A fundie explains why people don't believe in God

[formergothardite]

I went through their blog and it doesn't look like they are used to having people disagree with them. At least they are allowing comments that question them, so many fundies don't.

[infooverload]

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

I think there are a lot of people out there who fall into this mindset, but will not admit it. For a lot of people I think they just say I'm Christian because it is easier and doesn't require as much explanation.

[MrsYoungie]

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.

That story really made me angry. So sorry your kid and you didn't get to feel all warm and fuzzy because the homeless lady didn't cry and fall at your feet for a bunch of stuff she never asked you for. If you want to really help the homeless - don't judge them (the man OCDing over his possessions) just give to the local shelter or volunteer there. You'll really have a learning experience.

Also - if you give them money you don't get to tell them how to spend it. If the only joy in their life is a bottle of cheap hooch, then that's their life.

[MissA]

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

Honestly, this wasn't even a thing for me. I was bought up Catholic and my first exposure to the words "Allegory" and "Metaphor" were given to me by a nun who was teaching us about the book of Genesis. I can imagine it would be tougher for those who are "bible literalists" but honestly I think that they have far worse philosophical issues to deal with like the fact that the character of God, as given in the bible, is deeply ambiguous. You can go your whole life not stressing about dinosaurs but you have to decide whether to love thy neighbor or smite him on a daily basis.

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

Some "sins" are fun. Many are not if you have even an ounce of empathy. And the argument that the fear of a wrathful God is the only thing keeping everyone from raping and murdering all over the place has made me *very* suspicious of the characters of the people who claim that.

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

Well, yeah, honestly.

4. The extremes. Life either became so comfortable that you took all credit, or became so uncomfortable that you believe if there was a God He couldn’t possibly exist.

Quite the opposite. My life has always been quite comfortable despite my not being particularly deserving. Again that pesky empathy kicked in and I started wondering why I, upper-middle-class American white woman, got so much of the pie when so many others got so little.

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

This one makes no sense at all but honestly sounds like a call to go crusading.

[Pearl]

Don't ya just love it when other people tell someone how they think and why they make those decisions?

Really, that just gets to me.

How would this blogger know why people "reject God?" The only person this blogger really knows about is himself. He should STFU. The self-satisfaction and smugness just oozes from this list.

[Jezebel]

I am horrible at debating people who make posts like this, so I don't bother.

Well, as you've pointed out, these people aren't interested in debate in the first place. Personally, I don't find their arguments worth engaging in the first place (at least not on their turf, where they have moderator powers).

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.

I honestly don't recall when I was first taught about evolution. What I do know is that by the time I learned about it I'd already decided that God (at least the Christian one) was as made-up as Santa and the Easter Bunny, and that even if he was real he was too horrible and cruel to worship.

I remember having a toy ark, with animals, and when I finally learned the story behind it I was horrified. And I do mean horrified--I was already an animal lover, and that God would willingly drown innocent animals, rather than just deal with the people who were bad, deeply upset me. Other aspects of Christianity, the qualities attributed to God, and the idea of eternal punishment made no sense to me at all.

By second grade I refused to pretend to believe in God, or go along with group prayers. I stopped including God when I said the Pledge of Allegiance (and refused to say the Pledge at all by fourth grade). And I came to these conclusions on my own, despite what adults told me. My parents were what I'd call secular apatheists, who didn't care about religion and left me to figure it out on my own. And neither I nor my two siblings ever looked at Christianity and found it remotely believable. I think my brother's an outright atheist, and my sister and I are agnostic theists.

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

Most of the actions and behaviors I enjoy performing aren't sins (though many Christians try to make them such). Others I enjoyed turned out not to be so enjoyable over the long haul, and when I realized they were dragging me down or causing me harm, I stopped doing them. Still others that seemed like they'd be enjoyable turned out to be stupid, hurtful, and cause for shame and regret--so I never did them again.

