Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.
While this isn't strictly for debate, rules on civility, trolling, etc. still apply.
Accomplished something major this week? Discovered a cool fact that demands to be shared? Just want a friendly conversation on how amazing/awful/thoroughly meh your favorite team is doing? This thread is for the water cooler talk of the subreddit, for any atheists, theists, deists, etc. who want to join in.
While this isn't strictly for debate, rules on civility, trolling, etc. still apply.
So I have been an atheist since my teens, and many times I have found atheists saying that we need to use logic and reasoning instead of faith etc. and that's what makes us atheists, and these things matter of course but I feel that what turns people into atheists is just knowledge of the religion itself. As a person who has never considered himself smart, or "skeptical", I find disproving religion to be simple because I have known so much from so many atheist vs theist debates. Conversely I don't think most people are religious because of morals or lack of reasoning, but because they simply lack the knowledge that their religion is full of contradictions. So my TL:DR is that becoming an atheist is less about being intelligent or unique character traits like "skepticism" but more about passing knowledge checks. Just my 2 cents.
I was raised polish catholic, I attended church, got communion and became confirmed. After that I came to the conclusion I don't care about this and I just want to go home or throw rocks in the woods, church sucks. So i would go with my parents then ditch about 5 minutes in.
I don't know if that story was necessary but I think I just don't care for religion or belief in a higher idk. I think that being alive right now in this moment is what matters and what I do with these moments shouldn't be wasted to going somewhere on sunday but rather my own personal desires. I know I will die and I don't care what happens after, feel-good dreams suck.
By “faith”, I mean here “belief without evidence”.
Putting the burden of proof on theists means that God is presumed innocent of existing unless theists can clear the evidential bar of showing that God does exist.
Which means that the starting point of this set-up is the belief that God does not exist, independent of subsequent presentation of evidence.
Human thought is limited by the ways we can experience, which is a combination of the ways we can collect data about the world (the senses) and the ways we can process the data and conceptualize (dependent on language and the structure of the brain).
Every scientific instrument ever constructed is a product of human thought. Every human who is analyzing and constructing theories based on the findings is limited by the same process of thinking. Werner Heisenberg said that what we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. So due to the limits of the observer, we can never grasp the true nature of reality.
Ants can never conceptualize or measure something like blackholes, yet they exist. How can we claim that only the things we can measure truly exists.
I'm not saying that God exists with certainty but we cannot rule out the possibility. What are your thoughts on this?
Edit: Most of you are downvoting merely because I hold a different opinion . Only downvote if I don't comment in a constructive way.
I am an athiest and I am mostly non religous, I like science, but we can't defeat religon. More liberal and open religions will disappear not the highly organized ones.
So last time I talked about how paranormal experiences which doesn't match scientific model of reality, and are therefore dismissed by scientists, either because they think they are nonsense or because there are no funds and no scientifically interesting details, so the paranormal research gets taken over by religious funding, and therefore then religion will survive in the corners science didn't reach.
Another reason why religion survive is because religious people are less risk averse than athiests and are more community involved, while athiests are individualistic. Modern world must run on science, but no one wants to take risks while no one also can compute risks. Because calculating risks is also costly. So top companies that rule the world make sure people are scared enough to buy things, pay extra for the insurance, and Engineers make buildings and machines with extra protection, and some how the whole thing must fit together. The religous people don't rely purely on science, they put some unknowns to their gods and deities and super powers. They have their own people from technicians to lawyers that escape the risk averse capitalist world. Spiritual experiences are necessary for human survival because we have been like that for thousands of years.
Most athiests without the spiritual part and non social part but with individualism is actually lost in a world where insurance vultures and rent seeking behavior is dominant. They don't know to calculate risks so they either end up paying extra. Being religous lowers cost of living. Without spirituality only connection you have to people is financial. Athiest business leaders and politicians will work with highly organized religous groups against athiest loners.
“An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion continues moving at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force that changes its state of rest or motion.”
Therefore, there must have been an external force that caused all the matter and all the energy of the universe to come into existence at a specific moment.
The law of conservation of energy, also known as the First Law of Thermodynamics, states:
“Matter is neither destroyed nor created from nothing.”
If we reflect on this law, we arrive at the conclusion that the universe could not have come into existence. According to this law, either the universe does not exist, or its existence depends on the existence of the Creator.
Under naturalism, by causal closure, any physical object can interact with any other given fitting conditions.
