Thread: Question for Atheists.

I can't say I'm feeling many credibility vibes coming from that site...

Mario, you mind supplying the links?

By the way, 666blacksun is my best remaining site I've found, but it gets WAY out there, and is full of satanic rituals. There's actually pictures from when the guy who made the site hung himself from a tree by his legs with fishing hooks. Very graphic.

http://www.wingmakers.co.nz/Pyrokinesis.html

...my god, I just lost all credibility in the forums...

Originally Posted by Xedan

Mario, you mind supplying the links?

By the way, 666blacksun is my best remaining site I've found, but it gets WAY out there, and is full of satanic rituals. There's actually pictures from when the guy who made the site hung himself from a tree by his legs with fishing hooks. Very graphic.

He WHAT??!

Originally Posted by Mario92

http://www.wingmakers.co.nz/Pyrokinesis.html

...my god, I just lost all credibility in the forums...

You could've PMed it if you're that worried.

Edit: There goes my non-double posting streak. Oh well.

Oh, well. This thread has become pretty much senseless anyway.

...and I lost credibility more because I paraded around the fact that I'd be doing pyrokinetic experiments in my basement. Ayup, there it goes now. Bye, credibility. Ah, it was worth it!

Hehehe, let me know how those experiments go.

Sure, no problem. If I get results, first trip will be to a lab. Second trip will be straight home to start a blog.

Originally Posted by hypnocella

Some of those other beliefs help strengthen the concept of God. Angels for instance, lead directly to God.

Yes but that is not what you claimed

You claimed atheism prevents those beliefs.

Which just is not true.

fin.

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

Yes but that is not what you claimed

You claimed atheism prevents those beliefs.

Which just is not true.

fin.

Atheism doesn't even prevent belief in god, the lack of reasoned arguments does.

Originally Posted by Scatterbrain

Atheism doesn't even prevent belief in god, the lack of reasoned arguments does.

Well to be fair you can't be an atheist who believes in a God can you.

What I mean is you don't not believe in god because you are atheist; You are atheist because you don't believe in god.

Originally Posted by Scatterbrain

What I mean is you don't not believe in god because you are atheist; You are atheist because you don't believe in god.

yes indeed

Originally Posted by Scatterbrain

What I mean is you don't not believe in god because you are atheist; You are atheist because you don't believe in god.

Where as the same is not true for most religions.

They are not a certain religion because they believe in that god, they believe in that god because they are that religion

Long post, will spoiler it for scrolling purposes

Spoiler for Long post:

I was baptized as a "United" (whatever the hell that means). I've been to church maybe 3 times in my life (twice Christian, for Remembrance Day ceremonies; once Catholic, to accompany a friend). I have a very old and tiny copy of the bible that was given to my mother when she graduated from HS. I tried to read it, but found it incredibly boring (I was 10, mind you).

I never took theology, so bear with me on this... But my parents always gave us the freedom to discover religion for ourselves. When I asked my mother if there was a God, she said yes. I later found out that she only said that to make it easier. I was a bit young to have a lengthy discussion on why she didn't believe in God.

Around grade 6, we did a course on Japanese culture, and I learned a bit about Shintoism. I really liked it.

Around grade 9, I started communing with my sub-conscious. I wanted to figure my beliefs out, because at this point, I was agnostic. I found Western religion in general to be too conflicting. On one hand, people think God is an unforgiving dictator who is about to commit world-wide genocide before I'm 40. On the other hand, people say he's peaceful and gave us free will to figure out our own mistakes, but as long as we accept his love, we'll be A-OK.

Almost all religions seem to pay heed to one true deity above all, and they all have different names for it.

So, in mu communication with my subconscious, I came up with a set of rules that work for me.

That each religion, at its foundation, has a goal for people to live your life and to cause no harm to another human being.

That the ultimate goal is to find love and acceptance for all life on Earth.

That until we realize how to achieve this goal, we'll keep being reincarnated until we do.

That there is no Heaven or Hell. Hell is the continuous reincarnation linked with karma. I truly believe that if you do wrong to people in this life and cause harm, your next life will be worse off.

Heaven is simply the afterlife. It's not in the clouds, it's all around us. Some people call it the astral plane. I believe we are truly in Heaven when we learn what we are meant to, and we can choose whether to reincarnate or become a spirit guide for someone else.

I do not pray to a single deity, because a truly loving deity of the light would not command me to do so. A pure deity would not harbour such vain qualities. They don't need to command worship, because such a thought isn't even necessary. Rather, my "deity" is love. The purest light. All that is good. To love, accept and protect all of Earth's spirits in humans, animals, trees, water, etc.

I think what you've done is the perfect way to decide what religion you want to follow. I love the idea of mixing and matching religions, keeping the parts that make sense to you personally and leaving out the ones that don't.

Originally Posted by Hidden

I think what you've done is the perfect way to decide what religion you want to follow. I love the idea of mixing and matching religions, keeping the parts that make sense to you personally and leaving out the ones that don't.

