Tl;dr God (lowercase) as a perception of our reality is just as real as any other perception of reality because of how the brain creates our reality through its evolved hierarchical predictive model, balancing sensory input with predictions. Layered onto this is the social reality in the form of imposed meaning, and cultural proliferation of the belief in god and its real world ramifications in other’s realities.

Disclaimer:

Full transparency: Yes I really am an atheist, and yes this is a serious post. I’m going to attempt to do the impossible, convince you that I’m not insane. To unpack this (the argument, not my sanity) we have to dive into neuroscience and look at how the brain actually perceives its surroundings. Also this is a bad time to note that I am not a neuroscientist, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but don’t get too salty. I have watched tens of hours of lectures on the topic, and after a little while started forming this as a thought. That’s how thinking works, you think stuff. Most of my argument is based on “models” and “theories” of the brain, and these are generally considered accurate by smarter people than myself, and are supported by a lot of evidence (the models/theories, not my argument).

Appetizer:

What are we but a wet electrical brain, that’s trapped in a dark, soundless shell of bone? How does this thing actually form this amazingly complex experience of a vast universe around us? I mean, we see beautiful sunsets, galaxies nestled in the vastness of deep space, a massive floating piece of rock that controls tides and werewolves, and that’s just talking about vision. For the most part I will limit this to a deep dive into vision, but just know the brain, in a similar way, processes our other senses in mostly the same way, but in different parts of the brain. I may use the word “experience” interchangeably with vision when emphasizing our total perception of reality versus just vision.

Main Course:

I’ve numbered these points to make them easier to read:

1. To start, we have evolution to thank (of course). The brain evolved mechanisms for finding patterns for seeing in a context that was beneficial for our survival. It finds relationships within that information, and associates those relationships with behavioral meaning. The brain did not evolve to see the world as it is, but as it was useful to see it in the past.
2. The brain is continually redefining normality.
3. The chain of events for your perception of reality looks something like this. Outside event happens, which generates some kind of change that then has an outcome (light). This outcome then reaches your sensory receptors (eyes), however it’s not an image that reaches your eyes, it’s meaningless photons. Don’t get me wrong, the photons have information like wavelength, but there is no such thing as a “green” photon or a photon for a chair that hits your eyes. If you stopped that photon and asked who it even thought it was, it would not say anything because it's a photon and can't talk. This is raw data that your brain then needs to decode, and it does so by working backwards starting from the outcome to make a guess as to the cause. This is known as the “reverse inference problem”, that you actually have to start from the end product and work your way back to even experience reality. What?
4. It gets even stranger. The brain is structured to construct categories of the senses, not based on quality as in (the smell/taste/color), but based on the function (think: looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck). The simple reason is again, evolution, it was more useful for us to know the growl came from a predator, than to know it sounded growly. This is reinforced by your past experience and is equally a part of your perception of reality.
5. So the brain guesses in a predictive way based on sensory information and past experiences, AND each guess reinforces our perception of this… perception. Meaning when you see it again in the future, you’re going to be even more confident, having experienced something similar that you’ll be like, yea this thing is definitely a duck honey. This pattern for each guess is unique to your brain.
6. Okay so I keep saying words like “predicting”, “guessing” but like what does that even mean? Well the brain is complicated (you’re welcome). My understanding of the neural pathway for perception is this: There are hierarchies of connected neurons in groupings, and in each grouping is a sensory cluster and a predictive cluster. The sensory cluster receives the sensory information and then passes on a prediction to the predictive cluster. The prediction cluster then passes a prediction error down to another sensory cluster that then passes it to a predictive cluster, and on and on and on, all the while making guesses. Each layer of the hierarchy is trying to predict the layer below it. And both play a key role in changing the system for future use.
7. The important thing to know about this pathway is that sensory input is only part of the puzzle, your brain is actually then combining past experiences to shape your perception of the reality outside. This is a balancing act that the brain is constantly doing, and it fluctuates, sometimes giving more weight to the sensory information, and other times giving more weight to the past experience. Scientists have also found that it’s a zero sum game, meaning when you increase the precision of the sensory information, you increase the weight of it, and likewise when you increase the precision of the past experience you increase the weight of it.
8. One interesting feature regarding vision is that 90% of the input to the LGN (a just-post-retinal point in the visual pathway) comes from the inside out, originating much deeper inside the brain. And on average, downwards (inside to out) pathways in the cortex outnumber feed-forward pathways by at least 2 to 1, and in some areas 4 to 1.(Andy Clark lecture). In other words, the majority of your perception for vision emanates from inside your brain, not from the outside world. Throwing someone’s name into the middle of a paragraph is how you cite sources right?
9. Then there is a you you, which I’ll call the Self, which in essence is your conception of yourself. This is memories of normalized perception layered and entrenched in the brain so deep that it likely dates back to your first experience out in the world, birth. This is a popular theory in psychiatry, that the idea of Self emerges from the differentiation between your little baby body and your mother. You can then latch onto “transitional” objects that provide comfort and oneness, but that are meant to be abandoned as your definition of Self begins to take shape. I probably butchered that, but it goes something like that. In short though, this longing for oneness (the merging of Self with things) lingers into adulthood and may explain connections and longings we have for things. Like how you can’t ever be away from your cell phone ever again.
10. Your Self is never exposed to raw sensory input. Your brain on an unconscious level is exposed to this input, and it’s then tasked with predicting the cause of that sensory input, and then feeding that to your Self/awareness as your perception of reality. So from your unconscious you get your reality, a lot of which it gets from itself.

Dessert

So what is reality?

It’s your unique brain’s simulation of its best guess for what’s already happened that it feeds to your Self in the form of your perception that would have been most beneficial for you in the past.

It really feels like reality is just a construct… but hang on, there are things out there, I mean just look around you! Then you remember that an atom is 90% empty space, and that even when you’re touching something you’re not actually touching it. You’re feeling the resistance created by the arrangement of the protons/neutrons surrounded by an electron probability cloud, but you’re not actually touching anything. Your brain guesses that you’re touching something however and that’s good enough for your construction of reality.

So what does any of this have to do with the idea of god?

Okay I will get there, but first we need to talk about a couple other things:

/////

Also I'm not focuses on one particular religion's god, but just general lowercase god roughly defined as the following:

=A supernatural being: A being that is worshipped as the creator and ruler of the universe, or as controlling some part of life or the universe.

=A spirit with great power: A spirit or being that has great power, strength, or knowledge, and can affect people's lives and nature.

/////

On faces. We are really good at seeing faces, like actually too good to the point that we ignore sensory information on an unconscious level to see the face. Take the Hollow Mask illusion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH9dAbPOR6M) , even after you realize you were wrong, you still see it the wrong way, because you’re that good at knowing what a friggin face looks like. Your brain is giving more weight to the predictive guess that it’s a face, because faces are just that frequent and important to your life, because of all those friends you have, right?

