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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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@ Great Hope
You believe in a deity that wishes for us to find it. Correct? Then why is your deity such a coward and always hiding? If your deity wishes for us to find it, then why is it so hard for this deity to offer irrefutable objective hard empirical evidence for its existence?
Remember my Razor: NO EVIDENCE = NO EXISTENCE. Or, re-worded, the absence of evidence is an absence of existence.
If your deity is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, then it would possess the power, knowledge, goodness, and subsistence to prove itself. Why in all the many decades I have spent searching for it, it has never been found? Not even one minuscule piece of evidence.
Do not use your religious dumbo jumbo, or your religious texts, or your presupposed assumptions, or your personal experiences (hearsay). Only provide OBJECTIVE HARD EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE.
Onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit non ei qui negat.
rmfr
GH - Does this Creator have to be one God or could it be multiple gods? Could it be aliens?
@Sheldon
I've questioned my faith enough until it became undeniable. So for me to further question what I've experienced would not only be the biggest waste of time. But it will go in proverbial circles with no "objective evidence" that a Creator doesn't exist. Only to die and find out that I missed everything because worshipping the god of scepticism was somewhat more satisfying than the awe and wonder of The Creator and Giver of Life.
@ the other sideways questions above
Ok, I just came here to find out if I could empathize with athiesm, I think. I actually don't know where the inspiration came from. But, through this journey I've been asked questions about my belief and experiences. I've answered to the best of my ability. Which isn't much. And I still have yet to be sold on the idea\conclusion that I could just give up hope for this existence having a Creator. So to sum it up as much as I can. I guess you could say that no standard for ultimate justice sounds like a crock to me. There is far too much corruption, perversion, and straight evil that goes unnoticed and is fuled by the powerful, who only want more power, as history repeats... Again.... And Again... And Again. So there are countless reasons to believe. If you want, just pick one and hold to the hope. Here is how it worked for me.
The first question that I had to look at before I "let go" to believe. Was, why would I not want there to be a Creator? That was the single root that branched millions of unseen walls. Once I looked at that question. I realized that I did want there to be a Creator of all of this. Seeing how the adverse to it, didn't produce enough for me. I had everything I ever wanted, but I always had to go to great lengths to have it or hold on to it. So I wore restlessness as my crown. And spite as my robe. My own understanding gained me much, yet I was not satisfied for any amount of time. I knew there was more. I'd been living hard and fast since I was 4 years old only to find by my mid thirties that all things, and life itself, is all meaningless. Even if I attach my own perception of meaning to something? That too is also meaningless. So I was at the turning point. I said, if I do want to know this Creator? What would I have to do? What would it look like in my own life? Would I be able to discern it? Where do I start?
It was easy for me. As I was searching the biggest questions of my life, I kept hearing "let go" "let go" "let go".
So I finally said let go of what? It said let go of everything you are going to lose anyway. The Creator knew I was ready, so I "let go". I am surely an extremist, when I choose to do something, I really do it. No holding back, no looking sideways, no doubt, no fear, no half measure, no playing. I did it. I walked away from the kingdom I had built and was led by the spirit into connection after connection of impossible coincidence and a myriad of miracles. Over 7 years later it has become undeniable that a connection to this power has proven results in my life and those that know me, see it without me saying 1 word. Now this is where the rubber meets the road, I know this is a debate forum and @Sheldon is chomping at the bit to tear apart every line and label, sort, and file my experience from my want to believe. But I was invited to come here, I've been asked many questions, and this is my answer. Our transgressions and iniquities have caused separation from life. The Creator is life. But, there is a lifeboat for those that want a way back. If you want to know The Creator? You'll do it the way it's been designed. If you don't want to do it? Then it's really, really, hard to tell that you want to know The Creator. End of story. Don't believe me? Then try it for yourself "let go" of everything and see if The Creator doesn't show up and catch you. It's everything! It's not like you can give up anything that doesn't belong to The Creator anyways. So it's really not as complicated or scary as you might think. And if your question to me is "let go" of what? Your asking the wrong question to the wrong being. Only you will know. Do it or don't. I gain nothing. It's just you and The Creator. End of debate.
-Great Hope
@nyar
Just ban me already please. I can't make it any more simple. Yet I can't help but think that someone here does want to know. If you ban this troll then I don't have to care anymore. Thank you.
Still proselytizing.
I'm not reading that sententious sermon. Especially since you asserted how blinkered and closed minded you are in the first sentence, and again without demonstrating any objective evidence for your intransigent belief, and your strident claims.
"Just ban me already please. I can't make it any more simple. "
We all know how you theists love to play the martyr, but nobody has to come here. The only reason you come here is to endlessly deliver your sententious sermons and to proselytise, but the atheists on here simply won't find that kind of empty religious rhetoric compelling.
