Topic: The problem with atheism. - page 22. (Read 38498 times)

And many Christians have suffered much, are poor, and live with great difficulties.  This life is not fair.  So the question is more about Eternity and if there is more than just this short life we have here on earth or not?  For those that feel this is all there is, then I guess the goal for them is to pursue the greatest life possible now.  My concern, believing in God, is that it is so short sided and there will come a day of great regret.

The story that comes to mind is this one:


Luke 16:19-31

New International Version (NIV)


The Rich Man and Lazarus

19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

I do not "obey" Jesus and I could care less about God. Yet I live a charmed life filled with love, happiness, wealth, and peace of mind.  Just saying. 

There are other verses that say the same thing for those who "do not know God" if the word "deny" is an issue.

2 Thessalonians 1:8-9  He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.

I just think it is quite risky to think that one can claim ignorance as an excuse.  Do you really think that will work?

Prove God's existence?  That's easy. Science offers any theory a seat at the table. Theories are then reviewed and tested. Theories that are not testable and cannot be demonstrated are not considered theories at all. These are musings, guesses, or baseless ideas.

This has always been where science and religion depart. Religion depends on "belief". If nothing supports your assertion but you believe it anyway then you are just being superstitious. Science does not deal in superstition. It deals with provable facts.

For example, someone may believe they can read minds; after all, many people do. Now take them into a lab under controlled conditions and they can't do it. In fact, no one has ever done it under controlled conditions. That is why we know it can't be done. Still, the superstitious believer will have to construct elaborate reasons why the experiment failed. "The cosmic energy of the lab was interfering", or some such nonsense.

This is seen constantly in religion. Which is why believers invented Intelligent design. Because it is in no way a science you can say anything you want and draw a line back to the "designer", who must exist. Why does he/she/it exist? Because there must be a designer or the whole house of cards comes down.

I think everything is too perfectly created to just assume it suddenly happened out of nowhere. I believe there is a higher power and how we live our lives has an effect after we die. I can't go along with the stupid idea of vanishing for ever.

As Atheist I don't refuse to believe in God, I simply chose my version of truth that he is a fairy tale. I chose not to believe in a story of a all mighty being with infinite knowledge that is committing mass genocide, killing kids and babies. An all mighty being that impregnated a virgin by himself and late she gave birth to himself. Talking snake, woman created from a rib and so on. Reward for living life according to religious rules doesn't apply to atheists, since I had sex without being married, I eat what am not supposed to and so on...
So yes, God doesn't exist, there is no heaven or hell...

Atheists don't deny god. To deny god, one must first acknowledge him. Atheists don't even go that far. They just ignore him completely, as if he doesn't exist. And if they die and go to heaven, they'll be like, "Oh, hey, sup. Guess you're real after all. OK." And not, "Ahh! You're real! I deny you!"

Now you've changed the nature of your equation.   You are using two well defined labels that have certain properties and equating them to each other here.

In the previous example you said god = absolute truth.   Previously you have ascribed ominiscient powers to God, but never proved that absolute truth has omniscient powers.

The problem I had is that you responded to me as if my conception of god is the same as the typical Christian concept of god.  It's not.  So your entire response was almost totally irrelevant. I was simply commenting upon the plausibility of this widely held belief about the Christian god.  I said to assume he exists "for fuck's sake" because I wasn't trying to hammer home a convincing argument outside if the plausibility of the claim.

The problem you have with premise 1 is sounding more like stubbornness now.  If you believe absolute truth exists then you should having no qualms about what it's called as long as we each know that we're talking about the same thing.  There is absolutely no good reason why I can't call absolute truth 'god' or 'x' or whatever else.  It's the same thing as calling an apple "la manzana" in Spanish.  It means the same thing as "apple" and they are interchangeable.  I'm just using the word 'god' as an arbitrary alternative to 'absolute truth.' Thus, the reason you should have a problem with premise 1 is just as I said, i.e. you must not believe absolute truth exists.

1) la manzana = apple
2) apple exists
Therefore, la manzana exists.

Would you refute premise 1 here?

Well, if god is just a constant then it can't have any other properties that you ascribe to it.  It is a label only.  Like saying x = absolute truth.  You can't then ex post facto ascribe a bunch of properties to x and assume the equation is still true.  

Still waiting for empirical proof of God.

Read over it twice before submitting and once after.

Read it again. 

Yall can not be jesus, that is fine.  I however will be jesus when I fly in a few years from now.  I have had visions of it.  I know someone who has experienced levitation spontaneously.

If he could achieve that, I could achieve that, anyone could.  You don't have to but it is possible.  When you are completely in the present, anything is possible.

The question becomes, if you had that chance, would you prefer to the bounds of a normal human life living normal human deaths?  Or would you prefer to be as boundless and powerful as the universe itself?

God is absolute truth.  It is everything.

In exodus, God confronts Moses by appearing as a burning bush. He tells moses to rescue the Israelites from egypt, where they are currently enslaved. Moses asks God what his name is, and God says his name is "I am." That is open to much interpretation, yes, but as he is actually HAVING a CONVERSATION with someone, and he is making decisions, he is SENTIENT. This whole abstract "absolute truth" BS cannot fit.