On acute pain. A construction worker in England famously fell and stepped on a nail, this pierced his boot and he was in terrible pain. He went to hospital, they administered fentanyl to relieve the pain and eventually got his boot off only to find… that the nail had passed cleanly between his toes, causing no damage to his foot. This was severe pain that his brain created from a combination of sensory information and the past experience of knowing that foot is in shoe, nail went through shoe, so nail went through foot, nail in foot means pain. There was more weight to this understanding of the past experience than the actual sensory information, and for a period of time this construction worker lived in a reality where they were in real pain. This story was from an Andy Clark lecture.

On chronic pain. Similar to the acute pain false positive above, the brain can get stuck in a state of pain that it continually reinforces, where no actual sensory cause of the pain even exists. Maybe it did exist at one point, or the association just got crossed, but now you’re experiencing real pain chronically. There is actually real treatment that can be done to loosen that connection to the pain and get back to a balance of sensory/predictive perception.

On hallucinations. There are books written on the topic, and this post is long enough. So all I’m going to say is that these can be caused by many things, disorders and drugs to name some large categories. Looking at drugs for example, the drug enters the brain, hits the sensor and the brain is faced with an occurrence where it’s receiving sensory information seemingly from “the outside” for all it knows and it begins its predictive modeling to work back to the cause. And next thing you know you’re seeing dancing leprechauns taunting you at the end of the produce section in Walmart. I don’t think it’s that simple, but we all know what hallucinations are and have probably experienced some form of them in our lives. I mean how many times have you experienced a phantom vibration from your phone in your pocket?

All of these are “altered” states of reality. We consider there to be this normal objective reality that we all share; a desk here, a computer there, an airplane somewhere, but then we all can only experience this reality subjectively inside our own brains that really have no direct connection to the outside world and is literally just guessing things. I’m leaving Platonic Solids out of this. So we agree that everyone experiences reality differently, but where we find comfort is the shared experience. This lets us know that there is a normal, and probably actually something we can call a desk, a computer, and an airplane because we all agree on the characteristics of those.

There are two more major things that I need to cover: Social Reality, and the nature of Culture

Social Reality:

Simply put, from the categories of function that our brains construct, humans can create social reality, which is where we collectively impose rules and meanings into objects that otherwise would not have them. For example money, crosswalks, country borders, and facial expressions. These things all have meaning because we’ve imposed meaning onto them.

Culture:

“…All cultural transmission can be reduced to one of two types: making a mental representation public, or internalizing a mental version of a public presentation. As Sperber puts it, “Culture is the precipitate of cognition and communication in a human population.”

Sperber’s two primitives—externalization of ideas, internalization of expressions—give us a way to think of culture not as a big container people inhabit, but rather as a network whose traces, drawn carefully, let us ask how the behaviors of individuals create larger, longer-lived patterns. Some public representations are consistently learned and then re-expressed and re-learned—Mother Goose rhymes, tartan patterns, and peer review have all survived for centuries. Others move from ubiquitous to marginal in a matter of years. . . .

This is what is so powerful about Sperber’s idea: culture is a giant, asynchronous network of replication, ideas turning into expressions which turn into other, related ideas.” - Clay Shirky

Conclusion:

God as a social reality exists and god as a precipitate of cognition in the form of culture exists. God as an acute and chronic pain exists (I couldn’t resist), god as a hallucination exists (drugs/prayer/miracles/dreams). And god as a creation of the mind exists, and isn’t reality just a creation of the mind? You could say the sensory information of a god is what’s lacking here, however in this instance there can be sensory data reinforcing the existence of god for certain people, or the weighting problem, where more weight is being given to the guess that the cause is a god and that further reinforces the belief as well. And this is not really any different from how we all create reality.

We live in a world with fake news, and a two party system here in the U.S. where it feels like somehow Democrats and Republicans live in separate universes experiencing different realities. I’m not saying they are in separate universes, but I think you would agree that these branches of a collective/social/cultural reality are drastically different. The power of reinforcing your brain’s pathways is real power at an unconscious level that the brain then uses to further generate its reality and further reinforce that. And the experience for the believer in terms of the predictive pathways in your perception of reality is just as real as the lack of experience for the non-believer. People legitimately experience reality in a way shaped by their belief in god, and even if we don’t agree with that belief, it’s there and there are many people that share that belief. Remember, we look to others to ground ourselves and figure out the shared reality from our own subjective experiences so that we can confirm we aren’t the crazy ones, and when believers go to other believers, they’re reinforcing those beliefs.

So god exists as a very real entity that people can interact with and experience in their reality that extends out into a social reality and persists in culture and minds as a real entity, and ultimately has a real impact on the "real" world. Therefore gods are real, and they're more than just an idea or figment of people's imagination, they are reality, however reality can change and they may not be so in the future.

So in the end, I know I haven’t made a compelling argument for the existence of a god, and I’m sure there are more elegant philosophical arguments that say what I’m saying but better. There is also so much more to dive into, but that would take a literal novel and a lot more knowledge of how the brain works. Feel free to dismiss all of this as the rambling of someone who watched too many videos above their head.

Now, I am an agnostic myself, seeking the truth, and I do not hold the side of any religion here.

I also know atheists are individuals and there is no collective atheist dogma or set of rules by which they behave.

However here is my problem with the whole concept, in practice at least.

1)No endgame.

So atheists believe there is no god, therefore no afterlife, and all value and meaning is assigned by other people. Many value human life to be the most precious gift there is, atleast in theory. So how does atheism in practice look like, on average? Average simple people who do trivial repetitive tasks day to day, live for now and salary to salary. Some more creative ones would find a unique hobby or do art or somewhat of the sort, but its all very short lived.

So my issue here is this: if there is no supervisor or protector of any kind, that means its up to us to deal with the harsh realities of this world. If we say human life is valuable 'objectively' then its our duty to work on social progress in all spheres. If all this is the case, why do most atheists live lives on autopilot and engage in activities that are as generic and boring as possible. For every atheist doctor or scientist you will have thousands of robots playing videogames or getting high and hooking up because that is what makes them feel good at the moment. Zero development, personal or collective. All they focus on is distractions from the reality they claim to know and understand. No desire for helping the species at all. This often does lead do depression and in some cases worse. If we are alone in this fight, better grab that sword instead of running like a baby.

Ok so imagine you are a toddler, and in a house with your sibling or friend, its late and you are expecting the parents to come any second.

You get a message they will not be there for the entire night. You will remain unsupervised.

What will you, a toddler and your toddler companion do? Trash the place.

Completely. Pour ketchup on walls and clog the toilet. This is how most of them (not all) behave.

2. Conformity.

Atheists I have ran into contact with are blaming the Christians and Muslims for the forced conformity that they preach upon others, where everyone has to act the same to appease their god.

