The Atheist Thread (Long Time Coming)

Quote: rxwine

I read it and thought he was just having some fun. Somewhere I've read similar descriptions of the physics of Santa's trip. What he should do is write the same general idea about the Easter Bunny. No easy task hiding all those eggs.

Next up, see if you can upset any people by taking Halloween too seriously.

I just feel his real target directly is children. He wants to be heard by children trying to maneuver around parents. Hence, why I said on the same stage as pedophiles. Adults don't need a mathematical explanation to know Santa Claus can't be Santa Claus. On that note, they don't need proof because they can just keep lying to their kids such as saying Santa is multi-dimensional and has as many clones as he needs.

Quote: 1nickelmiracle

I just feel his real target directly is children. He wants to be heard by children trying to maneuver around parents. Hence, why I said on the same stage as pedophiles. Adults don't need a mathematical explanation to know Santa Claus can't be Santa Claus. On that note, they don't need proof because they can just keep lying to their kids such as saying Santa is multi-dimensional and has as many clones as he needs.

If he was doing Sesame Street, or some other's children show, I might think differently. Maybe it's different these days, but other than children's host, cartoons, and so forth, I paid little attention to adults when I was age 7 or under.

If parents aren't monitoring, then their kids are likely to see and hear all kinds of inappropriate material far beyond Santa's existence. They may not understand something like South Park, but kids go around repeating things they hear at usually the worst times.

Quote: rxwine

I read it and thought he was just having some fun. Somewhere I've read similar descriptions of the physics of Santa's trip. What he should do is write the same general idea about the Easter Bunny. No easy task hiding all those eggs.

Next up, see if you can upset any people by taking Halloween too seriously.

I admitted I was too hard on him. Still, there is a lack of propriety to it, this making fun of it, as if we all believe in Santa Claus and need Tyson to set us straight with some science stuff.

Quote: 1nickelmiracle

I've been looking into this stuff. IMHO, anyone debating the existence of God using religious texts and religions is using a strawman argument. It's very common and usually all people want to speak about.

I agree. You'll often get from an Atheist the bit about how you have to be an idiot to think God is up there sitting on a cloud throwing bolts of lightning around. Easily destroyed Strawman.

I'm currently reading a book about old testament Bible stories for adults. For an Atheist, it is rich ground for ridicule, of course, if a person wants to believe religion is just stupid superstition and stupid make-believe. Yet my counter-argument is that such a view is a stupid attitude; yes, I am working in the word 'stupid' all around to highlight the irony either side can look at the same thing so differently. I think a lot of really profound things are to be found in it, and that's the right attitude for the reader.

The old testament can also be tiresome at times.

And shocking. You didn't want to lose a war with the Hebrews, we are talking: everything burned to the ground, and men, women, and children slaughtered to the last person! Annihilation! [sometimes]

Quote: odiousgambit

I agree. You'll often get from an Atheist the bit about how you have to be an idiot to think God is up there sitting on a cloud throwing bolts of lightning around. Easily destroyed Strawman.

I'm currently reading a book about old testament Bible stories for adults. For an Atheist, it is rich ground for ridicule, of course, if a person wants to believe religion is just stupid superstition and stupid make-believe. Yet my counter-argument is that such a view is a stupid attitude; yes, I am working in the word 'stupid' all around to highlight the irony either side can look at the same thing so differently. I think a lot of really profound things are to be found in it, and that's the right attitude for the reader.

The old testament can also be tiresome at times.

And shocking. You didn't want to lose a war with the Hebrews, we are talking: everything burned to the ground, and men, women, and children slaughtered to the last person! Annihilation! [sometimes]

It is so completely foolish for anyone to think there is evidence either way and to use this as a basis to form a conclusion. We literally cannot prove we exist or even the universe itself really exists. People can say I think therefore I am or there is the moon, Earth and sun, but there is no way to independently prove it without having to come back to human perception. When you start talking about these things, the ignorant people just start assuming you're making things up because all they do is care about pop culture and getting off, or work and kids, etc. It seems evident to me, the major religious texts are a combination of being completely fiction, some scattered historical events, and Godly thought experiments which might be what God would want to say if God existed and I don't know. To me it makes sense God is behind the scenes isolated from close to everything else which is not God.

