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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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Sounds like a great way to handle a tough work situation! Looks like you have a firm grip on your life, congratulations!
I'm hoping to be able to retire someday! Like you, I will plug away and make the best of things. Worked years of midnight shifts on weekends and continue to pride myself as delivering the best. 32 years now, but the kids aren't through college yet, so just keep making things work.
@Homer... what came first, the fruit or the faith?
Faith, absolutely. It was a blind leap.
@Homer ... Faith, absolutely. It was a blind leap.
Answer to “which came first, faith or fruit”
So it does come from you. It is you.
Part of the “spirit/fruits” is FAITH “...kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control” (from memory)
Nothing special here. Nothing. You are in a self induced state of euphoria (or brain chemical induced state, who knows)...
Like I offered before...
When you are interested in “what is true” ...then maybe we’ll converse again.
Until then, enjoy your experience while it lasts (just don’t forget it’s been you all along).
Thanks! I've been working this one back and forth for a long time, and I imagine many have over the ages. I keep on getting the same results. I guess time will tell if the results ever change, or I will run out of time first.
Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: "unperformed experiments have no results" - Asher Peres.
@ Homer
"I just want to share what I am experiencing."
But you are not sharing, just making an assertion. And when some attempt to go further, the response is always the same "it makes my fruit feel good".
You have either decide to maintain a wall or do not understand what is going on internally within yourself and are unable to explain why you think and feel as you do.
@David K. Re: "it makes my fruit feel good".
I can think of quite a few things that make MY fruit feel good. No god required... *chuckle*....
Well that's rather the point, if you accept entirely subjective evidence for a belief, while ruling out similar beliefs for different deities from other religions, then you can literally believe anything you like. Which is your choice, but you can't then pretend you're interested in the truth or validity of that belief, as that ship has clearly sailed. Incidentally I never claimed your belief is false, as an atheist I simply don't believe it myself, as there is no objective reason to. That's what atheism means, the lack or absence of theism, nothing more.
Well of course you do, but your belief doesn't objectively match reality, which is the very definition of a delusion. I can't see any objective difference between you being convinced you have some esoteric reason to believe a deity favours you, than someone lying in restraints in a mental hospital who's convinced they're Joan of Arc.
Plato's cave doesn't help either, as nothing can be asserted as rationally valid just because there is no falsifying evidence, this is the very definition of an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. As an atheist I can disbelieve your claim because it is not evidence at all, but that does not mean I need to know it is false, or even claim it is false.
If I were to reason otherwise, then I'd have to accept all claims as valid, and you don't do this yourself, which indicates bias to me
I am reminded of this quote ..
"The interest I have in believing something is not a proof that the something exists."
Voltaire 1763
I'm often reminded of this quote:
" Well, I think there is a God. No question. What that God is, or what we know about that God I’m not sure. The one thing I know about life and about the — the nature of the human race is that it — the human race has always believed it’s known everything. Even the cavemen thought they had it all figured out and they knew everything there was to know about everything. Because that’s what — that’s where mythology came from. You know, it’s constructing some kind of — of — of context for the unknown. So we figured it all out and it was fine. I would say that, you know, cavemen had, you know, on a scale — and understood about one, you know? Now we’ve made it up to about five. The only thing that most people don’t realize is the scale goes to a million."
George Lucas 1999
@Homer: RE: Even the cavemen thought they had it all figured out and they knew everything there was to know about everything.
The only person on the site that thinks he has anything figured out is the theist. The rest of us are still waiting for you to provide any evidence at all aside from your dumb ass assertions. Any dweeb can make an assertion, it takes a master of dweebity to believe his own bullshit!
I'm not claiming I've got much of anything figured out. I just hold a belief that has little other than the joy that belief gives back to me to back it up.
A belief is the affirmation of a claim, a claim must be justified. What is the point in coming to an atheist debate forum, just to relentlessly repeat that you believe a deity exists, but have no objective reason or justification? That's not debate...what's more substantive criticisms of your claim seems to yield nothing new, just a repetition from you of the claim. This is starting to seem like I'm being preached at, and it's all very one sided.
What specifically do you hope to debate about your completely unevidenced belief?
For instance, you seem to have skipped past this post https://www.atheistrepublic.com/forums/debate-room/why-i-believe-god-0?p..., have you really no thoughts to offer on it?
Sheldon, there are so many threads inside this thread. I'll try to do better at responding to your posts when I get a better feel of the forum, I apologise.
@Homer
So your response to my quote from Voltaire, which warned of the danger of an a priori bias in favour of a belief, being cited or used as a reason to believe, as you keep doing. Is to inexplicably offer an irrelevant rambling disjointed quote from a science fiction writer, making a completely unevidenced assertion that there is "no question" that a deity exists?