Yet how do they behave? Atheists, having no premade guidelines form all kinds of groups. Each one of them has rules. If you do not follow said rules you are either ignored, outcast, or punished. And it always has to be your fault. Sounds similar doesn't it? This approach is hypocritical because if there is no true meaning and all value is assigned, then our moral differences do not matter. One can no longer remain in the group if they go against the rules, but it can not mean they are wrong, since there is no wrong.

This leads me to my second problem. Most atheists accept the common social norms. They act very similarly to how religious people did 600 years ago. There is no thought or critical thinking towards the society, only towards religion, so they will swallow anything served to them and hide behind made up labels and names (remember nothing has meaning) to confirm their biases that were planted into their heads at some point. There is no original thought. Every rule society respects came from a human mind. Why is that mind better than yours or mine? Are we not all equal and equally meaningless? Why do they chose to follow what is present even if it is flawed ( which I can prove in 3 seconds) if they are such critical thinkers.

Simply, to me, the concept of a free thinking unchained mind, comprehending the world around us with all of its flaws and goods, and a blind follower of made up human concepts with primitive desires do not go well together.

(a post similar to this got deleted on r/atheism so imma paraphrase and post it here) tbh, I'm torn between belief and unbelief, slowly shifting towards unbeleif, from most of the coverted atheist post on reddit they left the church because of some realization that it was all BS, I just cannpt seem to come to that realization, my own knowledge on Christianity just somehow seems to have strong logic (probably because I was born a christian) and I just cant seem to find an argument that breaks it. Pls give me some.

P. S. Some of you guys might say "this guy's just indoctrinated as hell" but trust me the logic given to me (by my obscure denomination) just seems too... logical I guess? I just that I cant seem to get it out of me, theres like a strong bias within me that pulls me relentlessly and whenever I try to go agaist it thoughs of sucide (for some reason) haunt me deeply.

TL;DR classic christian arguer here, educate me.

Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.

While this isn't strictly for debate, rules on civility, trolling, etc. still apply.

Hello, I am a Christian and I just want to know what are the reasons and factors that play into you guys being athiest, feel free to reply to this post. I am not solely here to debate I just want hear your reasons and I want to possibly explain why that point is not true (aye.. you know maybe turn some of you guys into believers of Christ)

Except for this paragraph and the first part of the title this is a copy/paste of a post I made in debate religion. I'm not actually presenting this as a refutation of the theistic claim but just as something interesting I found because I suspect I will get either no engagement or vehement passionate disagreement from theists who find this argument is deeply personal because they "feel God's presence" but really because if one claim about God, even one which is demonstrably useless and inconsequential, then maybe other claims about God can fail, and that would be tragic.

There are so many things I couldn't chosen for my inaugural post but I'll go with something really easy and perhaps uncontroversial between theists and atheists and maybe too narrow to be interesting, but I'm interested in seeing responses if I get any.

I was raised in one of the Abrahamic religions. I was taught, although my reading of Scriptures did not support this, I was taught that God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omnipresent. It is important to note here that some theists from other traditions may ascribe these properties to one or more of their deities and that not every believer or teacher of Abrahamic religions ascribes these properties to the deity, but for those who do, why?

For this post, let's focus on omnipresence. To accept omnipresence we must believe God is capable of being somewhere without interacting with the environment in any measurable or detectable manner, but I'm willing to grant that for the purpose of this discussion because I'm accepting, for the purpose of this discussion, the claim of omnipotence, and omnipotence must by definition include the power to occupy a location without detection (and therefore without the claim of occupancy being falsifiable but I'm not even talking about the veracity of the omnipresence claim).

Why was the property of omnipresence ascribed to the Abrahamic God at all? What does this property add? I say it adds nothing. If an entity is both omnipotent and omniscient, then it adds nothing to the capability of the entity to be omnipresent, and yet those who believe this find it to be extremely important.

Let's look at what we mere mortals obtain from being present somewhere. Why do we care about being present at all? We care because we can only be present in one place at a time. Or stated another way, we can only occupy one set of space-time coordinates. How does this limit us? It limits us in 2 ways. It limits our ability to know what events are occurring in at other locations in space-time. It also limits our ability to interact and intervene in the events occurring in other locations in space-time.

Now, if an entity is omniscient then they have overcome one of the limitations of only being able to occupy a single set of space-time coordinates because they definitionally know what events occur at all possible space-time coordinates. If that entity is also omnipotent then it eliminates the other limitation because the entity is definitionally capable of intervening in those (all possible) events.

So this l leads us to the conclusion that omnipresence is redundant and unnecessary, and to make this post at least slightly interesting I'll add the following.

Given that omnipresence is meaningless the phrase "God is everywhere" is exactly as true as the phrase "God is nowhere."

Hi everyone, i am Jewish and in our religion we believe that our laws arent applicable for non jews but they are still part of the original covenant with G-d, i believe that if every human abided by it, it would make world a better place

So a quick recap, The Seven Noahide Laws are a set of moral and ethical principles that are believed to have been given by God to Noah after the Great Flood as a universal code of conduct for all of humanity.

The first of the Seven Noahide Laws is the prohibition against idolatry, which teaches us to recognize the existence of a higher power and to worship only one God. This law promotes unity and respect among people of different faiths and helps to foster a sense of spiritual connection and reverence for the divine.

The second law is the prohibition against blasphemy, which teaches us to speak and act with respect and reverence towards God and sacred things. By upholding this law, we learn to show kindness and consideration towards others and to cultivate a culture of mutual respect and understanding.

The third law is the prohibition against murder, which emphasizes the sanctity of human life and the importance of treating others with compassion and empathy. By respecting the inherent dignity and worth of every individual, we can create a society that values human life and promotes peace and harmony.

The fourth law is the prohibition against theft, which teaches us to respect the property and possessions of others and to act with honesty and integrity in all our dealings. By upholding this law, we can create a culture of trust and cooperation that fosters economic prosperity and social stability.

The fifth law is the prohibition against illicit sexual relations, which emphasizes the importance of upholding the sanctity of marriage and family life. By promoting healthy relationships and moral values, we can create a society that values love, commitment, and mutual respect.

The sixth law is the prohibition against eating the limb of a living animal, which teaches us to treat animals with compassion and respect. By upholding this law, we can cultivate a culture of kindness and empathy towards all living beings and promote environmental sustainability and animal welfare.

The seventh law is the requirement to establish a system of justice, which emphasizes the importance of upholding the rule of law and ensuring that all individuals are treated fairly and equitably. By promoting justice and equality, we can create a society that values human rights and promotes social justice and equality for all.

In conclusion, the Seven Noahide Laws provide a moral and ethical framework that promotes peace, harmony, and respect among all people. By upholding these laws, we can create a society that values compassion, integrity, and justice and fosters a culture of mutual respect and understanding. Ultimately, the Seven Noahide Laws serve as a guide for humanity to live in harmony with one another and with the world around us.

