Atheism

Hi Smileryius. I do have something for you to think about.

I do see that you try like the rest of us to use logical reasoning,Would you please try to answer these question useing logical reasoning? "Is it possible that it is our environment that determines our language, religion, and many other aspects of our life?
For example if you were born in afghanistan do you think you would be speaking the language that you speak today?
What about your religion would you understand the bible as you do today? Would you even have a interest in reading the bible? How strong is your interest today in reading the koran?

How old were you when you decided to speak your language, worship the god you worship, and decided to be a heterosexual. I know the exact age I was do you know what your age was?

Nothing in the bible states that the earth is only 7000 years old. Common misconception. Humans however are 6035 years old tho.

you have faith that we were monkeys, I would say that it is an understandable belief, I agree that species change, develop and the survival of the fittest stuff, and I see that as great genetic engineering, but I am yet to see one species make a jump from one to another. Missing links tend to be the reason for my doubts.

now we could take the cliché route of arguing evolution theory vs God theory, but if its ok, that will be alot of typing and not alot of getting anywhere for either of us, unless you wanted to ask something that isnt in your bank of questions you ask every religionist, it is likely that I have answered it a hundred times before. I respect and understand your view, mine is different.

Have you studied evolution or only anti-evolution?
Have you studied biology or only anti-biology?
Have you studied physics or only anti- physics?

Can you know any of them whithout actually studying them?

Good summation on what I call "accident of birth."

Smiley believes he understands his religion, because he was brain-washed with it from his family, friends, and associates. His fear will not allow him to question what he has believed for most of his life. I bet he still prays to his god that never answers his prayers. Thanking god for the food he eats is somewhat ignorant in that he was just lucky (by accident of his predecessors) to have been born in a country where food is plentiful. Most on this planet do not have enough food to eat or clean water to drink. I'm sure he believes god blessed him with all these life sustaining benefits over the billions of humanity who struggle daily for food and water.

If he were to have been born in India where Hinduism is predominant, he would be a Hindu - believing his religion is the right one. Most in India survive on less than $2/day.

Your question is a very good one, and I shall answer as openly as I can.

Some of our personality is coded in our genes, some from our mother, some from our father, the rest is entirely developed through the psychological impacts from the environment around us versus our own free will. We choose much in our life, however our view and perception of the choices available are moulded heavily by our surroundings, the teachings we are brought up with etc.

My father was an alcoholic and a womaniser, my mother was raised Roman Catholic, and although she raised us to be respectful of God and the bible, we were not baptised into faith. My closeness to my mother gave me more inclination to understand her past and her religious history. She stopped believing after a number of incidents and unanswered questions. I guess that was the environment that moulded my requirement to find answers for not only her questions but also for my own. I believe that knowledge and not blind belief is what empowers us.
I am by nature curious. I have an incessant need to understand things, and being brought up in a western culture, I have access to many more choices than if per say raised in afghanistan, where choices are less apparent. I started reading the bible at 12 years old. I decided to worship God at 15, I have not studied the koran to the same degree that I have the bible, I have a basic knowledge and believe the teachings are very similar to the bible. I believe that I would have an interest in spiritual matters due to my inquisitive nature wherever I was raised however as to what denomination or how deeply I would be into my spiritual development I cannot be sure.
My language was chosen for me by circumstance, and heterosexuality is generally something that I see as natures course for me, I have merely never had an inclination otherwise, I guess it was officially decided when I married my wife 5 years 3 months and 29 days ago.

continue

Smiley, I was also surrounded by christianity from a very young age. Our mother converted from Buddhism into christianity, and I saw early on the contradictions being taught in church.

For example, the members of the church our family belonged to always "believed" we were the one and only true christians. They also had other dogma that showed me how bigoted they were against other religions and peoples.

Yes, I was around 12 years old at that time, but felt uncomfortable with what they were teaching; discrimination and bigotry.

All my siblings are still christians, and I'm an atheist. That's after having attended Catholic, Methodist, Buddhist, and other Protestant churches.

I learned that they were all the same.

Atheist fits me just fine.

You will be fine, just a late bloomer like myself. Just remember one thing and you seem to be doing it to a degree and that is that you and I can always be wrong so keep a open mind.
Science loves to be proven wrong as that is how it advances

I agree completely with what you ask. I would be a hypocrite if I expect others to hear my arguement if I will not understand thiers. My level of understanding of evolutionary theory are at a decent but not degree level. If you do not understand a teaching, how can you know it to be wrong?

Knowledge creates freedom for belief

Science and I have much in common then

Absotively . . . that was my experience. As to your other post about the 144,000--christians scrambling to make that out to be symbolic language is typical. They want to claim that scripture does not mean what it patently says.

"The Bible means what it says, except where it doesn't, and that's where I personally say." Something like that.

I'm not claiming any turf here--i just find it odd and a little annoying, that theists, specifically christians, show up in a thread intended for the discussion of being an atheist--something about which they can know nothing. Intrepid claims that he was once an atheist, but he has never to my knowledge, posted anything on that subject.

I checked Leviticus again, and you are correct, men get the shaft for adultery just as women do. I had remembered that incorrectly. It is beastiality for which women are punished, but not men.

I'll tell you what i told Intrepid: don't try to feed me that crap about your boy Jesus changing the law. Here are the three verses from Matthew, Chapter 5, which make clear that your boy Jesus was all about the law:

17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

It's a typical christian scam to try to claim that everything changed with Jesus, and that christians are all about love, no matter what the old testament says. It was your boy Saul of Tarsus who tarted up the old whore to make her more attractive to the Hellenistic culture in which he preached. Your supposedly inerrant scripture makes it clear that Jesus supported every last letter of the law.

Peddle your self-serving bullshit to someone else.

You're pathetic . . . you're just making this **** up as you go along.

I don't have a problem with christians ditching the scripture altogether because it conflicts so clearly with what they preach. The problem i have is that they still want to claim scriptural authority for what they preach, and then play mind games whenever someone points out the contradictions and the hypocrisy.

Yup . . . that about covers it.

Why is it that those of us who have divorced ourselves from religion can see the picture so clearly, and those who continue to believe have difficulty seeing the simplest of inconsistencies and contradictions?

I surmised early on that "the kingdom of heaven" was a fraud. Pretty astute for a young teenager, if I say so myself.

You seem to be more advanced than some of us as some of us are late bloomers and some will never achieve your level of understanding.

With all of that aside are you sure that the kingdom of heaven did not originally have a different meaning that may be achievable? I do agree with your conclusion about the generally accepted version of heaven being a fraud.

It wasn't difficult when I began to realize that most of the teachings from the church were questionable.

Not difficult for a young child when you are aware that something is drastically wrong for any church to teach discrimination against other churches and people. I didn't know much about homosexuals, but the church taught everybody that that was a "sin."

I've had arguments with my "christian" sister about this topic often. I say, how can you discriminate against homosexuals. She tells me she loves homosexuals; not what they do.

She can't see the hypocrisy in her beliefs.

I thought it was a fraud ci. the first time I was aware of it so that must make me a genius I suppose.

Do you go around making yourself look that bloody silly all the time?

Actually, ed's cartoon sums it all up. It is the rejection of authority. A rebel without a cause. The denigration of the father figure. Geoffrey Gorer traces it to an economic cause. Not specifically American but more pronounced there than elsewhere.

"Never question anything I tell you" is a basic military training principle going back to the Roman legions. It has power. But power brings luxury and questioning authority is a sweet luxury of the effete.

Let me see if I understand this correctlz: So when a guy loves his neighbor so much he wants to marry him, Jesus is on his side, and against the great number of Christians who seek to thwart his attempt to marry?