Welcome to the forum. Various opinions of different persuasions and intelligent discussions are always welcome.

I grew up in a very strict religious household and am an Atheist now.

Let me also point out the Kill 'em with kindness forum on here, where discussions are slightly more watered down. But for the most part, you'll find that my fellow Atheists and I are pretty civil on here.

The trolls and troublemakers on here are the only ones that irritate me. Have fun.

Welcome, RevG,

(Since you mentioned in your post, we have a forum called Kill 'Em With Kindness, which has additional rules enforced to keep things from getting 'mean'. You may want to test the waters here a bit, and if you find it too heated, you can post in the KEWK forum whenever you like.)

Re: Open theism. If I recall correctly, open theism seemed to be pretty nebulous and wishy washy, but I admit my recollection of what I heard about it is pretty vague. Could you bring us up to speed? Isn't there something about how god is not omnipotent or omniscient or something, and that's supposed to solve the problem of evil or something?

I guess my main question is: Why be an open theist instead of an atheist? What's your best reason for believing in a god?

You sound like someone who thinks or thought they were an atheist and are aware of our knowledge so you throw it out there that "I was one too"

To save you some time, It wouldn't matter to me if Dawkins or Hitchens proclaimed themselves to be Christians tomorrow, they would still have as much evidence for virgin births and zombie gods as you will have to defend if you are currently proclaiming yourself to be Christian right now.

Not that Christianity, or any religion can prove the existence of a magical invisible super brain with no brain with magical super powers.

"I was an atheist"

Is the same to me as

"I was a Muslim"

"I was a Christian"

"I was a Hindu"

I don't care.

SHOW ME, don't pontificate about ancient books or their popularity or your personal ability to masturbate over them because their gang club personally appeals to you.

SHOW ME how a thought can occur without a material process. Get your study replicated, tested and  falsified and independently peer reviewed and I will hand you the Nobel Prize myself.

I'll meet you for your findings, lets say, a week from never?

Welcome! What really gets my proverbial goat is when theists think they are better then everybody else, when clearly, we are better then everybody else

I only get mean when others get mean, and even then I try to show as much restraint as possible.  I hope you stick around, no offense but it is difficult to find a theist that can carry on a decent conversation, that's why I engage every one of them I can.  

I look forward to your posts.

Thanks for the welcome. Hey I couldn’t happen but notice your sc name. Ha ha. I owned a 57' sporster for six years! It had the original linkert DC cast alum. Carb, which was the model that S&S used as their original fuel carb, they just scaled it up x3 times! I attached many carbs in its lifetime before putting it back to nearly stock with no accelerator pump. The linkert was also used in a solid brass design for pans and such) . That beautiful black and brushed aluminum 57 had an Fairbanks Morris magneto. It was equipped with the original ‘dry clutch’ and other old school goodies, such as the awful 6 volt electrical system that I upgraded to 12 volt. Man how I miss that bike! Then I had an stroker Shovel head lowrider for quite a few years. Now I am building another custom, it’s evo but my heart lies with the old iron.

 Thanks so much for the advice. I already am delighted with the memberships candor and attitude here. Most of the time even intros are confrontational. It happens on both pro atheist sites as well as on pro Christian sites. I personally believe that the expression of ‘unsolicited’ kindness is a sign of higher intellect.

I am not a true Open theist which has a definite set of rules etc. The system has been pretty much discredited by mainstream religious scholars. However, I use the term to donate that I am a very liberal Christian, ie I do not bash homosexuals or believe in a burning hell nor do I stand on a soap box ministering to the masses using a burning hell to extort membership to the Christian movement. I truly detest certain TV evangelicals as minions of Satan, especially those that ask for money for a spiritual favor, those parasites are criminals of the soul and of the Christian faith. Only priestly pedophiles are lower in my estimation. Sorry for the rant, I am so heartbroken and yes, angry at those minions.

Anyway~ I have scriptural back up for what I believe for without it I am no better than a charlatan. I think deeds speak louder and are more believable than words, so I use the humanitarian missions to do my ‘preaching’. A ‘truth or a message of love’ does not have to be screamed or threatened, it’s better proven as truth and accepted or at least considered if it’s ‘whispered‘.

Oh my ha ha, is that a straw man? Hee hee.. That question will open a can of debate worms and we should start a thread I suppose, but I will attempt a short answer; The reason I am a theist and not an atheist is three fold at least. First, ‘science’ convinced me several ways that what we call God exists. I think the universe needed a reason or a cause to begin to exist, and for me, personally I found that an intelligent designer was a better answer than I don’t know or one of the alternate scientific theories such as the metaverse (ie up to infinite parallel universes). Second I had a NDE, (near death experience) where I ‘met’ ‘God’. Yes I am aware of the dangers of assuming that those are due to everything but meeting God, but you had of been there ha ha! Third is life experience.

