-Let It Be Known What Atheism Truly Is-

What I never got is why morality has to be so hard, humans largely have empathy and if not tainted by dogmas (religious or not) will want to do good things since we are social animals and need each other. I don't need to think a lot that slavery is bad, killing other humans without some good reason is bad (a sociopath killing people might need to be killed) or stealing isn't a good thing to do. The Bible can make good people who would otherwise if brought up do the right things do bad things slavery in the US was largely supported by Bible believers, and fought by them, but if Jesus just said don't own slaves clearly maybe there would not have been slavery.

An Atheist would oppose it because owning a person is wrong, slavery is wrong. Is it that hard?

So when it comes to enjoying life and ones interests as long as no one else is harmed I have no issues doing so, humans in the modern era should relax.

 

Jesus came all the way from another solar system and ended up getting crucified by a bunch of thugs. He wasn't very smart was he?

 

jrr777, John Brady, prunepicker and most of the remainder of the Christian mafia on this forum are best dealt with in the third person.

 

He was sent by God to die in order to soak up all past sins of the human race and give us a clean slate.
But the needle on the "sinometer" dial has been climbing again ever since, and when it goes into the red zone we've had our chips..
"The time has come for judging the dead.. and for destroying those who destroy the earth" (Revelation 11:18 )

 

Seems like god would have used an easier way to soak up the sin of humanity.

Christians should be partying hard on easter, over the suffering and death of JC, and yet they held this against the jews for a couple thousand years. Should they not have been thankful to the jews? Afterall, JC had to die which means someone had to kill him. It was predestined. Inescapable. Gosh, what a weird theology this god has. Almost like man may have invented it.

 

JC had to die, so God looked around for thickos to do it. He couldn't have sent him to Britain or they'd have invited him to tea, and he couldn't have sent him to the Australians or they'd have taught him to surf, so the snooty Jewish priests fitted the bill nicely..

 

How about some justification for the list of "sins" in the first place? How about a reason to believe in your silly Semitic deity? Faith should not supplant reason and evidence when it comes to belief. I prefer to keep it real.

I've been through conservative Christianity... Been there, done that. Happy to have moved on. I didn't walk away because it would ease my conscience with respect to how I live, either. In fact, walking away from that nonsense hasn't really changed that at all. I don't drink more alcohol or have more sex or do drugs (never have done them). I quit Christianity because I finally accepted what I already knew, namely that it's a bunch of BS that people cling to out of superstitious paranoia and fear, and because many find comfort in that belief system, and because many face a lot of peer and family pressure, and because many are woefully ignorant of modern scientific knowledge that blows the bible away at its foundations.

 

1- When you say you "quit christianity", do you mean you quit going to church, or did you quit on Jesus too?
I've never been to church because organised religion is not my cup of tea, but that doesn't stop me liking JC.
I hope you haven't let organised religionists put you off him.
2- Jesus is not a "belief system", he's Jesus..
3- His miracles were a "superscience" that we know nothing about, and he said we could do it too if we had the knack, surely that must intrigue you?

 

I'm atheist so that I will not desire to own slaves, sell my daughters, stone homosexuals, rape virgins and genocide other ethnicities.

 

Apparently the atheists have lost at least one member:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...ckerberg-religion_us_58684845e4b0eb586489cb9e

Former Atheist Mark Zuckerberg Gets Religion
“I went through a period when I questioned things,” he posts on Facebook.
12/31/2016 08:58 pm ET
Mary Papenfuss
Trends reporter, The Huffington Post

MARIANA BAZO / REUTERS
It’s not clear, however, what religion he practices.
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has eschewed his atheist beliefs and now asserts that “religion is very important.”

Zuckerberg, whose Facebook profile once identified him as an atheist, revealed his change of heart on his social media network after he wished everyone on Dec. 25 a “Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah” from “Priscilla, Max, Beast and me,” referring to his wife, daughter and dog. When a commenter asked him, “Aren’t you an atheist?” he responded: “No. I was raised Jewish and then I went through a period where I questioned things, but now I believe religion is very important.”


He didn’t provide details about his faith. The title of his holiday greeting on Facebook was “celebrating Christmas.”

