Why I am an atheist

[Papa Zoom]

All of them are anecdotal and culturally biased; e.g. a Hindu will also have many stories of “supernatural intervention”...are they true stories? No doubt the Hindus thinks they are.

Anecdotal evidence: Law
Witness testimony is a common form of evidence in law, and law has mechanisms to test witness evidence for reliability or credibility. Legal processes for the taking and assessment of evidence are formalized. Some witness testimony may be described as anecdotal evidence, such as individual stories of harassment as part of a class action lawsuit. However, witness testimony can be tested and assessed for reliability. Examples of approaches to testing and assessment include the use of questioning, evidence of corroborating witnesses, documents, video and forensic evidence. Where a court lacks suitable means to test and assess testimony of a particular witness, such as the absence of forms of corroboration or substantiation, it may afford that testimony limited or no "weight" when making a decision on the facts.

We value eyewitness testimony and use it all the time. Since it can be tested one cannot simply dismiss it out of hand.

It can range from sheer bigotry or fear of what’s different to a religiously-based belief that it’s an abomination to the Lord and deserving of death or at least repression.

That doesn't exactly describe it in behavioral terms. What is bigotry or fear of what's different? I have to interpret that to know what you mean. What exactly do you mean and please describe it.

The slave trade was instigated by people who were Christian. So were child labour and the denial of women’s rights and colonial repression leading to the death of millions of native peoples.

Slavery goes back to way before the time of Christ (records show around 1700BC) and slavery itself spans every culture, religion, and nationality.

In Britain a group of Yorkshire Christians campaigned against child labor. Their campaign began after Richard Oastle, a evangelical believer in the Anglican tradition, began to expose the what he termed "slavery" and began to sound the alarm about the horrors of child labor.

It would be helpful if you wouldn't lump an entire group into every historical injustice and claim the Christians are to blame. For every injustice, there were plenty of Christians (and non-Christians) fighting alongside to end injustices.

The largely “godless nations" of Europe and Scandinavia et al, are the most socially progressive nations on the planet.

You forgot to mention Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, and Mao.

By “properly understood and properly applied” you presumably don’t mean little things like the Inquisitions, the Salem witch hunts, the Crusades, the decimation of the Native Americans and Australian Aborigines or the Conquistadors of Latin America or the multitude of religious wars etc, etc, etc?

Oh gee, I must mean that. Please show us from the teaching of Christ where such actions are sanctioned.

[Papa Zoom]

Those stories/experiences can be better explained naturalistically, without appeal to a deity.

Interesting that you can know this without examining them individually.

For the life of me, I don't understand why so many theists make this false claim, especially when even many theistic philosophers recognize that it's false. Moral objectivism doesn't require a God (let alone an all good God), and Christianity can easily result in moral subjectivism. And here are plenty of normative accounts of what is "morally evil", that are compatible with atheism and moral objectivism.

I'm curious who these theistic philosophers are that recognize that morality can be objectively true without God.

[shunyadragon]

Of course that wasn't my point. I merely point out that these stories (which really amount to personal testimonies - and that is what I am referring to) exist and personal eye-witness testimonies are considered evidence evidence in a court of law. But that is besides the point too. The OP said he never witnessed any supernatural occurrences but many people claim to have done just that. I don't believe one can dismiss these "stories" outright. And again, I'm talking about stories meaning personal accounts.

The problem with claiming eyewitnesses. We do not have direct eyewitnesses in first hand sources. All our source, ie the Bible, are not first author witnesses of Biblical events. We have some letter by Paul and maybe Peter, but the legal reliability of Biblical testimony is seriously in question.

I can easily dismiss the Genesis stories and many miraculous Events in the Bible, because of the lack of documentation. One can believe based on faith, but it is not convincing in an argument against those that do not believe on faith.

And your claim is from a position of bias as well.

I am at present not making any claim either way. I believe in God, but I realize the weaknesses in claiming objective evidence of the reality of God or the claims of any one ancient religion or the other. I admit my bias in believing the way I do in the Baha'i Faith, but when discussing other religions and beliefs, I prefer to leave the question open

I agree with you on this point aside from the fact that without an all good God there cannot be something truly objectively evil.

I do not believe there is anything truly objectively evil.

