Question for atheists

 
... you're a "believer" telling non-believers to essentially fake it and go
 
through the motions of religion just because of some hum-drum percentage
 
you pulled out of your ass? You definitely sound like a true conformist of
 
organized religion.

 

 
I am no athiest, but I can truly see how blind you are by the words you
 
live by.

 

I believe in God, but not your God.
 
Lots of blood on His hands too.
 
But which institution doesn't?

 

It's because they have formed a conception of god that will always be false. The concept is a good one, useful, but call god what is not god and there is a big problem. It is better to not believe in god than it is to believe in a false god or rather misunderstand god.

 

I don´t believe in God but then again, that bastard never showed up. 

 

dropped church/christianity because it was weird. accept jesus and you will be saved. but the one to decide who is really going to get into heaven is god. you don't get into the white house because you know obama. you get into the white house because obama knows you. if god says no, the life that you've lived thinking it was for god was wasted. god is the ultimate judge. god says it's difficult to get into heaven, so watch out for the wide gate on the broad road that leads to hell... believing in god means believing in the majority of the population being sent to hell. seemed almost selfish to believe. god is a loving but fearful god. god is a jealous god. i never understood these. jealous? it's such a lowly miserable adjective to describe a god.
 
but in the back of my head i still wonder because i see my mom's faithfulness. her dedication makes me question her sanity. she wakes up at 5 to go to prayer every morning and spends her friday nights in church for prayer. it's kinda brutal to see her pouring out so much on something that i don't believe in.
 

christianity calls for change. your life purpose becomes worshiping god. your intentions change which changes behavior. i chose not to believe because i don't want to change my life.

 

 
Well, it's not like I choose not to believe, it would be reassuring to be as certain as religious people are that there's eternal happiness waiting for us when we die.
 
The thing is, I can't believe, even if I wanted to, I am just too rational and the concept of a god that has any participation in society and cares whether or not you follow certain rules seems too far-fetched for me, and I would not attribute any percentage to the chance of it existing. 
 
Besides, even if I was less of a rationalist and considered that there was a chance, why would I become a christian? Why not a muslim, a jew, a buddhist, a rastafari? Even if there was a chance that one of the religions was right, it would be too blind to choose a certain one and stick with it.
 
As much as I would love to hope for eternal happiness, I just don't buy it, I think it's impossible. An eternity of nothingness after death seems much more plausible and that's why I'd rather live life in my own terms and with the only goal to enjoy myself, because the sense of purpose that religion sells just seems egotistical and unrealistic to me  .

 

For me it was a process that occured for about 2 years. I left the church , because the new priest were either boring or had a strong accent to the point that I don't understand and therefore did'nt learn anything new so saw no value to going to church. I devoted a lot of attention to it to the point that I'd judge everyone in my mind on stuff like why these people are breaking one of the ten commandments or not fully devoting their life as a missionary to basically guarantee them a spot in heaven if they really believed it, so basically I'd in a way try my best to outcompete others on my level of blind faith try really hard to follow the ten commandments without breaking them.then pray to God for all the sins I've done that day to "cleanse" my soul. Pretty exhausting .  One detail I was taught at a catholic school was that God/Jesus would let nonbelievers in heaven. Made sense,I thought at the time since people like ghandi should be in heaven. But at the same time I got an itch.What then is the value of being christian or being reborned as a child of God through baptism? If one can make it to heaven without confessing and following the teachings of the bible to a T, what's the point? This kind of soft subjectivity didn't satisfied me,which not only lead me from Catholicism, but basically me forming my own unique christian interpretation on the bible.In hopes to find a more set in stone approach. Long story short I figured that this is also subjective since it's based on my interpretation.
 
Now to your question on why take that chance. Would this God be worthy of worship if he was so petty? I thought "of course not" and ruled out this kind of God, and replaced it with a more reasonable concept of what the ideal God should be.Being that any good person should make it to heaven,religious or not, believer or not. Also with the belief that Jesus would accept you back with open arms like a bf moving in.So I felt comfortable leaving the faith altogether and went on a more risky journey so to speak. Pascal's wager prob kept me a deist for the longest time, but if you think about it, there are an infinite religions and an infinite interpretations within each religion , how can we know if either of them are correct? maybe God is jealous and would be even more pissed you got the wrong religion than being a nonbeliever. With there being an infinite possibility of scenarios the change in the  probability of getting into heaven just by the belief is 0, and this is assuming if there is a personal god with the possibility to vary on every philosophical position.
 
The benefits of Atheism, is we don't have to play this game anymore.Pascal's wager is an illusion, for there is no wager. We can now devote our attention on something else.I've become a lot less judgemental and chilled out from trying to save everyone's soul's but rather would rather lower their distress . It's very freeing, knowing that I'm not bound by these rules imposed by this supernatural being where breaking these rules leads to eternity in hell.

 

I don't think it's a matter of "you (atheists) choose to not believe in any God or gods". Try believing in something that you don't believe in, see if you can make the choice to do it. I can't, belief isn't something that I choose to have or not have. It's simply the way it is.
 
I was a Christian for much of my life, my wife was as well. I never was much of a church goer but she was and took our kids as well, bible camps as a kid and the whole nine yards. There isn't a believer in the house today though. It's not a matter of we don't understand the arguments or the reasons, it's simply a matter of we saw and learned things that caused doubt and once that faith was gone there just wasn't anything to believe in anymore.
 