Ash'arism is a theological sect in sunni islam that proves good by using kalam cosmological argument

with a different premises and using islamic atomism theory

the world is composed of bodies and accidents of bodies for example the chair is a body and color of the chair is the accident , another example the car is the body the motion or the motionlessness are the accidents

everything that exists either its a body or accidents , everything that began to exist needs something that gets it from nothing to existence for example A needs B to exist ,B needs C to exist so on till you come to something eternal because infinite regress is impossible.

this eternal entity either its static from eternity (not true cause the world is changing for example the universe is expanding)

or this eternal entity that keeps moving from eternity ( not true cause it will lead to infinite number of movements which is an infinite regress)

or this eternal entity was static and then moved ( self contradictory cause eternal cant change cause what keeps changing is something that come to existence )

so eternal is not material ,and is not in space cause space is material and not in time cause it will lead to infinite time of past events.

​

One of the most common refutations I always see to the Problem of Evil is often that everything happens for a reason or some variation of that sort like the one in the title. Honestly, for the life of me, all I can think of really is how stupid it would be to tell a mother who just lost their child that, or someone who got raped, or quite literally any evil you can mention ever. But I honestly never really make any break-through by saying this, it feels as if it goes over every theist's head I talk to - so I wanted to ask you guys if you had any more sophisticated or complex responses to that ''rebuttal.''

We've all heard this talking point before. Atheists don't disbelieve in everything just because they disbelieve in God. This got me thinking.

What if we turned this logic on its head and asked the same thing from the atheist perspective? If you don't disbelieve in God what do you disbelieve in?

I imagine in most instances the disbelief would be directed at other humans and the world as a whole. But that wouldn't make sense because we all obviously exist. Maybe disbelief in things that have evidences isn't that far fetched as theists would lead you to believe?

1, Good ought be strived for by every particle of one’s being. 2, Lack of belief to the point of any form of nihilism is bad. 3, Belief in material is bad. 4, Christianity has a believable claim of immateriality. 5, There are no other believable claims of immateriality. 6, (from 1,2,3,4,5) Belief in Christianity ought be strived for by every particle of ones being.

One question myself and probably most other atheists get from religious people is this: what it would take to convert us? Sometimes it’s a genuine question, sometimes it’s an attack coupled with some variation of “your heart is hardened so you just can’t be converted even with proof”, but either way, it’s a common question and I think having a genuine answer is useful for these discussions.

Here is a list I’ve seen a few times that I think is rather helpful.

1. Demonstrate reliably that the supernatural exists

Here is the definition of supernatural that I prefer to use as I feel it accurately represents theists’ beliefs on it:

supernatural: that which cannot occur given the laws of physics and reality and yet occurs nonetheless.

Before I can consider any brand of theism, I need to be convinced that the supernatural is real. To convince me, evidence would have to be presented that is not reasonably disputable. The supernatural would have to be demonstrated to exist reliably and repeatably. Natural explanations would have to be reasonably ruled out. This would have to go beyond simple “this does not fit with what we currently understand of nature and the laws of physics” aka an Argument from Ignorance.

Quite frankly I think this step alone is an impossible hurdle for any theist. One might even claim it is unfair, but I disagree. That’s the nature of what supernatural is. One claiming the supernatural is real must by the very nature of the supernatural rule out all possible natural explanations for a claimed supernatural phenomena. To be convincing, it must go beyond “this is outside of our current understanding of what is naturally possible” because this does not reliably rule out a natural mechanism that has not been discovered yet. Other definitions of the supernatural that try to circumvent this issue I find inadequate. These other definitions often run into the trap of just becoming regular natural phenomenons of an advanced and complicated degree.

2. Demonstrate reliably that the source of the supernatural is a willful entity/entities

I don’t expect pushback from this point. Once the supernatural is established, the next logical step to becoming a theist would be convincing me that these supernatural occurrences are the result of a being or beings with intentionality. Different religions ascribe different power levels to deities, deific figures, and lesser supernatural beings, so the level of power is unimportant. What matters is reliably demonstrating that the supernatural occurrences have will and intention behind them from supernatural beings. Otherwise it is simply a force that can be tapped into by natural beings or a random unthinking force altogether.

Passing step 2. Would make me a theist but would not make me commit to a specific religion.

3. Demonstrate reliably that these beings are accurately described by one specific religion and that other proposed supernatural beings and descriptions that conflict with this religion do not exist/are false

This is the first step to converting me to a specific religion. It must be reliably demonstrated that the religion of choice is the only religion that provides correct knowledge on which entities exist, which do not, what is the nature of these entities, etc.

This point is also key for many other important religious aspects. I will use the well known story of Jesus’s resurrection to prove my point. Without establishing that only the supernatural entities described by Christianity exist and that the abilities prescribed to these entities are accurate, there are too many alternate explanations. What if a trickster deity resurrected Jesus to deceive people into thinking Jesus was the Son of God? What if the power to resurrect is not limited to a supreme deity? There are too many explanations without passing this step.

4. Demonstrate that the central figure or figures of worship deserve my worship

This is the step that would likely receive the most pushback if a religious individual ever made it to this step. It could be proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that a religion is true, but that alone would not be enough reason for me to fully commit and follow it with worship. I would have to be convinced that it is justified to do so as opposed to simply going on with my life as is but with new knowledge.

Here are some things that would not be convincing to me.

1. Something bad will happen to me if I do not worship. Threats of harm are not justified to me as a reason to worship. This includes veiled threats like “the deific figure or figures won’t specifically try to harm you but they will allow harm or allow you to harm yourself without helping if you do not worship them.”

2. Worship is owed for some service provided. This could include small things like prayers being answered as well as big things like my very existence being created and sustained by the figure or figures or worship. Gratitude and worship are two very different things.

3. Worship is deserved because of admirable qualities. Much like with gratitude, admiration and worship are two very different things.

I have left off a list of what would convince me worship is warranted because I simply do not currently know what would convince me. Not a single religious person has ever made it past step 1c so I’ve never really debated the other steps.

Atheists: are there any changes you would suggest? Any modifications to steps? A different order? Additional steps?

Religious people: do you think you can make it through this list and convert me?

edit: grammar and typo fixes

Many species have contradictory mating patterns. It is said Bonobos have something of a matriarchy while one species of sea louse or something drag females of the species into a coerced harem where the offspring will eat the mother. From this we can see that there isn't much symmetry. There is no clear moral system despite it supposedly coming from a moral deity. From there, the inclusion of evolutionary pressures explains the gaps more while simultaneously making theistic interference unnecessary and thus unfounded.

Edit: To clarify, my point is that there isn't much of moral consistency since the sea louse is closer to misogyny while bonobos are more feminist. There isn't a clear sign of moral intent, so no reason to assume design or intelligence, especially from a moral god who's omnipotent.

Psychotherapy

EMDR

I believe the rituals in Hinduism can be 'used' in such a way that it can be helpful for your mental health. I believe psychotherapy and EMDR essentially mirror some of the positive aspects that are in Hinduism. Here I will pose a strategy for 'using' Hinduism in a way that I believe if you did it, it would be helpful for your mental health. I'm not saying everyone who is Hindu does this, but I believe that 'doing' Hinduism like this leads to positive results even if you don't believe in god.

