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a new perspective
Posted on: February 21, 2009 - 7:05pm
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a new perspective
I think the seed was partially planted here so I figured I would come back and share....it's been about a year since my last post and I just wanted to let a mod know that you can officially take the "theist" badge by my name away.
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Thanks for making my day! Welcome to the real world, and congratulations.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Woot!
no problem, thanks for the seed that opened up possibilities and ideas...lol and I still remember that avatar...classic.
Congratulations Turbo. Don't forget, for one to be able to call themselves open minded they must be willing to accept the possibility that they are wrong. I congratulate you on a big step in the direction of open minded. Kudos. If you have any questions or thoughts about life as a non-believer, or are ever curious how others without belief view life, feel free to ask this site for its input.
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Well are you proud of your self Sapient and Kelly? Look what you have done. Now this person can't pawn his troubles off on a bearded man in a white robe or a man in a read leotard with a pitchfork.
He was quite happy clasping his hands together pining after a fictional Harry Potter in the sky hoping that the hero would re arrange the neurons in his brain, to make him do the right thing. Now he has to do it on his own.
I HOPE YOU ARE HAPPY!
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Lol Brian.
Welcome back, and congrats!
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
yeah I think it was todangst a long time ago that asked me something like what would it take to make you change your belief....if its nothing then you aren't open minded...at the time it was pretty profound...then everything started looking different...the question entered my mind...what if...and then with my friends, here, the internet, Penn Jillette (awesome), James Randi, Steven Hawking, Michio Kaku, etc...it just didnt make sense anymore.
now how I am going to break the news to my parents??? havent gotten that far yet...
Michio Kaku? I read Hyperspace and Parallel worlds and am about to start Physics of the Impossible
What has that got to do with atheism?
I would never do such a thing. Just pray to Jake....
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just the fact that these people I look up to and think are way too smart are atheist. specifically for Kaku I was watching something on the science channel and he was explaining his beliefs and I was like...well damn...he's soooo much smarter than me and they don't see a "need" for god...hmmm.
When science fills in the gaps, religion loses its utility.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Right, you have fun with that.
And you have fun crossing your arms and sitting in the corner by yourself, Alison.
Oh, and don't forget your helmet or knee-pads!
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
You cant fool me, that is photoshoped and there is no such god as "Jake". (Note to self: await lightning bolt).
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
OMG!! God rearranges the neurons in our brains? That sneaky bastard! That really pisses me off!! I'm calling my lawyer.
Rick
Frosty's coming back someday. Will you be ready?
What good is that going to do? Yahwe......oops......"Don't question the secret handshake"......God also watches you take a crap. He can do what he wants, how can a pesky lawyer sue God for invasion of privacy, after all he put the entire universe together in 6 days.
Just accept that the moon is made of cheese and Allah will give you 72 virgins if you blow yourself up.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Religion is a utility like nipples on men, what benifit other than getting them sucked on by a hottie, do they serve?
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
All the cool people are doing it... I just wanted to be popular
jkjk Just be careful that you are believing things because of logic and evidence rather than people telling you to, because even in something is true, you make it into a religion by believing it without evidence.
As for telling your parents, most parents probably don't care that much about your religious leanings, but if you are not sure about your parents, maybe find out? If they are going to get angry at you for not believing in God, then you probably don't need to tell them, but if they wouldn't, it's better to be honest with your parents.
Isn't it amazing how the more knowledge one gets the less of a mythology worshiper one becomes? As you look at people going up the knowledge ladder you find the higher up they go the less likely they are to blow themselves up, or give 10% of their income to a local scam artist.
There are exceptions but then that is to be expected. 
"Those who have stepped into the arena shall forever cherish a feeling the protected will never know."
What is love? Baby, don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
alright well it happened today....I told my dad....he said he was happy that I was finally starting my own faith and that I needed to start by writing down my questions and reading Genesis. He said read it but know that not everything has to be taken literally. He gave the example of a small child. If you tell a small child "don't play in the middle of the street because you'll get run over and die as soon as you go into the street" there is a "higher" truth there that the dad is trying to convey to the child even though it's not literally true....Oh man....I don't even know where to start.....
Cool. What's your faith?