A loop of deductions A => B => ... => A is either an identity or equivalence.
Not all physical objects are equivalent to one another.
Therefore, by negation, the existence of particular interactions in physical reality can not be accounted for by any rule of inferrence that is causally closed (i.e. of the form ' For all x in U: f(x) in U').
Thus, non-closed causation must account for it.
By negation, non-closed causation is the induction of a state change where initial and end state share no causally closed relation.
And no naturalistic object under causal closure can perform that.
Very performative, virtue signaling statement I see from atheists a lot.
If God came down, opened a portal to hell and told ya to bow down or experience intense pain and suffering for all of eternity, you're gonna say no?
Get real now, 100% of rational people are gonna do it. I am sure there are some exceptions, people who don't have the mental capacity to assess the situation I suppose
To begin with, I don't mean to deal with the agnostics who say "You're happy, and that's just fine." I have a live and let live attitude towards those who don't wish for anything else. I mean to ask those who think I am doing something wrong and should change my thinking/actions.
I am a devout Catholic. I believe strongly that God has called me to serve a specific purpose and I am most fulfilled from within whilst I am working towards that goal. The goal is the study of the oceanic world in a scientific manner. In essence, a scientific obsession fueled by faith and love of that which is good, which I interpret as God. I have no qualms of rectifying my faith and science, as the two have gone hand in hand.
And yet, I understand that several atheistic arguments have come up against my lifestyle. That it's more noble to just do what you do and then face oblivion. That I am deluded or an addict or standing on a flimsy base that will collapse at the slightest provocation. That my faith is a lie and I am propagating falsehood. I don't mean to attack atheism, as I know it comes from a very rational line of thought. But I wish to know if there is something from your perspective that I am not seeing. Why should I adopt an atheistic worldview? What are the benefits? I'll gladly debate in a respectful manner, but if you just wish to tell me and leave, I understand that too.
I’m wondering if you all would be willing to take a critical view of the claims I’m sending below:
For claim 8 it’s about the mysterious letters of the Quran and the number of times they appear in chapter 19. This is one of the claims I believe I can personally contest. When looking at the mysterious letters, for letters like Ya they count alif masqarah and hamzas seated on top of the letter ya as occurrences of ya (which I think makes no sense, since they’re not the same letter and only look similar). On the other hand, Rashad Khalifa even during his life was preaching about Surah 19 having 798 letters, and coincidentally, he lives for 19,798 days (if you include the start and end point. In reality, he lived for 19,797 days). As mentioned, though, if one includes the start point of November 19 and the endpoint of January 31 it comes out to be 19,798. I still can’t get over the fact that he during his life preached that Surah 19 has 798 mysterious letter occurrences and he himself lived for essentially that many days.
However, on the other hand, in released FBI files on Rashad Khalifa’s life, it’s stated that he was born on November 18.
In that case, my counterpoint above of him having in reality only lived for 19,797 days wouldn’t be applicable anymore. Now he would’ve lived for 19,798 days.
In any case, whether you use an exclusive on inclusive count, it just so happens that Rashad Khalifa lived for 19,798 days. It could’ve been 20,100 days, or 17,100 days, but instead it happened to be on the 19,798th day (which, once again, chapter 19 according to Rashad had 798 occurrences of the mysterious letters).
Point 5 isn’t elaborated but during Rashad’s life interstate 19 was built running through Tucson Az (where he lived at) and is also the only highway in the US to use the metric system. Furthermore, another interstate highway goes through Tucson, that being interstate 10 (if you combine these 2 roads you end up at 29, the same number as the number of chapters that include the mysterious letters in the Quran).
If you also count the number of days from November 19 to January 31 you end up with 74, which is the Surah in which the number 19 first appears.
Finally, for point 11, it’s not mentioned either but the numbers 1230 come from 2 things. First, it’s the abjad value of the name Rashad Khalifa and also if you count the verses of only initialed (mysterious letters) surahs, Q 19:1 is the 1230th verse and Q 19:98 is the 1327th verse. This is by counting only the verses in chapters 2,3,7,10,11,12,13,14,15,19 since they are the ones that contain the mysterious letters.
Once again, I would be so grateful if you could take a look at these claims and give me your view on them. I don’t know what to think with this information being present at hand.
The claims that strike me as the most impressive are him living for 19,798 days and the 19x1230x1327 claim.
