Because being an atheist is the same as being a Christian, these are just labels. It's the sincerity of your heart and the honesty of your mind that really matters.


"In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."
- John Lennon

How much time do you have?

 

In point form, Christianity:

• Is not demonstrably true
• Does not make you a better person
• Teaches you to accept bad explanations for difficult questions
• Does not even agree with itself on many topics
• Can and has been used to justify many kinds of bigotry and stupidity

 

Atheism, on the other hand, is not a faith. It's simply the position that no faith has convinced you of the existence of it's god or gods.

 

Without faith in any god, you don't tend to look for answers to life's ethical questions from the heavily edited and curiously selectively compiled writings of bronze age authors. You are free to recognize that as a society, we've got better answers now, and better reasons. We've moved past gender-based leadership, slavery, sacrifice, etc. Not that modern life is perfect, or perfectly moral, but there is an evolved morality that has moved past the bible. If the bible was really the source of morality that many Christians claim it is, then Christians probably could have spent the past 1900 years being better people.

 

And, today, we see the spokepeople for Christianity saying women can't lead congregations, or homosexuals (and almost everyone from high schoolers to 40-somethings have gay friends) are either sinful or disordered, or climate change isn't real, etc. And that's not even the most extreme cases. The extreme cases are even weirder.

 

Put it all together. Young people don't see the benefit of attending more inclusive churches, and would be embarrassed to be seen at more conservative churches.

 

There are more reasons, but that's what I can name in a couple of minutes of furious typing. I don't think most atheists truly think Christians are stupid. Some clearly are, but I think most of us realize that Christianity is a deeply held belief for most, who at the same time are able to hold reasonable opinions which do not involve public stonings. Christianity, when you look at it with fresh eyes, just doesn't make sense on so many levels, and now that nonbelief is socially acceptable and people don't have to worry about being ostracized, it's predictable that Christianity will suffer losses.

 

It's really a wonder that churches are hanging on to as many people as they are.

 

I don't think you have to be anything - Christian, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic.  No 'shoulds' invovled really.  Live your live the best you can, learning as you go, watching your views change along the way.  You may find a formal group with whom you are most comfortable, who also challenge you to think - go for it.  If you don't find a group - be a loner with friends. 

Kay catches an interesting point that I missed. Nobody "should" be anything. All you can do is learn how to evaluate what you're being told and what you read and what you experience, and then come to a conclusion. What we're seeing is young people coming to different conclusions than their parents. What's more, it's not like they don't know the bible. Atheists tend to know more about religion than the religious do.

 

 

Hi gregca

 

Maybe this can help you ----http://www.startingwithgod.com/talk-about-god/

 

How to Talk about God

 

Maybe you’d love for others to know Jesus, but *how* is the tough part?

I get that. I was an atheist. And I tortured my Christian friend. Every few days I’d hit her with another question.

“Why do you believe in God? What proof do you have?” “Why not other religions?” “Not using the Bible, can you even prove that Jesus actually existed?”

We answer questions like these on http://www.EveryStudent.com. (It can be a real help to you.)

Would you like to feel more confident in talking with others about God?

 

Hope this helps ---  

If you honestly have good reasons for being convinced in the existence of a god, Christian or otherwise, then you shouldn't be an atheist.  In such a case, presumably you could relate these reasons to your children.

As has been said before - there is no rule that parents and children should have matching beliefs.  Husband and wife don't need to have matching beliefs either.  Individuals go through life learning, changing, having new experiences.  It would be prety pathetic if their spiritual beliefs didn't change along with them.  

 

I'm thinking that there was a time in my life when I believed that there was a physical entity called God who lived up in the sky somewhere.  This God was creator and boss of everything and knew my every thought and move.  I had to behave well enough to be judged 'good' when I died so I could go to the magical place called Heaven.  

 

Eventually this belief started to get questioned - and it changed.  As more years of life went by my beliefs changed again and again.  No problem.  This is called maturing. 

Spinoza suggested that we know the dark because light lights itself and the dark. Light is, dark is not. In the absence of light ... there is nothing.

Knowledge is... in the absence of knowledge there is nothing.

Life has significance, meaning and purpose all of which ultimately derive from spiritual ground and truth. (And, none of which is the object of any 'science'.) Lives that are absent significance, meaning and truth ultimately are insignificant, meaningless and absurdly without purpose. The results of the latter are strewn all about our world these days.

I think sometimes language allows questions that are not really questions. Being atheistic is not a positive action. It is not something a person chooses. It is a default position when one does not hold that God exists.

I can say God exists and I know this from my existing. If God does not exist, there is nothing for me to say. No replacement belief. I may claim God exists, but if I do not think God exists, the discussion comes to a close there is nothing to discuss. The position of the atheist is that there is nothing there to choose. Hence there is not reason to choose atheism. One may reason to deny God, then that leaves nothing.

