Atheism's Unanswerable Question:

Nehemiah believes what he believes, and it gives him comfort. I'm not going to try to convince him he's wrong. That would take away someone's comfort, and that is just mean.

But I say to you that I have personally had experiences in prayer that have at times given me a profound sense of peace, as well as surprised me in the extreme.

"Prayer is not an old woman`s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action."
-Mahatma Gandhi

I can tell you that, in my life, I have experienced the profound power of prayer and even things that can only be described as miracles. But I'm not going to promote these experiences in argument because, from someone else's point of view, they are purely subjective and have no place in methodical debate.

However, I do strongly object to any attempted proof that claims that "the Bible is the true word of God because the Bible says so". A proof cannot be self-referential. You know why? Because my words in this post say so.

No, wait...

My original point was that, just because there are properties of black holes are not completely understood, that doesn't mean black holes caused the Universe.

But chairs, etc. are a colony of lessor objects of simpler construction that form something more complex. This is consistent with parallelism. The chair does not meet the total definition of Life, although a chair has a beginning, an eventual end, and a functional capability.

And a trillion rocks can form a mountain.

A God that can contradict oneself, would be a lawless God. And there is no power in chaos...

I object to the Fundamentalist argument that "God can do anything, whatever He wants, change the laws of physics", etc. These people want a God that will cheat for them.

 

Why, because you say so?

Do you have a proof or claim you want to show us? Because I have a hard time believing this.

If your argument is that if more people believe in something then the more powerful it is...

According to Pew Research, 78.4% of Americans identify themselves as Christian. 83.1% say they are religious and believe in God. But a whopping 1.6% call themselves athiets. Where is that "higher number and percentage of atheists" you were referring to?

 

How does pointing to a relatively low one time statistic suggest that atheism isn't growing? It's a bit like saying "the water is 32 degrees.... so where is this cooling that you speak of?"

it is undeniable that atheism is still the minority, and it will no doubt be for the foreseeable future, but that doesn't mean more and more people aren't starting to reject bronze age mythology in favour of evidence based rationalism. And even the ones who claim to still believe in it don't, not really. Press the average christian on whether they believe a talking snake ever existed, if someone was in a whale for 3 days or if a man built a boat to save a specified number of the millions of species and they will say they don't believe it.

What those surveys tend to show are people who are, what i call, traditional christians. They are christians because, well, they have always been christians and so have most of their friends. As for actually believing in that crap, it's a rarity and something only really believed by the odd fundamentalist or crackpot standing on a box in the park.

When pressed on it, there is very little the average christian really believes in their little book these days. So the real question should be; how much of the divinely inspired word do you have to reject in order to have rejected the notion that it is at all divinely inspired?

 

I consider myself Christian, yet I simply refuse to believe everything in the bible. One of my friend would be offended if you pointed out that he was not really a Christian, for not being aware the bible clearly states that god created man. My point is that those statistic have a very high chance of being wrong, because many people are afraid of the backlash of openly admitting that they don't fully believe in God.

Have you Christians ever wonder why you are a Christian? if you were raised by a Muslim family or a Hindu family, do you think you'd be a Christian today? I don't know the percentage, but I believe a high number of Christians have no idea what the other religions are about. I only recently learned about the basic beliefs of some of the other main religions, and some of them make just as much sense as being Christian.

I personally believe that anyone with good morals and ethics will go to heaven, or whatever is reserved for the good humans in the afterlife.

 

I don't go to church. I am pretty sure I believe in God, but I don't really know. But I do agree that Atheists generally can't answer the question. Where did the universe come from?
Heres an example conversation with a religious person:
"Where did the universe come from?"
"God made it"
"Who is God?"
"He is the Creator, he always has been, and always will be."
"Where did God come from?"
"I don't know."
"So if you don't know WHERE he came from, how do you know he exists?"
"I just believe it, I have faith that there is a God."

