Thread: Question for Atheists.

Its the Trinity, which is ( The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). God, which created the universe and earth..sent his son ( Jesus) to earth to be as a human on earth to spread the word and interact on a human level. He had 12 Apostles that he appointed to help him spread the word.. and make followers (Disciples) to further spread the word. Then Jesus died on the cross to die for our sins, and he went back to God. The Holy Spirit is what you recieve once you become a christian ( then you are also a disciple ), and are appointed to spread the word. Like I said, God is everywhere at all times. He interacts in peoples lives even if you dont necessarily realize it. Hes a spirit, not a physical being.

Originally Posted by * Diamond Eyes *

God has given everyone free will, which is where the choice comes in. It is everyone's own choice to follow him.

Can you please define free will. How does it work?

Do thoughts just pop out of nothing, just like a cosmic accident? If they do, than why are we "free willed people" the way we are? Why think anything specifically at all? It's obvious to anybody who can add 2+2=1 that thoughts didn't just pop out of nowhere, but were determined. An obvious example is among the millions who are indoctrinated into christianity, islam, hinduism, given different values, morals etc. We are determined, proven by simple science innumerable times by now.

Therefore... If thoughts arrise from the brain and are both part of the immensly complex causal chain of events presumably starting (as far as we can see) with the big bang. That makes them as determined and as "free" as the planets circling around stars. I am curious to hear where in this causal link does free will jump in? How you intend to supply any evidence for it? And at the end of the day, how does it fit with your idea of sin, if everything lies upon the possibly illusory concept of free will.

God has given everyone free will, which is where the choice comes in. It is everyone's own choice to follow him.

So what, he performs a few miracles, then does nothing for decades and decades, expecting everyone in the future to follow along with it because way in the past a bunch of gullible people saw Jesus perform a few party tricks?

Well, I'm convinced.

Yea, free will is a pretty tough subject to touch on.. If God is all knowing, then he must know what choices people will make? It implies that not only has God always known what choices individuals will make tomorrow, but has actually determined those choices. That is, by virtue of his foreknowledge he knows what will influence individual choices, and by virtue of his omnipotence he controls those factors. By observing that God exists outside of time, and therefore, his knowledge of the future is exactly the same as his knowledge of the past and present. Just as his knowledge of the past does not interfere with man's free will, neither does his knowledge of the future. One analogy is that of time travel.. The time traveller, having returned from the future, knows in advance what x will do, but while he knows what x will do, that knowledge does not cause x to do so: x had free will, even while the time traveller had foreknowledge; However, one objection raised against this analogy is that if x truly has free will, he may choose to act otherwise when the event in question comes to pass, and therefore the time traveller (or God) merely has knowledge of a possible event: even having seen the event, there is no way to know with certainty what x will do; Further, the presence of the time traveller, may have had some chaotic effect on x's circumstances and choice, absent when the event comes to pass in the present..
I think that there are different paths predestined...our actions will chose which path we go down..So in a sense we do still have free will.

Originally Posted by * Diamond Eyes *

Yea, free will is a pretty tough subject to touch on.. If God is all knowing, then he must know what choices people will make? It implies that not only has God always known what choices individuals will make tomorrow, but has actually determined those choices. That is, by virtue of his foreknowledge he knows what will influence individual choices, and by virtue of his omnipotence he controls those factors....

This is all fine. What you described is one important thing and something I would agree upon. But what is even more important is my question on what exactly free will is, how do I know I have it, how can I prove it, and if it exists how does it interact with the universe.

The whole point of free will as most people see it, I think, is that there is a source... that's it. There is a source that directs. This source, apparently acts externally and is not influenced. If you disagree with this you throw out the purpose and only meaningful component of the "free-willed soul", reducing us to beings determined by the universe, with only the illusion of free will. (This really is very complicated, for the most part because people never define it, so it floats around jumping one way or another, but whatever.)