He and wife Priscilla Chan met with Pope Francis at the Vatican last summer and discussed how to bring communication technology to the world’s poor. Zuckerberg said at the time that he was impressed with the pope’s compassion.

“We told him how much we admire his message of mercy and tenderness, and how he’s found new ways to communicate with people of every faith around the world,” Zuckerberg posted. “It was a meeting we’ll never forget. You can feel his warmth and kindness, and how deeply he cares about helping people.”

Zuckerberg has also cultivated an interest in Buddhism, which his wife practices.

During a 2015 trip to China, Zuckerberg visited the Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an and “offered a prayer for peace and health for the world and for my family,” Zuckerberg posted at the time, including a photo of himself kneeling in front of the Buddhist landmark.

He added: “Priscilla is Buddhist and asked me to offer a prayer from her as well. Buddhism is an amazing religion and philosophy, and I have been learning more about it over time. I hope to continue understanding the faith more deeply.”

 

Jesus is fiction. That part I didn't realize until after I quit the faith (all of it) and began to look critically at the bible.

You assume that he existed and performed miracles. I don't accept any of it. The gospels are not historical. They're not eyewitness accounts. They're not even from that far back in time, but were written after the destruction of the temple. Jesus follows a familiar pattern for demigods and otherwise non-historical characters of mythology.

The only thing that intrigues me is the actual, factual history behind these myths, the real people and events that led eventually to the genesis of Christianity. It's fascinating how people invent and further embellish such stories, how these things grow and evolve, and how total fiction can come to be regarded as historical fact based not on evidence, but on desire to believe. Human psychology is therefore also interesting to me, the ways in which we think and the reasons we think and behave as we do.

 

Actually, atheism is just a lack of belief in any theos, or god, singular or plural. It doesn't describe a position on religion or spirituality.

And as it happens in this case, Buddhism is brought up. Buddhism is a more or less non-theistic religion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheistic_religion

Existence of gods
See also: God in Buddhism

The Buddha said that devas (translated as "gods") do exist, but they were regarded as still being trapped in samsara,[3] and are not necessarily wiser than us. In fact, the Buddha is often portrayed as a teacher of the gods,[4] and superior to them.[5]

Since the time of the Buddha, the denial of the existence of a creator deity has been seen as a key point in distinguishing Buddhist from non-Buddhist views.[6] The question of an independent creator deity was answered by the Buddha in the Brahmajala Sutta. The Buddha denounced the view of a creator and sees that such notions are related to the false view of eternalism, and like the 61 other views, this belief causes suffering when one is attached to it and states these views may lead to desire, aversion and delusion. At the end of the Sutta the Buddha says he knows these 62 views and he also knows the truth that surpasses them.

 

Why should i lower my moral standards just to fall in line with a man on a cloud?

 

Meh, this fellow starts threads and runs away. I guess if you know you're full of it debate is frustrating

 

My first thought is that I have never sinned so I get to cast the first stone.

My second is that my personal morality is demonstrably superior to that of the Abrahamic gods.

 

Not quite correct, Durandal.

Atheism, historically and etymologically, is derived (from the Greek through the French) by "a" (without) + "theos" (a god) and "means"...without a god...NOT without a "belief" in a god.

That "lack of belief" meme is a relatively recent invention of atheists (I suspect for a number of reasons)...and the concept of the "lack of belief" is unknown, as far as I can determine, before 1950 or so. Prior to that, the word was used and defined almost exclusively as "a belief that "God" or gods do not exist."

 

Because a rising number of Atheists see belief and knowledge of a thing as separate positions so when one of us says we are an Agnostic-Atheist we lack knowledge of any deity claim and lack a belief in deities this is more precise since it allows for four distinct options for positions. Not three.

As for the original post we tend to keep morality in many ways simple many sins claimed like sexual pleasure isn't wrong if your not harming anyone intentionally and its consented by all parties who cares! But in many areas we agree like owning people as slaves and beating them is wrong which is endorsed in the Torah, Bible and the Koran so we would say wtf to believers who endorse any of these books.

