I found Dawkins' The God Delusion helped me get a sense of some of the main points atheists make. In particular, I like how he has a chapter entitled "The God Hypothesis." I like what Hitchens has to say as well. His well-known book is God Is Not Great. As for youtube, there is an interesting call-in show called "The Atheist Experience."
Agnosticism / Atheism / Theism
by Twisty 36 Replies latest members private
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Terry
Terry: Here is a challenge try for even simpler statements. I want to end up with more knowledge on the Origin of life. Looking at your post makes English look like my 2nd language instead of first. Thanks for your statements.
The Origin of Life is what you want to know about?
Really?
Why?
Let's pretend you already knew everything that Science currently holds to be factual. Where would that get you? You can look that up on Google.
Why not select something that would REALLY BENEFIT YOU if you learned it?
I think Philosophy is a much richer pursuit, personally.
"What do we know and How do we know it?" Doesn't that sound like something more benefical to your mind? That is called Epistemology.
An epistemologyis a theory of knowledge. To have a clear grasp of one's own life and context, one needs to be able to sort out the mass of information,
claims, and ideas we receive from others; that skill is based in epistemology.
After all, at root, we need to know whether what we believe is really true. How do you know when someone has proven a point? That can be terribly important when the truth of a scientific theory, a doctor's diagnosis, or the outcome of a trial is at stake. Some people say that words are arbitrary and mean whatever we like. Does that mean it doesn't matter if someone uses words he can't define in down-to-earth terms? Should we worry if we don't feel like we have mystic intuitions, or should we worry if we do? Studying Epistemology gives you the thinking tools to perform necessary decisive tasks of learning.
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thetrueone
Some of this question can be honestly answered by acknowledging why and where the roots of theism began.
Thousands of years of human ignorance of the world the ancients lived, had to accumulate toward something.
Theism offered an answer to the unknowns as well made a direct meaningful connection to these deities, similar to the
way human relationships are fostered upon, father, son, mother and so on. The father of course being the most powerful and wise
and sons playing the part as secondary roles to the father. A few thousands years of this kind of idealogical concept created many
supportive stories established toward this relationship arrangement. Some of these are obviously documented in the bible.
Just because there were no written transcripts of theses types of relationships from other cultures doesn't mean they didn't exist, they did.
Many of these ancient cultures were structured around a relationship with various worshiped deities, until that culture was over taken by another,
as history shows.
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OnTheWayOut
My understanding so far to prove Atheism to myself i will need to prove 100% there never was a God at all, I can't really say "I'm an Atheist till proven otherwise."
It is impossible to prove such a negative. Prove that there is not a teacup orbiting earth with hot tea in it. It cannot be done. While you are looking in one place, it moves. Prove an invisible being who doesn't show himself doesn't exist. It cannot be done.
Maybe the only difference between Agnosticism and Atheism is the strength in the belief of your own rightness?
I left that behind with the JW's. They had to "be right."
Atheist, agnostic, believer, unbeliever- they are just labels. If I accept the label "Atheist" it means what I feel it means. I know the Bible is bunk and none of the gods of man's creation are real. I know that there is not an omnibenevolent, omnipotent power out there when I examine the suffering of innocent children in tsunamis. My atheism means I know there is no proof of a god. If God pops into everyone's head tomorrow and explains himself, I probably won't like him, but I can reevaluate the "proof."
It sounds like you want to remain agnostic, according to a common definition that it means you just don't know. Fine. I don't even insist on any such label and if I am pinned down for one, I choose "rationalist" to mean I believe what offers a rational explanation that best fits the data. But data changes, so I can change if it does.
Everyone must take their own spiritual journey and find their own way. I can describe mine, but it won't be your journey. I very much believed the God of the Bible was probably true when I discovered that Watchtower was a dangerous mind-control cult. I didn't stop at examining JW's, I examined the base of their religion- the Bible. I quickly learned that the flood, the age of man, the exodus were all wrong. I had to read archaeology like THE BIBLE UNEARTHED. I found some great videos on the internet on who wrote the Bible. I found out how it developed and when it developed. Sure, someone can argue that it's all opinions, but when you go down that road, you see for yourself how Bible supporters are really just holding on to their beliefs instead of actually forming rational opinions that fit known evidence. (I know that some will just flame that last statement. It doesn't change it's truth.)
I turned to more science to learn about evolution and, I won't get all into a whole field for you, but if God created us, he did it via evolution. That, or he planted neanderthals and other species in the earth to fool us, complete with enough fake evidence to make unbelievers out of people. If that's a test, I don't want to worship that god.
