Christian wanting help from Atheists!!!!?

Question

Here is your chance Agnostics and Atheists. I am a Christian, yet I believe that a Christian should be able to answer your questions intelligently and with evidence outside the Bible also. I am currently studying this subject with a group of intelligent and educated Christians. If you do not mind helping the enemy some Give me the best reasons that you believe there cannot be a God, or that there is any possiblity that Creationism could be right. I will not promise to answer but will take the best questions and put them to the group for their answers and responses. If you want to know them my E-Mail is listed on my Avatar.
Please only science, historical, or biology based questions, I do not need to hear because you have to be stupid to believe that fairy tale. I would take no more notice of that than you do when someone says casue the Bible says so

Paul - I belive the word atheist is used to describe someone that does not believe in any God or Gods?
And my Bible does not teach me that my God is only a loving God but that he also is a God that punishes those who have sinned, which would be all of us. And cannot you love spomeone and yet punish them? I know that I love my children more than anything but I still have punished them.

Paul - I belive the word atheist is used to describe someone that does not believe in any God or Gods?
And my Bible does not teach me that my God is only a loving God, but that he also is a God that punishes those who have sinned, which would be all of us. And cannot you love someone, and yet punish them? I know that I love my children more than anything but I still have punished them.

Punishment does not mean that I beat them, Grounding, timeouts, removal of privileges, all constitute forms of punishment

Answer 1

I guess I would want to know why you believe in God first. There are plenty of reasons not to believe in God, but discussions only interesting if we actually have opposing beliefs on the subject.

If you're coming from the causeless cause stance, why must this entity be God (assuming such a cause exists)?

If you're coming from an intelligence implies intelligent creator stance, why do you fail to apply that hypothesis to your God?

If you're coming from a probability stance (i.e. what are the chances all of this could have come about without a designer), the probability of the existence of a God complex enough to create the universe is even lower. How do you rationalize this?

If you're coming from the ontological proof, couldn't one prove that the devil is just as, if not more, powerful than God? I could delve further into that one if you want.

If you believe in the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent flavor of god, how do you rationalize first the philosophical clashes between these terms and then reconcile the state of the world with such a god?


There are others of course, but my personal reason for not believing in a Christian god is that I don't see why a powerful being, especially an all powerful being, would require worship from admittedly insignificant people unless that god has a major complex. Many say that it's not worship but love that God wants, but I've never loved or trusted someone hiding in the shadows. In all other areas, it seems that we are encouraged to use our gifts, but it we turn our 'God-given' intelligence to question his existence, we'd better watch out for lightning bolts. My logic leads me to believe there is no god, and I really wouldn't want to follow any god who would punish me for doing so.

As for other gods, I just feel it's a weak stance to believe in them. It feels like a copout to say that we don't have to explain everything because this god or that did it. I have yet to see evidence for a god, and it makes no sense to believe in something simply because the lack of evidence fits that scenario.


Edit: In response to your punishment statement, why do you punish your kids? Isn't it so that they learn and can do better next time? Love implies that you have the other person's interests at heart, and in this case you are thinking of your kids' futures. What interest does eternal punishment serve? Considering it's for a finite amount of sinning, how can that be construed as just? If you don't assume God is loving, do you at least think God is just?

Answer 2

1) It's not that there -cannot- be a god, it simply that there isn't definitive proof that there actually -is- one.
2) I can have faith in the tooth fairy, but it doesn't make it real. Neither does having faith in anything else, like a god. Psychologically, if I believe in something enough, it may "exist" for me -- hallucinations, visions, ghosts, etc., happen all the time, but they aren't "real".
3) The Bible is has many contradictions. Why? The stories were passed down by oral tradition for decades, if not centuries, before they were finally written down (by humans). Try playing the gossip game for centuries, and see if you can keep the same story without errors. It wasn't written by the "hand of God", sorry.
4) Certain things in the Bible are simply impossible -- for example, Noah fitting two of -every- species into his ark. Even if you take the more conservative estimate of 4 -million- species on earth, how would he have built an ark with only 1 cubic foot per animal? Besides, the plants would not have survived underneath the water for that long... and Noah would have come back to a dead or dying earth.

