The final and ultimate proof for the truth of Christianity

[Jack the Bodiless]

Nice fishing attempt there, AH...

However, I became an atheist long before anyone died that I cared about. There have since been deaths of relatives, yes (some of them quite young: two deaths of relatives from brain tumors, one aged 35, the other 41). But it never occurred to me to "blame God" for them.

Nonexistent mythological beings can't affect me. Those who believe in nonexistent mythological beings, however, CAN.

I own a timeshare in Bali.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
Nice fishing attempt there, AH...

However, I became an atheist long before anyone died that I cared about.

Ah - there it is again - another clue. You "became" an atheist. This suggests you were once a believer?

So the question remains - why are you so angry at God?

You seem very hurt. Like God disappointed you somehow.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Ah - there it is again - another clue. You "became" an atheist. This suggests you were once a believer?

Until I was about ten years old, yes. I was raised as a Christian.

So the question remains - why are you so angry at God?

The God of the Old Testament is a comic-book villain. I'm not angry at him, just as I'm not angry at Fu Manchu or Ming the Merciless. However, I am rather disturbed by the fact that some think he's a "good guy".

And then there are the creationists...

You seem very hurt. Like God disappointed you somehow.

I lost faith in God a few years after I lost faith in Santa (the parallel seemed obvious). You think God should have given me presents?

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless

I lost faith in God a few years after I lost faith in Santa (the parallel seemed obvious). You think God should have given me presents?

You think God should be like Santa? There is a rather revealing note of disappointment in that analogy

Yes, we are getting somewhere I think

[Jack the Bodiless]

If everything I have consists of "presents" from God (as the Christians claim), then he should have labeled them better.

[Alexander's Horse]

You see underneath all your scoffing and intellectualising there is a kind of spiritual pain. That last remark is a perfect example.

I'm not even sure if you ever stopped believing in God. You say you did, but did you really? I wonder..........

[Jack the Bodiless]

Actually, I miss Santa more than I miss God.

God was a distant authoritarian figure, like "the government". Santa was a magical being who gave out gifts and doesn't appear to have carried out any acts of genocide at all.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
Actually, I miss Santa more than I miss God.

God was a distant authoritarian figure, like "the government". Santa was a magical being who gave out gifts and doesn't appear to have carried out any acts of genocide at all.

The other breakthrough here is that you say you lost your faith when you were 10 and your ideas of God are, well, pretty childish, much like those of a 10 year old

[Jack the Bodiless]

Even as a child, I remember thinking that Noah's Ark was a story for very young children. I was amazed when I found out that some "grown-ups" believed it.

I think God is basically a childish concept: an exaggerated cartoon of a "father-figure". And I think a lot of adults might see that also if they really think about what they believe and why they believe it.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless

I think God is basically a childish concept: an exaggerated cartoon of a "father-figure". And I think a lot of adults might see that also if they really think about what they believe and why they believe it.

Or your idea of God is very childish and you don't have the feintest idea of what an adult or mature understanding of God might be like

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by JohnM2433
In a similar vein, I think that the loss most feel upon the death of a loved one is due in part to a feeling that the individual really is gone, i.e., there is no afterlife, even if the grieving person purportedly believes in one. There's a great deal of doublethink going on here.

I disagree with that conclusion. People feel very upset if a loved one is travelling half way across the globe and will not return for many years. They aren't thinking they are gone forever though.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

As when the thread started... the idea is that without personal benefit/experience/relationship with a deity, there is no reason to believe in one, as the stories that were written in a book thousands of years ago can hardly be relevant to people today, unless the people today do see/find that God in their lives today. ~and that is what all the religions claim anyway (that you should have - if you don't have - experience with God today)

If you have found Zeus in your life you might just as well go and worship him, if you think that Jesus is the one that you have the connection with than worship him, if you have noone well than be an atheist.

To religious people: Who are you to convince the "uneducated" masses that there is some devine being/beings that is/are and will save you if the people you are speaking to have nothing of him/them in their lives.

Action: Instead of forcing the others to pray/live like that God wanted - you live that way, and pray for them, and if the God/s is real pray for the thing you can't and it/they can do... if one of your goals is to prove that God existst - well pray for that, and maybe your prayer will be answerd like Elijah (at least I thought he is spelled that way). Who says that you are any worse that he was.

To atheists: Who are you to call on reason to disapprove God or Gods to people who have some contact with them in their own lives whether trough prayer or thinking that it/they cured them or whatever, when you cannot reasonably disapprove Gods existance.

