Fact or Opinion?

Question

People that say they think that God is a stupid idea created by man...they believe everything has to have proof. Has to have a logical base. And then calls the people that DO believe small minded....

Narrow Minded:
1. having or showing a prejudiced mind, as persons or opinions; biased.
2. not receptive to new ideas; having a closed mind.
3. extremely conservative and morally self-righteous.

And "prejudiced mind" is:
1. an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.
2. any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable.
3. unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, esp. of a hostile nature, regarding a racial, religious, or national group.


So there you go Christians. Proving that Atheists are the ones that are narrow minded, not us.
I listen to what they have to say, I take evolution into account.
They refuse to listen, take anything we have to say into account...
Christians agree?

Site for the Prejudiced def.
"http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/prejudiced"

Site for Narrow Minded def.
"http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=narrow%20minded"

Answer 1

A man is either of Christ or antichrist.

Those who deny God are of the spirit known as antichrist. The reason they deny God is because to accept God is to accept his Word which in turn can convict and convert.

It is impossible for the creation to deny the Creator. They deny him so that can live in sin and not worry about guilt, or about being cast in hell. Yet, they choose to believe the lies of the devil just as Adam did, allowing themselves to be deceived by satan and in turn held in the grasp of death.

So what it comes down to is their love for sin is greater then their love for God.

Answer 2

Christianity is not a new idea. And how can you accuse atheists of being conservative or morally self righteous? Further, to assume that we have no information on this, or that we all based our thinking on a "bad opinion" of Christianity shows how weak minded you are. Our feelings and beliefs are not unreasonable. I am not hostile all the time toward theists. I have no preconceived notions. YOU however, seem to fit all those characteristics just based on the question. All you have proved is that you do and behave exactly the way you say we do.

Answer 3

Demetri I'm becoming more and more annoyed by your posts. Not because I disagree with them but because I find it so hard to disagree with them. I believed for a very long time in the idea that it's the best thing to believe whether there is or isn't a God.

Now I don't feel so comforted by that idea. You're right no religion can be certain they're following Gods will or whether they're in fact following some other beings will. After all Satan wouldn't appear with tail and pitchfork he would subtly influence us preying on our desire to believe we're doing the right thing.

Your fifth argument is the one that strikes me the hardest since I have first hand experience when I have voluteered for charities. I have always run into atheists at them and it struck me as odd that they would devote their time even to Christian charities. So often my fellow Christians and I would talk about how we're pleasing and following God's will. And I'm embarassed at how often we simply viewed those nonbelievers as potential converts instead of simply saying you're a good person just as you are.

Answer 4

All that the individual atheists have in common is that they are human beings who do not believe in any god.

Now, a lot of them will cross the line into the anti-theist territory, and that's when they usually start to spew the stuff about Christians being delusional and all religions being destructive no matter what. In those cases, I do agree with you that they can be narrow minded. They totally disregard the individual. But Christians do that to atheists quite a bit, too.

But I know a lot of great atheists who are like that. You can find them on this site and in real life. You just have to learn to respect each other and be mindful of differences.

Here in R&S, just try not to take things too seriously.

Answer 5

Wow. You really have no clue what you're talking about. I think it's time for some education here. I will proceed to thoroughly refute your claim that atheism and freethought are associated with being narrow-minded while christianity is not. Watch:

>they believe everything has to have proof. Has to have a logical base.

Because WITHOUT evidence, you can't rationally be sure that something is true.

>1. having or showing a prejudiced mind, as persons or opinions; biased.

Think about what you're saying here. You're saying that:
1. Requiring sufficient evidence to support the existence of God as a logical conclusion is biased.
2. Believing in God on faith, in the other hand, while ignoring the evidence that we can actually perceive, is not biased but rather totally balanced and fair.
Okay, now I will take precisely what you implied and replace the existence of God with the existence of J. K. Rowling's Hogwarts. If we apply your statements to Hogwarts instead of God, you are saying:
1. Requiring sufficient evidence to support the existence of Hogwarts as a logical conclusion is biased.
2. Believing in Hogwarts on faith, in the other hand, while ignoring the evidence that we can actually perceive, is not biased but rather totally balanced and fair.
Yet you do not believe in Hogwarts, and you can see that this second set of statements is false. Yet if you are, as you claim, UNBIASED, then you should hold no bias towards either God or Hogwarts and thus the two sets of statements should work the same way. You are now presented with the unavoidable choice of either believing in Hogwarts, or admitting that you are biased towards God, or retracting your claim that it is biased to require evidence, because anything else is hypocrisy. I await your decision.