If you're asking what particular things caused that doubt that's a whole separate post.

 

Either you experience a...road to Damascus...event or you don't. I experienced mine when I was 22 years of age. These words ring true...
"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."
Humility plays a huge role in whether or not a person is accepted into the Kingdom of God Almighty. Pride is a stumbling block for many.
 

 

I think the question you ask the atheist here is whether or not they have a relationship to God.
And the answer is yes, they most definitely do, but lack or misplace the faith to pursue it.
The non-believer will ask, do you believe in God?
And the faithful might answer with certainty or question what it is that they hodl..
 
The rigidly minded atheist, the one that may take over-substantiated claim in their Earthly possessions,
may subjugate value on a good, and initiate an exchange.
The believer will acknowledge this as an act of God.
The non-believer will not, yet readily pockets dollars away.
What or where is it that either envision to go from there?
 
If an Earthly man can envision another place entirely,
then can he make his path to get to it too?
Is this place beyond themselves?
What wills them to this destination?
 
If God's will is free will, then it is up to you to change it.
Individuals would like to think of themselves as autonomous, free-thinking actors.
Where the confusion may lie is that we give ourselves, our institutions, our gods too much credit.

 

Believing something isn't a choice, if you chose to believe this is called faith.

 

I'm an Atheist. I believe in many of the Christian ways as they're simply moral, for example treat thy neighbour as thyself.

I don't believe that there is a God, there's no evidence. Yet you could say that there's no evidence there isn't a God.

People believe in different things and although their beliefs may differ based on what they know or think, one does not CHOOSE to believe or disbelieve.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Some things just don't make sense. I don't like the you can be a shitty person but as long as you belive in Jesus and ask for forgiveness you're good and you can go to heaven. Really so if I'm a good person and treat people the way you're supposed to but I don't belive I get to burn for eternity. Seems kinda bullshit. Seems kinda like if that is the case god is a little irrational and I probably don't want to spend eternity with a crazy being anyway.

 

OP, what you are proposing is something called Pascal's Wager. You should really read up on it, as there has been loads of discussion for hundreds of years as to why Pascal's Wager shouldn't be used as an argument.
 
But why do you (atheists) choose to not believe in any God or gods?
I honestly don't think it was a choice for me, and I don't think that I could just "choose" to believe. I can't believe in deities because there simply is no evidence for them, and there isn't even a testable model, which is pretty much necessary for me to even consider something as even just a valid possibility as an explanation for events/processes in the universe. If there was a testable model, but no evidence, then I would consider the existence of deities to be a possibility. If there were both, then I would likely start believing. It seems clear that the concept of God is a human invention that nobody was ever to reasonably substantiate, so I reject pretty much all current claims of deities existing. So, I would consider myself an agnostic atheist, since while the existence of deities is likely unknowable, I certainly don't believe that it is an interesting possibility to consider and I don't believe in them.
 
I understand when you guys say "it makes no sense" but religion is based on faith.
When it comes to understanding how things in the universe work and how the universe came into existence, I think that faith is a fundamentally wrong approach of addressing that, and I think the only way to get any reasonable answer is to use reliable empirical data and to form models that explain the data and make predictions of future data. So, when a set of claims about how the universe came into existence relies on faith, then I just can't take it seriously.
Why do atheists choose to not believe, rather than just believe?
I answered this above, but to summarize, there is really no compelling reason to believe, and I think that based on what we know about how the concept of God originated, it's safe to toss it out as an explanation of the universe.
 
If there is a God (which I personally believe there is), why take that chance?
Here's the thing. If there is a God that is petty enough to torture people for eternity for the mere act of not believing in them, then such God would not be worthy of worship, and people that did worship such God and think that such punishment is alright would be incredibly disgusting human beings, much like the God that they worship. Furthermore, if such a God existed, I'm sure they would be able to tell the difference between sincere belief and "save my ass from eternal torture" belief, and would recognize that I'd be falling into the latter if I though that Pascal's wager was a legitimate reason to believe in deities. If there is a God that doesn't care whether or not humans believe in them, then I have nothing to gain by belief.
 
Even if its a 0.00000000001% chance? Is it really worth it?
It is totally worth it. I think that my intellectual integrity is more important than a forced belief out of some fear that I don't even take seriously. Trust me, as someone who was not raised Christian, your religion looks completely ridiculous and very bizarre from an outsider perspective.
 
Your life doesn't change much, also your morals shouldn't change because you become athiest, so honestly why even take the risk even if you believe its so minuscule?
I'm just going to address the part about morals not changing, because that just isn't true. If you are a member of a religion that has some prescribed set of morals, then you are going to follow those based on authority. If you are an atheist, then you have no such moral authority (and that's a great thing), which forces your morality to come from reason and compassion.

 

Nice man. Good to hear something personal. I feel like I understand you better.

 

You are choosing to be a christian because of a 0.1% chance that you will go to hell? 
 
I for one have done my research over years, and every single day I realize more and more how corrupt and fake religion has always been.

Morals are not relative to religion, you should really remember that. I'm a nice person that would save someone in need without a second thought, Just because I choose to base my beliefs off facts, doesn't mean you should look down upon me, or think I'm some asshole lol.

most people who have made a conscience decision onto whether or not to believe in a god or savior are smart enough to look into facts, and when you look at facts, religion fades away. 

It's all fake. 

 

On the internet ?