A fundie explains why people don't believe in God

[formergothardite]

I am horrible at debating people who make posts like this, so I don't bother. But this blogger asks atheist to respond, so there might be some members here who want to. I know there are plenty here who can, but people like this are often like Ray Comfort in that they respond to what they think you should have said instead of what you actually say so it is worthless to try and interact with them.

 

misunderstoodgod.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/5-reasons-why-you-dont-believe-in-god/

 

Anyway here are the five reasons you don't believe in God:

 

1.You were taught since you were in elementary school that evolution is true.

 

The opposite is true for me. I was taught since birth that evolution was a lie, even though we could see it happening.

 

2.You found out pretty quickly, that there were actions and behaviors that you enjoyed performing. Sin is fun

 

I realized that actions and behaviors that I had been taught were wrong and harmful were not actually wrong and didn't hurt anyone. If something hurts no one how can it be a sin?

 

3. What other people say about God’s non-existence makes sense, sort

 

There is no sort of here, what I have discovered myself and what I have heard from others about the history of the Bible and the creation of the modern day Christian god made me start to question the existence of god.

 

4. The extremes.

 

Yeah, any sort of god that lets children get raped while giving Miss Raquel a horse and the twins a dress is a shitty god and not one I want to believe in. If he is real, not sure why anyone would want to spend all eternity with him.

 

5. Truth has been misrepresented as relative, and now its become subjective and unreal

 

I have no idea what he is going on about here.

 

His rebuttal for point number to is here:

 

misunderstoodgod.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/rebuttal-reason-1-evolution-takes-faith/

 

Basically it is that atheist need to realize evolution is false and there is no proof to it. Where the Bible proves god is real and it is the only thing that makes logical sense. So there atheist.

 

He has two questions he wants atheist to comment and answer:

 

Ask yourself this question. What reason do I have in wanting God to be an illusion? Why do you want someone to prove God cannot exist? If you’re a brave soul, put your answer to this question down in our comment box. I’m curious to hear the answers.

 

I don't really want God to be an illusion anymore than I want Santa to be an illusion. If they were going to teach that Santa was real in the schools then I would want them to prove it.

[lizziesmom]

How about an atheist response where we explain to her why people do believe?

1)You were taught since birth that everything in the bible is true.

2)You take everything on faith, and accept the bad things in your life as God's punishment because you aren't a good enough Christian.

3)What other people say about there being no God makes sense, sort of, except you are so isolated you wouldn't know what other people's opinions are.

4)You think you have all the answers and are happy about that.

5)Anything that doesn't fit within your Godly view of the world is rejected.

Prove to me that God does exist, and I might change my mind.

[twinmama]

My entire answer is "it's silly." If you tell the same story but don't say it's religion, no one would remotely think it was true or that it was possible it was true. It's all fantasy and supernatural. Silly.

I think people who believe it, need to believe it for some reason. I have no need to believe it. I'm not scared of the afterlife, I don't need the comfort of thinking I'll see dead people again. I'm not going to go around murdering people if there's no threat of hell to stop me.

As for "wanting god to be an illusion"... I couldn't care less if god is an illusion or whatever. Thoughts of god don't enter my mind. Just like I don't think of big foot or the Loch Ness monster everyday. People always act like atheists are actively disbelieving in god and religion. It's just such a non-entity to me. I don't need reasons to not believe in god like I don't need reasons to not believe in unicorns or flying pigs.

[happy atheist]

People always act like atheists are actively disbelieving in god and religion. It's just such a non-entity to me. I don't need reasons to not believe in god like I don't need reasons to not believe in unicorns or flying pigs.

This.

[formergothardite]

I think Hermione said it best:

"You can claim anything is real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody has proved it doesn't exist."

I thought it was a guy writing this, but it is actually two women. And I really hope the biology teacher who tells her students that it is impossible for the universe to happen by chance so there has to be a God isn't teaching in a public school.

[Swamptribe]

It never ceases to amaze me how strongly some people associate atheism with evolutionary biology. (sarcasm on)Billions of Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Muslims, Jews and other theists who see evolution as gods method of implementing creation are just closet atheists.(sarcasm off)

One could take the time and go through this, refuting their arguments point by point, but it would be futile. I know, I've gone to great trouble correcting such nonsense in the past. Those who use such arguments don't care. Their own beliefs and prejudices are too strongly invested in these straw man arguments to let reality intrude. That is their 'truth'. I prefer to deal in facts.

There are entire websites, books and other materials out there that already refute these oft repeated fallacious argument. Many of them written by Christians.

