Avatar

Except for the fact that even the Catholic faith cannot agree on the interpetations of the New Testament. If the Catholic faith were hemogenous about it, why would there be so many conflicting branches of it? Moreover, who says that only the Catholic faith has the "authority" to interpet anything? The Catholic faith does. No one else agrees, however. The claim of the Catholic Church of any kind of "authority" is as abritrary as any Protestan's claims.

Catholic Convert

I do have lots of problems if I take God out of the equation.

I cannot accept an "eternal universe," especially if science itself points to a "big bang," or some kind of beginning.

Nothing makes itself. Every body in motion has been moved by another body, yet there must ultimately be an unmoved mover, or you have a dog that is chasing its tail.

If you go into a room and see billiard balls bouncing around on a table, is it reasonable to assume they were always doing so, without a beginning?

I will have to think this throug some more, but as of the moment a the belief in a godless universe seems to require more faith that one which was created.

trendkill

Not all atheists believe the existence of God has been disproved. I do not. I stopped believing in God when the promises made on his behalf by scripture were not realized. I did my best to be faithful and prayed for years, but God did not help me. Eventually I had to face the fact that I had no evidence at all for God's existence and was simply acting on assumptions that had been imposed on my mind by my upbringing--assumptions that led to an incomprehensible, meaningless, and, frankly, nightmarish view of the world. Belief in God had become worse than useless, and was rejected.

As for why I continue to disbelieve in any god:

One of the many failed arguments for theism; the First Cause. I have never heard a convincing or logically-compelling argument for the existence of God. The First Cause argument has multiple flaws; it assumes a conflict between two absurdities (infinite regress of events vs. an exception to the rule that every effect must have a cause) and claims that the first absurdity shows that the second absurdity must actually be true. This is senseless, in my opinion. You might as well reverse the two and say that the absurdity of the idea of something being uncaused means that causes and effects must indeed regress into infinity. Logically, it seems quite arbitrary; the theist picks the one that gives him the desired result.

Furthermore, there are problems with the premises. There is insufficient basis for the supposed absurdities in question for them to be proof of anything. Maybe there can be an infinite regress of causes and effects. Maybe every event doesn't have to have a cause--maybe some things truly do happen for no reason at all. Actually, if you read Hume, you might wonder whether there is even such a thing as cause and effect at all. How do we know? We don't. Our information is insufficient.

The arguments for the existence of God all fail, in my opinion. While I also think that none of the arguments against the existence of God absolutely compels logical agreement from everyone, I do find some of them highly convincing. Especially the argument from religious confusion, which claims that the massive inconsistencies between peoples' mutually-exclusive religious experiences shows that any given religious belief is more likely than not to be false.

JCS

Eternal:
Being without beginning or end;
Continuing without interruption; perpetual.
Seemingly endless; interminable. See Synonyms at ageless. .

So let me understand this, you think that getting a happiness implant then continuing on forever is appealing? Can any state of happiness without the possibility of change retain it's meaning or purpose when the halfway mark is beyond comprehension? Why do people waste time in the life they have, trying to secure another life for which they have no evidence of much less whether or not such a thing is realistically desirable.

Who wants nothing? Your son wants to believe what he believes, you want your son to believe what you believe, I want milk and cookies. Nothing bad about wants per se, it is what you do with those wants. If I rob a convenience store to get milk and cookies, some might see that as bad. If you impose your beliefs on another because you think your beliefs are best for them just because it is what you believe, some might see that as bad.

Catholic Convert

1) What would be wrong with a changeless happiness?
2) Who said there is no change? Christians do not believe this.
3) Who says they don't have sufficient evidence? Maybe they do.
4) This life is fleeting--extremely short. Why not spend it working for eternity? It's at least worth checking into.

JGL53

trendkill addressed the general problems with the First Cause argument, so I'll just comment on this refererence to the 'big bang'. There are different ways of looking at or explaining this, some of which would require more education in the field of cosmology than either you or I possess, I'm sure.

But to my simple, uneducated mind, it seems that there is good evidence that there was a 'beginning' to our observed universe, somewhere around 13 to 20 billions years ago. This is when space and time began, in terms of what we can observe. But we are not gods. Why should there not be a whole heck of a lot we can't observe?

There may be a multiverse of an infinite number of universes, all seperate and distinct, analogous to bubbles in a stream, that are all spontaneously existing, not created by a immaterial mind. Some will evolve life, some will not, depending on the physical constants that are at random evolved.

This violates no principle of science of which I know, and since no free-floating invisible immaterial persons or minds are involved (something science has no knowledge of or even a reasonable theory of), then it is the simpliest theory, i.e., has the least X factors (scientifically unknown and even unknowable entities), and is the preferred theory since it is the simpliest that will suffice.

But, if one rejects science, then I suppose you're free to just believe in whatever you wish to (the operative word here being 'wish').

Family Man

Catholic Convert --

Death doesn't scare me (though the process of dying I don't like); eternal life is what scares me. What would I do with it? How would I evade boredom? What would be the point? Look at it this way: in any movie I see, no matter how much I enjoy it, I'm always glad to have end. What a nightmare it would be if I were stuck in a movie that never ended and there was no way out of it.

That's how I view death; not as a horrible thing, but merely an ending. No, I'm not ready to check out yet: it's been a great ride that I enjoy immensely, despite the occasional rough spots. But at some point I know it'll be time to get off, and my only hope is that, when the time comes, my family, friends and associates will think that I've made a positive contribution to their lives. If that happens, and I live a normal lifespan, I'll be satisfied.

In short, I don't hope, or wish for, anything else after death. I don't see the point.

By the way, welcome to the board. Your sincerity is noted and appreciated. I don't expect you to agree with how I feel about it, but I do hope you can at least understand it.

_Naturalist_

Well, I simply don't see how I could take a collection of myths and half-legends as the ultimate truth, or even a possible truth. Also, I don't see how god (any god) is anything more than an invention by us humans. And why should I?

Well, I do want to know how all this came to be, absolutely. But that doesn't mean I wish to make things up, or take old myths and then decide to believe them. It wouldn't help at all! If anything I would just get a belief based on absolutely nothing, instead of being honest and say "We don't know, but maybe one day we will." Until then, why should I pretend to know? Sounds strange, wouldn't you say?

After I'm no longer alive, I'm not around anymore so it's impossible for me to fear that. However, I do have a desire to live, and I don't wish it to end - not because I fear death but because I like to exist... or something.

Spherical Time

First of all, I don't really think that most atheists fear death. I don't. In fact, I would be willing to guess that we fear it less that most Christians.

You see, atheists usually have come to accept death, in one way or another. We realize that the concept of heaven is too good to be true, and that when our lives end, we do too.

It's Christians (and Muslims, etc) that are so afraid of dying that they invent elaborate fantasies of living forever in paradise. It's not bad to want something, but it is repugnant to want something so badly that you deceive yourself into thinking that you've found an out, and then try to impose that view on others.

I'm not saying that you, personally, have tried to impose your views on other people, but Christians seem to have the insaitiable urge to convert others, and condemn those that don't conform.

After all, what is so bad about death if you've lived life?

Killer Mike

That doubt about whether god really exists or not is our gut instincts telling us what we already know: that god does not exist. For years when I was a fundy I suppressed this and believed something that deep down inside I knew was not true. One day I simply got tired of trying to fool myself and left the church. It was the best thing I ever did, not only for my intellectual integrity but emotional wellbeing. :thumbs: