The difficulty of talking to Atheist

[Colter]

Spiritualists? I thought that the Bible was opposed to spiritualists.

Spiritualists= people who pursue spirituality. I'm not a bible fetish worshiper.

 

[Hetta]

Spiritualists= people who pursue spirituality. I'm not a bible fetish worshiper.

Spiritualism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So this kind of spiritualist?

 

[Colter]

Maybe he relies on objective evidence?

You are free to have faith in what you choose, but if you don't have objective evidence to support it, people will question you.

I get that, but honestly, I think the so called atheist illustrate forms of faith in the conduct of their lives far more than they imply in their demands for all sorts of anal proofs and lab experiments when they question religious people.

If someone wants "certainty" then logic would lead you to abstain from having children, they are darned expensive, wring your guts out with anxiety, fear, heartbreak, frustration etc and make life much more uncertain! But it's worth every bit of it! That's love, it's not logic. God is live, he suffers in our suffering.

 

[Colter]

Spiritualism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So this kind of spiritualist?

Errrrm, no, you quoted my definition of the context in which I was using it.

 

[Hetta]

Errrrm, no, you quoted my definition of the context in which I was using it.

But that's not the correct definition. Just be careful telling Christians that you are a "spiritualist" because they will assume the definition I posted.

 

[Colter]

But that's not the correct definition. Just be careful telling Christians that you are a "spiritualist" because they will assume the definition I posted.

Thank you, I've been burned at the stake and banned from Christian forums a couple of times now. At BTDF I managed to earn a lifetime ban.

I believe in Jesus the Christ, but beyond that I have issues with various tenets of Paul's Christian religion about Jesus.

 

[Hetta]

Thank you, I've been burned at the stake and banned from Christian forums a couple of times now. At BTDF I managed to earn a lifetime ban.

I believe in Jesus the Christ, but beyond that I have issues with various tenets of Paul's Christian religion about Jesus.

I have my own struggles with the Bible, so I hear ya.

 

[Deidre32]

"The more of science you know, the less sure you can be; the more of religion you have, the more certain you are."

Jesus would have had doubts, but his doubts never became a religion, his faith became a religion. It wasn't so much that he wanted man to merely believe in him as he asked us to trust and believe with him; to share his faith in the Universal Father. Atheism is a religion of doubt, it's a form of faith because they cannot disprove God to the point of certainty.

But I have no absolute proof, even Jesus demonstrated that so called miraculous proof is overrated. He would perform some amazing act of healing yet some religious fanatic would point out how he didn't wash his hands before he ate??? Or claim that he got his power from Satan. Man may develop spiritual laziness if he were "certain".

I've grown, through experience, to appreciate the Fathers love and wisdom in allowing me to find truth legitimately rather then violating his own natural way, depriving me of the exhilarating adventure out on the high seas of faith adventure. Some of my friends who are former Atheist came by faith legitimately, they didn't buy into a ready made religion, rather through experience they came to a faith in a God of their own understanding.

While I have had tons of experiences and observations of God, as well as doubts, I can share this fact with you. On the day of my unanticipated psychic conversion, I was a hopeless, drug addicted alcoholic who often entertained suicide. My life was an unmanageable mess! I was anti religious, although I never had a big problem with Jesus the man. One moment I had no hope, the next moment I had hope. (There was no at will testable BS process).

They say that when the pupil is ready the teacher will appear. I'm so humbled by the fact that I didn't even realize how profound my personality change was, others saw it in me, my family, friends, but alls I knew was that I wanted help and went to a 12 place to get it. I haven't had a drink it drug for 29 years. People who new me say I only mildly resemble the criminal a-hole they once knew.

Other things about me that you may note:

* I do not now nor have I ever thought that God wrote ANY of the current books on the list that make up the Bible. The books of the bible were written by holy men, some more holy than others. The OT books were redacted and edited during the Babylonian captivity, they were written by the elite Hebrew priest class for a scattered Israelite audience. They made NO claim of writing the word of God. They took a mostly ordinary secular history and converted it into a miraculous fiction! After the return the Jews would frankly loose sight of their destiny and purpose, sadly they rejected the Son when he finally did come. Further complicating matters was the contamination of evolved Christianity by OT thinking and the prevailing Pagan doctrines of human sacrifice.

