Why do Atheists not believe? + OFF-TOPIC GOODNESS

[Sir Pwn4lot]

Hey, I have a question for you, be honest:

Why do most Atheists not believe in God/Christianity?

Please get back to me, I'm interested about what you think.

 

[mondar]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

Hey, I have a question for you, be honest:

Why do most Atheists not believe in God/Christianity?

Please get back to me, I'm interested about what you think.

They begin with the wrong pre-suppositions.

Why must atheists begin with wrong pre-suppositions?

 

[Sir Pwn4lot]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

Hey, I have a question for you, be honest:

Why do most Atheists not believe in God/Christianity?

Please get back to me, I'm interested about what you think.

They begin with the wrong pre-suppositions.

Why must atheists begin with wrong pre-suppositions?

Elaborate please, which pre-suppositions exactly?

 

[mondar]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

[quote="Sir Pwn4lot":32ut1foc]Hey, I have a question for you, be honest:

Why do most Atheists not believe in God/Christianity?

Please get back to me, I'm interested about what you think.

They begin with the wrong pre-suppositions.

Why must atheists begin with wrong pre-suppositions?

Elaborate please, which pre-suppositions exactly?[/quote:32ut1foc]

Most atheists are philosophical naturalists. Naturalism (IMO) is a false presupposition.

gotta go, be back later

 

[Sir Pwn4lot]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

Do you have a better method of gaining knowledge? Naturalism seems to be working out pretty well lol.

By the way, most Atheists (I can't speak for all lol) aren't closed to the idea of supernaturalism, but because there's not really a method of determining truth from fallacy in the supernatural world (Do you want to propose one?) all supernatural ideas are on equal footing unless they decide to manifest themselves in natural form. But no, if there were miracles performed everywhere and God just came down and predicted some stuff that was amazingly unlikely to happen (Such as give us all the lottery numbers for 10 years) then that would convince a lot of Atheists, myself included.

Any other reasons you can think of? I've heard more than one on this forum alone haha.

 

[Lelouch]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

It's hard to believe in something that has too many contradictions. Like, why does God claim to be merciful when he committed an act of genocide?

 

[Physicist]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

Hey, I have a question for you, be honest:

Why do most Atheists not believe in God/Christianity?

Please get back to me, I'm interested about what you think.

All Christians are atheists, when it comes to Vishnu, Thor, Allah etc. In fact, the only difference between them and atheists is that the atheists add one more god, YHWH, to the pile of non-belief.

Why do you reject Allah?

Historical, literary, and archeological research show that there is nothing special about the ancient Hebrew God, YHWH, that would provide any reason to think he exists and Baal does not.

 

[epistemaniac]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

2Co 4:3-4 esv And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. (4) In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."

Until God supernatural removes these blinders, everyone is an unbeliever...

btw, naturalism is itself an unproven assumed a priori one adopts as a worldview for reasons for reasons that themselves are not provable from within the naturalistic worldview.... unless the naturalist is aware of an empirical experiment whereby one can prove this worldview is the only method for determining truth...? eg they can't, because choosing naturalism is itself based on metaphysical (unproven and unprovable from within naturalism) presuppositions such as a closed universe, the impossibility of miracles, adopting empiricism as the only standard for true etc... which, in the case of the latter, this worldview violates it's own criteria for truth as the worldview itself (naturalism), as previously noted, is not itself, empirically verifiable. How can one prove, empirically, that miracles are impossible? What kind of experiment could one conduct to prove that no God exists? They can assume these things, and since the god of this world has blinded their eyes, they will, but they do so for metaphysical reasons, not because belief in God is itself disproven scientifically. This is why so many respected highly intelligent scientists are themselves, Christians, eg John Polkinghorne and see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ch ... in_science for others...

