Are you an atheist?

[The_Doc_Man]

At some point, those coincidences add up to something that CANNOT have been divinely inspired because it would provide proof and obviate the need for faith. The moment you don't need faith, you don't need God.

This is EXACTLY why you should be careful trying to post information that "proves" your point. Most of the passages CANNOT have the meaning you are attempting to assign according to the Christian dogma on this subject. Any god you can prove cannot be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph because the Abrahamic God is the god only accessible through one's faith. ALL provable gods are creations of Satan, meant to divert people from worship of the "One True God."

The tactics of the imposters would be to provide claims of veracity and elements of proof, so OF COURSE the Qur'an claims what it claims and says what it says.

I don't actually believe in ANY gods so I do not accuse you of pushing a Satanic creation on the world. But be aware that there are those who would use your proofs against you in the way I have described. In fact, in some of the Bible-thumping Fundamentalist pulpits around the USA, they already HAVE used a similar argument against Islam. To me it is all a case of "the pot calling the kettle black."

Your quoted passage says that men and women result when human sperm meets human egg. That is ALL that it says, and anyone conversant in animal husbandry would have told you that in the pre-Christian era. The brood mares and cows and nanny-goats don't get preggers until a male of that species joins the "conversation" and starts the balls rolling.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

After fighting with wifey's new computer ('cause the old one died), and I DO mean fighting, I realized there IS a God. The problem is

(a) attributes: the son of a bitch has a foul sense of humor
(b) actions: He dabbles as a programmer for Microsoft
(c) afterlife: there is no Heaven, but there IS a Hell, and your job in it will be to work for eternity with unpatched older versions of Microsoft software.
(d) the power of prayer: When you call in with a complaint, God is the snippy little bugger who says, "Well, since the web portion is working, we have reason to believe that the problem is on your end and we don't support your mess." Then he hangs up on you.

Or maybe I'm just feeling a little more cynical than normal at the moment, 1:15 AM after a day exceeding 18 hours spent wrangling with a software problem.

 

[Frothingslosh]

Actually, I can confirm that working tech support for more than six months ends in the removal of your soul and replacement with a demon summoned from the nethermost regions of hell.

After that, your only goals are to get people off the phones as quickly as possible, and to make their suffering match yours before they go.

That sounds like a day I had maybe ten years ago where I spent 16 hours cleaning my roommate's computer after he downloaded a no-cd crack for some game and it came packaged with a particularly nasty malware that, among other things, saved four separate backups of itself with random file names as well as downloading a new malware every couple minutes. (I wound up having to go into safe mode and do a TON of deletes and manual registry edits, along with using multiple scanners and cleaners to get rid of the combination downloader/page hijacker and the incredible amount of crap it downloaded.)

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Thanks, Frothy - confirmation of my conjecture is a good thing!

 

[constableparks]

Curious - since this thread has been going on for so long, has anyone changed their position on the topic since it was first introduced in 2008 (or since the time when you first read it)? If so, did this thread have anything to do with your decision?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Fair question, constableparks. In my case, no change (other than increasingly convinced I am right, but that's a fine point, not a broad change.)

 

[raghuprabhu]

Hi Everyone,

I have been an atheist since I was 14, in 1974. No change.

I am a Hindu by birth, the philosophy is live and let live.

Due to my religious upbringing, I used to think I may be wrong. Richard Dawkins books has finally driven through and the logic has made me a firm atheist.

 

[Mark_]

Has Russell been in here? I hear he's looking for his missing teapot.

 

[Galaxiom]

Curious - since this thread has been going on for so long, has anyone changed their position on the topic since it was first introduced in 2008 (or since the time when you first read it)? If so, did this thread have anything to do with your decision?

I have gained a greater realisation of how much the principles of Abrahamic Monotheism underlay the problems of the world.

