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Maybe it's just heavy socialization with like-minded folk, as that puts people's spirits way up often times.
Do you really believe that the majority of church-going folk in America truly believe in a supreme god? I think most of it is just hardcore tribalism at play, which is very, very hard-wired into the brains of humans. After all, it is still taboo in most circles in the US to say that you are an atheist or an agnostic.
I find it strange that many older people just want to stay alive to see grandchildren - not to just have more years with their own children. LOL.
At any rate, I am a Buddhist and thus am of the mindset that happiness can only be obtained internally, not from sources external to the mind. We come into the world alone and we die alone.
Still don't see any evidence on here where you can defeat an atheist or agnostic in two minutes. I am still an agnostic Buddhist (more atheist-leaning, of course).
Grandparents do value time with their kids, but by grandparent time have had decades of time together. Grandchildren are like new puppies , and any grandparent wants to watch them grow up as well , plus grandparents have more leisure time at that point to spend with them. I am blessed to have 2 close to me I see on an almost daily basis, one still under a year. So yeah, 4 more years past my normal expiration date with them would be an attractive bonus.
Oh, and I am not the one trying to defeat an atheist in 2 minutes. That was just a video actually posted by an atheist, not a poster making the claim. Below was my initial contribution to the thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wallflash
I'm curious as to what arguments you think the more spiritually minded theists have won, and why. I've never seen a theist win a single argument , since it's all based on believing without evidence .
Last edited by wallflash; 08-26-2018 at 11:19 AM..
Grandparents do value time with their kids, but by grandparent time have had decades of time together. Grandchildren are like new puppies , and any grandparent wants to watch them grow up as well , plus grandparents have more leisure time at that point to spend with them. I am blessed to have 2 close to me I see on an almost daily basis, one still under a year. So yeah, 4 more years past my normal expiration date with them would be an attractive bonus.
Oh, and I am not the one trying to defeat an atheist in 2 minutes. That was just a video actually posted by an atheist, not a poster making the claim. Below was my initial contribution to the thread.
I am happy to hear that your grandchildren make you feel happy.
If it was learned that the opposite was true, that atheists lived four more years on average than do the devotees, would that trigger a mass defection from the ranks of the religious?
The four more years business is really an irrelevancy. Even if I decided that, yeah, I want those four extra years, I could not bring myself to do anything beyond pretending that I believed the religious dogma. Does pretending to believe in god still add those four extra years?
If it was learned that the opposite was true, that atheists lived four more years on average than do the devotees, would that trigger a mass defection from the ranks of the religious?
The four more years business is really an irrelevancy. Even if I decided that, yeah, I want those four extra years, I could not bring myself to do anything beyond pretending that I believed the religious dogma. Does pretending to believe in god still add those four extra years?
Only if you think the reasons why those extra years exist is because God grants true believers additional years as a reward.
If it was learned that the opposite was true, that atheists lived four more years on average than do the devotees, would that trigger a mass defection from the ranks of the religious?
The four more years business is really an irrelevancy. Even if I decided that, yeah, I want those four extra years, I could not bring myself to do anything beyond pretending that I believed the religious dogma. Does pretending to believe in god still add those four extra years?
Would anybody that has been defeated in two minutes please raise your hand! If you were religious and converted to non-believer; please raise two hands!
What is pretty clear is that this is not going to happen, either way. The idea of the OP was to convince the stooge -audience that atheism had been debunked with a footling appeal to unknowns.
It's interesting that this is not the reason given in Acts for eating all kinds of foods. It is because God has said that He wants you to. Paul has to argue that prayer and so -on has made it 'clean'. This isn't even Jesus' argument in the gospels. It is clean, because it is - there are no unclean foods and never were.
Actually, I'm fairly certain that there were reasons, and good ones, for the prohibitions against certain foods. One needs to consider the state of their knowledge, or, more appropriately, their *lack* of knowledge thousands of years ago. In the current age, we have a great deal of knowledge in regards to medicine and diseases and science and general; we know *why* a lot of things happen and can explain them. Thousands of years ago, they lacked the ability to know/understand the science behind many events which are explainable today, however, they *did* have a rudimentary capacity to understand certain causes and effects.
Take pork, for example. Modern science tells us that eating raw or under-cooked pork can result in trichinosis- we know what causes it. Way back when, they had no explanation, all they knew was that, sometimes, eating pork resulted in Bad Things happening though they didn't understand why. Lacking anything better, the People In Charge simply told the common people that pork was 'unclean' and that they were not to eat it.
When reading ancient writings one has to consider what they could and couldn't know, as compared to what we can and do know today.
Carl Jung suggested that believing in an afterlife is “psychologically hygienic.” Who really knows what’s beyond death? Yet the placebo effect is real - so it makes sense to have it work for us rather than against us, right?
No, because you are adjusting your behaviors to something that isn't true, resulting in actions or inactions based on a falsity, when in many cases the truth would serve better and result in a more favorable outcome.
Some people are fond of saying "There are no atheists in a foxhole." Well, I have been the atheist in the foxhole. Knowing that there is no 'afterlife' and this life is all there is made me more cogniscent of rational decisions made with the intent of preserving my own life and the lives of others while achieving the objective. Knowing there is nothing else, I fought harder to stay alive. I do not fear 'death', but I am absolutely not ready to stop living.
If it was learned that the opposite was true, that atheists lived four more years on average than do the devotees, would that trigger a mass defection from the ranks of the religious?
The four more years business is really an irrelevancy. Even if I decided that, yeah, I want those four extra years, I could not bring myself to do anything beyond pretending that I believed the religious dogma. Does pretending to believe in god still add those four extra years?
I wish I'd thought of that Yes. If stats showed that atheists lived longer, Believers would say that it isn't worth 'giving up the truth' for. Of course, the situation IS a bit different. Beleivers think they are getting another life after this one. Atheists think this one matters, because it is the only one we get.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wallflash
Only if you think the reasons why those extra years exist is because God grants true believers additional years as a reward.
That's true too. If religious belief somehow had some therapeutic effect through reducing stress -levels, perhaps, lessons could be learned. They might be applied to secular life, as I apply Buddhist meditation and Awareness techniques to an atheistic life.
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Yes. If stats showed that atheists lived longer, Believers would say that it isn't worth 'giving up the truth' for. Of course, the situation IS a bit different. Beleivers think they are getting another life after this one. Atheists think this one matters, because it is the only one we get.
