Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 20:43     Subject: Why are you an atheist?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:For the athiests here who claim athiesm is the only logical conclusion...

Take a look at any YouTube video of William Lane Craig. He is a Christian philosopher (not a theologian, but a philosopher) who has had many debates with prominent athiests to include Christopher Hitchens. The entire basis of his positions are grounded in classical logic.

He is not demeaning to athiests, he merely concludes their position on God is not at all logical. He grants that there is some possible logic in being agnostic, but not athiestic.

I think most athiests who are not vehemently anti Christian would find him at least to be interesting, if you are not persuaded.



And there it is. Atheists are anti-Christian. Not anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-Buddhist, anti-Hindi....cause those people don't believe in the one true god either, right?


New poster here. Actually as an Atheist I'm not "Anti" any of them, I just don't believe the gods these faiths worship exist. In fact, from an academic perspective, I find all religions fascinating. From a practicing perspective I'm equally disinterested in all of them. You can believe what you want. One can not argue with faith (or lack of thereof).
Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 20:37     Subject: Why are you an atheist?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Word 15:38. the whole notion of an all powerful, all loving, all knowing god is an impossibility, a logical fallacy. He can't be all three.

Only according to limited human logic


It's the inverse of the story of the boy and the starfish, where the boy is faced with a beach full of stranded starfish and starts throwing them back one at a time. When someone observes that there are so many dying starfish that he can't make a difference, the boy says, "It made a difference to that one."

If God has a beneficent master plan for humanity, it involves the suffering of individuals. While the overall goal may be good, the methods make a difference to the few who are sacrificed for the greater good. Thus, God is causing the suffering. It may be in service to an overall greater good and master plan that we can't comprehend, but in the moment, God is causing pain and suffering to further His goals, and the person doing the suffering is unlikely to say, "I'm happy to be suffering/dying for the greater good of God's plan."
Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 20:36     Subject: Why are you an atheist?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Word 15:38. the whole notion of an all powerful, all loving, all knowing god is an impossibility, a logical fallacy. He can't be all three.

Only according to limited human logic


There goes that darned circle again.
Quit being a square.
Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 20:30     Subject: Why are you an atheist?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Word 15:38. the whole notion of an all powerful, all loving, all knowing god is an impossibility, a logical fallacy. He can't be all three.

Only according to limited human logic


There goes that darned circle again.
Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 20:28     Subject: Why are you an atheist?
I was an atheist until I spent more time around religious people who were really getting something out of it. These people didn't just go through the motions. They put there whole heart and soul into their belief, and even as a devout atheist, it touched me.



Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 20:06     Subject: Why are you an atheist?
Who cares?
Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 20:06     Subject: Why are you an atheist?
Anonymous wrote:Word 15:38. the whole notion of an all powerful, all loving, all knowing god is an impossibility, a logical fallacy. He can't be all three.

Only according to limited human logic
Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 19:51     Subject: Re:Why are you an atheist?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Take a look at any YouTube video of William Lane Craig. He is a Christian philosopher (not a theologian, but a philosopher)


Why is this distinction so important? Particularly when he has a PhD in philosophy AND a Doctor in Theology degree?


The distinction is relevant because when he has these structured debates, he does so in a way that is more philosophical than theological. He uses logic and presumes that his debate opponent would not agree to any theological premise.


William Lane Craig is to logic what Michael Behe is to biology.

Craig's logic is demonstrably flawed when it comes to cosmology and other arguments he makes where he uses logical constructs that sound good at the time, but fail upon detailed inspection. Among other things, Craig has admitted multiple times that he will not change his faith no matter what the evidence points to, because he has "witnessed the Holy Spirit in his heart". (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q78ahkiMtFk)

So that doesn't sound like someone who's open to the spirit of inquiry, that sounds like someone who has decided what his conclusion is and is now trying to justify it.

If Craig simply stopped at his statement that he will not change his faith no matter what the evidence points to, because he has "witnessed the Holy Spirit in his heart," that would be a testament to faith. But people like Craig and Behe and those who look to prove the existence of God via science or logic are doomed to fail, because such efforts are contrary to faith.

