I’ve erased my inital posting of this thread and decided to leave this site. I won’t be logging back into this website but before I left, I wanted to say one last thing. Take a look at the world around you. Look at the sky, all the trees, every living and non living creature, and all the people. Whether you can admit it to yourself or not, human hands could not have created everything we see. Something must have created the earth we live in. And that is God, and that is the truth. The truth is still the truth, even if no one believes it. Stop focusing on trying to prove that God doesn’t exist and trying to discredit all he has ever done, he won’t change. I hope and I pray that so many of you will either turn or turn back to God. He knows all that you have ever done, every wrong thing you have spoken about him yet he still loves you. It’s never too late to turn to God, and the first step is believing. Everyone of us will stand before God one day, period.
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Are you fucking kidding me? Yet another person in the last few days that is a "christian" and has a lame excuse to come to an atheist forum. "I wanted to meet and talk to a variety of people to understand why they believe in what they do."
Well, there's your first mistake sister. Atheists don't believe or hold beliefs. Apparently, you assume that we "believe" that there is no god. That would be factually incorrect.
Here's another red flag:
"I wanted to create a thread was to gather information for a study I am doing in my college biology class. Our assignment was to pick a human behavior and evaluate why people choose to perform it."
Holy shit!!! I mean HOLY SHIT!!!
An assignment like that would come from a SOCIOLOGY class NOT A BIOLOGY class. So it is apparent that that is a lie.
As for your survey:
1) If that takes 2 minutes for anyone to complete that they would have to be mentally challenged.
2) The survey is so small just about the only thing that you could actually gather from it is a percentage of people that claim to be christian. I don't know what your sample size will end up being, but if it isn't in the millions, it cannot be even close to accurate. It would be like asking 3 and only 3 people if they were christian. If 2 said "yes" then from that sample size I could say that 1/3 of all people are not christian. That would hardly be a realistic or accurate measure of the truth.
Where the fuck do all you christians come from and why do you come here?
I understand people that want an honest exchange of thoughts but I doubt that is why you are really here.
I believe that from time to time some fucking ambitious youth minister gets what he/she thinks is an original idea and sets a bunch of teenage to young adults to think of clever ways to "save" atheists. I'd bet you are one of those people.
Like I said, your question couldn't be from a credible college biology class because it is a sociological question and has ZERO to do with biology. So I don't even believe that you are even in college, let alone doing research for a college class.
Why don't you just do us all a favor and confess to who you really are and why you are here?
Hi mykcob4 (: well that got you pretty heated but I hope you got everything off your mind and said everything you had to say. I am in college, I am doing this for an introductory biology, and since I'm a Christian you can assume that that's the truth since I wouldn't lie but I'm not here to convince you of anything. You are entitled to your own opinions and can get angry with this post if you want but speaking person to person, I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk to me like garbage and assume things about me when you don't even know who I am. And in regards to why I am here, this site is primarily for atheist but since you all are supposed to be welcoming and this is a place where anyone can freely discuss anything, I thought I could do the same. No Christian is trying to save you guys, nor are we trying to save anyone else. We obviously know that God can only save people. And once again, since I am a freshman in college, I don't plan on writing a dissertation anytime soon on why people worship God so asking 7 questions on a survey to get a general idea is enough. Regardless of any offense you tried to bring to me with your post, I'm not offended. Have a nice day (:
@safari
What a crock! No biology class assigns its students to do a study of social behavior. That is a sociology study and has nothing to do with biology. You say that you and no christian is out to "save' anyone. Now from personal experience on just this forum, I know full well that is a lie. As for the way I address you, I will talk to you in any manner I choose. If you don't fucking like it, you can ignore it. Welcome to the real world missy. Angry? I am not angry. Sick of christian bullshit, sure I am.
As for your feeble little survey, it isn't worth a damn thing.
And BTW there is no "god" to save anyone.
Now 'fess up and tell us where you are REALLY from and why you are REALLY here! Tell us what religious organization sent you here and what "mission" they tasked you with.
Lol, you "understand people that want an honest exchange of thoughts".
Don't take the survey, It is deeply flawed and you can already guess what she is going to do with the information. WE know that many [most?] atheists were at some point theists. But the questions are not framed around (a) when you were a theist or (b) when you were an atheist.
Example: Even if you are an atheist, have you ever prayed to god? The real answer is:: sure, when I was a theist I prayed but of course not as an atheist... but of course THAT was not an option
I can agree that I should have added that as a choice but there was a place to comment so if that's what you wanted your answer to be, you could have wrote that. I'm not a mind reader nor can I guess everyone's reasons for believing or not believing in God. I'm sorry that you didn't like the survey.
