I’m sorry to resurect this topic but i’ve been thinking about this all day and i just had to mention it. you say that people in africa have no access to the bible but that is exactly what missonaries spend there entire lives trying to change. and to think that there are people out there that are that commited to there savior makes me belive in god just a little bit more. so what do you have to say about missionaries?
P.S. I watched the show, thanks for the heads up.

even though i’m an atheist, i actually encourage you to fully read the bible, including the OT. understanding it was probably one of the bigger steps to figuring out i didnt believe it and that it didnt make sense to me. if you’ve been under that label all your life, it would be wise to know what you’re rejecting if you’re going to reject it. if you ever did out yourself you would probably face opposition and argument from some, and you wouldnt want to be bludgeoned and embarrassed.

Theres a rare thing on TV in Austin, TX, this show called the Atheist Experience. – atheist-experience.com – they take calls from people on the air, and most of them are arguing christians who ask many of the same questions you asked here. All their shows are archives on mp3 or google video. the hosts are very smart and friendly, but will argue back with callers fiercely if they are harshly provoked (which happens sometimes).

I think this is one of the biggest issues. even i dont fight with my family over it because its just not worth it, i dont need them thinking they did something wrong and feeling guilty, and what they do with their religion doesnt affect my day to day life. im lucky though that the only truly religious zealots in my family live several provinces away, and already damned my family for being Anglican. to them we’re pretty much already atheists anyways

I am raised in a religious home and i do have the same faith as my parents but i actually am exploring other religions, it seems to me though that being christian or a atheist are the only places i’ll go and right now its leaning towards atheism. I think it’s only natural to carry on the faith of your parents in the beginning but as time goes on you have to look other places. sometimes its tough though because you are afraid of rejection from your christian family.

Drew asks earnest questions, he’s a regular member of this community so I felt he deserved a proper honest answer.

I’ve met a few Christians who claimed that Christianity was the only “world view” (its a term they use a lot) that could answer all of their questions about life. I talked to them a little bit and came away thinking they were extremely bad at asking questions.

Don’t you think you’re just answering a mystery with another mystery? That the answer is ‘magic man done it’?

You realize the jump from taking the world all the way back to its origin and a chicken/egg argument… to a talking snake and naked people in a garden? its a pretty big jump from a universal cosmos argument to Jesus dying for your sins then rising to heaven…

the world is marvelously complex, but for a god to exist, it would have to be even more complex. it raises the ‘then who created god?’ question. christians have allowed special pleading to say “well god has always been…” – i dont buy that. i mean, the possibility of a single loving creator is “possible” in the technical sense, but so is a creator that hates us, so is the idea of numerous alien beings, so is the idea of multiple gods, so is the idea that time has no beginning or end, that its all a big circle.

as for the explosion of gas, well its more complicated than that simple explanation as well, however i can say i’m not as heavily researched there as i am with evolution. However phrases like “Has to” and “Some higher power” – sorry, the idea that a single thing “had to” doesnt fly with me, and as for us specifically on earth, theres nothing irreducibly complex about us that can’t have be explained by evolution.

BTW, Rusty, Dawkins didnt like the Root of all Evil title, it was thrust upon him by the BBC, but he managed to fight enough to get the question mark in the title. it was thus called “root of all evil?” not “root of all evil”.

“I think it’s just the idea of hell that really freaks me out, can you imagine being thrown in a lake of fire and beingtortured for all eternity? And how do you know that youve even made the right choices in religions, what if you end up in muslim hell?”

You don’t know. But that fear which I also felt and questioned up to my teen years opened the door to questioning. If God can do anything, why wouldn’t it more clearly reveal itself and prevent people from going to hell? If prayer works, why doesn’t god heal amputees? Why would god feed Satan’s army with such drastic numbers? Why would god allow conditions such as in africa where people dont even have education or access to his word, where people suffer through life and then die and go to hell because too bad, they lived somewhere they couldnt accept christ? whereas on the other hand, we are rich and spoiled and fuck up everything and ask forgiveness on death beds because we conveniently grew up around religion and think we can fool god through loopholes? sounds real fair doesnt it?

sorry man, i see the god of the old testament as worse than hitler. have you ever really read deuteronomy? do you think parents should stone unruly children? the NT jesus and god are much calmer, but still very deadly and jealous… and very willing to apply infinite torture for finite crimes. if the god of the bible proved to me he existed, i’d be very afraid of hell, but i’d still believe, seriously, that he was unworthy of worship. Ultimately, even though many of them still follow the OT as part of their dogma, Jewish people tend to have a very undefined idea of hell. So maybe you should become a devout Jew and not worry about it – im teasing.

Are you being raised in a religious home, do you have the same religion as your parents? have you ever explored other religions? what does it say about us that we carry on faiths of our parents? is that really faith or just tradition? what kind of spiritual exploration, what kind of deep spirituality can you have if you’re stuck on default?

In the end Drew, it comes down to this:
Is there a possibility that there is some higher power? sure, again, same as other possibilities are out there. but do I believe in any specific one of them? no. So in that sense I am an agnostic.

But at the same time I am an atheist. I am without theism, without a committed belief to any of those things. Agnosticism and atheism are not universally exclusive terms, they by definition overlap quite a bit. On the other hand theres Gnosticism and Theism, which again, overlap.

If you’re worrying about labels at all: Gnosticism deals with what you know, and theism deals with what you believe. A hardlined stubborn atheist may be a gnostic atheist (but even they’d say they have a different standard of “know”). A Christian who believes in Jesus but doesnt claim to kwow for sure would be an Agnostic Theist.

And then theres Deists, which applies to most of the founding fathers of the US, who beleive that there is a god but don’t believe strongly in any specific religion. Lots of terms and labels out there, and at the end of the day, that someone out there believes that their specific branch of Baptist is more holy than another branch of Baptist, frightens the living fuck out of me. People that divided along denominational lines are frankly, dangerous – thats where I fall in line with Dawkins.

As for the Sagan thing that was brought up, that is where I fall in line most of the time. But really, its a matter of who I’m talking to. If someones being friendly and just asking questions, I feel like a happy Sagan atheist. When someone is in my face preaching to me, I can turn on the Dawkins snark and have no problem with it whatsoever.

I would never try to persuade anyone away from their religion. But Drew, if you’re denying science because you don’t want to go to hell that’s not theology, that’s superstition. There must be a more positive way you can incorporate theology into your life.

I wish more atheists would follow the example of Carl Sagan and less Dawkins.