Atheist reply to religous "question".

[talin]

WARNING: this is highly controversial religious material were people often get told they are dead wrong, if you cannot handle extreme differences in opinion leave now and preserve your sanity!
Thank you for your cooperation.

I was roaming around Yahoo answers and came across a Cristian "questioning" Atheists on how they could claim to discredit god's existence in a fairly rude, "this is how it is and I don't care what you say" manner.

So I responded and gave my views with a follow up (admittedly aggressive) speculation on how none of his scriptures or writing he cited could be trusted as sources and to please come up with something better. After a few errors and a copy paste and attempted re-answer, I find the thing got deleted but now I have a huge TL;DR on my clip board. So I figured you guys always have interesting opinions and the anonymity to express them so I thought I'd throw it out here and let you guys speculate as well.

Personally, I don't care if you believe in god or not and hope it bring you what ever fulfillment you're looking for. From what I've read, the bible itself admits to being more of an means to an end than anything. I've read people citing verses saying God/Jesus don't care if you believe as long as you just stop being ass holes and treat others fairly and tolerate their differences. Everyone is so ready to be offended over everything and it's stupid! Stop trying to figure out how the world came into existence and start trying to make it better. I don't care if there is a god because he isn't here now and he basically "said" in his scripture he isn't going to hold our hand! Now why don't you start reading the bible as it was intended and learn from the life lessons Jesus (or who ever wrote it) embedded into them!

If you want me to really mess with your beliefs, think about the era that these stories were made in and all the similarities to the other religions of that time. Then think how easy a creative person could have crafted them all together into an ultimate religion that took all the well accepted parts of each religion before it and then did some fancy tricks thousands of pagan priests had tried before hand. What if Jesus was just a really talented illusionist with a soft spot for humanity who had realized that most religion was smoke, mirrors, and good story telling? What if he made it up and his disciples were in on it? It would have been really easy to fool a bunch of superstitious, cow sacrificing, commoners who had already been fooled by priests and were pleasantly surprised by someone who did things out of the good of his heart. Then you have the zealots through the ages ages purging "heresy", questionable translations, "proof reading", and a few centuries worth of decay and "telephone syndrome" and we're going off a lot of trust in a lot of shady circumstantial "evidence". Now that I have discredited most of your written and testimonial evidence, please direct me to definitive archeological evidence proving (or at least making plausible) your claims and I'll give them more weight.

Then again, whether it was true or not doesn't really matter does it? Either way, Christianity is just an attempt at instilling good in humanity whether it's from a god or from a talented man.

Remember... you were warned. Try to contain any rage you have and give you opinion as nicely as possible and remember, I have nothing against you personally and this was intended for a particularly condescending person of which I'm sure you're above.

[BlueLight]

Any chance you can copy paste what he said at first?

[talin]

Any chance you can copy paste what he said at first?

Wish I did but the thing was deleted and I only copy/pasted mine originally so I wouldn't lose it when i went back a few pages and tried to click the "Answer Question" button again and found out it was deleted due to it not really qualify as a question and more of a sentence with a question mark at the end.

I'll see if I can find it in my history and see if the web page is saved.
---
Apparently I only save the last five pages the way I have it set and the rest is drawn from the site itself. I'm really wishing I had tried to save it earlier because then you guys would see how irritating he was being about it all.

He was talking about how we cant say "how could god burn people for acting how he made them" and other typical questions of morality and such because "He has to punish them for being bad!" Those are parts I remember but I honestly don't think I could replicate his... rant in it's entirety from memory.

I was actually a little irritate by some of the responses as well. Yahoo answers draws the idiots out in force sometimes. I hate how vague I'm being but when something on the internet gets me irritated I tend to try and forget about it.

[Thaedael]

The issue I have is that you are arguing against the bible, without having studied it.

[talin]

Sort of, yes. I'll admit to that much. As I said before, Yahoo answers draws the idiots out in force and while I've read a bit of it, I haven't actually studied it in depth and I'm going off citations and what I have read. It still doesn't make my point on the era it was "made" in any less real. I'm also not arguing against the bible as much as how people are treating it. My point should have been received that people need to stop arguing about who the people in the stories are and more on what the lessons they teach are. If I still had a bible I would probably still be slowly reading through a few passages a night until I had it finished but I lost my copy a while ago and never got around to replacing it.

Now while I may be "ignorant" to (more than) a few passages, my issue was more on how he and a few others were debating it. The second paragraph was more of an attempt to answer his "question" that he had roughly asked: "How can you say the bible and god isn't completely real?". It wasn't quite so direct but that's what he mainly seemed to be yelling at us for. That, I admit to be a bit speculative and somewhat opinionated.