@safari
It's NOT a survey! It's a push poll.
Example of a push poll:
I could ask you if your parents ever caught you masturbating in the closet.
Your immediate reaction/answer would usually be "no".
In return, I would say "good hiding place"!
I have just affected an answer from you that I wanted which was to get you to admit to masturbating.
That sister is a push poll.
That is exactly what your little survey is. You are trying to solicit predetermined answers. That is intellectual dishonesty.
Hahahahahaha what a bunch of bullshit... " I don't know anything related to science yet I'm in a college biology class! Why does the teacher keep giving me an F on every assignment!!"
1) what does every living thing have in common?
Answer:
GOD
F-
" I don't understand???!???"
Oh and after reading that you left the site... bye bye
@ safari er uh I mean god is love
Oh did your feelings get hurt? Too fucking bad. You tried to pass off a stupid christian push poll as a "biology class" assignment. We aren't as stupid as you fairy tale believers.
Oh and the "look at the sky...." and all that crap is an illustration that you aren't in a college that deserves any credit. That is if you ARE in college. My guess is that if you are in school it is a christian brainwashing institute.
BTW we don't "try" and disprove god. We just point out that NO ONE has proven ANY fucking god.
I knew all along that all you wanted to do was proselytize and here you are doing exactly that. What a surprise and shock to you that immediately I and most of the people here recognized you for what you are and what you were really up to. So instead of coming clean, you pout, whine, bitch and moan, just because NOBODY believed you. Boo Hoo!
There is no fucking god. Look around you safari. There is NO evidence of a god whatsoever.
I believe the reason humanity worships GOD is because it fills a emotional need of theirs, They want to give thanks for a special favor that has been given to them and so they worship god, I`ve seem people who are in a musical mood stop to worship god by song while others give money as a form of worship. People who have experienced good fortune like healing have been known to worship god.
And mentally ill mass murderers have been known to worship god as well:)
yes that is true but were they true worshipers? look at the culture look at all the heinous atrocities that people commit against one another. some are not religious and don `t worship GOD as personnel savior.There is alot of god with god worshipers that never make the headlines.
@God is Love: "human hands could not have created everything we see"
Who on Earth believes that?
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful
Evolution made them all.
evolution can not account for conscience and things like beauty art mathematics morality, if you say evolution then what about the cambrian explosion.there is not since lifes inception a continous fossil record. to you fossils is incomplete.i
@devout christian: "evolution can not account for...."
Evolution can account for all of the things you list. Conscience and morality are essential to the survival of human communities, both primitive and modern. Art is an expression of self-awareness, which arose through the evolution of our brains. Mathematics has its roots in the skills needed for hunting, gathering, and agriculture. There are Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon skeletons with evidence of serious, disabling injuries that have healed, which means that those people were cared for and fed while they recovered.
Of course the fossil record is incomplete. Very few plants and animals were fossilized, and many of those were lost through erosion, volcanic eruptions, etc. I don't know why creationists have latched onto the Cambrian Explosion as evidence of their nutty theories. It might look as if species suddenly proliferated over a brief period of time, but it actually took around 20 million years. The Cambrian also saw the appearance of many creatures with hard body parts, resulting in a surge of fossilization. The Cambrian species didn't just appear out of thin air.
Evolutionists, paleontologists, and geneticists have produced a vast body of evidence to support evolution over the past couple of centuries. Christians have produced not one scrap of evidence for creationism over the past two millennia.
Christianity gives you a very narrow field of view.
This true, nor does evolution claim to account for consciousness, all it claims is how there is such a diverse selecltion of life. How and where consciousness cones from is a totally different subject which their are teams of scientist worldwide looking into that very question, and I can almost guarantee that the answer will be more wonderous than anything we could have dreamt of. But just because science doesn't hold the answer yet, doesn't give you the right to to fill the knowledge gap with you deity, a magic man in the sky with absolutely no proof is not an acceptable answer. "I don't know" is a perfectly reasonable and truthful answer, but not acceptable. If it were acceptable we'd stop looking for the answer.
But you don`t answer you address briefly that conscience and morality are essential to our survival of human communities, tell me then where did conscience and morality derive from? if where just naturalistic where did we get these non physical components from, if not by a higher power? if everything is physical then there is no explanation on how we develop non physical entities.So you really haven`t addressed it fully.
If you truly consider it. The morality handed down to moses is very limited in it's scope compared to what we know today about human behavior and what is the right thing to do. Was the unimaginable suffering during WW2 ok with the morals of the god of the bible? It sure seems as if that was so. I do realize you can now say........well...the suffering on earth is nothing compared to the reward you will receive. You pretty much have no concept of suffering. I guess you could call that a blessing.
