Atheism , Agnosticism and Theism

[Principessa]

I was raised in Christianity all my life and I know those arguments . Still you don't answer me the WHY of suffering and the Why of human condition. The why of the unfairness of the world . Sorry mate but that doesn't answer the question.

Why the suffering? It's called Free Will, God gave it to everyone and we all use it differently. Most human suffering is man-made. I don't always watch the news, but when was the last time God 'smote' somebody?

Why is it people who don't believe in God(s) always point to wars, starvation, suffering etc. as proof that God(s) doesn't exist? All those things are man-made by virtue of our free will.

I've had a lot of crappy things happen in my life. At no point in time do I recall God whispering in my ear that I should date an alcoholic druggy and try to change him. God didn't tell me that it would be a good idea to drag race from Sayreville to Freehold in the rain and pin the speedometer. Or date yet another handsome yet verbally & emotionally abusive asshole. I did that out of my own idiocy or as I like to think of it in retrospect, 'temporary insanity.' :tongue: In truth that was me exercising my'free will.' :redface:

God doesn't start wars. Man fighting over what he thinks is the 'right' perception of God is what often starts wars.

I think the reason for suffering is pretty simple. You can't know one without the other. You can't know love without hate, you can't know up without down, you can't know fat without skinny, you can't know happy without sad... suffering and watching others suffer is exactly what allows us to be happy and experience happiness in others.

THANK YOU! Finally a voice of reason. As Dolly Parton once said, “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”

 

[Xcuze]

What about all the millions who have died from natural disasters? I suppose thats not Gods fault either? People are so quick to thank God when good things happen so why should he not take any blame too? When you start to look into the whole issue of what God is & isnt responsible for it rapidly gets ridiculous.

 

[bigmoochie]

A friend of mine likens Ayn Rand's writings to those of Tolkien, in the following respect: there is a certain time of life when some people are susceptible to their spell, but if you are not one of those people or you don't read the books during that time, you will find them to be a tedious load of horseshit.

Lol. I'm a Tolkien fan because I understand why he wrote his books.

Conversely, I'm not a Rand fan because . . . I understand why she wrote her books.

 

[deleted213967]

Dr. J.A.! Dr. J.A.!

Emergency!

Come Right Away!

 

[Puntie]

I was raised a Catholic, am now an atheist, but if I was to choose a religion I would definitely be a Muslim!

 

[bigmoochie]

What about all the millions who have died from natural disasters? I suppose thats not Gods fault either? People are so quick to thank God when good things happen so why should he not take any blame too? When you start to look into the whole issue of what God is & isnt responsible for it rapidly gets ridiculous.

Actually, from a Christian perspective, it's perfectly consistent, XCUZE. God does not cause natural disasters any more than He causes someone to get cancer or a cold. There's no blame to lay at God's feet for things like that. He is not capricious - in fact, He can't be because He is all love. Since none of us knows the time nor the circumstances of our deaths, God only asks that we follow Him & do His will. That way, we'll be with Him forever. If a Christian isn't actively helping out during natural disasters, or the poor in his/her own back yard, then that person isn't living his/her faith well to begin with.

Again, from the Christina POV, we were not meant to be in a world where disasters, disease, & death are everyday occurrences. In the beginning it was not so, the Bible tells us. But, as njqt466 pointed out above, we have free will. We can make the decision to live without God in our lives. God, respecting our free will, will allow us to have what we choose. He will not force us to accept His love. If we didn't follow Him, he'll respect that free will choice.

 

[Xcuze]

What can we blame God for then? Cough up a list, Billy Bible.

 

[whatireallywant]

I was raised going to Baptist (as a child) and Church of God (as a teenager).

THEN, at age 17, I started paying more attention to certain things that were being taught in the church, as well as this was during the 1980 election year when the Moral Majority was doing their thing. I was ALWAYS a very non-traditional female and was very much for women's equality. The church was AGAINST women's equality. So I quit going to church at age 17 and have not been to a Christian service to this day.

However, in my late thirties I started going to a Unitarian Universalist church. That's closer to how I am. :smile:

My other problem with the kind of Christianity I grew up with, besides that they're sexist and homophobic, is the whole idea of hell. I just can't deal with the idea of a "loving" god sentencing people to eternal torture! That is the farthest thing from love that I can think of. I can see wanting to punish people for wrong doing, but torture? And NEVER ENDING??! No!

 

[Drifterwood]

I blame god for christians and vice versa.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

there are no practicing christians that I am aware of.

Being a christian would mean following the teachings of Christ.

Christ twice denied being the son of God, and stated clearly he was the son of man.

Paul of Tarsus was the one who said he was the son AND incarnation of God.

Ergo... from Catholics on down all so-called christians are actually Paulines, because they follow the teachings of Paul and utterly deny the statements from Jesus denying his own divinity.


As to myself...
raised catholic- spent a long time researching other faiths, read the sutras, the Gita, the Koran.... all the biggies...
Came to the conclusion that ALL religions are merely methods of bribing or threatening people to toe a certain line, and pay up for some priesthood.
All religions promise a reward or punishment they never have to make good on...
and MOST people don't really believe... but TRY to believe, or claim to believe in the lottery-like hope that it MIGHT be true.

( if you really believed that heaven was life eternal without suffering... you would happily run to your death)

Further... most religions are engines of intolerance and exclusion. The most disgustingly amoral works of late have been the "left behind" series... which does not delve into the joy of the rapture... but rather, sadistically illustrates in gruesome detail all the horrbile things that will befall everyone who doesn't belong to the evangelist club.

Its not uplifting... its a revenge fantasy.

In my life I have found that, the truer the believer, the more reprehensible their private conduct.... the more willing they are to lie, cheat, and intimidate to further the aims of their religion...

