Atheism takes courage

[Czernobog]

It takes no courage to be an atheist. What atheism does require, however, is that one suspend logical, rationale thought. That is all.

You will have to explain this. I know for a fact that there have been several hundreds gods put forth throughout humanity. I'm quite sure you don't believe in all of them. Are you saying that the ones you don't believe in are because of your lack of rationale and logic?

Assume that there is a Devil. Wouldn't the Devil persecute the one true religion more than anything else? Now, consider that Christians are the most persecuted group on the planet.

The problem is your very first word. You want us to assume facts not in evidence.

 

[RWNJ]

It takes no courage to be an atheist. What atheism does require, however, is that one suspend logical, rationale thought. That is all.

You will have to explain this. I know for a fact that there have been several hundreds gods put forth throughout humanity. I'm quite sure you don't believe in all of them. Are you saying that the ones you don't believe in are because of your lack of rationale and logic?

Assume that there is a Devil.

Why would I.

Wouldn't the Devil persecute the one true religion more than anything else?

Now you are asking a hypothetical question about some thing that doesn't exist.

Now, consider that Christians are the most persecuted group on the planet.

No where even close. Try and actually to challenge my post.

There is nothing to challenge.

 

[Czernobog]

Just a bit of insight on what it means to be an atheist. It's actually easier to allow one's self to believe in God than it is to be an atheist. Being an atheist means there is no Devil to blame, no afterlife to reunite with loved ones, no personal cosmic bodyguard, only one life to live, personal responsibility for one's thoughts, actions, and prosperity, or lack thereof, lack of acceptance from a religion infused society, and no easy explanation for our existence.

Atheism is not for the weak.

Yeah ... I bet atheism takes a lot of faith.

.

Please actually understand what the word faith means. It doesn't work in your sentence.

I believe the second definition fits perfectly.
FAITH
noun
1.
confidence or trust in a person or thing:
faith in another's ability.
2.
belief that is not based on proof:
He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3.
belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion:
the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4.
belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.:
to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5.
a system of religious belief:
the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6.
the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.:
Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7.
the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.:
He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8.
Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

You just provided evidence in support of me. Faith means belief in something that cannot be proven. Atheism is an absence of belief. Get it together.

Atheists BELIEVE that there is no God.

That's a lie, and you know it it. I have said as much repeatedly. "God does not exist" is not a an affirmation of belief. It is a simple statement of position, based on a lack of evidence. Provide observable, verifiable evidence to demonstrate the statement to be false, and I will change my position.

I'm starting to think you are a liar, and a troll. After all, this is only about the 18th time during this discussion that I have made this point.

 

[K9Buck]

The problem is your very first word. You want us to assume facts not in evidence.

The only "evidence" that you will accept is that which can be placed on a slide and put under a microscope in a lab. So, anyone who presents you with anything is engaged in a fruitless endeavor.

 

[K9Buck]

"God does not exist" is not a an affirmation of belief. It is a simple statement of position, based on a lack of evidence. Provide observable, verifiable evidence to demonstrate the statement to be false, and I will change my position.

That is a statement, a statement that you have no way of proving one way or the other. It would be akin to saying "There is no life elsewhere in the universe".

 

[Tuatara]

Just a bit of insight on what it means to be an atheist. It's actually easier to allow one's self to believe in God than it is to be an atheist. Being an atheist means there is no Devil to blame, no afterlife to reunite with loved ones, no personal cosmic bodyguard, only one life to live, personal responsibility for one's thoughts, actions, and prosperity, or lack thereof, lack of acceptance from a religion infused society, and no easy explanation for our existence.

Atheism is not for the weak.

Yeah ... I bet atheism takes a lot of faith.

.

Please actually understand what the word faith means. It doesn't work in your sentence.

I believe the second definition fits perfectly.
FAITH
noun
1.
confidence or trust in a person or thing:
faith in another's ability.
2.
belief that is not based on proof:
He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3.
belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion:
the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4.
belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.:
to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5.
a system of religious belief:
the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6.
the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.:
Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7.
the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.:
He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8.
Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

You just provided evidence in support of me. Faith means belief in something that cannot be proven. Atheism is an absence of belief. Get it together.

Atheists BELIEVE that there is no God.

Anytime you have to put in a negative you are just rewording the original statement. You believe in no Nordic Gods. You believe there are no rainbow coloured Unicorns. You believe there are no dinosaurs living. See what I just did. I made you have several beliefs.

