I’m a 17 year old agnostic Texan/Mountaineer/Pittsburghese North Carolinian. Should I join your club? Why? Discuss.
I became an athiest at 15, for a variety of reasons.
What are your reasons?
What are your thoughts about people with honest and authentic faith?
Curiousity, pity, what?
On post 12 of Concerning the Silly Notion that “God” must refer to the babytalk version thereof I said:
How does this line up with your own beliefs?
Also, do you care to elaborate how you came to your unbelief in more detail?
The problem we Atheists have is that it’s hard to be specific about our reasons for atheism without the specifcs then being argued into invalidity by theists. It’s also hard to put a general no-god position into words. I am an Atheist for hundreds, if not thousands of tiny reasons.
Sorry Strinka, It’s your thread.
Are you itching to get out of Indiana?
I would be
First off, were you born in IN? Second, do you live in a (more) rural area (e.g., not Indianapolis, South Bend, Bloomington, Fort Wayne, etc.)? If so:
[ul]
[li]What is the prevalent religous denomination in your area?[/li][li]Since religious affilitations play a large part of social events, do you attend them? (Not church, per se, but other activities.)[/li][li]What are your social outlets?[/li][li]Do you feel political/religious/social pressures (that you probably wouldn’t feel as accutely in a more urban area)? If so, how do you handle it?[/li][li]What are some points of ideological disagreements you run into often? How do handle them?[/li][/ul]
Note: I also live in IN (a transplant to a fairly urban area) and am an atheist, although I’m well beyond my teens.
Strinka, would you car to explain where you get your user name from? Also, would you do me the favore of sharing some, not all of the reasons why you chose to become atheist, then not responding to anyone “debunking” your reasons? I would love it if you would.
Sure, go for it. We have no meetings, no events, no t-shirts, etc.
I didn’t really become an athiest. I was raised that way. Basically, it just makes sense. Why have a god, when you’ve got all sorts of natural laws that explain things. Also if there is a god who wants us to believe in him, why doesn’t he do something irrefutably miraculous? Like make eveyone in the world simultaneously see him in a vision.
It’s human nature. A part of your brain activates when in a religious fervor. When that part of your brain is activated artificially, you have religious experience. Cite.
I don’t believe in god. Any god.
Sort of. A plan on moving to Germany as soon as I can assuming I can learn it well enough. (I am taking a class now)
I was born in South Carolina. I lived there for five or six years. I don’t live in a rural area.
Protestant. But I didn’t know that until just now when I asked my dad.
I doubt it. I don’t partake in many social events, but that’s because I’m unsocial, not because of church involvement.
School.
No.
I don’t talk about it often. The last time I did was in November. We were talking about my beliefs. She asked why I didn’t believe in Christianity. My response: “Because it’s stupid.” I offended her. I probably should have realized that would but I only recently realized that people get offended when you call them an ass.
My last name is Strinka. It’s fairly distinctive.
As to the latter, I think I did that when responding to Large Marge.
I’ve noticed it with a couple of other exchanges: you don’t seem to be answering the questions asked. It is also not the case that a “religious experience” is a necessary condition to having faith.
People with faith live in a different world than you do- one where gods are out and about. Ignoring the fact that you think it that world doesn’t exist, what do you think of that world?
Basically, do you think gods are a bad idea… or do you think gods could be a pretty cool thing, kind of like superpowers or magic, but they just don’t exist? If you could have your own pet superbeing, would you want one?
I thought I did answer the question.
I think gods are a bad idea. They convince people to do things they really shouldn’t be doing in their name.
Sure, if I knew he wouldn’t turn on me. I know I sure wouldn’t like someone arbitrarily telling me what to do, especially if I was immensly more powerful than them.
Not even Bobby Knight?
I believe he existed. I do not believe he was a god by any reasonable definition.
Strinka, I’m a 46-year-old male atheist former Hoosier and I wanted to check in to say that I admire the poise you’re showing here.
I agree that it’s difficult, and ultimately pointless, to have the “god” arguments on terms which presuppose his/her/its existence. When I was your age I began attributing causality to random fluctuations in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which struck me as exactly as likely an any other explanation. My fundamentalist friends didn’t have much use for that. 
But remember that arguing religion is futile - religion isn’t based upon logic in the first place.
Good luck.
You seem to be assuming that all people who believe in gods worship them and do in their name the types of activities we see carried out by cults and such.
A large number of theists are not so blind and/or dumb as to do things “in the name of God” for a myriad of reasons. A lot of people also believe in God without actively practicing worship.
My point is (and I swear, I’m not trying to derail your thread, I’m merely responding to you), the concept of God, or gods, is not limited to those that believe blindly and carry out things “in the name of God”. I mean, it’s possible (maybe likely, even) that God doesn’t like the shit that’s carried out in his name. If God exists, and if He loves everyone, do you think he’s pleased when someone kills someone else and purports to do it in his name? I’d say probably not.
My question to you is, what is your take on the cosmological argument and the teleological argument?
As you and Casey 1505 know, many Hoosiers still worship Bobby Knight, and his holy eyebrows, and his holy flying chair, even after he was driven out of his temple to his new church in Texas. It’s good to see you have better sense than that. I was always uneasy about the constitutionality of a state university employing a “deity.”
For those still wondering about “Hoosier,” it simply means an Indiana resident or someone born here who now lives somewhere else. Indiana U.'s athletic teams are called Hoosiers, too, and that adds to the confusion, especially for Purdue fans. The origin of the word is lost to history, although humorous theories abound.
Why did you start this thread?
Kilvert’s Pagan, thank you.
I agree, not all theists do shit in god’s name. But I think the good that they do is outweighed by the harm the stupid ones do. Also that the good they do has less to do with their religion than the harm the others do. Maybe I’m wrong.
Cosmological argument: Why does there need to be an uncaused cause? What’s wrong with an infinite regress? And even if there was an uncaused cause, why does it have to be an omnipotent, omniscient god? Why not just an occurance like the big bang?
Teleological argument: What is it that needs to be designed? I think evolution does a much better job of explaining seemingly designed things.
It was kind of meant as a joke actually. I didn’t want to lie and claim that I was a polydimensionaly motile intergalactic alien or something, so I figured that if I was really specific about myself, there wouldn’t have been a thread doing the same thing.
I won’t disagree with that - there are and have been delusional people that have caused a ton of bad things in this world, some in the name of God, as if they had any more of an idea than you and I do about what pleases God.
I think it’s unfortunate that theism has such skeletons in its closet. But you have to admit, the perverse interpretations of theology by man do not prove God doesn’t exist. (I’m not saying that’s what you believe, I’m just saying I think people should concede that much.)
There doesn’t have to be, but it seems more likely to me that there was. And I don’t know for a fact that God is omnipotent or omniscient, or even that there God exists. To claim I know that God exists (or that He doesn’t), when debating theology, is to defeat the entire purpose of debate, to circumvent the process.
First of all, the theory of evolution does not preclude the influence of a creator. Many people believe that evolution is correct, and also believe God exists. Now, if you’re talking about evolution and excluding the possibility of an intelligent designer, then we must agree to disagree. So many things, from the world as we know it as a whole down to the tiniest aspects of life, suggest to me that it is more likely the work of God than of no one, than the idea that it just randomly happened. It all boils down to how you interpret the evidence. ;j
Then HAPPY VERNAL EQUINOX!! 