The origins of atheism

AirPo · Sep 23, 2015

As I was saying said:
Sorry that the truth hurts and you can't handle it. What is rude, condescending and offensive is your remark about me being rude, condescending and offensive. Autistic people which I am do not know how to be rude, condescending and offensive. I should take time to read up about autism then that will help prevent you from being rude, condescending and offensive.

Incorrect. Autistic people don't realize they are being rude, condescending and offensive.

AirPo · Sep 23, 2015

As I was saying said:
If you are stupid enough to do that it is your problem not mine.

AirPo said:
Incorrect. Autistic people don't realize they are being rude, condescending and offensive.

QED

AV1611VET · Sep 23, 2015

As I was saying said:
Atheism can be traced to Ancient Greece in the 5th century BC.

Maybe by that name.

But atheists were around in David's time.

Psalm 14:1a The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.

Even King Saul, in a state of repentance, realized he was acting like one because he was persecuting a saint who had a better track record than he and was more popular with the common people.

Just like they do today.

1 Samuel 26:21 Then said Saul, I have sinned: return, my son David: for I will no more do thee harm, because my soul was precious in thine eyes this day: behold, I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly.

DogmaHunter · Sep 23, 2015

Colter said:
In my theology the creator Sons are the Fathers of their respective domains. Lucifer would be a being created by Christ Michael, aka Jesus. Lucifer was a high administrator Son in the celestial world overseeing our world and many others.

Yeah... when a person identifies as an atheist, then that person doesn't believe any of this is rooted in reality. Which is why your comment made zero sense.

Atheists don't believe any of this. Not gods, not devils, not any other supernatural shenannigans.

Nore is atheism a "religion" of any kind.
It's the literal opposite: no religion.

In short, Lucifer, as well as many other orders of created or eventuated beings, live by faith in the unseen Father just like man does. Being a high administrator of a different realm than we live in, Lucifer knew his creator brother Michael and other celestial associates, but not the Universal Father.

Lucifer lost faith in the Father and launched a rebellion against the rule of the Paridice Sons in the name of the Father.

Atheists don't believe any part of your theology.
Again, your comment makes zero sense.

Colter · Sep 23, 2015

DogmaHunter said:
Yeah... when a person identifies as an atheist, then that person doesn't believe any of this is rooted in reality. Which is why your comment made zero sense.

Atheists don't believe any of this. Not gods, not devils, not any other supernatural shenannigans.

Nore is atheism a "religion" of any kind.
It's the literal opposite: no religion.

Atheists don't believe any part of your theology.
Again, your comment makes zero sense.

Atheist do believe things, they believe in a Godless Universe. They promote their unbelief by joining Christian forums to pester believers. Atheists are often rebellious non-conformists who ironically all seem to conform to the same way of thinking. I have a friend who is a very bright former Atheist, he considered himself a "professional Atheist" spending so much time debunking believers. Then he ran into a problem that overwhelmed him, finally a chink in the wall his ego had built around him allowed a completely unknown, unanticipated light to shine in. He was reborn. One day that may happen to you.

Colter · Sep 23, 2015

AV1611VET said:
Yet once again, Colter.

Feel free to answer it.

I thought I did, there is no difference in thin minds of believers. Satan and God coexist in the spirit realm. To them Satan rules this world. Then there is some crazy nonsense about Satan being locked up for 1,000 years but then let out again for a while.

Colter · Sep 23, 2015

LynnC said:
Hi Colter,
Think about this...
there is no way you can tell me that what ISIS is doing is not demonic, and demon inspired.

and what about people that think it's ok to harvest baby parts?
Remember the ancient pagan practices where babies used to be sacrificed on altars? This is nothing but a new form of that... demon inspired.

Hi Lynn, well, I can appreciate what you are saying, the ISIS movement is horrific to us......But sadly, what they are doing is no different that the God of Old Testament Judaism if you are familiar with the atrocities blamed on him committed by men. The ISIS people get their Ideas from their scripture book.

For example:

In Genesis 7:21-23 God drowns the entire population of the earth: men, women, children, fetuses, and animals.

In Exodus 12:29 God the baby-killer slaughters all Egyptian firstborn children and cattle because their king was stubborn.

In Numbers 16:41-49 the Israelites complain that God is killing too many of them. So, God sends a plague that kills 14,000 more of them.

In 1 Samuel 6:19 God kills 50,000 men for peeking into the ark of the covenant.

In Numbers 31:7-18 the Israelites kill all the Midianites except for the virgins, whom they are allowed to rape as spoils of war.

In 2 Kings 2:23-24, some kids tease the prophet Elisha, and God sends bears to dismember them.

Wryetui · Sep 23, 2015

withwonderingawe said:
MMMmmmmm what I’m going to say will probably get me thrown off this discussion board.

1, Wrytui you quote Saint John of Damacus

“I believe in one God, the source of all things, without beginning, uncreated, immortal and unassailable, eternal, everlasting, incomprehensible, bodiless, invisible, uncircumscribed, without form. I believe in one superessential Being, one Godhead greater than our conception of divinity, in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and I adore Him alone. I worship one God, one Godhead, but I adore three persons: God the Father, God the Son made flesh, and God the Holy Spirit, one God”

If that’s the way God was explained to me I would be an atheist too!

