Welcome fullarmor2.  I'm a former fundamentalist Christian who accidentally lost his faith.  At any rate, I appreciate that you seem to embrace a more compassionate theology than the average Christian.  Hope your stay here is enjoyable for you.

Welcome Fullarmour2. I was raised a fundamentalist then became a Catholic, and after much study became first a skeptic then an atheist. So, you never know, since you already have departed from fundamentalism perhaps you are on the road. In any event, welcome and I hope your enjoy yourself here and learn more of us.

 I'm a little confused. If you're not into religion, how do you get to the Christian part from "maybe a creator makes things complex."   That seems to require that you're buying the whole virgin birth, miracles, resurrection hullaballoo.    (Instead of mere deism.)

If you buy "creator" why not Odin or Ra? Why Jesus?

Back where I used to live, even as an atheist I attended a Universalist Church. Universalists tend to be very open minded, but just like many humanists atheists, also tend to be politically correct.

Having said that, it is always nice to meet people who aren't bible thumping bigots.

ALSO, having said that. Just to warn you, this sight contains blasphemy and blunt criticsim. You will find some people here have library type conversations, while others, like me, don't mind the verbal boxing ring. ALWAYS keep in mind that we are all individuals.

As to your movement to Universalism from fundamentalism. You have the same thing in common in your core belief that ALL people in history, from polytheism to monotheism. To believe that "someone" created everything, you have to believe in a brain with super powers and no material brain, no neurons, no cerebellum, that floats out there every where and nowhere at the same time, meddling in the affairs of humans.

The Egyptians thought the Sun was a thinking being for over 3,000 years and they were wrong. What makes you think you escaped the same flaw other cultures now and in the past have not? Did it ever occur to you that what went into all this was the result of a WHAT(natural process) and not a WHO(invisible brain with magic powers)?

In any case, glad to have you here.

 Hello, I decided to write to you because you remind myself of me. I was a hardcore baptist, went through a fundi stage as well. I recognized organized religion for what it was so I decided to break away from the baptist scene and I started attending mostly Non-Denominational churches. Later I decided that there was nothing in the bible about going to a church every Sunday, so I decided to spend my Sundays doing the lords work out in the streets where it needed to be done most. I witnessed to homeless folks, and bought them food, bibles, cloths, all that jesusE stuff. I think breaking away from the beliefs I grew up with was the first major milestone in my enlightenment. I see you have broken that first milestone of no longer accepting what your parents forced on you. You are questioning and it is a good start. Most religious nuts do not even consider questioning. Only advice I can give you is never stop questioning. Never have anymore blind faith. Even after I admitted to myself I was an atheist I still researched things like evolution, Big Bang Theory and did not accept them simply because most atheist do. Your whole belief now is basically a "God of the Gaps" theory. You can't explain something (complexities) therefore you assume it must be a god. I am not closed to the idea of some type of creator, but I do not assume that creator would even have to be a god. Something else that helped me was this little saying. I can't remember where I heard it, but it was something like this. If we only know 1% of everything there is to know about the known universe think of how much we don't know, and probably can't comprehend. Just educate yourself as much as you can. ok, its late. peace. 

PS

I know my grammar and spelling suck. Sorry. 

Hi, welcome to the forum!

Not sure why you need a Creator for that.

      Wow.  Thanks for all the responses.    I look forward to explaining where I'm coming from at this time in my life,  and to hearing your responses.

Nice to know you got away from Taliban style thinking, but you are not out of the woods yet.

I only speak for myself, and keep in mind, that there is a difference between my blasphemy, which you will get an earful of, and YOU the individual. So when you read my responses understand that I am attacking your claims, not you. I cannot judge you because I don't know you. That is a different story than having the ability to demonstrate what one claims as being credible, ON ANY GIVEN ISSUE, not just religion or god claims.

NOW, here comes my core criticism of ANY deity claim, not just yours.

There ARE many reasons atheists have for rejecting the idea of a god. But the best one I know of is simple. EVIDENCE. Thats it. There is no evidence. There is no way to replicate or falsify deity claims. Thus there is no credible reason to take them seriously.

To swallow a god claim is to believe that an invisible immaterial magical super brain with super powers exists. Call it Allah or Yahweh or Osirus, the concept is the same. A non-material invisible brain out there somewhere with no brain, no body, no neurons or cerebellum, meddling in the affairs of humans.

The concept is absurd and has no basis in reality.

NOW, here is what we do have in reality that we can prove.

We can prove time after time throughout history, that humans want to believe in these super heros so bad that they perpetuate these myths. Early gods were earthy, like volcanos and weather patterns and animals. That lead to language evolving and then the oral tradition with humans creating human like gods, then onto the written traditions of polytheism and now popular monotheism.