I won't call this approach a mistake, as it can be an exploratory phase leading to firmer ground, but those who stick with a New Age hodgepodge beyond adolescence generally end up with something shallow and narcissistic that simply evaporates if life ever puts it to the test, yielding to either full-on conversion or nihilism.

The logical progression from understanding that all religions are human creations, but also all founded on truth, is to realize that any one of them will do, if followed with that truth in mind. In Buddhism, the major schools are called "yana"--vehicles, or vessels. Buddhist masters are generally not too concerned whether you choose their vehicle or another, but nearly all will tell you to choose one and stick with it. If you attempt to cross a stream with each of your hands and feet in a different vessel, it won't take more than a breeze or an itch to put you in the water.

Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don't wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Then why does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe. God exists whether or not men may choose to believe in Him. The reason why many people do not believe in God is not so much that it is intellectually impossible to believe in God, but because belief in God forces that thoughtful person to face the fact that he is accountable to such a God. Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God. A silly idea that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... someone who gives in to temptation after five minutes doesnt know what it would have been like an hour later. Thats why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.People occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. The atheist can appeal to nothing absolute, nothing objectively true for all people, it is just mere opinion enforced by might. The Christian appeals to a standard outside himself/herself in which truth and qualitative values can be made sense of.I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Diamond Eyes, the truth is that lots of atheists would love to believe in God. Personally, I would love to believe in a very good God, but the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God is not good. He is a genocidal egomaniac who condones eternal torture. I know atheists who want to believe in God so much that they would rather believe in that one than be atheists. We are atheists because the idea of God does not seem logical to us. That is a fact. Can you back up your extremely broad claim that all atheists want to be atheists just so we can be accountable to nobody? I have seen that mere assertion before, and it is never backed up. It is just what the Christian establishment preaches. Nothing more.

The reason people don't come across Hamlet and think monkeys typed it is that, based on all of our experiences, only humans write plays. Plus, we already learned that Shakespeare wrote it. Universes, on the other hand, are not something we know first hand are created by thinking beings. We have not seen proof of it.

If you think that the existence of something complex has to have been created deliberately by a thinking being, then to be consistent, you have to have the same view of God. God is supposed to be even more complex than the universe. Who created him? If you say nobody did, then you go against your own claim about creations of complex things. So, is the existence of something complex automatic proof of a conscious creator, or is it not?

Originally Posted by * Diamond Eyes *

Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don't wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Then why does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe. God exists whether or not men may choose to believe in Him. The reason why many people do not believe in God is not so much that it is intellectually impossible to believe in God, but because belief in God forces that thoughtful person to face the fact that he is accountable to such a God. Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God. A silly idea that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... someone who gives in to temptation after five minutes doesnt know what it would have been like an hour later. Thats why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.People occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. The atheist can appeal to nothing absolute, nothing objectively true for all people, it is just mere opinion enforced by might. The Christian appeals to a standard outside himself/herself in which truth and qualitative values can be made sense of.I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Thank you for proving your ignorance.

Originally Posted by Mario92

Thank you for proving your ignorance.

She does have a pretty avatar though...

Originally Posted by Hidden

She does have a pretty avatar though...

Yeah, but how are you gonna quote Nietszche in your sig and then say that christian morality is the way to go? You need to spend some more time staring into that abyss.

Originally Posted by stonedape

Yeah, but how are you gonna quote Nietszche in your sig and then say that christian morality is the way to go? You need to spend some more time staring into that abyss.

What?

We don't think hamlet was written by monkeys because Shakespeare is more likely and can be backed up. God is neither likely or capable of being backed up. In fact, we DON'T know Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. History is not fact any more than gravity. However it is just as likely that Shakespeare wrote it as it is that you'll fall if you jump off a bridge.

And if I came up to you and told you every grain of sand was built by tiny gnomes who were nice enough to give us beaches expecting only praise in return, you wouldn't believe me. However, if ten or a hundred people told you this while you were a child and while you were growing up, you would have no doubt they existed. That is god. Invisible sand gnomes.

The point I was trying to make above, if it wasn't obvious, is that you would never have known about the god of Christianity if you were to rely on only first hand accounts. You base your knowledge of him on a 2000+ year old book that keeps being reinterpreted throughout the years so as to be able to stay relevant. From the very beginning of the book we know it is wrong. That is why every time science proves something, a verse in the bible that got it wrong is made into a metaphor.

And it can be argued that we atheists are taking science at face value too. To an extent this is true. Even if we go all the way back to how a person conducted an experiment, we still are listening to what they say they did. But for the most part, we would come to the same conclusion if we were to do it the same way. But it would be redundant and futile for everyone to believe only what they have proven for themselves. That's why scientists expand on previous theories, or correct what is incorrect. Science is ever expanding, ever updated, and ever refuted. It is only through this process that we can be sure we know what is possible to know.