Are Atheists Really Just Christians With Weak Faith?

I reject god due to lack of conclusive proof and I also don't claim spontanious life is certain because there's no irrefutable proof of it either. As I've said before we don't know for sure how it all started. What we have to do is to continue searching for answers until we find conclusive evidence it's one way or another not stopping research in this field and using the "god must have done it" argument for everything we don't understand

is believing everything written in a 2000 years old book to be true more intellectual?

what do you mean by that?

 

No. The big bang is just the most well known of a number of theories that might explain how life evolved. Being an atheist doesn't mean you believe in the big bang theory. You can believe there are things for which - at present - we do not have answers. What is beyond space? When did time begin? What happens after it ends? Etc. People used to think the world was flat because it appears to be so. At that time it was beyond comprehension and it was thought that people would get to the end and drop off the great plain. Thousands of years later we have come to know that our planet is round and we continue to learn more about what we don't know every day.

 

Either life spontaniously came to be from non-life or it was created. There is no alternative.

Despite no logical superiority, you've ruled out the creator and your issue is simply "how did it all spontaniously come to be?"

This whole uncreated creator is such a mystery to people and yet here we have "energy." You can go ahead and claim some logical superiority over the whole "God" idea as soon as you can explain where all the energy in the universe came from.

And then you can go ahead and prove that intelligence requires matter.

If science ever figures out how to create life from non-life then they've found immortality.

You would rather believe in immortality than God.

Exactly a whole religion based on science fiction.

You can believe whatever you want as long as God isn't involved.

The whole issue is that you want to pretend that trying to figure out why God isn't necessary is intellectually superior to trying to figure out how God did it.

You're going to be dead in less than 100 years. You don't have a whole lot of time to wait for proof.

 

Untrue. In the same way we can't comprehend what was before time started or what is time after it ends, we can't even begin to tackle the question about how life and the earth began. We may not have the cognitive ability nor the tools to figure this one out at present. For all we know there could be third or fourth possibilities beyond our comprehension. In the same way explaining Jesus to a dog would be useless, so might be a conversation with a human being about creating life and a planetary system to contain it. We can only make guesses based upon the variables that are available to us. Right now there is no proof or idea that can definitively explain the creation of life or why even bother with this whole charade, the good and the horrible evils. For all we know we're just the product of some much larger child's terrarium and he's gotten bored maintaining our little universe.

 

I agree 100% with your post. The answers to life could be none of the above. Based on what we know, how can anyone deny G-d with such certainty or have an unwavering faith wanting to go around telling everyone what G-d thinks? The truth may be something we have not yet even comprehended.

 

no, not kidding. Think about it. If you believe EVERYTHING in the Bible, as real christians do, then you must not be able to accept modern science's explanation of the creation of the universe. Sure, you can love god, but I don't know of any christian denominations that allow you to pick and choose what parts of the bible you wish to believe.

 

vs

"modern science's explanation of the creation of the universe" is not "real science." It's faith based science fiction.

Real science is observable, testable and repeatable. You can't prove or disprove anything with a theory.

The Bible has no issue with real science. The Bible has issue with science fiction just like it has issue with every other religion.

life from non-life by chance
life from non-life by intelligent design

life from nothing by chance
life from nothing by intelligent design

They could, but if God does exist and he put a time limit on you then one would assume he'd give you a way to know.

So you can wait for science to give you the answers and hope it doesn't matter or that they get the answers before you die.

You can become a scientist and try to find the answers yourself hoping they don't matter or that you find the answers before you die.

Or you can look for God and hope it doesn't matter or that you find him before you die.

Or you can wait for God to find you and hope that's the way he rolls.

Lots of options.

That's why it's called "religion" and "faith." And if you want to believe that it doesn't matter then that's great. But it'd really suck to be wrong.

 

Translates into, "You're going to hell."