* I believe in cosmic evolution, the fragmented story of Adam and Eve shows evidence of their arrival on a previously populated, fallen earth.

* The Noah flood story is the most ridiculous story in the bible, it was a result of the Hebrew priests failure to trace their blood line back to a much older Adam, so they just decided to drown the whole world in its own wickedness to fill in the gap.

* Jesus knew the errors of the scripture, but rather than
reform Judaism, he revealed new truths making use of what was true in the older writings and letting the untrue ideas die on the vine.

* In the plan of life God has has decreed that "human wisdom must evolve", he will not deprive us of that. Besides, man is in partnership with God in the evolution of God the Supreme in time and space through the collective of our unique, individual faith experiences in the very face of uncertainty.

I appreciate your feedback.

Re: atheism, the definition. It's more than doubt. It's really a disbelief in any objective proof that a god exists. There is no objective proof. As an atheist, I believe that a god 'might' exist, and no one has full knowledge one way or the other if one does or does not. So, there's that side of it, too.

Your thoughts on the flood/Noah's Ark and Adam and Eve are interesting. I believe the entire Bible is a series of historical truths mixed with nonsense, in order to perpetuate a religion. The Bible isn't a history or science book, it's designed to bring people to belief in a god, a specific god.

That's a problem I have with the Bible. Among other problems. lol

 

[Aldebaran]

I agree that logic does not imply wisdom, but wisdom implies logic. Wisdom without logic is foolish conceit.

I am all for wisdom. It's why I am an atheist.


eudaimonia,

Mark

An atheist believes there is no God.

Psalm 14:1 says: The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God."

Perhaps you're a little confused about what wisdom is.

 

[Aldebaran]

I am a Christian never really doubted Jesus is the only way to God of the Holy Bible but I have always liked reading different opinions on the Christian faith. The more I research the more I see that The Bible is truth. I'm not sure how deep in the Word you were before you left but I really hope you look into things that are established by Christians and the non believers too whilst looking at the overall message and the words of The Bible.

Welcome to the forum! BTW, I like your avatar!

 

[Hetta]

An atheist believes there is no God.

Psalm 14:1 says: The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God."

Perhaps you're a little confused about what wisdom is.

And behaving in a patronizing manner is a great way to show Christ to others, right? Because Jesus did that in ... absolutely no part of his life, ever.

 

[Aldebaran]

And behaving in a patronizing manner is a great way to show Christ to others, right? Because Jesus did that in ... absolutely no part of his life, ever.

You mean responding to when someone says they have wisdom by saying God doesn't exist by pointing out what the bible says about that? You'll have to take it up with the writers of the bible on that one.

 

[Hetta]

You mean responding to when someone says they have wisdom by saying God doesn't exist by pointing out what the bible says about that? You'll have to take it up with the writers of the bible on that one.

The writers of the Bible didn't make that post.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Shoe shopping for an Atheist must be torture!

"How do theses look Margie?"

"Great!"

"Oh but how can you be certain?" "what at will testable proof do you have that they look "great?" Will everyone who sees theses shoes on me have the exact same reaction?" "And don't give me that nonsense about how "you just know" Margie, we've all had quite enough of your unprovable personal opinion!"

No, rather I don't think Atheist are nearly as anal-retentive when it comes to their own lives as they pretend to be when they pick at the religious.


To answer your question, while certainty may grow through daily living in faith, there is no certainty I can give you about my experience with God. God is living, he is not a mathematical formula.

The real revelation of God to man is in the lives that we live. Jesus lived a God revealing life. To have seen Jesus was to see the Father. But still, no certainty.

In the original gospel, before Paganized Christianity remixed it, the core of Jesus' "good news" was the realization that we are ALL in fact sons and daughters of God. That by faith we can realize this ennobling truth.

To start, the shoe analogy is horrible. Would you like me to explain why it's horrible or can we just agree it's a poor analogy and move on?

Secondly... congratulations! Honestly, I don't know if I've ever seen a more honest statement from a believer about their own religious experiences than this...

"To answer your question, while certainty may grow through daily living in faith, there is no certainty I can give you about my experience with God."

That's just wonderful. The whole point I was getting at was that even you, who claims to have experienced god in some way, cannot actually be sure that what you're experiencing is god. Normally, getting someone to realize that is like pulling teeth...you however, have crossed into the realm of wisdom. It takes a big man to admit he could be wrong, so again...congratulations.

