How do you atheists stay so calm, not believing in a God?

Wow, such a shallow narrow view of the world. Stay in your bubble and don't allow knowledge in.

 

Even if that person is hated and unloved, and he is totally incapable of making anything of his life. God still loves him and has plans for that individual.
An atheist's view is that, if a particular person is a vegetable and has no loved ones to care for him, then his life isn't worth living.

Well, if I do have absolute control over my mind, then I'd wonder about how things exist and why. I also would wonder about logical loop holes such as:

1) If objective moral values do not exist, then God does not exist.
2) Evil exists
3) Therefore God exists.

If you do not believe in God, then the statement above is a logic loophole.

What force? If nothing existed before the Big Bang, then how can there be a force? Even if you apply metaphysics to the equation, you still have to figure out what came before it. If nothing came before it, then nothing can happen.

So that means humans are no more than biochemical robotic mistakes accidentally created by nature.

 

no, that is YOUR view. we are the ones saying those lives are very worthwhile, to the people living them. YOU can't see value in a life which doesn't belong to you. YOU are flawed, or morally bankrupt, or suffering the ill effects of a mercenary culture.

 

1) what does any of that have to do with old middle eastern bronze age myths about sky deities?

2) humans are not 'no more' than biochemical happenstance. we are the marvellous result of biochemical happenstance and natural selection. that it WAS happenstance, for the most part, is what makes it so (*)(*)(*)(*)ing marvellous. I'm sorry for you that that isn't enough to entertain your drama hungry and juvenile mind. I'm sorry for you that that doesn't satisfy your need to feel superior and special.

 

So if a person is loved their life has meaning? I think we've been over this. If a person who is a vegetable has no loved ones who pays the bills to keep them on live support? Do good Christians step in to foot the bill because god loves them?

No.

The expansion of the thing that wasn't nothing. Obviously. The Big Bang is the rapid expansion of a very hot and dense object. Which existed before it expanded. It cannot expand before it exists. At no point in science does anyone say there was nothing. Religion tries this, but it's not nothing. It's god. Who happens to be in the nothing, or outside of the nothing. In the other nothing? There's a question for you. If god created the universe where was it when it happened? Can't say care much for the answer but I'm curious what you come up with.

Now you're personifying nature too? Mistakes and accidents require intention. This is why the theist can't understand. Things happen because they are caused. There is no great reason, things just happen. There's an explanation for it that we don't always have. But we look for it. Until we know for sure we don't think chalking it up to magic is good enough.

I swear I must have covered all of this previously.

 

Amen. In the face of the spectacular accident of our existence and our lonely place on this spec of dust we can either lament and despair in the vanity of our short lives (as captured in Ecclesiastes) or marvel and rejoice in how precious it all is and extend comfort to those here with us who are troubled. Theists who say that atheists can find no value in life would prefer a pile of dirt to diamond on account of the diamond being too rare to be valuable.

 

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the need for gross drama (and by gross I mean emphatic and overblown) is a sorry old addiction, and tends to render the victim incapable of joy in simple existence. nothing is ever good enough, nothing ever satiates. see an incredible mountain? boring, unless it has a magical pixie hiding inside it, who may or may not burst forth at any moment and wreak havoc. marvel at the complexity and humour that is we humans? can't ... not unless they come with onboard magic specialness and potential immortality.

 

I'd say they would. To be perfectly honest with you, I've never seen an atheist sponsored hospital, shelter or charity.

** scratches head **

Uhh... No what?

What kind of question is that? It doesn't make sense. If something exists outside of third dimensional space, then the "where" is irrelevant.

As for the Big Bang, you're saying something was always there, because the Big Bang couldn't have happened out of nothing. So, now you have to explain how something can exist forever while ignoring the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. I'd love to hear your explanation on that.

Mistakes and accidents don't require intention. If you were walking down a sidewalk and you tripped and fell. Did you "intentionally" fall? Of course not. It was an accident - an action performed unintentionally. Therefore, there was no intention present on falling. Mistakes and accidents do not require intention.

Your problem is you think theists can't understand science. However, that's simply not true. In fact, theists are much more flexible to science than atheists are. The reason why we're more flexible is because we'd never say something cannot exist because we can't see it.

 

Invisible pink unicorns exist, and so do all the gods ever proposed. And ghosts, and invisible aliens, and fairies at the bottom of your garden. Since you acknowledge their existence, or at least potential existence, perhaps you'd care to redirect huge sums of research money to their investigation? After all, you're super flexible about all those gods etc existing.

