Faith is Born from Fear

[sealybobo]

Are you set in your ways or are you open minded and open to learning new things?

I would think that a theist would want to know all the facts before deciding if they believe in god or not. But that doesn't seem to be the case. It seems more like theists are usually brainwashed first into believing in god and you can't even talk to them about it without them getting angry or trying to scare you into believing what they believe by threatening us with hell.

Notice we don't say you'll burn in hell forever if you believe in god. We don't use the scare tactics. That's what theists do. They have to. How else do they get you to swallow the bs story they've sold you?

I would think a rational person wouldn't claim to know what other people think without actually asking them.

I have stated, more than once, right here in this thread, that there is no such thing as Hell, yet idiots keep throwing it in my face to prove their superiority to me. All they actually end up proving is that they cannot follow a train of thought. I suggest you stop arguing with the voices in your head, they are making you look really stupid.

So you have basically invented your own religion. You just took the parts you don't like out, like hell. Got it.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

That makes two of us. You know nothing about your beliefs, either.

I know everything about my beliefs, I just don't believe what you want me to believe so that you can pretend you are intelligent enough to argue with me.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

You just made the claim. You said you talk to a god.

No I didn't, I repeated your claim that the God I talk to does not exist, and asked you to prove it.

 

[Hollie]

The burden of proof is on the person or party asserting the claim; in this case, the theist.

Newsflash, I never made a claim, thus I have no burden of proof. You, on the other hand, have openly claimed that the God I talk to does not exist, so feel free to prove it.

That's nice that you're hearing voices. But doesn't that interfere with your time spent commanding the French forces at Waterloo?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

So you have basically invented your own religion. You just took the parts you don't like out, like hell. Got it.

Did I?

Can you show me where the Bible says that the Hell you keep talking about exists?

Didn't think so.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

That's nice that you're hearing voices. But doesn't that interfere with your time spent commanding the French forces at Waterloo?

Still upset that you can't fit me into your stupid box?

 

[Hollie]

That makes two of us. You know nothing about your beliefs, either.

I know everything about my beliefs, I just don't believe what you want me to believe so that you can pretend you are intelligent enough to argue with me.

It's not as though you're capable of composing a coherent argument.

What are the voices in your head telling you to do? Do you realize the voices in your head are the reincarnation of David Koresh?

 

[Hollie]

That's nice that you're hearing voices. But doesn't that interfere with your time spent commanding the French forces at Waterloo?

Still upset that you can't fit me into your stupid box?

Actually, you can't find a way out.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

It's not as though you're capable of composing a coherent argument.

What are the voices in your head telling you to do? Do you realize the voices in your head are the reincarnation of David Koresh?

It is not as if you would recognize one if it was spelled out for you.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Actually, you can't find a way out.

I don't need to.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

It has been said by many Christians that one of the primary reasons for someone being an atheist and saying that they don't believe is because they don't want to believe. They don't want to ask the hard question "What if I'm wrong?" because they can't accept the implications of that questioning. They claim that we as atheists take the easy way out but I argue that it is just the opposite. Christians downright refuse to humor any kind of questioning when it comes to their belief. They refuse to look inside themselves and ask "What if there is no God?" because they are terrified of the implications of that question. They claim we are afraid of hell but in fact it is they who are afraid of oblivion. Of nonexistence. Understandably so. The idea of ceasing to exist is unpleasant to say the least. That is why being an atheist is far from the easy way out.

As an atheist you look that unpleasant reality in the face, swallow your fear and accept it and live your life to its fullest. Being a Christian is a way of ignoring the fact that the world is an unpleasant and often unjust place where some people live their whole lives in despair before their flame of consciousness goes out forever. This world can be cruel and unfair but as atheists we accept that it's the only one we are ever going to get and that motivates us to fight our hardest to make it a better and brighter one. For our sake and for the sake of our children. We don't turn away from reality and turn a wishful eye to an afterlife that isn't going to happen.

Theism is also a leaned behavior, religion is no different than anything else created by man – language, social mores, cultural values – one is taught religion the same he is taught to speak and read a language, a process that starts very early in life.

 

[Hollie]

It's not as though you're capable of composing a coherent argument.

What are the voices in your head telling you to do? Do you realize the voices in your head are the reincarnation of David Koresh?

It is not as if you would recognize one if it was spelled out for you.

There are a number of physiological conditions that cause people like to hear voices. There are also psychoactive drugs which can help your condition.

 

[sealybobo]

So you have basically invented your own religion. You just took the parts you don't like out, like hell. Got it.

Did I?

Can you show me where the Bible says that the Hell you keep talking about exists?

Didn't think so.

I was watching

So you have basically invented your own religion. You just took the parts you don't like out, like hell. Got it.

Did I?

Can you show me where the Bible says that the Hell you keep talking about exists?

Didn't think so.

The term “hell” is found twenty-three times in the King James Version of the English Bible.

