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There must be something to your belly button claim since there are billions of people in the world who share your belief.
Not.
Do you get how ridiculous those kind of atheist arguments are now? Yet I hear them all the time in this forum.
Then you missed the point, which was that ANY claim deserves to be supported (by at least a modicum of evidence), if the person making the claim expects others to accept it as something more than personal navel gazing.
The product of my personal navel gazing (i.e., belly button lint) was intentionally ridiculous, because that is where we end up if unsupported claims stand unchallenged. Don't look now but, despite the billions of people sharing your belief, there is precisely as much evidence supporting it as there is supporting my belly button hypothesis. Zilch, zippo, nada. Citing numbers of people who have allowed themselves to be swept along with an unsupported belief does not constitute evidence or strengthen your argument.
So you have never exercised faith (not necessarily religious based) in your life?
Others have answered this while I was sleeping but, since it was directed to me, I will add my own thoughts:
I had religious faith early in life, having been raised in the church, until I got old enough to ask questions and think my own thoughts. When I looked behind the curtain and started to realize that "there was no there... there," that was the beginning of the end for unsupported faith.
Outside the religious context, I have "faith" that the bottle of milk in my fridge won't kill me... that my wife will be at home tonight... that my plane flight won't crash... that I can dive in a pool and come up for air... that I can make it down a ski run without breaking my leg... that my children are growing into kind, responsible people... that a meteor is unlikely to fall on my house... and many, many more.
But in EVERY case, there is some evidence to support these beliefs and expectations. None of them are for certain (100% guarantees are not required, as monumentus has patiently explained), and bad things can happen, but I have reason to think the odds are pretty good that those things I just listed will continue to happen. They all happened before, most of them repeatedly, and it is reasonable to expect them to continue. If this expectation counts as "faith," it is different than what I qualified above as "unsupported faith".... by which I mean believing in something you have NEVER seen happen, and for which there is ZERO supporting evidence. That kind of faith I do not exercise in my life.
[And please let's skip the step where you substitute "hope" for faith. That is a different word with a different meaning. I would have a much different view of religion and the religious, if every declaration was preceded by an honest acknowledgment like... "We don't know if any of this is true, and we really don't have any reason to think it is, but we sure HOPE it is!"]
He exists because he is what drives all the good acts of faith in this world. An atheist will never once acknowledge all of the good things that have happened to him as a result of other people's faith. It's as if it's an impossible thing for him to do so. He can't do it. Even though the good done by religion outweighs the bad 99 to 1. Therefore atheism is a kind of delusion, from my perspective. It is proof to me that atheism is false.
No. No. No.
Your limited thinking just fell into the Easter Bunny & Santa Claus trap.
Something does not exist because people act as if it existed.
Neither. I'm saying you can't compare a faith shared by billions, with something like the belly button claim which means nothing. Yet atheists make these kind of meaningless statements all the time ad nauseum.
No matter how many people believe something doesn't make it true or real.
He exists because he is what drives all the good acts of faith in this world. An atheist will never once acknowledge all of the good things that have happened to him as a result of other people's faith. It's as if it's an impossible thing for him to do so. He can't do it. Even though the good done by religion outweighs the bad 99 to 1. Therefore atheism is a kind of delusion, from my perspective. It is proof to me that atheism is false.
How do you know that this is true? What exactly is a "good act of faith"?
How does a person know which good things have happened as a result of other people's faith?
For example, I feel I am incredibly fortunate to have been born at a time and in a place where I am no one's property. Billions of others have not been so incredibly fortunate. Is this good thing which has befallen me the result of other people's faith? And why is it that other people's faith has failed to bestow the same good thing upon billions of others?
How do we determine which good things have been done by religion? Which bad things?
There must be something to your belly button claim since there are billions of people in the world who share your belief.
Not.
Do you get how ridiculous those kind of atheist arguments are now? Yet I hear them all the time in this forum.
there are actually two notions that need to be addressed. belief in god and celebrating.
Think of it this way. We atheist are saying a holiday devoted to a god is like a holiday devoted to a belly button. Both are meaningless to us. But I can actually see a belly button. that's pretty important to supporting a claim.
Your god, to me, is just you misunderstanding the connections to the surroundings you have. “memes” are the “idea’s” being expressed by humans and memes are part of the feedback loops that make us humans. That feedback loop is the illusion of “something else”. Those sets of interactions are, to me, incorrectly labeled as god. I kept it simple, but a more in depth look would show it.
Notice I used the word “illusion”. “Delusion” is something not there, but the data shows that to be incorrect. Its an “illusion” in that the interactions of the universe forming you are just something different than “god thingies”.
Now, due to my nature, I am forced to look at “humans” as a whole. Its very clear we celebrate.
Its part of being human. That’s just a fact. So how do we “celebrate” something while having it mean something, at least semi important?
Something like Christmas started as “god” and since moved onto “spirit of giving”. It also has some economic considerations for being useful. So I am in.
But, let me be clear, I do some pretending. Its beneficial in this case … to a degree. I do love the lights.
And I openly say I see no reason at this time to believe the thing you do. More than that I have never said despite your claims.
.
lol .. what exactly does it mean?
Why are you so scared to admit what you are?
Atheist?
Agnostic?
Believer?
Something else?
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