People believe in deities, not because they are real, but because they confuse their sense of awe for a god existing along with the ignorance of not wanting to accept their finite existence. If you can accept that neither Thor or Isis existed a billion years ago, what makes you think Jesus or Allah or Vishnu will exist 1 billion years from now?

  Well first,    I started rejecting it about two years ago.   I started thinking about all the things which make eternal torment doctrine  senseless  or illogical .  But, it was not just a logical thought process that I had which caused me to change.    I just could no longer view people like that.   As hell bound. Its not right. When I view people around the World I have compassion for them. I want them to be well.  So,   its like my thinking just vomited up et doctrine and could not take it any more!     Also I recognized that an extreme concept of punishment like that is not consistent with an intelligent God of love(not easy to do when your told to just believe it, and your not suppose to understand it),  who was smart enough to create. But not intelligent enough to have an appropriate justice system?  Come on.     I would think things like "why would God create and allow humans  to be in this  problematic World  where God knew they would make mistakes,  with the intention of destroying them when they do"?!     If there is a God this is impossible.  An intelligent God would know what to expect and would have a better plan than that.    

   Now,  in addition to that I discovered that  what I had was just a theological system. And there are other ones!  I didn't have to stay  with one that makes no sense to me. A theological system  is simply how you understand/interpret the bible. AND how it all fits together.(or what ever religious book you use)   I don't believe the bible is perfect anymore.   I think it reflects the imperfect people who wrote it.   But I also believe it has the message of universal salvation running through it from Genesis to Revelation.    Thats due in part to the fact that I discovered this other theological system which understands the bible this way, but i've seen the sciptures they use, and they teach it.     Part of the reason why I embraced this way is because I think that if God is really there,  God would have a plan to ultimately help everyone.    And my  new system   uncovers   this in the bible.    And I found out that there really are hundreds of scriptures that say, in different ways,  that all people are saved.  And all the punishment scriptures are referring to temporary correction is all. Which is what you would expect from an intelligent God.    And the word "hell" is not even in the bible.   Its a mistranslation from Hebrew and Greek words which have totally differnet meanings!    Another thing I will say to folks who believe in eternal punishment is "why would God tell you to love your enemies, while God intends to roast and toast enemies forever"!?    

Do you really think that a baby popped out of a girl WITHOUT a second set of DNA contributing to her egg? Isn't it more likely that humans like the idea of purity and invented a religion with a super hero who was born of a virgin? If you do some research you will find, THE MOTIF, of avoiding the vagina via sex, is not a new MOTIF to Christianity and that prior pagans claimed their heros were born out of a pure mother.

And while we are at it. EVEN IF a man named Jesus existed, it would still not make the fantastic claims of the bible true. Most people accept that the earth isn't flat, and as such they SHOULD accept that the earth is billions of years old and was not created in 6 days.

All one could prove, and it is still debatable that a man named Jesus existed, is that a man existed, it still wouldn't make claims of magic true. You can see Superman flying around in NYC in the movies but that doesn't mean that Superman is real. It would only mean an actor playing super man was real.

I can find morality in Star Wars without believing in "The Force". I can find morals in Harry Potter without believing that boys can fly around on brooms.

WHAT makes much more sense is that humans have always had a history of projecting their own desires of super heros on the world around them. The first gods were earthy, like animals and volcanos. Later gods became polytheistic and more human, then we progressed to modern monotheism.

If you can accept that the sun is not a thinking being, which the Ancient Egyptians falsely believed for 3 thousand years as a thinking being, then you should be able to accept that there is no such thing as a magical invisible super brain, with no brain, no body, no neurons or cerebellum, floating out in the cosmos, everywhere and nowhere at the same time, meddling in the affairs of humans.

No it is not hard to answer why you believe what you do. You are merely answering that way because of your history and your own wishful thinking. You believe in a god merely because the idea appeals to you.

Please understand that many here, including me, used to have those same intense emotions that gave us a false sense of a god based on our mundane human psychology of wanting a placebo to fill in the gap.

Seriously. Do you really want to believe that a brain, with no brain, with magic powers, floats out there everywhere and nowhere at the same time? Does that seriously make sense to you? Or could it just be the idea appeals to you?

"Why would our species evolve to believe such things if there was no god?" BECAUSE WE ARE FLAWED!

Our species evolved to seek out patterns. OUR FLAW is that we didn't have the answers from the start and more often than not we insert a bad guess into the gap. Our evolutionary hiccup is that we default to gap answers more than we actually seek answers. We are slowly outgrowing that attitude, but not fast enough as far as I am concerned.

Again, you are allowing your natural sense of awe get to you. If you think the universe is the result of a thinking being with us in mind, then go take a space walk and take your helmet off.

