to justify a belief in god, which is strange. Is it so hard for you to comprehend that people are atheists for good reasons? Like there isn't any evidence for god?
Ah yeah ! Me . Me Satan walks the earth . Only for a little while . I got to tear some shit up real good before I go . Fun Fun in the sun
Smurfs are a big reference point Spidey . Yeah blue bull imagery. It is totally surprising were that blue bull shows up . I just read a passage in de bible that said they will come from the north and leap from mountain to mountain . Now that reminds Me of Pecos Bill and his blue bull. They jumped from mountain to mountain . I think it is reference of the white man migration towards the west. See the bible is like the directive. So people live by it and do what it says and it says the people from the north will jump from mountain to mountain . We did ! The goal was completed . The directive filtrated in all society by artistry , imagery and symbolism . Then it plays on the subconscious minds of the viewer . The next artist to broach the subject may not even know that the original thought was a bible ditty , even though they may have got it from another source . Like second generation information from the root , or even way down the line 8th , or who knows ? The information ? does it get distorted ? Maybe weave in and out of distortion . Depends on which way the wind blows
kx000
Valued Senior Member
I can't explain my belief. I'd love to share. I'd love to enlighten you, but I don't know how, so I won't try. I will only stay true to my belief. If every single one of the other 6 billion people on earth didn't believe in God, I would still. I have never been religious, I have never pretended to. As a mater of fact, I believe most people belonging to a religion are only there because they are afraid, not because of faith. To me thats a sin. To me, to have fear at all is to mock God.
I guess one reason I truly keep my faith is love. Just as God is its powers are great, you can't see it, and we have no understanding of it even though we experience every single day. Another is the human mind. So vast, like outer space, maybe limitless. Such a great thing, yet it doesn't even exist.
What if I said the human mind didn't exist? Have you any proof of it (maybe you do, just asking)? I mean iv'e never seen one.
One day I will die old and in love. Then I will walk with Jesus, or I will be sent to were ever it is I desire most, until I need to return to earth.
The human mind does not exist. It's an illusion generated by the brain.
Can you at least tell us why you believe in god? You believe in Jesus too, so don't say you aren't religious, it just doesn't apply.
Can you at least tell us why you believe in god? You believe in Jesus too, so don't say you aren't religious, it just doesn't apply.
Your disagreement does not exist.
it is just an illusion generated by your brain.
Puff! Pew pew!
Then you've got a rude awakening coming.
funny..that's the same line we could use on atheist.
I wasn't implying (mainstream) atheism.
I think believing in God "because it makes sense" becomes unbearable at some point. I suppose that point is when one realizes that believing in God should be something real, something apriori, and not a mere because-it-makes-sense abstract intellectual exercise.
are you saying that a belief in God should be based on evidence and proof?
No. I do think that it has to be apriori, otherwise it won't be relevant (enough) to the person.
Shouldn't belief in anything be based on evidence? Proof is a different animal...
well then i think i do not understand what you are saying..
wow..i looked up A Priori, wiki has very little on it..closest i can see that applies is 'A priori knowledge, justification or arguments.'
websters has a better definition
a : deductive
b : relating to or derived by reasoning from self-evident propositions — compare a posteriori
c : presupposed by experience
2
a : being without examination or analysis : presumptive
b : formed or conceived beforehand
notice two of the definitions are subjective..(self evident, and experience)
so i am still confused by your meaning as 'makes sense' does not exclude 'a priori'