Thread: Question about atheists

> I told you that they don't

Oh, thanks, then. I'm glad you backed it up with your analogy.

Here are 209,000 sites that disagree.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i...6000+years+old

> but to tell you that since you don't have anything to pray to, you will never understand the difficulties

I was a Christian at one point. Don't assume things you know nothing about.

> There were thousants of witnesses. If they would disagree with these stories, things would not be as we know them today.

Bull. The events in the Bible supposedly happened 2000+ years ago. Many of historical documents since then have been destroyed, lost, or altered. You have no way of knowing how they felt. Hell, the US's war with Iraq happened 6 months ago, with millions of people watching, and people still can't agree on what really happened.

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>When God made us, we were perfect. He gave us the pontential - logic - to choose between many things. However, many people use this power for bad purposes.

If god is perfect and he made us perfect, then even with free will we would not have chosen to disobey god. The fact that adam and eve chose to disobey god is proof that they were imperfect to being with!

>Also, you asked if altzhaimer brings people closer to God....

So a person slowly losing their mind brings them closer to god?

>An example which says to much; a man in the Twince , in 11th of September, praid to God to help him get out of the building, and he managed to leave the builting - without even understanding how he achieved it.

Sure, and all those other thousands of people who prayed to god for help werent worth saving?

wow turn your back for one second...

Much typing to do.

Before answering to anything, Clyde i want you to answer what i asked you. - ( i think that when we say address we mean that we agree )

No didaskalos i do not agree with you, when i said i had addressed it earlier i meant that I had already covered it in a previous post, look back at page 2.

First of all, the reason for talking about Allah was to show you that now, we are speaking only about Christianity, not about other religions - because many say that their God controlls the mind of the people.
Anyway, what you said is wrong.
And that was a problems that the theologists of Islam were trying to explain, and try to give an answer for many years. The problem that, since Allah controlls the will/behaviour of people, why at the "Final Judge" he will judge all the people as responsible for their own acts?. That's true

didaskalos my best friend at university who I have known for 7 years was raised a strict Muslim he memorised the entire Quran word for word, my girlfriend was brought up a Muslim in Pakistan by fundamentalists, the 14 year old girl from Pakistan i've been talking to about evolution for the past few days is a Muslim.

You are wrong, they believe in free will. Try asking one.

No. It's clear: Everybody can do whatever he wants, not whatever the God wants. And what we will choose some day between many other choices, is the future, which in fact doesn't exist at all - at least for now.
ex. Next morning, you'll have to choose something between many other choises. When this time comes, you will think and make your choise. That's all. But God, knows from today what you will choose, but he is not the one who chooses that.

Never mind, I don't think you grasp the point I am making, its is complex and may be beyond the language barrier.

1) Our nature include free will
2) Can't you see what i said to you previously? When God made us, we were perfect. He gave us the pontential - logic - to choose between many things. However, many people use this power for bad purposes.

If God had made us perfect people never would have used it for "bad purposes", God made us flawed.

Can you imagine a world with choice where only good people exist? Just imagine it, a world with no war, no torture, no rape, no starvation, no disease, but where people still choose they merely choose not to do all those things.

Just as people today (according to you) have free will and yet they never choose to do certain things so too people in a perfect world would have free will and not choose to do bad things.

But we don't live in a perfect world and human beings are not and never were perfect, because they weren't created by a perfect creator.

As you know, Satan, was at first an angel as all the others.

Yes Satan is another amusing aside: If God knows everything, why did he make Satan an angel? Why didn't he go "Hmmm Satan, nope, he'll go bad, i'll make Charles an angel instead"

Did God screw up?

This say too much about the free will that we have from God., and that it's not God's fault that so many people do bad things( since he gave us free will ).

Free will is still not an answer because God could have made us with free will but without an agressive sadistic side to our nature.

God let us think freely and choose whatever you want. God did not give us catastrophical nature, many of us make catastrophical choises

I can imagine a humanity with choice, with free will but without pain. If God were what you believe him to be, our humanity would be like that.

