Common Sense Atheism

Chris P Bacon said:
Would it matter to you if you knew the religious beliefs or lack of belief of those everyday people who attend to you?

People like a barber or beautician? Grocery store clerk? Physician? Attorney?

How did you come by your belief system? Did you learn it from birth or did you discover your current beliefs later in life?

What if you consider them to believe as you do or nearly so but you find out that their beliefs are the opposite of yours?
Does it matter? And if so, why or what not? What makes a person's beliefs, besides your own and those of your family, important?

I'm only curious as to why religion or lack of it, stirs up such strong feelings in people.
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God puts non believers in Christians lives. It is our ultimate purpose to bring them to the Lord, so that they to can live eternally. We should NOT judge anybody but love as Jesus did. It is very difficult to try to explain my believes. Sometimes just showing love and respect hopefully reflects who I am. We as Christians are in a battle constantly with good and evil. Our lives are very difficult and challenging. The devil always tries to make us sin. But ultimately God has already won the battle with our souls.
 
Jan14 said:
God puts non believers in Christians lives. It is our ultimate purpose to bring them to the Lord, so that they to can live eternally. We should NOT judge anybody but love as Jesus did. It is very difficult to try to explain my believes. Sometimes just showing love and respect hopefully reflects who I am. We as Christians are in a battle constantly with good and evil. Our lives are very difficult and challenging. The devil always tries to make us sin. But ultimately God has already won the battle with our souls.
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No insult meant but that sounds like a difficult life to live…constantly battling the good versus evil….why not just do as you would be done and leave it at that?
 

Snow74 said:
No insult meant but that sounds like a difficult life to live…constantly battling the good versus evil….why not just do as you would be done and leave it at that?
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I’m sure we all try our best to. However no one is perfect. The rewards come later. Life was not intended to be easy unfortunately.
 
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Murrmurr said:
Hi, Nathan. Great to see you. I hope you're doing alright.

From my atheist perspective nature is intentional design, but not by any sort of divinity. The building blocks of everything is the same stuff that exists throughout the known universe. It came together on Earth exactly the way it had to in order to survive as a living thing, and it came together in various ways for the same reason. I'm certain it came together in various ways on various planets in our galaxy and others.

So the question (for me) is What compels chemicals, proteins, minerals and other building blocks of life to come together to form a huge variety of living things that work so perfectly? I can understand why people believe that something divine compelled it to do so, or even used it to literally make living things, but I don't believe that's the answer. As complex as living things are, that just sounds too easy.

I think the answer is as complex as, say, the human body and all its parts and components....from an atheist pov.
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Thank you @Murrmurr , I'm coping better as the days pass. The "living things" part of the equation is the tough one, can't detect the life force by any legitimate means. In my Taichi/Qigong practice I refer to the "Qi" as breath, as energy and allude to it being believed to be the life-force, in Traditional Chinese Medicine. I believe that a life-force is within living things, some suggest that it is electric impulses, some say it's the soul...
 
Nathan said:
Thank you @Murrmurr , I'm coping better as the days pass. The "living things" part of the equation is the tough one, can't detect the life force by any legitimate means. In my Taichi/Qigong practice I refer to the "Qi" as breath, as energy and allude to it being believed to be the life-force, in Traditional Chinese Medicine. I believe that a life-force is within living things, some suggest that it is electric impulses, some say it's the soul...
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That's interesting. My son took Tai Chi, as a martial art though, among other things that kept him in shape. It really emphasizes breathing and slow movement.
 
The Old and New Testaments were written at a time when people believed that the earth was flat, that the sun revolved around the earth, and that the sky was a dome. They didn't understand what caused earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, droughts, hurricanes, or tornadoes. They didn't know that diseases come from bacteria and viruses. They had a desire to define the causes of all those things and others, but they didn't have the scientific understanding or tools to do research, so they just took their best guess. The Bible explained what they didn't understand. It was an early attempt at science, philosophy, and nature.