Indeed, unless someone is suggesting that God exists, there is no discussion to be had. The atheist does not contribute anything positive to the discussion. Being a critic and applying critical thinking to beliefs is not what defines atheism. People who believe in God should test and questions beliefs and they have done so and they do so. Christ did so in his ministry constantly.

Hi Greg:

 

Whether or not God exists depends very much on how we define God. The separate, supernatural, authoritarian, Zeus type creator/dictator God is not the only way to define God. If it were, then I, too, would be an atheist. But if, as I believe, God is the ALL, the ground of being as well as the totality of being, then it is difficult to deny God.

 

Also, if "God" is a metaphor for an otherwise inexplicable experience, then the definition of the metaphor is up to us. Then spirituality and faith in God are experiential.. Then doctrinal or dogmatic beliefs do not enter. If your children think that faith in God is being ignorant, then they only display their own ignorance, not yours.

 

 

 

 

 

One more thought: If "God" is a metaphor, the arguing the existence or non-existence of God is stupid. How can one argue the existence or non-existence of a metaphor?

 

 

ARM,

Its like saying God is nothing ... a good place to start if you knew nothing in the swamping that occured at your beginning ... and don't tell me mother's and fathers weren't swamped with emotions when messing about with nature. usually there exist an abstract of Q'lues, information or intelligence in this case. Is it nuts that kids arn't told the aesthetics and dangers of messing about the tree concurrantly? Thus the requirement of the cloes ... timeaus! Time is seldom noticed as it too pas-ess's! All things move except Light ... it just is as unknown energy as freed from the degradation of entropy. What's entropy? There's a dilemma to explain to the unexperienced in getting thoroughly burned ...

 

The classic expression from mother up in the kitchen; "what are you kids doing downstairs in the rec' room?"

 

The response is always "nothing" a filthy metaphor or just mire expression of abstract god as L'uv (sort of like anachronism or parable)! What a scro'up, or Jacked up (popup app?) emergency when the implications arrive as consequence to lack of Q' Luce ... derived form Luçè Ferrous ... the dripping of irony from the walls of 'elle? It appears as a brighter place in Dante's satyrs ... not how you've been taught by physical powers ... are there lesser metaphysical powers  ... like underlying thoughts? Osh-iðée bang bang ... and the fake un-ditties fly ... as monoliths none-the-less!

 

Don't you just live for word? Some people call it god, love, a vain word ... some just a myth! It a hateful setting would it be possible to call god a lye or just resting? What happens when the somnolent becomes insipiently sentient to what we've done?

 

Who's fault ... why Urs ... her mere appearance advocated trans actions ... transmutations ... sort of a word tranplanted as a thought: "could we have handled this better?" Not if you're instituted in some extreme! Why the code? Cause God's children didn't wish to know and thus the start ... like a cosmological impulse ... blo'ta'th' 'ed (in a short hand or left tap as rendered in acrude or cock kneed English)?

 

Yes, WB, the nothing that is everything, the dark void of Buddhism, atheism in the name of God, complementarity.

 

 

In my previous post, I siggest that a person does choose atheism.
But some are atheist because they do not find significance, meaning or purpose. ... and, indeed there are folks in such a situation despite their adherence to dogma, doctrine and signed membership...

well gregca ...... I suppose you could use the same reasons a person uses to ignore any other person.

When we take away the personal and make it a group, issue, concept then "it" becomes much easier to discount and ignore.

Regards

Rita

 

1.) It's easier

 

2.) You're kids will think you're cool

 

3.) You will become part of a growing trend

 

4.) You can sleep in on Sunday

 

5.) You will "know" that when you die that's all there is

 

6.) You won't have to take your grandchidren to church

 

7.) You can criticise others beliefs with abandon, or just become smug knowing that your thinking is more advanced.

 

8,) Science will provide your hope for the future.

 

9.) You will understand that you being born was by chance only

 

10.) Akuna Matata.....

- Hi Aldo a very   good post. Very straight forward and understandable. Your way of showing of the Atheist stance ,and I liked  you have done so . Without useing the word Belief . Which should make a Atheist happy.For me to hear someone  say there is no GOD. Is like someone saying there is no ground. To that I must  then say, Then what are you standing on?

God Bless-- airclean33

Airclean....

Born by chance or intent-sieve loss of sense, when your intellect drifted away in a blast ... bust ... loss of reality? Causes some need of filtering ... san works if you can understand grits, like methodists of freed thoughts! So much stirred up in the Babylonian Storm God ...

 

Imagine Jaqob on the Other side of Jordan ... considering immaterial stuff while resting his head in a hard place. Did you know that, that stone was mahaineim that in ancient tongues refers to a dimension shunned by mortals. In some interpretations this is the head of man ... difficult to penetrate ... sort of insensitive!