Is there anything that would make you believe in the existence of God? What would it take? If God him/herself came down to earth and told you who they were would you believe? What sort of proof would you require to believe in God? And if you did get proof that God was real, would you decide to not believe and worship anyway?
For most atheist the identity is arrived through rejection of religion.
The common narrative is "I examined and deconstructed the religious frameworks and they didn't hold up" This is true.
The person reflexively arrives at atheism without the very same rigor they just used on religion. They take on naturalistic assumptions of reality without the same rigorous examination they they just did with religion.
This is where the common reply "I'm not a naturalist, i just don't believe in God appears" It's technically possible to be an atheist without being a committed naturalist, but in practice, the reasons most people give for rejecting God already rely on naturalistic alternative of reality.
So what happens is usually someone who rejected a specific identity and then put on another identity and learned the arguments to protect the new identity.
The process is this, heavy criticism of the rejected view, light criticism of the adopted one, followed by identity protection the odds that the resulting belief tracks reality is lower than most people in that position are willing to make.
Although atheism was true, we would not have understood the existence of evil or good, and we would not understand the judgement on such issues with total judgements, as if we had an excessive mental structure during which we give judgements and these judgements become correct.
Where do we have this authority (authority) through which we rule and give an evaluation?
Does the material world that lacks the standard in the first place give this authority and this reliability in the judgements?
The judgement of the atheist and his decision on this error and the validity of that, and the charity of this judgement and the evil of the other judgement, these decisions issued by the atheist mean the error of atheism itself.
If we were children of this world, neither evil nor good would appear in it, and you would not know the meaning of error or disfunction, and this is what Richard Dawkins literally decides in the world – when he said:
“The universe is in fact without determination, without purpose, without evil and no good”
If blind cruelty is indifferent as you say and as you describe the universe, how do you care about good or evil?
Your indifference to good and evil and your question about the existence of deformed children, or the existence of injustice in this or that legal judgement, is the greatest evidence of the absurdity of the atheistic perception of existence
hi again. It's been a while since I've been in this subreddit. i will present the same argument but this time with more evidence: are ellen white and her visions proof of the supernatural? i found an article that goes in-depth about the phenomena associated with white visions; they even managed to find the identities of the doctors that tested her as well as some biographical information. according to this historian the testimonies were made sometimes in these vicinities of these named doctors, so anyone who suspected fraud could simply talk to the doctors that analyzed her to check. has anyone got a natural explanation for this article and the testimonies contained? there are thirteen of these testimonies with the now-identified doctors (David H. Lord, Dr. Baldwin, etc.) (the author of the article even discusses some natural explanations (epilepsy, fraud) and dismisses them on the basis of what we know of the testimonies involved). i would appreciate it.
on a personal note, i am doing much better now than the last time i visited here. I realized that even if God exists, I would not obey or worship him. and that did wonders for my mental health. I guess i would call myself a misotheist. i would like to see explanations that could turn me into a full-fledged atheist.
This might be the one and only reason I believe in a divine god. If when we die, it's just a black screen, then it's overwhelmingly unfair.
People who raped and killed people would just get away with it? Even if they did get punished in life, there's thousands or millions of bad things they did that they didn't get punished for, either ones we know about or ones we don't.
So where do evil people go? There's a couple of people who did me wrong and I want to just ask them why, nothing more. I will rest full of hate and rage if I don't get back at these people, and the only thing holding me back from insanity is that I'll see them when we die.
Also, the idea of hell and heaven technically makes you avoid fucking others' lives. So that's that.
EDIT: apparently atheists believe that; yes, criminals will get away with it, and the only way to get them punished is here in life, not after they die. Even if they are kings or queens or people of power that you'll only dream of punishing. No afterlife where everyone is equal and judged equally. Even if there's no judgement after we die, I wouldn't lose anything from believing in it, and it's good for the peace of mind.
Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.
While this isn't strictly for debate, rules on civility, trolling, etc. still apply.
I'm New IFB, KJV only, fulfillment theology, post-tribulation rapture, premillennial, free grace/hypergrace, osas/eternal security, easy believist, antinomian, non-reformed, cessationist, sola fide, sola scriptura, subordinationist trinitarian, etc. Here is what I believe:
Given my use of hermeneutics and understanding of physics and cosmology, the universe began 13.8 billion years ago. Scientists can't explain what caused the singularity, nor does Lambda-CDM (and the fine-tuning problems associated with it). All we know is that we're here. The Bible says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. God said "let there be light" and it was so, and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. Now, in the Bible, it divides creation by "days", but if we read the Bible more thoroughly, that could mean longer (2 Peter 3:8).
