Originally posted by webboffin
Why do athiests if they don't believe in God come and subscribe to this Christian forum? (Please note: I don't hold anything against them) Hopefully some of them will see the truth and accept Jesus as our saviour.
Are they searching for something but don't know what? Or are they trying aimlessly to convince christians of their non-god beliefs are right?
I don't believe in fairies so I wouldn't bother joining up to a Fairy Forum just to tell people I don't believe in fairies.
I'm just curious to what inspires them to come here (often regularly).
But please do come regardless.
Thank you for raising the question. And let me try to answer that.
Well, let me first state that, like you said, I do not hold anything against christians, or believers, or anyone.
I come here, since this is an open discussion board. It is more or less the same as that I have a doorbell, and sometimes people of Christian belief ring my doorbell, and start talking about their belief. Although I am a convinced non-believer (in the sense that in my reasoning, there is no outside cause for the world to exist) I let them say what they have to say, respond to them politely of what I think the world is like.
So, this is a discussion board for people, although founded by people of Christian belief, to talk to each other and to people of no-belief and maybe also of another belief.
I think it is good to have open discussions on any item, so people can know about each others thought on questions and issues that matter.
People in this world, have different opinions and thought on many things.
As long as we are people, and do want to know about the world around us, we need to consider not only if what we think the world is like, is correct, and change opinion if we are convinced that our thoughts are somehow incorrect, and also we need to know what people of different belief, opinion or thought, base their beliefs, opinions or thought on.
In this world, it's only sane to have such open discusions, and try to understand each other in an open and honest fashion, treating anyone as humans no matter what their beliefs or thoughts or opinions are. We should treat each other this way, just like we want other to treat us.
Cause the only alternative would then, to start fighting against each other, and starting a war. As long as I live I will always be convinced of the fact that their is no goal worth of fighting a war for, and will struggle for peace always.
Whatever the beliefs, opinions or thoughts are a person has, and no matter how absurd or abnormal such a belief, opinion or thought could be, in the perspective of someone else, I always try to think of this from the fact that this other person must have a reason to have this belief, opinion or thought. We should try to understand this, and not dismerit someone else from what we ourselves think is true. Nobody in the world has all the knowledge, so we may not judge people by the fact they have less knowledge or different knowledge. We all understand part of reality, but nobody understands all of reality.
It's in this fashion, I welcome others here which want to enter such an open debate and discussion, based on mutual respect.
So, the reasons for coming here and discuss with you in this manner are twofold:
1. I wanna know what and why you think/belief the way you think/belief
2. I wanna explain what and why I think/belief the way I think/belief
The issue of "turning ones minds" is out of the question. People make their own judgements. But sometimes one does need others to draw and base opinions on. People of strong belief or conviction, don't tend to change their belief/conviction easily.
Only when one is not certain about ones own belief/conviction (and everyone is up to some point uncertain about if what they think or belief is right or not) it can be that one can change ones opinions.
If someone is not up to that, then nobody can, and certainly not by pursuading or enforcing things. That just would work the other way around.
As what my own conviction and understanding is, is that to my knowledge (which I am aware of is limited of course), the world as we see it, is entirely understandable. There is nothing we cannot understand. Although to acquire understanding, it means we have to act in order to get this understanding. Understanding does not come with itself.
In order to understand, we must ask questions, examine things, and look at things from all perspectives. Only then we can manage to aquire a little bit of understanding. It's not an easy way this can be done.
It has costed us thousands or years, to get our understanding on the point where it is now. This is not the work on an individual, but is the work of so many people, who pioneered in understanding the things we did not understand before. And it is certain, in our journey of getting this understanding, we made all kinds of mistakes, assumed things to be the way they were not. But as humans, we can only learn from our mistakes.
Sometimes we might feel lost, and sometimes we might think we cannot makes sense of it all. But these are only moments or points in time, in which our understanding is developing. I am certain we are able of understanding it all. That is what our history proofs us. We already see the big picture, and are able to make sense of the world as a whole.
In this journey, I think, nobody should be left on its one, it is for everyone to get to this understanding, and to actively participate in it. After all we all belong to the same family: the human family. Even despite the fact, that major conflicts are between us sometimes, as the daily reality shows us every day, I am convinced we are able to overcome them at sometime at some point in our human development.