Now, in the 21st Century, we understand what causes natural disasters. We no longer have to guess at science, or most of it, anyway. There are still many things we don't fully understand, but the events and disasters described in the Bible are well within our abilities to define and document.

Most of us wouldn't rely on a scientific textbook from the 18th or 17th centuries except to examine its idiosyncratic and anachronistic values. The older the textbook, the less value it has outside of historical interest. A book written 2,000 years ago has no useful technical value. At the time of its authorship, it had tremendous value. Today... not so much. Yet to millions of people, the Bible is the go-to book to explain everything in the universe.
 
Irwin said:
The Old and New Testaments were written at a time when people believed that the earth was flat, that the sun revolved around the earth, and that the sky was a dome. They didn't understand what caused earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, droughts, hurricanes, or tornadoes. They didn't know that diseases come from bacteria and viruses. They had a desire to define the causes of all those things and others, but they didn't have the scientific understanding or tools to do research, so they just took their best guess. The Bible explained what they didn't understand. It was an early attempt at science, philosophy, and nature.

Now, in the 21st Century, we understand what causes natural disasters. We no longer have to guess at science, or most of it, anyway. There are still many things we don't fully understand, but the events and disasters described in the Bible are well within our abilities to define and document.

Most of us wouldn't rely on a scientific textbook from the 18th or 17th centuries except to examine its idiosyncratic and anachronistic values. The older the textbook, the less value it has outside of historical interest. A book written 2,000 years ago has no useful technical value. At the time of its authorship, it had tremendous value. Today... not so much. Yet to millions of people, the Bible is the go-to book to explain everything in the universe.
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iu
 
RFW said:
That's interesting. My son took Tai Chi, as a martial art though, among other things that kept him in shape. It really emphasizes breathing and slow movement.
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The way I like to describe these matters is: Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) as an institution, like say a high school. Qigong as the PhysEd Department, with Taichi being the martial arts division.

RFW said:
breathing and slow movement.
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Well put, the two hallmarks of these TCM practices.
 
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There is so much BS, it is impossible to discern truth from fiction regarding religion and all of its denominational derivatives. Does God exist? First define God. Is God, as you believe God, to be the same for everyone? If you don't believe God exists, then does the God you do not believe in exist is the same as your non-existent?

It is all very simple; I am different from you and you differ from anyone else. So why do people insist their worldview is the only one that matters for themselves and everyone else? People spend too much time and effort defending their beliefs without taking into consideration the history and diversity of people like you and me.
 
Della said:
This condescending woman with her patronizing, "yes dear" is really getting on my nerves, and now that she's ridiculing people with mental illnesses, I'm about to throw up. You seem as devoted to this book of cheesy, obvious cartoons as some people are to the Bible.
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It really is obvious, isn't it , the points those cartoons make? I don't see the ridicule though. She's merely stating a fact. And of course, maybe you take things too literally, much like some people take the bible. Anyway, have a realistic day! 😊
 
Chris P Bacon said:
It really is obvious, isn't it , the points those cartoons make? I don't see the ridicule though. She's merely stating a fact. And of course, maybe you take things too literally, much like some people take the bible. Anyway, have a realistic day! 😊
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What fact is it that she's stating? Is it "schizophrenics and other people with mental illness think that believing is seeing?" That's not a fact. I've heard people say "seeing is believing" but never heard anyone mentally ill or not say "believing is seeing." Whatever her petty point is she clearly thinks she is insulting Christians by comparing them to schizophrenics so, yes, she is ridiculing them. Or did you think she was complementing her husband by comparing him to people with schizophrenia?
 
I think her point is that we all, pretty much, recognize "crazy talk" when we hear it or read it.
No need to be upset. If what she says doesn't apply to you, just ignore the cartoon. Do you
suffer from a mental illness and as such, you find her words offensive? If so, I didn't know.
 