 

Of course I don't know this stuff for sure ... not supposed to by church institution that would sooner support Caesars', etc ... regular brute force ... thus Wisdom in the steets according to Hebrew scents of woe mon did you see that go by as Sophetic? Such is genteel background learning by what appears to be a mule ... see Walter Brenan in ... That Mule Old Rivers and Me! Possibly a revival with Mrs. Hype ... is there a hypo form ... you know a lesser evil ... when the nut cases are Luce ended and have to process all by their self ... Manaheim Transfer is a good approximation ... intelligence hidden in, or for a song?

I have been wondering recently why I rarely hear the word 'agnostic' anymore.  I threw it into a conversation with friends who go to church and they all looked blank.  When I explained what I thought the word meant one woman said "Sounds a bit silly to me - either you beleive in God and will go to Heaven with other Christians, or you don't believe in God and you are an atheist".

 

It wasn't worth upsetting her with a disagreement - but to me her words sound almost idiotically simplistic.

 

 

If you believe me strange ... have you ever looked about in your dimension of unreal desires

I don't think it's possible to just choose to be an atheist, or a believer in any faith, for that matter.  If you don't believe in God, you can't choose to believe in God.  If you do believe in God, you can't choose not to.  That's not to say that you can't change beliefs, but people need to be convinced by whatever convinces them.  

There's certainly that.

 

I've described it this way before: How do you trick yourself? How do you hide something in your house so you will never find it? Not counting car keys.

 

I can no more choose to be a Christian than I can choose to be gay. I can pretend to be a Christian, but I won't actually believe? Would Christians prefer their kids lie to them, or openly not believe?

 

Christianity should be proud that, at least in some parts of the world, belief is no longer coerced. Christianity has come a long way just by accepting that other beliefs and non-belief are acceptable conclusions. It only took Christianity a little less than 2000 years to stop killing, torturing, or shunning those who don't believe. And some people say it's not a source of morality! Pffft.

 

 

11.) You can claim that Christianity was responsible for the majority of wars, killings, and torturing of people. This will add credibility to being an atheist.

LMAO. You suck at creating straw men. Show me where I wrote that above. Show me how acceptable it has been to not be a believer in times when almost everybody believed and going to church was something you had to do to mantain your social standing.

 

Look, your kids aren't believing, and that's a problem to many of you. I'd apologize, but (a) it's not my fault, and (b) I think it's fantastic and not something to apologize for even if it was my fault.

 

The new reality is that young people aren't believing, and it's a reality that even United Future and the Comprehensive Review Whichamacallit completely avoided or danced around. Christians everywhere are looking at making church more fun, more doctrinal, more flexible, more open, more exclusive, more anything....when the elephant in the room is that it needs to be more believable. Christianity is not believable to more and more people.

 

I could say that you failed to sell it properly, but I don't know how you could. Ideally, I think you'd have more luck with your kids if you homeschooled them and kept them as ignorant as possible. In lieu of that, enjoy the ones who do carry on your faith, and manage well the shrinkage of your congregations. That's also the new reality.

 

Hi gregca,

 

 

As others have pointed out, should is the key.

 

 

Of all the definitions belief falls most easily into definition 3.  Belief is often described as an obligation, proper course of action or advantageous.  It isn't necessarily either and I don't think it is properly automatically any of the three.  Though history shows belief systems have ensured that belief can be automatic for any of these three reasons.

 

If a belief in God is not proper or valid simply because it eliminates the criticism of a wider believing audience then a non-belief in God would not be proper simply because it eliminates the criticism of a wider non-believing audience.  Particularly where that criticism is employed as a tool for conformity.

 

When "should" is employed for either belief or non-belief there is an attempt to control at play and that control is a direct affront to the liberty of the individual.  Belief or non-belief should be a matter of choice.  Where it becomes obligatory or expedient the individual is being subjugated to a system.

 

Grace and peace to you.

John
 

 

Chansen, Greg asked a question. To think outside the box, as an atheist. That's all.

 

12.) You can point out the failures of religion and ignore the successes.

You're not honestly considering things from an atheist perspective, though. You're just being an idiot.

 

Personally I think it's sad. Atheism literally has nothing to offer. They're honest about having nothing to offer, but still.

 

14.) You can resort to namecalling if someone uses your own arguments to support atheism..

You just are being an idiot. You're not being honest here. You're not coming up with reasons to think like an atheist - what you're coming up with is criticisms of atheism. They're bad criticisms, but that doesn't even matter in this context. I think what you're doing is dishonest, and you're being dishonest in a way that I would call idiotic.

 

That's why I prefer Pastafarianism. We offer dead Pastafarians a beer volcano and a stripper factory.