Belief in God cannot be determined as being true or false based on only whether one is an academic, a scientist, a gifted intellectual etc. Rather it is a question of whether or not God decides to sovereignly life the blinders on the heart and mind which keep a person in darkness by monergistically regenerating their heart enabling them to savingly believe. Until God does this, a person will remain an atheist of one sort or another, be they of the dogmatic and closed/narrow minded type, or tending towards the agnostic type.

blessings,
ken

 

[Physicist]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

2Co 4:3-4 esv And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. (4) In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."

Until God supernatural removes these blinders, everyone is an unbeliever...

btw, naturalism is itself an unproven assumed a priori one adopts as a worldview for reasons for reasons that themselves are not provable from within the naturalistic worldview.... unless the naturalist is aware of an empirical experiment whereby one can prove this worldview is the only method for determining truth...? eg they can't, because choosing naturalism is itself based on metaphysical (unproven and unprovable from within naturalism) presuppositions such as a closed universe, the impossibility of miracles, adopting empiricism as the only standard for true etc... which, in the case of the latter, this worldview violates it's own criteria for truth as the worldview itself (naturalism), as previously noted, is not itself, empirically verifiable. How can one prove, empirically, that miracles are impossible? What kind of experiment could one conduct to prove that no God exists? They can assume these things, and since the god of this world has blinded their eyes, they will, but they do so for metaphysical reasons, not because belief in God is itself disproven scientifically. This is why so many respected highly intelligent scientists are themselves, Christians, eg John Polkinghorne and see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ch ... in_science for others...

Belief in God cannot be determined as being true or false based on only whether one is an academic, a scientist, a gifted intellectual etc. Rather it is a question of whether or not God decides to sovereignly life the blinders on the heart and mind which keep a person in darkness by monergistically regenerating their heart enabling them to savingly believe. Until God does this, a person will remain an atheist of one sort or another, be they of the dogmatic and closed/narrow minded type, or tending towards the agnostic type.

blessings,
ken

Naturalism is the pragmatic choice. I cannot prove that the world is not an illusion, and we are simply brains in a vat run by computers, like the movie, Matrix. However, the pragmatic option is to take the world as it is with as few axioms as necessary, Religious belief, OMO, violates Occam's razor.

With regard to spiritual experience, I have heard of a fellow who thought he was the re-incarnation of Napoleon. To him it was real; to outsiders pure madness.

 

[samuel]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

There's a pretty simple answer.

Psa. 53:1 To the chief Musician upon Mahalath, Maschil, A Psalm of David. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good.

 

[epistemaniac]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

nor is pragmatism a valid worldview... for Hitler and many in his Germany it was pragmatic to rid the world of Jews... based on pragmatism alone one would have no grounds on which to stand in order to say that this was evil....

btw, Occam was a Christian.... so appealing to Occam to disprove belief in God is not rational as Occam himself did not seem to think that the principle he developed to stream line thought exempted the existence of God....

blessings,
ken

 

[Sir Pwn4lot]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

Lol guys I'm not asking for an argument about why Atheist morality is flawed, I'm simply asking for a basic answer to "Why do atheists not believe?"

For example: They want to sin.

Simple.

 

[jasoncran]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

Lol guys I'm not asking for an argument about why Atheist morality is flawed, I'm simply asking for a basic answer to "Why do atheists not believe?"

For example: They want to sin.

Simple.

true, they want to sin
i can go with that.

 

[JoJo]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

I wouldn't say most people particularly want to sin. Although all of us are tempted to do things we know aren't good for us. The difference is that, as Christians, we can confess our sins to God and are forgiven. But I'm getting off topic...

Why don't atheists believe in God? They are blind. We must pray for them to see.

"In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." (2 Corinthians 4:4)

 

[Physicist]

pragmatically not true

nor is pragmatism a valid worldview... for Hitler and many in his Germany it was pragmatic to rid the world of Jews... based on pragmatism alone one would have no grounds on which to stand in order to say that this was evil....