But you have to feel sorry for people like Craig and Behe. Faith is belief despite the lack of evidence. At it's most basic, faith in God is like the "trust fall" that you do at team building exercises - you can't see your team members, and you simply have to trust that they won't let you hit the ground when you fall backwards, or, in the case of Indiana Jones, when you deny your rational mind and step off the cliff hoping there's an invisible bridge.

But when we do the trust fall, we're scared. We try to listen to make sure that our team members are actually behind us. We look for evidence to support our belief (and hope) that someone will be there to keep us from getting hurt.

We want support for our belief when faith falters, and having atheists running around saying, "There is no God," and having science continually pushing back the boundaries of the universe/multiverse feeds that kernel of doubt. So, one way to address that is to use the tools of science to try to prove the atheists wrong and prove there must be a God.

Unfortunately, science and logic are really bad at proving the improvable unless they are manipulated to achieve fraudulent results.

At the Dover School Board trial, Behe was ultimately forced to admit that the definition of science he was advocating to justify Intelligent Design would have to allow astrology and other similar pursuits to qualify.

The logical arguments Craig uses to "prove" God must exist are all the logical equivalent of the exercise you do in algebra that "proves" 1=2, but there's a trick in the middle that involves dividing by 0, which invalidates the proof because division by 0 is undefined.

Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 18:31     Subject: Why are you an atheist?
Anonymous wrote:I can't be definitively sure that God doesn't exist, but I don't believe in one.

If I went through the motions of religion simply to appease a deity, despite not believing, that would be what's known as Pascal's Wager.

I look at the universe and while I don't know a lot of things about how it was created, whether it is unique and, if not, how it fits into the multiverse and how [b]that[/t] was created, I don't see a need for a deity in that process (but I freely admit there may have been one).

When I look at the evolution of religious belief, I see primitive peoples who attempted to explain things they didn't understand based on a variant of Clarke's Law which says that the behavior of any sufficiently complex system is indistinguishable from magic. (Clarke's Law in its original form says, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.") They created "gods" to explain all the things they didn't understand - creation, weather, seasons, life, death, etc.

Modern religious believers look back on those pantheists and say, "They just didn't understand about God," but modern religions don't actually provide any explanation why the modern, monotheistic god(s) are any different from the pantheons of old. To me, the mythology of the modern god(s) exists to perform the same functions of providing (literally) a deus ex machina for the things people don't understand and to serve as an enforcer of cultural norms and desired behaviors.

The more science pushes back the boundaries of the known and understood, the less need there is for a deity to explain it. Also, the more we understand about the multiverse, the "bigger" a deity has to be to have created it - making such a deity even more removed from life on our little rock orbiting our "unregarded yellow sun far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy." Such an entity would have less in common with us than we do with the smallest pieces of cells in our bodies.

So, even if there is a deity responsible for creating the multiverse, I simply don't believe that it would have any interest in us and our doings, and it certainly wouldn't be demanding worship from us or jealous of whether we worshipped something else.

It would be nice to think there was a caring, omnipotent, omniscient entity out there, and it would certainly be nice to believe that after I die I'll be reunited with loved ones forever after, but I don't believe it. I'd rather live my life to maximize the value of the time that I have on Earth with those I love, because I don't believe there's an afterlife.

When I die, my genes will live on in my children and descendants, and I hope that they are my gift to posterity (if not, no give backs!). The memories of me will live on for a while in the minds of those who care about me, and the bits of me - all of which were formed in ancient supernovae - will get recycled by the universe. And I'm ok with that, although I'd like to postpone it for as long as possible.