[sparkles]

As an atheist, I have no proof that god does NOT exist. A Christian has no proof that god DOES. We believe as we do, as a result of either indoctrination or examination. There's really only one way to prove whose beliefs are correct but no one's come back from the dead to tell the tale.

[Cannelle]

How about an atheist response where we explain to her why people do believe?

1)You were taught since birth that everything in the bible is true.

2)You take everything on faith, and accept the bad things in your life as God's punishment because you aren't a good enough Christian.

3)What other people say about there being no God makes sense, sort of, except you are so isolated you wouldn't know what other people's opinions are.

4)You think you have all the answers and are happy about that.

5)Anything that doesn't fit within your Godly view of the world is rejected.

Prove to me that God does exist, and I might change my mind.

Adding on to this, and maybe this fits in with #4, but...6 (or 4a). You want it to be true. You want there to be a kind, loving person who listens to you and gives you things when you praise him and ask nicely. You want there to be something after you die, instead of nothing. So you believe because you want these things to be true, not because they actually *are* true.

[formergothardite]

As an atheist, I have no proof that god does NOT exist. A Christian has no proof that god DOES. We believe as we do, as a result of either indoctrination or examination. There's really only one way to prove whose beliefs are correct but no one's come back from the dead to tell the tale.

Exactly. I can't prove that God doesn't exist. But I also can't prove that Bigfoot isn't real. At this point I think it is more likely that Bigfoot is real and maybe they will actually find him on that show. I'm not sure how much longer they can make a show about them wandering around the woods in the dark not finding Bigfoot.

[itaintmebabe]

Although I reluctantly went along with my parents when I was young, I innately knew there was something wrong with it from a young age. (I really hated the Catholic idea of a "guardian angel" and it pissed me off to think I had one lurking behind my shoulder. I wanted to kill mine. Seriously.) You can't put it into words. It's a feeling. I guess when you get tired of all the religious BS and eventually escape, you can look at things from a perspective that you can't when you're submerged in it. There's no one point, "I am an atheist because of X..." or several points "...because of X, Y and Z." It's many, many points and experiences and feelings.

But I went through the stages like most kids do of believing in Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and God. And I grew out of all of them as all kids do. I'm just wondering why the last one is so hard for so many people, especially since "God" seems so vindictive, and the other three were pretty benign if not generous (although sometimes Santa does have that pedo vibe, ew). I'd rather believe in the other three. No one's ever used them as a reason to start wars.

[slh12280]

What next? I am seeing: what stops you from murdering/raping/stealing? And how exactly does believing in evolution mean not believing in God? There are people that believe in God and evolution. I got over the you need God to be moral thing a while ago. Please meet an actual atheist and take an ethics class or something. And to realize I used to think like this :?

[dawbs]

Know what makes my religion hard for me? having grown up in an 'all or nothing' culture of religion.

I grew up young-earth-creationist, fundie-light-to-moderate-ish. Religion has never been 'easy' for me (there are people who find faith easy. I am, for lack of a better term, jealous of those people) and when, in college, I eventually 'bought into' evolution (I didn't start out trying to fact-seek, it's just that I studied biology and the evidence kept mounting), I had a problem.

Suddenly, I had 3 options:

1-Assume that truth was a lie--that science was wrong, that my eyes deceived me and God was the sort of bastard who would bury dinosaur bones just to mess with our heads.

2-Assume that God was a lie--that I had to chuck 100% of my faith and embrace a different worldview

or

3-Assume that maybe these things weren't polar opposites and maybe it was possible to believe in both evolution and God.

I put myself into category 3, but if I ever decide to say "fuck it all" to all religion and spirituality, you can rest assured that the people who tried to force me to chose between categories 1 and 2 should have millstones around their necks.

[Diana]

Believing in God was easy when i was a child and i just believe everything that an adult says to me, then i realized what faith means and that nobody really knows if God exists. For this fundies with no contact with real world and so poorly educated is easy to believe in anything.

[formergothardite]

I see that they allow comments, it will be interesting to see how and if they answer. They seemed to feel like anyone who doesn't agree with them should be afraid to challenge them because they are so smart.

[FlorenceHamilton]

I resent the fact that the blogger lists the reasons why I am and atheist. The blogger begins with a list of assumptions about all atheists and then follows a logic trail from these assumptions, which are not true of me and are different for everyone who concludes that there is no...or that there is likely no God.

1. As a child, I was taught the Old Testament creation story before I knew a thing about science. My secular school did not introduce the topic of beginnings of evolution until middle school. We did not discuss the origin of the universe until much later. In any case, as these concepts were added to my perspective, they made much more sense to me than the bible story did.

