From Christian to Atheist. Your thoughts?

AussieBanana said:

So I want to start a discussion about religion and more in depth Christianity.
I want to first start by saying that I'm an Atheist but that wasn't always the case. I was born in to a Christian family and for most of my childhood and early teens I was. That was until I started studying science.
What I don't like about religion is the fact that it makes no room for questions, when I was a school it was "don't ask how Noah built the ark just accept that he did" and if I did question the church I would get in trouble.

I guess my real question is how people can blindly(faith) follow a book that was written 4000 years ago but just ignore facts and common sense?

(Sorry about the grammar I like science not English)

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Soyeong said:

Christianity has a long history of intellectuals, many of whom have been leading scientists, it is false that there is no room for questions in Christianity or that there is a conflict between it and science. "Faith" is synonymous with "trust" and has nothing to do with believing something blindly. The only reason to believe that Christianity is true is because that's what the evidence supports.

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GQ Chris said:

I don't have enough faith to be an athiest.

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GQ Chris said:

I already wasted too much time here with an atheist. lol

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Heatios said:

I'm sorry you feel that way.

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Heatios said:

You've got the idea right, don't be fooled by what the inevitable responses from theists you'll see, they will most likely be cleverly reworded attempts to convince you of the very thing you stopped believing for in the first place, blind faith.

You are completely correct, question your beliefs, don't just accept things, find outside justification for it, not circular reasoning, scientific evidence or reason to believe this is true, don't let any amount of repetitions of the same claim to blind faith, ever shake your unwillingness to simply accept something because you are told so. Evaluate it for yourself.

People accept things on blind faith, because of indoctrination from birth, people who have got it in to their head that this is correct, by simply repeating it, to the point where they then are not willing to accept that all this time they are wrong. Faith isn't much of a reason to believe anything, but Blind Faith has got to be the stupidest reason i've ever heard of for believing anything. It is basically admitting that you cannot prove something, and do not have a credible reason, but believe it is true no matter what. Religions have been manipulating this though, inclination that we have to never just "believe" something is true, by fear mongering, and pascals wager arguments, saying what "could happen" changed the entire ball park, and people would rather go for the brand new mansion than their house getting evicted, seeing it as worthy to ignore the fact that they have no reason to believe they will be promised either of these things.

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Soyeong said:

It is not even humanly possible to have blind faith. Any belief at minimum requires evidence or else it would never have been formed in the first place. Learning is the process of taking in new true and false beliefs, weeding out beliefs that we wrongly thought were true, and reinforcing true beliefs. If my beliefs are true, then I want them to be reinforced, but if they are false, then I want to find out which ones they are. The problem comes with wrongly weeding out true beliefs or reinforcing false beliefs, but we should never fear to question them.

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Heatios said:

The rejection of the theistic claim that "God exists" is simple rules of an argument, the positive claim is required to meet its burden of proof, if it has not there is no reason to believe it.

Cute, but rejecting a claim is not a faith based position, it's simply following the rules of an argument.

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Heatios said:

Please, link me to any and all evidence supporting and affirming the validity and authenticity of Christianity that comes from outside sources. If you have any evidence to support Christianity from outside sources, outside quoting the bible, please, please link me, I would love to see some historical records, scientific demonstrations, scientific evidence, that supports Christianity.

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Soyeong said:

Atheism is negation of theism, so it is the equal and opposite to the position that God exists, and inherently can't be the null position. In other words, if theism is 1, then its negation of atheism is -1, not 0. The only null or neutral position is not knowing whether something is true and every other position requires the burden of proof. If you wish to avoid the burden of proof, then don't claim to hold a position that is the negation of another position.

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Soyeong said:

Please quote a single historian saying that what you asking for is the proper way to do an historical investigation.

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Heatios said:

You are the one who said you had evidence, that was outside of using circular logic, I.E the bible as evidence to justify the bible's accuracy. I'm simply asking for proof, to which there is a multitude of historians that would ask the same, you really think a historian would look at a factory owner's account of the industrial revolution? No they look at the accounts from people working there, they evaluate outside claims, they find ways outside of just one text provided, to proof the claim as accurate. It's quite remarkable you imply no historian would ask for evidence in the way I did to do a proper historical investigation, because almost every one of them would, in fact your claim is the one that historians would classify as improper way to do a historical investigation.

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Soyeong said:

Science works in the realm of things that are observable, measurable, and repeatable, which excludes historical events, so asking for scientific evidence of an historical event is frankly absurd. Historical events can't be proven, so historians don't work with proof, but with probabilities. Corroborating evidence certainly strengthens testimonial evidence, but testimonial evidence does not get demoted from qualifying as evidence in the absence corroborating evidence. The account of a factory owner would certainly be important to an historian, with the more perspectives the better. They would take note of the bias, but would never dismiss their account just because they were a factory owner.

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Heatios said:

Historians don't work with probabilities, they work with accounts. I will agree, that it does not mean that because there isn't corroborating evidence, that the testimony is to be thrown away, however, it's not strong evidence whatsoever, and that being said, this minimal amount of testimony with no corroborating evidence it actually occured as reported, only weakens the claim, which is subsequently destroyed with fact that; Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

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