Atheism promotes Nihilism

reply to post by Iason321

It took examining both sides of the fence very closely for me to come to my current beliefs,

and I will never change my stance, until the day I die. God willing.

Iason, you are not old enough to have studied everything there is. Plain and simple. You have not lived long enough...you are too young...in years. Many of the members here that you are denigrating, mocking, shaming, abusing, and attempting to "persuade" have lived as educated adults since before you were born. Some of them since way before.

My daughter is your age. She has explored a variety of different faith-based ideas...she was allowed to do that, encouraged to do it....by me and her father. My mother is 20 years older than I am, and she and I have fabulous talks about "religion" and "theology" in general. The simple truth is that you cannot POSSIBLY, by ANY STRETCH, claim to know "more" than those of us who have been seeking and looking and having our own experiences with these issues for DECADES.

In fact, for all your self-touting wonderfulness, how you are "the best thing walking on earth" to your family and friends, that is PURE EGO. You keep making threads that directly refute other people's well-researched and perfectly sound discussions with a simple, childish "shut up" as though you are trying to "drown out" people who come here with alternative information, and looking for alternative information. Do you have the capacity to step back and see that?

I suspect that if you look back in twenty five years at the posts you have made here, at your attitude, your smugness, your ridicule and high-and-mighty confidence that you know everything now, you will facepalm with embarrassment.

Why did you decide to join ATS and start ridiculing everyone who comes here seeking their own personal, unique, hard work to make sense of life? Isn't there some place you can go that you won't be feeling so nasty every day? You're not helping the cause of those who follow Christ's TEACHINGS...in fact, on a daily basis you exhibit the exact OPPOSITE.

I don't expect you to realize that now, because you haven't got enough life behind you yet. Just to let you know, you are behaving like the adolescent that you are. Your "new-found" faith came of a major life-threatening crisis, and you are still reeling with how close you came to finding out what happens when we die.

Please try to show some respect to those who have read, studied, considered, reflected, and LIVED on this same planet without your "help" and "guidance" for their entire lives.

If my daughter were to talk to me the way you talk to adults on this board ... or to ME, her mother, in that manner, she would ....
well, she never would do that. For that, I am thankful. She has critical thinking skills, serenity, spirituality, and a refreshing and open-minded disposition that you APPEAR HERE to lack entirely.

reply to post by Iason321


May God forgive you for you know not what you do.

Stop imposing your Christian rules on us non-Christian. Your rules do not apply to non-Christians, not to everyone.

I envy people who can talk openly to their parents about religion. I can't talk to my mother because she gets upset and takes it really personally when I disagree with her. So we've pretty much agreed to disagree and never talk about it.


Most people I've known are like that. Whenever I question a belief or have a disagreement, regardless of how respectful or diplomatic I state it, people always get angry.

reply to post by EvilSadamClone




Well I was specifically talking about Jesus and the New Testament.
Obviously most of the Old testament is the Torah and as you say, similar to some other myths but with some new stories thrown in to freshen it up.
Some of it ties into global events that obviously happened, Great Flood etc..

I am not saying it's plagiarized... that wasn't my point, my point was that it is mostly edited, made up and forged...with numerous books and gospels and writings omitted
And that is in relation to the New Testament.

That's it

I agree with everything you said man

It seems the temperament of the atheist is that it promotes reality and therefore nihilims. But reality according to the atheistic sciences is strictly limited to the physical world is it not?

furthermore, most of the defendants of atheism here and other places seem to hold stead fast into moral relativism which has many problems in logic.

Not to mention the red herring arguments concerning the theist claims of morality.

And I do think Nietzsche was right in his assessment that scientific atheism leads to nihilism.

im an athiest, doesnt mean i think my life has no meaning. i dont beleive in an afterlife but i will leave a legacy through my children, grandchildren, great grand children ect.
the purpose of life is to survive and reproduce and for a lucky few to be remembered in history.

if anything athiests lives end up having more meaning because they work towards these goals instead of breezing though life thinking that itll all be fine in the end.

reply to post by EvilSadamClone


it's actually the sad state of our world today. Most people don't know why they believe what they proclaim to believe. I am a Christian and I know why I believe what I do, but I've met too many people who don't. In fact, it's alarming when me, a Christian for only 6 years, at 29 years old can give better reasons than the elder whose been a Christian and a leader of the church for decades.

So in terms of atheists, I do commend that they know why they believe what they believe...albeit sometimes it simply sounds like regurgitated anti-religious catch phrases.

Originally posted by DaveNorris

im an athiest, doesnt mean i think my life has no meaning. i dont beleive in an afterlife but i will leave a legacy through my children, grandchildren, great grand children ect.
the purpose of life is to survive and reproduce and for a lucky few to be remembered in history.

if anything athiests lives end up having more meaning because they work towards these goals instead of breezing though life thinking that itll all be fine in the end.

comments like these might be true for some people, but not all. Secondly, the OP addressed your type of response by asking, on what objective grounds do you determine what is good or bad?

If meaning is simply self prescribed, and atheism is true (which I agree leads to nihilism) than the meaning, purpose. etc that you have for your life are mere delusions of the mind. Are they not? If there is no purpose outside of what you prescribe yourself, then really it's just a fabrication of the mind. Rather, the question is WHY do you have meaning, purpose etc? For what reason do humans in general desire meaning purpose, regardless of whether they believe that they are part of a transcendent purpose or not.

reply to post by FaceLikeTheSun


i can see were your going with that, but cant the same arguement be used against the beleif in an afterlife. could heaven just be a fabrication of your mind, to give your life purpose... something to think about

Jesusism partly promotes Deism, I say partly because mother nature is just a part of the mural.