2. I was not led in public school to believe that sin is fun. I was taught to do unto others as they would do unto you. I was taught that choosing to do hurtful or dangerous things carried risk and penalties that I would have to bear. Young people test the boundaries by breaking the rules. In the secular world, we face the consequences of breaking those boundaries in real time. I will say that I have a different definition of sin than what seems to be taught in fundamentalist homes. Mistakes are not necessarily sins and the price for making them is not eternal demnation. Willfully hurting another person is a terrible thing to do and the price for these kinds of behaviors was quite high. If I behaved in a way that was intentionally mean, I did think that god was angry with me and very bad things would happen to me. Later, I became aware that this was my own conscience.

3. I am not certain how to respond to this statement of the blogger's own doubt. I can say that as life moves forward, the idea of god as the driving force begins to make more sense, yes.

4. The extremes? I am not certain what this refers to.

5. I think that the concept of truth is not at all relative. I think that humans have limited sensory and integrative capabilitis that make it so that although we can approach the truth, but can only gather increasing evidence that it is there. Once there is enough evidence that an idea is true, we begin to treat it as truth. How we get this evidence is to test it. If in each test, the idea comes out true, that assumption is given the weight of fact. If this is tested and is found to not always be true, then we know that there is something missing from the idea and we need to search for this. When we can create reliable systems based on reliable/repeatable truth assumptions and they work so well that we trust our lives to them, then the assumtions are considered to be fact.

The misconception that Creationists have about Evolution is that they see it as an answer. Scientists see it as a process. We have identified a process to test the consistent trends in the order of living things. We test it by looking at the fossil record. The fossil record is ver clear on the macro level, just seeing depth of the layers. We confirm it on the quantum level with carbon dating. We compare patterns seen in many different areas of the earth for consistent data. We look on the biochemical level, looking at DNA samples. All of these things put together paint a very clear picture of the process of evolution. There are times that inconsistencies are found in a step or stage in the development of living things. This makes us go back a few steps and break it into smaller pieces until we clarify that particular part of the puzzle. The puzzle is still the same puzzle and the picture is very clear. Sometimes, we do try to fit a piece in the wrong spot. Enough of the pieces fit very nicely. The puzzle is very clear at this point. We have enough data to see the big truth in Evolution. We continue to contribute details.

Creationists are always asking for the "missing link" between species. According to the process, there are strings of leaks in all species with changes so tiny that it takes millions of years for a branch point to become fully clear. We find evidence of new creatures that fit in the tree at way points all the time. We also know that in the beginning of speciation, the creatures can (and do) still breed together and further blur the lines.

There are lots of religious people who undrstand Evolution well enohg to understand that it is true. They feel that there needed to be a sentiant being to direct this whole thing. Others of us think that it happens all the time on tiney levels, that is has been for millions of years and that it will go on doing so. Hopefully, himans will continue to be intersted in learning more and more details of the process.

[SquirrelySquirrel]

I can't argue with these points because they're just ridiculous. I've never heard of anyone suddenly abandoning religion because they were taught evolution. My tiny, rural public school that was 99%+ Christian taught us evolutionary theory with no religion intertwined and I'm damn certain that most of those people are still Christians. All I have to do is look at my FB feed to know that. The "sin" thing is also ridiculous because there is no proof that religious folks "sin" less than atheists. Pretty sure the opposite is true. All of it and the rest is just proof that the blogger has spent no time actually talking with atheists.

Like itaintmebabe, I knew from a young age that religion was nothing more than fiction to me. I was raised by non-believers, but they let me walk my own path and reach my own conclusions. "God" has been a nonentity to me my entire life.

[Guest Anonymous]

I really love the comment by Mags. I especially like this part:

I simply believe in one fewer god than you do. I don’t believe in your god for the very reasons you don’t worship all the others. That’s really the simplest way to explain it, I think.

I've been thinking about stuff like this quite a lot lately. A lot of the arguments that (some) Christians use against atheists and other non-believers can equally be applied to Christians' lack of belief in other faiths. I'm paraphrasing but I often hear things like: "The religious text says it's true," "This book is super-duper old, there is history, heritage, etc.," "Lots of people believe in this, can they all be wrong?" If these things really were good reasons to believe in Christianity then you would have to believe in a lot of other religions as well.

Edited: Spelling!

[RachelB]

The Partner's reason for being atheist is that he wants to make his beliefs conform to reality, not wishful thinking, in order to have a clearer understanding of the world. And, contra that "sin is fun" thing, he's trying to figure out what a secular ethical system looks like for him. (Foundational principles: he is not the only human in the world, and society needs ways to balance various people's needs and wants when they come into conflict.) I admire the intellectual rigor and courage that this process has entailed for him.