[Thaedael]

Your whole argument is based on how people debate it, but having not read it, I still find your debate itself bad. Not saying the idea is bad, just the way you go about "proving it". Problem I have with the internet is people fighting over stupid things, but alas that's life. For all the bad things the bible has quote "caused/enforced/justified", just as many non religious things have done it. I have a friend who gets into youtube comment wars all the time, and I find a million other things better to do, like clean out the damn rp threads, or pin your topic, which you should go finish.

[talin]

Pin my... oh, you mean that old CS maker topic? I had totally forgotten about that...

[BlueLight]

Because it's a fallacy. and that's coming from a Lutheran Critical reasoning teacher.

Bluelight - God is real because the bibles say it's real.
Talin - How do you know that the bible is telling the truth.
BlueLight - Because the bible is the divine truth from god.

My argument for why god is real is basically god is real. Now this doesn't mean god is real or not real; it just means i have a shitty argument.
One thing that annoys me is when people on the Atheist side of the fence pretend that they'll play along with your "what if".

BlueLight - for instants lets assume there is a god and lets assume he inspired the bible to be written how he wanted it.
Atheist - Alright, if there is a god then he might have done that; but, you still have the 2000 years of translating and other such stuff.
BlueLight - *FacePalm* so basically the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob can't do a simple thing of inspiring what is to be written all during the ages?
Atheist - are you fucking kidding me? Of course he can't!

Another argument i hate more because people are putting words in the bibles mouth is the old earth theory.
Basically some people assume that in Genesis when they say "days" for how long it took the earth to be built, they really meant "God days" which is really 100,000,000 years each.
Now I don't believe this but I personally don't have anything to support my claim and neither do they.(Granted there is possible what if's that would support it like translation error or the fact people back then were idiots but it's just a what if.) My problem is when some one says "Well it's in Genesis, it's another retelling of creation.".
I don't mind the theory but i hate the assumptions people make about it really being there in the bible.
I have a friend who's does believe this and really i don't mind it because he at least doesn't say it's in are common bibles. He did say it was possible for it to be mistranslated or never added because the idea back then would be silly; but he never says it's in there now.

[talin]

So then we get back to my first point where what exactly happened is a mystery and we're both pretty clueless about the facts in the grand scheme of things and should instead focus on deriving a philosophy from ancient scriptures and see the wisdom inside rather than argue senselessly about whether or not they are actually true. Maybe I should have made that more clear but in all honesty, I was more replying out of annoyance at his crappy excuses and general insults at atheists in general.

Though lately I haven't really been fully atheist as I have been speculating that maybe gravity really will halt the expansion of space and eventually collapse back into conditions similar to "pre-big bang" and the result is a sentient, "perfect", yet ultimately purposeless being until it gives itself a purpose by using it's own matter to create the universe once more (parallel universe?). Thus, big bang happens and a new cycle of existence begins.

Only thing is that this is more universe centric and sort of labels us a "planned accident" rather than making everyone happy and saying we all get a nice big eternal existence full of love and happiness if we died being nice to others (or at least praying like hell but I prefer to frown upon that assumption, dedicated Christians are generally nice at the moment). While I agree we should all make an effort to be nice and at least try to be tolerant of each other, I really don't think we're going to have our soul saved. Once those little electric signals in our brain are gone, we stop mentally existing. Others may remember us and our bodies may take a while to fade but "we" end right then. Sorry, it's depressing, I know.

[IrrelevantComment]

Why don't I believe in the Christian God? The Old Testament.

[Smackman]

Gotta love how atheists compare notes and make the same arguments. Believing any unsubstantiated claim makes you a gullible fool.

[Schramm]

My main problem with most religions is that the real message, to be a decent human being, is often lost as people try to prove that their version of the story is the right and that their version of the same god is the only real one, which kinda contradicts their own teachings in the first place, dont you think


But yeah, I agree with the original post, tis one hell of a good point

[talin]

Gotta love how atheists compare notes and make the same arguments. Believing any unsubstantiated claim makes you a gullible fool.

Um, unsustained claims? So your saying we should keep arguing over which version is right or whether they are right at all rather than learn from the trials that the people (or other entities) in the stories overcame. The forum troll strikes again!

[BlueLight]

My main problem with most religions is that the real message, to be a decent human being, is often lost as people try to prove that their version of the story is the right and that their version of the same god is the only real one, which kinda contradicts their own teachings in the first place, dont you think


But yeah, I agree with the original post, tis one hell of a good point

I think i see where you going about the only god thing and well I disagree. I don't have a elegant explanation so i wont confirm what you're really saying since i couldn't really defend anything in this area and i know it.

[BlueLight]

Believing any unsubstantiated claim makes you a gullible fool.

Smack... you do know that you just call about 99% of people in the world gullible fools?
Even most Atheist believe in something about how to world came about and to be frank, i find most of those sillier than a god.
A god by definitions can rewrite rules of how the universe works; Science is making educated guess with information we already have and proving those guess (Doesn't rewrite universal truths.)