Albert Einstein believed that the universe was timeless (which made no sense because we're spacetime, which according to GR is emergent), but Hubble proved him wrong, and later, Georges Lemaitre. The Big Bang is a Catholic invention using Einstein's math. All other models, like the steady state theory, have been disproven using CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background). Evolution I believe in, unlike the moron Stephen Meyer. Recently, scientists were able to upload a fly's brain to a computer, proving that consciousness might be computation. The simulation argument basically says that since reality is computation, perhaps there could be a programmer? God SPOKE us into existence (John 1:1). That's why we're information (geometry and so on).
Consciousness must exist beyond the brain because it's information in a system also. So when you die, you are merely information without hardware, which could still consciously exist in another dimension. Computational functionalism theorizes that the mind is essentially "software" running on the brain's "hardware". Because it posits that consciousness is independent of its physical substrate (i.e., it doesn't matter if it's made of neurons or silicon), it implies that a human mind could theoretically be uploaded and survive on a computer. Whole-Brain Emulation: The theoretical process of scanning a biological brain down to the synaptic level and rebuilding that exact neural architecture as a computer program. Digital Emulation: Transitioning the conscious mind into an entirely digital environment (often framed via the Simulation Hypothesis), making human existence informational rather than metaphysical.
The Bible says that the kingdom of heaven is "in your midst". Luke 17:21 and so on. Look into Bernard Carr's works. String theory is the supposition in advanced maths that suggest that perhaps when you die, the information is consciously preserved in another dimension. At least that's my interpretation of it. And multidimensional doesn't mean "afar off" but rather these are different dimensions within spacetime itself!
But that's just my theory. Does consciousness stop at death or does the software (consciousness) running on the hardware (brain) migrate elsewhere?
TLDR: Because of paranormal experiences religon will survive.
Hi I was not born in a well organized religon, and I wasn't religous anyways. So I am naturally athiest and irreligious. So I see there are like say, western atheists who don't like their "god" and want to argue against it, and think that they are winning.
Actually you are not winning. Here is why, even though science have come a long way to show that when you measure x you can accurately predict y for things like particles and waves, and anything made of particles and waves like bridges and planes, there are things science find it hard to answer.
Imagine there was a doctor who said, she was an Athiest all her life, and then she had a Near Death Experience in which she was able to communicate to the doctor who was working on her and see everything outside her body, I know about the esteemed doctor Olaf Blanke being able to explain it using the connection to TPJ, but he can't explain the whole experience. Also we are not sure weather that OBE is same as this OBE.
In my opinion, traditional religons that go by the book would die away, religous people will reject the book, they will now look in to these paranormal experiences.
I don't believe in religon, I think we might be living inside a universe which is more complex than we can understand at the moment so what we can't understand gets reflected as paranormal experiences. For example, if ghosts are real, ghosts might be a different kind of life made of different matter, and we might become ghosts after we die like caterpillars become butterflies. Nothing to do with religon, its something we don't understand from Standard Model.
It is really hard to do science. You have to prove things mathematically and experimentally and you move like a snail. Mass hysteria and speculation move faster.
When I argue with athiests about paranormal experiences, they speak like they can explain everything scientifically. Instead of admitting that they can't they say that these paranomal experiences are created by the brain. I also find hard to accept paranormal things to be true by science that I know of, but if they are real experiences of real people, how can we disprove them without a scientific explanation that explain it all? Not partly. Like if a UFO abducted a person, all we can say is there is about 0.01% confidence in that being true according to our current model of reality. (Its not just you see it you believe it)
TLDR: Because of paranormal experiences religon will survive.
Religions attempt to provide answers and explanations to many of humanity's deepest questions. And while these answers may provide comfort and certainty, they can also diminish the motivation to keep doubting them. Curiousity is often born from uncertianty, and when uncertainty disappears, so can the desire to investigate, ask, think, pursue of further knowledge and understanding - everything that over thousands of years lighted countless lives with the sense of purpose and fulfillment.
When accepting God and traditional religions, you need no longer wonder about all sorts of philosophical dilemmas that occupied the minds of thinkers for centuries.
Accepting faith forces you to accept all the classical old - fashioned answers.
"Is the universe pre-determined?" - No. God gave us all a free will.