Your dad didn't get angry, so I think this is promising. On the other hand, I can't figure out what the "higher truth" of Genesis would be.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
catholic
Aha.
Leave him well enough alone.
Good work on having a mind.
Be careful. I ran into exactly the same situation. Catholic dad. I told him. He thinks that it's a healthy phase. It's all good until he realized that I wasn't kidding when I said I didn't believe, and would no longer take unsubstantiated anecdotes as evidence. Then he started getting nasty. The real emotional shitstorm might still be over the horizon.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
oh man...thats what I want to avoid...hmmmm
Hey, it's better than it getting nasty right away, right? Take the little wins, too. This is a decent win for you. Don't worry so much about the future right now, or you won't appreciate your win here. One step at a time.
At least you don't have to completely hide your doubts anymore. That's a good thing.
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I almost don't want to say this, because I don't think you're self confident enough in your position to do it yourself, but for the sake of others who may be a bit more vicious and reciprocal in their tactics, this stage could be a window to attack your parents faith with, much as they are using it to try and strengthen your own. Flip it around. Every time they have a little comment to make, take it. Think on it. Develop a response. Present it to them. Repeat. Either they'll give up, they'll hate you for using their own tactics on them, or they'll figure out that their positions are untenable.
Bonus points for using the bible to pull it off. Having been catholic, you may have enough knowledge of it to work with to the detriment of their beliefs.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Cool. Should we ever find ourselves in the same place at the same time, I'll buy you a beer.
www.RichWoodsBlog.com
I mean no disrespect, but could you help me out here.
So from what I have read here you were asked the question:
what would it take to make you change your belief....if its nothing then you aren't open minded...
And then you found some people who were smarter than you and they didn't believe in God so now you don't believe in God. Hmmmm
So, the only thing it took to change your belief is some people have a higher IQ than you do not believe in God so now you don't. wow. It didn't take much. I am not sure I would call that open-minded. I would say maybe you were not grounded in why you believed in the first place.
If that is not it . . . what was your response to the question? What did it take to change your mind?
In case you are unaware - you know one of their heroes - Dawkins recently (6 months ago) in a debate with John Lennox stated AND I QUOTE: "a serious case could be made for a deistic God." Now, he doesn't believe in God, but his statement certainly brings up the point that whereas this site and many on here share the disbelief in God that Dawkins possesses - BUT, he departs from many here in the fact that he believes that intelligent people can make an intelligent argument for a deist God.
I guess if there are others like you and all you have to do is recognize that intelligent people think differently than you AND THEN you will change your belief - I would be more than happy to introduce you to people with PhD's from many well respected universities that believe in God.
Just for starters:
John Lennox
John Lennox MA MA (Bioethics), PhD DPhil DSc is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science, and Pastoral Advisor at Green College. He is also Lecturer at Wycliffe-Hall, University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
No worries, none taken.
It actually all started b/c I was looking for more about God. I happened to find this website and was here as a theist and did the same things I assume that you are doing...just go search my old posts. Fortunately I started to find all these people that made me stop and think…who were able to respond in a way that showed me that maybe all these arguments for God weren’t really as strong as I had been brought up to believe....I didn’t become an atheist to just be like the people I look up to now. In fact I had no idea who Richard, Randi, Penn, or any of them were before I really started looking on my own without my parents.
I don’t think my mind changed in one moment. I think it was a slow progression. Slowly all the arguments I had didn’t look like anything until finally I actually got honest with myself and said that I was atheist. I struggled for a long time (when was my last post as a theist before this thread). I told myself it was a phase, that I just didn’t understand….until I couldn’t do it anymore.
To be clear…I would LOVE for there to be a God that cares about us and offers an eternal life….I would love to not have been wrong for the first 20 something years of my life…it was a real struggle especially coming from someone like me….
just to give you an idea…I bought a house with my wife before we were married and slept with a neighbor for 6months until we actually got married due to my belief in a God…so ALL of my friends knew I was seriously catholic. Now I have had to face them and say hey…I think I was wrong….
Actually that’s not exactly the case. See youtube video linked at the bottom. Dawkins was taken out of context. And if you don’t want to watch the whole thing just skip to about 18min in.