I'm a practicing Christian, though I'm sure I don't meet the arbitrary standards of this fundie's ™, and I accept the account of evolution that's supposed to be the route to Skepticsville. Also, living with a partner who does not believe in God has not turned me atheist. Instead, it has given me some clarity into why I believe as I do, because we spend time talking about things like religious belief and practice.

[formergothardite]

I just got to the part of her blog where she takes her child to help the homeless. She at least admits she went about it the wrong way, but good lord this is horrible. I feel sorry for the child because her mother put her in a bad situation and then made it worse.

Who Lord?

There was a man sitting in the middle of the park organizing his whole cart like he was taking inventory. Tediously, he was putting each and every thing he owned back into his wire basket, and periodically running his hands through his hair, once, twice…23 times! Nope, not him, honey.

Then we saw her. An old black woman shuffling slowly while pushing one cart, and pulling another. She was slightly built with plastic grocery store bags tied around her shoes with rubber bands

It ends up with the homeless lady refusing to take items from a child and giving the lady a lecture on how she shouldn't send her kid to strangers to give them stuff and how people who want to help the homeless do it in the way that they think the homeless people need help instead of how they actually need help. The lady won't take the gift and then the blogger talks about how people refuse Jesus' free gift too.

misunderstoodgod.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/feeding-the-homeless-big-fat-fail/

I have no idea why she had to tell us what color skin the homeless lady had. It was not relevant to the story at all.

[SquirrelySquirrel]

I really love the comment by Mags.

Thanks. That was my contribution. :D

[August]

I've been an atheist from well before I could understand evolutionary biology. And since the pope (FTMF) understands evolutionary theory, is he an atheust, too?

[FloraDoraDolly]

Know what makes my religion hard for me? having grown up in an 'all or nothing' culture of religion.

I grew up young-earth-creationist, fundie-light-to-moderate-ish. Religion has never been 'easy' for me (there are people who find faith easy. I am, for lack of a better term, jealous of those people) and when, in college, I eventually 'bought into' evolution (I didn't start out trying to fact-seek, it's just that I studied biology and the evidence kept mounting), I had a problem.

Suddenly, I had 3 options:

1-Assume that truth was a lie--that science was wrong, that my eyes deceived me and God was the sort of bastard who would bury dinosaur bones just to mess with our heads.

2-Assume that God was a lie--that I had to chuck 100% of my faith and embrace a different worldview

or

3-Assume that maybe these things weren't polar opposites and maybe it was possible to believe in both evolution and God.

I put myself into category 3, but if I ever decide to say "fuck it all" to all religion and spirituality, you can rest assured that the people who tried to force me to chose between categories 1 and 2 should have millstones around their necks.

You might be interested in this site: http://biologos.org/

It's for Christians who believe in evolution.

[darkplumaged]

I am basically an agnostic theist. The definition given on [link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theism]this page[/link] is essentially true of me: I mostly believe in the existence of a supreme being, but I know that there is no way to prove that any kind of deity exists, and there is no way for us to understand the nature of said deity.

I do not believe that anything in scripture is literally true. Therefore, I can believe that evolution is real and still believe that there is, or could be, a supreme being of some kind. I also think that God as depicted in the Bible may have absolutely no relationship to any deity that exists. We don't know, and we can't know. So I think that you can reject that God, if you like, and still believe that there could be a God.

[formergothardite]

I am basically an agnostic theist. The definition given on [link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theism]this page[/link] is essentially true of me: I mostly believe in the existence of a supreme being, but I know that there is no way to prove that any kind of deity exists, and there is no way for us to understand the nature of said deity.

I do not believe that anything in scripture is literally true. Therefore, I can believe that evolution is real and still believe that there is, or could be, a supreme being of some kind. I also think that God as depicted in the Bible may have absolutely no relationship to any deity that exists. We don't know, and we can't know. So I think that you can reject that God, if you like, and still believe that there could be a God.

I flip-flop on believing this way all the time. Sometimes I think that there might be some sort of god like creature who started it all. Other times I don't. But if there is a God, I don't think he is going to punish me for a lack of faith.

[Hane]

I am basically an agnostic theist. The definition given on [link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theism]this page[/link] is essentially true of me: I mostly believe in the existence of a supreme being, but I know that there is no way to prove that any kind of deity exists, and there is no way for us to understand the nature of said deity.

I do not believe that anything in scripture is literally true. Therefore, I can believe that evolution is real and still believe that there is, or could be, a supreme being of some kind. I also think that God as depicted in the Bible may have absolutely no relationship to any deity that exists. We don't know, and we can't know. So I think that you can reject that God, if you like, and still believe that there could be a God.

Thanks for this. It basically sums up what I am.