This is a perspective of going to a Southern style Hindu temple since that is what I'm familiar with (different shrines for different idols instead of multiple idols in a row.)

1. You take off your shoes before you enter the temple. There are a-lot of modern trends around being present. Be focused. Be present. Notice what the ground feels like. Are you walking on cold stone? Soft carpet? You can feel slightly more exposed than normal. This place is not like other places.
2. You ring the bell. It's loud. Try to concentrate on the bell sound as long as you can. How long can you hear it? Try to concentrate. This is also a way of trying to tell your body that you are in somewhere different than other places. Right now you are focused on your inward journey. You are here. Be present.
3. You go to the first idol. The different gods have different attributes, characteristics, things that they are known for. Now we start the psychotherapy portion. You know how a therapist might say tell me about 'X', what does 'X' make you feel? That's what we are doing here. One aspect of the god will resonate with you the most. Sit with that feeling (we are blending psychotherapy, meditation, religion here). Let your feelings come up. You could spend 20 minutes, an hour in front of a god. You could cry just like in psychotherapy
4. EMDR/Grounding aspect. When difficult things come up in psychotherapy, sometimes need to 'come up for air'. In EMDR, there are a number of techniques to help you ground yourself like moving your eyes back and forth, tapping, etc. In Hinduism, I'm amazed by the number of things that are available to you for grounding. There is something for every sense. Sound: There is music playing, there are bells, there is chanting. Visual: The visuals at a hindu temple and staring at the idols is incredibly over stimulating. Smell: they always have incense burning. Taste: The give food/treats (Bananas, apples, raisins, mixed nuts), and incense water for you to drink. Feel: The ground, the things you drink, they will touch something to your head. Honestly it's incredible. If you are having an emotional time on a self psychotherapy trip, open your eyes, and you are immediately grounded by everything going on
5. After you are done with round 1 with an idol, you can walk around the idol (strech your legs, rush of blood coming back to your head), and then you can think about that aspect of that idol again once are done, you move onto the next idol
6. The different gods and the different attributes of the gods are essentially like a therapist exposing your blind spots. There are things you try to not think about, but when you think about the different gods and their qualities one by one, you will have to confront things you aren't comfortable with. If there is a topic for an emotion you need to process that's not there, congrats, no one can agree on how many gods there are. You want there to be a god for that? Bam. There is now. Use something to help you ground yourself, and you're off to the races.

I was amazed by the grounding capabilities that are in a Hindu temple. It really feels to me like people from thousands of years ago figured out some of this stuff that we are re-discovering in modern times, and put it into their religion to try and help people

Although Mormonism is frequently made fun of for being implausible due to its unconventional beliefs, it may actually be one of the best-evidenced major religions. This is because while the lines of reasoning in favour of it on historical grounds are similar in nature to those for Christianity, its advent in a relatively recent era with many surviving historical accounts means that we can be more certain about the facts that support those lines of reasoning.

Note that this does not mean that Mormonism is true—if anything, it undermines the probability of other, seemingly more reasonable religions. Nor does it mean that Mormonism is more probable than Christianity broadly defined, since it is a branch thereof and therefore must have lower probability than some kind of Christianity being true. It only means that the evidence itself is of stronger quality.

Background: The historical case for Christianity

The historical case for Christianity revolves around proving that Jesus Christ was resurrected. Christian apologists argue that (1) early Christian leaders claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus and the empty tomb, and (2) factors such as their willingness to be martyrs and alleged mass sightings of Jesus help exclude alternative explanations, such as hallucinations or deception.

Because the events occurred so long ago, surviving records are limited, and the reliability of various biblical and extrabiblical sources is disputed by modern scholarship, the underlying historical claims have limited certainty. For example, Richard Carrier disputes claims about the apostles' martyrdom.

A historical case for Mormonism

The preambule to the Book of Mormon includes the testimony of the three and eight witnesses. They both testify to seeing the plates, and the former additionally claim to have been shown the plates by an angel.

Taken at face value, these testimonies suggest that (1) there really was a set of golden plates and (2) there is divine approval for the contents of the plates relayed by an angel.

As with the Christian apostles, the Mormon witnesses were also persecuted; they were subjected to mob violence. Additionally, Joseph Smith himself was killed by a mob. Additionally, the accounts of the Mormon witnesses suggest that they collectively saw the plates and the angel, rather than individually. These pieces of evidence help reduce the likelihood of deception and hallucinations as explanations.

Both the case for Christianity and the case for Mormonism rely on evidence and reasoning of a similar nature. However, the evidence for Mormonism is stronger in that it is more recent, reducing the likelihood of errors that seep in over time. For example, the evidence for persecution of Book of Mormon witnesses comes from contemporary—though pro-LDS—testimony, sometimes by self-described eyewitnesses, while stories about the apostles' martyrdom are by and large late and apocryphal.

What about evidence against Mormonism?

There are several pieces of reasoning marshalled against Mormonism—for instance, the lack of achaeological evidence for the North American civilizations or philosophical objections to its polytheism. There is legitimacy to these objections, but they are similar in nature to objections to Christianity, such as the lack of archaeological evidence for Genesis and the Exodus or philosophical objections to the Trinity. Thus, while they do drag down the probability of Mormonism, they aren't necessarily any stronger than criticisms of Christianity.

Atheist do NOT like the word “faith”. It is pretty much a bad word to them. Yet I’ve seen them describe faith perfectly on many occasions, but using a different word other than faith. Maybe they’ll use “trust” such as like this for example:

“It’s not faith to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. We trust that it will rise tomorrow because we have data, satellites to track the movement of the sun relative to earth, historical occurrences, etc.”

A recent one I’ve now seen is using “belief” instead of faith. That one was a little surprising because even that one has a bit of a religious sound to it just like “faith” does, so I’d thought that one would be one to avoid as well, but they used it.

Yet they are adamant that “belief” and “trust” is different than faith because in their eyes, faith must ONLY mean no evidence. If there happens to be evidence to support something, then nope, it cannot be faith. They will not call it faith.

And so what happens is that anything “faith” is automatically labeled as “no evidence” in their head, and thus no ground can be gained in conversations or debates about faith.

I personally don’t care much for words. It’s the concept or meaning that the words convey that I care about. So with this understanding now of how “faith” is categorized & boxed in to only mean “no evidence”, is it better I use trust and/or belief instead? I think I might start doing that.

But even tho I might not use the word “faith” among y’all anymore, understand please that faith is not restricted to only mean no evidence, but I understand that this part might fall on deaf ears to most. Especially because some proclaimers of their faith have no evidence for their faith & desire that others accept it that way too. So yes, I see how the word “faith” in its true sense got “polluted” although it’s not restricted to that.

