Quote from: toneyb on July 04, 2009, 04:40 AM

Very wrong analogy, You are comparing grapes to oranges. The US treasury is responsible for printing the dollars, they have acknowledged that fact and they alone have they sole responsibility of doing that and all dollars can be known to be either fake or real based on the standard that has been provided or set by them, but in the case of religion all you have are different $5 note telling you that they are the real $5 note while all other $5 are fake without any US treasury ever endorsing any of them, all they do is talk about how real they are and how fake others are, if you ask them to provided any evidence to support their claims they will show you the signatures(scriptures) of their alleged Chairman of the Federal reserve(their various gods) who never signed the document. himself.(all religious text were written by men NO god/gods has ever written any).

This thread is full of win.

Lita:

i believe that scepticism does not mean definite disbelief, simply questioning.  Atheism is the certainty that there is no God.

Did u just say certainty , WTF!

I would not use the word certainty if i were you.

well in as much as a christian is certain that there is a god.  you get my meaning   

Some folks skeptical about religion and God gather together on a thread on atheism. Little did they know that another religion has just been birthed. Only that the object of focus differs,

i don't think philosophising about the existence of god, or how to deal with believers is quite the birth of a religion. there are no tenets, or ritual, deities or laws.

Lita:

i don't think philosophising about the existence of god, or how to deal with believers is quite the birth of a religion. there are no tenets, or ritual, deities or laws.

You talk about philosophy and you also mention "how" yet you mean there are no tenets. Very soon you might want to make them more acceptable by compiling your "hows" and philosophy into a list of believe system, then you realize you are still as religious as you never wanted to be.


For me, If I follow my faith as a christain, and exemplify the bible principles as taught and read for myself, I have got nothing to lose. Even if after life, I later realised there is no God (Which Im pretty sure there is a God), I have not lost anything either as I will enjoy the benefits of life after death by His grace. However, how sad will it  be for those, who opposed the existence of God and in eternity realised God exists,  Since there is no repentance after death, It will be horrendous!

how can there be tenets to unbelief? i'd be interesting in hearing them. 'how to deal with unbelievers' is no different to offering advice on anybody or anything else that bothers us. a list need not be compiled- considering as there have always been people who don't believe- and the unbelievers didn't compile a canon of unbelief and propagate it worldwide. i have no problem with religion or the religious, and i do think that unbelief and belief are both matters of faith, but atheism (or in my case, agnosticism) are not a religions.

I like to affirm that Nigeria is an unnecessarily religious country, Religion has failed to provide answers for my people, despite their blind adherence to various leechy camps and conventions parroted by religious leaders. Please I am proposing a Nigeria Skeptical Society, Let all Nigerian Skeptic come together to liberate our Nation. send me email : profibadan@gmail.com or call 07060874312 to join

profibadan:

I like to affirm that Nigeria is an unnecessarily religious country, Religion has failed to provide answers for my people, despite their blind adherence to various leechy camps and conventions parroted by religious leaders. Please I am proposing a Nigeria Skeptical Society, Let all Nigerian Skeptic come together to liberate our Nation. send me email : profibadan@gmail.com or call 07060874312 to join

You can set up a forum just like this or start a separate thread here. You also have to set one up at the local level

@beewhy focus, I want to presume you have not done much reading on philosophy yet, that argument of yours is termed Paschal's Wager and it has been deproved a long time ago.


[tr]For me, If I follow my faith as a christain, and exemplify the bible principles as taught and read for myself, I have got nothing to lose. Even if after life, I later realised there is no God (Which Im pretty sure there is a God), I have not lost anything either as I will enjoy the benefits of life after death by His grace. However, how sad will it be for those, who opposed the existence of God and in eternity realised God exists, Since there is no repentance after death, It will be horrendous[/tr]

We have more than 1000 religions in the world all claiming supremacy and at least three of them claim to be the only ones to even, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Only one of them must leads to God as none of them agree that others will go to heaven, then what if you die and gets to heaven to discover that the God of Heaven is not JEhovah but Allah, then you will be doomed. but if you choose to be atheist and discover that there is a God, then you have not lost anythung as God is an atheist himself for God does not believe that there is a God above Himself.

profibadan:

We have more than 1000 religions in the world all claiming supremacy and at least three of them claim to be the only ones to even, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Only one of them must leads to God as none of them agree that others will go to heaven, then what if you die and gets to heaven to discover that the God of Heaven is not JEhovah but Allah, then you will be doomed. but if you choose to be atheist and discover that there is a God, then you have not lost anythung as God is an atheist himself for God does not believe that there is a God above Himself.

