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I am interested because of many reasons. 1. I was raised Christian. 2. Much of the society I live in is Christian. 3. Many of those Christians hate non-Christians and wish to use the law against me. 4. I have a vested interest in creating a more religiously tolerant society. 5. I like debate.
I don't hate you! And Christians don't hate anyone! Why do you have this misconception we are these hateful people?! I am ABSOLUTELY sure you have Christian friends and I am SURE that they are not hateful. We both need to stop this stereotypical view of each other! That is what you should be doing. Practice what you preach! Your interested in creating a religiously tolerant society? Well ridiculing and mocking Christianity isn't a good start. Thank God we live in one of the most religious tolerant countries in the world.
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I have spoken many times against many religions. The reason you see most of us rail against Christianity is because that is the topic that comes up more frequently here. If you look around, you will also see us criticize Islam and others.
No you don't. Because I don't see that at all. I only see Christianity, Christianity, & more Christianity topics. It's brought up frequently because you guys bring it up. It is the basis for Atheism. And you say you've spoken against many religions...So much for religious tolerance.
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The connections are personal because these are personal issues. Religion *is* important. People kill and die for it. Consider that I have two small children, and I have think about who is going to be teaching them. When I have to guard against my own family to stop them from teaching what I feel are inappropriate ideas to my children... that's pervasive. That is something that needs to be addressed as a culture, one person at a time.
If you don't want your children to be around religious teachings, don't bring them near Church or a religious school! Put them in public school and keep it moving. Millions of kids have been fine without religious teachings there.
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As far as never having heard of it... well! I was a Christian until high school. I was raised in it. Steeped in it. We had a birthday cake for Jesus at Christmas every year. I've heard it. I've studied it. I've lived it. I've been you. I've been the evangelical apologetic.
You are NOT me. Don't you try to equate yourself with me. That is where I cross the line. You have not walked in my shoes, you have not lived my life, you have not grown up with the same people and environment I have, so you have no merit to try to make yourself seem like I'm in the same shoes as you. I'm not. We come from two different life paths and generations. I am just a Protestant. I choose to become saved on my own account. Not because of my family or anyone else. I'm sorry you had to go through that with your family but that is you. Maybe the physchological connection is that you felt so forced with Christianity when you were a child, that in your adolescence and adulthood you finally decided to break away from that strain that was put on you from an early age. If that is the case perhaps you should reevaluate your faith. I never understood how someone who had a complete knowledge of the Lord forsakes him just like that.
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So, if you want to go on experience and exposure, I've got you beat hands down. You're in high school. That means you are at most twenty years old, though most likely younger. I deconverted from Christianity twenty-five years ago, long before you were a gleam in your Daddy's eye.
Yes I'm 17 and will faithfully admit you've had more life experience and exposure than me. I'm very young. But I'm not stupid. And I haven't been blinded. Nothing about my faith in God has been forced. If it was forced on me, by at least age 12 I would have decided I don't believe. Because everyone in the world knows teenagers rebel. I would have gladly rebelled on religion long ago and not give it a second thought if I didn't believe. I have seen his works. There were times in my life I could have DIED. I just called on the name of the Lord and somehow and someway, things turned out all alright and I survived. I'm going to graduate soon and my faith has been nothing but strengthened since my pre-teens. And your attempts to make me question my faith is pointless. I told you I've heard and read about everything having to do with the nonexistence of God in the book and it just doesn't click with me or what's in my bible.
Another thing, stop trying to patronize me because of my age. Long before I was a gleam in my dad's eye? That was not necessary.
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You want to know what the connection is? Try raising kids as the most reviled minority group in America.
I realize that. And I'm sorry you have to have that stigma but you know what? Christians aren't having such a hot look in the public eye either. So you aren't the only ones going through having to go above the stereotype.
Last edited by allenk893; 05-05-2010 at 06:51 PM..
I am interested because of many reasons. 1. I was raised Christian. 2. Much of the society I live in is Christian. 3. Many of those Christians hate non-Christians and wish to use the law against me. 4. I have a vested interest in creating a more religiously tolerant society. 5. I like debate.