To sin is to miss the mark. That's literally what it means; you take aim at a target, let your arrow fly, and it misses. Knowing that, I can't exactly get my hackles up at being called a sinner--because we all are going to miss the mark, sometimes. We're all going to be foolish, unkind, angry, jealous, and irresponsible. But to enjoy a pleasurable activity that neither harms myself nor others? It's not a sin, no matter what it is.

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

No "sort of." It makes perfect sense--which I cannot say for the arguments for your God's existence, or the validity of the Bible as more than a collection of Bronze Age legends and folk history.

4. The extremes. Life either became so comfortable that you took all credit, or became so uncomfortable that you believe if there was a God He couldn’t possibly exist.

[i lost the second sentence there, and thus the meaning of the statement; edited to fix.]

I've had ups and downs. The overall trend of my life has been toward comfort and affluence, but I did have a hard time of it in my early 20s (alcoholism, drug addiction, a brief period of homelessness after I cleaned up, and a couple of years of serious poverty). I've had disappointments, heartbreaks, and upheavals, alongside successes and causes for joy.

I've had plenty of chances to reassess my belief in the Christian God--especially during my four years in AA and NA, when belief in a "Higher Power" was considered mandatory, and there were strongly Christian overtones in the literature and discussions of what this "Higher Power" would supposedly do for me. And the answer kept coming up "No." I kept myself clean and sober the entire time, despite being told I'd end up drunk again because I was an atheist. I finally left because I'd heard enough magical-thinking, faith-healing bullshit--usually thrown at me by people who couldn't stay sober, or get their lives together despite long-term sobriety.

My life has had plenty of extremes, as well as periods of calm. And through all of those periods, and everything that has happened to me, my unbelief has persisted. And it's done so naturally, with no effort on my part.

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

I'm trying to make sense of this word salad. I think what it refers to is the idea that the capital-T Truth of the Bible has been robbed of its power by cultural relativists claiming that while certain laws and commandments made sense to the desert nomads who originally recorded them, they do not apply to life in the 21st century. Also, the idea that the Biblical narratives made exrensive use of allegory, mythic symbolism, and metaphor, and were never meant to be taken literally, really gets fundies' knickers in a twist--Biblical literalism makes it much easier to pass harsh judgment and eliminates the need to think too hard about what the text might mean.

Which I guess really means the writer thinks that strict, authoritative Biblical literalism and inerrancy would make a convincing case for Christianity, and that mythopoetic, cultural-relativist, historically contextualized interpretations are why there are so many atheists. Or maybe they don't mean that at all, but since they can't write for shit, I'll just throw it out there all the same.

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.

For me, it was never a matter of wanting the God of the Bible to be in illusion--I simply recognized that he was. And it wasn't a matter of wanting someone to prove he didn't exist--his existence seemed utterly improbable (to the point of impossibility) from the start.

I'm willing to believe in a divine intelligence at work in the universe. But the petty, cruel, vindictive, and all-to-often powerless God depicted in the Bible is hardly a likely candidate--he's just too human, and a rotten human at that. If there was a supreme deity, I would expect it to be so vast that we as humans could not possibly comprehend its majesty and power. We probably wouldn't be capable of recognizing it, much less understanding it, much less knowing its will.

[dawbs]

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

It's for Christians who believe in evolution.

It is interesting.

It actually, however, does kinda seem to teeter on the edge of creating a link between a facet of science and a facet of religion. I think that's setting things up for failure.

I'll have to mull it longer to put it into words well, but using the Bible to 'prove' evolution or evolution to 'prove' the Bible is rife with pitfalls. To many things can change.

I mean, centuries ago, people used the Bible to 'prove' the earth was the center of the universe. On the flip side, people tried to use the Bible to 'prove' the Sun was the center of the universe. Both were wrong, because the center of the universe is 1-unrelated to our solar system and 2-unrelated to the Bible. Creating links, even to something that was closer to the truth, between Bible and the science, just results in creating dogma that is not conducive to either, when the science makes the sorts of advances that science is eventually going to make.

