Jeremy_the _Atheist

Hello Everyone,

First of all, I've been a lurker for a while and this is my first post and so I just wanted to say hi to everyone and introduce myself (My question begins on the fourth paragraph if you just wish to skip to it).

To tell a little about myself, I was born in a fundamentalist christian home with 'fundie' christian parents. My father attended a preaching school in New Mexico when I was a child, and I attended a christian private school for a short while when during junior high/middle school. Growing up, I studied the bible, memorizing entire books. I read all the usual christian literature including Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell, A number of creationism books including the Genesis Record by Henry Morris, all the C.S. Lewis and Max Lucado stuff, among others. I knew all the creationism/anti-evolution arguments forward and backwards, new all the arguments for the existance of God and why Christianity had to be the only 'true' religion.

I was a devout christian up until I was about 24. About that time, I started questioning my faith for a number of reasons and with in a year became an atheist. I didn't actually admit to myself I was an atheist for a couple of more years, during which time I still attended church. Once I did finally accept it and admit it to myself, however, I found it to be the most positive thing to have ever happen in my life. It was like someone had turned on the lights. To borrow from Dan Barker, I became that new creature of which the bible so ignorantly speaks.

Anyway, with the intro out of the way, I know that a lot of christians visit these boards and I have a couple of questions for all of you. Is truth important to you? What I mean specically is if there is no god, would you want to know it or would you rather not know and persist in believing anyway? If it could shown and demonstrated that god infact does not exist, would you stop believing or would you insist no matter what that god did exist and that what ever or whom ever demonstrated that god didn't exist was somehow wrong, even if you couldn't see it?

I have another question for people after this one has been answered by some christians. Thank you all in advance.

Jeremy the Atheist

[edit: By god, I mean the deity (or deities) of the judeo-christian and muslim belief systems. Or any personal god. By existance, I mean having an external reality apart from one's mind.

I'm not really interested in belief in the deist god or any other impersonal notion of god because I never quite understood how either the existance or the non-existance of such a being made the slightest bit of difference.]

GeoTheo

Define God. Define existence.
Thanks

wildernesse

Truth being. . . what exactly? Truth as in honesty between people--well, sometimes. Truth, as in an objective basis on which everyone should base their worldview? Absolutely not important, as I don't think it exists.

If there is no god, how on earth would anyone show that? God's existance is not something that is likely to be within human's knowledge or proofs.

That's a pretty big if.


I'm interested in your next question.
--tibac

Jeremy_the _Atheist

By truth, I mean the way that external reality really is. Many people have faith that god exists. My question is basically would you be willing to change your mind if their was strong evidence to the contrary, or if it could be shown or demonstrated that your beliefs were, in fact, false.

I don't know if worldview would be the right world, but basically yeah. For example, it can be objectively shown that the earth is not flat so a view of the earth as being flat would be incorrect.

Through the scientific method we learned many things that the knowledge of which was once thought unobtainable so I don't think this is correct. But the question is if.

It can logically shown that, by some definitions, god can't logically exist because these definitions involve characteristics that conflict with each other. Of course the theist can always claim that god isn't confined to rules of logic but I fail to understand what meaning it has to say that something exists outside of logic.

Maybe, maybe not. But that doesn't answer the question.

I'll post the next question once I've gotten some answers for this question.

HelenM

Of course truth is important. I don't want to believe lies any more than [I assume] you do.

Helen

CJD

"For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. . . . If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied" (1 Cor. 15:16, 19).

This very true statement, implies, among other things, the notion that if there is no God, then we ought to want to know it. Otherwise, "we are [indeed] of all people most to be pitied."

Regards,

CJD

Lanakila

Wanting to know is what led so many of us atheists to deconvert. It takes courage to want to know. I challenge those that do want to know that come from the xian perspective to really for the first time look at opposing evidence. Not from the same tired biased sources. Apologists look at the evidence with their own bias. Go on a truth quest. I know its scary, as I just deconverted a month ago. But this life is much more joyful. (at least for me) Than one based on something, or someone who is accepted on blind faith. That blind faith could be in the hindu god krishna since is has as little evidence to back it up as krishna.