Gehenna
The final and eternal abode of those who die apart from God is Gehenna. The word is found twelve times in the Greek New Testament. In eleven of these instances, it is Jesus Christ himself who employs the term.

Tartarus
The apostle Peter wrote that:

“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment . . .” (2 Pet. 2:4).

Here, “hell” is from the Greek term tartarosas, a participle, the noun form of which isTartarus (so rendered in the footnote of the ASV). This is this word’s only occurrence in the New Testament.

Hades
The Greek hades is translated “hell” ten times in the KJV. Most recent versions transliterate the term, bringing it directly into English as Hades.

 

[Hollie]

It has been said by many Christians that one of the primary reasons for someone being an atheist and saying that they don't believe is because they don't want to believe. They don't want to ask the hard question "What if I'm wrong?" because they can't accept the implications of that questioning. They claim that we as atheists take the easy way out but I argue that it is just the opposite. Christians downright refuse to humor any kind of questioning when it comes to their belief. They refuse to look inside themselves and ask "What if there is no God?" because they are terrified of the implications of that question. They claim we are afraid of hell but in fact it is they who are afraid of oblivion. Of nonexistence. Understandably so. The idea of ceasing to exist is unpleasant to say the least. That is why being an atheist is far from the easy way out.

As an atheist you look that unpleasant reality in the face, swallow your fear and accept it and live your life to its fullest. Being a Christian is a way of ignoring the fact that the world is an unpleasant and often unjust place where some people live their whole lives in despair before their flame of consciousness goes out forever. This world can be cruel and unfair but as atheists we accept that it's the only one we are ever going to get and that motivates us to fight our hardest to make it a better and brighter one. For our sake and for the sake of our children. We don't turn away from reality and turn a wishful eye to an afterlife that isn't going to happen.

Theism is also a leaned behavior, religion is no different than anything else created by man – language, social mores, cultural values – one is taught religion the same he is taught to speak and read a language, a process that starts very early in life.

Agreed. The form of that conditioning (the religious indoctrination), is overwhelming a function of geographic location and parentage.

Ones religious belief is, with near certainty, a matter of where they were born.

 

[sealybobo]

It has been said by many Christians that one of the primary reasons for someone being an atheist and saying that they don't believe is because they don't want to believe. They don't want to ask the hard question "What if I'm wrong?" because they can't accept the implications of that questioning. They claim that we as atheists take the easy way out but I argue that it is just the opposite. Christians downright refuse to humor any kind of questioning when it comes to their belief. They refuse to look inside themselves and ask "What if there is no God?" because they are terrified of the implications of that question. They claim we are afraid of hell but in fact it is they who are afraid of oblivion. Of nonexistence. Understandably so. The idea of ceasing to exist is unpleasant to say the least. That is why being an atheist is far from the easy way out.

As an atheist you look that unpleasant reality in the face, swallow your fear and accept it and live your life to its fullest. Being a Christian is a way of ignoring the fact that the world is an unpleasant and often unjust place where some people live their whole lives in despair before their flame of consciousness goes out forever. This world can be cruel and unfair but as atheists we accept that it's the only one we are ever going to get and that motivates us to fight our hardest to make it a better and brighter one. For our sake and for the sake of our children. We don't turn away from reality and turn a wishful eye to an afterlife that isn't going to happen.

Theism is also a leaned behavior, religion is no different than anything else created by man – language, social mores, cultural values – one is taught religion the same he is taught to speak and read a language, a process that starts very early in life.

Agreed. The form of that conditioning (the religious indoctrination), is overwhelming a function of geographic location and parentage.

Ones religious belief is, with near certainty, a matter of where they were born.

Some theists will reply that they were not brainwashed as kids. Some of them found Jesus in their 20's when they were adults. I say that is still an age where young men and women are very gullible and easily convinced with fear.

Or they'll say they were raised by Christians and they decided to become Muslim.

How did Sammy Davis Jr. become a Jew?

Anyways, what do you say about the people who are born into one faith but find another religion? These people fascinate me. I can't imagine what they read in the Koran or what they heard about the Mormon faith that convinced them.

I guess I can see it. I once thought maybe the Jews had it right. And I like the Mormon schtick. God told Joseph Smith in 1800 that all the other religions were bogus and to start his own a new religion called Jesus Christ of Ladder Day Saints. Brilliant new angle! I too think the other religions are all bullshit. I just think so is the Mormon faith too.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

All religions have their genesis in fear.

I don't think that's true. Familar with some ancient Greek and Roman sects where fear is not what first comes to mind.

Gods are a human construct to deal with fear of the unknown.

Right.

The idea of God isn't at the base of human knowledge touching on the concerns of ontological origination. The inescapable fact of human cognition is a mere illusion. So tell me, in truth, what precisely are you denying first? The existence of God or the existence of the universally apparent, objectively self-subsistent construct?

Right.