 

Bare theism has nothing to offer, either.

What is "bare theism"?

It is the opposite of atheism. Atheism (by itself, bare) is the non-belief in any gods, nothing more. Theism (by itself, bare) is the belief in at least one god, nothing more.
.
Neither of these offer anything past that belief. The other details of one's worldview do that, theistic or atheistic. For example, theists might add details *about* that god, that they find meaningful.

What is the word for theism that "adds details"? Is that religions? Is there a word for atheism that adds details?

It's not a word "for theism" or "for atheism" that does so.  But life philosophies and religions do serve.  "Christianity" has something to offer (we could argue about what that is, but that's not my point) far beyond what mere "theism" offers.  Exisentialism has something to offer far beyond what mere "atheism" offers (yes I know one can be a theistic existentialist; again, not my point).

.

Relating this to the OP, is Greg more concerned that his grown kids are atheists, or that they are not Christians?  "Atheist" describes what they are not; but what *are* they?

If one does not have some idealism  ... especially if it is not a moving example what is the use of the search for excellence without a sense of balance?

 

One is best to stay near the centre of the string, cord, or cable or you could fall out of line and learn something about the brutality of offended (real or not) mankind ... they really are a brutal bunch, that Latin brutii ... a rough example of power set free without clues ... like forte in old Gael ...  a braenstorm in cuneform (based on "<" in rotation) or any cunning shape that is poorly understood by people that don't desire to do so? It does encourage chatter alien communication ...

Thank you for your coments.I would like to respond to a few. I think Aldo got closer to what I was thinking on this topic. I liked waterfall and his 10 responses. It is certainly good reasons . However his number 11 is, I'am afraid, in error. It is more a sterotype response with little truth in it. Chansen stated that it is demonstrately true. Fair enough but it is as well not demonstrately false. either. As well It can make you a better person. It does not teach you to accept bad explanations. That is up to me. Also everything has been used to justify all types of bigotry and stupidity. In respect to gay, women etc. I don't understand the point. Christainity is a evolving faith not a static one. The U.C has a gay moderator. My minister is a woman. enough said. I do believe with chansen that young people aren't believing. It is not a matter of music, fun or anthing. They just don't believe the stories.

Thank You

They don't believe the stories to be literally true?

 

Well, they shouldn't. Stories are stories. Stories aren't literally true, they are literarily or metaphorically true.

 

 

Hi Chansen--You posted--

 

The new reality is that young people aren't believing, and it's a reality that even United Future and the Comprehensive Review Whichamacallit completely avoided or danced around. Christians everywhere are looking at making church more fun, more doctrinal, more flexible, more open, more exclusive, more anything....when the elephant in the room is that it needs to be more believable. Christianity is not believable to more and more people.

______________________________________

Airclean--I don't know what book your reading . But Christains have knowen  what would happen now in this age . For over two thousand years.Did you think are GOD lives in the dark as you do? I have told you already what is coming. You just laugh and say bull. I can't do much about that , as thats your choice.You are now at the beginning of the end for those who think as you Chansen . Injoy this short time , for the Bible speaks of a time when those who will not walk in GODS way . Just won't be here.I have a Boy and and Girl Both today walk with GOD. My son found a girl who's sister was marrried to a mininster in GODS Church. Today so is she. My daughter had some problems in her life. She married a man who did not walk with GOD . Today they both walk with GOD . And are now studying  GODS Word The Bible together every night. They now tell me there on there secound time through it. I have Grandchildren . And yes now great grand children. I am the Head of my family. I introduced GOD to my Family as my Head" and Leader" an theres as well.I give thanks to GOD every day that He has walked with us.My Great Grand children will chose it they will walk with GOD" or not. But they will rememder they came from a family that had GOD walk with them  an they with Him. ( As we all once did), and as in the end  Will once more do.

brilliant!

So is there any evidence for my personal existence?

And exactly where can I fond that .factual scientific' evidence?

Is it rational that I exist?

And, what might that rationality or reason be?

Just wondering....

I have faith in my existing and my faith is evidence based, and I in existing exist to be... which is the rationale of my faith in existing.....

a slightly more torturous pathway leads to a rationale, evidenced based faith in the existence of God and God in human terms....

Here is another great one :) 

 

 

Greg,
If your kids decided that there was a god of some sort, but had no beliefs about its nature or identity, and that was how they viewed the matter for the rest of their lives...would that make you any happier about the situation?
.
If so, then why? Given what I've explained about about atheism and theism being so trivial on their own, I mean.

 

You`re a cool person, airclean33 :3

This ones funny too 

 

 

Hey BB. Good to see you. I don't know why but your vids don't show up (using my phone).

 

Aren't you really saying here "Why can't my children be more like me, gregca?"