First of all it's not a real panishement. It would be a reall punishement, if after the deth our soul wouldn't leave any more, or, if after the death everybody of us went to hell.
But things aren't like this. We can also "leave in the Paradise", as Adam and Eve used to. We can also become Saints, which, of course, is not God, but it is something like a God. There is a term in my language, but i don't know how do you say it in English.

Its not a real punishment? Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........ pain isn't a real punishment.

You see up till this point i thought there was a chance for a reasonable debate, where we could make atleast SOME headway, but.... just think about what you've just said.

Even if you consider it a fairly relaxed punishment (!!!!??) it still doesn't alter my point: Is it fair for God to punish you for actions taken by someone else? Is that fair? Do you think an God who was omnibenevolent (entirely good) would do such a thing?

Humans learned the evil, an they did that sin. They had all the conforts, and they did not do what God told them. So, they showd that, they didn't deserve all these things God made for them.
*--->*Also, God asked them the reason for eating that "fruit". So they had the chance to apology. But instead of apologing, one said that it was the womans fault and the other it was the snake's fault. They did not regret for their act.

You are merely repeating bible stories without thinking about them, if God was PERFECT, then man would not have been flawed, and he would not have sinned. He would have CHOSEN not to sin.

Think of it like this, do you ever choose to eat rocks? You have the choice but you just don't choose it do you, in fact in all likelyhood you choose to avoid high levels of pain, most people do, its in our nature. If things can be in our nature and patently they can, then why did God give us a nature that would predetermine us to sin?

Incidently you do know the apple stands for knowledge right? Think about that for a minute, knoweldge = sin. Does that sound reasonable?

It's like the english phrase:
A friend in need is a friend indeed
Or, in my coumrty, exept from something like this, we also have:
The good captain(of a ship) appears in the storm.
These two phrases give the answer.

Is it ok to make my children crawl through glass, to test their love for me?

Also, you should know that God never let us helpless, and gives us strength to overcome all of our problems.
Do you know how many tamptations face all those priests who decide to go to a desert for example, although they are alone? However, they get so much strength from the God, that they are the happiests persons in the world

What basis do you have for claiming their strenght comes from God, and not from them?

Also, you asked if altzhaimer brings people closer to God.
I 'll make this a little more generall, and ask you this:
Which kind of person do you think, will come closer to God, more easiy; a man with all the conforts, many money, three houses, five cars, and at launch a table with all the kinds of food?, OR a poor man who has very little money, his house was recently destoied by an eartquake, and doesn't know if he 'll find anything to eat today?
Yes, i know these are extrime examples, but the say my point.

Have you read the book of Job?

Edit:

Additionally, are you suggesting its ok for God to make people's lives crap so that they will be closer to him? If he's God, why can't he make people feel closer to him without making their lives crap? He can? Yes I thought he could, so once again God is making people live's miserable for kicks.

quick note: An example which says to much; a man in the Twince , in 11th of September, praid to God to help him get out of the building, and he managed to leave the builting - without even understanding how he achieved it.

Think about how ridiculous that is, God let thousands of people die, but saved one random guy.

Do you think he was the only one who prayed?

Don't you believe in good luck? If you don't, how can you believe in bad luck?

Also, i am not going to tell more than the following about if church would controll the science. I am not going to say about an "if".
Personally, as a Christian, i tell you that our faith encourages research. It doesn't contoll it and our faith doesn't say anywhere that researches should stop. Full Stop

I suggest you read the history books.

Also, you said about interpretation of the Bible. Go buy a bible, and i don't think that you 'll find a very nig problem about the interpritation

How can you possibly say that when there are NUMEROUS different sects of Christianity all of whom have different enterpretations?

Is the bible all literal, or is it metaphorical, which bits are literal which bits are not.

If you believe the bible is literally true word for word, then you believe the universe is 6000 years old. Because it documents creation up to Jesus, and you can add up the dates. Whats more you don't beleive in evolution because it states God created all species separately.