Incomprehensible?

“And this is life eternal to know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” John 17

2, Another point where I believe Christianity has fail is to sufficiently explain suffering, how can a God of love allow all the suffering in the world. Every atheist I ever spoke to wants a rational explanation of why God created in the first place and then why must we suffer.

3, I believe many people become disillusioned with the way fundamentalist have taught the Bible, I mean the insistence of God creating in six twenty four hours days, the earth is 6000 years old, ex nihilo or something from nothing, the flood, Jonah and the whale etc. They are taught all of this growing up and then they go off to collage and in a short time it’s all destroyed by the secular world.

4,We need to better understand evolution and abiogenesis. It really is a hoax. There is an article here; http://wasdarwinwrong.com/korthof98.htm

"The probability of the spontaneous origin of this is: P < 10-1018. The spontaneous origin of 1,800 nucleotides is the Koonin-threshold for the origin of life and evolution. No Origin of Life (OOL) researcher put it more clearly and dramatically than Koonin. Please note 1,800 nucleotides is a minimum. Every OOL researcher that skips over the Koonin threshold makes a serious scientific oversight."

That probability of less than 10 to the 1018 power represents more years than this earth has been around. We need to educate our atheist friends more on this issue, I don't think most of them have any idea how flimsy their faith in evolution is.

1. That quote belongs to one of the greatest saints in the Orthodox Church and it requires a huge theological knowledge in order to understand his work and his sayings.

2. Christianity has failed in exactly nothing. People have failed in comprehending christianity.

“Only the foolish think that suffering is evil. A sensible man knows that suffering is not evil but only the manifestation of evil and healing from evil. Only sin in a man is a real evil, and there is no evil outside sin. Everything else that men generally call evil is not, but is a bitter medicine to heal from evil. The sicker the man, the more bitter the medicine that the doctor prescribes for him. At times, even, it seems to a sick man that the medicine is worse and more bitter than the sickness itself! And so it seems at times to the sinner: the suffering is harder and more bitter than the sin committed. But this is only an illusion – a very strong self-delusion. There is no suffering in the world that could be anywhere near as hard and destructive as sin is. All the suffering borne by men and nations is none other than the abundant healing that eternal Mercy offers to men and nations to save them from eternal death. Every sin, however small, would inevitably bring death if Mercy were not to allow suffering in order to sober men up from the inebriation of sin; for the healing that comes through suffering is brought about by the grace-filled power of the Holy and Life-giving Spirit.”

~St. Nikolai Velimirovich

3. Fundamentalists are not and have never been a part of the ancient wisdom of the Orthodox Church and they do not have a valid theology, not even by far.

4. Christianity does not, neither it builds on science or has to be forced in order to fit the secular world. Following the Holy Fathers, Orthodoxy uses science and philosophy to defend and explain her Faith. Unlike Roman Catholicism, she does not build on the results of philosophy and science. The Church does not seek to reconcile faith and reason. She makes no effort to prove by logic or science what Christ gave His followers to believe. If physics or biology or chemistry or philosophy lends support to the teachings of the Church, she does not refuse them. However, Orthodoxy is not intimidated by man's intellectual accomplishments. She does not bow to them and change the Christian Faith to make it consistent with the results of human thought and science.

St. Basil the Great advised young monks to use Greek philosophy as a bee uses the flower. Take only the "honey," ---- the truth --- which God has planted in the world to prepare men for the Coming of the Lord.

For example, the Greeks had a doctrine of the Logos. The Gospel of John opens, "In the beginning was the Word (Logos, in Greek). For the pagans, the Logos was not God, as He is for Christians; rather he is a principle, a power or force by which "God: formed and governs the world. The Fathers pointed to the similarity between the Logos or Word of the Bible and the Logos of Greek philosophy as a sign of Providence. The difference between them, they attributed to the sinfulness of men and the weakness of the human intellect. They remembered the words of the Apostle Paul, "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ" (Col. 2: 8).

Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, places a high value on human reason. Its history shows the consequence of that trust. For example, in the Latin Middle Ages, the 13th century, the theologian-philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, joined "Christianity" with the philosophy of Aristotle. From that period til now, the Latins have never wavered in their respect for human wisdom; and it has radically altered the theology, mysteries and institutions of the Christian religion.

asherahSamaria · Sep 23, 2015

AirPo said:
Incorrect. Autistic people don't realize they are being rude, condescending and offensive.

Autism is a developmental condition with a basket of symptoms that may or may not be present for a positive diagnosis. I know a lot of autistic people (officially diagnosed) that are neither rude or condescending and fully grasp the meaning of what they say and how they say it.

DogmaHunter · Sep 23, 2015

Colter said:
Atheist do believe things, they believe in a Godless Universe.

The "-less" part makes that negative claim. One doesn't "believe" negative claims.

I believe lots of things. Gods aren't one of them.
My atheism is only defined by that which I do NOT believe. Not by something I DO believe.

You need to believe specific things to be a theist.
Whenever those specific things are NOT believed, one is an atheist by default - regardless of what else is believed or not believed.

