Ask an atheist

[mangxema]

@Mangxema- I think your post, if nothing else, creates an interesting discussion of what "God" is.

I thought so too. Sometimes I don't really know how to answer the religion question because it really depends on how you define it. However, if you keep broadening the concept, there comes a point where religion loses all it's 'religiousness' and would become science, more or less. I'd be on board by that point, but by then it's kind of irrelevant.

Were the Greek deities "Gods?" While they were worshipped that way, I argue no. The Greek Gods were totally fallible, and more like advanced superheroes (Forgive the crude analogy) than deities.

I hate to get pedantic here, but there's definitely a difference here between Gods and gods. The Greek deities were totally lowercase gods. They were worshiped and were believed to control certain aspects of nature; that's pretty much the definition. Capital God takes on a whole different Christian-esque shade of meaning that really doesn't make much sense in the plural form. So no, they aren't Gods, but they couldn't possibly be, so it's kind of a silly question.

I will say that one thing about the Greek gods, though: They definitely feel more plausible to me. The only way biblical passages make any sense to me is if I imagine some Greek-like personality behind them.

Is "Bob" able to control (Whether he actually does or not doesn't matter) the state of humans after death[...?]

This part I don't think matters much. Why only after death? I presume for some sort of afterlife, but an afterlife and a deity are not in anyway related.

...and did he create the Universe out of nothing (Doesn't mean he couldn't have used the Big Bang or whatever, but he had to create the first spark from nothing.)

The 'out of nothing' bit also seems pretty arbitrary. If I met a being and he created, say, a planet, from the cosmic equivalent of a ball of clay (stockpile of raw atoms and such), it would still be pretty damn impressive.

I think I draw the line at this: ... If you can't answer yes to either of those two, I'd not consider him a God, but rather, an advanced alien.

Okay, fair enough, but that's why I'm not religious.

 

[Seon]

I have one question to all local atheist: Were you raised a an atheist, or have you "deconverted" at some point along the way?

I began to deconvert myself at around the age of 10~12 as I came to study all these little books of world history and biology, mixed in with healthy dosage of crisis of faith as well as all those logical debates with my inner-self on the nature and the faith of human soul.

After I read about evolution and also learned about the existence of many more religions, and wondered how some of those people were somehow more deserving of Heaven than any other Christians that I have met so far. I wondered at the logic in which the bible threw them all down to hell. From that, I decided that the Bible was, , not a word of God, but written by fallible man attempting to capture whatever God they had in their mind. No God that I worship is evil enough to condemn human souls, basically his children, to life of eternal suffering in hell simply for not believing in him. No God that I worship would be picky enough to create this entire world in 7 days and THEN plant evidence to suggest that it wasn't just to trip people up so that he can condemn them for all eternity in hell. No, for the idea of a god as a perfect being, something that was worth my worship, to be true, than I must reject the Bible as my source of knowledge.

The Bible stories that my sunday school teacher taught me were nice, but they all read to my ears as now mere interesting tidbits of history, or perhaps even fairy tales.

And because a pastor is merely another man who just happened to know more about the bible than I did, yet still adhered to the flaws that were beginning to be obvious to my mind, I also rejected him as my source of knowledge. And then for the next few years I pondered God's goodness to myself.

First on the list were the destination of the souls of the people of other religion. It didn't make sense to me that they would all be condemned to eternity to hell. Therefore, the only way that my belief in the one Perfect God can become a reality was if all the humankind on earth were judged by the same basic principles... not in any of the passages of the bible nor in any text nor human's fallible mind... and all the different religions were mere attempts to capture the same Perfect God as the one that I envisioned.

After all, it wasn't "Free Will" if all God did was to stretch a long corridor filled with trap doors, gave me several books on how to cross said corridors, all of which contained contradictory information from each other, and told me to cross it. That isn't giving us a choice. That was plain sadism.

And God could not have sadism. He was a perfect being, and thus without that.

And with that settled, I moved onto my second wonder. Existence of Hell.

Which one is a greater virtue? Justice or Mercy? At which point did justice become vengeance, and at which point did mercy become too naive? Was it more important to have the criminals of this world punished forever in hell? Or is it more important to show mercy to these criminals and give them a chance to repent? A truly good god would always give his children another chance. For Patience is a virtue, and so God must have infinite patience.

What was the sense in throwing them for all eternity inside hell anyways? Wasn't it enough after maybe a couple of years? No God of mine would throw his children forever inside a realm of suffering from which there were no escape. It just did not click inside my head.

Eventually, all these debates that I had with myself broke down my already chaotic faith bit by bit. There wasn't a specific moment when I suddenly declared myself to be an Atheist. It was a long and slow process in which I so desperately wished to hold on to the faith, only to find myself not caring enough about it to notice that I lose it at the end.