Faith is not limited to religion. Even Albert Einstein took it as a matter of faith in special relativity that quantum entanglement, the "spooky action at a distance" did not exist. In fact it does exist and has been proven multiple times. Quantum entanglement is when two particles act as one, simultaneously (as in faster than light), though separated by distance.
 
jakbird said:
Faith is not limited to religion. Even Albert Einstein took it as a matter of faith in special relativity that quantum entanglement, the "spooky action at a distance" did not exist. In fact it does exist and has been proven multiple times. Quantum entanglement is when two particles act as one, simultaneously (as in faster than light), though separated by distance.
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Faith is a belief in something for which there is no proof. Yes, I get it.
That Albert Einstein's faith was proven to be wrong is proof enough,
for me anyway, that faith alone does not make anything true. But faith
is more often used to "explain" matters of religion than ones of science.
I say all this in the faith that you'll understand the common sense of it.
 
Murrmurr said:
Hi, Nathan. Great to see you. I hope you're doing alright.

From my atheist perspective nature is intentional design, but not by any sort of divinity. The building blocks of everything is the same stuff that exists throughout the known universe. It came together on Earth exactly the way it had to in order to survive as a living thing, and it came together in various ways for the same reason. I'm certain it came together in various ways on various planets in our galaxy and others.

So the question (for me) is What compels chemicals, proteins, minerals and other building blocks of life to come together to form a huge variety of living things that work so perfectly? I can understand why people believe that something divine compelled it to do so, or even used it to literally make living things, but I don't believe that's the answer. As complex as living things are, that just sounds too easy.

I think the answer is as complex as, say, the human body and all its parts and components....from an atheist pov.
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Actually, I ordered the below book that amazon will deliver in a few days that I hope provide some insight into how it may have naturally evolved so over eternity:

A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos​


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1107156610/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Most people using small anthropormorphic thinking imagine a god making things like Santa Claus with his hammer individually creating everything. Infinitely more impressive to a scientist to just seed likely productive planets within a fine tuned galaxy and vast universe with basic DNA and allow DNA to roll out slowly building up myriad interesting varied life forms the god just gardens and tweaks some, marveling at. For instance the Cambrian Explosion or tweaking ape minds into humans. This below example MIT lecture of how neuroscience is showing some human brain qualities that appear to have inexpicably risen. Go to the last 10 minutes.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/brain-a...-spring-2019/lecture-videos/lecture-16-music/

To think an ultimate intelligent entity would be content to just create Earth with its life within so vast a Universe, screams as anthropormorphic nonsense.

https://www.seniorforums.com/thread...ng-in-the-universe-short-science-video.68735/
 
Nathan said:
Thank you @Murrmurr , I'm coping better as the days pass. The "living things" part of the equation is the tough one, can't detect the life force by any legitimate means. In my Taichi/Qigong practice I refer to the "Qi" as breath, as energy and allude to it being believed to be the life-force, in Traditional Chinese Medicine. I believe that a life-force is within living things, some suggest that it is electric impulses, some say it's the soul...
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I think that, when you understand symbiosis, then (for me) it satisfies the question Why did these building blocks come together in such variety? Life supports life; plants need nutrients and aeration, bees nectar, flowers pollination, endless etc. I think this explains extinction, too; the less efficient and less reliable things die off.
 
Chris P Bacon said:
Would it matter to you if you knew the religious beliefs or lack of belief of those everyday people who attend to you?

People like a barber or beautician? Grocery store clerk? Physician? Attorney?

How did you come by your belief system? Did you learn it from birth or did you discover your current beliefs later in life?

What if you consider them to believe as you do or nearly so but you find out that their beliefs are the opposite of yours?
Does it matter? And if so, why or what not? What makes a person's beliefs, besides your own and those of your family, important?

I'm only curious as to why religion or lack of it, stirs up such strong feelings in people.
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My beliefs are my own and I don't try to share them or impose them on anyone.

I find it interesting that so many nonbelievers are happy to tell you how stupid you are for believing in whatever you believe in. But usually only if you are Christian.

For an interesting experiment, why don't you visit your local mosque and explain to those gathered in prayer that they are a bunch of idiots?
 

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