**Edit: I feel the need to say that I am NOT an atheist hater. I hope it’s understood that I intend to focus on the discussion only, & not something outside that like personal attacks. My DMs are always opened too if anything outside that wants to be said (or inside too for that matter). I welcome ideas, rebukes, suggestions, collabs, or whatever else Reddit allows.

Provocative title i know but if you would hear me out before answering.

As far as I can tell, the best definition for testimony is "an account reported by someone else." When we are talking about God, when we are talking about miracles, when we are talking about the """"supernatural"""" in general most atheists generally say in my experience that testimonial is not sufficient reason to accept any of these claims in ANY instances.

However,

When we are talking other extrodinary phenomena reported by testimony in the scientific world most i find are far more credulous. Just to be clear from get go as I worry there is already confusion

I AM NOT

I AM NOT

I AM NOT

SAYING that the scientific evidence is inherently testimonial. RATHER I am saying that, in practice, the vast majority of us rely on the TESTIMONY of others that scientific evidence was cataloged rather then conducting the scientific method it ourselves in many cases. For everyday matters much of this (though not all) is meaningless as most people can learn well enough the basics of electricity and the workings of their car and the mechanics of many other processes discovered through scientific means and TEST them ourselves and thus gain a scientific understanding of their workings.

However,

When it comes to certian matters (especially those whose specifics are classified by the US government) those of us without 8 year degrees and access to some of the most advanced labs in the country have to take it on testimony certian extrodinary facts are true. Consider nuclear bombs for instance. It is illegal to discuss the specifics how to make a modern nuclear weapon anywhere and I would posit the vast majority of us here have no knoweldge of how they work or (even more critically) have ever seen a test of one working in practice, and even if we did i doubt many of us would have any scientific way of knowing if it was a nuclear test as described.

As Another example consider the outputs of the higgs boson colider which has reported to us all SORTS of extrodinary findings over the years we have even LESS hope of reproducing down to the break down of the second law of thermodynamics; arguably the single most extrodinary finding every to be discovered and AGAIN all we have to know this happened is the TESTIMONY of the scientists who work on that colider. The CLAIM they make that the machine recorded what THEY SAY it recorded.

If you made it this far down the post i thank you and i am exceptionally interested to hear your thoughts but first foremost I would love to hear your answer. After reading this do you believe you accept certian extrodinary claims on testimonial evidence? Why or why not??

Often I have heard it said when talking to atheists about the various atheist states throughout history (Robespierre's France, Lennin's Russia ect) that the violence commited by atheists in these states against believers are the products of "secular religions" or at the very least "religious thinking;" if any dispute that SOME atheists say this I'm happy to link to some videos made by some prominent atheists including Matt Dillahunty where this opinion is recorded.

However by that same token whenever a Christian says in place of God atheists worship the state, or consumerism or social liberalism or what have you I often se atheists cringe and I would say get understandably annoyed retorting "belief in something other then a God is not the same as belief in a God" "Just because I believe in something that ISN'T a God doesn't make me religious."

Again, this latter position i am sympathetic to but i dont se how you have it both ways.

Either Communism for example is a secular religion meaning Christians are on some level RIGHT when they say in place of their God atheists (or at least SOME atheists) worship their own "gods" in place of God

OR

Its not a religion and thus non-believers are capable of the same repression and violence against others as believers are in the name of some secular philosophy.

Curious to hear what the sub's thoughts on this are

Genesis 6:3

3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.” (NIV)

Deuteronomy 34:7

7 Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone. (NIV)

Throwing out the ridiculous claims of outlier Jeanne Calment, a criminal, charlatan & rotten, stinky liar. Top 10 verified oldest humans (Wikipedia).

1. Kane Tanaka: 2 January 1903 19 April 2022, 119 years, 107 days, Japan

2. Sarah Knauss: 24 September 1880 30 December 1999, 119 years, 97 days, United States

3. Lucile Randon: 11 February 1904 17 January 2023, 118 years, 340 days , France

4. Nabi Tajima: 4 August 1900 21 April 2018, 117 years, 260 days, Japan

5. Marie-Louise Meilleur: 29 August 1880 16 April 1998, 117 years, 230 days, Canada

6. Violet Brown: 10 March 1900 15 September 2017, 117 years, 189 days, Jamaica

7. Emma Morano: 29 November 1899 15 April 2017, 117 years, 137 days, Italy

8. Chiyo Miyako: 2 May 1901 22 July 2018, 117 years, 81 days, Japan

9. Delphia Welford: 9 September 1875 14 November 1992, 117 years, 66 days, United States

10. Misao Okawa: 5 March 1898 1 April 2015, 117 years, 27 days, Japan

Preface: There are many skilled debaters on here, this is not really meant for you. It's more a starter pack to stop people making mistakes I've made in the past.

1: Arrogance can line you up for an ecclesiastical thrashing.

Do not enter a debate with someone assuming that simply because they believe in God that they are in some way intellectually inferior to you.

Yes, we all think it's nuts to believe in God, but if you walk into a debate assuming you are more clever than someone, you're more likely to easily walk into a trap that you can't coherently dig yourself out of.

One of the main tools of a skilled theist is to take off on tangents and muddy the debate in order to deflect you away from a point they are struggling to defend, and if you aren't careful to stay on topic they can potentially use your desire to argue against you. You will be tied in knots by someone

2: Manners maketh the Man (unlike God, who doesn't exist)

Please don't take this for granted.

It ties in with rule 1. If, during a debate, you insult or mock somebody for what they believe you have effectively lost the argument. Atheism is a religious position, we think of God all the time, just in the negative. Take it as your religious purpose as an atheist to convert people to your belief system.

Even the Christians have learned (through hundreds of years torturing people on the rack) that violence and harm do not make for good converts.

Your best and most powerful weapons in a debate are patience, measured responses and methodical explanation. If the other person starts to get visibly flustered, or begins insulting you, take it as the best kind of victory and stay the course. People will often just shut down if you insult them directly, and you have lost the chance to convert them, and reinforced stereotypes about "arrogant" atheists.

Instead of

"you believe in the magic man in the sky."

Try

"What I struggle with is your accepting as fact something for which there is no evidence."

3: If you go to battle with no ammunition, all you have is a club to beat them with.

You don't have to read all the scriptures to debate, but a foundational knowledge of them will seriously improve your ability to win arguments and not end up becoming an "atheist gets owned" meme.

One of the main problems I have with these subs is people just coming on to insult others and then not actually debating them in any way. Bluntly, if you don't want to engage in structured argument but are on a sub named "debate......), you are an arse.

Debating religion from the atheist perspective is not that hard, even if you are struggling in an argument, Google is there for you.

Example:

Atheist: If God loves us, why do we get cancer?

Christian: The Bible doesn't say God is ombibenevolent.

Atheist: Googles "God Benevolent bible" 2 minutes of reading aaaaaand...

Atheist: James 1:17 "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning." How's that?