 

First of all, there is great debate on whether the book of genisis meant 6 days or 6 periods of time, and there are many christians that understand that the book of genisis was written to be read figuratively and not literally(god can teach us in many ways, not just literally)

 

It doesnt neccessarily mean that your going to hell. I think i went through this part before or else im experiencing deva vous.

 

Common sense tells us there are wayyyy to many variables for life to be created by random chance. Think about it folks and use basic common sense.

 

And "common sense" tells you that the magic man done it? LOL

 

Completely untrue and it takes a while and some humility to realize it. Just because we don't understand how life on Earth began doesn't mean that a one in a billion chance it couldn't happen spontaneously. After all, for all we know time could have existed for 1 trillion years and over that time the almost impossible odds could easily have been reached. There is just no way to know. What religion CAN do is make it easier for people to make sense of what they see which they do not understand. I'm not saying it's crap but there is a comfort in feeling like you are in control of and understand what is life, the afterlife and your destiny. To some, they'll prefer to live in the Matrix, believing that when they die the Tooth Fairy will sprinkle pixie dust on their bodies and whisk them into another existence because the very thought of it all being over without anything more is too much for them to bear. People are all made differently and of varying abilities to cope.

stOx has a good point though. Respectfully, there are many who say that it's common sense that Jesus was clearly just a man, e.g. virtually no writing at all about his miracles during his lifetime, the tremendous amount of historical revisionism and crusades and forced conversion by the Church, wondering what the point was for Jesus to "die for our sins" and then for life to continue as if it was no big deal, etc. In fact, the Irish and Scots banned Monty Python's "The Life of Brian" which posited the possibility that perhaps false messiahs were easily produced during that time 2,000 years ago. Jesus was just the most popular one. With regard to Christian consistency, what happened to the fundamentals - the Five Books of Moses - the actual words of G-d - somehow being reduced to nothing more than a cute story about some people called the Jews from whom Jesus was a member? The Ten Commandments is a bastion of law but for some reason the rest of the laws laid down in the books that define the Ten Commandments were somehow just vanished... like the day of rest being made Sunday by the Pope. This is not to say that those who believe in Christ won't cite their own reasons for their being convinced of their faith, and I respect them for it, and my point is only to show that there are tremendous differences of opinion which can be clearly justified. But the bottom line is that there is no absolute proof that Jesus was anything more than a man than there is that Moses came down from the Heavens than there is that Mohammed never existed. All of these religions were founded many years ago and, even now, who knows what could be changed with Photoshop. In 10 years from now Mel Gibson's children may be circulating doctored photographs with the Jews wearing Nazi armbands. It scares me to think what happens in 200 years from now when those much further away from the horror are influenced by convincing propogandist garbage that has been produced en masse. Now you're beginning to see part of the problem.

Religion and understanding its roots is not a simple question. Most younger people think they have it all figured out until they later realize that it only seemed common sense because it was based upon the limited variables available. The only "common sense" fundamental concept that impacted me originated in the Jewish Old Testament and is best known as "love thy neighbor like thyself." You don't need to attach a deity to human decency. To me that defines a person. The rest is all a mask.

 

One easy alternative is that you definition of life is flawed. That what you and modern convention terms as alive is overly limited. I am not saying that is so, just pointing out the alternative you failed to see. Either way that is a good phrase you have there.

 

Sorry for the double post but I couldn't help but point out that the theory of relativity and the subsequent additions to it propose that energy IS matter. A good leap to make would have been "is consciousness energy and if so then it is neither created or destroyed but merely changes." And if consciousness is an energy then the universe must be teaming with it. So if intelligence requires energy and matter IS energy then its a big crazy circle isn't it?

Edit:There is a very strange book I own called The Cipher of Genesis. It is not really a unique book at all, but it attempts to explain the Book of Genesis in light of a symbol/letter system that pretty much adheres to modern scientific speculation. It might be interesting to some of you die hard Christians. I don't think it will be too heathenistic for you either.

 

The whole point of this exercise is that no matter what you believe it requires faith. Even believeing that you can't know requires faith.