I didn't have to disprove every last idea of God. After awhile, you learn they are all manmade and some of their origins are lost. I basically went back to the tsunamis and suffering. If God could do something, he's not worth my worship. If he can't do something, then he's just an advanced being that doesn't deserve worship either.
Science doesn't fully know what "the spark of life" is, so I accept that they have good ideas but need work. One day, they will have it figured out. It may not be in my lifetime. It seesm that now that the supercollider at CERN is online, most of science is focusing on the building blocks and the start of the universe itself. I know they don't have those answers either, but may one day have better answers. Looking to science is better than "God did it." It fits only to explain that, but not how God came about. If "they" cannot explain adequately how God came about, "we" have the same problem with the universe, so it's really a moot point. I go back to the paragraph above about worship then.
I read so many books, I cannot remember them all. I read some eastern thought, some laymen's scientific books such as BEFORE THE BIG BANG, WHY EVOLUTION IS TRUE. I read the typical list of atheist books by Hitchens and Dawkins and the like. Tons more books were about the Bible. I really enjoyed Jonathan Kirsch's A HISTORY OF THE END OF THE WORLD and HARLOT BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD. I read Bart Erhman's GOD'S PROBLEM. So many more. Two things that directed me- what was available at the public library, and what came up as books that other people examined when they examined the books I was looking at on Amazon? But, really- read/view what you like.
This is a forum for such discussions to flourish and I don't go around outside of the internet telling theists that they are not rational. Spock from Star Trek learned that there was more to life than logic, so people need what they need. I leave them alone unless they want to discuss it.
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freydo
Since atheists have so much faith in their religion, that which they cannot prove nor disprove the obvious, that man didn't just fall out of a tree, we have to establish a hierarcy of ignorance beginning with the ignoramus - the Latin equivelent of agnostic. As we descend down the devolutionary chart, we come to heathen, followed closely by educated idiots and total morons.
As Buckminster Fuller pointed out, "You can't take two monkeys and come up a human...but you can go the other way and take two humans and come up with something pretty close to monkey..."
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Knowsnothing
Since atheists have so much faith in their religion
You're so off, it's not even wrong.
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poopsiecakes
Since atheists have so much faith in their religion, that which they cannot prove nor disprove the obvious, that man didn't just fall out of a tree, we have to establish a hierarcy of ignorance beginning with the ignoramus - the Latin equivelent of agnostic. As we descend down the devolutionary chart, we come to heathen, followed closely by educated idiots and total morons.
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freydo
Knowsnothing is an appropriate moniker
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Knowsnothing
Lol, would you care to engage in civil dialogue, or merely sling derogatory insults?
BTW, I don't think atheists argue that man fell out of a tree. In fact, that sounds more like the creation story set forth in Genesis, that we were made of dirt in one day.
Talk about embarrassing.
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Morbidzbaby
I can only tell you (the OP) what my own journey has entailed. I had doubts starting from a young age due to a LACK of any help or demonstration of love or caring from "god" (AKA Jehovah, at that time). When I got older, I wanted to know more about this "evolution" thing that I wasn't allowed to learn about in school.
I started simple, perusing the internet and reading both sides of the issue (for and against). It seemed to me that there was much more evidence and hypotheses in defense of evolution that made sense, than there was for creation and god. So I took it a step further, reading books like "Why Evolution is True". It's a pretty easy read and made me stop in my tracks and think "Hold the phone...". It was then that I realized that indeed evolution had much more evidence in support of it than creation or the god theory.
That's where I started, and at the time I called myself an Agnostic...because I just didn't know how I really felt...if I was ready to let go of a belief in a god. I stayed there in Agnostic-land for awhile. I continued reading, but then I branched out and read books like "Jesus, Interrupted" and "Misquoting Jesus" which gave me a different look at the Bible itself. Through my research, I found that there was no evidence to support the Bible as "the Word of God".
Eventually, I started watching YouTube videos by TheThinkingAtheist, which were enlightening and thought-provoking, as well as vids by other Atheists and those involving science, biology, etc.
The end result is that I am an Atheist...because through thorough research and also self-examination, I come to the conclusion that there is no god and there never has been.
One common misconception is this one: Surely if i mention there is a chance i could be proven otherwise, there is a chance there is a God which makes me an Agnostic?
The short answer is no. A good number of Atheists are open to being proven wrong...with solid, concrete, irrefutable proof. Not "Well, Jesus came to me and..." or "I prayed to god and I was cured of cancer"... But real SOLID PROOF. We are open to being proven wrong...very much so! A good number of us would change our tune in the face of such evidence because EVIDENCE (or lack of) is what we base our Atheism on. But as of yet, no such proof exists. Therefore, we remain Atheists, but are always open to being proven wrong.