Some of this can certainly be attributed to what has been posted here, especially by Aziz Rasul who demonstrates so clearly what religion can do to the mind.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

G - agree that religion can be insidious. Aziz and I went around the mulberry bush many times over his quotes from the Qur'an and I could not make him realize that his reading of the raw words had been culturally biased.

It is not strange that many Muslims are refugees from a land torn by the continual conflict of deeply ingrained religion. What is also not strange is that they want to preserve their "old" way of life. And what is sad (as well as straight on to your point) is that in trying to maintain an old way of life, they bring their conflicts with them. Yet they cannot see that it was their intolerant and intransigent religion that led to the situation in the first place.

 

[Mike375]

I have not changed to any real degree.

I still have several possible scenarios and I vary a bit at different times as to how strongly I place one.

I still give zero to any of the formal religions.

 

[Mike375]

Some weeks ago I was talking to a medical specialist who is a "born again" .....as an aside 99% of medical specialists are in the "there is definitely something out there territory" as opposed to being born again Christians.

Anyway this "born again" specialist gave me a simple insight into how people with such an extreme level of education can deal with the Bible's impossible stuff like Noah's Ark, Joshua stopping the sun in the sky without everyone flying off earth at a 1000 mph etc.

It is really simple. Their starting point or premise is God exists and of course God can change the laws of nature, suspend the laws or do whatever He wants including making a talking snake. Thus for that medical specialist Noah's Ark etc. does not represent even the slightest issue.

What puzzles me and always has is making the jump from a belief to faith. Faith being where you act on or take a 100% position without proof.

To me the atheist and born again are the same. There is no proof via science how this whole show started. Of course if The Big Bang could be proven then we obviously hit the snag of pre big bang.

I certainly envy both the atheist and born again Christian as opposed to people like myself with constantly changing positions.

 

[raghuprabhu]

I am a Hindu by birth, an atheist from 14 years of age. I found that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life. It has a place for atheist, doubtful believers and full believers.

 

[ColinEssex]

Actually, religions are very good organisations. They brainwash people into believing that every other religion is the enemy, therefore history has recorded that religion is the basis for many wars.
Wars are good, as they are excellent vehicles for culling populations by the million, millions of fighting troops are killed and as a result the world population doesn't grow as quickly as it might.

Col

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Col, I have to say this: When you are right, you are very close to spot-on right. One minor quibble: You forget that for wars, not only the soldiers are killed. In the assaults made by whichever side is the aggressor (and where possible, retaliating forces), civilians who won't immediately convert or submit are also killed.

As to brainwashing? They learned long ago the lesson taught by Jesus: "Suffer the little children to come to me." Because of course, when they are still little kids, you CAN teach them about religion with getting the reaction "What a load of codswallop" (or hogwash or sheepdip or your favorite other derogatory term). Once they get old enough, introducing religion has low odds of success.

Just so folks won't think I'm TOTALLY one-sided about this, population pressure and the need to take territory suitable for farming (to feed the people of "MY" country) will also come into play. And we cannot forget wars fought to take territory for taxation purposes. Plus wars of rebellion for political freedom, religious freedom, or whatever else is in that category. But religion contributes to the mix.

 

[Galaxiom]

They learned long ago the lesson taught by Jesus: "Suffer the little children to come to me."

There are definitely a lot of priests and nuns who made sure little children suffered.

Unfortunately most of them got away with it.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Maybe at some point the USA's #MeToo movement will encourage some of the sufferers to come forward and get more of these monsters out of the pulpits and religious schools.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

And here we are a month later and I saw an article on Yahoo News that a newspaper in Vatican City has come out on the side of the nuns who are essentially treated as slave labor for the bishops. They are calling it a scandal and (correctly) calling it unfair treatment. Wonder how long the "good old boy" network that is the College of Cardinals allows such seditious articles to be published.

 

[raghuprabhu]

As long as people believe in god, that he has preplanned this for them ....

 

[Galaxiom]

God must have decided He didn't want me to believe in Him.