[emiliawasframed]

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.

I'm not sure that a lot of believers in Christianity would disagree with you on that point, or would say that it's a bad thing to want those things. That's pretty much the definition of faith found in Hebrews 11, no?

[Effie]

How about linking her to an interview with an atheist? Like this: http://thesweethummingunderground.blogspot.com/2012/11/interview-with-atheist_27.html (Not breaking link cause I know the person wouldn't mind.)

I think we should all live in accordance with our thinking. I can't un-think my thoughts or ideas. My non-belief is a result of my reasoning. I can't choose to disbelieve it, just like many believers can’t choose to disbelieve in a deity. I can’t find the idea of a God to be convincing, no matter how much I want it to be. It must be a very comforting thought to believe you have some kind of god looking after you and giving your life meaning. I envy that. I wish I could have that. Instead I have to live with my existential anxiety and the disappointing ‘reality’ that my life is completely insignificant in the vast world. If I could change my own belief system, while still remaining true to myself, then I would. At this point I would have to deny the conclusions and understandings I have come to, in order to be able to believe in a deity. A belief in a deity simply goes against my thinking.

[formergothardite]

Well they have replied and said that it is impossible to be a Christian and believe in evolution, don't judge them because they aren't perfect just a work in progress :roll: , they told the commenter L.M. "welcome" in quotes like that, don't think they were really meaning it :lol: , they are highly educated :roll: , that it takes faith to not believe in God, oh, and best of all, they have PROOF!!! that Jesus happened just like the Bible said he did. Bunches of secular historians have proven that his life was real. And since Jesus was real then that means God is real because he said he was God. Take that atheist! We should all be saved now. Also, people who replied to them seemed really angry and hateful if we would just sit down with them we would all be close friends.

They did not link to any of this proof, which I would think they would have if it was really there. From what I understand, there really isn't any proof of Jesus. Nothing written during his life about a man who had a huge amount of followers or about it going dark during the day or the Temple falling apart. All those things were written well afterwards.

[SquirrelySquirrel]

Awwww, the poor widdle darlings feel bullied. Yet I can't even find a comment that is remotely angry and hate-filled. I guess intelligent responses are just too much for them to take without pulling out the martyr card.

[formergothardite]

I didn't see the anger either. There was a couple of cuss words, but in the context of the posts it wasn't hateful. Maybe there was some deleted comments that were filled with anger, but disagreement isn't hate.

[SquirrelySquirrel]

I didn't see the anger either. There was a couple of cuss words, but in the context of the posts it wasn't hateful. Maybe there was some deleted comments that were filled with anger, but disagreement isn't hate.

I doubt there were any that were worse. The one said to "take off the gloves" to the person who dared to ask if they were going to bother to respond to any of their comments.

[formergothardite]

They didn't respond to any of the ones explaining why they don't believe in God. It is like if the reasons weren't on the list they made they are going to ignore them. I don't get the "take off the gloves" comment. No one really seemed to have fighting gloves on. They started this, said they wanted atheist to read it and respond and then acted upset when that actually happened. Did they really think an atheist was going to read that and suddenly say, "Oh wow, I'm going to believe in God!!"

[lizziesmom]

Since it seems like the mantra for fundies is never to disagree or encourage different points of view, they are spectacularly unprepared to respond to someone who doesn't say 'amen' to everything they say. It seems really stupid to me to post this topic inviting responses and then cop out.

[formergothardite]

Since it seems like the mantra for fundies is never to disagree or encourage different points of view, they are spectacularly unprepared to respond to someone who doesn't say 'amen' to everything they say. It seems really stupid to me to post this topic inviting responses and then cop out.

I think part of it is that, despite all the claims that they have debated atheist, what they have really only done is listen to Ray Comfort debate atheist, and he just sticks to a set script and talks over people. It is harder to do that online. The replies they were expecting were not given, so they don't know what to do.

