Don't believe in God anymore

[BadaBing]

We can see the number of people saying the don't believe in God rising, and coincidentally we see the rise in the numbers who are turning to heathen ways, witchcraft and astrology are gaining popularity, truly idiotic in my opinion, how long before Gretha starts a nature worshiping religion?
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/19/us/w ... index.html

[PogMoThoin]

I'm glad I'm a pastafarian

[isha]

I kinda think it's funny that some of the people who firmly do NOT believe in God do believe in the "Universe", also known as energy or Oneness or the Tao or Great Spirit or etc. But especially the people who "put it out into the Universe" or ask the Angels and such like. People, all of that is what the rest of us peasants used to call God.

As for me, I don't know if God exists or not at all, and I will never know, just like no one else alive will ever know one way or the other, even the devout atheists. I suppose I am a devout agnostic with a preference to hope in God. It doesn't do me any harm and we have good chats!

[PogMoThoin]

I like a bit of pasta myself, going to do a lasagna tomorrow for dinner.

Spaghetti and meatballs was where it started!

[the dunne]

I also see the number of threads started by BadaBing and the increase of numbers of shitty threads being directly tied....

Coincidence?

[BadaBing]

I also see the number of threads started by BadaBing and the increase of numbers of shitty threads being directly tied....

Coincidence?

his is a anonymous forum, don't be shy , no one knows or cares who you are, post what you are thinking, don't leave me and everyone else hanging.
I see a lack of fresh discussion so started a few new ones, if you don't like the topic just ignore it, gubu wont last long if people don't post, which discussions have you started around here.

[the dunne]

his is a anonymous forum, don't be shy , no one knows or cares who you are, post what you are thinking, don't leave me and everyone else hanging.
I see a lack of fresh discussion so started a few new ones, if you don't like the topic just ignore it, gubu wont last long if people don't post, which discussions have you started around here.

Good point. Was having a bad day and was needlessly snippy.

[8760976543]

I never understood what the point of a life on earth was if there is a heaven and hell. Why not just cut out the middle man and go straight there.

[Hairy-Joe]

Define God. Is it the Judean Christian version of God? What about the Gods of ancient Greece & Rome? What about the Norse God's?

I don't believe in any of them. They always struck me as stories when growing up and I when I thought about them, I couldn't take them seriously. I was lucky growing up in a house where we were encouraged to ask and think about things.

[kadman]

Its the same god that Carlin talks about. Some guy that lives in the clouds, who points a big finger at you, and he wants your money.

[marhay70]

We have this book which we are all supposed to believe is God's word, It is divided into the Old and New Testaments but, in effect, it is the word of God, yes?
In the Old Testament, there are a succession of heroic figures like David, Joshua, Moses etc. Now what these heroes had in common was that they had an up close and personal relationship with the Almighty, and were directed by God to undertake various tasks which mostly involved massacres, rapes, enslavement and all those other healthy pastimes we all miss today, of people who upset him. God encouraged these acts and indeed was often quoted as saying that not a soul should be left alive, not a house be left standing, not a field be left productive, even the animals were not to be spared.
Then we have the New Testament. In this, God has decided that he didn't really mean all that and that really, people are not that bad and that he will make bits of himself and spread them out to carry out a rescue mission for mankind.
In this vision, he will come on earth in person and spend about 21/2 years trying to sort out all the wrongs of the past, allegedly, 4000 years, he will castigate all the priests and rabbis who are carrying out the instructions he has laid down over those millennia and instructed all those heroic figures in, and then get himself deliberately killed, only to rise again after three days. Not an option, mind you , that he extended to all those massacred over the past thousands of years.
During this mission he has become a reformed character, he has decided that, although he is all powerful, all knowing and all seeing, he was, in fact, wrong all along. Nobody is to be massacred, or raped or enslaved, everybody is to be loved and cherished, indeed, instead of killing your enemy, you should offer him the opportunity to kill you instead, and die with a smile on your face. You should not take your neighbour's property but give him yours gladly and you should stop practising all the rituals of religion that he instructed you to do over all those years.
Now I don't know what anybody could find hard to believe in all this.