I've seen people use the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent and actually think they can prove God isn't these things. Do they even grasp what these words even mean, if there is a God which is these things, the definitions we have for these words bars them from even making any conclusion because these characteristics are ineffable. We have such huge blind spots in observation and thinking, I cannot even comprehend how human beings with biological self-improvements, technology advancements will ever be capable of interplanetary dominance and understanding of the universe, let alone the next level making any progress in God. It's beyond my grasp. The universe itself and time are not constant, no one snapshot of the entire universe in time can even exist. Understanding the universe is a level below understanding God, and it is not possible. God can theoretically exist without evidence. One can start to feel there is progress when contemplating this, but the law of more knowledge illuminating more awareness of ignorance will always persist. The rabbit hole never stops, but I am apt to believe in some ways atheism and theism are the same thing. What really bothers me is a license these things grant to believe your fellow man doesn't exist and you shouldn't and don't have to care about them. Caring too much about things we have no ppwer is just a waste of time. This debate goes nowhere and it's a complete waste of time.

For perspective, blue did not exist!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=totDkXxKOXg

I find out telling people you believe in God and not the religious texts, and failing to tell them I don't believe anyone will ever meet God or know he exists, isn't that easy. There will never be evidence, this gets me nowhere. I will never know for sure how to keep God happy, if I should even try, if there are consequences. I have nothing but my imagination and ideas to go by. The thing is ideas and thoughts are not chosen, they are given to you by your environment. Is father gamble dead? I finally got his name.

Quote: 1nickelmiracle

I find out telling people you believe in God and not the religious texts, and failing to tell them I don't believe anyone will ever meet God or know he exists, isn't that easy. There will never be evidence, this gets me nowhere. I will never know for sure how to keep God happy, if I should even try, if there are consequences. I have nothing but my imagination and ideas to go by. The thing is ideas and thoughts are not chosen, they are given to you by your environment. Is father gamble dead? I finally got his name.

he never participated in this thread, I don't think, and has quit participating generally. He was trolled pretty bad, I won't mention any names

as for your position on God and so on, similar to mine. Revelation is a pretty hard sell for me [I don't mean the book of R.]. The idea that a higher power has communicated with certain people is not outlandish, but the nature of the scripture we have is not impressive in that regard. And it has stopped or at least waned, even if it happened ... I just don't see how someone can be faulted for asking why only certain people get this communication, and not others. I won't go so far as to dismiss it as all impossible, but ...

so I guess you can say I just don't go Atheist , but that God has revealed himself to certain people, or for that matter, is like a human being at all, is what I doubt

Quote: odiousgambit

he never participated in this thread, I don't think, and has quit participating generally. He was trolled pretty bad, I won't mention any names

as for your position on God and so on, similar to mine. Revelation is a pretty hard sell for me [I don't mean the book of R.]. The idea that a higher power has communicated with certain people is not outlandish, but the nature of the scripture we have is not impressive in that regard. And it has stopped or at least waned, even if it happened ... I just don't see how someone can be faulted for asking why only certain people get this communication, and not others. I won't go so far as to dismiss it as all impossible, but ...

so I guess you can say I just don't go Atheist , but that God has revealed himself to certain people, or for that matter, is like a human being at all, is what I doubt

Most people, if not all, are actually skeptics, just of different things. I just don't reserve any special exemption for religion. I think I stopped giving it an exemption earlier than my teens. If you roll ten dice sequentially, and then line them up in the order you rolled them you'll see an order of 1s through 6s that you'll probably never see again in your lifetime if you rolled them every hour of every day. Predicting an extremely rare event is what is near impossible, not seeing or experiencing one.

Seeing a onetime unusual event is easy, just the majority of combinations are meaningless happening all around you.

So, what I'm getting to is it is not improbable that someone will have a combination of experiences and illusions that make them believe in some fantastical new belief system. That may drive them to spread the belief.

When I try learning about physics, my mind can barely comprehend it. Nobody's mind can interpret and understand higher dimensions intuitively. Things we cannot perceive at all, nobody gets pitch forks out. I don't understand how others can be so sure about God's non-existence when we are so insignificant. I understand how it doesn't do anybody any good wondering when on this Earth you don't need to know if God exists, but being somewhat open isn't so bad since the odds of God's existence cannot be 0. I don't really see how evolution made believing in God a capability or where in the world the idea of a God came from(since minds cannot formulate original ideas which do not start from perception. I have a really low opinion of the human mind and all it is incapable of, too much error and blindness to be satisfied by my tastes. We're able to survive and not perceive the world for what it really is after all. It makes no difference for survival if you believe in God, but if God exists as people imagine, you cannot perceive God with your senses unless this same God let you somehow. It is almost as if people expect God to actually be living across the street or to think they could trap him somehow and if these kinds of cases cannot be true, then God doesn't exist. Regardless any kind of process of elimination cannot be done ever, it will be eternally impossible to ever chart the entire universe and account for every atom, then say God cannot exist because everything has been accounted for. Time across the universe is not standard anyway, the universe cannot be ever just be pinned down, how can it ever even be thought of as any single thing for one moment, I don't get this. A globe for the universe and all the data about it cannot be made, I would expect this to have to be possible to solve the God problem at all with all eternity.