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Atheism can take many forms, from disbelief in God to the complete rejection of Him because they view Him as an evil entity by virtue of His unwillingness to stop evil. It was Edmond Burke who said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.” We might be able to extend that to "A God who is able to stop evil from triumphing and does nothing must of necessity be evil Himself."
This idea is repugnant to theists naturally so they have invented all sorts of excuses for God. We've heard them a million times around here: "God's ways are mysterious" "God is honoring man's free will" "It's Adam's fault, not God's". They're all pretty silly and without merit. The only one that may be closest to the truth is that there must be a system of justice in the supernatural world that is completely unlike the one we have here. In God's world people suffering horribly is not bad or evil, just unfortunate. We down here who do the suffering cannot fathom such a system. It seems abhorrent to us.
It would be so easy for me to just stop believing there is a God were it not for this pesky detail:
"The 2010 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica contains 32 volumes, 50 million words and 300 million characters. It requires roughly 1 gigabyte (GB) of disk space to store. A single byte (or 8 bits) can represent 4 DNA base pairs. In order to represent the entire diploid human genome in terms of bytes, we can perform the following calculations: 6×10^9 base pairs/diploid genome x 1 byte/4 base pairs = 1.5×10^9 bytes or 1.5 Gigabytes, about 2 CDs worth of space!"
I hope you got that. The human genome could hold the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and still have room left over for another half of the set. To my mind this kind of gigantic organization of coded information could not have come about by accident. The odds of something like that happening on its own are so infinitesimal as to render the number virtually incapable of being written out.
So I personally can accept there is a Higher Intelligence out there and I can even accept that this Intelligence operates on a morality totally different from ours, but I cannot accept that this Intelligence chooses to foist its warped sense of morality on we who have to suffer under its pernicious set of evil laws.
So I may believe in God but I am under no obligation morally, religiously or otherwise to acknowledge Him or to hold Him in anything other than complete and total indifference. I think by that definition it makes me an atheist who believes in an evil God, strange as that may sound.
1. I no longer believe in "a god".
2. I definitely don't believe in biblegod, but perhaps there is some other god that operates differently than the bible indicates, and who may be deistic.
3. I could be wrong, but none of the dimwitted christian posts I see on this forum are convincing me, and in fact, they push me further and further away from remaining open-minded about it.
I hope you got that. The human genome could hold the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and still have room left over for another half of the set. To my mind this kind of gigantic organization of coded information could not have come about by accident. The odds of something like that happening on its own are so infinitesimal as to render the number virtually incapable of being written out.
....
And indeed it did not come about by accident.
You are quite right that the odds of that happening are infinitesimally small. Perfectly zero in fact. About the same as the odds of a fully formed immaterial 'higher intelligence' just happening to exist or coming into existence by accident or chance.
1. I no longer believe in "a god".
2. I definitely don't believe in biblegod, but perhaps there is some other god that operates differently than the bible indicates, and who may be deistic.
3. I could be wrong, but none of the dimwitted christian posts I see on this forum are convincing me, and in fact, they push me further and further away from remaining open-minded about it.
For all my years of atheism, I was open to the possibility that there could be some entity or other that could perhaps be described as "God". Then I came to R&S and the Christians convinced me there is no such thing as a god, let alone a bible God.
I used to be convinced that there really was a man named 'Jesus' - Yeshua actually - but again, between Harry, Trans and many more plus the Christians who insist on presenting irrational arguments, convinced me that the man himself likely never existed.
For all my years of atheism, I was open to the possibility that there could be some entity or other that could perhaps be described as "God". Then I came to R&S and the Christians convinced me there is no such thing as a god, let alone a bible God.
I used to be convinced that there really was a man named 'Jesus' - Yeshua actually - but again, between Harry, Trans and many more plus the Christians who insist on presenting irrational arguments, convinced me that the man himself likely never existed.
The effect of the efforts in this forum will have consequences for those who evoke them. I only hope they are not too onerous.
I think by that definition it makes me an atheist who believes in an evil God, strange as that may sound.
Nope. Makes you early Gnostic.
Gnosticism says that humans are divine souls trapped in the ordinary physical (or material) world. They say that the world was made by an imperfect spirit. The imperfect spirit is thought to be the same as the God of Abraham.