 

[Eaglewings]

Well let me rephrase that.. Some of the worlds strongest Christians were skeptics..yet because they were open when searching they were shown, in amazing ways..There are also people who are so convinced with the idea that God is a fairy-tail they wouldn't see it if it hit them in the face...

I'm not a skeptic. I am a rational atheist. There's a difference. I'm not looking for some personal experience, I a looking for empirical evidence.

Now with that said..

We do have Empirical Evidence that Jesus indeed died on the cross...and by the blood stains on the cloth, he died exactly how the Bible said He died..
'Finding Jesus': Shroud of Turin Q&A - CNN

Really? The Shroud of Turin?!?! Okay, let's look at all of the ways that the Shroud of Turin is evidence of nothing:

First of all, it is a three-to-one herringbone twill composed of flax fibrils. Except, no examples of complex herringbone weave are known from the time of Jesus when, in any case, burial cloths tended to be of plain weave. In addition, Jewish burial practice utilized — and the Gospel of John specifically describes for Jesus — multiple burial wrappings wrapped tightly around the body with a separate cloth over the face:

"When cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself…"​

Sooo, we are to believe that a piece of cloth for which there is no evidence of its type existing, and which was contrary to both tradition of the time, and description in the Bible, itself, does not comport with burial, was the burial shroud of Jesus, and, magically, captured his image? Really?!?! Additionally, none of the gospels make any mention of any miraculous burial cloth after Jesus' resurrection. Curious that the most holy relic in all of Christendom doesn't even get so much as a word in its holy texts, isn't it? There are also claims of "bloodstains" on the cloth, but Hebrew law dictated cleansing of the corpse before wrapping and bodies don't bleed after death. Chemist Walter McCrone identified the substance as a "combination of red ochre and vermilion tempera paint. By the way, from your own article:

But the scientists doing the carbon dating were not amateurs, and the samples were tested in three separate labs. Moreover, the carbon date cohered with other evidence that the shroud was a medieval forgery, like the fact that there is no evidence of its existence until the 14th century.​

In other words,your vaunted "Shroud of Turin" is evidence of nothing, other than the desperation of Medieval Christian fanatics to come up with some actual empirical evidence to support their mythology. I can't believe that not only did you have the audacity to call the shroud of Turin empirical evidence of the existence of jesus, but you linked to a source that calls your evidence bullshit!

We know then by the same chapters that Jesus did indeed produce miracles that his personal disciples recorded. Even they wanted to see evidence..

We haven't even established the existence of Jesus, yet, so let's not get into his mythical "miracles", shall we?

We Scientifically know that John the Baptist did indeed live, and have found his remains..So there is another 2000 year old story that made it into the bible..

Scientists find new evidence supporting John the Baptist bones theory

Boy, you sure do like gilding the lilly, don't you. From your article:

While these findings do not offer conclusive evidence, they also don't refute the theory first proffered by the Bulgarian archaeologists who found the remains while excavating under an ancient church on the island.

In other words, the bones may belong to John the Baptist, or they may belong to Akhmed the Dung merchant. So far your "empirical evidence" is astonishingly underwhelming.

Here is an updated Science Journal on the topic.. as they continue with this study
They found the parts tested were cut from the area hurt by fire damage in the 13th and repaired.

From this newest study..

This result cannot be impressed on the TS by using ancient dye pigments, as they have bigger sizes and tend to aggregate, and it is highly unlikely that the eventual ancient artist would have painted a fake by using the hematic serum of someone after a heavy polytrauma.

PolyTrauma means: died by intense trauma and torture at the time of death

The markings on the shroud shows a difference in the markings of blood compared to other crucifixions. They stabbed Jesus in the side to kill him faster.. These non-man made stains show the bloods stains to line up to this.


Atomic resolution studies detect new biologic evidences on the Turin Shroud

.

Really? You're still stuck on the burial cloth that was created in the 12th century as proof of something that happened in the 1st century? Please give it up. You're embarrassing yourself. No archaeologist of any respect gives any credence to the fake Shroud of Turin. There is no blood on the Shroud of Turn. It was tested. It wasn't blood.

Really? Listen, there are so many scientist's of all faiths still exploring this..This is not a closed case .. except in your mind.

There is not Empirical Evidence that it is a Fake..dude


This is an excellent Scientific A++ link to read on the shroud . Which can explain it much better than me..