 

[emzie]

So, on the left side we have a faith and on the right, not a faith. Got it.

Glad you got it.

 

[MikeL49NYVI]

Ajidica:

Sorry it took so long, I want to respond to your thoughtful questions, the best I can.

[Ajidica;10473296]If we see things with a finite viewpoint, how are we to know that we are comprehending the totality of God's wishes? If God were to relay his wishes to us, would that not require he debase his perfect being to understand what we think?

We know these things because God, out of love, has made it possible to do so. This is one of the purposes of the Bible, and why it was written. It is all laid out in there, everything. And also just to make sure, God sent His Son, Jesus to make it personal.

You have hit on something here. God did exactly debase Himself for us, by sending Jesus to become a man, and die on the cross for us. He made the supreme sacrifice so we could get the redemption we need, and He wants us to have.

God did create Lucifer with free will. Is God not then responsible for the evils perpetrated by Lucifer as a result of God's gift?

Like I said before, you got me on this one. I don't think so, because of the nature of love, and because somehow the evil originated with Lucifer, and not with God. I just can't fully explain all of it

How are we to know that God's final attempt at having us back in communion with him is your take on Christianity, or Christianity in general?

I guess the best way is to examine the claims of all the religions that attempt to deal with this issue.
Christianity is unique in that it is the only one that has made the claim that God Himself paid the price of sin. Of all these religious prophets, leaders, and spokesmen, Jesus is the only one to claim divinity for himself.
Then you take the claims of the Bible, and add that in, and you will get a decent ammount of evidence. It is all in there.

But, in the final act, it still comes down to a personal act of faith, to agree to accept it. The Bible guarantees that if you are honest with yourself, and search for God with your whole heart, He will be there. Jesus in speaking of this said "Behold I stand at the door and knock, if any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him and he with Me."
Christians hold that since Jesus is God, then His promises must be kept by Him. If they are not kept, then Jesus is not God.

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

I have one question to all local atheist: Were you raised a an atheist, or have you "deconverted" at some point along the way?

My mother raised me and taught me about Christianity and the Bible. While she didn't force me to go to church, she did attempt to teach me those values. And for a time, I accepted those values.

As I got older, I realized my parents weren't perfect and that not everything they taught me was correct. I challenged everything I had been taught, and while some moral lessons stuck, the mythology and some baseless "moral" viewpoints were tossed out.

My grandmother tried especially hard to make sure I was a good Christian. I appreciate what she was trying to do, and it pains me that I cannot explain to her why I cannot agree with her, because it would break her heart. She's advancing in years, and I don't want to burden her with something she would feel would be devastating. She is probably going to think I'm not going to end up in heaven with her or something.

I care for her very much, but I cannot believe in what she believes in. I know she won't change, and I can't either.

Then I assume you admit to the possibility that my God is real?

It's as possible as me finding a magic box containing a starman which will transform me into Invincible Pizzaguy, allowing me to single-handedly defeat all the terrorists in the world and personally smack Kim Jong Il across the face and declare that North Korea is free.

In other words, almost certainly not.

The problem with your god is that he makes the exact kind of mistakes that primitive barely-educated men in ancient times would make. And that is why I believe he was invented by those ancient men. It explains his attitudes on eating, grooming, genital-cutting, slavery, punishment, and warfare. It also explains his shifting attitudes over the centuries.

The whole bit about the Tower of Babel, and the firmament in the sky, and the just plain silly ways he went about doing things (two of every animal? He's god. He could just repopulate the new world by batting an eye. He doesn't need an elderly man to build an ark to hold a billion species. And what did the animals he flooded do to deserve his wrath?) just seem un-Godly.

Plus, a perfect benevolent merciful all-wise being and the nazi death camp of hell, is a contradiction too grave to ignore.

IMO, if God designed a punishment for man, it would be more enlightened than the kinds of ideas men come up with and wish upon each other.

"I hope you burn forever in agony!!!" is just the sort of thing weak-minded, hateful little men come up with to try to express their hatred of one another. That's something I feel God would be incapable of, because being good, all-powerful, and all-wise, means you wouldn't ever have to resort to such barbarism to get your point across.

It's something that is actually more barbaric than human beings could come up with, because we don't know how to torment someone forever. The worst thing we can do is torment you temporarily. And for that to be the punishment for simply not accepting one version of one faith that believes in one god, seems entirely like a scam to me. It's not godly at all.

If there were an omnipresent, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient being, every single thing that this being would ever come up with would be correct. He'd never change his mind about anything. Everything he would do would be perfectly just, and perfectly make sense.

You wouldn't be able to rationally question this guy. His logic would be flawless, his character would be spotless, and his wisdom would be unquestioned.