I'm not sure you understand what I actually was trying to say. When people do evil in the name of Christ, they are not actually acting in His name. They are not properly understanding or Applying his words. Christian are called to love others and treat others with love. When that is not followed, those people are not following Christ. You can't willfully murder in the name of Christ. Just because you have the t-shirt doesn't mean you're really in the club.

The same would be true of any belief system. They all pretty much claim when anyone does evil in the name of our religion or non-religion, they are not actually acting in the name of that religion.

[Papa Zoom]

The problem with claiming eyewitnesses. We do not have direct eyewitnesses in first hand sources. All our source, ie the Bible, are not first author witnesses of Biblical events. We have some letter by Paul and maybe Peter, but the legal reliability of Biblical testimony is seriously in question.

I can easily dismiss the Genesis stories and many miraculous Events in the Bible, because of the lack of documentation. One can believe based on faith, but it is not convincing in an argument against those that do not believe on faith.

Fine but I'm not referring to the biblical witnesses.

I am at present not making any claim either way. I believe in God, but I realize the weaknesses in claiming objective evidence of the reality of God or the claims of any one ancient religion or the other. I admit my bias in believing the way I do in the Baha'i Faith, but when discussing other religions and beliefs, I prefer to leave the question open

We all make claims on these forums and we all have a bias. It's unavoidable.

I do not believe there is anything truly objectively evil.

Killing babies with pitchforks or eating popcorn. Are they both morally neutral?

The same would be true of any belief system. They all pretty much claim when anyone does evil in the name of our religion or non-religion, they are not actually acting in the name of that religion.

Unless the religion specifically states such evil and commands it be done. It's not the Christian faith that is the problem. It's the heart of man.

[Starlight]

I don't get how you can be / become a Christian if you never thought that there was any evidence of a supernatural deity. Surely a Christian, at minimum, believes that Jesus rose from the dead.

I was born into a Christian family and raised a Christian and all my friends and family were Christians. I believed it because everyone said it was true. As an adult, I thought it would be nice to have some actual evidence to back up these beliefs, and I was unable to find any.

The problem is that if you reject the existence of God, how do you objectively measure good, and how do you objectively determine what is 'progress' for a society?

I hold to the same objective morality that pretty much all the other atheists on this forum do and which has been discussed ad nauseum in other threads and which I'm not going to repeat here.

If you haven't got an objective measure of these things, and can show that Christianity fails and something else passes, you're rejecting an objective truth claim('God exists') on subjective grounds. That's not very rational.

You misread my post. I changed from a believing Christian to a nominal Christian (who didn't believe in the supernatural but who still thought Christianity was a good idea because it promoted people being nice to each other) because I couldn't find any legitimate evidence of the supernatural. I changed my labeling from a 'nominal Christian' to an 'atheist' because I concluded that Christianity on balance wasn't actually causing people to be nice.

[Starlight]

On Locke:
Some scholars have seen Locke's political convictions as deriving from his religious beliefs.

~shrug~
Everyone's views have to start somewhere. But Locke made quite a number of developments of new ideas, which subsequently took off on their own. The apple fell further and further from the tree with each iteration. John Stuart Mill who developed Locke's ideas further was an atheist. And the utilitarian paradigm of morality they both developed is now generally seen as standing in opposition to your fundamentalist-Christian divine-command view of morality. The entire paradigm and worldview that they and their thought-descendants developed must be judged and evaluated on its own merits, not just with reference to what the religious beliefs of the first person to begin its development happened to be.

[Adrift]

You misread my post. I changed from a believing Christian to a nominal Christian (who didn't believe in the supernatural but who still thought Christianity was a good idea because it promoted people being nice to each other) because I couldn't find any legitimate evidence of the supernatural. I changed my labeling from a 'nominal Christian' to an 'atheist' because I concluded that Christianity on balance wasn't actually causing people to be nice.

No. In many parts of the Christian world you would have been considered at first a nominal Christian who eventually did a slide to nontheism with a slapped-on Christian label (ala John Dominic Crossan or John Shelby Spong), and then eventually to atheism.

You're whole mental scale of Christian belief is skewed way left of center. It's no wonder then when you interact with mainstream orthodox Christians you think of them as fundamentalists and extremists.

[Cow Poke]

Yes, I know all about the fear mongering aspect of the Bible.