To do: try praying once and than you can say that there was no response and that whatever God the others claim exists - you can be positivley sure that he does not exist, as you had no response, and therfore no reason to believe in one. As an (in christian case) omnipotent/omnipresent God should certainly hear you.

Still many people today claim to have such experiences, and many more don't, as it is such a lose/lose case - it is a perfect place for good old debates with no end

[Jack the Bodiless]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Or your idea of God is very childish and you don't have the feintest idea of what an adult or mature understanding of God might be like

Well, given that the Bible is a book of fairy stories written by a primitive tribe of Bronze Age goat-herders who thought the Earth was flat: why do these mature, sophisticated adults keep referring to it?

I generally respect those who choose to believe in an undefined "higher power". It's not a belief that I share, and I also have issues with those who claim that such a higher power is necessary (because I've investigated many such claims). But we can generally "agree to disgree".

The problem is with those who wave "holy books" about, and quote passages to justify whatever their favorite form of bigotry, logical fallacy, or scientific falsehood is.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless

Well, given that the Bible is a book of fairy stories written by a primitive tribe of Bronze Age goat-herders who thought the Earth was flat

There it is again - the simplistic childlike view of a 10 year old.

I'm not sure you can squeeze the whole bible into a pidgeon hole quite that small Jack

[JohnM2433]

Alexander's Horse responded to Jack the Bodiless by saying

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
So the question remains - why are you so angry at God?

You seem very hurt. Like God disappointed you somehow.

Are you suggested that Jack doesn't believe in God because he's mad at Him? Personally, I've never stopped believing in someone because I was mad at that person. In fact, I can't believe or disbelieve anything at will. Yet I notice that people invariably talk about religion as if faith were voluntary. Is it for you? Maybe I am actually the strange one in this regard(!).

You can't seem to accept that someone would stop believing in God except as the result of some sort of emotional trauma. Personally, I think that atheism may, ironically, be embraced more easily by those with a background of strict religious teachings. Once you're old enough to realize that, taken together, all those dogmas just don't make sense (this happens around 10 or 12 or so, and finding out that something else you unquestioningly believed in (Santa Claus) is fake really does help), it's a lot easier to question religion in general; if you were able to believe a bunch of nonsense, and a bunch of apparently intelligent people who taught it to you could too, what reason is there to believe that that's not the case with all religions? Whereas a rational individual schooled in less narrow religious teachings may never need to question his/her childhood faith, as those teachings may be sufficiently broad not to be directly contradicted by each other or the real world.

I think that this could explain the tendancy of some atheists and agnostics to lump Christians in general together with Creationists and similar wackos. They take it for granted that almost all religion is equally irrational, but that ain't necessarily so.

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin
I disagree with that conclusion. People feel very upset if a loved one is travelling half way across the globe and will not return for many years. They aren't thinking they are gone forever though.

Yes, I've thought of that. But I still don't think that the grief that even those who believe in an afterlife feel upon a loved one's parting with them in the physical world equals that which they feel upon a loved one's parting into the spirit world. I don't have any actual evidence to back up that claim; it's just a gut feeling, and I'll freely admit that it could be quite wrong.

Similarly, I think that almost everyone fears their own death, and not because it will separate them from their loved ones or because they might go to hell. If I'm right about that, it's either because their faith is less than 100% certain, or because an abstract belief in the afterlife doesn't translate itself into the appropriate emotion(s). Although no doubt some people have faith genuine and deep-rooted enough that the prospect of death doesn't trouble them at all.

What term, if any, is there for "people who believe in an afterlife"? I find it tiresome to repeat that phrase over and over.

You know, I just thought of something, and I'm going to relate it, because it seems so relevant to what I'm discussing: I never got over my childhood fear of darkness. I still imagine monsters lurking in it, and pull the covers up over my head. I know they're not there, but that doesn't keep me from being afraid of them. I imagine that that sounds absolutely absurd and childish to a lot of you; yet I bet that most of you still find books and movies scary, despite the fact that you know they're not real. It's as if there's an emotional part of the brain that has "beliefs" of its own, and doesn't care what we rationally decide is and is not true. As the above example demonstrates, these "emotinal beliefs" may be irrational ones, so if we react emotionally as if death = oblivion, that doesn't indicate that the subconscious part of us that believes that is that smarter part, and I certainly don't mean to suggest that. I only wished to point out that this internal division, as it were, does indeed exist.

"I have a healthy respect for many forms of danger, but only one truly irrational fear."
-Scott Adams, on his fear of water, in The Dilbert Future