Unless you can demonstrate some objective evidence you're wasting your time, and again I have told you how annoying I find it when theists preach to me as if their beliefs are a foregone conclusion. Rather than a vapid unevidenced superstition they can demonstrate no evidence for.
@Sheldon
Ok, I'll quit wasting my time. Thank you.
@Great hope
If you do leave, please understand it was not because you are a martyr, or that us godless heathens do not have a heart. It is because all you can provide is basically personal experience, and a very boring and repetitious tendency to proselytize.
Great hope
@Sheldon
"Ok, I'll quit wasting my time. Thank you."
Well that is your call obviously, but if you feel you can't engage in rational discourse without your usual recourse to endless sententious preaching, then perhaps it's for the best.
Great hope, you wrote, “@nyar Just ban me already please. I can't make it any more simple. Yet I can't help but think that someone here does want to know. If you ban this troll then I don't have to care anymore. Thank you.”
I see that you addressed this to Nyarlathotep, however, I’m going to stick my nose in here.
This seems to be a fine example of your stance in life. It seems you want to be banned so that you don’t have to take responsibility for making the decision to leave AR and then act upon that decision. This is just like your religion - you don’t want to be fully responsible for your own life so you have created a superpower to hold that position. This seems to be your SOP. It gets you off the hook, doesn’t it? You don’t have to make any final decisions for yourself nor take full responsibility for anything since you pawn that off onto others...in this case it’s Nyar, overall, it’s your gawd. And what I find most puzzling is the righteousness you display because of it.
@ Great Hope
And you decided to not address my questions because you have no answer. Here they are again.
And you propensity for your claim to "let go of everything" does not work. I lost everything. I have let it go. And if you do not believe me, then read my Soul Shatter Essays.
I shall be the first to admit that I might could have handled it better. If you had no one, not even family, to help you through such a devestating catastrophe, how would you have handled it? Prayed to a deity that would never answer your prayers?
You said without a knowledge of a Creator, your life was meaningless. Have you ever thought that your life being meaningless is because you wanted it to be meaningless? Even on a subconcious level?
Evidence you have brainwashed yourself just as Micheal Sherlock once said, "Religion is not merely a tool to oppress the masses, it is a self perpetuating scam that leads the masses to oppress themselves." You can also insert "individuals" in place of "masses."
Your quotes above are also evidence you have closed your mind and shall never be swayed from your presupposed assumptions.
Read my Soul Shatter Essays. The only being who was there to catch me, was ME. The memory of me wife and twin daughters are the only reasons I am still alive today, despite the suicidal thoughts I deal with each and every day, several times a day. My answer to not suiciding is that suicide would be the greatest dishonor I could give them. And for that, if it existed, I would deserve to be burned in Hell for Eternity.
Again, I ask, if the Creator is all-powerful and all-knowing, then why is it such a coward and afraid to show itself? Even to someone who, proverbially speaking, has literally been to Hell and has come back to the living.
I honestly sought for over 30 years to prove the Bible correct and to find its God only to find it is nothing more than a collection of plagiarized lies that were plagiarized from far older myths and legends. It is also my premise that the Proverbs of Solomon were plagiarized from Asian philosophies.
An Artifact (which I have seen live in person): Ipuwer Papyrus (dated 1850 BCE (400 years before the supposed Exodus)) contains a poem that describes Egypt as afflicted by social anarchy and in a state of chaos. This archaeological evidence does not support the story of the Exodus, and most histories of ancient Israel no longer consider it relevant to the story of Israel’s emergence. Nevertheless, the Ipuwer Papyrus is often put forward in popular literature as confirmation of the Biblical account, most notably because of its statement that “the river is blood” which naturally occurs anyway due to iron rich sediments during the disastrous floods of the Nile. Additionally, it states that the social disruption may have actually been caused by the “arrival of Asiatic servants.”
And I now have a last question for you. Why is it so hard for you and your Creator to provide everyone with OBJECTIVE HARD EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE proving its existence? Why is your Creator such a coward that it requires us lowly apes to search for it, only to find nothing?
Otherwise, The Nine Razors...
...are completely and totally aplicable.
Even with your proselytizing, you have provided absolutely no evidence. Just a yarn. Yarn meaning "a tale, especially a long story of adventure or incredible happenings."
rmfr
@Great Hope
I took your advice. I let go of my biases and went to church today. It was great. The sheer amount of delusional joy and subservience to an unevidenced deity was entertaining to behold. Also, I counted 71 unevidenced claims and 31 fallacies.
Going to a Wiccan service in a few days. I'll let you know how it is as well.
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