Perhaps that was your problem - you never experienced the Love of Christ.

[Starlight]

And just because you haven't encountered it doesn't mean it isn't so. It may be that miracles do not happen. But you can't determine they don't happen because you personally haven't encountered any.

We are talking about my personal beliefs on the subject. I did my best to assess the evidence of numerous 3rd party claims of miracles, and concluded that as best I could determine not a single one of them was true.

Which laws have Christians world wide advocated against to keep gay folks from having rights?

I gave a list in my earlier post. Some examples from my country: In the 80s here the Salvation Army ran a public petition against changing the law to legalize gay sex, in 2004 Christians marched against the introduction of civil unions, and in 2013 numerous Christian groups spoke out against the introduction of same-sex marriage and made parliamentary submissions on the subject. The pattern has been rather similar in other Western countries, with Christians opposing gay rights at every step of the way.

There are already laws against workplace discrimination.

In some countries. America does not have such a law at the federal level, nor in about 39 of its states at the state level IIRC. The introduction of such a law in my own country was delayed by about 3 years because Christians were opposing it.

You don't need a special law for "only" gays.

You need to include 'sexuality' in the list of protected categories alongside things like race and gender, to prevent discrimination on those grounds.

And what is hate speech?

Hate-speech laws prohibit verbal or written expressions of nastiness toward minority groups. Current UK law:
"Expressions of hatred toward someone on account of that person's colour, race, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origin, religion, or sexual orientation is forbidden. Any communication which is threatening or abusive, and is intended to harass, alarm, or distress someone is forbidden."

Which malicious lies they Christians spread?

I listed them in an earlier post. You seem to have found many of them somewhere online and repeated them in your post, which I won't quote that part of for obvious reason of not repeating lies.

Which part of my explanation that I think Christians who tell and spread malicious lies about gay people are evil, horrible and immoral, did you not understand?!? It's people exactly like you that made me finally reject Christianity. The part that's hilarious though is that you claimed not to be anti-gay earlier, yet here you are spreading malicious lies about gay people. I think the irony meter just exploded.

While you didn't cite the source of your quotation, google showed the piece was authored by the FRC which is designated an anti-gay hate group by the SPLC because:

The FRC often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science. The intention is to denigrate LGBT people

[Starlight]

No. In many parts of the Christian world you would have been considered at first a nominal Christian who eventually did a slide to nontheism with a slapped-on Christian label (ala John Dominic Crossan or John Shelby Spong), and then eventually to atheism.

You write some complete and utter drivel sometimes. I was a moderate evangelical Christian who truly and sincerely believed in what I had been taught. You trying to call that a 'nominal Christian' is so absurd it makes me wonder what you even think you're trying to achieve by doing so.

You're whole mental scale of Christian belief is skewed way left of center. It's no wonder then when you interact with mainstream orthodox Christians you think of them as fundamentalists and extremists.

[Adrift]

You write some complete and utter drivel sometimes. I was a moderate evangelical Christian who truly and sincerely believed in what I had been taught. You trying to call that a 'nominal Christian' is so absurd it makes me wonder what you even think you're trying to achieve by doing so.

This is what you said,

I was born into a Christian family and raised a Christian and all my friends and family were Christians. I believed it because everyone said it was true.

Fraid to tell you this Starlight, but "I believed it because everyone said it was true" is the very definition of nominal Christianity.

[Starlight]

Fraid to tell you this Starlight, but "I believed it because everyone said it was true" is the very definition of nominal Christianity.

As per usual you're 100% wrong.

[Papa Zoom]

We are talking about my personal beliefs on the subject. I did my best to assess the evidence of numerous 3rd party claims of miracles, and concluded that as best I could determine not a single one of them was true.

ok

I gave a list in my earlier post. Some examples from my country: In the 80s here the Salvation Army ran a public petition against changing the law to legalize gay sex, in 2004 Christians marched against the introduction of civil unions, and in 2013 numerous Christian groups spoke out against the introduction of same-sex marriage and made parliamentary submissions on the subject. The pattern has been rather similar in other Western countries, with Christians opposing gay rights at every step of the way.

I don't see gay sex as a "right." And I see nothing wrong with people who believe a particular behavior immoral seeking to keep that behavior from being recognized as "normal." I don't see gay marriage as a "right" either. So what? I don't hate gay people. I just don't see the issue as they or others see it.

