Hello All, I am new here.
I am a newbie here. Man, I had trouble even finding this site some time ago, (or finding it again). The first time I was here, pissed off for some "reason", I posted up something to Angie the AntiTheist from Sinner Ministries on the Proof of God. Yes, I came under another name then, and was frankly scared I'd be found out and kicked off this site when I returned. This is the stupid link I gave, (http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/welcome.php). Please guys, gals, look at it and tell me what you all think. After going through an transformation, or rather an evolution, (basically, taking a good hard look at what those atheists were talking about), I have come to finally know that my beliefs in Jesus Christ, God, The Holy Ghost, (all somehow different but the same), are false.
You guys, I've been raised as a Baptist, then tried the "Non-Denominational" approach at a very young age. It took me nineteen plus years to realize my mistakes. During that time period, Interdenominational approaches were offered to me by people I became friends with at the Campus Crusade for Christ, Jehovah's Witnesses witnessed to me over time, Mormon elders visited me at college one season, a Hare Krishna monk bumped into me at the Mall of America, I've tried another church, blah blah...and I've been struggling to understand WHO I AM, and what the HELL everything is, where the HELL it all came from, and WHY.
LIST OF THOSE FAITHS AND WHAT BECAME OF THEM IN MY LIFE:
*Baptist Experience: "Solid Rock" Baptist Church was a failure, losing many of its members to rumor and hate, (or so I heard)
*Non-Denominational Experience: It's basically over, though I still need to tell my former pastor what I know now. As far as beliefs in the "Holy" Bible at all, along with scary stuff like how we all were slapped on the face by an angel who took away our memories of Heaven, Four Eternal Abodes, Mother and Father Wickedness, etc., I hate it all-there is NO proof. Damn, the time I've wasted. Beliefs from this experience also taught me NOT to cower in fear at the presence of Homosexuals, Satanists, Atheists, and oh damn I forgot the last one. Wait I remember-Hypocrites. Love is something I offered all people. No discrimination. Damn. I'm Black for God's sake. I better understand that one.
*Interdenominational Experience: Doesn't work. How can you get ALL of the denominations to agree on ANYTHING completely, especially IF the WORD OF GOD is perfect and able to unite people, on top of that it "predestined" the Children of GOD, (But OH wait it didn't, According to God-WHO GAVE US CHOICES)? WTF. What I meant here is this. God is a Contradictory Mess. PLUS this Campus Crusade for Christ is messed up, they are made of mostly good folk who are misguided HIGHLY. Perhaps some who willingly blind them. They're actually Fundamentalists. I feel sorry for them now. For awhile, a Long While, I thought we Christians were the persecuted. Nope.
*Jehovah's Witnesses: Man, why do they have these dudes and mostly old ladies come out every summer, to hand you a pamphlet, EVEN IF you claim you believe in God, which I once did. I keep getting these "Awake" books. Please. One title on a book was : "IS BELIEF IN A GOD REASONABLE?" Lemme tell ya I know what this belief has done to folks my mom knows. Messed them UP. No birthdays? Come on!
*Mormons: While I have a Book of Mormon at home, (which for a time I forgot we had), Idk...its dumb. My dad's one too.
* Hare Krishna: He thinks His God is the "All Attractive One". Handed me a book. Lost it. Damn. hehe.
Anyway feel free to comment. I've gotta leave the Caribou at the MOA.
---TheoreticalMan ---out.
Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
*God
"God, I trusted you. I loved you, I even, while angry, repented of anger before you, but you suck. And you know what really hurts? I'M TALKING TO MYSELF."
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Everyone here welcomes you to the forum. Hope you get some benefit from the board and maybe we could invite various members who are best suited for your needs.
The biggest and most common mistake to coming to the forum is doing it cold. There is a huge number of topics and if you take the time to read back, it better assists you.
One of the many you might not ignore is a new one
Home » Forums » Religion and Irrationalities » Atheist vs. Theist
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“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Welcome. I am pretty new here too. I too wasted some of my life on religion, but I don't think without first believing and then overcoming, I would have the drive for learning that I now have. It sounds like you put alot of effort into trying to "believe" in God. It takes alot of effort to completely delude yourself with irrationalities. I now know you have to arm yourself with scientific knowledge just to defend yourself and the world against the poison of religion.