I have spoken many times against many religions. The reason you see most of us rail against Christianity is because that is the topic that comes up more frequently here. If you look around, you will also see us criticize Islam and others.
The connections are personal because these are personal issues. Religion *is* important. People kill and die for it. Consider that I have two small children, and I have think about who is going to be teaching them. When I have to guard against my own family to stop them from teaching what I feel are inappropriate ideas to my children... that's pervasive. That is something that needs to be addressed as a culture, one person at a time.
As far as never having heard of it... well! I was a Christian until high school. I was raised in it. Steeped in it. We had a birthday cake for Jesus at Christmas every year. I've heard it. I've studied it. I've lived it. I've been you. I've been the evangelical apologetic.
So, if you want to go on experience and exposure, I've got you beat hands down. You're in high school. That means you are at most twenty years old, though most likely younger. I deconverted from Christianity twenty-five years ago, long before you were a gleam in your Daddy's eye.
You want to know what the connection is? Try raising kids as the most reviled minority group in America.
Yeah, right. The real threat to your kids growing up in the U.S.A. isn't drugs, or STDs, or peer influence to play "the choking game" or to join a gang (depending on where you live), or start drinking or smoking....it's REEE-LIIII-GIONNNNNN. OK, sure. Better watch out for that big building on the corner with the steeple on it...never mind the crackhouse, or the permissive schoolmates parents house where your kid goes for a "party" at 13 yrs old and the friends parents let the kids drink and they get messed up, and then they're fixing to be a parent 9 months after the party.
The THOUSAND+ posts to this forum ain't about your kids...It's about YOU and YOUR focus on it.
Originally Posted by HistorianDude My assertion that "Nature" is not god is neither more nor less scientific than the assertion that man is not a mangrove.
Oh? So you disagree?
Use your words. How exactly is the one assertion more or less scientific than the other?
There is scientific evidence to distinguish man from mangrove. There is nothing to distinguish "Nature" from God.
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One cannot eliminate from existence that which never existed in the first place. One need not bother to account for it either.
Succeed in distinguishing "Nature" FROM God (using scientific evidence and ONLY those attributes not in dispute) or show how "Nature" never existed (or doesn't exist) and I will concede.
Au contraire, Mystic. There's plenty to distinguish an invented God of Convenience from Nature. "Nature" is a definable, measurable system, a force that logically accomplishes things absent any supernatural input. It especially lacks wildly inefficient, fairy-tale spur-of-the-moment mechanics, and God would, necessarily, leave out such inefficiencies if He were so gol-danged "super".
He'd not include, for instance, the DNA code sequences from ancient dinos or viral particles or other species in our's or modern bird's or lizard's DNA. He'd not leave tell-tale incrementally and measurably more efficient brain systems as we proceed along the evolutionary chronology. There's a far more acceptable and rational explanation, frankly.
All that speaks clearly to the absence of some outer hand of convenient influence. Rather, it all speaks quietly and clearly to a simple, stepwise nature-moderated process. Efficient, thorough, lethal at times, without compassion but efficient beyond any other process.
Meantime, the Godly are all dancing around the campfire, bodies painted blue, and celebrating what's left of the unexplained, cherishing the inexplicable remnants, for as long as they remain so.
Au contraire, Mystic. There's plenty to distinguish an invented God of Convenience from Nature. "Nature" is a definable, measurable system, a force that logically accomplishes things absent any supernatural input. It especially lacks wildly inefficient, fairy-tale spur-of-the-moment mechanics, and God would, necessarily, leave out such inefficiencies if He were so gol-danged "super".
You do have difficullty dealing with generics. There is NO SUPERNATURAL. You are so obsessed with the religious BELIEFS and not the concrete Attributes of God revealed in YOUR "Nature" God by science. Those attributes you laud are more than adequate to constitue God for us puny creations. ALL the disputable crap (Omni's and whatnot) that humans demand that God MUST have to qualify as God are just human hubris.
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He'd not include, for instance, the DNA code sequences from ancient dinos or viral particles or other species in our's or modern bird's or lizard's DNA. He'd not leave tell-tale incrementally and measurably more efficient brain systems as we proceed along the evolutionary chronology. There's a far more acceptable and rational explanation, frankly.
