Your atheism ends at time of death. No atheeists in hell

[Leatherneck0311]

What a great excuse!

I have to wonder what you are doing here if you are so determined not to argue that Christianity is right. It is kind of like you have no clue what to say, no actual reason for why you think your religion is right. You might like to ponder what sort of advert for Christianity that is.

It is what it is it’s not an excuse I do not waste my time on people playing word games.

 

[Whatsisface]

Nope, I ignored that because their is not one bit of honesty, integrity, and or sincerity in your post. If you wanted to know if scripture was true you would not base your beliefs on what others have told you about God and scripture you would search it out for yourself, but it is obvious you listened to others and formed your beliefs without one bit of honest research, and or sincerity.

So asking you questions and giving you every opportunity to answer is dishonest, right? Asking others to detail their journey is trying to find out.

You seem very defensive, which is a tacit admission you're not confident your reasons for belief are good reasons.

 

[Whatsisface]

It is what it is it’s not an excuse I do not waste my time on people playing word games.

That's exactly what you're engaged in, you're not being straightforwardly open.

 

[SteveB]

Why should I think that is a pearl, and not just chalk that will crumble to dust in my hand, Steve?

That's the great thing about gifts.
You can either receive and enjoy it. Or, just throw temper tantrums.
YHVH's gifts don't crumble in our hands.
It's more biblically accurate that you despised the gift and threw it into the garbage.

Again and again we ask you to substantiate what you say, and again and again all you have is threats of infliction of intense pain (as from burning) to punish, and more Bible quotes that assume the Bible is true.

And again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and over......again....
I have explained to you that in order for you to actually know the truth about Jesus, you have to engage him for yourself.

Anything less than that means that you have become a lazy intellectual assenter.

To which I refer back to the video from earlier this morning.

Just labelling it a "pearl" does not cut it.

Sounds like you have a problem then.

 

[docphin5]

1. So you don't have an example of what you're talking about. OK.

so you have zero evidence for all atheists wanting to believe in god.

2. By the way, there is another option: atheists who think that whether they want or don't want to believe in a god is irrelevant for how they determine whether they should believe in a god.

so you concede atheists do not want to believe in god. Got it. Then what was your point in challenging my assertion that atheists with few exceptions have made their mind up that god does not exist, —just to be argumentative?

I liked your post (#202) about critical thinking and you turned it into a debate about nothing.

 

[Eightcrackers]

so you concede atheists do not want to believe in god. Got it.

There is a difference between not wanting to believe, and wanting not to believe.

Wanting to believe is a bad thing, by the way; beliefs should be in spite, not because, of wants.

 

[docphin5]

There is a difference between not wanting to believe, and wanting not to believe.

Wanting to believe is a bad thing, by the way; beliefs should be in spite, not because, of wants.

And groupthink and conformity are documented psychological phenomena. What does Gus expect, a scientific study of CARM atheists to “prove” they are influenced by groupthink or conformity? He is just being argumentative.

 

[Gus Bovona]

so you have zero evidence for all atheists wanting to believe in god.

I never claimed that, so whether I have evidence for that is irrelevant.

so you concede atheists do not want to believe in god.

It appears that there is no logical way for you to conclude that I concede that atheists do not want to believe in god, given my statement that another option is that atheists think whether they want to believe in god or not is irrelevant. Can you walk me through how one logically concludes what you concluded from what my statement?

Got it. Then what was your point in challenging my assertion that atheists with few exceptions have made their mind up that god does not exist, —just to be argumentative?

I didn't challenge your assertion, I merely asked for you to give an example of what you were talking about:

1. Can you offer a single specific example of an atheist who shows that he/she doesn't want to believe that God exists, that would be the best (or one of the best) examples, in your opinion? Either a name or a YouTube or a post/thread or book or article?

 

[Gus Bovona]

And groupthink and conformity are documented psychological phenomena. What does Gus expect, a scientific study of CARM atheists to “prove” they are influenced by groupthink or conformity? He is just being argumentative.

Of course, groupthink is something humans are capable of, but it seems like you are saying that atheists in general fall prey to a particular case of groupthink in which they want to (wait, its that they don't want to, right?) believe in God. What makes you conclude that that particular case of groupthink is occurring? Just because groupthink is something humans do? Do you have any other reason or evidence that atheists are falling prey to groupthink about wanting to not believe in God?

The vast majority of atheists I've been in contact try their best - and seem to do a fairly good job most of the time - in fighting against that tendency to let wants (or lack thereof) influence the decision about whether God exists. The vast majority of atheists I've come across are well aware of groupthink, and they also acknowledge that they are prey to it as much as anyone, but the first step in fighting the ill effects of groupthink is to acknowledge that it exists.

 

[mikeT]

Forgive me for condescending to analyze what you said

It's not condescension. This is a discussion forum, made to give people things to analyze and think-about or react-to.

but maybe because you are looking for God outside of yourself that you cannot find him.

I don't mean to be dismissive of the rest of your constructive post, but I looked - for more than two decades - without filters or expectations. Sure, in the beginning I though I knew what God was, and I looked for that specifically. However, after a while I basically just looked for ANYTHING.

I looked inside and out; I looked for one and many; I looked for supernatural and natural, western and eastern and something with no geographical reference whatsoever. I looked for alien and human, abstract and concrete, vociferous and silent. I looked for it all.

After two decades of doing this, there came a point at which further searching was nothing but a waste of time. I was ignoring the fact that I wasn't finding anything, in the hopes than failing to find something was part of the puzzle I was supposed to solve. The answer was pretty much staring me in the face: either god didn't want to be found, or there was nothing to find.

To this day I remain pretty open-minded about it all. I may indeed have failed where others succeeded, or missed something I should have seen. I could be completely wrong about what I failed to find - and I live with this prospect comfortably.

I know what I did, and I know how sincere and thorough I was about it all. Anyone who tells me I didn't look correctly or hard enough is just plain wrong. I mean that respectfully.