Why do atheists spend so much time arguing about the existence of God?

hmmm. maybe everyone has beliefs. smack. there hits reality. everyone thinks different so everyone has different beliefs. scary, aint it?

 

The constant refrain in your posts, which you haven't yet explained, is your effort to use the beliefs and acts of religious zealots to attack ALL religion. Let me assure you that most Christians don't regard Leviticus and Deuteronomy as their guides to morality. From time to time, a Christian fundamentalist will write to our local newspaper quoting Leviticus in attacking gays. I've written back with some of the quotations you've supplied, and others against mixing threads of different fabrics, sowing different seeds in the same field, etc., to make the point that no sane person takes this stuff seriously anymore. It dates from the Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews, when the Jews were strangers in a strange land, trying to preserve their national identity from corruption by foreign customs. There are lots of non-fundamentalist Christians like me who agree with Marcus Borg that "The Bible should be taken seriously,but not literally." Looked at from a metaphorical-historical perspecitve, it's full of rich insights into the history and traditions of a remarkable people, and includes some stirring passages relevant to an understanding of God and Justice, but if we went around killing rebellious children, we'd be in big trouble with the authorities. Islam's efforts to restore Sharia law are another matter--a development that I find disturbing in the twenty-first century.

 

I won't ever let "zombies" have their way.

They are wrong and when told they are start ridicules debate over if "magic" is real or not.

Belief in religion, ritual or if you would rather call it "supernatural" is for fool's.

 

Awww, so when you can't prove your point you make like you're a martyr under fire?

No-one, as far as I can see, is arguing whether magic is real or not, and I'd recommend that, if you are at all intelligent or interested in this subject, you might want to look at where beliefs in the supernatural originate, rather than just dismissing them as "for fool's" (and please, if you're going to churn out that mantra over and over again, can you at least remove that unnecessary apostrophe?). If you truly wish to "educate" people out of their religions, you'll need more than just "religion is for fool's", and a little understanding of why, for example, so many religions have a flood myth might allow you to understand these beliefs (even if you do not agree).

I do not believe that there was a great flood as described in the Noah story. But my studies of structuralism have allowed me to at least understand why the story and its symbolism are so popular. I do not, unlike you, have the luxury of being able to dismiss every aspect of religion as 'THEY'RE JUST SCARED CUZ THEY'R GONNA DIE!', what my dad refers to as "the awful truth". It's simply callous to write something like that off as mumbo jumbo, especially if you supposedly want to "cure" it. It's as absurd as telling a virus that it's dumb in the hope of curing an infected patient.

 

Religion should not be "left alone" or punished in a physical sense at all.

It should be VERBALLY ridiculed.

It's easy to do.

Religion is bad for reality as the "average" human mind perceives it.

That being said,

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

The last word's of "some guy".

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noahide_Laws This is an aside, but these are the Laws given to Noah after the flood. I guess you could say this is why most Christians don't follow the complete Torah (mixed fibres, shellfish, et cetera); it is because they aren't racial Jews, they are gentiles.

 

You're living breathing typing proof that it isn't that easy.

You've made a similar comment before. I don't see how anything can be "bad for reality", unless you think reality will somehow be affected by people's perceptions. Please explain why someone believing a lie is inherently bad. Please explain this without referencing extreme acts of violence and such, which as we have agreed would be bad whether they were based on a "false" belief or a "true" one. How is anyone harmed by the lie itself?

Yeah, not getting any more interesting really. Look around the world at all the places where conflicts are split along religious lines and show me ONE place where "everything is permitted".

 

Let me simplify it further,

EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED.(In one way or another)

NOTHING IS TRUE.(If some fanatic wanted to tell you water was not essential for human life you could NEVER TRULY prove them wrong.)

Unless you accept some things as fact and others as fiction , Like there is no "supernatural" force behind the creation of the universe and any attempts to prove that there is, is simply the work of a human.

No matter how educated you may think he is.

No shame in saying I don't know.

 

Sorry I’m reading to catch up but when got to this I had to comment, so if this has already been said pardon me.

The problem is you keep lumping all religion together, like it’s all one thing, one ideology, it’s just not. I hate to break it to you but there some religions that DO NOT condone killing, murder or going to war and yet you lump them together with religions that do. Why is that?

What you‘re saying is a little like saying that if one human or one group of humans has killed then all humans are killers and all humans should be done away with. It’s just not so.

Also, no matter how often you say it, the existence god has not been disproven so when you keep insisting that God does not exist and stating it as fact, without any proof, you are in fact lying.

As for religion being bad for people, I know many people who will tell you that their lives have been dramatically been changed for the better by religion. Although you may say that they could have done that with out religion, I think most of them would disagree with you.

 

Just like jihad, sharia too has a double meaning (I guess Torah also is included in this). Sharia in the popular context means as everyone should know, Islamic Law such as laws about property for men and women after a divorce. Personal Sharia however was described to me by my Modern Movements in Islam professor (Dr. Earle Waugh). He told an anecdote of his time in North Africa and he met an elderly street sweeper who swept every morning. He asked him why he does it and the response was "This is my sharia". I guess just as you could say a man is called to priesthood, this man's place in life was a street sweeper. This isn't to say he was forced; he loved his job.

That being said, I do not fully agree with Sharia being introduced into the legal system of countries. Mainly because there isn't an official magisterium as there is within many forms of Christianity making the Sharia very varied. Some of it is very progressive (Muhammad allowed a woman to divorce her husband just cause she felt like it), to the very reactionary (where a woman only gets custody of all children up to a certain age).

 

Atheists spend so much time arguing because they think that it makes them right. The fact is, nevertheless, EXISTS a God, and is almighty Yahweh.

 

maybe eli. physical evidence. atheists argue about a state of being. christians argue about a group of people on another existence watching us through a scope. compare. practicallity.

 

Who has spent more time on this thread, atheists or theists?
This is one atheist who has better things to do than argue with zombies.
To anyone reading with a mind, please remember that TRUE atheism does not exists as a cult of personality!

I'll probably be back after a dozen more pages of bullshit and ignorance and skim through looking for any signs of intelligence but I wont stay long.

 

Actually, you won’t be missed, because your rampant name calling does not add anything to the discussion.

 

Christians are complete shit any ways.

 

You have a point. A better question might be: Why do believers waste their time arguing with yokels who can't present a reasoned argument and fall back on playground name calling and bravado about their intellectual superiority?

 

self-proclaimed intellectual superiority.

 

Belief in the supernatural and the belief in the POSSIBILITY of the supernatural are two VERY different things.

Maybe there are more agnostics here and less so called atheists than many posters realize.

 

why do hippies keep arguing about the existence of LSD? :toetap05:
at least God you can prove that..

 

It could be a matter of semantics. When I say I believe in God, I mean I'm willing to bet on God as the most plausible explanation for a variety of phenomena neither I nor science can otherwise explain yet (Yes, Dawkins' "God of Gaps"!) If I were a scientist, this would be unacceptable, but I'm just a poor schmuck trying to make his way through an ambiguous existence. I could say "I don't know", and leave it at that--which would make me an agnostic. But I have a strong suspicion that there is Something Big Out There, for reasons I've already mentioned. So I accept God as a reasonable "working hypothesis", to borrow William James' expression. "Supernatural" raises a whole other issue. If we encountered alien life forms that were far superior to us in powers and intellect, they'd seem like gods, ie "supernatural", but could be the product of natural forces we don't understand yet.