That's a bizarre non-sequitur. Did you have any thoughts on the content of the quote by Voltaire, and its warning against bias in favour of beliefs, given you have from the start claimed to believe in a deity based solely on subjective emotion, without a shred of objective evidence?
I don't see it as a non-sequitur.
Voltaire champions reason before belief, and I get that. I also get George Lucas when he says the amount of knowledge we have to reason from is very limited, that we as humans tend to believe that we have more of what is known actually known to base our reasoning from, when we don't.
When it comes to how I live my life in most every way, I choose reason over faith. I don't go trusting in God to deliver me and reject reason in my decisions. I'm not counting on some divine entity saving me from harm if I pray hard enough for it.
But I do pray and believe and get joy from that at a level I do not otherwise. I'll leave that part in my life. And I happen to believe Jesus set a decent example of how we should treat each other.
Yet that is precisely what it was for the reasons stated, and again you respond without actually offering anything substantive?
That's not what the quote said at all, the quote cautioned that just because you found a belief appealing doesn't make it true, and from he very first you have asserted you believe in a deity because of the emotional effects that belief has on you. Reason is how we rationally justify belief, they are not competing positions, one is a method, and the other the result. Your George Lucas quote was absurd, it asserted the existence of a deity as beyond question, then asserted humans always believe we know more than we do, the irony was palpable, but the quote has no relevance to the post of mine you were responding to.
Don't be absurd, of course you don't. You have admitted you hold a belief you cannot offer any rational reason to support.
So you think slavery is OK then and that slaves should "obey their masters, even the cruel ones"? Have you abandoned your family yet, as Jesus encouraged his followers to do?
You were on safer ground when you said very little, the more claims you make about your beliefs the more open to refutation they are....
@Sheldon
"
Have you abandoned your family yet, as Jesus encouraged his followers to do?"
The following is in no way a criticism of your post, but simply an addition, if you don't mind
There is also the admonition to sell all of one's possessions and give the money to the poor, who Jesus says"are always with us"
Jesus is also reported as saying the greatest commandment is to love God. .But second only to that is the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself . In my opinion, this it most blatantly ignored of all 613 commandments.
OOPS, I've fallen into the same pit as our little friend;
The existence of god has not been established.
Nor has the historicity of Jesus. Nor has it ever been established that the New Testament is anything other than the mythology of Christianity
OR if not myth, that it the books of the New Testament canon were decided arbitrarily in the fourth century. PLUS that they have been changed so much in 2 thousand years, that nobody can tell with any accuracy what happened and who said what to whom.***
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((9))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
***my reference:
"Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why'" Bart Ehrman (Highly recommended, by me)
"Summary
Ehrman recounts his personal experience with the study of the Bible and textual criticism. He summarizes the history of textual criticism, from the works of Desiderius Erasmus to the present. The book describes an early Christian environment in which the books that would later compose the New Testament were copied by hand, mostly by Christian amateurs. Ehrman concludes that various early scribes altered the New Testament texts in order to de-emphasize the role of women in the early church, to unify and harmonize the different portrayals of Jesus in the four gospels, and to oppose certain heresies (such as Adoptionism)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misquoting_Jesus
Ok Sheldon, I already said I don't believe Jesus said that about slavery. You may find that was Peter.
Exidus 21 also endorses slavery emphatically and very specifically. Jesus endorsed the old testament laws according to the bible.
Do you think it's ok to beat a slave to death as long as they don't die within 48 hours of the beating? Do you think gay men and women are an abomination?
Do you think unruly children should be taken to the edge of town and stoned?
Those are some of the OT laws the bible claims Jesus endorsed.
That doesn't strike me as very moral lesson at all, but a recklessly and cruelly irresponsible thing to say.
Do you accept the objective scientific fact of species evolution, or the biblical creation myth in Genesis that claims humans were created in their current form instantly using magic and clay?
@Sheldon, I believe the old testament documents a group of people who strive to live life, and more often than not get it wrong. I find some good life lessons documented here and there in it but some stories of some pretty messed up people as well. Looks like they used God as a way to explain why things worked and didn't work a whole lot. Probably like what many peoples were wont to do during those times, and I guess many still do.
Some guy comes along and tries to set these people right, and teach them a better way to do life. They were expecting some guy that was going to deliver them from the Romans but they got a guy that tried to deliver them from their ways that didn't work while still staying alive long enough to make a difference. I never see him try to endorse the stuff you are claiming he endorses. If one wants to take some political stance that says when he said he came to fulfill the law it means that he endorses all the shit his people pulled over thousands of years then go for it. I happen to like what he taught and tried to do for his people. I try to live by the principles he taught where it makes sense the best I can.