[debrand]

I answered and am happy that the owner at least let my response remain. It doesn't surprise me that they ignore responses. She couldn't retain faith if she allowed any questions about the truth of her faith.

[formergothardite]

So instead of answering individual comments, she has made a whole blog post to reply. She is basically just writing the same stuff without addressing the points people made. Not shocking at all.

Part of seeking the “truth†included examining morality in a world of no absolutes. How easy it is to look at the world and point out the bad in others while thinking “I’m good, I’d never kill someone or torture a baby so don’t call me bad.†Yet if anyone of us had every thought, every urge, every desire, exposed to the world I don’t think one of us could walk away without our head hanging in utter shame. Jesus perfectly lays out our condition, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). We are spiritually dead, separated from God until He gives us new life, makes us a new creation through our acceptance of His grace and love given to us through the death of Jesus Christ.

Some of my thoughts would be embarrassing, but there really isn't nothing too horrible up here in my head. I don't really fantasize about killing and torturing people. When I read about a particularly evil fundie I will sometimes think that I want bad things to happen to them, but logically I would never really want that. I can't remember who said it, but someone here said that the best punishment would be for them to realize the horror of how they have treated children and have to live with that every day. And I agree with that and I'm not ashamed or going to hang my head about it. I don't think that most people are desperately wicked. I think that most people are nice and kind, but that doesn't make the news.

My search for the truth challenged me to examine myself and the world I lived in. A world of subjective truth, moral relativity, and self indulgence. A world where my happiness and success reigns supreme no matter the cost to others. A world where simultaneously all roads lead to god, I can be god, and where god doesn’t exist. Yet, the truth doesn’t work that way. The truth is absolute and exclusive. Truth is truth no matter how bad one may want it to be otherwise

I don't believe my happiness and success reigns supreme no matter what the cost of others. Neither do most people. The point about truth always being true, well I'm to say what another person said in the comment section of one of her posts on absolute truths. Stealing is not always wrong because if you say that then you are saying that the Jews who stole food to survive were wrong. Killing is not always wrong, because if you say that then you are saying the people who worked in the concentration camps and killed the children who were being experimented on so they would suffer and be tortured anymore were wrong. Lying isn't always wrong because if you say that then you say that the Jews who lied about who they were wrong. Life isn't black and white, a lot of it is shades of grey and most people are capable of figuring out that stealing your neighbor's flat screen TV is wrong but stealing food when you are starving and people are trying to systematically kill you isn't. There are some cases in which stealing, lying, killing are the right choices to make.

Recently a few people commented that believing in God was just as logical as believing in the Greek gods. None of the Greek gods claim to be the way the truth and the life, none of them so accurately point out the condition of our hearts.

The God of the Bible doesn't point to the condition of our hearts either.

Some argue that Christians use circular reasoning to prove the existence of God, yet no other world view (belief system) hinges its credibility on its ability to write the future. Bible prophecy is not vague, its specific even predicting the day when Jesus would enter Jerusalem on a donkey proclaiming Himself king. Almost 1/3 of the bible is prophecy, much of it already fulfilled. For centuries skeptics claimed much of the fulfilled prophecy was written after the fact because it was so specific. However, this was disproven when the dead sea scrolls, written over a hundred years before Christ, were discovered. See a previous post IS THE BIBLE TRUE?

I always thought those prophecies were a tad vague even when I was a Christian. And I thought it was debatable if all/most of them have been fulfilled?

Yet, when we acknowledge “evil†we acknowledge “goodâ€, and when we acknowledge the existence of “good & evil†we accept that there is a moral law by which to differentiate. A moral law by which man abides. The existence of a moral law requires a moral law giver. When we say there is no God, we eliminate the moral law giver and implicitly good and evil no longer exist. They become subjective ideas within a culture/society. In some African countries girls between infancy and 15 years old are subjected to female genital mutilation which often involves removal of the genitalia which has no health benefits and is detrimental to the girl.