 

There is as much evidence for an historical Jesus as there is for several other figures we do accept, that is to say, none. The area where he came from was in great spiritual ferment at that time and there were many "wonder workers" who we do have good records of that existed then, so it is actually more improbable to propose that one of them who later became so famous that his memory has come down to us didn't exist than that he did. It has been suggested that Jesus was one of these, namely Simon Magus, or that he may be a composite of several, but it is hard to argue against the idea that someone or a group of people didn't exist at the time and have his message.

And this is the essence of Christianity, that our message is not from a remote deity but another human being. That God is one of us.

 

In my final school year I got College of Preceptors exam passes in General Science and Advanced Science, and later when I realised the bible described a "superscience" I was naturally intrigued and began looking at it with a critical eye, and the more I looked, the more I realised it's not fiction.
Scientists with far more qualifications than me have reached the same conclusion..-

"A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature."-Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): The Universe: Past and Present Reflections. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics: 20:16.

"There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming"- Paul Davies (British astrophysicist), The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability To Order the Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, p.203.

"As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"- George Greenstein (astronomer),1988. The Symbiotic Universe. New York: William Morrow, p.27

"When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it."- Tony Rothman (physicist),Paradigms Lost. New York, Avon Books, p.482-483

"When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist, I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics."- Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics), 1994 The Physics of Immortality. New York, Doubleday, preface.

"We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it.."- Alexander Polyakov (Soviet mathematician),Gannes, S. October 13, 1986. Fortune. p. 57

"Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God – the design argument of Paley – updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one"- Ed Harrison (cosmologist),Harrison, E. 1985. Masks of the Universe. New York, Collier Books, Macmillan, pp. 252, 263.

"Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed"- Barry Parker (cosmologist),Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 223.

"Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe."- Galileo

"Super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature"- Dr. Antony Flew (philosopher and former atheist) in video interview 2004.
Discoveries in DNA led him to that conclusion.
A computer program is made up of a series of 1's and 0's (binary code), the sequencing and ordering of which makes the program work.
DNA in our cells is similar to an intricate computer program made up of 4 chemicals (ATGC), arranged in the cell as GTGTGACTCGCTCCTGAT and so on.
The order in which they're arranged instructs the cells action. Within the tiny space of every cell, this code is 3 BILLION letters long!

 

Semantics. Without a god, without belief in a god. It comes down to the same thing. And, of course, the original Greek term was coined by Greek theists..

- - - Updated - - -

Sure, I'm always prepared to accept the possibility that Jesus was based loosely on one or more real persons. It's just that I'm convinced there was so Yeshua bar Joseph and no Joseph and Mary as claimed.

 

Semantics...yes. But very important semantics.

You are saying that the word, etymologically, comes to "without a belief in a god."

It doesn't.

If there is a god (or are gods)...none of us are without a god.

But some of us can be without a belief in a god.

And some of us can be without a belief that there are no gods.

I am one of the latter.

Here is the situation:

There are some people in this world who "believe" there is at least one god.

I am not one of those people.

There also are some people in this world who "believe" there are no gods.

I am not one of those people either.

Can you say that same thing?

(I suspect not.)

 

I would suggest that this is nowhere near as important as having a useful and transparent definition for 'gods' but, I understand why you need to have this derivation of the word 'atheist' for your 'ministry'.

 

I've given a "useful, transparent" definition of "gods." If you need to pretend I haven't...too bad for you.

The subject of what the word means and how it got to mean that came up...and I commented.

But I understand why you need to come at any argument I make the way you do, William. And since it helps make the situation a win/win one in our many discussions...good for both of us.

 

One Jesuit never want me to believe on God and he has right. But he will take my throne away if I start to believe on God before I start to believe on God and never are his Goden but Goden are my want. Both Jew Gods Jesus Christ and God exists every how starting with one of two.

 

I'm a rational person science as a tool of reason has been proven to be the most practical and sensible way to advance our species from agricultural improvements to zoological investigations and everything in between. It took us to the moon, let us split the atom, delve into the mysteries of the universe, find black holes, advance medical knowledge and even this computer is due to science.

So why should we believe in something that science hasn't even demonstrated is possible how foolish is that and how morose would a person be to do so - and why would we further trust following any other path to the advancement of our species other than science?