Of course I accept evolution. I do happen to believe that this complex universe was sparked by an intelligence made of simpler stuff vs a spontaneous event, and the purpose for this was have a universe capable of evolving intelligent beings. So sue me if I have no proof of it and you consider it a delusion, but it works for me.
@Homer...” Some guy comes along and tries to set these people right, and teach them a better way to do life.”
You have me so confused :)
Ok - just trying to get what you believe strait. The Old Testament doesn’t mean much (is this part of the bible from god?)
“Some guy comes along and tries to set these people right, and teach them a better way to do life.”
Now, Jesus comes along (is Jesus god? or his son or just a guy?) and his teachings weren’t completely mind blowing (he knew his audience).
I’ve said that there are some good things in the bible...the “fruit” you speak of, listed, is one example.
Now, if I take it that the bible is a man-made collection of “works & myths” I can pull out lessons and shake my head at the bad and learn something.
If I take it as “All scripture is inspired of God...” (CLAIM), then, it’s a whole other thing, isn’t it?
To say, hey, I read about these “fruits” and by golly, I get great results when I treat others well.
To say, these “fruits” are a “gift of god’s spirit” (a claim) and Cherry Picking your “scriptures” from god’s good book...well...
There are many, many good books that provide good lessons and morals. Same with movies. Depends on what you want to get out of it.
The old testament documents a nation's plight from their point of view. I think it teaches some lessons about a nation that tried to be inspired by what they got from God, but it sure looks like they got it wrong most of the time. They wrote books about that plight over thousands of years, they were collected up and assimilated as the old testament. Exactly how much of that is legend, and exactly how much of that is hard fact, how am I to know?
Jesus came along and tried to show them a better way, IMHO. I like to believe he was inspired by God and was able to get to that "fruit" like nobody's business, I would love to believe somehow God did incarnate on Earth as Jesus or directly send him to do that as is reported, but I have absolutely no way to know that in any way shape or form. He sure ended up making an impact on the world today regardless. I really don't require it to follow what good I get from his teachings. I think that still makes me some sort of a Christian.
And I still get joy, patience, and all the other things from belief and trying to commune with God. People here will call that part a delusion, but that's ok, it's worked quite well. People may say I can't do that, and I say "Watch me!" I used to hold all those beliefs that were taught directly by my church, but they failed to hold water, caused loss of faith, and the loss of that joy and patience. So I dropped those things.
@ Homer
There is no contemporary historical evidence for a Peter/Simon Peter or "Cephas" as described in the gospels at all. None.
So we don't care.
I'm trying to tell him Jesus isn't credited with saying that about slavery, and I know there's only scant contemporary historical evidence for Jesus himself as well. But somebody wrote that letter to a Church that talked about slaves submitting to masters, and I'm pretty darn sure it wasn't Jesus!
@ Homer
Paul the delusionist talked about it and as Peter was written by pro Roman hellenists it is not surprising it is in those gospels. The most egregious appearing in both Titus and 2 Peter.
Which begs the question ...what parts of the bible can you rely on as actual history?
You are right, almost. There is NO contemporary (to his life) evidence for a jesus figure as described in the gospels. None. Not a skerrick.
One thing is very certain is that NOWHERE in the gospels does the jesus figure (as reported in the NT) condemn slavery, racism or misogyny.
Not very loving and beautiful is it? He had plenty of time to do it, 3 years of preaching and not one sentence like "it is wrong to own another human as property" ...amazing oversight that.
“Jesus isn't credited with saying that about slavery,”
Jesus is also NOT credited with condemning it or instructing “Masters” to “free the slaves”...it’s an accepted practice (that his Father encouraged, allowed, set rules for) never condemned...
Also think about what you carefully wrote... “Jesus is credited as saying...”
So Jesus never wrote down his own sayings? He didn’t spend his life (or at least a part) writing HIS OWN THOUGHTS to be “preserved” ...it’s all heresy (someone with a few decades under their belt remembering back to what he said...). Yah, ‘cause memory is sooooo reliable.
I’m just throwing in my thoughts.
I don’t know you Homer, aside from (obviously) what you posted. You could be a young man with a family and all the responsibility that brings to your life and you’re figuring yourself out and what works for you - or you could be a hairy happy troll enjoying your fun. Doesn’t really matter to me.
If I assume the first, I’d say you most likely are rational in many areas of your life and have found something that works for you. I use to pray even when I didn’t believe in god. It can be a form of “meditation” which has beneficial results. It may be that calming your mind or focusing on how you want to respond instead of react “helps”.
It’s like those “lucky socks”. A player puts on his lucky socks, he’s more relaxed, confident, driven...he plays better (anxiety level down) and he credits his socks.
It’s just YOU. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing magical about it. In fact, it’s awesome that we as humans, have this capacity. It’s finding the tools to keep one rational when playing with the imagination.
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