Christian: makes like batman and Bales

Conclusion: Argue constructively, arm yourself with knowledge, be polite and stay calm. Don't hate people for being wrong, help them understand. Treat them the way Jesus would have of he wasn't just a fictional character.

And for the love of Attenborough, please don't look at someone like Hitchens or Dawkins and think you can argue like they do. They argue with rage and passion and break all the rules I mentioned BUT they have studied every aspect of their opponents, they are absolute pro's at what they do. If you try and copy them without the same level of understanding they have you will just get trashed. You'll get there eventually, but for now, patience.

Thanks.

Accomplished something major this week? Discovered a cool fact that demands to be shared? Just want a friendly conversation on how amazing/awful/thoroughly meh your favorite team is doing? This thread is for the water cooler talk of the subreddit, for any atheists, theists, deists, etc. who want to join in.

While this isn't strictly for debate, rules on civility, trolling, etc. still apply.

I am in the process of deconstructing my faith, but am struggling to truly find a slam dunk argument against Christianity. One of the most promising and oldest ones seems be the problem of evil, but for it to work we must assume that the a characteristic of the Christian God is omni-benevolence.

In my view god being "omni-benevolent" is an empty term (who gets to decide what benevolent is) and quite tautological if one simply defines good as "the will of god". Furthermore, it is obvious to me that god does not share a morality that is similar to ours based on the old testament, which shows god, a supposedly all knowing figure, being quite cruel and capricious on numerous occasions .

However, just because a being is potentially amoral doesn't mean we shouldn't worship it, especially if it threatens us if we do not.

For instance, imagine you are a prisoner within a totalitarian county and the jail guard orders you to help create a statue of the country's amoral/immoral dictator. If you refuse you will be killed, but if you accept you will be spared. In most cases, you would consent to helping create the statue, despite the immorality of the leader.

A stronger argument along similar lines appears to be that since god appears to have few problems with deception and also lacks a sense of morality remotely similar to our own, we can't say for certain that the Christian Religion isn't just some form of twisted test/form of amusement (and thus following it is illogical), but this requires closely analyzing the bible itself and is not the strong knockout blow I was looking for.

I find it odd that many of our trusted Christian church leaders,both true blue & lipstick varieties, are quick to gloss over Christ’s literacy or even assert Christ’s illiteracy while simultaneously attributing all sorts of magical nonsense to his name. How you gonna elevate this guy to god-tier status, yet preach he can’t read? Of course God reads, reads great!writes great too! Jesus according to Christians is the real deal, the whole Enchilda, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha & the Omega, yet also according to them he can’t write Alpha or Omega. That’s crazy thinking, blasphemy even, all the best stuff in the Bible was written by Jesus.

Receipts?

Jesus Christ (Didymus Judas Thomas) authored The Gospel of Thomas.

Read here the opening lines of The Gospel of Thomas (Leloup Translation)…

“These are the words of the Secret. They were revealed by the Living Yeshua. Didymus Judas Thomas wrote them down.”

Note the unusual use of the word “revealed” here in place of common language you’ll find of “said/spoken”.

The unusual doubling of the Twin generic descriptor, sandwiching the common Judas name.

Didymus = Twin (Greek) Judas = Name Thomas = Twin (Aramaic)

Judas, according to the Bible, was a brother & devoted servant of Jesus Christ (Mark 6:3; Matt 13:55; Jude 1). His twin (Acts of Thomas). The spiritual (divine) Christ paired to the physical (human) Judas. Jesus WAS Judas. In the Gospel of Thomas there were no miracles, no resurrections. Jesus predicted no future events, he was no prophet, no revelations or rapture. All prophesy attributed (falsely) to Jesus was culled from the Hebrew OT and retrofitted as Roman propaganda to co-opt, conflate & corrupt Judaism w/ the upstart Jesus’ movement, neatly consolidating control of both under Rome, effectively killing 2 birds with 1 stone.

So how then did Jesus know Judas would betray him? Simple, he (Jesus/Judas) turned himself in & cut a deal with Pilate to fake crucifixion avoiding further unrest in the Jewish population (exactly what you would hope for & expect from a Jesus). The deal was after the crucifix fake-out Jesus would bounce & so he did becoming St.Thomas/St.Jude traveling far & wide, converting about a billion more ppl to Christianity before dying in his 100s.

A few additional odds & ends that support this info above (greatly abridged for time).

1. While the two written accounts we have of Judas’ death following his “betrayal” of Jesus in the New Testament differ greatly, they do both agree on Judas’ death occurring simultaneous with Jesus’ death on the cross.

2. NT Jude 1:1 identifying Judas as a brother to James but a “servant” of Jesus.

3. The apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas (apostle of Jesus), Ch. 216 - Judas takes on appearance of Jesus, later crucified in Jesus’ place.

4. St. Jude is most often depicted wearing a giant medallion around his neck with the life-sized head of Jesus on it, that’s 2000 yrs before modern rappers made this a thing & fashionable. They literally got Jude walking around, spreading Christ’s word “wearing the face of Jesus”. The truth hidden in plain sight.

5. In sharp contrast to the synoptic Gospels’ liberal use of the sayings in Thomas’ Gospel, chopping them up and sprinkling them about freely, The Gospel of John contains far fewer examples of overlapping content with The Gospel of Thomas. This drop off due to the fact of John being authored in direct opposition to Thomas. A point by point takedown and smear campaign (e.g., “Doubting Thomas”, Faith trumps Knowledge) targeting Thomas to discredit and flush out the remaining followers of early Christ movements, movements still having legs and remaining popular despite the introduction and heavy promotion of the 3 synoptic Gospels being widely disseminated across all Roman territories. John’s underlying agenda accounts for the dramatic shift in tone, structure & narrative, making a clean break from messaging of synoptic Gospels. John was a hit piece against early Christians/Gnostics, Rome couldn’t just steal it, they had to kill it.

I'm sure we can all think of a million reasons why Christianity doesn't make sense. But there are very few examples if any that Christians are willing to agree on with atheists. There is But one exception and that is the concept of mercy. Mercy as Christians understand it is undeserved. This means that forgivness is unreasonable. The central focus of Christianity makes the philosophy completely illogical. Mercy must acknowledge the more reasonable alternative logic that it intends to negate. Forgivess concedes the reality of the situation should concluded in the opposite fashion.

This isn't to say forgivness is necessarily wrong or bad. But just that it's unreasonable and that Christianity can not claim to be logical with it as it's most important principle.

Theism, as a belief system, is rooted in faith and personal experience. Believers rely on subjective factors to affirm their faith in god. However, when asserting a belief, atheists rightfully request evidence for support. Faith and personal experiences are basically impossible to quantify or to provide empirical evidence for.

A typical believer doesn’t seek empirical evidence for their believe system because it’s nonsense to try to connect spirituality with naturalism. Nevertheless they are forced to provide evidence as to backup their claims which results in the whole 'arguments for gods existence' that they had to invent for debates. In the bible for example no such arguments are needed because a believe system doesn’t work like that.