"Where do our thoughts and emotions come from?" - we have a soul that remains after death.
"What is the nature of morality?" - good and bad are objective values.
"How should we face the apparent meaninglessness of life?" - The purpose in life is fulfilling God's will and obtaining our place in heaven.
"How can we truly know things?" - The source of all knowledge is God.
"Where does consciousness emerge from?" - it is a property of your mind and selfhood as God created you.
All these pre-existing answers derive from the mere act of accepting faith.
You can no longer wonder, explore, think, debate, about all these question, since once these answers are accepted as unquestionable truths, the incentive to examine them independently is weakened, and moreover - becomes pointless.
The same pattern appears to exist with science.
Why devote one's life to search and explore knowing that the ultimate answer for all questions is God, and that perfect knowledge and understanding awaits them in the afterlife?
That all the answers are there, waiting for you, and hence working so hard to reveal them would simply be meaningless?
One would not endeavour to explore, knowing that beyond death awaits ultimate knowledge and a perfect accordance with truth.
So this is more so me looking for answers to some of my experiences.
I am agnostic but I believe there's more chance that God exists than not. I wanted to share some of my reasons why and see if there's some reasoning in my beliefs.
How do we explain things such as enlightenment. I got a taste of this through a bipolar episode of course things came back to normal at some point but my experiences were relatable to even people who don't have bipolar.
There's certain teachings and lifestyles who's whole point is dedicated to reaching this kind of tranquility and oneness so while I know in my case it was a case of mental illness,what about for people who experience that without it,either through meditation or other much healthier means.
On the analytical side of things when I look at the world and how it operates i sort of feel like given our intelligence as a species if we look at how dumb and chaotic the world can be. If we look at some of the incredible technology and advancements we have made in almost every field. I find it hard to believe that we still have a lot of social,lifestyle issues and environmental issues.
I feel like there's some problems the world faces today that should be a complete non issue.
I also feel like we could be hundreds of years ahead in simple things such as quality of life. So when look I around I feel like there is a sort of evil force that is sort of keeping people in this state of chaos and ignorance. I will go further into this is if asked in the comments but to cut it short if there is something supernatural that's keeping humans from achieving their highest potential i think the opposite of that also exists in some shape or form.
Anyway I sort of wanted to hear some other perspectives and explanations on the matter maybe I haven't thought about some of these things from another lens.
here i am trying to prove there is a god with the most of attributes of the catholic god (catholic are Christians to be clear i am catholic ). To start my argument is will start by stating some things have to potential to be something else and everything that exists is it it fully realised state as well. Everything that has potentiality which means it has the potential to be something else needs to have a cause that is in a state of actuality, something in a state of actuality is something it it fully realised state as we can see everything that existed and has existed has potentiality in the universe and in the big bang ,but it is clear that everything cant have potentiality as that would mean they would have to have a cause , If everything has as cause there are two ways you could try to explain it there is a infinite series of things turning from potentiality to actuality by things in a state of actuality, or there is a first cause this is necessary for everything to have a cause as a cause is only possible in a finite series of events so there must be a first cause.
As if have said earlier anything was potentiality has a cause so this first cause must being pure actuality and it would need to not be like finite things like non intelligent objects as those objects have potentiality, so it would have to be a intelligent being but not and intelligent being that has potentiality so if would have to be all powerful to be pure actuality in power, it would have to be all knowing to be purely actuality in the area of knowledge, it would also have to be all loving to be pure actuality in being loving , it would have to be transcendent as everything that has potentiality is part of the universe it does not have potentiality so it cant be part of the physical universe because of this and would have to be boundless as being finite not infinite would mean it would be like the universe and have potentiality which it is not . this cause in have described previously in this post has almost all the attributes of the catholic god. i am trying to prove that a being with pretty much as the attributes of the catholic god exists and how this is undeniably true.
my aim is that you will believe at least in a first cause with most of the attributes of the catholic god and even better believe in a being with all the attributes of the catholic god and ideally believe in the trinity in the future. i hope you will at least accept that there has to for existence have to be a god with most of the attributes of the catholic god. please respond to the whole argument don't just pick out and focus on the weakest bit of it. if you want o understand the catholic view of god more read the Athanasian, nicene- Constantinopolitan or apostles creed from a reliable catholic source like EWTN and catholic answers and websites of the vatican. please be polite in you responses and be charitible in engaging with my post.