If that is how you have set to "disprove" Paschal's Wager, I very much doubt the philosophy you have read. Your own answer does not "prove" the non-existence of God or the supernatural. In fact, you have only managed to lay a strong basis for the philosophical argument that there is a God. Let's quote you again:

profibadan:

but if you choose to be atheist and discover that there is a God, then you have not lost anythung as God is an atheist himself for God does not believe that there is a God above Himself.

If as an atheist, you discover that there is a God, then you have lost everything indeed! God never claimed to be an 'atheist'; and just because 'God' does not believe there is any other deity above God's divinity - that does not amount to "atheism" at all. To say that God is an "atheist" simply means that you don't have any clue about the meaning of the term "atheism", or perhaps you just want to play games and gull your readers. Anyone arguing the way you do will definitely fail a freshman's course in philosophy - guaranteed!

However, as to the opening line of your comment quoted -

profibadan:

We have more than 1000 religions in the world all claiming supremacy and at least three of them claim to be the only ones to even, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Only one of them must leads to God as none of them agree that others will go to heaven,

. . . that again is not a solid point for your atheistic argument. Those who are informed know that there are many, many shades of atheism (many different types of atheisms) as there are thousands of religions in the world. I have often tried to point out that informed atheists who are honest enough will recognize the fact that: "There are many different forms of atheism; many differents atheisms so to speak" (atheism.ca). So, the complaint that 'we have more than 1000 religions in the world' is a no-brainer.

Besides, among these 1000s of "religions", there are some which are known as "atheistic religions". Yes, these atheistic religions are also part of the 'more than 1000 religions in the world'; but the interesting thing is that, while some of these atheistic religions do not claim a superiority of monotheistic faith principles, they nonetheless have the exclusivism that atheists complain about in theistic faiths.

atheism is not a religion. it simply means we dont believe in any dogma. if religion were true, there shouldnt be soo many of them. even 5 is too many. god hasnt done a good job showing to us that he exists.

dogmafree:

atheism is not a religion. it simply means we dont believe in any dogma.

I don't think I've made atheism into a "religion" - this is why I pointed out that informed atheists acknowledge that there are many different types of atheism. However, there is a vast difference between "atheistic religions" and atheism being a religion. And yes, atheists (especially adherents of atheistic religions) actually adhere to certain atheistic dogmas - unless you don't know what a "dogma" actually is.

dogmafree:
if religion were true, there shouldnt be soo many of them. even 5 is too many. god hasnt done a good job showing to us that he exists.

It all depends on what you mean by "religion" - and let us not forget that there are atheist religions among the term "religion" (which would mean that such atheistic religions are also false if "religion" is false).

However, by the same ideology, atheism is FALSE if there are so many of them. Infact, 5 types of atheism is too many; and we know that one person's atheism is not the same for all atheists. Can you therefore make that kind of argument that just because there are different religions, then religion must by default be "untrue"?

dogmafree:

atheism is not a religion. it simply means we dont believe in any dogma. if religion were true, there shouldnt be soo many of them. even 5 is too many. god hasnt done a good job showing to us that he exists.

Yes atheism is not a religion but a quasi religion. In America, atheists enjoys same rights as xtians and muslims. A Christian is a believer, a Muslim is also a believer and likewise an atheist, but believes in different things

I am an atheist. My family is a very deeply religious Christian one. It was very difficult when I first started questioning my belief in god because my family kept proselytizing to me. However, they have since left me alone because they realize that my certainty about the non-existence of god is as strong as their convictions.

I live in the States and feel free to tell anyone, including my family that I am an atheist. We have freedom of religion and are able to accommodate all viewpoints. However, when I go to Nigeria I am very careful not to reveal my atheism to anyone outside my family. That wouldn't be wise considering the sheer numbers of religious nuts, I mean fanatics in Nigeria.