[Norman Breaks]

Hogwash.
The whole lot of it.
Designed to control.

[SouthWesterly]

All I know is that there are no dead atheists

[marhay70]

All I know is that there are no dead atheists

And just how, can you tell us, do you know that?

[DeletedUser]

I find the difference is that I believe in God and there are any number of people queuing up to tell me I'm wrong, or foolish or "weak minded looking for a mythical sky protector" (that one stuck with me!)

Yet I know plenty of athiests, my best friend veers from sceptical agnosticism one day to outright denial the next - and yet I've never felt it necessary to push my views on him.

Let's live and let live eh ?

[kadman]

If you had a vacancy for " A GOD" and god turned up for the interview, would you give him the job based on his past work history.

[marhay70]

I find the difference is that I believe in God and there are any number of people queuing up to tell me I'm wrong, or foolish or "weak minded looking for a mythical sky protector" (that one stuck with me!)

Yet I know plenty of athiests, my best friend veers from sceptical agnosticism one day to outright denial the next - and yet I've never felt it necessary to push my views on him.

Let's live and let live eh ?

I don't believe in God, certainly not the Biblical God, and most certainly not, the RC church, but I do respect your right to believe in whatever you want.
Regrettably though, this has not always the case. For centuries. people have been forced to conform to the religious norm, often on pain of death, and religion has been firmly entrenched in this country, whether we want it or not, for over a millennium.
To this day, because of lack of political will, our children are still taken at four years of age and fed a diet of religious ritual for a period of at least eight years at a time when they are at their most vulnerable and impressionable. For those whose parents might be of a non religious inclination and object to this, their children are separated from their peers and made to feel different and estranged, again, during their most vulnerable years. During these years, our children will naturally learn all those things that humans need to lead a normal, healthy life and, because it''s being taught at the same time, religion is subsumed into unconscious thinking as a natural part of life. I have gone to weddings funerals, weddings, communions etc, over the years and watched the reaction of the congregation to the various urgings from the clergy or other ritual sounds and it is an almost robotic response, nobody really knows what is going on, it's just something you do.
This is the basis of all religious belief, it's a habit, instilled in you by repetition over years. In case you might, as some people do, kick the habit, the Church has developed various disincentives, like Hell, Purgatory, eternal torture and other such lovely Christian like practices. If this is not enough, it preys on the fact that maybe you might worry your parents or other close relatives who have passed on, may not have really been up to scratch and may require a little help from you, by way of God or one of the elite of heaven, to ease their way around all this torment. Of course, this may come with a token charge.
So, my problem is not with the concept of God or Gods, there may well have been an architect of the Universe, a Creator of all things, my intellect is not sufficient to rule that out because I can't even begin to contemplate what happened in the beginning, was there a Big Bang, if there was, then what went bang? These are questions I tend to avoid as I really can't begin to imagine an answer and I think this is also the reason people cling to religion because it is beyond their powers of reasoning to envisage anything else, thankfully, for my own peace of mind, I have managed to wrench myself away from this.

[isha]

One issue is that people confound the idea of ''God'' with the history of political institutions such as various churches.

[Memento Mori]

It is interesting that in attacking God, most end up attacking a caricature of God and not what is actually believed. For instance, we have God compared with Zeus and the like, betraying a complete misunderstanding of what God is, and the fundamental theological differences. The fact that there is a difference should be obvious even from a superficial look at history - believers in these "old gods" abandoned belief in them wholesale in favour of belief in God. Why? Because they found the difference and arguments and theological conception behind the Christian God persuasive, with a strong philosophical, intellectual and theological tradition springing up almost immediately in the early centuries. In short, God was profoundly different to the pagan gods that went before. This was debated heavily at the time between the early Church Fathers and the pagans.