Personally, I feel that why universe exists instead of nothing fairly demands a ‘cause’.

Thank you for your reply and expressing interest in my beliefs, I am also curious about your thoughts and various atheist concepts etc. I love these forums but they are kind of restrictive eh? I look forward to discussing these issues with you and the members here.

Oh CJ I forgot, I am from East Tennessee I guess. I was born in an airplane as my mother and her family were coming from France. When we arrived we traveled all over the USA and some of the world, my father worked for an international service group, but he loved East TN as do I and I spent most of my formative years here and in Coca Beach FL where Dad worked at the Cape.

There is no 'atheist' paradigm.

Atheists are notoriously varied in their ideas, apart from that single feature of a lack of belief in anything that could be called a 'God'.

You are simply and demonstrably wrong there - or are you seriously suggesting I share some identifiable set of beliefs or world-views with Stalin or Pol Pot??

Atheism is an aspect of, a consequence of, some actual world-view, such as 'free-thinking', skepticism, or maybe one of a range of philosophical or political ideologies, or at the other end of the spectrum, a simple lack of concern for ideas of ultimate origins or philosophies of any kind. It may be a starting point, for some people, but that can lead into any of a range of directions, because it doesn't come with any doctrine. So no, if you take up 'paganism', you simply adopt a belief, after a period of not having that category of belief. No matter how you express it, there is a clear difference between adopting a religion, which, to be meaningfully so described, has some specific set of doctrines, unlike atheism.

Atheism imposes far fewer constraints on what kind of world-view one can extrapolate than any religion. You are still free to adopt a moral code exactly the same as any religion, or even all the rituals, IOW, to still attend the church, because you simply like the experience. There are atheists who have done just that, because of the direct moral or aesthetic appeal of the ideas, or the rituals, independently of any Theistic 'justification' of them. Maybe an atheist can practice all the rituals of 'paganism'.

Don't extrapolate your experience to all 'non-believers', that is a fallacy.

'Practicising positive atheism?' So you went around specifically attacking religion? Or just consciously rejecting religious ideas?

I have never taken any religions seriously, just gradually came to see the emptiness of the God concept more consciously as I grew up.

I now see the 'God' meme as having no merit, logically, rationally, morally...

I don't use anything as an 'authority' as such, that is more a feature of the religious mind-set. I refer to, listen to, read, people who seem to have established a 'track-record' of coming up with interesting ideas, ways of finding patterns, pointing out patterns and resolutions of puzzles that hadn't occurred to me before. I then incorporate the most useful concepts into my own 'tool-set'. Even people I have only heard briefly have helped me form a new way of seeing, or presented an argument which has really made sense to me.

You appear to be drawn to something about religions. Is it the idea of a 'higher power'? Genuinely curios.

BTW, I am just over 65, my pic from when I was a youngster of not quite 61...

'Epistemology' is primitive and muddled - Me.

On those points we agree.

When I first became an Atheist, it was primarily due to my anger with much of the behavior of religions and various things in the Bible.

While I still have many issues with the behavior of organized religions (not just Christian religions either) I realized one day, that I no longer believed in god, simply because I had never really seen any evidence of one.

Right after I left organized religion, I toyed around with Buddhism for a little while, got disenchanted with it, and moved into this type of New Age stuff.

This was in my early 20's.

I chased around so-called haunted houses and ghosts, looked for signs of extraterrestrials, read on all that astrology stuff, etc. (I am sure you get the idea).

But at the bottom of all of my searching and all of my looking, I never found any evidence for the existence of any of it. All I found were alot of people that were hoping to find  SOMETHING.

BUT, I found much joy, much wonder and many amazing things in science.

I found in science, the missing gap that religion had never given me.

That is a little of my background anyway.

  Welcome! WELCOME with your background you are most welcome and rare and welcome. You can comment on other religions while still citing prohibitions like Deuteronomy 17's covenantal 'transgresses', among which, forbidded the worshiping of the Sun, the moon and the other created things.  Activity can be at a stand still, then someone new comes along. I conclude you coming is alright with me, you simply have no idea how rare a fellow you are.

>
 

I have been wrong before, many times! However I think this is more of an misunderstanding than a error. For example; Christians, Buddhists, Pagans, etc are also varied in their beliefs, still it would not be inaccurate to say that they embraced a Buddhist paradigm, a Christian Paradigm etc. Maybe posting the definition of ‘paradigm’ I was using will clear this up? Paradigm; 1. typical example: a typical example of something 2. model that forms basis of something: an example that serves as a pattern or model for something, especially one that forms the basis of a methodology or theory.

Yes and no. I can not comment on your political moral ethical or other views. I assume you are a good moral ethical person just like most atheists I know. However you do have a lack of belief of God just as Pol Pot or Stalin did (allegedly). If it makes you feel better you could say that I being a Christian have some of the same beliefs that the inquisitor had! Ha ha. Just for fun I Googled ‘define atheist paradigm and got 1,210,000 hits!