Agree fully. I think we are hardwired culturally to accept something in the form of a higher power. We are constructed with a bunch of chemicals that keep us from dwelling on the idea that we are born and then pretty much die at some point...with no way to understand why, when, or even how. There is great injustice and suffering in the world- with no way to understand why. When those chemicals wane, we have invented more to help with this and to provide the calm that we need to suggest we are more than we are- that we have some larger purpose in a larger plan. We fear death because we don't know what it will be, knowing we will not be with what comforts us in this life. So, we invent reasons for our being, our purpose, our intent. Superstition provides a means of thinking that we have some control- which we do not. Even the term "atheist" is a nod to a deity as it has to do with the negation of the concept. Ironically, I do not have any issue with believers. In the end, if they have believed all their lives and then there is nothing in the reward of death, they will not know it one way or the other. Those of us who question, or don't believe, do not have that comfort of a "story" regardless. I wish I could believe. What I do believe is that while we are here, we have the choice of treating others as compassionately as possible, and to love as much as can. In this way, we do influence the world in great ways that impact the present and the future. Our actions, however small, may trigger a series of events ( which we may or may not ever know about) that can either positively affect the world or negatively affect the world- at that is our legacy. That may be what God is.
Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 17:00     Subject: Re:Why are you an atheist?
Anonymous wrote:
Take a look at any YouTube video of William Lane Craig. He is a Christian philosopher (not a theologian, but a philosopher)


Why is this distinction so important? Particularly when he has a PhD in philosophy AND a Doctor in Theology degree?


The distinction is relevant because when he has these structured debates, he does so in a way that is more philosophical than theological. He uses logic and presumes that his debate opponent would not agree to any theological premise.
Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 16:57     Subject: Why are you an atheist?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:For the athiests here who claim athiesm is the only logical conclusion...

Take a look at any YouTube video of William Lane Craig. He is a Christian philosopher (not a theologian, but a philosopher) who has had many debates with prominent athiests to include Christopher Hitchens. The entire basis of his positions are grounded in classical logic.

He is not demeaning to athiests, he merely concludes their position on God is not at all logical. He grants that there is some possible logic in being agnostic, but not athiestic.

I think most athiests who are not vehemently anti Christian would find him at least to be interesting, if you are not persuaded.



And there it is. Atheists are anti-Christian. Not anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-Buddhist, anti-Hindi....cause those people don't believe in the one true god either, right?


I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing it out. I should have used the phasing anti-religion.
Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 16:51     Subject: Re:Why are you an atheist?
Take a look at any YouTube video of William Lane Craig. He is a Christian philosopher (not a theologian, but a philosopher)


Why is this distinction so important? Particularly when he has a PhD in philosophy AND a Doctor in Theology degree?
Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 16:49     Subject: Why are you an atheist?
Anonymous wrote:IMO, there are very few atheists. At most, they're agnostic.


And where exactly is your data to back this assertion up?

I agree with others that said that agnosticism is a stepping stone to atheism. I was an agnostic for maybe, 48 hours - if that.

I've been an atheist for over a decade. Although perhaps forever, as I always had doubts growing up, but didn't feel that it was even possible to express or admit those doubts. FWIW I was raised in a non-Christian religious family. I simply believe that all religions, all gods, are totally manmade things.
Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 16:38     Subject: Why are you an atheist?
Take at this list of gods:

http://www.rationalresponders.com/a_big_list_of_gods_but_nowhere_near_all_of_them

Let's say there are 1000 of them on the page. You don't believe in 999 of them. Why? How come? Why did you rule out 999 of them? Why are those 999 incorrect?

It's kind of like that. I just believe in one less.

The ways people choose which god is the "right" and "true" and "real" god is more a reflection of their upbringing, or maybe some reflection of their own self or individual fears.
Anonymous
Post 01/21/2014 16:11     Subject: Why are you an atheist?
Anonymous wrote:For the athiests here who claim athiesm is the only logical conclusion...

Take a look at any YouTube video of William Lane Craig. He is a Christian philosopher (not a theologian, but a philosopher) who has had many debates with prominent athiests to include Christopher Hitchens. The entire basis of his positions are grounded in classical logic.

He is not demeaning to athiests, he merely concludes their position on God is not at all logical. He grants that there is some possible logic in being agnostic, but not athiestic.

I think most athiests who are not vehemently anti Christian would find him at least to be interesting, if you are not persuaded.



And there it is. Atheists are anti-Christian. Not anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-Buddhist, anti-Hindi....cause those people don't believe in the one true god either, right?