The god of the Bible commits too many errors to be god, therefore it is not real.


Edit: Again, I have been pre-empted by others who are faster on the keyboard.

 

[El_Machinae]

I think I draw the line at this: Is "Bob" able to control (Whether he actually does or not doesn't matter) the state of humans after death, and did he create the Universe out of nothing (Doesn't mean he couldn't have used the Big Bang or whatever, but he had to create the first spark from nothing.) If you can't answer yes to either of those two, I'd not consider him a God, but rather, an advanced alien.

Well, there's no reason to think that there's a state after death. However, the ability to create a Universe (via a bubble universe) and to create it with initial conditions conducive to life and to create it with an end-purpose is something humans might have someday.

However, even if we have a purpose for the life-bearing universe that we create, we won't hold any moral ownership of it.

This is why I'm agnostic on whether our universe was created intentionally. Ehn. Could have been.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Plus, a perfect benevolent merciful all-wise being and the nazi death camp of hell, is a contradiction too grave to ignore.

IMO, if God designed a punishment for man, it would be more enlightened than the kinds of ideas men come up with and wish upon each other.

I agree. I believe fire was simply a metaphor because I believe that that was the best way to explain it that man can understand. I don't think the actual punishment is fire.

 

[Leoreth]

If hell exists, imo the best punishment is nothing. I.e. literal emptiness. I imagine after spending half of eternity in the void, you'd wish for fire and brimstone.

(Well, at least now I have time to read all my books *glasses break* Nooooo! )

 

[GhostWriter16]

If hell exists, imo the best punishment is nothing. I.e. literal emptiness. I imagine after spending half of eternity in the void, you'd wish for fire and brimstone.

Sadly, there is no such thing as "Half of Eternity" but even still, I don't know why you'd wish for fire and brimstone.

That said, I believe Hell is the absense of God, and so its a lack of a posititve, rather than a forced negative, as a punishment.

Than again, total absence of God is a horrifying concept. Even on Earth you benefit from his existence.

 

[Leoreth]

Sadly, there is no such thing as "Half of Eternity"

Sure there is. It's eternity.

(the statement above wasn't entirely serious).

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

I agree. I believe fire was simply a metaphor because I believe that that was the best way to explain it that man can understand. I don't think the actual punishment is fire.

Destruction, eternal torment, or eternal abandonment. That is the implied or explicit punishment for simply being incredulous that God exists, let alone actual crimes.

Bear in mind, every being that this God creates functions exactly as God intended, because God makes no mistakes. So, God the creator, is a god who will design his creations with the capacity to fail, blames them for the failure, and then destroys, torments, or abandons them.

I hate to put this so bluntly, but really, it's not that different from someone who raises kittens and then throws them into a meat grinder for not meowing just right. It really is the sort of cruelty only man can come up with.

This is what I mean, I mean that God should be so obviously awe-inspiring that I shouldn't be able to rationally doubt him like this. When I have trouble distinguishing the all-loving all-knowing one from a sociopath with a shaky grasp of physics, geography, astronomy, and basic decency, that's when I must be running across a god that man designed.

Sometimes, a human being says something so profound that you just shut up and consider it, because it's that inspiring or wise.

God should be a billion times that. I've never heard anything attributed to God that ever made me just sit in quiet reverence, and made me ponder the wisdom of it.

That's why I say God could prove himself to me in the highly unscientific way of merely having a conversation with me of an hour's length. The answers that only God could provide would be really apparent that God is giving them to me.

I wouldn't have to see, hear, touch god, I could be satisfied with answers. Organized religion, I have approached for answers and none were forthcoming. On the really tough ones, the answer is "God works in mysterious ways", or "God has a plan", or "Seek answers through prayer" which are all different ways of saying "I don't know".

God knows. Therefore God could answer all my questions. I could be convinced of God simply because the answers God could give would be so completely genius and absolutely make sense, that they obviously come from a being more advanced than we little humans.

That's why I'm also convinced hell isn't necessary. Evil, I think, comes mostly from willful or accidental ignorance and/or chemical imbalances in the brain. God should be able to cure either of those before letting you into heaven. One snap, fixes your brain, and god could answer all your questions at once, because he's God. Would take him zero seconds to transform the Unabomber into a saint, who is no longer insane nor suffering from a wrong-headed ideology.

The fact that God couldn't come up with such a simple solution tells me that he's either not God or doesn't give a darn about his creations, and that doesn't smell like God either. It all just doesn't pass a sniff test.

Am I making any sense? You don't necessarily need to agree with me to see where I am coming from here, I think.

Even if you're a believer, you've had to have come across "answers" that don't sound like they're very god-inspired before, but you've accepted them for lack of a better answer. True or not true?

