Why are people afraid of atheism?

[plain 12]

Sorry, I just thought of you as a "Sally". Is that sexist? heehee

[WASaBubbleButt 41]

I really feel God has laid it on my heart to let the atheists posting here know that He loves you very much and will welcome you with open arms at any point in your lives. I know by saying this right now, it is likely that none of you is interested, and you even think me foolish, but I need to put it out there in case at any time in your lives you have a change of heart. There is nothing God wants more than to have a relationship with you and have you in His family and there is nothing you have done or could do that He won't forgive.

Again, I say this knowing I am opening myself up to ridicule, but also knowing that there are many famous (and not-so-famous) former atheists (like Anthony Flew mentioned above) who have changed their opinions about the existence of a deity or of God Himself. So I know change is possible, even if not right now, at this point in your lives or at this point in this thread :tongue2:. You are loved more than you could possibly know.

You know, Gidget, I've been looking for a reason to block you and this is as good as any. Would you be open to my comments if I wrote that we will welcome you with open arms if you want to join us in atheism?

Tell you what, you pray for me, I'll think for you, then I'll block you because between the young earth routine, you lost all credibility with me. Today you lost my respect.

I'll think for myself, thank you and good bye.

[plain 12]

You know, Gidget, I've been looking for a reason to block you

Wow...really? Just looking for a reason?

[WASaBubbleButt 41]

Wow...really? Just looking for a reason?

Maybe a better way to say it is that I was looking for justification. Not that I need it really, but after the young earth thing I realized that too many times I read posts around here and hear the theme song to Twilight Zone running through my head and enough is enough.

Personal opinion, but sometimes it is a waste of time to read posts that are kinda far out there. Time is limited in this life and reading bizarre posts means I never get those minutes back again. Unproductive minutes are wasted minutes. ;o)

[brandyII 9]

Sorry, I just thought of you as a "Sally". Is that sexist? heehee

I do look more like Sally but have more of a Linus personality and even still have my blanket!

[Fanny Adams 7]

I really feel God has laid it on my heart to let the atheists posting here know that He loves you very much and will welcome you with open arms at any point in your lives. I know by saying this right now, it is likely that none of you is interested, and you even think me foolish, but I need to put it out there in case at any time in your lives you have a change of heart. There is nothing God wants more than to have a relationship with you and have you in His family and there is nothing you have done or could do that He won't forgive.

Again, I say this knowing I am opening myself up to ridicule, but also knowing that there are many famous (and not-so-famous) former atheists (like Anthony Flew mentioned above) who have changed their opinions about the existence of a deity or of God Himself. So I know change is possible, even if not right now, at this point in your lives or at this point in this thread :tongue2:. You are loved more than you could possibly know.

I hate to burst your bubble, but Anthony Flew has not become a Christian. His statements about becoming a deist have been twisted by a number of Christian writers to mean something far more than he has ever said:

Extracts from Wiki's Anthony Flew article

On several occasions, apparently starting in 2001, rumours circulated claiming that Flew had converted from atheism. Flew denied these rumours on the Secular Web website.[5] In 2003, he signed the Humanist Manifesto III.

In December 2004, an interview with Flew conducted by Flew's friend and philosophical adversary Gary Habermas was published in Biola University's Philosophia Christi, with the title Atheist Becomes Theist - Exclusive Interview with Former Atheist Antony Flew. Flew agreed to this title.[1] According to the introduction, Flew informed Habermas in January 2004 that he had become a deist,[1] and the interview took place shortly thereafter. Then the text was amended by both participants over the following months prior to publication. In the article Flew states that he has left his long-standing espousal of atheism by endorsing a deism of the sort that Thomas Jefferson advocated ("While reason, mainly in the form of arguments to design, assures us that there is a God, there is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or for any transactions between that God and individual human beings."). Flew states that certain philosophical and scientific considerations had caused him to rethink his lifelong support of atheism.

Flew's conception of God as explained in the interview is limited to the idea of God as a first cause. He rejects the ideas of an afterlife, of God as the source of good (he explicitly states that God has created "a lot of" evil), and of the resurrection of Jesus as an historical fact though he has allowed a short chapter arguing for Christ's resurrection to be added into his latest book. He is particularly hostile to Islam, and says it is "best described in a Marxian way as the uniting and justifying ideology of Arab imperialism."[1]

Journalist Mark Oppenheimer suggested that Flew, then 84 years of age at the time of Oppenheimer's statement, has been suffering from a mild form of senile dementia for at least three or four years.[6]

Reaction and response

Flew has subsequently changed his position given in the Habermas interview as justification for his endorsing of deism. In October 2004 (before the December publication of the Flew-Habermas interview), a letter written to Richard Carrier of the Secular Web, stated that he was a deist and also said that "I think we need here a fundamental distinction between the God of Aristotle or Spinoza and the Gods of the Christian and the Islamic Revelations.".[7] Flew also said: "My one and only piece of relevant evidence [for an Aristotelian God] is the apparent impossibility of providing a naturalistic theory of the origin from DNA of the first reproducing species ... [in fact] the only reason which I have for beginning to think of believing in a First Cause god is the impossibility of providing a naturalistic account of the origin of the first reproducing organisms."