Answer 3

It isn't reasonable to believe in anything that doesn't have evidence. You would be stuck with all of the tens of thousands of religions that man has managed to make up over the years. There isn't a shred of evidence that indicates there is any god, let alone the one you mentioned in particular. Therefore it is unreasonable to think there is.

Further, many things that your religion has predicted have been flat out wrong. Let's start with the Earth not being flat. I could site the Bible verses that indicate this, but the real key is the scholars that didn't know all thought it was flat based on what was written.

Any VALID theory on how life got here has to match the fossil record. Life started simple and got more complex. You can determine that with stratification (simpler species are found in layers that are under layers with more complex ones) alone and there isn't any debate about this basic fact. This CLEARLY doesn't match the Bible. It does match evolution. And that is without any of the harder to understand evidence.

I could site more examples. Scientific study clearly shows prayer doesn't work (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?ex=1301461200&en=4acf338be4900000&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)
There wasn't a world wide flood, there is no archaeological evidence that the Israelites were ever in Egypt, etc....

Nothing science has found really excludes a god, just what is written in the Bible. But nothing indicates there is one either.

Answer 4

I'm not sure if you mean reasons there cannot be a god or if you mean reasons the Christian God does not exist. I'll go with the omnipotient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent argument against the Christian god because if God were all of the above evil could not exist and if evil does exist then this god doesn't exist.

The argument about gods in general is much more difficult other than the fact that science can explain many things in the universe without intervention from gods and angels and what not. We may as well assume that given time science will explain them all.

Think of then ancient gods for the sun, moon, etc. Given time we found that existence and the motion of the planets did not require the existence of these smaller gods so why do we assume the existence of a bigger god who is basically just the sum of the smaller ones.

Answer 5

"Reasons there cannot be a God"? What makes you think that atheists would believe that there cannot be a god?

You have already undermined yourself - I can't imagine why anyone would expect an "intelligent and educated" response from you after the way you wrote this question.

Later: your "additional details" only make it more clear that you don't understand this at all. Sure, atheists do not believe in gods. As I said before, what would make you think that atheists would believe that there cannot be a god?

I suggest that you sit back and think about this more. You clearly haven't put much effort into understanding any of this, and you're clearly not in a position to offer anyone else any answers yet.

Answer 6

How about philosophy based questions.

There's a forum full of them at philosophorum.

How about the classic problem of evil?

1. Evil exists
2. Christianity postulates an omnipotent, all-loving, all-knowing god
3. Only two parts of 2 are logically possible, therefore the christian conception of god must be wrong.

This works because of omnipotence, in itself a contradictory idea (an omnipotent being can create a more powerful being but that decries omnipotence). An all loving god would want to stop pain, and all knowing god knows pain is occurring and an all powerful god is able to stop it.

Remind yourself that omnipotence is beyond logic. Since god would have the power to lay down logic, he could have laid it down in a different way that permitted free will and yet did not permit evil, but he supposedly chose not to.

Or the empiricist argument. All knowledge comes from sense experience. Since we cannot sense god we cannot know he exists. Thus god cannot be known.

Neither of these is a proof against the existence of any god, the first only decries the abrahamic faiths' god and the second says `well god could exist, but it's of no significance, he should have given us more evidence`

Answer 7

As a couple people have mentioned/demonstrated, philosophy is going to be a big one here.

My historic/philosophical reasoning, based on my own studies: Christianity's stories are all from outside sources. Not the historical bits, but things like Adam & Eve, the flood, and a lot of the symbolism. Check out Joseph Campbell's Occidental Mythology--he gives more excellent examples than I can give here, and he's not in the least offensive about it.

Answer 8

You are not my enemy.

Read Dawkins's The God Delusion. It ain't perfect, but it's persuasive (and often amusing). Read Harris's The End of Faith. Take your pick from that lot and you'll get an idea of where most other atheists are coming from.

Answer 9

Why no proof of a world flood?
How were all animals gathered for the ark? How long did it take? How did it not sink with all those animals, as the size would not be sufficient to hold them?
How was god there before everything?

Answer 10

Alternayively you could supply us with evidence that ther is a god