 

[GhostWriter16]

Am I making any sense? You don't necessarily need to agree with me to see where I am coming from here, I think.

I see where you are coming from, but I think your answer proves you deny free will. If you ever do get saved, you'd make a good Calvinist, and make my parents proud

But seriously, the thing is, I don't believe God created anyone to do evil. I believe God created people to do good, but people refuse and do evil, by their own choices. God does not make them do it, he lets them do it.

Note that this is not a catch all "I understand the ways of God and can say with confidence that I cannot fathom any logical argument that they are wrong." There are still a lot of things that seem wrong to me, but that I defer to and trust God on. But on this issue, it seems clear enough, there is NOTHING immoral about granting free will and then requiring people to use it wisely.

Even if you're a believer, you've had to have come across "answers" that don't sound like they're very god-inspired before, but you've accepted them for lack of a better answer. True or not true?

Yeah, on several things, but not on the core message of Christianity.

 

[timtofly]

Even if you're a believer, you've had to have come across "answers" that don't sound like they're very god-inspired before, but you've accepted them for lack of a better answer. True or not true?

Could it be that some are pre-disposed to not accepting the answer? (election)
Could it be that some just do not accept the answer? (rejection)
Could it be that some are unable to accept the answer? (no knowledge/comprehension)

 

[flashgordon]

Judges "1:19 And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."

I'm building up my blog again(I had one flashgordon's "Ascent of Man" blog!; but, I took it down for lack of interest. I started this new one because I needed to put some thoughts somewhere). I can't link it here on this messageboard apparently. But, if you want to google "Jacob Bronowski "Scientific Humanism" you can find much more than the quote above(I'm trying to keep the biblical stuff in one post; the first post; the writeup i needed to start up a blog again for; the rest of the blog will be scientific and mathematical history)

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Yeah, those iron chariots are a pain in the ass. So much more difficult to overcome than a group of rebellious angels...wait, what?

 

[El_Machinae]

Ask an atheist:
How do you decide how much charity to give and where to give it? Do you think that charity giving is noble? Should morality which encourages it be developed? What're some of the things which prevent charity giving? Is it okay that it's 'easier' (emotionally) to give to charity close-to-home than far away? Do you think that if you were a believer in a religious faith, you'd give more to charity or 'be nicer'?

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

1. None right now. I'm a grad student with no money.

2. Yes.

3. I would hope that a sense of human solidarity wouldn't need encouragement. This is a reflection on the individual.

4. For me or for other people?

5. Whatever you want. Just make sure that the money goes to where it is needed.

6. No. I was more nihilistic and misanthropic as a Christian.

 

[GhostWriter16]

6. No. I was more nihilistic and misanthropic as a Christian.

This proves it is unlikely you were ever really Christian to begin with....

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

It proves nothing, Miss Cleo the Psychic.

I was nihilistic because I didn't see a point to life if there was an eternity in heaven. I was misanthropic because of my own solipsism which made me think that I had been chosen by god while others hadn't. I'm really tired of you being the arbiter of who is and isn't a Christian. Fine if you want to keep on playing that role, but don't ever accuse anyone else of arrogance.

 

[Ajidica]

Like I said before, you got me on this one. I don't think so, because of the nature of love, and because somehow the evil originated with Lucifer, and not with God. I just can't fully explain all of it.

If God is the source of everything, including love, how could Lucifer 'create' evil, which at its core is simply a variation of love?

I guess the best way is to examine the claims of all the religions that attempt to deal with this issue.
Christianity is unique in that it is the only one that has made the claim that God Himself paid the price of sin. Of all these religious prophets, leaders, and spokesmen, Jesus is the only one to claim divinity for himself.

Why does a sacrifice, as you put it, have to be given for us to regain communion with God? If we look at Milton's Paradise Lost, Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge so he could remain with Eve because he loved her. Adam willingly sacrificed his ability to remain in Eden for love. Given that Adam (and by extention, mankind) has sacrificed their own Eden why does any additional sacrifice need to occur? Could the message to regain communion with God simply be 'be an upstanding and moral person'?

Then you take the claims of the Bible, and add that in, and you will get a decent ammount of evidence. It is all in there.

But, in the final act, it still comes down to a personal act of faith, to agree to accept it. The Bible guarantees that if you are honest with yourself, and search for God with your whole heart, He will be there. Jesus in speaking of this said "Behold I stand at the door and knock, if any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him and he with Me."

I'm curious, does your personal act of faith need to be in accordance with Christian ideology?

Christians hold that since Jesus is God, then His promises must be kept by Him. If they are not kept, then Jesus is not God.

Why must we make a promise with Jesus rather then simply making a promise with God?
Furthermore, it is my understanding of Christian theological history that Jesus isn't God, especialy if we take the Nestorian or Arian viewpoint.