 

Atheist sponsored?

That's like saying 'people who don't like cats' sponsored. We're not a (*)(*)(*)(*)ing club.

Besides, any organisation of atheists (sufficient to build) prior to pretty much now was crushed by religionists. You never allowed us to reach our potential. Since those days are now over, and religion is fading fast, you will be forced to acknowledge that such benevolent institutions will carry on without your gods.

 

In the US, Only if we have enough moral fortitude to bear True Witness the Most Excellent job our Founding Fathers did at the Convention with our federal Constitution and supreme law of the land. Simply because, our Founding Fathers gave us the all the secular and temporal morals we need to accomplish our mission Statement and Objective:

 

And even now we find our charitable efforts rebuked by theists -- our donations are returned, our Adopt a Highway signs are vandalized, we are told to quit "shoving [our] beliefs in everyone's face" -- whenever we publicly identify our good works as being the works of atheists. It is a good thing, for many reasons, that we typically look down on using charity as a conversion tool and are perfectly happy giving to and founding secular charities, which welcome both atheists and theists, instead.

 

Isn't any charity that does not explicitly claim to be religious....pretty much an Atheist organization?

Doctors without borders, habitat for humanity, Bill Gates....there seem to be far more unaffiliated do gooders than religious.

 

It is why some on the left prefer to defer to the Most Excellent job our Founding Fathers did at the convention with our supreme law of the land.

 

Most people do fear death though. You are an anomaly. Fear is the driving factor for most people who seek security in religion. But I am not so sure you do not fear death. Only because I served with a lad who said the same thing in viet nam. But as he lay dying, he was scared to die, scared to lose the only reality he had ever known, scared to lose his wife back home, his infant child, all of his worldly possessions. So he died in fear, and there was noting I could say to help him deal with that fear in the few minutes he had left. So I just old him, this wasn't the end, and that he would be will all of the people he loved one day. From the look he gave me, and perhaps it was the morphine, but it didn't seem to help at all.

So, it is easy, so easy to claim you do not fear death, but when the hard reality is upon you, and you are young, that bravado is no longer there. The reality check is devastating on most people. 99.99999999999999999999999 percent of humans fear death, even the religious, for everyone wants to be with Jesus, but they sure as hell do not want to die to be with him.

Generally speaking if you do not fear death, you are either insane, or you have been enlightened, from a change in consciousness. But many people make that claim to not fear it, but that is because they are not close to it. If you own an ego, if you live a life driven by an ego, indeed you do fear death, whether you will ever admit it or not. For this is the human condition. And egos demand continuance, and security, but are also subject to self deception.

So, are you insane, or enlightened?

 

And I bet your god gets a pass on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. How covenient.

 

Perhaps you'd like to explain your need to affirm such a postulate.

So it was Einstein's death that gave his life meaning, whereas his discoveries were of no consequence. Have I got that about right?

Prove it.

 

I started answering this. But then got to the part where for the second time I'd have to go back and quote myself and decided against it. I'm not repeating myself anymore. I literally covered this before you even got there. You remember when you asked what sort of "evidence" was presented to me? I covered nearly everything you said since in my response. I even specifically mentioned people using poor understanding of the laws of thermodynamics. The rest of this is semantics, again, and ignorance. This is far too predicable, too boring, and I don't honestly know why I continue. So I won't.

 

I consider myself to be agnostic, not arrogant enough to claim I know whether there is or is not a God. When I tell people I'm agnostic, some will automatically think that means I'm an atheist or that I'm "confused." However, this is the definition of "agnostic" that I feel is correct.

"a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience."

 

Well, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics only effects transient beings. In other words, objects that came into being by a cause.

 

What's arrogant about claiming to know there's a God?

 

Because no one could possibly know that.

 

Not surprisingly, you evidently don't see the arrogance in this claim.

 

It's certainly not arrogant to claim that no person could KNOW whether or not a god exists. The arrogance is when someone claims in absolute terms that a god exists or does not exist. How is claiming you don't know being arrogant? You don't make any sense.

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Oh let me guess, you are a bible thumper?

 

Then why isn't it arrogant to claim in absolute terms, as you have, that one cannot know a God exists?

How is claiming to know being arrogant? Hmmm?

You cultivate a sense of superiority over others by putting them in boxes.

That's not a guess.