Why are atheists disliked in America?

[Yedtarts]

Re: Why are atheists disliked in America?

Truly... From where do you get your information?
Are there reliable numbers that show that more than 50% of atheists who become addicts convert? What is God's way anyway? Alcoholics Anonymous? There are secular groups too (e.g. rational recovery).

Maybe it did not sound what I was trying to say the way I meant it to do. I wanted to say from most of atheist who acknowledge god when they have addiction problems be it drug or alcohol they go on TV channels and cry like little girls even some of them worst than little girls.

My information I get it when I watch satellite TV that I have at home, there are lots of religion channels on it, no they are not just Christian channels, you have all kinds of religion channels there, also sometimes there are shows on regular channels when they talk about addictions, and most of addicts that have stopped their bad habits and they are drug or alcohol free for log time and never went back to their addictions are the ones that “found God” it’s one of their words, which some of them they admit that they never believed in God and some say we believed in him but we never prayed or we never took the religion seriously.

I also want to clarify that you're not saying (because you didn't quite state it this way) that atheists have a higher incidence of drug addiction.

[Yedtarts]

Re: Why are atheists disliked in America?

I never implied that. One of the strengths of religion is that once you believe in it, it's very hard to let go. All I said was that people turning to a reassuring or comforting god in their time of need says more about the person and their desperation than it does about whether or not a God actually exists.



What does that have to do with anything? We're on a public forum here. You posted something in a thread, and I was inspired to respond to it. When someone posts something in this forum, it's not like they can add a "ps" at the end that says "...and only such and such members may respond to this post, the rest of you shut up..."



Again, what does this have to do with anything? You have every opportunity to respond to the topic at hand here in this thread. I'm hoping you can not repeat the behavior of that other thread you're referring to, but it seems like we may already be off on the wrong foot. I'd prefer if you just focused on the arguments for your view.



I never twisted your words or put any words in your mouth. One of the fundamental aspects of Christianity are the ethics of Jesus Christ, of which the primary one is compassion. This is very clear and controversial to no one who knows anything about Christianity or theology.

I never implied you used the words compassionate christian or referred to yourself as such, but you were talking about Christianity, and intrinsic to that is the idea of compassion. You may not consider yourself a saint, but as far as I can tell you are a Christian. This in turn implies that people (yourself or anyone else) can be Christians and not be compassionate, and that is okay as far as you are concerned. If this is the case, then not only have you failed to show that atheists are hypocritical, but you've implied that Christians are.

I also didn't bring up your bad grammar at all in this thread. All I was doing was responding to the points you were trying to raise and why I thought they were weak or failed at supporting your arguments.

Look who’s hiding behind mommy. What happened suddenly you got the courage to answer back after seeing a moderator answering?

When in an argument you start attacking the messenger and not concentrate on the message, and start saying things like this: “The only "pure source" would be if God directly appeared to you or spoke to you in your mind. At which point you would either be hallucinating or schizophrenic.” Or things like this: “I'm noticing a trend here, I really can't do anything to help If you cannot follow the basic information being exchanged in the conversation” or : “It's hard enough understanding you with strange grammar and way of constructing sentences. Don't prolong the torture of reading your posts with extra, unnecessary text.” This is the only kind of answer you will get from me.

[Jinx]

Re: Why are atheists disliked in America?

Look who’s hiding behind mommy. What happened suddenly you got the courage to answer back after seeing a moderator answering?

Siggie posting in this thread had absolutely zero influence on me posting. If anything, I get jealous when I'm not the first atheist on the scene

When in an argument you start attacking the messenger and not concentrate on the message, and start saying things like this: “The only "pure source" would be if God directly appeared to you or spoke to you in your mind. At which point you would either be hallucinating or schizophrenic.” Or things like this: “I'm noticing a trend here, I really can't do anything to help If you cannot follow the basic information being exchanged in the conversation” or : “It's hard enough understanding you with strange grammar and way of constructing sentences. Don't prolong the torture of reading your posts with extra, unnecessary text.” This is the only kind of answer you will get from me.

The text you are quoting came after you had already demonstrated yourself to be unable to carry a conversation in any mature, proper, or interesting way. I didn't come out of the gate insulting you. Even now, I'm not insulting you, not really, I'm just pointing out everything I see wrong with a) your points, and b) the way in which you present those points.

Now you can either dwell on that and waste more key strokes typing out responses to my responses to your responses to my responses about grammar and feeling insulted, or you can just properly defend and argue your points.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Why are atheists disliked in America?

Wrong. Atheism simply is the lack of belief in God and other supernatural entities, and the lack of belief is usually based on the lack of evidence for such a being or beings. Lacking belief in something is fundamentally different from saying "there is no..."