They promote their unbelief by joining Christian forums to pester believers.

"pester"?

I thought this was a public discussion forum.
If you don't like discussion with other-minded people, you are free to retreat into the christian only sections.

And once again, my atheism isn't defined by contributing to an online forum either....

Atheists are often rebellious non-conformists who ironically all seem to conform to the same way of thinking.

Perhaps, perhaps not.
Either way, it is irrelevant as atheism isn't defined by attitude or behaviour, but by not believing very specific propositions concerning gods and the supernatural.

I have a friend who is a very bright former Atheist, he considered himself a "professional Atheist" spending so much time debunking believers.

That's nice. Not to mention irrelevant and anecdotal.

Then he ran into a problem that overwhelmed him, finally a chink in the wall his ego had built around him allowed a completely unknown, unanticipated light to shine in. He was reborn. One day that may happen to you.

Is this a good time to tell about my friend who nearly became a pastor and then turned atheist?

Anyhow...who cares.

My atheism isn't defined by what I DO believe. Nore is it defined by my behaviour, attitude, political prefernce, sexual orientation, who my friends are, what country I live in, what my parents believed or whatever anecdote I can come up with.

My atheism is ONLY defined by my lack of beliefs in supernatural shenannigans. And that's it. Get it into your head.

Chriliman · Sep 23, 2015

Archaeopteryx said:
I'm not relying on "common sense."

Maybe you should rely a sense that's uncommon, that personal sense that is unique to you. The truth is written somewhere inside of you. You'll know it when you find it.

AV1611VET · Sep 23, 2015

DogmaHunter said:
Atheists don't believe any of this. Not gods, not devils, not any other supernatural shenannigans.

Do atheists believe in the Resurrection, angels, or spirits?

Acts 23:8a For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit:

DogmaHunter · Sep 23, 2015

Chriliman said:
Maybe you should rely a sense that's uncommon, that personal sense that is unique to you.

Que?

The truth is written somewhere inside of you.

Que?

You'll know it when you find it.

Another invitation for confirmation bias?

Eudaimonist · Sep 23, 2015

Colter said:
Atheist do believe things, they believe in a Godless Universe.

They may believe many things. They may believe that they had just had a hamburger for lunch. But what makes them atheists is that they don't believe in divine beings.

They promote their unbelief by joining Christian forums to pester believers.

I'm here for dialog with willing discussion partners. I'm not here to "pester" anyone. Are you here to pester atheists? You could post exclusively in the Christians-only area.

Incidentally, what do you think of Christians who go to atheist message boards and discuss ideas with them? I have seen plenty of them.

Atheists are often rebellious non-conformists who ironically all seem to conform to the same way of thinking.

Perhaps some are like that, but many aren't. *shrug*

I have a friend who is a very bright former Atheist, he considered himself a "professional Atheist" spending so much time debunking believers. Then he ran into a problem that overwhelmed him, finally a chink in the wall his ego had built around him allowed a completely unknown, unanticipated light to shine in. He was reborn. One day that may happen to you.

That's nice. It works both ways. Christians have seen the light of reason and become atheists. It could happen to you.

eudaimonia,

Mark

DogmaHunter · Sep 23, 2015

AV1611VET said:
Do atheists believe in the Resurrection, angels, or spirits?

Acts 23:8a For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit:

What part of "don't believe any of this. Not gods, not devils, not any other supernatural shenannigans" didn't you understand?

Chriliman · Sep 23, 2015

DogmaHunter said:
Que?

Que?

Another invitation for confirmation bias?

Nope, just a different way to think about something. Sorry, is that a crime?

DogmaHunter · Sep 23, 2015

Chriliman said:
Nope, just a different way to think about something. Sorry, is that a crime?

It's not a crime.
It's just irrational.

AV1611VET · Sep 23, 2015

Colter said:
I thought I did, there is no difference in thin minds of believers.

"Thin minds" -- that's a new one.

Usually they are either "closed" or "non-existent."

Colter said:
Satan and God coexist in the spirit realm.

God is also transcendent and can enter the physical world at will.

Colter said:
To them Satan rules this world.

That's because Adam turned it over to him.

Colter said:
Then there is some crazy nonsense about Satan being locked up for 1,000 years but then let out again for a while.

What is "crazy nonsense" to some is doctrine to others.

Chriliman · Sep 23, 2015

DogmaHunter said:
It's not a crime.
It's just irrational.

Since my thoughts are based on my faith in God, do you think my every thought is irrational?

I'd argue that someone who thinks another's thoughts are always irrational is in fact being irrational themselves.

I do not think you're every thought is irrational. I see a lot of rational thinking from you, but it ceases to be rational when we get to the meat of deep thinking about truth.

Eudaimonist · Sep 23, 2015

AV1611VET said:
Do atheists believe in the Resurrection, angels, or spirits?

Would believing in the Resurrection imply belief in God? Then no.

I suppose it is possible to believe in spirits and magical resurrections and still be an atheist, since atheism is simply a lack of belief in divine beings. Some New Agers strike me as atheists, though clearly not the skeptical sort.

eudaimonia,

Mark

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