"If the shroud had been produced between 1260 and 1390 AD, as indicated by the radiocarbon analyses, lignin should be easy to detect. A linen produced in 1260 AD would have retained about 37% of its vanillin in 1978... The Holland cloth, and all other medieval linens gave the test [i.e. tested positive] for vanillin wherever lignin could be observed on growth nodes. The disappearance of all traces of vanillin from the lignin in the shroud indicates a much older age than the radiocarbon laboratories reported."

Shroud of Turin - evidence it is authentic; the real shroud of Jesus Christ




.

Oh, for ****'s sakes! Now you are denying science (carbon dating) in order to claim that the Shroud of Turin is a scientific discovery. Give it up, Slick. The Shroud of Turin is a hoax. If it makes you feel better believing in it, that's up to you. But, please quit trying to convince me that it is something that it clearly isn't.

Don't piss in a cup, and try to tell me it's Iced Tea!

You are refuting science ButtHead .. Why didn't you even read the ******* link...


"If the shroud had been produced between 1260 and 1390 AD, as indicated by the radiocarbon analyses, lignin should be easy to detect. A linen produced in 1260 AD would have retained about 37% of its vanillin in 1978... The Holland cloth, and all other medieval linens gave the test [i.e. tested positive] for vanillin wherever lignin could be observed on growth nodes. The disappearance of all traces of vanillin from the lignin in the shroud indicates a much older age than the radiocarbon laboratories reported."

"The fire of 1532 could not have greatly affected the vanillin content of lignin in all parts of the shroud equally. The thermal conductivity of linen is very low... therefore, the unscorched parts of the folded cloth could not have become very hot." "The cloth's center would not have heated at all in the time available. The rapid change in color from black to white at the margins of the scorches illustrates this fact." "Different amounts of vanillin would have been lost in different areas. No samples from any location on the shroud gave the vanillin test [i.e. tested positive]." "The lignin on shroud samples and on samples from the Dead Sea scrolls does not give the test [i.e. tests negative]."

"Because the shroud and other very old linens do not give the vanillin test [i.e. test negative], the cloth must be quite old." "A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggests that the shroud is between 1300- and 3000-years old. Even allowing for errors in the measurements and assumptions about storage conditions, the cloth is unlikely to be as young as 840 years."

"A gum/dye/mordant [(for affixing dye)] coating is easy to observe on... radiocarbon [sample] yarns. No other part of the shroud shows such a coating." "The radiocarbon sample had been dyed. Dyeing was probably done intentionally on pristine replacement material to match the color of the older, sepia-colored cloth." "The dye found on the radiocarbon sample was not used in Europe before about 1291 AD and was not common until more than 100 years later." "Specifically, the color and distribution of the coating implies that repairs were made at an unknown time with foreign linen dyed to match the older original material." "The consequence of this conclusion is that the radiocarbon sample was not representative of the original cloth."

"The combined evidence from chemical kinetics, analytical chemistry, cotton content, and pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry proves that the material from the radiocarbon area of the shroud is significantly different from that of the main cloth. The radiocarbon sample was thus not part of the original cloth and is invalid for determining the age of the shroud."

"A significant amount of charred cellulose was removed during a restoration of the shroud in 2002." "A new radiocarbon analysis should be done on the charred material retained from the 2002 restoration."

 

[Czernobog]

Just a bit of insight on what it means to be an atheist. It's actually easier to allow one's self to believe in God than it is to be an atheist. Being an atheist means there is no Devil to blame, no afterlife to reunite with loved ones, no personal cosmic bodyguard, only one life to live, personal responsibility for one's thoughts, actions, and prosperity, or lack thereof, lack of acceptance from a religion infused society, and no easy explanation for our existence.

Atheism is not for the weak.

Yeah ... I bet atheism takes a lot of faith.

.

Please actually understand what the word faith means. It doesn't work in your sentence.

I believe the second definition fits perfectly.
FAITH
noun
1.
confidence or trust in a person or thing:
faith in another's ability.
2.
belief that is not based on proof:
He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3.
belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion:
the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4.
belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.:
to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5.
a system of religious belief:
the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6.
the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.:
Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7.
the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.:
He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8.
Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

You just provided evidence in support of me. Faith means belief in something that cannot be proven. Atheism is an absence of belief. Get it together.

Atheists are always playing semantics with the definition of atheism. A true atheist believes there is no creator, otherwise known as "God". Cue the k*nt act.

See, this is why having a rational discussion with theists is impossible:

Me: The sky is blue.
Theist: Nope. Everyone like you thinks the sky is yellow.
Me: I just told you the sky is Blue.
Theist: But, you really believe the sky is yellow.