I think the universe is too perfect and mankind too imperfect for there not to be a greater source of intelligence. If someone were to say they saw God or God spoke to them, nobody would believe them anyways. Certainly people can have visions in their dreams and attribute that to having contact with God but it could just be that our minds are more powerful during sleep than when awake. Concepts of good and evil, God and Devil, etc. are representations of pros/cons, hot/cold, positive/negative. If you think about it, all the forces that are holding the universe together is in perfect equilibrium and if there was an imbalance, our world would cease to exist.

In the same way that we don't have evidence to prove there is a God, we also don't have evidence to prove there isn't a God. Atheists argue proof is not needed for something that doesn't exist. For whatever reason, we are conditioned to imagine things that don't exist, something we refer to as vision. If people didn't have vision, there would be no cars, no television, no vcr's, etc. These things came from people that had vision. Mind you, some people are still hunting for the fountain of youth and Big Foot (imagination is separate from vision). There was a time when people sat there and wished they could change the TV channel without getting up and wham, the remote control was invented. Some people wish and hope while others do work and create. I would be shocked to find out that scientists and inventors in the past were non believers, despite what most of us are told today.

[Yedtarts]

Re: Why are atheists disliked in America?

The text you are quoting came after you had already demonstrated yourself to be unable to carry a conversation in any mature, proper, or interesting way. I didn't come out of the gate insulting you. Even now, I'm not insulting you, not really, I'm just pointing out everything I see wrong with a) your points, and b) the way in which you present those points.

Now you can either dwell on that and waste more key strokes typing out responses to my responses to your responses to my responses about grammar and feeling insulted, or you can just properly defend and argue your points.

What is my point? You’re saying there is no God. I said: I respect that as long as you respect what I believe in and not mock my belief or my God. What did you said back? “The only "pure source" would be if God directly appeared to you or spoke to you in your mind. At which point you would either be hallucinating or schizophrenic”. Your point is?: I should be thankful to your sarcastic answers and consider me being hallucinating and schizophrenic a mature and interesting way of conversation?

[yerazhishda]

Re: Why are atheists disliked in America?

What makes religion what it is is the fact that there are certain unquestionable truths you have to accept to be a believer, whereas atheists tend to be people who are incredibly skeptical about such claims. There is nothing in common between the two. Religious people like to make Atheism sound like a system of faith because if you (the religious person) are coming from a position of faith, it's easier to feel as though you're on equal ground with, and with authority enough to attack, another position of faith.

This is such a bogus argument that gets repeated ad nauseum by the Dawkins crowd. There are certain unquestionable truths that everyone accepts on a daily basis - i.e. that A does in fact actually equal A. Isn't the fact that someone believes we can understand the universe with a great amount of (if not 100%) certainty simply a philosophical prejudice? How can we know for sure that our senses are not deluding us? I'm not arguing that therefore, a god must exist, simply the statement that atheists could NEVER do such a brash thing as accept truths that cannot be empirically verified...

Also the atheist can never really justify philosophically or morally his existence. In other words, what difference does it make if I live or die? Not how should I live, but why should I live in the first place. You will find that the answer to that question lies beyond the purely rational realm. If you take that there is no meaning, you descend into nihilism and into the realm of absurdity...

[Jinx]

Re: Why are atheists disliked in America?

I think the universe is too perfect and mankind too imperfect for there not to be a greater source of intelligence. If someone were to say they saw God or God spoke to them, nobody would believe them anyways. Certainly people can have visions in their dreams and attribute that to having contact with God but it could just be that our minds are more powerful during sleep than when awake. Concepts of good and evil, God and Devil, etc. are representations of pros/cons, hot/cold, positive/negative. If you think about it, all the forces that are holding the universe together is in perfect equilibrium and if there was an imbalance, our world would cease to exist.

In the same way that we don't have evidence to prove there is a God, we also don't have evidence to prove there isn't a God. Atheists argue proof is not needed for something that doesn't exist. For whatever reason, we are conditioned to imagine things that don't exist, something we refer to as vision. If people didn't have vision, there would be no cars, no television, no vcr's, etc. These things came from people that had vision. Mind you, some people are still hunting for the fountain of youth and Big Foot (imagination is separate from vision). There was a time when people sat there and wished they could change the TV channel without getting up and wham, the remote control was invented. Some people wish and hope while others do work and create. I would be shocked to find out that scientists and inventors in the past were non believers, despite what most of us are told today.

Scientists from La Place all the way up to Dawkins can provide plenty of reasons as to why you don't need a God, which is no one proves that there isn't a God, but it does license unbelief. That's all I'm saying. The whole argument about how the universe couldn't possibly work without a God tends to come mostly from (but not limited to) people who simply don't know as much about science or done the hard research that dedicated scientists have.

[Jinx]

Re: Why are atheists disliked in America?