In some countries. America does not have such a law at the federal level, nor in about 39 of its states at the state level IIRC. The introduction of such a law in my own country was delayed by about 3 years because Christians were opposing it.

Federal discrimination laws have been on the books since 64. http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html

You need to include 'sexuality' in the list of protected categories alongside things like race and gender, to prevent discrimination on those grounds.

I know that many people think that anything goes when it comes to sexuality. Not everyone sees it that way. I don't. And I don't feel bad about seeing it that way. It's not hate driven. I have reasons for my views. The liberals love to label people like me as intolerant just for thinking differently. It's so hypocritical.

Hate-speech laws prohibit verbal or written expressions of nastiness toward minority groups. Current UK law:
"Expressions of hatred toward someone on account of that person's colour, race, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origin, religion, or sexual orientation is forbidden. Any communication which is threatening or abusive, and is intended to harass, alarm, or distress someone is forbidden."

Christians put up with "hate" speech all the time according to your definition. Done by atheists and agnostics and humanists. In the current culture, no one can belittle any other people group except Christian groups are a legal target.

The part that's hilarious though is that you claimed not to be anti-gay earlier, yet here you are spreading malicious lies about gay people. I think the irony meter just exploded.

I know many gays and they've had many, many partners. And studies show this to be true. Not for every single gay out there but true for many. Which study are you disputing? Or is it you just don't like the results? Why is just saying what one believes to be the case anti anything? I think gay sex is immoral but then I think all sex outside of a one woman one man is immoral. So what? Why do I have to accept your view? It's crazy. Unless I see things exactly the same as an LGBT activist I'm anit-gay. Ok, got it.

[Starlight]

I don't see gay sex as a "right." And I see nothing wrong with people who believe a particular behavior immoral seeking to keep that behavior from being recognized as "normal." I don't see gay marriage as a "right" either. So what? I don't hate gay people. I just don't see the issue as they or others see it.

This reads perfectly like one of those "I'm not racist, I just don't think black people should have the same rights as everyone else" spiels. Golden. I love how you delude yourself into thinking you're not anti-gay. You don't actively dislike them, you just don't think they should have rights.

Federal discrimination laws have been on the books since 64. http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html

They don't include protection on the grounds of sexuality. This has allowed people to discriminate against gay people in the workplace. As of last month the EEOC has said they're reinterpreting the protection on the grounds of sex to include protection on the ground of sexuality, which is nice of them, but it may not stand up in court.

Christians put up with "hate" speech all the time according to your definition. Done by atheists and agnostics and humanists. In the current culture, no one can belittle any other people group except Christian groups are a legal target.

In the UK they don't seem to have had any large series of prosecutions against atheists, agnostics and humanists, so your claim would seem to be false. What I typically find happens is that Christians are used to being in the majority in the Western World and are not used to having their power and authority challenged or opposed, so to them some small opposition seems really significant and takes on in their minds a level of scale out of proportion to all actual objective truth. As the Daily Show once brilliantly summarized this perspective as represented by Fox News: "[They] express anger and victimization over the loss of absolute power and reframe it as persecution of real America by minorities, freeloaders, and socialists." My observation is that Christians often have an equally poor, but inverted, perception of the harms that they are inflicting on others.

I know many gays and they've had many, many partners.

I know many gay people too, all but two of which have had one partner to the best of my knowledge. How many partners people have depends on the culture that they live in, not whether they are attracted to men or women.

Which study are you disputing?

I'm primarily upset about their choice to select those particular studies as opposed to any other ones, and the pretense that the results of this hand-picked selection process were representative. If someone goes into what's widely believed to be the world's densest forest and analyses how many trees there are per square mile, and then publishes that result, then is it justifiable to say "the world is generally covered by X number of trees per square mile <cite study>"? Is that in any way an honest or reasonable thing to do? Of course not. It's totally dishonest in every way. That's they way the FRC's lies about gay people generally function: they select the most unusual and unrepresentative and extreme studies and pretend they are generalizable, and ignore all the other studies that came to different views. There are also usually additional problems with the studies the FRC selects - they have often been deliberately engineered by anti-gay Christians who have deliberately used unsound methodologies in order to yield fake anti-gay results.