Atheism shows curiosity though and I like that I suppose, but isn't that what got the cat?

Originally posted by SisyphusRide
Atheism shows curiosity though and I like that I suppose, but isn't that what got the cat?

I know right!!

I mean why be curious and think and learn and grow and be challenged when we can just all read one book and think the same and never have to question anything?

Wouldn't that be nice?

Originally posted by FaceLikeTheSun
So in terms of atheists, I do commend that they know why they believe what they believe...albeit sometimes it simply sounds like regurgitated anti-religious catch phrases.

and I believe it is not so out of the box intellectual thinking as atheists might like to believe. Humans invented the scientific method, we also created math and numbers along with the theory of evolution and something (I don't know what it is) coming out from the nothing in the big bang.

"believe" what a cool word that is, I'm a believer...

Originally posted by blupblup

Originally posted by SisyphusRide
Atheism shows curiosity though and I like that I suppose, but isn't that what got the cat?

I know right!!

I mean why be curious and think and learn and grow and be challenged when we can just all read one book and think the same and never have to question anything?

Wouldn't that be nice?

I believe atheist should be a little more open minded about things... Dawkins failed and his wife took his kid from his influence. I know atheist don't want to hear that but that's how a vendetta grows.

recognition and acceptance of all others belief systems is a good place to start, but also a very narrow path.

------------

additionally; Jesus was 30+ish while the majority of the minority of self proclaimed atheists are in a completely different age group in my personal experience with them amongst my peers... My favorites are the ones with the bull ring in their nose, they can be led... but a chicken bone will do too.

reply to post by FaceLikeTheSun


The problem is this: there is no why when there is a lack of belief.

Like some people don't believe in Unicorns, there really is no why.

And it's Christians and other theists who insist there must be a why.

Christians cannot understand atheism. It's impossible.

All it is is a lack of belief. Nothing more.

But Christian can't seem to understand that no matter how it's explained to them.

Originally posted by EvilSadamClone
reply to post by FaceLikeTheSun

 

The problem is this: there is no why when there is a lack of belief.

actually you can ask Jeffrey Dahmer what the why becomes and quite possibly blossoms into with no system (please don't make me post the clip again)

Like some people don't believe in Unicorns, there really is no why.

symbology my friend, unicorns could exist in a parallel universe eh?

And it's Christians and other theists who insist there must be a why.

actually there is a why and some Christians and Theists know it, but no matter how much they try to explain the why and tell an active atheist, the atheists just still don't get it.

Christians cannot understand atheism. It's impossible.

atheism is all too understandable, it's actually quite silly imo and can be looked upon as childish, but necessary. (being active that is )

All it is is a lack of belief. Nothing more.

it is much more, they acknowledge the belief... seeds can be planted and flowers can bloom, as they do.

But Christian can't seem to understand that no matter how it's explained to them.

back to quote above; Christians I think understand all too well, for it was and is Gods laws that formed our (westerners) reality.

atheism is all too understandable

then please, explain athiesm to me. wot is it that you think i beleive and dont beleive, because surely u know better than me

The OP quotes scripture that states that good works are but filthy rags in his god's eyes, and education and wisdom are but foolishness in his god's mind, and if I don't believe that Jesus died for my sins and was resurrected, then my life is worthless and my soul is to be damned for eternity. Isn't this a nihilistic point of view?

reply to post by EvilSadamClone

I envy people who can talk openly to their parents about religion. I can't talk to my mother because she gets upset and takes it really personally when I disagree with her. So we've pretty much agreed to disagree and never talk about it.


Most people I've known are like that. Whenever I question a belief or have a disagreement, regardless of how respectful or diplomatic I state it, people always get angry.

Ironically, my mother was devoutly religious by temperament until fairly recently -- 15 years, maybe? -- when she became disillusioned and experienced a complete turn-around....she was a Sunday School teacher as a teen, and went to church without her parents. That was where my dad met her...leading the kiddies to the altar for their blessing from the priest (High Anglican Church)...

She was the acolyte coordinator while my brothers and I were growing up...she took us to church EVERY Sunday for years, until we said we didn't want to...and even then she said fine, at least go to Sunday School. (I don't know about my brothers, but, I didn't do that, either.) And now? She herself says she's "lost" her religious neurons. She recently pointed out to me an article she came across that the right frontal lobe seems to be somehow directly related to reliogosity, that a head trauma or injury of some kind can alter it...

I very much appreciate her willingness to continue to explore the ideas of God...she is now reading The Evolution of God, by Robert Wright, at my suggestion (she's reading my marked up copy, and highlighting it herself for later comparison/conversation) and she's LOVING it.

My mother-in-law, on the other hand, is impossible, like those you describe in your quote above.

I think that we can continue to develop as human beings until the day we do die, but not everyone does. They stay stuck in a spot for the duration. Anyone claiming at any time that they have the absolute answers to these mysteries and that they will "never" change their mind are working at life out of a total inability to manage the discomfort of looking at these issues with an open mind.

It is imperative to approach the subject bravely, courageously, and make one's own steps on one's OWN path in order to really GROW. I don't know how old you or your mother are, but give it some time, stay calm, and who knows....maybe she'll come around.

Cheers!

Originally posted by windword
The OP quotes scripture that states that good works are but filthy rags in his god's eyes, and education and wisdom are but foolishness in his god's mind, and if I don't believe that Jesus died for my sins and was resurrected, then my life is worthless and my soul is to be damned for eternity. Isn't this a nihilistic point of view?

Are you saying hypocrisy.... from a Christian.... on ATS???

Never...

I don't believe it.