I believe in unicorns because there's no proof they don't exist...so they must exist!
The Atheist Delusion
by looter 44 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
garyneal
Not sure if you guys watched the video or not, but people were dumbfounded and you might even say blindsided when the people told them proof for a God. It's just an example of how no matter how much you think he doesn't exist, you could be very wrong.
It's pretty clear and obvious that you're not going to listen to anything anyone tells you but in the off chance that you might here's a brief synopsis of my story. I was a born again Christian who really loved the Lord and loved being a Christian. While I was not raised in the church, I believed that it was the right place for me and I became a baptized believer in 1991. Throughout the 90's I had a cold/hot relationship with Christ but in the late 90s I was very on fire.
I married my wife, a JW, in 2003 and I still attended church thinking that my faith was correct. When she decided to reject it and 'progress in the truth' I had a crisis of faith and had to know for certain if my beliefs were correct. I researched what they taught me and compared it to the Bible and found flaws. Then I dug deeper and found a lot of flaws in the JW faith. I was emboldened and felt that my faith was vindicated. I found a church and began taking our only daughter there every Sunday.
I joined this group sometime that same year still on fire for the Lord but I began to see how other Christians (like yourself) won't listen to logical arguments advanced by the atheists on this board. Many of them behaved the same way witnesses do when non-witnesses SHOWED them evidence that undermined their beliefs. I began to wonder if I was behaving the same way and had to know for myself why I believed what I believed and did I really have a sound rational reason for it. If there was no threat of hell, would I still believe? You see, I had to be able to follow 1 Peter 3:15 and therefore I had to have a sound rational argument for my faith.
At the end of the day, I had to believe in as many true things and as few false things as possible so I began following the evidence. I needed to be able to say that I had no reason to defend the truth because the truth stands on its own and does not need my defense. Therefore, I had to know what that truth really was and that's how I ended up here, an atheist.
Ray Comfort, banana-man, does not listen to atheists and makes all kinds of assumptions about their position that is totally untrue. I'll give him points for his outreach but if he really wants to reach atheists he first needs to start actually listening to them and try to understand them. Instead he thinks he has all the answers and thinks he knows the atheist position when he doesn't have a clue.If you're trying to reach atheists, you first need to listen to them, understand their position, and try to respect why they arrived at their position. Some atheists may reject God because they want to live how they want. IE. God does not allow me to be gay, I want to be gay, so fuck God. However, people like that are not really atheist in the strictest sense as they still hold some kind of belief in a god that they reject. I, and other atheists like me, do not reject God, I just simply cannot find good enough arguments to prove that he actually exists.
Do you have any such arguments?
-
cofty
there'd be a lot more skeletons around if there indeed was no God, as a lot more sodium chloride in the sea
Eh?
This is why rational people end up laughing disrespectfully at creationists.
Are you really getting your science from Banana Man?
-
Xanthippe
They don’t want God to be true because they don’t want to submit themselves to any authority that would restrict their most cherished freedoms.
Same tired old argument. We don't want anyone to tell us what to do. Really?
Those who hold emotional objections to belief have usually been burned by believers and even Christians.
So we're either bad or sad? Pathetic. What about having searched the evidence for years and come to the conclusion God doesn't exist?
-
Mephis
All Christians have to do is read some and they will be ready to tackle these barriers with ease and, hopefully, with grace. But, this only goes for those who indeed have this situation not for those who reject God because they came to a their own conclusion. You know who you are.
So Christians have an answer to every question, which works apart from all those times when it doesn't because atheists have used evidence to form a conclusion? Kind of like how the Reasoning Book was meant to work. Heck, kind of like how the Come Back to Jehovah brochure is meant to work.
As others have said, follow the evidence. I'm agnostic about a God in the deistic sense, but I'm pretty positive that old blood and thunderguts Jehovah is a human invention.
-
DJS
I can keep this up all day. This is a tip of the iceberg. Note the sources.
In a 2013 meta-analysis, led by Professor Miron Zuckerman, of 63 scientific studies about IQ and religiosity, Zuckerman noted: "Ongoing research among secular Americans confirms that non-religious family life is replete with its own sustaining moral values and enriching ethical precepts. Chief among those: rational problem solving, personal autonomy, independence of thought, avoidance of corporal punishment, a spirit of "questioning everything" and, far above all, empathy."