So what is free will. Everybody takes it for granted and it's obvious, but I really don't get it. Especially with the knowledge we have gained with science on the matter of the human mind. The idea of free will is basic responsibility - A choice was made, someone made it. For responsibility to have any value at all, it must be connected to our experience of ourselves - mainly our perception of, well doing something. In a causal system responsibility has no meaning, because things are determined. Is it really the asteroids fault for killing the dinosaurs or is it the gravity...something else perhaps? Things go from ...->A->B->C etc. Free will can only exist with the human notion of percieved self awarness and actualization. Because the human consciousness "feels" the making of the choice "out of nothing".

The point I'm trying to make is that thoughts don't come out of nothing and we know this. Therefore the idea of hell & heaven is all about sending determined souls with determined choices to determined places. It's all so senseles and IMO stupid to be taken seriously. I mean... I'm perfectly aware that this could just be a metaphysical way of throwing the shiny apples in the shiny box and the rotten ones in the shitty box as dictated by some "metaversal Walmart legislation" (God). If this is the case, then I guess it's just the infinitely worse situation of squishing some bugs thinking "too bad for the ant, life sucks". Ooooh yes... the major religious views don't even give us - the rotten apples - a chance to die and be used as fertilizer. No, no, they are being punished! How dare they be rotten! The bastards must suffer for ever! And to that I say...I didn't ask to be born. And if it all really is about cause and effect (as opposed to me just poping out of nowhere and be responible for the spontaneous incarnation I had no part in) then I deserve no punishment as much as the "saved ones" deserve no grace.


My thoughts are basically that we live in this universe where things interact and seem to have a strong causal relationship (let's leave quantum mechanics interpretations out of this for now, so it's pretty much absolute). What would a "smaller" causal system inside the grand causal system - the cosmos - look like? My claim is that it would manifest as a consciousness with the illusion of free will. The reason we're even debating this complicated topic now is because our thought experiments on time travel or precognition and it's implications just do not compute. Mashing up determinism directly together with free will just doesn't make sense for a consciousness that percieves itself seperately from everything else, especially as the source of decisions and thus free will. But we are a part of the universe. :peace:

I hope I got some of my thoughts across well enough.

Just for fun:

God is not all-powerful as he cannot build a wall he cannot jump

Originally Posted by Mario92

Just for fun:

God is not all-powerful as he cannot build a wall he cannot jump

I like busting out the 'a rock so big he can't lift it' one myself. Personally I find that line of argument to be philosophically unfulfilling, since it's just relating to a non-corporeal, body-less Christian God.

But I guess the core of the point is that the term god is so loaded, in some cases overloaded because once you give an entity omniscience and omnipotence you quickly find situations where the immovable object meets the unstoppable force, you divide by zero and Things Go Badly (tm).

Nice thread. Hopefully i'm not going too off topic, but it all reminded me of a writer like no other: Bertrand Russell,

" If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."

I never became an athiest.


I was born one.


Fun fact: so is every human being in existence.

Originally Posted by Sekhmet

I never became an athiest.


I was born one.


Fun fact: so is every human being in existence.

True dat, true dat.

Originally Posted by Sekhmet

I was born one.

So you're saying atheism is for babies.

Originally Posted by Mark75

So you're saying atheism is for babies.

All humans are born athiest.

No one knows god or becomes religious until it is taught to them. Even after being exposed to religiion, babies and small children will only copycat behaviour from their caretakers in order to please them. Their minds have no concept of god.

Originally Posted by Mark75

So you're saying atheism is for babies.

Babies like YOU!
CRY SUM MOAR.

Originally Posted by Sekhmet

No one knows god or becomes religious until it is taught to them.

Just like no one knows to not stick a screwdriver into an electrical outlet until it's taught to them. You're not really making much of a case for atheism, here.

Originally Posted by Moose

Babies like YOU!
CRY SUM MOAR.

Q _ Q

Originally Posted by Mark75

Just like no one knows to not stick a screwdriver into an electrical outlet until it's taught to them. You're not really making much of a case for atheism, here.

Sticking a screwdriver into an electrical socket has tangible results which can be measured and observed in reality - whereas believing in an invisible sky fairy does not.

Originally Posted by Sekhmet

Sticking a screwdriver into an electrical socket has tangible results which can be measured and observed in reality - whereas believing in an invisible sky fairy does not.

I demand an empirical demonstration!

Because Mark is so dissatisfied with the answer I quoted, I'll post something new. Isn't that nice of me?

