philechat

I remembered reading the Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound. Prometheus was being punished by Zeus in the most terrible way because he loved humankind and gave knowledge to humans. He recognized that Zeus was a tyrant, and refused to acknowledge Zeus as moral, even when other gods bowed down to Zeus in fear.

In the story Prometheus was being described as immortal and able to be set free from punishment only by Zeus' will. And because of Prometheus, mankind inherited the knowledge of the gods, and were able to create civilization from the previously shadowy existence.

Morals: The tyrant of the sky (who creates hell for unbelievers) or the love of fellow humans, choose one. Could one endure the suffering inflicted by this tyrant (assuming that he exists, which is of low probability) for the love of mankind? Or should one be Eichmann number 2? Think about it.

(this is the famous "Argument from Autonomous Moral Agent", often used in existentialism)

[ June 27, 2002: Message edited by: philechat ]</p>

ax

I was reading a book last night about how the God of the bible ( and the bible itself) are true, it stated things like " sidon has been destroyed-just like God predicted" and so forth, but in the end it basically proved that when OT hebrew writer's got pissed at towns, and said that God would destroy them, some actually were destroyed!, but nothing lasts forever..
I just can't seem to do the whole "xianity" thing anymore, I want to believe God exsists, I pray and cry my eyes out every night for a sign-but nothing happens! I have big problems with things like "original sin" and stuff, and all the xians that I talk to about it cannot understand it!! It's weird, they just cannot comprehend what's going on!! It seems all my futile attempts to explain these things to them is simmilar to yelling at a deaf person (I think I heard that saying here somewhere).It's good to know that there are other people out there who have experienced what I'm going through.

philechat

But there is no evidences (outside the Bible) of the Exodus, of Joshua's conquest, and scant evidence for the kingdom of Soloman and David. But, again, even if the Biblical God exists, I feel the obligation to reject him since he violates the principle of freedom and autonomous morality.

Mageth

Yes, ax, I've gone through that. Believe me, once you escape your superstitions, and get over the period of cognitive dissonance you're going through right now, the world becomes much clearer.

daemon

I can relate to this... a lot. I spent months like this for a while, before I really admitted that I didn't believe. I tried to rationalize my beliefs, find excuses, and for a time, I became comfortable with my denials. Once comfortable, however, I was able to recognize them for what they were, and to finally discard them.

You have my sympathy, ax. Deconversion can be very hard, and sometimes, even now, I wish I believed.

philechat

More on autonomous moral agent could be found <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/james_rachels/autonomy.html" target="_blank">here</a> in the Infidels Library. Perhaps you could get pass the notion of hell as a determining choice of your morality and beliefs with this argument.

Think hard

ax

ah hell... Hell is good is it not?? you get punished for ALL ETERNITY for not being born into a christian country, or even worse-you did a few bad things in the span of about 70 yrs!! no no, just remember that: "God is love" and everything will fall into place, I'm sure I'll get through my worries....( God willing <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> )

Mad Kally

ax,
This must be rough for you. I like this quote from TheSecWeb home page:

To disbelieve in the gods, is at the same time to affirm life, purpose, and beauty.

--Emma Goldman

ax

have a read of this page and tell me what you think (you don't HAVE to, but it would be nice)<a href="http://www.bibletruths.org/wordgod.html" target="_blank">God's proof is in the bible-funnily enough....</a>

Koiyotnik

Daemon beat me to it ( ) but I went through this stage as well. I never really had strong faith to begin with though, just some vague sort of acceptance. When I started to really think about it, though, atheism made sense to me. Like you, I really wanted to believe at one point, but just couldn't find the conviction in me.

My advice to you is to just think, long and hard on it. Or, take a long, boring drive in the car--that's how it happened to me. It's amazing what kilometres and kilometres of highway will make you think about.

-Justine