Studies have found that secular teenagers are far less likely to care what the "cool kids" think, or express a need to fit in with them, than their religious peers. When these teens mature into "godless" adults, they exhibit less racism than their religious counterparts, according to a 2010 Duke University study. Many psychological studies show that secular grownups tend to be less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militaristic, less authoritarian and more tolerant, on average, than religious adults.
Recent research also has shown that children raised without religion tend to remain irreligious as they grow older - and are perhaps more accepting. Secular adults are more likely to understand and accept the science concerning global warming, and to support women's equality and gay rights.
One telling fact from the criminology field: Atheists were almost absent from our prison population as of the late 1990s, comprising less than half of 1 percent of those behind bars, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons statistics. This echoes what the criminology field has documented for more than a century - the unaffiliated and the nonreligious engage in far fewer crimes. Since the number of godless is estimated to be 10 percent of the general population, all things being equal you would expect their prison population to be 10 percent. The fact that the actual number is 50 times less than expected can lead to only one of two conclusions: either the godless commit less crime than the religious or they’re too smart to get caught very often.
Another meaningful related fact: Democratic countries with the lowest levels of religious faith and participation today - such as Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Belgium and New Zealand - have among the lowest violent crime rates in the world and enjoy remarkably high levels of societal well-being. If secular people couldn't raise well-functioning, moral children, then a preponderance of them in a given society would spell societal disaster. Yet quite the opposite is the case.In a 2012 study by the Pew Research Center - 11 percent of people born after 1970 said they had been raised in secular homes. This may help explain why 23 percent of adults in the U.S. claim to have no religion, and more than 30 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 say the same. So how does the raising of upstanding, moral children work without prayers at mealtimes and morality lessons at Sunday school? Quite well, it seems. Far from being dysfunctional, nihilistic and rudderless without the security and rectitude of religion, secular households provide a sound and solid foundation for children.
For nearly 40 years, Vern Bengston, a University of Southern California professor of gerontology and sociology has overseen the Longitudinal Study of Generations, which has become the largest study of religion and family life conducted across several generational cohorts in the United States. When Bengston noticed the growth of nonreligious Americans becoming increasingly pronounced, he decided in 2013 to add secular families to his study in an attempt to understand how family life and intergenerational influences play out among the religionless.
He was surprised by what he found: High levels of family solidarity and emotional closeness between parents and nonreligious youth, and strong ethical standards and moral values that had been clearly articulated as they were imparted to the next generation.
"Many nonreligious parents were more coherent and passionate about their ethical principles than some of the 'religious' parents in our study". "The vast majority appeared to live goal-filled lives characterized by moral direction and sense of life having a purpose."
According to a Barna Research Group report, fundamentalist Christians have the highest divorce rate, followed by Jews and Baptists. The godless are tied with Catholics and Lutherans for the lowest divorce rate. It seems that some groups that claim to follow the Bible most strictly are not putting their money where their mouths are.
-
lara croft
cool trailer, I am going to watch the whole video tomorrow I still believe in god too
-
scratchme1010
What is the obsession of believers wanting to prove non-believers wrong!
That's just more crap. Piles and piles of more crap. The drama, the background music, nothing new at all. It's the same believer nonsense.
-
wizzstick
Ray Comfort is another money making 'Christian'.
Look on his You Tube channel and you'll see this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciPXWTnONBQ
Note there are loads of coins in the bag. And in the description box a link to his store:
http://store.livingwaters.com/gospel-tracts/ten-commandments-coin.html
$8 a coin!
Scammer.
-
DJS
Looter apparently is another hit and run theist. Looter, in the future I suggest that you conduct some actual research before you post garbage, because that is what this OP is.
And when I say research, I'm talking about Google scholar or academic quality, peer reviewed data - not vile bile spewed forth from your favorite confirmationally biased website by like-minded lazy brained jesus lovin' theists.
If you had any integrity, you would acknowledge you were wrong and apologize. Theists never do that of course. At least you didn't call down evil us, like Vidqun did and which is the typical practice of theists when they can't actually provide evidence and can't refute the evidence presented against them. And they never can. Provide evidence.
So I will take your silence as acquiescence and acknowledgement. Silence is a coward's way of showing contrition, but I will accept it.