In another letter to Carrier of 29 December 2004 Flew went on to retract his statement "a deity or a 'super-intelligence' [is] the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature." "I now realize that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction." wrote Flew. He blames his error on being "misled" by Richard Dawkins, claiming Dawkins "has never been reported as referring to any promising work on the production of a theory of the development of living matter".

The work of physicist Gerald Schroeder had been influential in Flew's new belief, but Flew told Carrier that he had not read any of the critiques of Schroeder that Carrier referred him to.

When asked in December 2004 by Duncan Crary of Humanist Network News if he still stood by the argument presented in The Presumption of Atheism, Flew replied he did but he also restated his position as deist: "I'm quite happy to believe in an inoffensive inactive god". When asked by Crary whether or not he has kept up with the most recent science and theology, he responded with "Certainly not", stating that there is simply too much to keep up with. Flew also denied that there was any truth to the rumours of 2001 and 2003 that he had abandoned his atheism or converted to Christianity.[8]

A letter on Darwinism and Theology which Flew published in the August/September 2004 issue of Philosophy Now magazine left the world hanging when it closed with, "Anyone who should happen to want to know what I myself now believe will have to wait until the publication, promised for early 2005, by Prometheus of Amherst, NY of the final edition of my God and Philosophy with a new introduction of it as ‘an historical relic’."[9]

In an interview with Joan Bakewell for BBC Radio 4 in March 2005, Flew rejected the fine-tuning argument as a conclusive proof: "I don't think it proves anything but that it is entirely reasonable for people who already have a belief in a creating God to regard this as confirming evidence. And it's a point of argument which I think is very important - to see that what is reasonable for people to do in the face of new evidence depends on what they previously had good reason to believe." He also said it appeared that there had been progress made regarding the naturalistic origins of DNA. However, he restated his deism, with the usual provisos that his God is not the God of any of the revealed religions:[10]

[MacMadame 81]

Hi, Macmadam, What caused you not to believe in God anymore?

When I was younger, I was full of wonder and a lot of the world seemed magical. Surely that couldn't have happened without a creator?! But as I grew up, I began to learn more about how the world works and realized that I was just being naive. My wonder came from lack of knowledge. Which is not to say I don't have wonder any more, but it's a different kind and not one that leads me to "feel" the presence of a Higher Power.

Then I decided that even if there is a God, you have to do good for goodness sake and not because you want to please him or because you fear him. Also, whether is a God or not, I see no convincing evidence that there is an afterlife. I think when you die, you die.

Once I realized it didn't matter if there was a God or not because believing had no impact on my behavior, I began to see the world more clearly and realize that the very idea of a Creator is flawed. It was all based on feelings and not on logic. If you can't get a system without a creator, then you can't have a Creator without a Creator. There can be final Creator --it's like looking at yourself in a mirror with a mirror behind you -- each mirror reflects the image in the mirror into infinity.

I think what Glouc was trying to say is that religious belief is a very personal thing. For many Christians, it is what defines their lives.

All people's beliefs define their lives. How could a person's beliefs not define them?

For many people, insulting their beliefs is saying they are stupid. Calling people stupid is an insult and it's not an impersonal one. Hence, they take that personally.

To me this whole "when you insult Christianity you insult my very core but when I insult atheism, it's no big deal because it's not personal" discussion reminds me of the previous "you can't be moral because you don't believe in God" discussion. It's equally annoying and misguided.

[brandyII 9]

I'm hoping this thread will end too, please if there is a God let this thread end. If there is no God then let it end also!!!!