If you think he is also jesus, or that jesus isn't the son of christ, then you hold Jewish beliefs.

Why are we assuming for fuck's sake that God exists? Isn't that what we are debating right now? I'm not just going to assume he exists because you tell me to.

Actually, no, my problem with premise one is NOT because I have a problem with premise 2. It's because God cannot equal absolute truth. It doesn't work. Absolute truth is not a sentient thing.

Yes, and your logic is flawed. The truth of your argument you can see above "Assuming for fuck's sake that god exists and he is omnipotent." You believe this because you think that god is absolute truth, but god cannot be absolute truth because absolute truth is not sentient and god is.

This is just some abstract bullshit that is part of a completely different argument. I don't give a fuck whether absolute truth exists, because it has nothing to do with the existence of god.

The Christian God is interpreted in so many different ways -- and I haven't done nearly enough research on Christian history or the Bible to comment too much otherwise -- that it's hard to debate with you about it and know that we're talking about the same thing.  That being said, I agree that there are some ridiculous beliefs about God that are just plain unsound know matter how you try to spin it.

I think of the Christian God as omnipotent. omnipresent, and omniscient, that he was also Jesus, and that he "am who am."  I think we can at least agree that this is at least a broad, but general, start to the Christian definition of God.

Assuming for fuck's sake that God exists and he is omnipotent.  Well, an omnipotent being would also be able to stratify himself such that he would be less than himself at the same time that he is himself.  To that extent of Jesus and his relationship with God as de facto (basically the crux of 'christ'ianity), plausible based on the commonly held beliefs about the Christian god.

Your problem with premise 1 is because you have problems with premise 2.  You can't empirically 'prove' anything because of the problem of induction.  You can only 'prove' within a certain margin of error, and if you find any academic article that asserts a conclusion without allowing a margin of error (e.g. The results indicate a positive correlation between x and y, p < .05), then they totally fucked the scientific method.

True logic exists according to what the rules of logic indicate true logic to be.  Logic is a closed system, and it's a self-reinforcing system.  When you try to break this system, you will find that it's impossible too because it will automatically lead yourself to a contradiction.

It's absolutely impossible to deny absolute truth.  To deny absolute truth is to say it is the absolute truth there is no absolute truth.  If you say truth is relative, you are saying it is the absolute truth that truth is relative.  If you say there is more than one absolute truth, then you are saying that it is the absolute truth that...well...you get it. 

Except that Christian God is not just absolute truth. He is not a concept. He is a sentient being. Sure, he is not a human. He is depicted to be everything that is good. But that still means that he makes decisions. Many of the things he does in the Bible (the flood for example, which he sends to earth because the angels are having sons with the daughters of man, therefore creating the nephilim, a behavior of which he does not approve) could be argued to not be the correct response to something. So, premise 1 is absolutely not true. Premise 2 on the other hand doesn't really make sense either but you can't empirically prove that there is no absolute truth either so I would be hypocritical if I said it didn't exist.

Logical proof for god is very easy to establish as, at least plausible.

Premise 1: God = absolute truth
Premise 2: Absolute truth exists
Therefore: God exists.

Premise 2 is a no-brainer given that any attempt to deny absolute truth only reaffirms its existence, so that only leaves Premise 1 as an issue, and it's not really a issue given that it's simply ascribing a different name to a constant.

There is plenty of empirical (physical) and mathematical (abstract) evidence for god, but you need to know philosophy which has the tools you need in order to make sense of the relationship between the mathematical and empirical, and this includes understanding the limitations of each discipline, and also the ways in which they compliment each other.

I think that what can be proven you cannot know, and what you can know cannot be proven.  This is because absolute knowledge is obtained through direct experience (not an experience 'of something,' but through experience, period) while 'proving' requires we reach indirectly to 'evidence' that is abstractly interpreted.

If I've felt the warmth of the sun on my face, I can't prove that to you no matter how many thermometers I find or no matter how many times I tell you I felt that warmth.  Ultimately, you need to trust that either I'm not lying or that thermometers are an objective measure of something subjective such as a warm feeling.  The experience of warmth is something that is known but cannot be proven.

As far as "Why does God reveal himself to the stoner," I can tell you that the Bible says, "Seek and you shall find," but note that it does not tell you what to seek.  It simply says to 'seek.'  While I denounced Christianity long ago (I was raised Catholic, denounced it and became a strict atheist, then eventually denounced atheism after I experienced it to be false), my experience resonates with several Bible passages, including this one.  Because of my experience in meditation I understand the power of "seeking" without having a predetermined object of search in mind.  If you observe purely and unbiased, such as in a meditative state where experience clearly diverges from the abstraction of it, absolute truth will reveal itself to you. 

Every photographer knows that to get an image with the most clarity, he must be totally still.  If he's bouncing around or moving while trying to take a picture, the resulting image will be blurry.  You need to learn to be like a good photographer, to still your mind and to observe with single-pointed concentration.  If you do, everything will become much more clear to you.