Do Gods Exist?

[DBT]

"Faith is like a piece of blank paper whereon you may write as well one miracle as another." ~ Charles Blount (1654-1693)

Faith, like faithfulness, faith in your spouse, children, family, science, money. Credit, credentials, credible - all mean faith. Faith is simply trust. You know that don't you? I think atheism in general, and specifically these forums, need a translation guide for double speak and misappropriated colloquialisms.

No, not the same. Direct experience with someone or something is not the same as a belief held without the support of evidence. Building trust or an understanding of how the world works is not the same as having faith in a belief held without evidence.

 

[Elixir]

You have to insist upon your opinion as fact even though you can no more prove your position is true than mine. So, you demand evidence (the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid) and proof (evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement) without fully understanding what those things are.

Gee, that would make more sense (as well as being more honest and factual) written with the first and second persons reversed, I.e. “I have to insist upon my opinion as fact even though I can no more prove my position is true than yours.” Etc. etc.
At least that would make it an unassailable assertion of fact, rather than a specious conjecture.

You actually lack any authority or knowledge to present the above as fact as written.

It is interesting to note how long it took you to get around to admit believing in the Santa Clause of American religion; the Xtian-style supernatural Creator-God invention.
That is typical of the religious “gotcha”-seeking crusaders who come around here.

 

[Elixir]

You know what's dumb?

Yes. I do. Atheism and science.

Reeel dam smort, yabetcha!
Y’all need a good ol fashioned wooden soapbox to stand on while waving your arms and proclaiming that Teh Stoopid afflicts everyone but you.
We ain’t never seen nuthin’ lak thet thar round these here parts!
(At least not for at least three days before you came here with your manmade can of rhetorical fog.) gonna tellya a secret you won’t believe:

WE SEE YOU!

 

[Jarhyn]

You know what's dumb?

Yes. I do. Atheism and science.

Reeel dam smort, yabetcha!
Y’all need a good ol fashioned wooden soapbox to stand on while waving your arms and proclaiming that Teh Stoopid afflicts everyone but you.
We ain’t never seen nuthin’ lak thet thar round these here parts!
(At least not for at least three days before you came here with your man made can of rhetorical fog.) gonna tellya a secret you won’t believe:

WE SEE YOU!

Like, most Christian apologists have the same damn arguments because they all come either from the same damn "leadership training" ecosystem, or knockoffs specific to the sects. The worst part is that as a kid and young adult, I was all over those events, and for whatever reason I was different and saw through the "cheapness" of their canned rhetoric, and had the actual time to study the fact that it's all build on hollow rhetoric and convincing people to knee-jerk reject science since it's so dangerous to their world view (it's central feature is doubt!)

 

[ideologyhunter]

"Faith is like a piece of blank paper whereon you may write as well one miracle as another." ~ Charles Blount (1654-1693)

Faith, like faithfulness, faith in your spouse, children, family, science, money. Credit, credentials, credible - all mean faith. Faith is simply trust. You know that don't you? I think atheism in general, and specifically these forums, need a translation guide for double speak and misappropriated colloquialisms.

Well, shoot, you need to skedaddle on over to islamqa.info, where you can find 9 indisputable proofs of Islam and the Quran, and you won't have to simply 'trust' nothin'. You'll have proof.

 

[Elixir]

You'll have proof.

Aw shucks. The thing about godders is they don' need no steenkin' proof. At least not the ones armed with invincible ignorance and rhetoric to match.

 

[Jarhyn]

And the worst part, @RIS? We know you won't deconvert no matter what we say. You can't. You're trapped in a church trained to reject you from your entire family community if you do become an apostate, and we are a sorry replacement for a community, however cult-based it is.

Look at what they have done to you in the name of a person who would certainly be appalled at such an act of rejection over a difference of opinion: they have made your very mother and father, perhaps, or your wife, or your friends, or perhaps "and..."

Do you not see how evil that is? How disdainfully and unmercifully and lovingly corrupt that is?