When someone portrays the Christian God and whatever assortment of pagan gods as being the "same", they are revealing that they really do not know what they are talking about, as the fundamental conception of both is profoundly different. "Well they are all supposed Gods aren't they" betrays a level of unsophisticated superficiality akin to someone saying "well, they are both noise" in contemplation of a concerto and the sound of a pneumatic drill at work.

You also get the portrayal of God as some super powerful being within the universe doing this or that. This "powerful man with a beard in the clouds" caricature is built up, and then attacked. When atheists start trotting that one out it can be safely ignored, as Christians do not actually believe this. The portrayal of God as the "man in the clouds" is an artistic representation, not a theological explanation of what God is. God is not a being within the universe, rather He is being. The uncaused cause, etc. Often when reading atheists decry their caricature of god, the believer will think "Yeah, I don't believe in that god either".

Regarding the Bible, has not everyone read a book that has an ending that casts the entirety of the book in a new light? Which can be read again in a new, more revealing way with the knowledge of the ending? The Bible is a collection of books that contain divinely revealed realities, written under the inspiration of God. They are written by (divinely inspired) people, for people, in the language of people. The Bible as a whole is a gradual revelation, culminating in Christ. The old testament is not a history textbook, nor is it a physics or science book, it was never intended to be. Some of it is allegorical. St Origen covered this 1800 or so years ago, as have many many others since, discussing the ways in which scripture is to be read and interpreted. Supposed "conflicts" at a superficial level in scripture is nothing new, it is odd that some pull it out as some new criticism, when that question has been asked and answered innumerable times over 20 centuries (and longer if one leaves aside the new testament and looks at Jewish interpretation of the Hebrew Bible). When reading the Bible we need to think about what the authors wanted to say, and what God wanted to reveal through the words. In any given passage, is it "literal" truth, or "spiritual" truth? All of this needs to be read through the prism of Christ, the culmination of revelation. If your reading of the Bible results in you viewing the old and new testaments as contradictory, or somehow in conflict, you have not delved deep enough into the meaning. The old testament prepares for the new, and the new fulfills the old and each reveals and sheds light on the other. The Bible needs to be read together, and above all, through the prism of the culmination of revelation, Christ. But ultimately, when atheists raise this supposed issue, it is not the heart of the matter. If the Bible were crafted to their satisfaction in a way which they could understand, or if it were so explained to them, they would not suddenly start believing in God. For discussion among believers, it is a most important and valuable topic as it is raised in sincerity and in a search for understanding. When atheists raise it, it is a red herring.

Participation in organised religion is in decline in some parts of the world, but I do not think that the overall religiosity of man has declined. People have begun looking for "new" outlets for spirituality. We see this with Yoga, "new age" stuff, people being obsessed with crystals etc. or just a vague "I'm spiritual". The two main (or at least most interesting to me) manifestations of this are the surge in the practice of mindfulness and worship of nature. Mindfulness is ultimately a blind mans grasp at meditative or contemplative prayer. Mindfulness is regressive as it tends to be centred on the self, whereas prayer centers the self in relation to others and ultimately God. Regarding nature, again here we see vague "spirituality" in connection with nature, from elevating avoiding meat to a moral imperative, to all sorts of vague "connections" to nature, many of them ritualised. Again, it is quite regressive. It is both sad, and encouraging, encouraging in that the innate compulsion man has towards the divine and worship continues to manifest itself, but sad that it does so in a such a regressive manner. Soon a new box will be needed on the census; "I'm spiritual, I do spiritual stuff that is popular at the time but sort of in my own way I make up some of the detail as I go along". This is regressive behavior, akin to mans wallowing in ignorance before revelation.