No matter what I say, you have already decided that you know what I "really" think. Not only is that irrational, but it is condescending and offensive.

 

[K9Buck]

See, this is why having a rational discussion with theists is impossible:

What do you call someone who says there is no "God"?

 

[Tuatara]

Just a bit of insight on what it means to be an atheist. It's actually easier to allow one's self to believe in God than it is to be an atheist. Being an atheist means there is no Devil to blame, no afterlife to reunite with loved ones, no personal cosmic bodyguard, only one life to live, personal responsibility for one's thoughts, actions, and prosperity, or lack thereof, lack of acceptance from a religion infused society, and no easy explanation for our existence.

Atheism is not for the weak.

Yeah ... I bet atheism takes a lot of faith.

.

Please actually understand what the word faith means. It doesn't work in your sentence.

I believe the second definition fits perfectly.
FAITH
noun
1.
confidence or trust in a person or thing:
faith in another's ability.
2.
belief that is not based on proof:
He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3.
belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion:
the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4.
belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.:
to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5.
a system of religious belief:
the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6.
the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.:
Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7.
the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.:
He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8.
Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

You just provided evidence in support of me. Faith means belief in something that cannot be proven. Atheism is an absence of belief. Get it together.

Atheists are always playing semantics with the definition of atheism. A true atheist believes there is no creator, otherwise known as "God". Cue the k*nt act.

How so. Please point out where I am wrong. Atheism is a lack of belief.

 

[Czernobog]

The problem is your very first word. You want us to assume facts not in evidence.

The only "evidence" that you will accept is that which can be placed on a slide and put under a microscope in a lab. So, anyone who presents you with anything is engaged in a fruitless endeavor.

Well, a bit of an oversimplification, but yeah. that is rather how a thing is determined to exist: it can be observed, measured, and verified. That's kinda the point. God is as real as unicorns, Santa Claus, and ghosts. They are all creatures of fantasy. Now, as soon as someone presents me with objective evidence to the contrary, I will change my position.

It never ceases to amaze me how theists act like expecting rational evidence is, somehow, the irrational position.

 

[K9Buck]

What do you folks call someone who says there is no "God"? The rest of the world calls them atheist. What do you call them?

 

[Tuatara]

"God does not exist" is not a an affirmation of belief. It is a simple statement of position, based on a lack of evidence. Provide observable, verifiable evidence to demonstrate the statement to be false, and I will change my position.

That is a statement, a statement that you have no way of proving one way or the other. It would be akin to saying "There is no life elsewhere in the universe".

Exactly and if you were to state that life exists elsewhere we would also demand evidence for that also.

 

[K9Buck]

It never ceases to amaze me how theists act like expecting rational evidence is, somehow, the irrational position.

Like I said. Engaging you on the subject is a waste of time. You are not interested in a reasonable discussion. You're not interested in "evidence", you'll only accept God appearing to you and performing a miracle as "proof". But that's ok with me. Carry on.

 

[K9Buck]

...if you were to state that life exists elsewhere we would also demand evidence for that also.

Who has said otherwise?

 

[Tuatara]

What do you folks call someone who says there is no "God"? The rest of the world calls them atheist. What do you call them?

You need to go back and carefully reread the posts. Who is arguing against that? Although most atheists claim a non belief in God or gods as opposed to a definite there is no God.

 

[Tuatara]

It never ceases to amaze me how theists act like expecting rational evidence is, somehow, the irrational position.

Like I said. Engaging you on the subject is a waste of time. You are not interested in a reasonable discussion. You're not interested in "evidence", you'll only accept God appearing to you and performing a miracle as "proof". But that's ok with me. Carry on.

Yes that would be proof. What do you consider to be proof?

 

[Tuatara]

...if you were to state that life exists elsewhere we would also demand evidence for that also.

Who has said otherwise?

You were the one pointing it out. I think you have a problem with comprehension.

 

[K9Buck]

...most atheists claim a non belief in God or gods as opposed to a definite there is no God.

Many atheists often engage in derision of believers and then claim to be "open minded" and pretend to be agnostic. And I thought the OP said it was "courageous" to claim to be an atheist. LOL. All I see are atheists playing semantics with the word "atheist" and acting like a cowardly, sniveling little k*nt.

 

[K9Buck]

I think you have a problem with comprehension.

No, you got your **** hurt and now you're going full k*nt mode.