 

[DLH]

Because?

.

And the worst part, @RIS? We know you won't deconvert no matter what we say. You can't. You're trapped in a church trained to reject you from your entire family community if you do become an apostate, and we are a sorry replacement for a community, however cult-based it is.

Look at what they have done to you in the name of a person who would certainly be appalled at such an act of rejection over a difference of opinion: they have made your very mother and father, perhaps, or your wife, or your friends, or perhaps "and..."

Do you not see how evil that is? How disdainfully and unmercifully and lovingly corrupt that is?

First of all, wrong again atheist. I've never belonged to any religious or political organization or group. Secondly, for once, in spite of your indoctrination, propaganda, group think and ideology, think for yourself. Your desire to deconvert me is exactly the same thing you criticize the church for.

 

[pood]

Because?

.

And the worst part, @RIS? We know you won't deconvert no matter what we say. You can't. You're trapped in a church trained to reject you from your entire family community if you do become an apostate, and we are a sorry replacement for a community, however cult-based it is.

Look at what they have done to you in the name of a person who would certainly be appalled at such an act of rejection over a difference of opinion: they have made your very mother and father, perhaps, or your wife, or your friends, or perhaps "and..."

Do you not see how evil that is? How disdainfully and unmercifully and lovingly corrupt that is?

First of all, wrong again atheist. I've never belonged to any religious or political organization or group. Secondly, for once, in spite of your indoctrination, propaganda, group think and ideology, think for yourself. Your desire to deconvert me is exactly the same thing you criticize the church for.

No one has any desire to deconvert you. We simply point out how silly your arguments are. I mean, you criticize as “dumb” the very methodologies of science that gave you an internet platform to assail science as dumb. How dumb is that?

But why are you here? To convert us to Christianity? If that is the case, it would be hypocritical of you to criticize anyone for trying to deconvert you, if indeed anyone were trying to do that.

If not to get converts, why be here? Surely you must have realized that a board full of educated skeptics and atheists would be critical of your posts, so why do you get bent out of shape by criticism? What were you expecting?

 

[TomC]

"Faith is like a piece of blank paper whereon you may write as well one miracle as another." ~ Charles Blount (1654-1693)

Faith, like faithfulness, faith in your spouse, children, family, science, money. Credit, credentials, credible - all mean faith. Faith is simply trust. You know that don't you? I think atheism in general, and specifically these forums, need a translation guide for double speak and misappropriated colloquialisms.

Nope, the word faith is more complex and nuanced than that.
I have trust that my real parents loved me because of what they did for decades. (I wasn't a model child). Biomom and sperm donor were just a couple of dumbass college kids that "God" dumped me on in 1958. Ann and Bill C took me in and gave me a good home. I had faith in them based on solid evidence and personal experience.

That's extremely different from religious faith and theism. In that context, Faith means a Belief in things that the Believer really wants to be true, despite the lack of evidence. Or even in contradiction to the clear evidence. And has the corollary belief that the Believer is smart and special enough to understand what is real when most people are not.

I am not a hard atheist. See my self description for more detail. But I am not a theist because I don't think I am so great I understand more about God than most people. I'm not sufficiently delusional to believe that highly of myself.
Tom

 

[Jarhyn]

Because?

.

And the worst part, @RIS? We know you won't deconvert no matter what we say. You can't. You're trapped in a church trained to reject you from your entire family community if you do become an apostate, and we are a sorry replacement for a community, however cult-based it is.

Look at what they have done to you in the name of a person who would certainly be appalled at such an act of rejection over a difference of opinion: they have made your very mother and father, perhaps, or your wife, or your friends, or perhaps "and..."

Do you not see how evil that is? How disdainfully and unmercifully and lovingly corrupt that is?

First of all, wrong again atheist. I've never belonged to any religious or political organization or group. Secondly, for once, in spite of your indoctrination, propaganda, group think and ideology, think for yourself. Your desire to deconvert me is exactly the same thing you criticize the church for.