"...but truth is a point of view, and so it is changeable. And to rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force." -Hypatia
Welcome, TheoreticalMan. Your deconversion story inspires me -- it gives me hope that people can be reasoned with! This doesn't mean that we have to agree on everything, though.
I come from a Pentecostal background; speaking in tongues, slayings in the Spirit, faith "healings." (I never did any of those things, I don't think I ever believed in them.) The Pentecostals are big on the Holy Spirit. In my late teens I went through a phase of exploring Eastern religions, mostly Buddhism but a little Taoism. Also around this time I read books on psychology which led me to philosophy. (Once in a while the author would refer to an ancient Greek philosopher, which interested me.)
In my early twenties I dabbled in some more Buddhism and Taoism. I had a lifelong interest in science, but it deepened when I entered a biology program in college. That's when I really got into studying evolution and the intelligent design-evolution debate. After a year of going back and forth between evolution and intelligent design, I settled on evolution. To this day I remember my eyes being opened when I first studied evolution -- something clicked.
Also near the end of my first year in college I got into studying Christianity more. I went from agnostic back to Christianity for a while, then back to agnosticism. The turn to atheism happened a couple years later with a linguistic shift that I got from reading The God Delusion. That was six years ago, and I've learned much more since.
What a stupid site. I tried playing around with different "clicks paths" but got hung up on one and realized that they are forcing the visitor through a funnel.
What I got stuck on was "absolute moral laws do exist" or "absolute moral laws do not exist".
Moral laws are specifically an opinion. They do exist but they are not absolute. They in fact change for me over time because my opinion changes.
After clicking "absolute moral laws do not exist" they then ask "its ok to molest children for fun" or "it isn't ok to molest children for fun".
Well of course I clicked "It isn't ok..." and it takes you back to the "absolute moral laws..."
This is illogical. My opinion that molesting a child is purely my opinion. It is not an absolute.
What if they asked "Is it ok to lie?"
Some people are going to say, "sure it's ok to lie when you are trying to throw a surprise party" and others will say "no you shouldn't lie at any time".
Yeah, they're trying to make you look like a child molester if you click on the "It's not absolutely wrong to molest children for fun" button. Pretty sneaky! It's objectively wrong, in my opinion, but not absolutely wrong. It's absolutely wrong in the layman's sense of "definitely wrong," but not absolutely wrong in the philosophical sense. But, hey, it's always the sick stuff with the Christians (not all of them).
You can do similar reasoning with child rape that you can with murder: Is it wrong to murder in every situation? No. Sometimes you need to defend yourself. Rape allows for few to no exceptions in the real world. Consider this real story. Two killers kidnapped a group of four people, two young men and two young women, and the men were forced to rape the women on threat of death. (I'm sad to report that after several hours all four of them were murdered.) Should these men, who were psychologically forced at gun point to rape the women, have been tried for rape? No, they were forced on punishment of death.
Dont get too frustrated. I know that you've felt a growing frustration. I noticed it over Jean and later Brian37. Nobody wants to see U leave, I certainly dont. My advise is seek out a couple of the folks you would like to most interact with. It's lot to ask, I know.
"...but truth is a point of view, and so it is changeable. And to rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force." -Hypatia
Even most news paper sites are more strict than this one. Being our opposition wont get you booted on this website. Even merely being a dick won't do that. The philosophy here is let the reader decide. Which ironically was the social norm in journalism until the age of cable news when opinions increasingly got passed off as factual news.
The rules here are simple, no spam, no criminal calls to violence or threats of violence. No one here is going to boot you merely for saying "You are full of shit". Atheists have been called every name in the book and then some. I'd like to live in a world where we can all bitch and the worst any of us gets is a harsh word instead of a bullet .
"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
Welcome to the forum, the website lost me at the absolute morals. The false dichotomy setup with two answers is extremely limiting and misleading.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
LOL. I think you completely missed something... I was talking about the link of the "other site".
