Is there a God of atheism?

[unapologetic]

Learner said:

"what should be easy to conclude from what came after Abraham is that 'they all talk about him' therefore he is vouched for."

There are thousands of books that talk about Superman.
There are thousands of books that talk about Spiderman.
There are thousands of books that talk about Santa Cluse.
Liars can vouch for anything. Doesn't prove shit.
Followers of a cult WILL vouch for anything, without question.

If my old man had as much faith as Abraham, I'd have suffocated him in his sleep.
The Abraham story was one of the first things that deprogramed me as a kid.
I don't understand how anyone could think that story is 'inspirational'.

Learner said:

"people through the ages have not been convinced enough by what is written about Zeus to become followers,"

But that is not how it works. The vast majority of believers of any dog, are born into their belief and never question it.
Belief in Zeus died out, for whatever reason. And was never thought about again, 'through the ages'. Reading about Zeus has nothing to do with it.
How many religions have you studied, seriously considered? Before DESIDEING to stick with what your parents said you were?
Did you decide? Or just defend by reflex.

 

[ideologyhunter]

My two cents: Jesus was an aspiring rabbi and prophet who taught Torah law, wore the holy garments, was celebrating a Jewish holy day the night before his execution, never ascribed holy power to his mother, whom he treated with a brusque manner, sent his disciples out with instructions to minister only to the Jews, and who would not recognize the religion that developed in his name. He certainly wouldn't eat your Christmas ham. He would probably have been revolted by the notion that a Roman emperor gave muscle to the new religion, and that antisemitism had a vibrant life in its history.

 

[Learner]

Curiously - what would you say about atheists who believe they've seen ghosts and we're pretty sure these were not imagined?

I would say that they lack a grasp of the sheer power of our imaginations to mislead us; And perhaps point out that even if they saw something, it would fly in the face of what we know for certain about the way reality works, to assume that that thing was caused by a dead human.

This could be an interesting discussion.

I'll just mention one of the atheists who was part of a discussion board. A mathematician and a lecturer at a University in Scotland. He said that the apparition that he saw at the hotel room he was staying at, was of a female of some particular description that suddenly appeared by the window in his room. He said he knows for sure it wasn't his imagination because his wife saw it too! Upon his own little investigation he found out that other people have reported seeing the same thing too.

He does believes he saw a ghost .. but he believes there is a 'natural explanation' for it somewhere. I thought it fascinating, I still do, now as a theist.

 

[Learner]

Apologies if my response are slow to the posts (via phone). It's that busy time of year.

 

[Learner]

Learner said:

"what should be easy to conclude from what came after Abraham is that 'they all talk about him' therefore he is vouched for."

There are thousands of books that talk about Superman.
There are thousands of books that talk about Spiderman.

Did you not investigate the authors of these comic books? What did you find while inspecting each line under your microscope, assuming you were looking for any claims of 'truth' narrative doctrines?

What do the authors share and reveal of themselves! By their mouths, assuming they were like the authors of the bible, do they believe in the characters they write about in their stories? Do you get what I mean? The bible and comic book authors are not in the same category context as you erroneously think it is.

There are thousands of books that talk about Santa Cluse.
Liars can vouch for anything. Doesn't prove shit.
Followers of a cult WILL vouch for anything, without question.

Yes well I'm happy to know more. I'm sure reading from the "serious scholars" who spend a life time studying the 'santa texts' would help me with that. Although I'd think it be a tad dubious, like I mention in the above, regarding "statements declared" by authors of comic books compared with the statements actually declared by the authors of the bible.

If my old man had as much faith as Abraham, I'd have suffocated him in his sleep.
The Abraham story was one of the first things that deprogramed me as a kid.
I don't understand how anyone could think that story is 'inspirational'.

As a kid I didn't understand it but I did understand the other parts of the bible, the parts around Jesus, like 'love your neighbour as yourself, feed the hungry' and so on. I became a 'born again' a lot later in life, when being a non-theist when I joined the forum actually.

Learner said:

"people through the ages have not been convinced enough by what is written about Zeus to become followers,"

But that is not how it works. The vast majority of believers of any dog, are born into their belief and never question it.

I questioned the faith. I became agnostic, simply due to the fact, I didn't really read the bible! Theres a reason why the 'God debate' still continues on today in the advanced technological world . There's a reason why there are theists in the 'science community'. Some converted to Christianity when they were already scientists.

Belief in Zeus died out, for whatever reason. And was never thought about again, 'through the ages'. Reading about Zeus has nothing to do with it.

Yes emphasising on the belief in, as to why one becomes convinced in their faith and why does that faith still remains in current modern times.