Then you have to decide how confident are you that you're right and everyone else is wrong and consider what is the worst that could happen if you're wrong.

I can't solve the mystery of life scientifically in my spare time with the life time I've been given. Countless people much smarter than I have been working on the problem for centuries. I can however study various religions and see what they teach about how to get to heaven and how to get to hell. The only two topics that matter really until you settle on one.

My two worst case scenarios are Mormonism being right or Islam being right. Both those religions reserve hell (the real hell, not the fluffy kind for the "misguided" people) for those who actively reject the religion and tell other people not to follow them. I have a diploma to prove that I learned all about Mormonism and plenty of history proving I soundly rejected it. If any other religion on the planet is correct I'll either end up reincarnated or in some form of heaven. Or if none of them are correct then it didn't matter anyway what I believed because I'll end up in the same place regardless. And all I did was spend my spare time studying philosophy.

It's very easy to just throw up your hands say you can't know and then just sit on your hands for 100 years and hope for the best.

 

This is a semantic game at best. If faith is defined as a belief system, then yes, everyone has beliefs of some sort. I believe that what my eyes see are accurate, etc. If faith is defined as belief in that which cannot be proven, then that is a different definition of the word faith. Some seem to imply that all uses of the word "faith" means some sort of connection to G-d and religion, e.g. if everyone has faith then they somehow are connected to G-d whether they like it or not.

Speaking logically, it doesn't make sense that if someone is born into the "wrong" religion that they'll be punished for it, despite being a kind, righteous and giving person. A powerful deity doesn't need this kind of fearmongering - but people, especially those insecure and avaricious, surely use this weapon. This is why the crusades like the inquisition are such a joke of logic, where people were going to go to Heaven because they feared being killed, not because they had an iota of belief that the religion they were converting to was in any way correct.

What does make sense is that people can be judged for the decisions they make in their own context. It seems to me that many religions share some similar codes of civilized conduct that defines how we treat each other as human beings, the Ten Commandments being one such example. This is why to me it makes more sense to define what is "moral" or approrpiate conduct first before you decide whether you've chosen the right G-d. An old Jewish story has it that an impatient man came to a famous Rabbi and asked him to explain the Bible in the time one can stand on one foot. The Rabbi replied the "Love thy neighbor as thyself" line and that's it. Basically, this means that you can practice all day and night the rituals for G-d - the one you fear - and alone it's basically worthless. Those who are closer to G-d are those who can truly respect and treat other people properly and honestly - those that don't wield supernatural power over you and compel you to be righteous. It is your choice and self-control to treat the "weaker" group appropriately and learn how to live together in a civilized fashion. It seems to be a good way to live, G-d or not. The dishonest usually always have to keep an eye on their own back because they wonder if their neighbor is treating them like they do to others... even though it is unsettling that some wicked people seem to get away with it during their lifetime. Life is a series of choices and we all have one to decide how we feel most comfortable living it.

I don't have any more time for this interesting conversation and probably will drop off. Some of the things you have said were nice to revisit moments of introspection and hear what others are thinking. Thanks for sharing.

 

This is the obvious answer to the question posed.

 

"god" is an alien. The human race was seeded by an alien race as a DNA farm.

 

Sure, kids will question everything their parents tell them but when it comes to religion then they listen and pretend that's some kind of excuse. If your parents jumped off a cliff would it be their fault you did, too?

Nobody is stopping anyone from questioning what they believe. Well, except various cults around the world. The leaders of those religions have a nice place in hell reserved for them. The members can hope for some leniency but I wouldn't count on it.

Is Islam or Mormonism turns out to be true I have no excuse. I had plenty of chances to hear about those religions and accept them.

The Bible is the most read book in the world. Every major religion acknowledges it to some degree. So it doesn't matter what religion your were "born into." If the Bible turns out to be true then you had ample opportunity to discover it.

Where did the aliens come from?