As for the rest of your post:
When it comes to Jean's posts I ignore them.
Brian37 is a good egg even though he doesn't understand what true debating is; he has his point of view (right or wrong) and if you don't like it he will stomp on you for a while before he gets bored and moves on. I don't mind that at all because he and I are closer to agreement than he might want to admit.
There are a few others like AtheistNightmare who I recently see as a poster I need to start ignoring.
Then The Theist who I thought wanted to have a logical and honest debate, but instead starts quoting from the bible as if it were the encyclopedia britannica. That is truly frustrating for me as I really would enjoy a good, logical, stimulating debate. I've yet to find any one from the theist side of things who wants to actually debate philosophy.
I'm not going any where. I have no place else to go. IIDB went under several years back due to... well... politics. Hopefully Sapient won't ever let that happen to this site. I really hated what happened over at IIDB and it was sad to see so much time and content go down the shithole. btw - the only reason I knew of RationalResponders is because of a post on IIDB which was talking about the atheist challenge.
Yeah, even being a horrible debater won't get you booted from this site.
While I have personally made a commitment to run this in perpetuity we all know that shit happens and that may be hard. But more immediately the new server qualifies as re-signing of a 5-7 year lease. You can bank on that much with reasonable certainty.
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It's good to hear, but I know that shit happens. I'll ride the wave as long as it is still kicking. When this site goes down I'll move on to FRDB or some other site which has people with similar views as I do.
Dear Danatemporary,
I am back after a long while. Thanks to you and everyone for the welcome! I took more time to slowly examine science ad religion in ways I'd never done. You all can consider me one of many Neos introduced to the Desert of the Real World, if you will-though its much more plentiful here than where I once was. Voices of reason brought me out of my ignorance. Some were here and on Youtube:
* The Amazing Atheist
* Darkmatter2525
* Zaunstar
* The Atheist Experience
* ProfMTH
*43alley
*falchion49
and many others- some major scientists and humanists->>> Dr. Richard Dawkins, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Christopher Hitchens, James Randi, and others.
There were Christians online I examined too- VenomFangx and clips of William Lane Craig, Lee Strobel, of course the Banana Brothers, (Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron).
* Basically, I am here because I needed to tell someone about what truth I've found. I am as clueless as can be UNTIL I know the evidence of a thing. I will take a better and more detailed look at this website. Love it all so far guys!
I will try this link, (Home » Forums » Religion and Irrationalities » Atheist vs. Theist), as soon as I can. Thanks a bunch!
Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
*God
"God, I trusted you. I loved you, I even, while angry, repented of anger before you, but you suck. And you know what really hurts? I'M TALKING TO MYSELF."
Hey-thank you so much! I have not yet read the God Delusion, (I want to badly). I have read other books at times, and will try harder again, but Youtube folks like:
* The Holy Bible, (especially fire-brimstone), most of ALL brought me into the light of logic, simply by being SO illogical. It's failure to satisfy me wholly was made clear more by key atheist outlets.
And I also saw Christians and Creationists like...Kent Hovind and his son and others.
Philisophicus, thanks. Your story is very interesting!
Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
*God
"God, I trusted you. I loved you, I even, while angry, repented of anger before you, but you suck. And you know what really hurts? I'M TALKING TO MYSELF."
Hey man I thank you so much! Thanks for the encouragement!
Hey,
If you have attended a public school/institution then you should be well use to this place and nothing will seem new.
I was given this badge because I have refuted everybody so hard they forgot which way the win blows.
Welcome to Agnostic High School where you will still pass even if you flunk. Hmmm?
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
A Rational Christian of Intelligence (rare)with a valid and sound justification for my epistemology and a logical refutation for those with logical fallacies and false worldviews upon their normative of thinking in retrospect to objective normative(s). This is only understood via the imago dei in which we all are.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
As Dana wrote, there are plenty of interesting threads on this site.
It is easy to read things, be intrigued, use a search engine, find more, another search and another... exponential knowledge increase.
Then find that a few hours have passed.
Way Kewl