GeoTheo

I don't think God exists in the same way that we exist.
I also don't think the universe exists in the same way we exist.
For example saying that somthing exists is another way of saying it is contained in the Universe. So some researchers, thinkers, philosophers, mathematicians etc. (not exclusively theists) do not believe the Universe exists. It would therefore have to contian itself or be a subset of itself.
If you look at the Universe as being contianed in God then you would have a similar dilemma.
If you look at all of consciousness as being contianed in God or God as the "ground of being" I think you get closer to the mark.
When we ask questions like "Who made the universe" or "who made God?" I think you are asking similarly misguided questions.
We are looking at it too subjectively. It is kind of like pondering what things looked like before the evolution of the eye.
They didn't look like anything because there was nothing looking at them.
Science is a kind of dialogue between conscious man and the universe and religion is a dialogue between conscious man and God. I think that there is similar interplay between the conscious and unconscious mind and similar levels of creativity.
I think when you switch from the worldview of theism to atheism you be only changing the designators for phenomena you are seeking to understand and continue to have some of the same problems caused by the limitedness human understanding.

So that is why I asked you to define your terms.

Jeremy_the _Atheist

Helen M and CJD,

Thank you both for answering. I will give my next question soon enough in another thread. BTW, I'm not just jacking around with both of you. I'll explain in full what intentions are in the next thread.

Lanakila,

I agree totally with your post. But actually, I never really set out to find out if God existed or not, I just wanted to know how the world worked.

For me it began one day in church when the preacher stated that the universe was only 6 thousand years old. For some reason (I'd never thought to ask the question before), I started wondering how we could see stars that were millions of lightyears away. Then I started wondering just how it was we 'knew' the stars were that far away. My quest to learn the answers to these questions at first lead me to the library, then into the classroom (I signed up for some math, physics, and astronomy classes). In the process I learned all kinds of neat stuff like the scientific method, logic, all kinds of math, the principle of falsifiability (sp?), ect. The more I learned, the more I realized certain things; that "creation scientists" had focused mostly on the biological and geological end and had all but ignored the physics and astronomy end of the age of the universe question, that creationism lacked an actual model, that so-called creationist theories weren't falsifiable and so there was no way to test and see if their ideas were correct or not, that the creationism research institutes didn't seem to be accomoplishing or producing anything of value, among other things. I gave up my creationist stance in due time and that was the start of what eventually lead to my deconversion.

Life has been more joyful for me since I deconverted as well. When I was a christian, I would get so tired of trying to reconcile an all-good god with a world so filled with pain and suffering. Also, even though I didn't "know" the specifics of the scientific method, I still employed certain aspects of it in my own life. For example, I reasoned that if God created the universe, then certain things ought to be true. These things were not true and anytime I would bring it to the attention of someone, they'd always answer with "we live in a fallen world" or "we must have faith," etc. This was just added stress for me. I had always been taught a straw man version of evolution but when I started learning about how the evolutionary model REALLY worked, it was like someone had turned the light on. The world suddenly made A LOT more sense.

GeoTheo,

I made it clear in my first post and in my subject heading that this is a question for chrstians. From the way you are talking, it doesn't appear to me that you are a christian or any other kind of theist. I already stated that I am not interested in belief in impersonal deities. For example, if god is defined as just "the ground of all being" or in some other super-vague way, I can't see how it makes even the slightest difference whether such a "thing" exists or not. I don't even know how it even has meaning to say that such a 'thing' exists or not.

Anyway, the purpose of this thread is asking christians questions concerning thier belief in god. This thread is not about defining what is meant by the word god. It's already assumed I'm talking about the christian god, (I, of course, wouldn't be asking a christian if they believed in Zeus, ect.). Nor is this thread about asking if god does exist. I

Anyway, if you are a christian and want to answer the question, or if you have something else of interest to say that is related to the conversation, great. If not, stop posting in this thread because your post has got nothing to do with the question being asked.

seebs

Of course I want to know the truth. I don't think it's possible for me to know whether or not I know the truth, but I can keep trying.