YES our universe is amazing, but their is FAR MORE DISTRUCTION than production. Are you also going to atribute cancer and flesh eating bacteria to your "higher power"? How about child rape or child cancer? How about 200,000 men, women and CHILDREN drowning in a tsunami?

If you want to claim a "higher power" you can. But if we are going by that "higher power" model for argument's sake only, I wouldn't want to worship such a prick. That would be like thanking Kim Jong Ill for not killing me because I didn't question him.

If you were my kid, and I put you in a house full of razor blades, broken glass, asbestos and ecoli, would you thank me, or be pissed at me?

HERE IS REALITY. From the time we are born, to the time we die we are subject to all sorts of risk, from crime, to disease, war or disaster or even a car accident, much less the same risk that WILL eventually get us that got the dinosaurs. Something WILL eventually get us as individuals,  AND eventually as a species.

When you insert a "higher power" into the mix it becomes a horrible and repugnant thought. That something that COULD prevent harm to us sits with folded arms like a child playing with army men in a sandbox.

WHEN you take out fictional super heros as an explanation it frees you up, not to live forever, but to look for ways to maximize the good and minimize the harm by OBSERVING nature, both the things that benefit us, and the things that harm us.

I find it demeaning to reality to fill in the gap with such petty concepts as a magical being. Just like you would find it demeaning to Edison if someone claimed that Thor made the electricity for his light bulb.

Which is the mistake YOU make, and believers in Allah make, and believers in Vishnu make, and the same mistake that the Egyptians in the sun god ra made.

YOU START with a naked assertion. A history of making claims is only a history of making claims. A history of passing down claims to the next generation is only evidence of successful marketing.

BINGO, and that's were your problem is. You can like the idea all you want. You can claim the idea all you want. What you don't have, that no person in human history has had, is evidence of an immaterial, magical super brain, be it the Sun, a volcano or your god. I'd suggest you think about why you reject other people's deity claims to understand why we reject your claim as well.

What is wrong with "WHAT" being the answer and not a "who"? Has god belief stopped cancer, or desease or war or crime in our species history? No.

But when we left the caves and were no longer afraid of the shadows, when we challenged accepted norms, we came up with things like neurology, computers, space travel. And all those things exist without a particular label or god required to accomplish those advancements.

IT IS a mess and it IS temporary, but there is no life after death just as you didn't have a life before birth. Can you imagine what life was like before you were born? NO, so why would life be any different after you die?

Why not stop insisting that that reality has to have a magical interviener and accept that we are merely a product of nature and are products of evolution and luck. Our luck will run out, but this is it, this is all there is and that doesn't frighten me in the least.

What is so horrible about accepting a finite existence? When your flowers die or a tree dies you don't pray that they go to a plant heaven or hell. Plants and trees are temporary and so is the sun and our planet. Get over it. There is no purpose to human existence other than what we as individuals make it. But we are not special to the planet or the universe. Those things will exist long after we go extinct, and even those things as well, will die too.

Belief in god only exists because of human flawed thinking. God(s) did not exist 4 billion years ago and they wont exist when the sun expands and fries our planet, but our species won't even make it that far.

Instead of making up gods because you like warm fuzzy feelings, accept reality and your finite existence and work toward better thinking and better logic. I find the world much more awe inspiring now than I did when I did believe in a fictional friend in the sky.

The sun's formation, a black hole, a gamma ray are all amazing, but also destructive. I find a kitten awe inspiring too. But I don't let my brains fall out because I find them cute. I also look at a lion and tiger and a house cat and it is blatantly obvious that there is no magic in their common ancestors.

Yes and no.

Yes I am saying that NO CURRENT CLAIM OR PAST CLAIM IS CREDIBLE. I'll call bullshit on anything past or present, polytheistic or monotheistic, or even generic. We know what a human brain looks like. We know what neurons are. What we don't have is evidence of an invisible version of such. You don't have evidence that Vishnu doesn't exist. You don't have evidence that Allah doesn't exist. But how much weight do you give those claims just because someone utters them.

But as far as the future, who knows? I think proving a "god" would require scraping all current and past claims and starting from scratch. But that is pointless because you would still have to start with a naked assertion. So I would default to a "technical" admission of "I don't know" as far as the future, but I am not going to hold my breath waiting for that "evidence".

If I claim that I have an invisible snarfwidget, you have no way of disproving it. But you don't dwell on that. So unless I come up with evidence for this invisible snarfwidget, only a fool would say, "Yea it could be possible". 

"All things are possible" is the core flaw of thinking of humans. Uttering a claim is not the same as demonstrating the credibility of a claim. The concept of any possibility of an invisible non-material super brain is absurd. So as it stands now, I take the default position of no, currently from our understanding of what material constitutes a brain capable of thought, combined with what we know about how brains work, and what we know about the history of humans making bad claims, when you take into account the totality of all this, no, a god cannot exist under our current understanding of nature.