Now with an Atheist:
"Where did the universe come from?"
"A large explosion"
"How did that large explosion happen"
"I don't know."
"Well if you don't know, how do you know it happened?"
"hmm... let me answer with something completely off topic that bashes religion:"

No one knows what happened, no one knows why, no one really CARES why, but everyone wants to be right, and they want everyone else to know it. I think that people should just shut up and let each other believe what they want. Atheists are a bunch of whiny little babies who cry when we get to post our pictures of Jesus during Christmas... This country was based around religion, congress opens with prayer, religion is all around you and there is nothing you can do about it. If we all die and there is no God, you were right, if we all die and go into line for the pearly gates, we were right... And for historical proof of Jesus? They think they found his remains like... I think 1 or 2 years ago... He was in ancient writings. Go find me an ancient book about your big boom....

 

this shows an atheist increase

up 110% between 1990 and 2000

 

How ignorant. Instead of refuting it case-by-case, I'll simply write this. Everything "stOx" wrote is completely wrong. All of it based on sad ugly bigoted stereotypes ("bronze age mythology" - shame on you!)and wildly wrong assumptions.

 

You are full of it. Excuse me for not believing a private website that doesn't mention it's methodology and completely contradicts Pew Research and the US Census Bureau.

Especially since "non-religious" and atheist are NOT the same thing!!!

For example, 16.1% of the people in the USA that call themselves "non-religious". But a mere 1.6% call themselves atheist!

Personally, I've found that atheists are more apt to lie than religious people because atheists feel no moral compulsion to tell the truth. THAT is why Thomas Jefferson didn't want atheists on his cabinet!

 

That is BS, you are the one full of it. You probably don't even know many or any atheists personally if you actually believe that lie.

Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

but at same time owned slaves and had sex with a underage 15 year old slave girl named Sally Hemings.

So much for using him as a "moral example", that goes down the toilet. He may be a American hero, but you can't ignore those historical facts.

 

You have stOx (pronounced Stalks) figured out. He is from England which is a post Christian nation. I wouldn't be surprised if he has never met a true Christian, only some people that hold to some traditions of their largely spiritually dead churches. He is definitely one who "protesteth too much" and "kicks against the goads".

 

Hey guys it worked. Athiesm is correct. I threw the leaves up in the air and when they came down they formed a dog. You know what i named thsi dog? easy, i named him order from chaos lol.
This is the fundamental problem that no atheist can answer. Instead they keep coming up with smart alec questions about whether god can make a stone to heavy for him to carry If He couldn't lift something he would not be omnipotent and therefore would not be God. Therefore this silly question is really asking if God can create a situation in which He is not God. NO!

Instead of focusing on riddles we should focus on this one basic premise. The universe and all of its complexities could not have been created by chance. The chances of this happening are flat out zero. An atheist is to vain to admit to this problem. Just admit there is a chance that god can exist. It will make yous look alot ofwise and will at least tell people that you prescribe to the very old notion of COMMON SENSE, instead of creating these incredibly silly riddles that no one even cares about.

AS far as numbers are concerned people of faith wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy outnumber atheists and I have brought out those numbers many times. They have not and will never catch up to us EVER.
Put that down in stone please

Atheists saying they are growing every year is like a new search engine that doubled from 1 search a day to 2 a day. Sure they increased by 100% but how far behind google are they looooooooooool.

Corwin you are also correct on that because when you are an atheist, you can set your own laws, rules and morals as to how you will act with other people.
The world is their oyster.

 

That is not how atheism or evolution explains life, as evolution is not like that. Your statement is often a weak argument that religious people keep using. I am not going into a deep explanation for something you should have learned in school, that you can research yourself, or even read in this forum from other members. But to put it simply, evolution is often a slow progress that occurs from mutations and events that create pressures on organisms to change over time to adapt in their environment to increase their chance of survival.

You don't believe in evolution despite all of the evidence, but somehow you believe in a book written by men 2000 years ago who lived in the bronze ages?

That shows the paradox and ridiculousness of claiming an all powerful, knowing god.

Do you have any credible scientific or mathematical study to back up your claim, or is that just your opinion? Even a 0.01% of chance is a chance for something to happen, that is not zero.

It is not in vain, and only a religious person would believe that. Why should a atheist admit there is a chance that there is a god without any proof, and what god? Can you just admit that there is a chance that there is no god?