I find it quite interesting that the only people who manage to make sense on this topic are the atheists, the so called believers manage to only threaten, shout and otherwise try to shove their claim down the throat of the "unbelievers" or "infidels" so to say, i am not fully an atheist, but i also dont care about God, if he exists then let him make himself known to this world simple, But my problem remains with the Christians: why?
-do you believe God loves all of humanity and he is a universal God?, then why is the bible(the word of the universal God) only about the Jews, it about God protecting the Jews and sanctioning various acts of infanticide, genocide, racist behavior and the dehumanization of women FOR THE JEWS, Christians should read exodus 21: 20-21, in there God endorses slavery, he also endorses Joshua killing unborn babies, the list goes on and on
-Have you Nigerians ever considered how Christianity truly came to us, the missionaries huh?, who brought those missionaries?, the colonialists who needed to subvert our will, Christianity remain only a bad copy of Judaism( a nationalistic religion made by the Jews for the Jews)
-And that same bible happens to say the world started 6000 years ago in the bronze age, lol
    The problem remains that Christians never REALLY read the bible, and those that read it, do so with the aid of several devotionals, you really should read the bible, go through the contradiction and atrocities within, after all its the perfect Word of GOD.
     then someone says God cured a woman of aids, 5000 people die of AIDS everyday, 30000 children die of hunger everyday, but God doesn't have it within his schedule to help those people huh?, lol

If you believe there is no God, you are right! If u believe there is God, you are right. If you dont know what i mean it means you are not completely sure if God exist or not

religion has colonized the minds of many until it has become impossible to think about things critically. there is a lot of false associations e.g. relating getting healed to god and very few people take time to look to look at greater majority of people who are sick and suffer despite the fact that they believe.

No, its only the height of narcissism to believe that God loves only you so much he saved ONLY YOU while IGNORING the COUNTLESS MILLIONS out there, if this is true, didnt he make us all, WHAT KIND OF GOD EXACTLY ARE THESE fucking pastors preaching to us?

@Topic

It hasn't been easy especially when one is in a country that's literally over flowing with religious bigots. The moment they hear you're an Atheist or non-religious, they begin to act as if they've seen an extra-terrestrial invader. They start behaving so funny and it's sickening. They start looking at you in a strange way. Most of them will assume that you're in a "secret occult society". . .lol. People are very un-informed and naive down here even with all the education. Most times, i keep my disbelief in religion to myself (except when some religious bigot tries to force his/her opinions down my throat. . .and then, i am forced to "re-educate" them on what their religion really is).

I feel real good coming across this!

Override: No, its only the height of narcissism to believe that God loves only you so much he saved ONLY YOU while IGNORING the COUNTLESS MILLIONS out there, if this is true, didnt he make us all, WHAT KIND OF GOD EXACTLY ARE THESE fucking pastors preaching to us?

I feel real good coming across this!

SATAN HAS DONE HIS HOMEWORK...
Pls don't go 2 hell...lake of fire is not play play...
If Jesus said dia will be gnashing n wailing of teeth, he really meant it...
I just prayed dat d Lord will reveal Himself to U.
Did you know Tai Sholarin trained Pastor Kumuyi to be an atheist b4 God revealed himself to him...
Jesus Loves You. He wants U cos U're His image.

Bump !

I'm a skeptic and I just try my best not to expose my unbelief to the believers. I'm also an introvert so it's ridiculously easy to just pretend that I whole heartedly believe in a god. I just pretend to be religous when I'm around religous peeps. So I just pretend everyday because I'm only surrounded by religous peeps.

Hmm i still have to go to church on sundays, to get mind fvked by a man who doesn't know about the Origin of the text he uses in preaching.

Atheism is false.

.

Bump!

Seun:
Perhaps we should start a church and call it Redeemed Humanist Church of Atheists (RHCA).

no, rather call it almajid humanist mosque of artheists. Whooosh!!!

Seun:
It's not easy not to believe in God (and supernatural miracles) in Nigeria. Left, right, center, people are claiming miracles and supernatural intervention. Every Nigerian - politicians, businessmen, educators, beggars, and criminals inclusive - believes in the miracle working God, the devil, demons, witches, wizards, and 'spiritual attacks'!

Is there someone else on Nairaland who lives in Nigeria and does not believe in God? How do you manage to hold on to your unbelief in the midst of all these dogmatic believers? Whew, isn't this country too hot?!

- a concerned Nigerian unbeliever.

If only you knew how happy I was seeing your name on Google as an atheist , And I really don't care anymore about waking people up, Nigeria has an average of 70 percent IQ of the average Nigerian , is it these ones that will see fact? Tbh I stay on my lane happy and content that there's actually no God , funny I used to think you were Muslim , btw I was born an Atheist

TheSourcerer:
If only you knew how happy I was seeing your name on Google as an atheist , And I really don't care anymore about waking people up, Nigeria has an average of 70 percent IQ of the average Nigerian , is it these ones that will see fact? Tbh I stay on my lane happy and content that there's actually no God , funny I used to think you were Muslim , btw I was born an Atheist

Gbam!