I think we started with naturalism, i.e. a minimal assumptions world view. If you would like to get into details, I recommend Harbours " Intelligent Person's Guide to Atheism'. What I stated was that naturalism works, as opposed to, say, Christian theology, that leads societies into dark ages, or Islamic theology that leads them to Jihad. Hence, pragmatically, a naturalistic worldview is superior. At least, based upon its application in America, atheists engage in less destructive social behavior, e.g. violent crime and spousal abuse than do fundamentalist Christians. Of course there are treacherous political dogmas as well as religious dogmas; Communism for one. I would contend that it is the role of the humanist to oppose them all.

btw, Hitler was a Christian, and certainly not a very pragmatic person.

However, the OP asks why people would choose atheism. Most do so because its the rational choice. Any of the religious dogmas requires one to believe propositions that contradict empirical reality. Atheism is the least arbitrary choice since it posits no such extraordinary propositions.. If, instead, you decided to be a Muslim, you would be required to accept one set of mythology, Islam, while arbitrarily rejecting competing mythologies such as Christianity. Here, I use the term,mythology, for collection of stories that have to be accepted on faith as opposed to independent, objective, verification.

 

[mondar]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

Do you have a better method of gaining knowledge? Naturalism seems to be working out pretty well lol.

If the presuppositions of materialistic naturalism are to be axiomatic, then things like knowledge, or morality are mere chemical reactions.

Is the subject of physics made up of atoms and molecules? Are the laws of logic material or immaterial?

By the way, most Atheists (I can't speak for all lol) aren't closed to the idea of supernaturalism, but because there's not really a method of determining truth from fallacy in the supernatural world (Do you want to propose one?) all supernatural ideas are on equal footing unless they decide to manifest themselves in natural form.

I cannot agree here. Just in comparing the 3 great monotheistic world relgions, Christianity, Judiasm, and Islaam.... While the matter of the NT interpretation of OT prophetic revelation is complex, I think the apostles had it correct. Jesus was divine, and he was the long awaited redeemer promised in the OT covenants from Adam to the New Covenant. With Islaam, the Koran has contradictions with the NT in what it says about 1st century christianity. But why should I believe someone 600 years after Christ or the eyewitnesses who say Christ for themselves.

But no, if there were miracles performed everywhere and God just came down and predicted some stuff that was amazingly unlikely to happen (Such as give us all the lottery numbers for 10 years) then that would convince a lot of Atheists, myself included.

Any other reasons you can think of? I've heard more than one on this forum alone haha.

I think the main reason to believe Atheism is wrong is that it starts from naturalism. I dont see naturalism as a feasible presupposition. I guess I said that. But naturalism assumes that what we see is all we get. It cannot account for knowledge or any better morality than might makes right, or the highest common good of the most people.

 

[Sir Pwn4lot]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

i edited this to keep the debate on why atheists dont believe, jason

I think the main reason to believe Atheism is wrong is that it starts from naturalism.

And that's where you're wrong lol, you don't 'believe' in Atheism, you cease to believe in Theism. Atheism is simply the absence of Theism, it isn't it's own thing.

If you're talking about Gnostic Atheism then it's a different story. Gnostic Atheism does require a belief (That there is no God), but I don't adhere to that form of Atheism and neither does anyone else I know.

 

[jasoncran]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

i edited one post and removed all those that were off topic including mine. if you wish to discuss mass murderers are caused by aethism then open up another thread.

 

[3gsd]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

Atheists aren't atheists because they want to sin. Atheists are atheists because they do not believe there is a God. Their reasons vary, but in a nutshell, that's it.

 

[ronniechoate34]

Re: Why do Atheists not believe?

It's hard to believe in something that has too many contradictions. Like, why does God claim to be merciful when he committed an act of genocide?

God is sovereign and holy. He is best suited to judge us righteously because He knows us inside and out. There is no escaping the presence of God He is everywhere, and He walks the dark places of our hearts.


We demand punishment, banishment, execution and tortures here on earth. An Almighty God has to judge us, otherwise it wouldn't make sense. Corrupt justice is iniquity and it serves only to satisfy the hardness of the hearts of men. I believe that pure justice does exist. Once people step away from God they should expect the worst. America.