I did crack up though when I heard the name Gidget instead of Gadget, maybe I'm up way to late but it made me :tongue2:

[willbefine 2]

I didn't used to believe in God, then I had my daughter. Then, NOT believing in God seemed as illogical to me as believing in God had once been. I could not look her in the eyes and deny that she had been perfectly and wonderfully MADE. It became, for lack of a more eloquent word or phrase...obvious. Although I'm sure I will be accused of mistaking my an emotional experience for a spiritual experience, it really wasn't very emotional at all. I just knew. And it was like, "Damn, how could I have missed this!" Now, of course I learned in philosophy, my freshman year in college, that you can't PROVE God. I'm not that great at debating, so I won't even try. But just out of curiosity, where do you guys stand on the idea of intelligent design? I once heard a comedian say regarding evolution, that he just couldn't believe that because a trillion years ago, some lizard grew legs and crawled onto dry land, that NOW there's a guy named Lou hailing a cab in Brooklyn(tee he he)

By the way McMadame, suggesting that Gadgetlady and perhaps all other believers are not "grown up" was unecessary and rude . Whereas some believers have no doubt, extended an invitation to you to believe based on a "you're going to hell" platform, her invitation came from a place of genuine belief and a desire for you to experience God the way that she (we) have. Shame on you.

[willbefine 2]

In High School, the quarterback(while drunk) once told me, "If you lost weight....I'd do you". Although he was cute and popular, I knew he was trash, and I didn't want or like him before and certainly not after the comment he made. I was 17 and still trying to work up on my first kiss(had no interest in letting anybody "do" me.) But it still hurt.

He is in jail now(tee hee hee, tee hee hee hee)

[willbefine 2]

oops, posted this in the wrong thread

tee hee hee

[Fanny Adams 7]

But just out of curiosity, where do you guys stand on the idea of intelligent design? I once heard a comedian say regarding evolution, that he just couldn't believe that because a trillion years ago, some lizard grew legs and crawled onto dry land, that NOW there's a guy named Lou hailing a cab in Brooklyn(tee he he)

All the arguments I've heard from the Intelligent Design proponents centre around the "impossibility" of the complexity of life arising by chance. However, the calculations used to demonstrate that impossibility are seriously flawed. This site succinctly summarises the logical flaws in the "impossibly complex" argument: Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations

Every so often, someone comes up with the statement "the formation of any enzyme by chance is nearly impossible, therefore abiogenesis is impossible". Often they cite an impressive looking calculation from the astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, or trot out something called "Borel's Law" to prove that life is statistically impossible. These people, including Fred, have committed one or more of the following errors.

Problems with the creationists' "it's so improbable" calculations

1) They calculate the probability of the formation of a "modern" Protein, or even a complete bacterium with all "modern" Proteins, by random events. This is not the abiogenesis theory at all.

2) They assume that there is a fixed number of proteins, with fixed sequences for each protein, that are required for life.

3) They calculate the probability of sequential trials, rather than simultaneous trials.

4) They misunderstand what is meant by a probability calculation.

5) They seriously underestimate the number of functional enzymes/ribozymes present in a group of random sequences.

The site gives a very good layman's overview of how abiogenesis is not just "not improbable" but is actually "extremely probable".

[gadgetlady 4]

You know, Gidget, I've been looking for a reason to block you and this is as good as any. Would you be open to my comments if I wrote that we will welcome you with open arms if you want to join us in atheism?

Tell you what, you pray for me, I'll think for you, then I'll block you because between the young earth routine, you lost all credibility with me. Today you lost my respect.

I'll think for myself, thank you and good bye.

As I said,

I say this knowing I am opening myself up to ridicule

.

Nevertheless, I'm sorry you felt my statement an insult, worthy of loss of credibility, worthy of my being blocked, etc. Those are the decisions you choose to make and are wholly up to you. I stand behind my statement and will continue to do so. And if you wrote that you would welcome me into atheism with open arms, I certainly wouldn't denigrate you or block you. I would accept them as the feelings of a person who truly believes what she believes. I wouldn't agree, but I wouldn't condemn you for your beliefs, challenge your credibility, or deem you not worthy of respect.

[gadgetlady 4]

I know change is possible because I used to believe in God... then I grew up. :tongue2:

I wasn't a Christian . . . until I grew up.:thumbup:

[gadgetlady 4]

I hate to burst your bubble, but Anthony Flew has not become a Christian. His statements about becoming a deist have been twisted by a number of Christian writers to mean something far more than he has ever said:

I never said Anthony Flew became a Christian. I know he did not. He went from atheist to theist, becoming convinced that the world around us had to have a designer. I did discuss this in a previous post as well. Specifically, what I said tonight was (emphasis added):

that there are many famous (and not-so-famous) former atheists (like Anthony Flew mentioned above) who have changed their opinions about the existence of a deity or of God Himself.

Anthony Flew did indeed change his opinion about the existence of a deity. He is not a Christian, and I never claimed he was.