Unless I see things exactly the same as an LGBT activist I'm anit-gay. Ok, got it.

You're extremely anti-gay. You're pretty much deluding yourself to pretend otherwise.

[Papa Zoom]

[QUOTE=Starlight;226062]

This reads perfectly like one of those "I'm not racist, I just don't think black people should have the same rights as everyone else" spiels. Golden. I love how you delude yourself into thinking you're not anti-gay. You don't actively dislike them, you just don't think they should have rights.

I've actually heard this same line before. I'll have to share it with my gay friends. It's perfect. It shows who the real intolerants are. I'm not anti heterosexual but I must be since I think premarital sex is immoral. hmmm It's laughable. BTW, being gay and being black are not the same. It's a tired comparison. If I had said I'd have nothing to do with gays you'd say, "see! See!" But because I say I have gay friends (and have all my life) that's a sign I'm anti-gay. Sweet logic.

They don't include protection on the grounds of sexuality. This has allowed people to discriminate against gay people in the work place. As of last month the EEOC has said they're reinterpreting the protection on the grounds of sex to include protection on the ground of sexuality, which is nice of them, but it may not stand up in court.

In what way exactly is a gay being discriminated against in the workplace? I need to have a specific since a blanket statement is worthless here.

In the UK they don't seem to have had any large series of prosecutions against atheists, agnostics and humanists, so your claim would seem to be false.

???

What I typically find happens is that Christians are used to being in the majority in the Western World and are not used to having their power and authority challenged or opposed, so to them some small opposition seems really significant and takes on in their minds a level of scale out of proportion to all actual objective truth.

Yeah, some small opposition. Like having your head chopped off, drowning, rape, slavery, murder, and in the USA, free speech silenced, and we've put up with years of having the Christian faith mocked. It will get worse too. But then you're ok with that it seems.

As the Daily Show once brilliantly summarized this perspective as represented by Fox News: "[They] express anger and victimization over the loss of absolute power and reframe it as persecution of real America by minorities, freeloaders, and socialists." My observation is that Christian often have an equally poor, but inverted, perception of the harms that they are inflicting on others.

Yeah I always seek out comedians for commentary on important news items.

I know many gays too, all but two of which have had one partner to the best of my knowledge. How many partners people have depends on the culture that they live in, not whether they are attracted to men or women.

I don't know to what extent that statement is true or false. It's not important to me either way.

I'm primarily upset about their choice to select those particular studies as opposed to any other ones, and the pretense that the results of this hand-picked selection process were representative.

Studies should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.

If someone goes into what's widely believed to be the world's densest forest and analyses how many trees there are per square meter, and then publishes that result, then is it justifiable to say "the world is generally covered by X number of trees per square mile <cite study>"? Is that in any way an honest or reasonable thing to do? Of course not. It's totally dishonest in every way.

I don't think that analogy actually works.

That's they way the FRC's lies about gay people generally function: they select the most unusual and unrepresentative and extreme studies and pretend they are generalizable, and ignore all the other studies that came to different views. There are also usually additional problems with the studies the FRC selects - that their extreme are often deliberately engineered by anti-gay Christians who have deliberately used unsound methodologies in order to yield fake anti-gay results.

Probably best to compare many studies to know for sure. It's not worth time nor is it really important to the discussion to find out.

You're extremely anti-gay.

Says the guy who doesn't know me personally and we are supposed to be having an open and honest discussion. I thought these boards are for the free flowing of ideas without the need for putting people in a box. In my entire life I've never done one thing against the rights of any person regardless of their beliefs or lifestyle. I've had opinions about those folks and their choices, which I mostly kept to myself. I never post like this on FB nor discuss such things at work nor would I (because haha! I have gay friends at work and on FB and yes they are actually my friends! I even have friends that are living with another person but not married. I keep my thoughts on that to myself too! It's not by business and it's NOT my job to correct people in the real world).

But this is a discussion group and here we openly and honestly share our views. So I do. Makes for interesting conversation because it brings out the best in alternate views, which we all need to hear and consider. The fact is, above all else, I believe I am called by God to love others unconditionally. All others. Which I do. And on these boards I will continue to honest in the discussions and will look forward to having my views honestly and respectfully challenged.