[Memento Mori]

. I have gone to weddings funerals, weddings, communions etc, over the years and watched the reaction of the congregation to the various urgings from the clergy or other ritual sounds and it is an almost robotic response, nobody really knows what is going on, it's just something you do.
This is the basis of all religious belief, it's a habit, instilled in you by repetition over years. In case you might, as some people do, kick the habit, the Church has developed various disincentives, like Hell, Purgatory, eternal torture and other such lovely Christian like practices. If this is not enough, it preys on the fact that maybe you might worry your parents or other close relatives who have passed on, may not have really been up to scratch and may require a little help from you, by way of God or one of the elite of heaven, to ease their way around all this torment. Of course, this may come with a token charge.
So, my problem is not with the concept of God or Gods, there may well have been an architect of the Universe, a Creator of all things, my intellect is not sufficient to rule that out because I can't even begin to contemplate what happened in the beginning, was there a Big Bang, if there was, then what went bang? These are questions I tend to avoid as I really can't begin to imagine an answer and I think this is also the reason people cling to religion because it is beyond their powers of reasoning to envisage anything else, thankfully, for my own peace of mind, I have managed to wrench myself away from this.

Speak for yourself!

[marhay70]

Speak for yourself!

I am speaking for myself and recounting my observations of, and interactions with, others. Haven't you heard, the Inquisition is over?

[marhay70]

It is interesting that in attacking God, most end up attacking a caricature of God and not what is actually believed. For instance, we have God compared with Zeus and the like, betraying a complete misunderstanding of what God is, and the fundamental theological differences. The fact that there is a difference should be obvious even from a superficial look at history - believers in these "old gods" abandoned belief in them wholesale in favour of belief in God. Why? Because they found the difference and arguments and theological conception behind the Christian God persuasive, with a strong philosophical, intellectual and theological tradition springing up almost immediately in the early centuries. In short, God was profoundly different to the pagan gods that went before. This was debated heavily at the time between the early Church Fathers and the pagans.

When someone portrays the Christian God and whatever assortment of pagan gods as being the "same", they are revealing that they really do not know what they are talking about, as the fundamental conception of both is profoundly different. "Well they are all supposed Gods aren't they" betrays a level of unsophisticated superficiality akin to someone saying "well, they are both noise" in contemplation of a concerto and the sound of a pneumatic drill at work.

You also get the portrayal of God as some super powerful being within the universe doing this or that. This "powerful man with a beard in the clouds" caricature is built up, and then attacked. When atheists start trotting that one out it can be safely ignored, as Christians do not actually believe this. The portrayal of God as the "man in the clouds" is an artistic representation, not a theological explanation of what God is. God is not a being within the universe, rather He is being. The uncaused cause, etc. Often when reading atheists decry their caricature of god, the believer will think "Yeah, I don't believe in that god either".

Regarding the Bible, has not everyone read a book that has an ending that casts the entirety of the book in a new light? Which can be read again in a new, more revealing way with the knowledge of the ending? The Bible is a collection of books that contain divinely revealed realities, written under the inspiration of God. They are written by (divinely inspired) people, for people, in the language of people. The Bible as a whole is a gradual revelation, culminating in Christ. The old testament is not a history textbook, nor is it a physics or science book, it was never intended to be. Some of it is allegorical. St Origen covered this 1800 or so years ago, as have many many others since, discussing the ways in which scripture is to be read and interpreted. Supposed "conflicts" at a superficial level in scripture is nothing new, it is odd that some pull it out as some new criticism, when that question has been asked and answered innumerable times over 20 centuries (and longer if one leaves aside the new testament and looks at Jewish interpretation of the Hebrew Bible). When reading the Bible we need to think about what the authors wanted to say, and what God wanted to reveal through the words. In any given passage, is it "literal" truth, or "spiritual" truth? All of this needs to be read through the prism of Christ, the culmination of revelation. If your reading of the Bible results in you viewing the old and new testaments as contradictory, or somehow in conflict, you have not delved deep enough into the meaning. The old testament prepares for the new, and the new fulfills the old and each reveals and sheds light on the other. The Bible needs to be read together, and above all, through the prism of the culmination of revelation, Christ. But ultimately, when atheists raise this supposed issue, it is not the heart of the matter. If the Bible were crafted to their satisfaction in a way which they could understand, or if it were so explained to them, they would not suddenly start believing in God. For discussion among believers, it is a most important and valuable topic as it is raised in sincerity and in a search for understanding. When atheists raise it, it is a red herring.

