do you want to know why i think people don't believe in god?
well i believe people don't want to believe in god because they are scared.
they know that if they finally do gorge the confidence to believe in him, he might discipline them for their skepticism.
On the way out - I agree wholeheartedly regarding your example about children's hospitals. It is a tremendous demonstration that there is no god.
Over the last few years I have spent many nights in one with my son. When I was able to actually fall asleep I would often be woken by children crying in pain. They were not my children and yet my heart ached to help them. Let me tell you the silence from above on those sleepless nights was deafening.
i remember studying this book years ago and how it impacted my belief system.
i no longer believe the bible is god's word.
however i do have a couple of lingering questions on this subject.
SonoftheTrinity - at first I liked your quote as well but something about it bothered me. It is clever. However it discredits the amount of thought and research one goes through by letting the evidence lead them. It makes it seem as though it is a sad state to be an atheist or agnostic.
I continue to see evidence on this site and others that theists use pity, fear, and wonder to prove god exists. Religion and god are two although related things, they are not the same.
Some religions do good things. That does not prove there is a god just as the religions that do bad things disprove him.
do you want to know why i think people don't believe in god?
well i believe people don't want to believe in god because they are scared.
they know that if they finally do gorge the confidence to believe in him, he might discipline them for their skepticism.
Pressman - The mental gymnastics you have to jump through to try and make a point makes me want to cry and laugh at the same time.
Cry because I weep for the blinders people will put on to try and keep a semblance of their belief. For many it is just to much to lose god along with their religion, family, and friends. If you really feel the way you just described how did you ever analyse and see that the jw's are wrong? Why didn't you just continue to blindly follow and believe their interpretation of the bible?
Laugh because the line of thought you portrayed makes me think that you are just taking us all for a ride on this joke to demonstrate how ridiculous belief in jwism is.
do you want to know why i think people don't believe in god?
well i believe people don't want to believe in god because they are scared.
they know that if they finally do gorge the confidence to believe in him, he might discipline them for their skepticism.
It's funny how you use fear as the reason for not wanting to believe. I do want to believe but the evidence does not support my desire. Show me the proof.
You may have concern about being disciplined for being skeptical. That says more about you than anyone else. From my observation of human nature and god. The construct of it is one of each individuals ego.
I would never have imagined a god disciplining me or anyone I cared about for being skeptical or using what was given each of us by him "our brain". I certainly would never discipline my children for asking perfectly legitimate questions.
I wonder what kind of childhood you had to believe of god in this way.
it just dawned on me.
the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.
so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.
I just don't as a policy believe in made up words. One is either a theist, deist, atheist, or agnostic. I'm sure there are other accepted definitions that break into one of these 4.
This seems like trying to have your cake and eating it to.
i remember studying this book years ago and how it impacted my belief system.
i no longer believe the bible is god's word.
however i do have a couple of lingering questions on this subject.
Usual reaction does not negate rational thought. Believing just because you want to is irrational.
there seem to be many prerequisites for life as we know it.. to name a few: order, function, compatibility, availability, sustainability, intelligence, consciousness, intuition and so on.. focusing on only one, namely order.. what are the chances of order arising spontaneously, by chance, with no creator/designer?.
i have often pondered this and recently came across a mathematical summary of the big picture:.
if every particle in the known physical universe (10^80 particles), participated in one trillion interactions (10^12 interactions) per second, for the entire 30 billion years of the universe's existence (10^18 seconds), then we would by now have covered only 10^110 permutations.. if you had only 100 components in a container, what are the chances that a blindfolded person could lay them out in order on a table?.
Gone for good - I agree wholeheartedly with you.
Which is more fantastical taking from the OP's scenario? A blind person laying out 100 blocks in order, or the blind person appearing out of nowhere? In other words who is gods god?
i remember studying this book years ago and how it impacted my belief system.
i no longer believe the bible is god's word.
however i do have a couple of lingering questions on this subject.
Thank you for your comments tenacious. I want to believe as I think many here want to. I just have great difficulty accepting things based upon conjecture. I almost lost my now 7 year old son because of my 3rd generation jw belief system. I will be dammed if I do anything of that sort again.
I know without a shadow of doubt that belief in a higher being has imo very negative consequences. Principally it leads to stunting growth and further understanding. When we get used to the idea of "that's just beyond our understanding, or it was meant to be" we stop pushing for evidence or a real answer.
I think that if everyone were to logically follow their thoughts all the way through they would see the error in theism. Belief in a god is dangerous.
I have found a couple of channels very interesting on YouTube. Darkmatter2525, darkantics, and thethinkingatheist to be very thought provoking. The first is rather vulgar but thought provoking none the less.
i remember studying this book years ago and how it impacted my belief system.
i no longer believe the bible is god's word.
however i do have a couple of lingering questions on this subject.
EndofMysteries you are not living up to your name. You believe in a mystery. Which is more complicated the quote unquote created or the creator who made the complicated DNA and so on that you describe. I know for example that you and I are more complicated than a chair.
I contest that Theists are holding onto belief in a creator as a means of comfort. I would like to believe, however the evidence does not hold up to scrutiny. I also see evidence that belief in a creator of what you just mentioned stunts our growth and effort to continue to learn and grow.
i remember studying this book years ago and how it impacted my belief system.
i no longer believe the bible is god's word.
however i do have a couple of lingering questions on this subject.
Thank you fulltimestudent for the source material. I will be delving into it over the weekend.
Tenacious I had this same discussion with my wife the other day so your thoughts are fresh on my mind. If their is an intelligence behind all of this what is the intelligence that made that intelligence? Which requires greater faith believing a house was built by itself over millennia or the maker of that house just appeared or had no beginning. The ridiculous thought of god not having a beginning would keep me up at night as a kid.
I will no longer believe without evidence. I have been burned for far too long and almost lost what was most precious to me because of wanting to believe without evidence. Never again and I hope others do not continue in a course of willing blindness. Because it comes at a great cost.