No one has any desire to deconvert you. We simply point out how silly your arguments are. I mean, you criticize as “dumb” the very methodologies of science that gave you an internet platform to assail science as dumb. How dumb is that?

But why are you here? To convert us to Christianity? If that is the case, it would be hypocritical of you to criticize anyone for trying to deconvert you, if indeed anyone were trying to do that.

If not to get converts, why be here? Surely you must have realized that a board full of educated skeptics and atheists would be critical of your posts, so why do you get bent out of shape by criticism? What were you expecting?

Exactly. And, he hasn't even asked WHY I am an atheist...nor why anyone here is, nor even taken the time to understand what that means.

I mean, I am absolutely going to call bullshit insofar as no religious person comes to a forum like this without affiliation to a religious sect. Nobody ends up religious on an island. Religious people, generally, cleave to churches, and *especially* Jehovah's Witnesses.

Every time a Christian apologist comes through here, it becomes apparent that the one with the hardened heart is them, hardened by repeated exposures to the claim that their heart contains something *complete* when all it contains is something *circular*, instead.

But it's just so droll and predictable when things come to this juncture with cocky dunning-kruger sorts, mostly in their teens and twenties, who have been *alive* for fewer years than the educated folks here have been considering the questions they claim to know the answers to better than us.

Young apologists are taught to reject even the foundations of logical reasoning, to use weak and sassy argument and semantic games that tie people in knots faster than they can catch the conflation that the arguments are designed to hide! They are taught *rhetorical technique* rather than *reasoning skills*, and for the weak minded, well, they can't tell the difference!

I would like to deconvert them though. Absolutely. If he thinks it is right to do to us, as you point out, it is right for us to do as much to him when he comes into our home.

If he wishes to do so *in good faith of negations*, he would come in here *assuming we could be right*, and hear out an earnest attempt at apologies for reason, first. They would earn their invitation by conceding that someone here has first right to the attempt.

Of course in a group forum like this that someone who has the right is EVERYONE.

But as I said, the good faith required for this is already violated by the fact that they are already vested in a church which will declare them apostate if they gave us a serious shot with a softened heart.

 

[Jarhyn]

In fact, to with my previous point, the moment I became an atheist and rejected my church despite the consequence was watching a church send away an interim pastor when that pastor encouraged the idea of actually considering others in such good faith for the sake of mutual understanding and coming to consensus.

We, as a class of youths in a church, sat with Mormons and discussed the differences in our faith in what I think is the singular most civil exchange I have ever been a part of with someone of a different set of beliefs and then the man who made that happen was kicked out of the church for it.

I watched exactly that event play out in front of me, effectively shattering any hope I had that such missionary religions operated in good faith, that anything tied to the power structure and messaging network that made that happen was corrupted to its core!

The leadership conferences? Those taught the kinds of sass we are getting from RIS today, rather than the Socratic dialogue.

"Professing themselves wise, they showed themselves the fool".

RIS, everything you know is wrong. The people who taught you, the ones at the very top? They taught you wrong as a cruel joke, the punchline of which is that you are the foot soldier whose brainwashing keeps them in power. They hate you and laugh at you and hoard your money to inflate their power and influence rather than any sake or purpose of building the "kingdom of heaven here, today, for *everyone*".

I am a person of Matthew 19:12. I am a eunuch devoted to building the kingdom of heaven!

Does your church, however, accept that I am trans? That others are trans? The only difference between a eunuch and a "trans person" is 2000 years of research and the discovery of how to manufacture the hormones we want rather than just removing the ones we don't! Even in Jesus' day, eunuchs commonly lived as women† and *these were the majority made by their own hands*, and *yes* they were devoted to building society up for everyone most times.

And your own religious structures, whatever brainwashing (aka "missionary training" or "leadership conferences" or "Covenant High In Christ") brought you here? I'm pretty sure it doesn't look kindly on people like me, who are exactly the ones your own prophet told you to accept!