Participation in organised religion is in decline in some parts of the world, but I do not think that the overall religiosity of man has declined. People have begun looking for "new" outlets for spirituality. We see this with Yoga, "new age" stuff, people being obsessed with crystals etc. or just a vague "I'm spiritual". The two main (or at least most interesting to me) manifestations of this are the surge in the practice of mindfulness and worship of nature. Mindfulness is ultimately a blind mans grasp at meditative or contemplative prayer. Mindfulness is regressive as it tends to be centred on the self, whereas prayer centers the self in relation to others and ultimately God. Regarding nature, again here we see vague "spirituality" in connection with nature, from elevating avoiding meat to a moral imperative, to all sorts of vague "connections" to nature, many of them ritualised. Again, it is quite regressive. It is both sad, and encouraging, encouraging in that the innate compulsion man has towards the divine and worship continues to manifest itself, but sad that it does so in a such a regressive manner. Soon a new box will be needed on the census; "I'm spiritual, I do spiritual stuff that is popular at the time but sort of in my own way I make up some of the detail as I go along". This is regressive behavior, akin to mans wallowing in ignorance before revelation.

Del Boy would be proud of the ducking and diving in this post.
Firstly, the portrayal of God as a man with a beard who lives in the clouds is the image portrayed in churches worldwide for centuries. Nobody is supposed to know what God looks like, although I seem to remember it being said that Moses looked upon the face of God, but he didn't leave any pictures, so this was an image dreamt up by man but one with which the Church was happy to go along.
Secondly, you're not exactly helping your cause by comparing the Bible to a work of fiction with a twist in the tale, what's the phrase in Christianity, the same yesterday, today, and forever, so why would you have a twist in the plot? It's supposed to be an account of the world from the Creation to the Crucifixion, a true account. Only in very recent times has some doubt been thrown on the credibility of the OT, when I went to school the story of Adam and Eve was up there with the Crucifixion in terms of credibility, you accepted it without question.
The New Testament only follows on, where it does, from the Old because the narrative is designed to look that way. It's a pity they couldn't manage to get the people whose accounts the Church picked to record the story, i.e the writers of the synoptic gospels, to stay on the same page.
However, as I said, if that's your thing then you're welcome to it. I'm not here to dissuade you. I'm here to put an alternative point of view, something the Church refused to allow dissenters to do over hundreds of years.

[knownunknown]

Something that has irked me as of late is the religious trying to pigeon hole atheists into the group that 'actively deny god exists' or 'believe in the non-existence of god' blah blah etc..etc..

Most atheists would actually tell you they are both atheist and agnostic, just like most religious folks are also agnostic. They can't prove one way or the other whether 'god(whichever god you're having yourself)' exists or not, but don't actually specifically believe in any of them. It's a lack of belief.

Faith is not reason, having faith that god exists does not amount to knowing he exists. How many of the religious folk in this thread are agnostic, or have you got some proof otherwise?

[isha]

Something that has irked me as of late is the religious trying to pigeon hole atheists into the group that 'actively deny god exists' or 'believe in the non-existence of god' blah blah etc..etc..

Most atheists would actually tell you they are both atheist and agnostic, just like most religious folks are also agnostic. They can't prove one way or the other whether 'god(whichever god you're having yourself)' exists or not, but don't actually specifically believe in any of them. It's a lack of belief.

Faith is not reason, having faith that god exists does not amount to knowing he exists. How many of the religious folk in this thread are agnostic, or have you got some proof otherwise?

I have noticed that most atheists I have read/known or heard do not admit to agnostism. Which in my opinion makes atheism as much a religion as any other belief system about God.
I don't actually understand how anyone can say they definitively KNOW anything about this matter. All our knowledge about this is emotional inclination, one way or another.

[DeletedUser]

Interesting that the poster above, who I can't be arsed quoting - effectively says I'm stupid for believing in God and he's more "enlightened" for not.

Nah you're just a wannabe edgy prick tbh.