AND AGAIN, you keep inserting "creator" as the default position. A hurricane is "created" by climate, water temperature and environment. Those things under certain situations "create" a hurricane. Why do you insist that life, or the universe has to have a humanoid creator with magical powers? If you can accept that a hurricane is natural, then an atom an quark are no more dependent on magic than a hurricane is, thus evolution AND our universe CAN be a product of a WHAT and that there is no need for a who.

Stop inserting a "who" in the gap. That causes more problems from a logical standpoint than it is worth. Complexity is an emergent property, not a default starting point. AGAIN, go look up "infinite regress" to understand the mistake in your logic. I would also recommend "Occam's Razor". And the fallacy of Pascal's wager".......just as a few things to help you understand where we are coming from.  And Bentrand Russell's teapot.

I think all thats true regarding  natural things.  Everything will die  or become more corrupt.  But,  I think we have spirits or a life that will never die. And will be taken care of by an intelligent God at the end of the day.       

  Now,  when you talk about different  God names,  those all just mean God to different groups of people.  For example,  Alah just means god in Arabic .    Don't they all or most just think they are talking about a creator?

   No, in Universalism you don't pick and choose.   Its an entirly different system of theology.  How the bible is understood and how it all fits together. They have good explanations for all those hell verses you mentioned.   They don't just ignore them.  They explain all those types of passages.  Its the most logical way of  understanding the bible from a religious perspective,  that I have ever seen.   Brian was right.  Universalist are open minded,   I'll go further,  they are way more reasonable than mainstream religion or anything I've seen that is religious. You know? 

       We think it will be a new and better World.  And that no one will be excluded.  Although people will go through correction.  And because people will see that God is really cool person,  not as was presented by false religion,   people will be pleasantly surprised.   It will all be real , not relgious.   I think religion has everydodies image of what a creator/god  would be,  distorted.  I think thats why you think it would be horrible.  What if God REALLY is love?

Because he/she/it does not do something now,  does that mean God is not there?  Not nescesarily I don't think. He/she/it  might have a plan we don't understand yet.

But you picked Universalism because it's what's convenient for you. You weren't motivated by a god of fear and punishment, so you picked Universalism because it can conveniently explain away those nasty verses that talk about eternal torment. Right?

So religion is just convenience. You'll become an atheist if you find this to be more convenient. Convenience is everyone's god, myself included. Why continue to pretend anything else?

Glad that you agree with me. So lets move on.

YOU, there is a God.

ME. No there isn't, there are merely people who like the idea of a god.

Here again is a list I think you should know, even theologians know this stuff. I don't think they debunk this list very well at all, but they have more than I have seen from you in this thread.

1. Infinite regress

2. Occam's Razor

3. Fallacy of Pascal's wager

4. Bentrand Russell's teapot

forgot this also

5. Law of probibility

For starters..............................

........................................................

Go work on understanding those in that list. Even if you don't agree with me after reading them, you should have an understanding of where atheists come from.

Being nice is no more impressive than being mean. Both are natural human actions.

I don't know if I'd be arguing semantics with you, but I don't like this analogy. I agree that believers have a placebo out of convenience. But I think good use of logic and method is not convenient, but a requirement, even when inconvenient.

I am not an atheist out of convenience, but because logic dictates it.

     I exaggerated  when I said its all about that.  its just important.  Your right.   The most important thing is being right.        Now I never made a decision to believe in God.  I grew up that way, as you folks say some of you did.     So what it is, is I'm not sure its right for me to decide I'm not going to believe. ( And I understand thats not anybodies intention here, to change the other,  although thats ok if you think it would be a positive thing I guess. . We are just talking.)        Because I think its not unreasonable to think a higher power was involved.     I did drop many of my mainstream beliefs.  I saw reason to.  I  saw no support for them or worse.  AS far as my belief in God's existence, which is one of the many religious beliefs I had, thats different,  I view God as  the creator,  and that can be presented as a reasonable belief.  Unlike eternal torment.  I stopped believing that because I realized it nuts.   That didn't happen regarding my God , in general as creator,  belief.  You know?

  I

        Science does not disprove a God/creator though.   And some scientists  agree that the idea of a creator is not unreasonable.

Don't you think its possible to make it work in an intelligent manner?   Without hurting nobody ?  Some scientists believe in a creator for example.

    Transponder use to ask me how I get from there to  my christian perspective though.   Thats a good question.    But I'm not say all of Christianity is right.   Truth is where you find it.  I'm finding some here on this forum.  I'm sure it can be found in a whole host of places.      Maybe there is only no justification for going past being a deist to religion,   and being a deist  alone is fine and reasonable.  Without religion.