I prefer philosophical constructs like Taoism, Epicureanism, Skepticism, or Stoicism.

God is a child's fantasy of getting ice cream as a reward while everyone you don't like gets spanked.

OR its a delusion about being far more important than any of us really are...

Either way, I'll have none of it.

I believe that our consciousnesses are more linked to a realm of thought than we ordinarily realize... I believe that life can be deep, meaningful, and spiritual, without resorting to delusional beliefs that are entirely self obsessed... ( like eternal life)
I believe that we, right here and right now, are responsible for creating the paradise we are capable of envisioning...
And that compassion and right action are the path to enlightenment and peace of mind.

But fairy tales?
No thanks..
Pony up proof of God, proof of miracles, or proof that religion does more good than harm...unites more than it divides... and I will consider the argument...

 

[Xcuze]

I agree with Ayesho. Religion is ultimately all about controlling peoples minds. Its brainwashing by any other name. Simple as that.

 

[deleted213967]

And that's why, essentially, Blaise Pascal chose Christianity v. non-belief. Read up on Pascal's Wager, if you don't know of it. He was one of the greatest philosophers of all time, Christain or not.

Pascal's Wager works great for agnostics too!

Do try it at home! What have you gotta lose? :wink:

P.S.: What kind of elaborate torture would have awaited poor Pascal should he have chosen "heresy", I wonder... huh huh!

 

[Phil Ayesho]

Pascal's wager is logically flawed, because it is predicated upon the idea that you can FOOL God.
If insincere claims of belief are all it takes to mollify God... then God can not be any form of agent of truth.

Which means that God must, by definition, be a lie.

 

[deleted213967]

Pascal's wager is logically flawed, because it is predicated upon the idea that you can FOOL God.
If insincere claims of belief are all it takes to mollify God... then God can not be any form of agent of truth.

Which means that God must, by definition, be a lie.

It is not God he was trying to mollify...

 

[Calboner]

I consider myself an agnostic, though a more proper term would be "adoxic." "Agnostic" means "without knowledge," and while I am certainly without knowledge of the existence of God, there are plenty of people who believe in God without claiming to have knowledge of his existence or nature. "Adoxic," if there were such a term, would mean "without belief," which describes me more accurately. Actually, we already have a Latin-derived term with the same etymological meaning, namely "infidel," but that term is used to signify anyone not sharing the faith of the person using the term. So "agnostic" it has to be.

Anyway, I am a fence-sitter on questions of the existence of God, for the following reasons. On the one hand, I find it difficult to understand religious belief as anything other than a form of superstition and wishful thinking, and all rationales for religious belief that I have examined have seemed to me in the end to depend essentially on obscurantism, bullying, or plain old mumbo-jumbo. On the other hand, it seems to me possible that this is due to my own intellectual limitations rather than to the inherent nature of religious belief. It may be, for all that I know, that there is a form of religious belief that is neither superstition nor wishful thinking, and for which there is a probable rationale, only I have not yet encountered it, or have not understood it properly.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

It is not God he was trying to mollify...

You can't mollify an imaginary construct, no... but the heart of the wager is that the reason to believe is not belief, not faith, but the vanishingly small chance that it might be true... wherein, if true, you win... if not true , what have you lost?
This is purest possible self interest... and not reflective of a sincere belief in anything.

If God does punish people for not believing... he would not be fooled by someone who only claimed belief on the off chance it might benefit him.

A vengeful God ( and any God that would create a hell must be pretty vengeful ) would be even more pissed off at Pascal than any ordniary non-believer, because Pascal is lying to get in.

 

[Xcuze]

But the bible's a good story, Ill give it that. A few pop-up pics would have been nice though.

 

[bigmoochie]

I agree with Ayesho. Religion is ultimately all about controlling peoples minds. Its brainwashing by any other name. Simple as that.

Really? So would you say that there can be no rational scientific thougth for those with faith because they would only be able to spout the Church-authorzed ideology?

If so . . . & I would never mean to put words in your mouth . . . I wonder what you'd think of Fr Georges Henri Joseph Éduard Lemaître & the "hypothesis of the primeval atom."

Phil, Christ never denied being being divine. And the term "son of man" is universally understood to be a Hebrew messianic term from the OT. Read up on your Daniel, please.

Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul after his conversion, was not the first to attest to the divinity of Jesus Christ. John made that very clear in the first lines of his Gospel. There is 2000 years of thought that backs this up & way too many Biblical sources to go into here.

As for religion doing more harm than good . . . Let's say the numbers of those who were burned at the stake, or whatever other form of death, during the Spanish Inquisition were true (& forget that it was the Spanish gov't who put the vast majority of those people to death, not the Catholic Church, per the historical record). Let's add in all the lives lost in at the hands of Christians during the Crusades. Hell, let's even add in all the dead in the wars of Constantine after the Edict of Milan. And, please, feel free to add any other number you believe were wrongly killed at the hand of Christians.

That number of dead would pale in comparison to the number of people who were murdered at the hands of Godless, athiestic totalitarian regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mussoloini, Ceauşescu, etc in the 20th Century alone. But, yeah, Christianity sure has caused quite a lot of harm to the world.

Anyway, thanks for the *discussion*, fellas. "Billy Bible" over & out.

 

[Principessa]

I was raised a Catholic, am now an atheist, but if I was to choose a religion I would definitely be a Muslim!

:yikes: Muslim?!? Really? Do you think maybe your view of Catholicism and Protestantism is skewed from growing up in a country where those two groups have been fighting for over 100 years? What is it about Islam that appeals to you exactly?

 

[Xcuze]

There is no rational scientific thought in religion. Thats the problem!