Now we if we believe in a God, then we have no ideas what rules of the universe were in place.
If we believe in science then we're saying that a atom was created out of nothing and then blow up thus creating more atoms... ya we're just totally saying bullshit to E=MC^2.

As for the Atheist talking part, I've only seen one person say he was a Atheist in this thread and even then he didn't out right say it.

[zeldafreak1]

I was raised as Catholic, converted to Christianity but now I don't really buy into the whole "God" thing. (Agnostic I think) I mean, I believe that there's some "Greater Force" (for want of a better term) out there, how could all matter have come into existence without some "Greater Force"? If there is a "God" then why make us suffer on this "planet"? One way to look at it, "The body is nothing but a shell, and the soul is imprisoned in it, waiting for the time it shall be let free (Death)" If there is a "God" why doesn't this Force let us just be souls in the first place? Why make us "in "His" image but make us live on this damn rock? What's with all the hardship and suffering "God" forces us through?
As my friend, the PhilosoRaptor says:

Life.jpg (100.5 KiB) Viewed 1807 times

[Mr D]

Silly zeldafrak1, there are no dinosurs on "Earth" anymore.God made them first but didnt like them so he send them all to Mars and made animals and 2 humans on his second try. Silly zeldafrak1.

And about the suject.I personaly like this opinion about the subject:

Buddhists see questions such as the proof the existence of a deity or the explanation of the creation of the Universe as being pointless. There is little hope to resolve the issue to any absolute satisfaction, the resoluton of the issue would not help a person on the journey to enlightenment, and there are more things to concern oneself with.

[IrrelevantComment]

If we believe in science then we're saying that a atom was created out of nothing and then blow up thus creating more atoms... ya we're just totally saying bullshit to E=MC^2.

I'm going out on a limb here and saying you haven't studied Physics at any great detail. You seem to be working under quite a few misconceptions:
1) You seem to believe that the Big Bang Theory states that something came out of nothing. In fact most physicists believe that energy already existed prior to the big bang.
2) You seem to have no idea what E=mc^2 actually means. E=mc^2 (or more appropriately dE = dmc^2) is the mass-energy relationship. Basically, mass and energy are [b]the same thing[/] so it is possible to convert one to the other. For example, if you have 9x10^16 Joules of energy, and all of it is converted to matter, you will have 1 kg of matter (half will in fact be antimatter though). THAT is what e=mc^2 means - it describes how mass changes as energy changes. Creation of matter from energy does not violate e=mc^2, it obeys it.

Science is far more reliable than any religion for several reasons. It makes testable hypothesis, meaning it can actually be disproved and it has tangible results, ie your computer.

[IrrelevantComment]

Though lately I haven't really been fully atheist as I have been speculating that maybe gravity really will halt the expansion of space and eventually collapse back into conditions similar to "pre-big bang" and the result is a sentient, "perfect", yet ultimately purposeless being until it gives itself a purpose by using it's own matter to create the universe once more (parallel universe?). Thus, big bang happens and a new cycle of existence begins.

No offence, but that makes no sense. There are an infinite number of potential outcomes of your scenario, and the one you have mentioned is in no way more likely than say, giant dinosaurs being created and flying spaceships around. Why would a sentient being be formed?

Wild speculation is no grounds for a belief. I'm inclined to agree with

Believing any unsubstantiated claim makes you a gullible fool.

[BlueLight]

I'm going out on a limb here and saying you haven't studied Physics at any great detail. You seem to be working under quite a few misconceptions:

Correct.

1) You seem to believe that the Big Bang Theory states that something came out of nothing. In fact most physicists believe that energy already existed prior to the big bang.

Ya, that's basically like saying there is matter before the big bang.

2) You seem to have no idea what E=mc^2 actually means. E=mc^2 (or more appropriately dE = dmc^2) is the mass-energy relationship. Basically, mass and energy are the same thing so it is possible to convert one to the other.

Yes i know, that's my problem though. If we have a tabula rasa then how do we have matter or energy to begin with? Sure, if we have energy then we could have matter.
If we have matter we could have energy.

Code: Select All Code

Think of it like this. I've got a building I want made, and i tell you to make it.
Now you have 2 types of things to make this building with; money and construction materials.
Now if i don't give you either these, then the building isnt going up.

if you need a permit and don't have money you can sell some construction materials get the money.
if you need more construction materials you can buy them with money.

Science is far more reliable than any religion for several reasons. It makes testable hypothesis, meaning it can actually be disproved and it has tangible results, ie your computer.

I don't disagree with you, however i would like to remind you that for the longest time the world was flat. Just because we believe something today doesn't mean it's right.
I agree you could say the same thing about god but as i've said it makes more sense right now then the big bang to me at least.