Yes, you didn't know? Yeshua Ga'Notsri was his name. There was never a man by the name "Jesus" or "Christos". Those are later Greek developed titles. But it's pointles, as I found after MANY times mentioning this, to even speak of this as, it simply does not precipitate. Density of biblical indoctrination and desire to stick to trotted mental concepts is impermeably bulletproofed.
1. I no longer believe in "a god".
2. I definitely don't believe in biblegod, but perhaps there is some other god that operates differently than the bible indicates, and who may be deistic.
3. I could be wrong, but none of the dimwitted christian posts I see on this forum are convincing me, and in fact, they push me further and further away from remaining open-minded about it.
The Bible-god is just one of roughly 10,000 others. The only reason the Bible-god is still around is a huge quirk of good fortune for the Christians at the Council of Nicaea when Constantine was trying to decide which god to make the official god of his Roman Empire and he picked two: Druid god, Hesus and Hindu god, Krishna and combined the two into Hesus Kristos--Jesus Christ. Two for the price of one.
I think by that definition it makes me an atheist who believes in an evil God, strange as that may sound.
Nope. Makes you early Gnostic.
Gnosticism says that humans are divine souls trapped in the ordinary physical (or material) world. They say that the world was made by an imperfect spirit. The imperfect spirit is thought to be the same as the God of Abraham.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ukrkoz
Yeshua actually
Yes, you didn't know? Yeshua Ga'Notsri was his name. There was never a man by the name "Jesus" or "Christos". Those are later Greek developed titles. But it's pointles, as I found after MANY times mentioning this, to even speak of this as, it simply does not precipitate. Density of biblical indoctrination and desire to stick to trotted mental concepts is impermeably bulletproofed.
If you're trying to quote other members, go look in the Rules thread for some tips so you can do it correctly.
Atheism can take many forms, from disbelief in God to the complete rejection of Him because they view Him as an evil entity by virtue of His unwillingness to stop evil. It was Edmond Burke who said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.” We might be able to extend that to "A God who is able to stop evil from triumphing and does nothing must of necessity be evil Himself."
This idea is repugnant to theists naturally so they have invented all sorts of excuses for God. We've heard them a million times around here: "God's ways are mysterious" "God is honoring man's free will" "It's Adam's fault, not God's". They're all pretty silly and without merit. The only one that may be closest to the truth is that there must be a system of justice in the supernatural world that is completely unlike the one we have here. In God's world people suffering horribly is not bad or evil, just unfortunate. We down here who do the suffering cannot fathom such a system. It seems abhorrent to us.
It would be so easy for me to just stop believing there is a God were it not for this pesky detail:
"The 2010 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica contains 32 volumes, 50 million words and 300 million characters. It requires roughly 1 gigabyte (GB) of disk space to store. A single byte (or 8 bits) can represent 4 DNA base pairs. In order to represent the entire diploid human genome in terms of bytes, we can perform the following calculations: 6×10^9 base pairs/diploid genome x 1 byte/4 base pairs = 1.5×10^9 bytes or 1.5 Gigabytes, about 2 CDs worth of space!"
I hope you got that. The human genome could hold the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and still have room left over for another half of the set. To my mind this kind of gigantic organization of coded information could not have come about by accident. The odds of something like that happening on its own are so infinitesimal as to render the number virtually incapable of being written out.
So I personally can accept there is a Higher Intelligence out there and I can even accept that this Intelligence operates on a morality totally different from ours, but I cannot accept that this Intelligence chooses to foist its warped sense of morality on we who have to suffer under its pernicious set of evil laws.
So I may believe in God but I am under no obligation morally, religiously or otherwise to acknowledge Him or to hold Him in anything other than complete and total indifference. I think by that definition it makes me an atheist who believes in an evil God, strange as that may sound.
its not repugnant. Its just not as valid as we can be. To say the god of the bible is all evil is as illy as saying its all love. In effect its fighting a fairy tale with a fairy tale. Good in elementary school, but grown ups need not apply.
Believing in something more but not more deities is basically the most valid statement of belief we have today. There are not many reasons to just deny it. In fact, I don't see any reason except some type of ax to grind against religion.
I love the the counter claim "oh, you must really want a god if you say that." thats as funny as saying "yeah, the bible is the word of god."
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To my mind this kind of gigantic organization of coded information could not have come about by accident. The odds of something like that happening on its own are so infinitesimal as to render the number virtually incapable of being written out. 
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