No buddy. There is no scientific proof that life did ( or ever could ) evolved into existence from non-living matter. Only DNA is known to produce DNA.
A living thing was never produced from anything other than another living thing.
So, that living micro-organism with the one cail you said about ( even if human came from this ), definetely needs a creator.

I am very clear here, and so i can claim - as theologists say- that Christianity doesn't come in conrtast with science.

Your point is irrelevent, evolution makes no claim over the origin of the first microorganism, thats abiogensis which is comes under astrobiology which is *drum role* a science.

Are you now agreeing that we all have a common ancestor? We were not created as individual species as it claims we were in the bible?

So, for an atheist, what's the big deal in doing bad things? ( that was my point - the deal )

Since atheists are no more likely to do bad things than theists the point is mute.

Well... it's the way everybody sees this. Yeah, ethic by its own doesn't have anything to do with religion, but Christianity has the best/perfect ethic. ( this is not selfish )

LOL have you read the bible?

Any development? Anything uncovered? I guess "NO".

>>I'm just wondering. If you don't believe in a God, what do you guys/girls believe?

Explanation from my point of view for gcn_zelda again:

You can not believe anything just because you don't have explanation.

1. Long time ago I heard two pair words: Religious-Hypocrite & Non Religions-Hypocrite.
2. One thing I found in last 27 years is that truth is beyond the question of belief.
Such as (examples are in a broad sense):

Situation A. I'm standing right in front of you; you need not to believe it, do you? You are seeing me, this is true.

Situation B. I'm standing behind the wall, you are not sure.. You are confused.. But you have some sort of evidence ... now you may or may not believe.

So.. where there is a chance of not being true.. you have a choice to (will) believe.
I smelt the word believe as dark, suspicion, confusion, lie.. Truth is even much brighter than sunshine.


Occam's Razor approach: Consider the choices and select the one that is the simplest, because simple explanation is almost always the best.

Note on Holy Books: I do believe (because I'm in dark or confused, not sure) the guys (not girls ) who wrote the books were the most brilliant of that times. But because of the evolution or ... in this 21st century, I guess there are lots of brilliants around the world to understand their ideology to make people discipline (for peaceful life). I think they did that because wanted to guide people for a peaceful life. Their motivation was positive (though they created imaginary Superman, which was a lie).

Firstly, atheism in general doesnt claim anything

Sorry, I was mistaken. I actually thought Atheists claim that no God exists.

yeah, atheists don't have to prove anything.
The ones who have to prove their beliefs is the believers.

Take the first logic class you find. It will teach you that if you make a statement, you have to back it up. It's not for the other side to shoot it down.

No! I can't believe that nvoigt because you're smart, genuinely intelligent and evidently not overly indocrinated, you are influenced by social view points which is skewing the way you're thinking about this topic but i genuinely think you could come around if i or someone else could explain with more clarity why your reasoning is flawed.

I don't think it's flawed. Maybe different. I think we have the same base here:
Evolution is what happened. Most religious theories and books have flaws. They were translated several times and have been written a long time ago. This way, even if they were right at the time written, flaws are to be suspected. My conclusion is that I cannot come to a conclusion. Your conclusion is as the evidence is flawed, there is no God.

Take another example:

Joe Farmer was abducted by aliens. Their Ufo landed on top of his barn, taking four cows and him to a planet called yobana where they did various experiments. This is flawed, no evidence whatsoever, probably a made up story. My conclusion is, that this bull$$$$ is not enough to decide if there is life outside of the space we know. Your conclusion would be that as the story is total bull$$$$ and Joe Farmer was drunk at best, there is no life outside of our galaxy.

No facts, no decision on my part. And I guess we already agreed above that we don't have proof for anything. We don't even know if my decision to sit here and answer isn't God's way to play Sims on a saturday afternoon.

I don't think it's likely or reasonable. I just don't think it's totally impossible either.