Wow, you truly believe that humanity, around a lot longer and well in advance of any god-construct and religion thereof, was incapable of the innate intelligence to comprehend and integrate itself into its world without the steering mechanism you choose to call the work of your god? You are a mightily handicapped ponderer resolutely captivated by your god abstract.
You have beneath your efforts a chorus of voices from your collective to give you strength and some feeling of credibility. This gives you the bulk of your sense of purpose and a distraction for the doubts you bury deep and shroud in hope. Atheists understand the religious meme that has engulfed your thinking. To that mercy we tolerate you as we tolerate any other person or group who become absorbed into theism's ranks. You must understand that we come from those ranks. We did not make atheism up. We did not create it from thin air or to effect some sense of devilry theism quickly condemns it as.
We did not rebel from theism.
We thought our way out of it through knowledge. Knowledge of the world as it has been chronicled in man's historicity from all across the global populace is within our scope of internet vision. It is up to us as responsible persons to know from whence we came and how our behavior has been modified by it throughout time immemorial. We read past the god-constructs as man's cure-alls for his fears of the unknown. We're far beyond theism's attempts to call us back to their god-arenas and challenge our dismissals of their claims. That kind of interaction is unworthy of the little time we have to look forward for truth rather than rest on ancient, unproven and woefully archaic philosophies some men continue to burden themselves with. You should really rest yourself from your current efforts to preach to those who have preached before you, and yet preached their last.
consciousness evolved out of love and loss. But where did love come from? It came from loss. Where did the feeling of loss come from? It came from losing something you became accustomed to having.
@Devout Christian: "where did we get these non physical components from"
What non-physical components? Everything you think, feel, believe, remember and experience is in your brain. Instead of fretting about imaginary immortal souls and other rubbish, you should enjoy the real creative power of the wonderful mechanism between your ears.
Are you suggesting that conscience and morality didn't exist before people started to believe in Jehovah? You'll find plenty of morality in the writings of the ancient Greeks, the Chinese, the Babylonians, etc. Confucius created a highly evolved moral system, including the Golden Rule.
What message do you take from Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon skeletons showing signs of injuries that have been treated? They tell me that people have always had morality and conscience, because without those things we can't live in communities. Where those people Christians?
how about the soul and the spirit these aren't physical entities.I`m of course not saying that conscience and morality didn`t exist before Jehovah but it was thru our first parents adam and eve.That was placed there by almighty Jehovah, I`m not disputing when morality and conscience came to be all I`m saying is that it came from GOD. and of course you don`t and avoid the question on how we have spirit and souls.
@Devout Christian: "avoid the question on how we have spirit and souls"
I'm not avoiding the question. We don't have spirits and souls. You're the one who suggested that we do.
"Our first parents Adam and Eve" --Are you serious?
Morality came from god? Is this the same god that murdered all the first-born sons in Egypt and urged his iron-age followers to murder, rape, and torture? Some morality!
Oh for cryin' out loud.
Morality comes from society, not any god. This has been explained even to you the first time you were here. You can't prove a soul so that part if your argument is a non-starter.
You can't prove a spirit, again, a non-starter.
You can't prove a god....non-starter!
You can't prove Adam and Eve...non-starter.
Also, you claimed that all those murders were not really christian. I beg to differ. Billions were murdered in the name of god for the glory of god. The Crusades, the genocide of native Americans, Fucking WW II, the murders and forced conversions by Charlemaign!
....St Bartholemew's Day massacre, 30 Years War, Spanish Armada, the burning of Jan Hus and William Tyndale, the massacres in Rwanda (nuns and priests charged as war criminals!). All of these atrocities were committed by real Christians in the name of their imaginary savior. Shame on the whole sorry lot of you.
You have confused created things with naturally occurring things. Most of us have the ability to tell the difference, Trees, naturally occurring. People, naturally occurring. Animals and plants, naturally occurring but sometimes manipulated from natural substances by man. Buildings, created. Watches, created. Ignorance? Well, sometimes ignorance is naturally occurring and there is nothing that can be done. On other occasions it is worked on and refined.
Ok, I know this discussion is actually about some sort of survey instead of the question posed in the title, but since I clicked the link because of it, I thought to answer the question. Why would people worship God? My simple answer is this: Because they want to. If you don't do, don't. If you want to, then do.
"The mind is a garden and we are it's master gardener."
Worshipping a god is simply a cop out from being responsible for your own garden.