Are believers just ignorant?

Question

It seems to be a running theme on this board that anyone religious, especially Christians, is stupid or uneducated. One of the main reasons for this is that most atheists refer to a lack of tangible and indisputable proof that God exists. There is an abundance of tangible proof in the same science text books that you use to disprove God, and as far as having indisputable proof; God gave us free will to choose whether or not to worship him. Giving absolute proof would pretty much make worshipping him the only option unless you wanted to go to hell for some odd reason. If someone brought you to a fork in a road and gave you absolute proof that one path would lead you to death and horrible pain, and the other led to peace and everlasting life, there wouldn't be much of a decision to make would there? God loves us enough to give us the ability to CHOOSE, even if that means not choosing him.

As far as Christians only believing what they are told or forced to believe, I became a Christian after a great deal of studying many religions and scientific publications. If most athiests would take the time to acutally research the subject with an open mind you will find that it eventually becomes apparent that there is way more evidence supporting God than against God.

Answer 1

Agreed
Most Christians believe what they are told, not what they discover with the Lord's help.
Their Bibles lay on the shelf, unread.
They do not take their faith "on the road" with them through the week.
Christianity is not designed to be so much a "religion" as it is a "lifestyle".
Yes there is plenty of evidence to historically support:
That Jesus actually lived and died in the way that the Bible states that he did.
That the resurrection actually occurred pretty much as described in the Bible.
That the various peoples and places mentioned in the Bible actually existed and lived pretty much the way that they are described in the Bible.
You do not have to be a "believer" to see this. You simply have to be open to letting the evidence speak for itself.
I firmly believe that anyone who does their own research without preconceived opinion, will find God in the evidence of history.
Most Christians today have a form of religion but not the substance....

Answer 2

If only people would read the question. And no, believers are not ignorant.

I agree with what you are saying though. Many non-Christians or ex-Christians hold much angst against us for personal reasons because some "Christian" wronged them sometime in the past. Most of the time you can put a logical argument on the table, like something created from nothing, and they will deny the truth just as they feel some of us do. So I guess we are all ignorant if we refuse the truth.

Answer 3

Imagine yourself being born on an island not visited by any foreigners. Imagine you had you had a good heart, you helped others and tried to make sence of the world around you based on the limited amount of knowledge you have come across through your observations of the world. You have essentially created your own belief system. When you die, will God take you to heaven if you called him by another name? if you think "No" is god that egotistical that he will puhish anyone who does not call him what the book says to call him? Who is this god? Does any book understand him at all? When the tsunami came no one religon was better than another the true religon of the world is that none of the current religons represent god. Truth is out there and i know its not in the books... Belivers are just misguided, they need to try and understand the real god, and not the text from the past that tried to expain god in their context.

Answer 4

I do not think that believers are ignorant or stupid. HOWEVER, I do think that they tend to be closed minded, but don't we all? I have met many believers who refuse to listen to the other side of the argument. I am an athiest who is willing to listen to the arguments that Christians present for their faith. I would just love to be able to talk to a Christian who is willing to concede that I may be right and they may be wrong....it all takes faith, and like you said, there is no tangible proof either way!

Answer 5

Nice spin! Here is one for ya.

"What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way." -- Bertrand Russell

Answer 6

I'm getting dizzy from your circular reasoning.

You're saying god didn't want to make it too obvious he exists so we could exercise the "free will" he gave to make the choice to believe in him or not, but if we choose not to believe then, sorry...hellfire for you !! Is that your point, in a nutshell.?......emphasis on nut...

First I can't be bothered to believe in a deity who can't be bothered to make his existence obvious.
Second, your perfect god has screwed things up royally....I lack confidence in his omni(fill in the blank)
He failed to forsee that his wonderful creation would listen to the talking snake and eat the fruit of knowledge of good and evil (He must have been hard up for sins in the early days if that was the best he could come up with) Then he again failed to forsee that man would just start sinning again (of course...making up sins on the fly as usual) Starts over again after the flood..chooses his people and has them slaughter some more of his creation, and again fails to see that they won't meet his standards.

After all the failures of the OT god, his next best plan to salvage the whole thing is now to divide himself into 3, and have part of himself born out of some poor peasant teenager, walk around Galillee for a few years cursing fig trees and misquoting the OT, then piss off the Romans enough to kill him.

This god of yours, really has some poor planning skills. If he is all you say he is, he knew from the first moment of creation how it will all turn out in the end. So he knew I would be an atheist, even after having every opportunity to "hear the good news" and yet he created me anyway, knowing he was condeming me to eternal hellfire just by the act of creating me? His love for me is so great that he will allow me to choose eternal damnation. Nice guy

What a vicious, evil, spiteful, vindictive, capricious, vain and nasty piece of work your god is. what a cosmic prick!

On the other hand, maybe it is all your imagination, and yes, to finally answer your question. Believers ARE ignorant. That is not an insult...look up the meaning of ignorant if you are ignorant of it.

Answer 7

No believers are nor ignorant, they see the TRUTH. Where is the proof? The proof is in Bible prophecy. There are 8000 verses of prophecy in the Bible, 90% of those prophecies have been fulfilled. Scholars have listed over 100 prophecies in the Old Testament relating to the birth, earthly mission, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Everyone of them fulfilled. The odds of one man fulfilling only 48 of those prophecies is 1 to 10 with 157 zeros following it. There is historical proof that Jesus lived from the writings of Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Lucian and the Babylonian Talmud. Yes God exists and He sent His only Begotten Son to die for our sins.

Answer 8

BibleNinja,
I believe that it is the tendency to hate that drives the nonbelievers. Yet I can tell that you are one who they must contend with on a different level. The typical noob Atheist comes here thinking that it's going to be easy to out think a Christian, and that's the pride before the fall.

I hope to see more of you here.

Answer 9

That's right. You do have the ability to choose. You can choose between believing something that does have evidence for it and believeing something that doesn't have evidence for it. Which are you going to take? Put it another way, are you going to be logical or not?

Answer 10

Here's another good website which gives much supporting evidence for creationism. I like to show this to ppl who are truly serious about studying into issues; not mere surface believers if u know what I mean.

http://www.halos.com/index.htm