How about this, you just don't hurt other people for fun. You don't treat women as less than men. You don't treat children as object that you collect and then hit because they are born wicked.

Yet intrinsically the very fiber of our being tells us that rape, murder, torture, etc…are wrong.

Yes, most people are born knowing this. They don't need the Bible to tell them that these things are wrong.

Given the logic of an existence devoid of God why would throwing my newborn child in a trash can or flushing her down the toilet be wrong

Because you are unnecessarily hurting another person?

How can we say that the holocaust was evil if there is no moral law, if we are just the product of random unguided processes, what value do we have if our very existence was mere luck in a universe of chance and no real meaning?

:roll:

[Trynn]

I love how quickly it always goes to the holocaust...

[formergothardite]

These people really think that people without God are just running around plotting to murder, rape and steal. I don't think that refuting arguments used by atheist has worked out the way they thought it would.

I haven't studied Greek gods in a long time, but I thought that they had human characteristics like anger, jealousy, love to show where humans got them from? So Greek gods sort of reflect the nature of man, except on a bigger scale. Do I have this all wrong?

[Arete]

No, you have it right about the Greek gods. They very much reflected the human condition. Their main charge vis a vis the world was to check human beings against hubris. Other than that, they really didn't care much for Homo sapiens. :lol:

[SquirrelySquirrel]

I don't think I can go back again. Why do so many think that admitting they'd be rotten, horrible people without religion is a good thing? How can they not see that they are saying they are morally inferior to every atheist out there who hasn't murdered someone? I see it all the time and it never fails to make me chuckle.

[rward]

For the record, I'm an atheist buddhist. (40% of Buddhists are atheist.) The Buddhism part is just because I love His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Seriously, feeling down? Check out his twitter feed, @HHDL. He puts more love and empathy in 140 characters than most people do in a lifetime of talking. I aspire to be like HHDL, though I fail miserably most of the time.

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

We didn't get into evolution until 5th or 6th grade. I think that's fairly standard.

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

Oh, honey. I grew up Catholic, and terrified of Satan and Hell. TERRIFIED. I cannot tell you what those concepts did to a socially awkward, anxious, emotionally abused child. I would sit up at night convinced the Devil could hear my terrible, terrible thoughts and would drag me to Hell at any moment. I was 6 at the time.

As for today, sin is irrelevant to me. Harm is what I'm concerned with. How are/can my actions harm another? Will not harming this person cause greater harm to another, or harm to many more people? (i.e., if I don't stand up against fundamentalists and hurt their feelings, am I condemning more people to fundamentalism?) That concept guides me in all things, or that's the goal anyway. My choices in dog training, fighting with my husband, donating money to charity, recycling, eating meat all connect to this goal of not doing harm, or doing the least harm possible.

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

Yeah, actually it does, but to be honest with you, I always knew. Those were the terrible thoughts I was convinced that Satan would come for me for. (That and hating my emotionally abusive father.) It made no sense. I am a creature of logic and pragmatism and I always have been. On the plus side, I rawked college philosophy classes, on the negative side, I figured out the whole God, Santa, Easter Bunny things pretty quickly.

4. The extremes.

Here, I'll just repeat the OP: 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.

Exactly. Every time some fundy crows about god finding them the perfect dress, all I can think of are all the little girls that were being raped right at that moment. All the dogs stuck in puppy mills. All the homeless people freezing through the night. All the dying, suffering, screaming people and this asshat gets a dress? Fuck off.

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

Ah, yes, the only truly true truth. And this person knows it. :roll: Come back to me in 20 years, darling. Feel pain and loss and wracking guilt and then tell me you know everything you need to know.

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 want to believe. I do. I always did. I want a god who loves me and will care for me forever and thinks I'm such a special little flower, but that doesn't make it true. I don't believe in fantasies and fairy tales because it'd be nice. If you're going to do that, stop mocking people who roleplay Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. You're no different.