Furthermore I‘d say an atheist can be a lot more detrimental on a religious/ spiritual person than vice versa. Atheist are usually steadfast in their opinion because all they need is evidence and reason and nothing more. A believer might start doubting or getting into a crisis when confronted with an atheists because all they will tell them is "you believe in a magic man and there is not a hint of evidence and you’re intellectually inferior". Surely the motivation is to actually to assert themselves even more than an theist may do but that is in the end attack on believe and marginalization.

If you disagree, what can be gained from these discussions, and what is your motivation to engage in them?

hey 👋🏻im 18 i hope everyone is fine and feels good, so This post is an attempt to think logically about God, God existence, and the creation of the universe, I've been thinking about this for a week or two and this is what i think

I do not believe that the creation of the universe will be among anything else related to these 4 cases

1• The universe has existed forever

Well, The universe consists of material matter Such as planets, stars, human beings etc..

This idea is not very good, even mathematically. Imagine that we have a box containing an infinite number of toys and we only took 2 toys from them, so what is the number of toys remaining? Mathematically speaking, the remaining number of toys is infinite, but actually it is missing 2 toys If we return these two toys to the box, Mathematically speaking the remaining number is the same infinite but it's actually have 2 more toys now it increased by 2.

The idea of infinity doesn't seem very logical so we won't depend on it much.

========

2• A finite person created a finite universe

That's actually isn't very good theory, i mean if someone that will die in the end created the universe so there must be someone who will not die created that finite person and so on.

========

3• An infinite entity created the finite universe

sounds interesting, but we need to talk more about it.

Imagine that there is a soldier who wants to fire a single bullet at a target, but he can only take the order from the commander, and the 1st commander need to obtain approval from the 2nd commander, and the 2nd commander need the approval of the 3rd commander, and so on, a loop is infinite that will never end. The bullet will never be fired unless there is one person who is the leader of all the leaders, and that's the thing that's the entity created the universe. a single entity above all

========

4• The finite universe found itself

this idea will not work because Mathematically speaking what is the sum of 0 + 0 ? Actually it's still 0 because there's nothing in first place there's a zero so it's always 0 the same thing about the universe it can't actually creat itself because it wasn't there in first place ! that idea isn't going to work for us anymore

posted the same on another sub but removed for no logical reason, anyway.

Hey Everyone!
I’m currently conducting my thesis in which I investigate how religions (or atheism) view or affect sexual wellbeing. I'd be interested to hear both religious and non religious peoples perspectives on the topic of sexual wellbeing, and if you think that religion influences it positively or negatively. This can be both just personal experiences or opinions or anything backed up by articles etc., just start a discussion!

As part of this thesis, I’ve created my own survey, the link to which is attached bellow, however feel free to just add to the discussion without participating in the survey, Im genuinely also interested in gaining personal opinions to broaden my scope of understanding.

For those wanting to participate:
The survey takes only about 3 minutes to complete. I understand that it is a sensitive topic and many of you may be hesitant to participate, which is why I want you to feel secure that this survey is completely anonymous and you are free to withdraw your participation at any given moment.
Feel free to leave and questions or remarks bellow.
Your help (both through creating a discussion or completing the survey) would be greatly appreciated, but regardless thank you for reading!:)
Survey link:
https://uva.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cA2la6SDz6vgXLE

Has atheists read the full translation of Quran. What are their opinions/criticisms regarding it? Please be specific in your answer by giving examples from Quran. Thanks.

Quran presents itself as work of literature. Thus it should be understood in light of laws of language i.e. translation of word> Its appropriate form in composition of a meaningful sentence> context in which that sentence appears> Topic/Theme of surah (chapter). It employs various 7th century arabic jargons, proverbs which should be understood in light of language of native speakers of 7th century arabs. It is possible since we have poetry compilations available of arab poets of pre 7th century arabia.

Quran reasons by appealing to Innate human disposition (Fitrah) which includes our moral/ethical sense, aesthetic sense and our common sense. Do atheist regard this "Fitrah" of humans to be a standard for finding/reaching truth? If not then why not?

Google Sheets link for those who dislike Reddit's formatting: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GVRPYNes_bAfImLsHLYiWG1NrowLBXEF_dS7aL8INek/edit?usp=sharing

This post was originally written for r/DebateAChristian, but so far it's sat there for three hours with not one response :( So, in expectation / hope of getting some criticism to debate with, I'm posting a slightly modified version of it here.

The Easter Challenge is an argument against Christianity presented as an intriguing task. Put in its own words:

The conditions of the challenge are simple and reasonable. In each of the four Gospels, begin at Easter morning and read to the end of the book: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. Also read Acts 1:3-12 and Paul's tiny version of the story in I Corinthians 15:3-8. These 165 verses can be read in a few moments. Then, without omitting a single detail from these separate accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative of the events between the resurrection and the ascension: what happened first, second, and so on; who said what, when; and where these things happened. Since the gospels do not always give precise times of day, it is permissible to make educated guesses. The narrative does not have to pretend to present a perfect picture--it only needs to give at least one plausible account of all of the facts. Additional explanation of the narrative may be set apart in parentheses. The important condition to the challenge, however, is that not one single biblical detail be omitted. Fair enough?

Fair enough.

The author of the challenge goes on to say that he has attempted and failed at this task, as have other (presumably highly educated) Christians. He then goes on to list several apparent contradictions in the accounts, and why he believes they cannot be harmonized. There is at least one attempted answer to the challenge out there, but it doesn't follow the instructions exactly, omits two passages from the narrative (the long ending of Mark and the snippet of 1 Corinthians 15 requested), and it seems to me to be too short to be a complete answer.

This is my attempted answer to the challenge. In the interest of not leaving out a single Biblical detail, I have copied the full text of all of the aforementioned passages into a table, arranging them into a single chronological account that matches the challenger's requirements. The author requested notes to be added in parentheses, however as I was already using a table format I put the notes in a column mostly by themselves. In the interest of space, I only used five columns when I really needed seven (one for each Gospel, one for Acts, one for 1 Corinthians, and one for notes), so some of the columns serve more than one purpose, but I think this still came out legible enough.

Let me know what you think!

You’re telling me that a man who was proven to be a real person who actually lived plus a myth has a supposed myth created by other people about his life is a lie??

And that these same people created these "myths" around his life also died for him even after had passed away? I find that to be a very unlikely possibility.. it has been proven by psychologists that human beings are not willing to die for something which they know is a lie…

So obviously ALL these people believed that Jesus was the messiah.. were they hoodwinked? (Very unlikely) since these people claimed to have seen this man perform miracles… u can argue that these are disingenuous… Then are u claiming that these people are crazy? And that Christ happened to encounter and convince schizophrenic patients that he was God? (ALSO INCREDIBLY UNLIKELY).. I think that the points I’ve made alone almost proves him to be the truth.. if not you’re more than welcome to try and change my mind.