>2. not receptive to new ideas; having a closed mind.

So you claim to be receptive of the idea of God. Very well, are you receptive to the idea of Allah? Of Buddha? Of Vishnu? Of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? No, you are a christian, and you do not believe in these other deities. Your mind is just as closed to them as the mind of an atheist is to the christian God. Yet you still claim that you are open-minded AND unbiased? You need to think over what you're saying.

>1. an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.

You state that to be prejudiced is to form an opinion 'without reason'. Yet you yourself said that '[atheists] believe everything has to have a logical base.' and claimed that THIS was prejudiced. So now it is prejudiced to use logic, but at the same time prejudiced to not use logic? Would you mind explaining this for me? Because quite honestly I don't see how it works.

>I listen to what they have to say, I take evolution into account.

Just as a side note, there is a difference between atheists and evolutionists. There is no requirement for an evolutionist to not believe in God, in fact many evolutionists are religious. While evolution is incompatible with the literal meaning of the Bible, it is by no means incompatible with the existence of God, any more than evolution of artificial life inside computer simulations is incompatible with the existence of humans.

>They refuse to listen, take anything we have to say into account...

On the contrary, most of the atheists I've seen on the Internet- and most particularly the intelligent ones- say that if given enough evidence, they would believe in God.

Answer 6

The Bible says in the end times, there will be haters of the Bible, mockers and scoffers. Also, there will be people who are actually proud of what they should be ashamed of. Sounds like now to me. Pray for them. Keep spreading the Gospel (Good News of Christ) but don't throw pearls to swine. It's hard to believe how many Top Contributors in this section are atheists. What do they contribute? I've emailed the Yahoo! Answers team 3 times about this. As for as evolution, I'm a Geologist and my studies and work led me TO God due to the complexity of life, the universe is 150 billion light years across, I believe that there are things here on Earth that were put here specifically for our enjoyment, fulfilled prophecy, etc...I think evolution is how God created. I don't believe He twitched His nose like "Bewitched" and poof, there is a cow! Genesis is not a science book. It was written by Moses through divine inspiration in a manner that was understandable to the people to explain the human condition.

Answer 7

I'm sorry, but your definitions do not fit atheists. We are not prejudiced, as we did not prejudge without taking into consideration what we are judging. As your definition of prejudiced mind shows, the opinion needs to have been formed beforehand or without knowledge, preconceived or unreasonable. Our opinions of theists are based on the knowledge that theists believe in something which does not exist, and base much of their lives on that belief. That is neither preconceived or unreasonable. As to not being receptive to new ideas, we are, but we've analyzed your ideas and found them severely lacking of any merit. As to being extremely conservative and morally self-righteous, are you sure you're directing this at us?

Based on what you, yourself, have posted, one would have to come to the conclusion that atheists are not narrow minded. I won't bother comparing theists to these traits, as I don't want to be called hostile.

Answer 8

If you're making the point to define atheists as opposed to religionists you might want to remove "extremely conservative and morally self-righteous" next time. Its inclusion really works against your thesis.

I might venture the idea that any notions atheists have regarding religion are not preconceived, but come from primary sources. Most atheists know religion quite well. In fact, I would assume most atheists know religion far better than most religionists know atheism. Given that, who is prejudiced?

Answer 9

You left out delusional which by clinical definition all faithful believers are.

de·lu·sion (di l′ən)

noun

a deluding or being deluded
a false belief or opinion
Psychiatry a false, persistent belief maintained in spite of evidence to the contrary

And of course I take everything anyone has to say into account. Christian views, Muslim views, Jewish views, all of them. Most I reject as delusional but I listen and take them into account. You are quite the unfair, judgmental person.

Answer 10

how long did it take for you to get to a computer on the short bus today?

by reading your "narrow minded" definition, that is a perfect definition of most republicans, conservatives, christians that i know or have ever met, heard, read, seen, listened to. Especially the extremely conservative and morally self-righteous...doesnt that kind of defint the "moral majority" or the "social conservatives" or the "conservative christians", im confused how you related those definitions to atheists?

Most atheists used to be christians, most christians did not used to be atheists. So i fail to see how your definitions work. The majority of atheists understand the bible better than christians do, they have lived that live, have been there, thus their "biases" are personal experience, not pre-concieved. Get a clue.