 

[Aldebaran]

The writers of the Bible didn't make that post.

The writers of the bible are the ones you have an issue with if you don't agree with what they wrote.

 

[Colter]

....."Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul. Moral choosing constitutes religion as the motive of inner response to outer conditions. But such a real religion is not a purely subjective experience. It signifies the whole of the subjectivity of the individual engaged in a meaningful and intelligent response to total objectivity — the universe and its Maker.

The exquisite and transcendent experience of loving and being loved is not just a psychic illusion because it is so purely subjective. The one truly divine and objective reality that is associated with mortal beings, the Thought Adjuster, functions to human observation apparently as an exclusively subjective phenomenon. Man’s contact with the highest objective reality, God, is only through the purely subjective experience of knowing him, of worshiping him, of realizing sonship with him.

True religious worship is not a futile monologue of self-deception. Worship is a personal communion with that which is divinely real, with that which is the very source of reality. Man aspires by worship to be better and thereby eventually attains the best.

The idealization and attempted service of truth, beauty, and goodness is not a substitute for genuine religious experience — spiritual reality. Psychology and idealism are not the equivalent of religious reality. The projections of the human intellect may indeed originate false gods — gods in man’s image — but the true God-consciousness does not have such an origin. The God-consciousness is resident in the indwelling spirit. Many of the religious systems of man come from the formulations of the human intellect, but the God-consciousness is not necessarily a part of these grotesque systems of religious slavery.

God is not the mere invention of man’s idealism; he is the very source of all such superanimal insights and values. God is not a hypothesis formulated to unify the human concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness; he is the personality of love from whom all of these universe manifestations are derived. The truth, beauty, and goodness of man’s world are unified by the increasing spirituality of the experience of mortals ascending toward Paradise realities. The unity of truth, beauty, and goodness can only be realized in the spiritual experience of the God-knowing personality.

Morality is the essential pre-existent soil of personal God-consciousness, the personal realization of the Adjuster’s inner presence, but such morality is not the source of religious experience and the resultant spiritual insight. The moral nature is superanimal but subspiritual. Morality is equivalent to the recognition of duty, the realization of the existence of right and wrong. The moral zone intervenes between the animal and the human types of mind as morontia functions between the material and the spiritual spheres of personality attainment." UB 1955​

 

[lt11]

Welcome to the forum! BTW, I like your avatar!

Hello thanks for the welcome.

 

[Hetta]

The writers of the bible are the ones you have an issue with if you don't agree with what they wrote.

I'm taking an issue with the way you wrote your post - something which you understand perfectly well.

 

[Deidre32]

The funny yet consistent thing I tend to see with these conversations is that they spiral into theists vs. atheists. Theists use their holy books to support their truths. Atheists are interested in objective truths. This is why we end up at these standstills. And then people start getting offended etc...

Because theists don't have objective truths, they have their experiences, prayers, the Bible, etc...those three things do not satisfy or pass as objective truth. An objective truth is something that just is and doesn't ever change. We can all agree that 2+2=4. If you believe it equals 5, that will be your subjective truth. Same with religion.

The Bible is one "version" among many as to who god "might" be. If you want to dub that objective truth, then that is why you struggle to gain credibility from non theists.

 

[variant]

The funny yet consistent thing I tend to see with these conversations is that they spiral into theists vs. atheists. Theists use their holy books to support their truths. Atheists are interested in objective truths. This is why we end up at these standstills. And then people start getting offended etc...

Because theists don't have objective truths, they have their experiences, prayers, the Bible, etc...those three things do not satisfy or pass as objective truth. An objective truth is something that just is and doesn't ever change. We can all agree that 2+2=4. If you believe it equals 5, that will be your subjective truth. Same with religion.

The Bible is one "version" among many as to who god "might" be. If you want to dub that objective truth, then that is why you struggle to gain credibility from non theists.

It's always funny to see someone try to address an atheist with a Bible passage.

It's generally that we just don't share or support the assumptions you are making, and believers are used to talking to believers who do share a common set of rarely questioned assumptions.

http://www.christianforums.com/t7841907/#post66313994

I suppose it does make it difficult to talk to us.

But, to do such a thing makes one question if they understand the nature of our disagreement.