Still I think its accurate to say an atheist has an atheistic paradigm if and I clarified it her simply means a world view or the person is an non believer. A paradigm as I am using it here is simply the way the ’user’ models his view or reality etc, not as a strict guideline with unassailable parameters. A atheistic paradigm in the way I envision it could accommodate all atheistic beliefs with no constraints. I see it as a liberating term actually.

Yes I agree. However an atheist could go to church and I would welcome all! However one couldn’t be an atheist and a traditional Christian simultaneously.

I agree and know several people who claim they are atheist Christians.

I think you have me confused with someone else, unless you can point out where I suggested something like that.

No, that is not positive atheism, or not the way understood it ! Here this the definition is fairly close to what I beleived, however just like open Christian theism is not perfectly accuate neither is positive atheism to describe how I understood it, but this is close ; Definition: Positive atheism is defined as the positive that claim no gods exist or the denial that the claim "at least one god exists" is false. This definition of positive atheism is often confused with the definition of atheism generally but that is a mistake; the definition of positive atheism is a subset of atheism generally and closely parallels related terms like strong atheism. The term positive atheism appears to have been first used in this sense by Antony Flew at least as early as 1976 and has become common in philosophical, scholarly writing on atheism and theism. Positive atheism is in fact far more common among philosophers than related terms like strong atheism, but strong atheism is more common among laymen and popular writers.

http://atheism.about.com/od/Atheist-Dictionary/g/Definition-Positive-Atheism.htm

Going by what you said, (above) most physiologists would say that you used yourself as the ‘authority’. That is you assess the facts and trust yourself to be the best judge of what is truth and what is not. I don’t want to generalize but can say that most secular humanists and atheists either use self or the state as the ultimate authority. Most religious/spiritual people us God. Its not too difficult to understand the why of either of those assessments is it?

To be honest with you what began to tug me away from atheism was science of all things. Usually science and learning pulls someone away from spiritual beliefs because those beliefs are seen as primitive backwards etc by the scientific establishment. There is a rise of spirituality and science especially in cosmology and particle physics (quantum physics more than classical physics). It’s not that atheism wasn’t sophisticated enough, personally I could not square with the idea that the universe coming from nothing. The current theory ie the big bang is now being challenged, however before the current challenges, it fairly demanded that the universe began to exist. So if it began to exist and did not exist eternally (as Einstein thought) something had to cause the universe to begin to exist. Our physics can only take us back to nano seconds after the big bang banged so to speak before they break down into gibberish. However there are arguments such as the KCA, (kalam cosmological argument) http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html a cosmological argument, that uses logic, science and observation for evidence to suggest that the universe must have had a ‘cause’ to begin to exist. And this cause, had to be eternal/atemproal and be capable of making a universe to begin to exist, and not simply any universe, one that can support life. I am getting a bit deep, so I will leave it there for now.

I hear 65 is the new 40, personally I feel like crap physically having broken most of my bones racing my Harley* against the police one early AM when I was about 42 years of age.. ha ha…that was some time ago but man, broken bones hurt progressively. However they really saved my life, because it wasn’t much later that God told me he had been trying to reach me and finally had to do something drastic to save my real life!

*I was also an airborne ranger (101st fort Campbell KY) in training and blew out a knee on my first static jump, so yes pain is my friend~

Thanks for your reply, I hope to have the time to begin some threads to discuss these issues in more detail.

RevGodapriori,

it may not surprise you to hear that I disagree fundamentally with pretty much all of your comments there, but it may be best at this point to take the issues into new separate threads as you suggest.

I have stuck to the non-motorized cycles, and it seems to have only been positive as to my current health and fitness status...

There is zero warrant for assuming any first cause need be anything but the most infinitesimal quantum twitch, so KCA proves nothing about anything of interest.

Quantum mechanics point away from the spiritual, except in the minds who misunderstand the 'observer effect'.

I often marvel when I hear believers attribute God as having intervened to save their life in some way after some serious accident or disease.

My reaction is first, he would have had the power to stop the bad crap happening in the first place, so that is already problematic. And if it was some kind of test, or a shock designed to encourage you into taking him seriously, why has he left me, a life-long atheist, who regularly curses and blasphemes his name, encourages others to treat the idea with similar disdain, to pursue a quite fulfilling life into a healthy 'old age', without any equivalent trauma?

Apart from an incidence of potentially life-threatening appendicitis in my early twenties, although there was little suffering involved, thanks to a decent government sponsored health system and modern surgery.

Seems to me I have adopted the better strategy. I certainly would not want to be punished with an after-life in the presence of such an inherently evil entity as the Christian/Islamic God.

Anyway, I will watch out for any threads you care to start, to get into detailed discussion of these issues.