Like every time you open your mouth to deny the existence of God you don't as a matter of necessity acknowledge the fact that the idea exists in and of itself, i.e., imposes itself on the human mind without the same willing that it do so.

Here's the real truth: atheism is the irrationalism of the unexamined mind, i.e., the stuff of an unexamined life with an attention span of a two-year-old. And all the silly statements I'm reading on this thread regarding the essence of that construct and those confounding the potentialities of the various revelations alleged to come from the God of nature follow from this very same kind of underdeveloped attention span.

 

[sealybobo]

All religions have their genesis in fear.

I don't think that's true. Familar with some ancient Greek and Roman sects where fear is not what first comes to mind.

Gods are a human construct to deal with fear of the unknown.

Right.

The idea of God isn't at the base of human knowledge touching on the concerns of ontological origination. The inescapable fact of human cognition is a mere illusion. So tell me, in truth, what precisely are you denying first? The existence of God or the existence of the universally apparent, objectively self-subsistent construct?

Right.

Like every time you open your mouth to deny the existence of God you don't as a matter of necessity acknowledge the fact that the idea exists in and of itself, i.e., imposes itself on the human mind without the same willing that it do so.

Here's the real truth: atheism is the irrationalism of the unexamined mind, i.e., the stuff of an unexamined life with an attention span of a two-year-old. And all the silly statements I'm reading on this thread regarding the essence of that construct and those confounding the potentialities of the various revelations alleged to come from the God of nature follow from this very same kind of underdeveloped attention span.

Like being gay, it takes a lot to come out of the closet and say you don't believe in god. Sorry, can't fake it. If we don't believe it doesn't make us bad people we just don't buy your stories. What religion are you? If you are a christian, do you believe the Muslim stories? How about the Mormon stories?

So you and I are both atheists. You just believe in one more god than I do.

 

[dblack]

I would challenge anyone demanding proof of a god's existence to provide similar proof of their own existence. Not the existence of their body, or even their brain, but proof that the thing they refer to when they say "I" actually exists.

 

[PostmodernProph]

Actually, that's the experience of so many of you thumpers. These charlatans you worship don't get rich and powerful from fleecing the non-believers, they get rich and powerful from fleecing the slack-jawed.

sorry, you must have be confused with someone who worships a tele-evangelist.....not surprising....you're confused about most things....

Sorry. Tele-evangelists are too numerous to count.

not really.....there are likely fewer than a hundred.....

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Atheism, like theism is just a collection of beliefs and opinions. If gods don't exist (or something we'd call a god) then you could never prove that without knowledge spanning the whole of the universe. If gods (or something we'd call a god) do exist, but we can't prove it, then maybe instead of being an either/or proposition it's simply what god(s) is/are is other than as conventionally thought of.

I don't believe in the classical religious ideas of gods, where a god is a being similar to us. Alive, discrete, sentient, etc. But the universe exists. And despite a decidely hostile to life nature in the universe, life exists nonetheless. Maybe instead of inventing ideas of god where the god is like us, we need to widen our frame of reference and consider the possibility than the whole of the universe is "God." Or better still, the whole universe is merely a single organism. And our limited perspective is akin to a single blood cell, if it could think, not being aware it was merely part of a single animal.

Right. And if you'll recall, you're spouting the very same gibberish that I annihilated on another thread. It's quite simple really. One need not get all tangled up in the web of your "Say what?”.

First you allege, albeit, unwittingly, that humans must necessarily have all knowledge—you know, sort of like an eternally self-subsistent, transcendently non-contingent and omniscient Mind, which the construct God unambiguously denotes, in spite of your convoluted prattle to the contrary—in order to access the axiomatic alternatives of ontological origination, which is all that objectively matters with regard to the base of knowledge. See post #336 in the above. The rest is a matter of revelation that would have to come from the God a nature Himself.

Proof is not the province of finite minds. Your point, such as it is, is moot.

Hence, that rash of nonsense is obviously false, unless you're going to contradictorily assert something else. Oh wait! You do that in the very next paragraph.


"I don't believe in the classical religious ideas of gods, where a god is a being similar to us. Alive, discrete, sentient, etc."

Oh?

First of all, pantheism is merely one of the thee axiomatically apparent potentialities, sort of: (1) God exists as an indivisibly transcendent Being self-subsistently independent of the material realm of being; (2) God doesn't exist as all of existence is material; and (3) god exists as the totality of everything that exists in the universe.

Precisely what the difference is between two and three for all practical purposes is rather mysterious, given the fact that the pantheistic god is not alive, personal, discrete or sentient in any sense, but in the sense that it is alive, personal, discrete and sentient in us, even if we be just parts of the whole.

Atheism is irrational as it flat out denies the existence of something whose potentiality atheism necessary acknowledges to be something whose existence cannot be rationally denied flat out.

Pantheism is an inherently contradictory notion that makes a distinction that makes no practically discernible difference.