BellaOnline Forums Religion and Spirituality Atheist Can Atheism REALLY be defended?

If no one sticks around then your intimidation works and you can just bully all non-athiests out of the forum. I'm not christian, but I do like the love message of christianity. The historical stuff, and old testament parts really don't work for me though. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Again, I'd like to apologize for my own aggressive method of communication. It does nothing to open hearts.

Oh wow, now she's being intimidated. Mea culpa! Mea culpa!

As far as opening hearts, it might be more useful for you to open your mind.

Okay, that's it for me, folks. It was fun for a while, but playing with idiots gets old very fast.

Have fun insulting everyone who thinks differently than you.

I have opened my mind. I listen to you, as opposed to your close-minded strategy of just insulting disagreeing viewpoints. I have been an athiest, I have been a christian, I have been a buddhist, I have been in the ba'hai, I have been just about everything. I have only been open-minded. I try and find what I can reasonably prove to myself. That seems mostly to be that there is a creator-force, a good vs evil conflict, but we can't know exactly who god is.

The fact that you assume all non-athiests are idiots speaks volumes about yourself.

That's a rather broad assumption about a group of people.

I'll try to make it simpler for you. What's one of the first lessons a child learns when it plays with other children? If you bite/kick/punch another kid - chances are they will do it back to you. What do you learn from that experience? Two major things:

1) Your actions have consequences.
2) If you do something to someone else, they can (and probably) will do it back to you.

Those are two of the biggest lessons in life and we learn them in childhood. How many laws/rules can you think of that stem from those two lessons? Do you think that if someone supposedly has no internal sense of right or wrong that they can at least figure out that there are boundaries that should exist so something they don't want to happen doesn't happen to them?

Humans are capable of learning. Through learning they can make judgements about possible consequences of their actions. From there you can create rules and laws.

It's not a hard concept.

Ah, equivalent exchange. Yes, but you do realize that is yet more proof of another realm.

You see, I can kick you, run away, and not face the consequences. Life is an unbalanced equation, like Pi, and needs the other half to balance it.

In the same way, someone who does not believe there is another realm that balances the equation, might kick you if he believe he can get away with it.

Or they could just prey on the weak, and punch/bite/kick weaker beings.

Like at columbine, they were evolutionists who preyed on the weak. I'm sure if the school was full of police officers with guns they wouldn't have marched in. But they knew they were defenseless.

When they shot themselves, they obviously thought there was no punishment waiting for them.


As a matter of fact, before a modern society with morals came along, the law of the land WAS that the strong take advantage of the weak.

What made man decide not to follow nature and "survival of the fittest"?

Perhaps the comment was not made lightly, but either way, it's a really horrible reason to believe in something. To believe because you're scared of being wrong? And what god would want such a believer? I don't want someone to be my friend/lover/whatever because they're afraid not to be.



Your examples really don't make a great deal of sense, because we have seen the sun come up as expected our entire lives. This gives us precident for believing that it will.

As for the possibility of accidents, why would it not occur to you that they could happen. It occurs to me everytime I get in my car.

That is rubbish! There are moral codes outside of religion. And my personal obligation is to myself rather than to something I don't see. I actually think to operate under a moral code that is created in my image of the world is much more effective.

There is outside of RELIGION, but not outside of SPIRITUALITY. Outside of spirituality, there is no reason to adhere to morality. It's not that hard to understand. It's the "why be good" when there "is no good".

Athiests usually don't believe in Good vs Evil. Because it presupposes there is an eternal conflict, which means there is an eternal existence, i.e. spiritual realm.

But you're wrong. I really don't know why you keep repeating this. I believe in good and evil and all the things that go along with that. I just don't think we needed a god to tell us that some things are wrong. Deliberately harming is wrong because it takes what is not the right of anyone to take. I don't need god to tell me about it.

I agree I'm the same way. I don't believe in a religion. I'm just saying there definitely is good vs evil, spirituality, a creator-force. We aren't SUPPOSED to know who, or be 100% sure as that would take the challenge of life away. Otherwise jumping infront of a bullet for a friend would just be an investment, instead of ultimate sacrifice for an ideal.