What is my point? You’re saying there is no God. I said: I respect that as long as you respect what I believe in and not mock my belief or my God. What did you said back? “The only "pure source" would be if God directly appeared to you or spoke to you in your mind. At which point you would either be hallucinating or schizophrenic”. Your point is?: I should be thankful to your sarcastic answers and consider me being hallucinating and schizophrenic a mature and interesting way of conversation?

I never said there is no God, right off the bat you're showing that still, after all this time, you have no idea what my point is. I don't mind you challenging my position if you actually can, but at least know what my position is. As for the hallucinating things, if you actually imagine Jesus coming into your room or hear voices in your head, I don't know what else I would call that. Again, you're focusing on this being something incredibly insulting I said. If you went up to most people and said you hear voices in your head, they wouldn't just nod and accept that as something legitimate or normal to say. You act as if I'm the only one who would think it's odd for you, or anyone, to hear voices in your head or see a biblical figure, that apparently the rest of us can't see, appear in front of you. If you're insulted by me pointing out how mentally unstable those symptoms are, then you better not tell most people, cause they will likely feel the same way.

[Jinx]

Re: Why are atheists disliked in America?

This is such a bogus argument that gets repeated ad nauseum by the Dawkins crowd. There are certain unquestionable truths that everyone accepts on a daily basis - i.e. that A does in fact actually equal A. Isn't the fact that someone believes we can understand the universe with a great amount of (if not 100%) certainty simply a philosophical prejudice? How can we know for sure that our senses are not deluding us? I'm not arguing that therefore, a god must exist, simply the statement that atheists could NEVER do such a brash thing as accept truths that cannot be empirically verified...

Also the atheist can never really justify philosophically or morally his existence. In other words, what difference does it make if I live or die? Not how should I live, but why should I live in the first place. You will find that the answer to that question lies beyond the purely rational realm. If you take that there is no meaning, you descend into nihilism and into the realm of absurdity...

It's not a bogus argument. We don't know anything for certain, everything in the world is taken on faith, because precisely as you pointed out, we can't know anything for sure. However, we can believe certain things over others based on good reasons and evidence. However, to be a religious person there are certain unquestionable truths. You cannot call yourself a christian without absolutely believing Jesus was the son of God, you can't call yourself a Muslim if you don't believe that God spoke the words of the Quran to the prophet Muhammad who then wrote them down. Saying these things are not true, or even implying that you don't think they are true, automatically makes you not of that particular religion anymore.

[Yedtarts]

Re: Why are atheists disliked in America?

I think the universe is too perfect and mankind too imperfect for there not to be a greater source of intelligence. If someone were to say they saw God or God spoke to them, nobody would believe them anyways. Certainly people can have visions in their dreams and attribute that to having contact with God but it could just be that our minds are more powerful during sleep than when awake. Concepts of good and evil, God and Devil, etc. are representations of pros/cons, hot/cold, positive/negative. If you think about it, all the forces that are holding the universe together is in perfect equilibrium and if there was an imbalance, our world would cease to exist.

In the same way that we don't have evidence to prove there is a God, we also don't have evidence to prove there isn't a God. Atheists argue proof is not needed for something that doesn't exist. For whatever reason, we are conditioned to imagine things that don't exist, something we refer to as vision. If people didn't have vision, there would be no cars, no television, no vcr's, etc. These things came from people that had vision. Mind you, some people are still hunting for the fountain of youth and Big Foot (imagination is separate from vision). There was a time when people sat there and wished they could change the TV channel without getting up and wham, the remote control was invented. Some people wish and hope while others do work and create. I would be shocked to find out that scientists and inventors in the past were non believers, despite what most of us are told today.

Chinese people believe in “Yin and Yang” which is what you are describing, cold and hot, evil and good, negative and positive, God and devil. If there’s “Yin” then why cannot be there “Yang” or the opposite, if there’s “Yang” why cannot be there “Yin”.
In these days that we are living you can see evil everywhere (wars, murders, unjust verdicts, corrupt politicians/doctors/judges, scammers and on…) so if there’s an evil there should also be good. No? Evil comes from devil, good comes from God, Yin and yang.
These days we see lots of satanists and very well organized anti God/Jesus movements which are well publicized by the main stream media and lots of people follow it and think it is a cool thing. So if there are Satanists and anti God/Jesus why can’t be there believers of God and pro God? If there're antis, there should be something there to be an anti about, right?
I respect the ones that don’t believe in God, they say there is no God for me, I don’t believe in it. That is fine with me, no one will ever force them to become believers. But when they start mocking and making fun of believers and God, I find that is offensive and I have every right to defend my beliefs.

Even if God did not exist, I find believing in him and praying to him gives me peace of mind, comfort and answers my un understandable questions in a very reasonable and logical ways. I never had violent or evil thoughts after my prayers. No one can show me yet any violent or evil words that Jesus has said, he represents God for me.