I didn't grow up learning about religion or spirituality. I knew a little bit about native beliefs, but that was it. I didn't grow up with atheism either, though.
Without realizing it, I learned biology due to my love for wildlife and then the other sciences when they were taught in school. Slowly, I began to learn about other beliefs and because the more scientific side of the argument made sense to me, atheism seemed the way to go, but I never put much thought into religion until a few years ago when I discovered the internets. Then my ideas about the world became more concrete and I discovered non-theistic philosophies like Buddhism and LaVeyan Satanism.

That's the gist of it.

I became an Atheist around age 17. Being heavily indoctrinated slowed down the process. As soon as I realized that life goes on, minus divine intervention, I considered myself an Atheist. Although I wrestled with the thought, I couldn't fight the fact that religion is nonsense.

Atheist beliefs:

First there was a bunch of nothing and a cosmic egg, and then there was the big bang. Nothing caused it, and nothing happened before it, because there was no time. But nothing started time. It just... started itself. Because things are known to just start themselves, right? Ya, it happens all the time. Anyway, it just happened, and purely by chance, everything worked out so you're sitting there reading this. But it's all chance. Really.

Originally Posted by LRT

Atheist beliefs:

First there was a bunch of nothing and a cosmic egg, and then there was the big bang. Nothing caused it, and nothing happened before it, because there was no time. But nothing started time. It just... started itself. Because things are known to just start themselves, right? Ya, it happens all the time. Anyway, it just happened, and purely by chance, everything worked out so you're sitting there reading this. But it's all chance. Really.

Are you implying that creationism is more logical?

Originally Posted by LRT

Atheist beliefs:

First there was a bunch of nothing and a cosmic egg, and then there was the big bang. Nothing caused it, and nothing happened before it, because there was no time. But nothing started time. It just... started itself. Because things are known to just start themselves, right? Ya, it happens all the time. Anyway, it just happened, and purely by chance, everything worked out so you're sitting there reading this. But it's all chance. Really.

Are you implying that you expect reality to behave in ways which are obvious and make good sense to you without requiring much thought?

Originally Posted by LRT

Atheist beliefs:

First there was a bunch of nothing and a cosmic egg, and then there was the big bang. Nothing caused it, and nothing happened before it, because there was no time. But nothing started time. It just... started itself. Because things are known to just start themselves, right? Ya, it happens all the time. Anyway, it just happened, and purely by chance, everything worked out so you're sitting there reading this. But it's all chance. Really.

Ah, typical...mate, you really ought to look into things a bit more before flying off like that.

First off, by definition, an atheist is one who simply does not believe in the existence of a god or gods. That's it. Really. And you can't seriously tell me that some badass sky fairy is any better than "just chance." I should point out that "just chance" is only one of an infinitely large number of possibilities, and it would be arrogant to claim that you know exactly what happened and how it happened. In truth, we don't know, and it is unlikely that any shall know within our lifetime, or any lifetime for many years to come, if ever. For all we know, the universe could have been created by creatures similar to humans that were playing around with a particle accelerator and destroyed themselves in the process. "Just chance" isn't as implausible as it may seem at first glance. Literally anything could have created the universe, or, it could have spontaneously popped into existence for reasons we cannot comprehend. Claiming that intelligent design must be the truth or far more plausible than any other theory is arrogance and close-mindedness at its pinnacle. You know no more of creation than I do, I can assure you of that.

And an invisible god who judges us (apparently) and created this whole universe in one week is more logical? We have scientific explanation which can be observed physically, unlike God...

Originally Posted by LRT

Atheist beliefs:

First there was a bunch of nothing and a cosmic egg, and then there was the big bang. Nothing caused it, and nothing happened before it, because there was no time. But nothing started time. It just... started itself. Because things are known to just start themselves, right? Ya, it happens all the time. Anyway, it just happened, and purely by chance, everything worked out so you're sitting there reading this. But it's all chance. Really.

Please show me citations of this "scientific theory" of yours and a scientifically enclined atheist who actually believes what you just wrote... But you probably won't, because all you people do is make a strawman and run away from truth. Ah, ignorance is bliss, I bet you think you're pretty smart and witty.