All that speaks clearly to the absence of some outer hand of convenient influence. Rather, it all speaks quietly and clearly to a simple, stepwise nature-moderated process. Efficient, thorough, lethal at times, without compassion but efficient beyond any other process.
Who are we to determine what our God MUST be capable of to qualify as our God? What we HAVE learned about Him is more than sufficiently Godly for our initial approximations. We will continue to learn more. We just have to be careful NOT to use our ignorance and pitiful abilities to understand or make sense of His works as a basis for rejecting Him . . . as you do above.
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Originally Posted by FredNotBob
Why do you assume that because athiests do not believe in God or organized religion, that the topic is not of interest to them?
I don't believe the same things that Christians do, but I'm still interested in learning more about Christian belief.
But it doesn't make any sense. Why would you be interested in something you don't believe in? I have never posted on the Atheist section because I have no belief in it. So why would I bother them and ask questions and ridicule their beliefs (or lack of belief) if I had no interest in it or becoming one? This is the very flaw with Atheist that never ceases to amaze me. You guys love to crack jokes and give sarcastic responses to us because of our belief. You think we're delusional and crazy for doing so. But all I seem to see is the constant talk of Christianity. And I NEVER seen so many people that claim to be opposed to religion in it's entirety only talk about Christianity. There's never opposition to the hundreds of other religions in the world. There's a psychological connection there. I'm not a psychologist - I'm just a high schooler but I know when I see a mental pattern between people and there's a strange underlying about the way Atheist discuss religion and the hostility towards Christianity. Regardless of the fact I'm a Christian. There is a connection and I am determined to get down to the bottom of it.
There is a connection and I am determined to get down to the bottom of it.
For myself I have come to the conclusion that the more productive effort to understand atheists is not to go into what they do know about God which they deny to exist, because they will evade in all directions and adopt a frivolous attitude if not downright go insolent, taking up for example name-calling, and at the same time insist that they are not into name-calling but just having their own concept of God -- and then I would tell them but that is not the concept of God we know to have existence and you claim to not have evidence of, for example, spaghetti, tooth fairy, unicorn, and they will insist that God is similar to them because there is no evidence of His existence, which to anyone with a knowledge of words and intentions of users it is all perverse quibbling just to hurl stones of insolence against God and people who know God to exist.
The more productive effort is to peer into the heart and mind of atheists, to investigate their life history and their lifestyle, and such an examination might show a pattern with them indicating that they are trying their most obdurate worst to convince themselves, that they are living a life that is of any genuine worth no matter that they are in fact feeling so diffident with their life and lifestyle, but they have not the courage, hence not the will and perseverance, to change for what to them should be a better life and lifestyle.
This kind of a study of atheists can be done by socio-psychologists in the broader area of personality psychology.
Life and lifestyle of atheists, as a subject of research, even an academic discipline, should focus on the spokesmen or theoreticians of atheists and exemplary socalled atheists, who engage in all kinds of fallacious expositions against God and theists, notwithstanding that they know better for having most probably a good formation in rational logical thinking, than to resort to such dishonest stratagems of epistemic deceit and deception.
Life and lifestyle of atheists, that should really be a very interesting scope of study for socio-psychologists in the broader field of personality psychology.
And it will be a much more productive inquisition by us believers in God, than trying to even just get them to tell us what they know to be the concept of God with us theists who claim to know that God exists.
If there be any sincerely intellectual atheists, then they are not really atheists but agnostics; but they are just the same atheists if however in claiming to be atheists on rational and logical grounds they also resort to name-calling and use words which are slogans employed by rabble-rousers.
But it doesn't make any sense. Why would you be interested in something you don't believe in? I have never posted on the Atheist section because I have no belief in it.
You seem to be implying that we're just going to sit like bumps on a log and never indulge our desire to learn and grow.
The reason that athiests (and Wiccans such as myself) show an interest in religions that we don't believe in is because they interest us!
We're still human, after all, and curiosity is one of humanity's defining characteristics.
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