No, pandering to religious people is just moronic and WRONG. If scientists and atheists done so then there would be no progress at all. Almost every scientific discover had opposition from religious people who thought they knew "common sense". Do you know when film was first invented, christians called it filmcraft? They also thought the Internet was evil as well. When Galileo said the earth is flat, the church thought he had no common sense and was wrong. Today we all know who is right and who was wrong.

So? Studies show the amount of uneducated people far outnumber the amount of educated people as well. When Galileo said the earth was round, the amount of people who said the earth was flat (mostly religious people) far out-numbered him like 99%. That is not the case today.

A lot of the ancient major religions in the past before Christianity and Islam thought same during the time they were popular as well, now look at where they are today.

People also thought Yahoo and AltaVista were unbeatable when google was a new search engine.

No, that is wrong and just your insecurity, bias, and prejudice against atheists that cause you to believe that. What is your proof to even back your ridiculous blanket generalization claim about millions of individuals?

 

Common sense is worthless with regards to scientific realities, always has been. Common sense used to dictate that the earth was flat. Common sense is actually an impediment to the quest for objective knowledge.

People of faith outnumber the atheists.. mostly in the US. And outside the coasts, the US is one of the most socially backward country among developed nations. I mean, Bush got elected twice...

A religious person (who's about half crazy) created this thread and taunted the atheists. Although I agree that some beliefs are a personal matter, people have the right to discuss them, like you just did.

Wow you almost made a sensible post until that clusterf*ck of pure FAIL. The presence of religion is mostly traditional, coming from a time where humans couldn't explain much, so they relied on religion. And finding anything in ancient writing is no proof of anything, I'd say 99% of what people used to believe has been proven false in our modern times. So primitive people didn't write anything about the big bang.. they didn't write much about computers either.

You should have stopped writing before that last paragraph if you wanted to be taken seriously.

And by the way, why do you need the government to dictate your religion and force it down people's throat? The government has no place in promoting any religion, that's actually one aspect of a healthy and just society. The churches are already free to do as they please, without being taxed. What more do you need? Do you really think Jesus wanted governments to force his teachings on people? If you like theocracies so much, you should try visiting Iran...

 

I don't think government should dictate a religion. I just think that both sides of the argument are saying that society is better off without the other, but I think that society would be better if both sides just shutup and accept the other peoples views. Atheists call us idiots for believing in God but don't like it when we call there theories dumb, and Christians don't like people who don't agree. Both sides could be right, and for all we know they could both somehow be wrong. Arguing on the forum is ok with me, but all this topic has been in people bashing each other's intelligence because of there religious(or non religious) beliefs. People say religion is poisoning society but it seems to me that it is both sides. ok I am done, off to school.

PS: yes that last paragraph was fail because by that time I was just pissed off and started ranting.

 

The people who want God to not exist, we call them atheists, are either not very bright or don't want to deal with the point of the throw the leaves in the air or the tornado in a junk yard creating a Boeing 747. The point is that extreme order is present in DNA and other aspects of life it either got their by chance (tossing leaves up in this example) or it got there by non-chance or an order creating cause.

 

There's no need to throw a tantrum just because you got schooled on statistics and how they work...

So are you going to explain how you miraculously determined that atheism isn't on the rise from a one time statistic?

Look at these so called "christians" deliberately misrepresenting peoples views so they can refute them. Good job your god doesn't exist, he would be ashamed of the depth you are prepared to sink to protect an ancient myth.

What would jesus lie about?

 

Atheists overall tend to have more education then the religious.

How many times do scientists and atheists have to say that do not properly describe evolution at all? How hard is it to buy a nice credible book about evolution then read and research it yourself?

I would like you to tell me what is this "extreme order" in DNA? Especially since there is a ton of junk DNA, viral genes, conditions of human genetics, and human genes and DNA that have no purpose. Those facts do not seem to present some "extreme order" in DNA.

 

So what's the difference between "non-religious" and atheist? Your example doesn't explain a thing.

 

non-religious are people who are atheists, but haven't thought about it or officially declared their atheism yet.

Note the 'yet'.

a synonym for nonreligious would be secular, or at the very least agnostic.

 

'atheist' is a highly charged word, almost sounds like an insult especially in America so many people hesitate to apply it to themselves and even if they don't believe at all in god/s prefer using non-religious or secular.