How many religions have you studied, seriously considered? Before DESIDEING to stick with what your parents said you were?
Did you decide? Or just defend by reflex.

As mentioned above. Some people become religious later in life, even from an atheist upbringing.

 

[Learner]

No. I'd more likely not trust what I'm hearing in my head. Abraham was chosen, no one else. But If I did listen and God didn't stop me, like Abraham was stopped, then that voice in my head was not God's and I would have just killed my son.

That sounds like the old formula for identifying witches. Everyone knows that witches float, so throw a suspect in the river. If she floats, take her out and hang her for being a witch. If she drowns, then good news. She wasn't a witch.

Fortunately what you post is not a Christian practice.

How do we know that Abraham was chosen by God? Because God stopped him from murdering Isaac.

And how do we know that God stopped him? Because Abraham told us so.

And why do we believe Abraham's story? Because Abraham was chosen by God.

It's simple James. There were scriptures written after Abraham as well as many Prophets that came after him. I'm a simple man and the bible wasn't made to be difficult - what should be easy to conclude from what came after Abraham is that 'they all talk about him' therefore he is vouched for.

Just as Jesus validates Abraham!

Jesus, if he actually existed, contradicted prophets, laws, and Elohim/Yahweh: against an eye for an eye, against stoning, for love your neighbor as yourself which you would think is also against stealing land from Canaanites and constant holy wars of the old testament.

As I said to our new friend unapologetic, I didn't really read the bible, and I used to see and read similar to you.

Reading the verses now, like the one that says 'Jesus didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill them', should mean to me, the Old Commandments still stand. 'Still stand', implying in terms of people who could still be judged under those laws, without accepting a saviour!

The understanding that with a saviour, by simply the belief. Jesus IOW vouches for you:

Matthew 10:32

“Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven

Romans 10:9
that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;

Revelation 3:5-6
5 The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. 6 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches..

 

[southernhybrid]

That's interesting Learner because I was raised by Christian evangelicals and the more I read and thought about the Bible, the more I was grossed out by it. After attending a conservative Christian college for one semester, I became an agnostic searching for the true religion. After several years of that, I became a strong atheist in my mid 20s. After nearly 50 years, I'm still a strong atheist and so is my dear son, who I exposed to various religions, without ever telling him what to believe. His father is a Baha'i and to this day, he tries to convert my two grandchildren. The Baha'i Faith isn't nearly as crazy as the Christian religion, but it still is based on mythology, just a nicer mythology that doesn't even send anyone to hell. I honestly don't understand how anyone can believe in a god who threatens to torture nonbelievers for eternity. That's some pretty egotistical god, don't you think?

 

[ideologyhunter]

The world is about 33% Christian -- or professing Christian. According to the 'narrow is the way' teaching, doesn't this religion really teach that the vast majority of humans deserve eternal torture?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Jesus, if he actually existed, contradicted prophets, laws, and Elohim/Yahweh: against an eye for an eye, against stoning, for love your neighbor as yourself which you would think is also against stealing land from Canaanites and constant holy wars of the old testament.

As I said to our new friend unapologetic, I didn't really read the bible, and I used to see and read similar to you.

Reading the verses now, like the one that says 'Jesus didn't come to abolish the law but to fulfill them', should mean to me, the Old Commandments still stand. 'Still stand', implying in terms of people who could still be judged under those laws, without accepting a saviour!

The understanding that with a saviour, by simply the belief. Jesus IOW vouches for you:

Matthew 10:32

“Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven

Romans 10:9
that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;

Revelation 3:5-6
5 The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. 6 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches..

So, it's okay to kill gays if they are atheists who don't believe in Jesus? But if they believe in Jesus, they get a free pass? Or you require gays to confess. What if they don't confess? It's okay to follow the Old Testament laws to condemn them to death? What does that have to do with genocide?

In fact, I really don't see an answer to my question. You said that the old laws are derived from the two basic laws. So, I asked you to show a logical derivation.

Show this:

"Love your neighbor as yourself." ==> "If a man lies with a man as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them."

"Love your neighbor as yourself." ==> "However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.* Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God."
*to be clear, anything that breathes includes cats, small children, squirrels, dogs, slaves, goats, and babies.

The obvious truth is that loving your neighbor as yourself--generally speaking, since most people love themselves to a decent degree--contradicts both old commands. Stoning teh gays is based on bigotry and a lack of freedom of consenting adults to be happy and fulfilled. Loving your neighbor as yourself would mean letting your neighbor be free to choose the consenting adult they want to love in private in their bedroom. Committing war-time atrocities for land against babies and small children is based on jealousy of someone else having great land and resources you want and it is evil to murder people for it and a stupid and unbelievable excuse that thousands of years later people believe that murderers for the land heard supernatural voices telling them to do it. Loving your neighbor as yourself would mean letting your neighbor have the land, not murdering him and taking it.