I personally don’t think the level of intelligence has anything to do with if you are a theist or atheist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu1iZW29GTw
If you thought that was gonna save you from eternal damnation in Hell, ...
you're goddamn mistaken, and you're still spawn of slime!
Do I know you?
Wow!
I am too new here and I never knew you previously but I am happy to hear you have come around to rational thinking
I feel like I have had a very similar experience as you in my recent (like 1-2 years ago) turning to atheism. I have even used that same analogy of a seed being planted in me. I discussed some issues with some of my atheist friends and they planted some seeds of thought. They completely revealed the ridiculous nature of my religion to me. These were high school friends and I no longer saw them anymore when I went off to a different college then they, and I remained a christian for quite some time. I sort of realized the validity in their arguments, but for some reason part of me didn't see any reason to deny it. Then I took a philosophy class at college and it completely opened my world up to real critical thinking and be able to always ask the why to anything at all. Never ceasing the why question is what eventually led me to atheism, but I never would have been open to it and have progressed to that point without the planting of the atheist seeds in my thoughts.
My parents are religious as well, especially my dad, who clings to his disproven biblical creationist beliefs. It is so curious to me how someone can truly deny so much evidence for what some humans wrote. It truly is delusional in every sense of the word. Perhaps not all christians are deluded like this, but about half of americans are lol. I have been extremely vocal to my parents though and have had arguments many times. I have constantly asked them why they believe in religion and my dad usually lacks a cogent response in any shape or form and my mom usually says that there is evidence and she believes in it because of evidence. I ask her what the evidence is and she says she doesn't know but she knew at one time lol
The funniest part about this situation is that when I was a child and adamantly believed my religion had to be the truth, I once asked my dad why people wouldn't believe in God with all the evidence to support it? (evidence supplied by my parents of course) And he responded, "People will believe what they want to believe and you can't do much about it."
It has completely swapped and now that my mind is free of religious slavery, I realize that perhaps he was right, but he is the kind of person he was talking about. So really you could try to argue with your conservatively religious father, but it is likely not to work. I still won't give up trying get mine to actually give me a single reason why anyone should believe Christianity to be the truth, but whatever I am just too puzzled by people not believing in reality and I can be pretty argumentative about it.
Yep! Thank God for us!
yeah I don't know...I can imagine it would be 100 times harder for someone like our parents to come to the same conclusion that we did. I mean I've only spent the last 26 yrs believing and it was extremely hard for me. Its gotta be hard. I think I am just going to keep doing what I am doing...letting them know what and why I think what I do and see where it goes. And if it goes nowhere....so be it.
I would have just said, "Fuck it", why bother with years of sleepless nights, loosing 100's of pounds of weight, running to the psychiatrist to get prescriptions to calm my nerves during the day, and sleep at night, and then awake again to a miserable existence, and occasionally vomiting from uncontrollable anxiety.
Not an easy thing to break free from. Good job taking the red pill. Welcome to the real world.
www.RichWoodsBlog.com
Look how far Turbo has come: http://twitter.com/#!/apr20vturbo
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Support our activism efforts by making your Amazon purchases via this link.
That's awesome.
Success stories for people learning to think rationally almost give me enough motivation to argue with theists...
I'll have to keep that question in mind "what would it take" -that's a good one.
Does he still come around here ever?
dang it sent these notifications of replies to my spam folder!
Gonna have to fix that! 
Thanks Brian! Not just on twitter and FB either.... I actually got to attended TAM8 this year as well! Met tons of awesome people. I haven't had a whole lot of free time lately due to life situations and school but when I can I do lurk.
I will say that I try to always engage theist in friendly discussions. You never know what effect you might have on people when you point out where the logic and evidence lies. I know how much atheism has changed my life so now its hard not to share with everyone. I still have hope for my parents but I know the chances are slim. I have never been happier with who I am, what I am doing, and why I am doing it. So thanks to everyone that took the time to nicely tell me how crazy my ideas were!
Special thanks to Brian for making this forum for me to see and todangst (sp?) since from what I remember he was the one who gave me the kindest and most complete answers that helped get me to where I am today.
Oh and as a side effect I have never loved science so much!!!!! I am actually just trying to get through this finance degree as quickly as possible so I can start studying my passion which is now physics!!!! :D