You, @RIS, need to first strive to understand us, our beliefs or lack thereof, and how we operate in such a state as we do, in reasonable faith in each other rather than in a god, and how this nonetheless creates situations where such *atheists* still pursue "the kingdom of heaven, here, now, for everyone", and *secular* arguments that this is the right thing to do!

†I am a eunuch, though; one of the few who want "neither" rather than "the other", however the trans girls I know tend to go harder on the secular kingdom of heaven thing than I do, even. See also: Hijra (the Indian eunuch community)

 

[southernhybrid]

That doesn't matter. Kim Jong Un is a god and he exists.

Whatever, dude. Are we all done here with this nonsense?

Oxford Dictionary definition of God:
1. In Christianity and other monotheistic religions, the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.
2. In certain other religions, a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity; an image, idol, animal, or other object worshiped as divine or symbolizing a god; used as a conventional personification of fate.
3. An adored, admired, or influential person; a thing accorded the supreme importance appropriate to a god.
4. Informal: the gallery in a theater.

Never mind. I see you've gotten quite a few people to waste more time today. Have fun!

 

[Jarhyn]

That doesn't matter. Kim Jong Un is a god and he exists.

Whatever, dude. Are we all done here with this nonsense?

Oxford Dictionary definition of God:
1. In Christianity and other monotheistic religions, the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.
2. In certain other religions, a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity; an image, idol, animal, or other object worshiped as divine or symbolizing a god; used as a conventional personification of fate.
3. An adored, admired, or influential person; a thing accorded the supreme importance appropriate to a god.
4. Informal: the gallery in a theater.

Never mind. I see you've gotten quite a few people to waste more time today. Have fun!

And the very first thing he does with these definitions is to go on with conflating and equivocating them.

 

[DLH]

And the very first thing he does with these definitions is to go on with conflating and equivocating them.

I'm not equivocating just because you need to limit the definition and meaning of the word to validate your fake, ignorant ideology. A god is what I said it is, with sources.

 

[DLH]

Never mind. I see you've gotten quite a few people to waste more time today. Have fun!

Another ideologue with no argument.

 

[Jarhyn]

And the very first thing he does with these definitions is to go on with conflating and equivocating them.

I'm not equivocating just because you need to limit the definition and meaning of the word to validate your fake, ignorant ideology. A god is what I said it is, with sources.

Well, you seem to be so keen on thinking it's ignorant, but you know *nothing* about me. Being "3" does not give you a "1" or a "2" or even a "4".

To take what someone means to say and then misinterpret it? That's just straight up dishonest.

It's hard to believe you are "for real" how stereotypical and common your behavior is for a pre-ex-member here. It is unsurprisingly arrogant, but so on the nose... Are you just some troll fucking with us?

 

[DBT]

And the very first thing he does with these definitions is to go on with conflating and equivocating them.

I'm not equivocating just because you need to limit the definition and meaning of the word to validate your fake, ignorant ideology. A god is what I said it is, with sources.

A Caligula figure declaring himself to be a god doesn't make him a god. It's just a man making a declaration of godhood. Playing with words doesn't alter reality.

 

[Elixir]

Playing with words doesn't alter reality.

It very obviously alters some people's realities. But "our" realities and the external reality (singular within the dimensions to which it is confined) are not the same thing.
I'm perfectly happy to throw out my reality and adopt The Writ of RIS, just as soon as I am presented with that actual writ and the advantages of adopting it. The advantages must include greater predictive and explanatory power than Science in general, and more elegance and simplicity than Evolutionary Theory.
Reality is harsh, but it is a lot more robust than the alternatives I know of. So I like being able to get around in it.

 

[unapologetic]

"...all mean faith. Faith is simply trust."
No authority figure that says 'Trust Me' and demands it, can be trusted.

Your desire to deconvert me is exactly the same thing you criticize the church for.

Then why are you still here? What kind of perverted ego trip are you on?
Somebody needs to deprogram you.