You cannot show that these old timey commandments are derived from newer more moral ideas because they aren't. They are evil commands.

 

[EricH]

I ask because people through the ages have not been convinced enough by what is written about Zeus to become followers, compared with the billions of followers today who are convinced of the God the bible

Most Christians did not become Christians because they read the Bible and found it convincing. They are/were Christians because they were born into the faith, and were indoctrinated into believing that the Bible stories are true by the community in which they were raised. I was a Christian in my childhood because my parents were Christian and I didn't have access to the resources that would allow me to challenge their teachings as I did when I was no longer under their influence.

 

[TomC]

If my old man had as much faith as Abraham, I'd have suffocated him in his sleep.
The Abraham story was one of the first things that deprogramed me as a kid.
I don't understand how anyone could think that story is 'inspirational'.

Here's the thing about getting all judgy about the OT. By modern standards, that story is awful. But in the context of the culture and conditions of the day it looks really different. Child sacrifice was a common thing. There were reasons for that. But Israelites didn't do that. This story explains that, and takes that teaching all the way back to Abraham. So it was actually an ethical improvement in the primitive culture of the day. Other things in the OT are similar.
Tom

 

[steve_bank]

1/3 Christian and the world is getting more or less crazy?

But wait, if we are all convert to Christianity and live IAW the bible the world will be just and peaceful, right?

 

[James Brown]

"God commanded atrocities, but Jesus loves me so it's okay."

I used to hold that view, also.

 

[Learner]

The world is about 33% Christian -- or professing Christian. According to the 'narrow is the way' teaching, doesn't this religion really teach that the vast majority of humans deserve eternal torture?

As I said to a previous post. I used to read it the same way (or not really reading).

The 'narrow gate' verse refers only to the believers, (walking through the wide gate)!

Here we see in Mathew 7:13 -14
13 Enter ye in by the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many are they that enter in thereby. 14 For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it...

* Then a few verses down we see to whom these verses are referring to.

...15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit...


...21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!

No surprise corroborating with Revelation 7:9 which is 'often overlooked' when (some) atheists repeatedly suggest from their reading of bible, with the rhetoric, 'not many people get to heaven..." etc. contradicting the said verse obviously:

Revelation 7:9

9 After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb...

 

[Learner]

1/3 Christian and the world is getting more or less crazy?

But wait, if we are all convert to Christianity and live IAW the bible the world will be just and peaceful, right?

You could technically apply that logic to all governing system types. Be it Hitler, Ghandi or Jesus. If everyone followed one of these individuals by the sincere conversion to their particular ideology. The world would be peaceful and right in the success of that system.
(Just using the 'technicality' method for arguments as often used by atheists)

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No surprise corroborating with Revelation 7:9 which is 'often overlooked' when (some) atheists repeatedly suggest from their reading of bible, with the rhetoric, 'not many people get to heaven..." etc. contradicting the said verse obviously:

I don't know. God's covenant with mankind has changed so many times, it is really hard to figure out who is in, who is out.

After all, Jesus comes, what, 500 years after Abraham. Just to create a whole new set of rules and significances?

 

[unapologetic]

Did you not investigate the authors of these comic books? What did you find while inspecting each line under your microscope, assuming you were looking for any claims of 'truth' narrative doctrines?

Of course I didn't look for 'truth' in comics because they openly admit they are FICTION (and/or allegory). And are not asking anyone to join their cult. If they did, 2000 years from now someone could make the same BS claims of being vouched for, that you do. People belonging to, and trying to SELL, a cult can not be trusted to know the truth about their cult. Your bible, be it Truth, Allegory, or Fiction ... is propaganda.

 

[unapologetic]

I find it suspicious that we never hear the story from Isaac's point of view.
We should write it. But I don't have the skills. Any volunteers?

 

[Rhea]

I find it suspicious that we never hear the story from Isaac's point of view.
We should write it. But I don't have the skills. Any volunteers?

“WTF, Dad!!!!!”


Also, consider this:
Either Abraham TOLD Isaac he was being walked up into the hills to be murdered, or Abraham lied to Isaac, which is a dastardly sin.

Which do you suppose it is?

 

[unapologetic]

I find it suspicious that we never hear the story from Isaac's point of view.
We should write it. But I don't have the skills. Any volunteers?

“WTF, Dad!!!!!”


Also, consider this:
Either Abraham TOLD Isaac he was being walked up into the hills to be murdered, or Abraham lied to Isaac, which is a dastardly sin.

Which do you suppose it is?

If Learner writes it, Isaac asked for it.