THE ATHIEST AGENDA

[Magenta]

ok, well one I would say, is that, from my perspective, saying things like, there is only one god and Jesus is his son who died for our sins, or 'things from the spirit of god' don't mean anything to me, since I don't believe in those things. I wonder why if Jesus died for our sins, we can still go to Hell? What about those who lived before him? Why would Christians 'believe' Jesus but then not believe Mohammed? Why would God have to sacrifice his son/himself (sort of, after all he was resurrected!) for our sins? If God is all powerful couldn't he have just forgiven those sins in the first place without kicking the crap out of Jesus/himself?

For the most part, even atheistic historians accept the fact of Jesus having walked this world. True, this does not prove any claims He or we made/make concerning His birth, life, and ministry, though His death is recorded in extra Biblical sources. I will also add that the word hell is a mistranslation of at least four different words in the original languages. If you are interested, you could study this out for yourself. Um, why should we believe the adulterous war mongering pedophile Mohammed?

 

[Magenta]

Why would God have to sacrifice his son/himself (sort of, after all he was resurrected!) for our sins? If God is all powerful couldn't he have just forgiven those sins in the first place without kicking the crap out of Jesus/himself?

The gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing, yes? And yet, God proclaims the coming of Jesus from the opening chapters of Genesis, and Jesus was purposed from before the foundation of the world, for the very reason of paying our sin debt. The nation Israel was brought into being to be His progenitors, and they recorded their long history with God's prophets, up to the intertestate period, and the coming of Jesus Himself. I suggest you read the Bible and humbly pray for understanding.

 

[MarkEFK]

To be fair, OT God enjoys a war too! Also polygamy was totally cool in the OT, as was marrying a girl 'not fit to bear a child'. Don't get me wrong; I'm no fan of Mohammed, but OT God is hardly a basket of kittens..

 

[Magenta]

To be fair, OT God enjoys a war too! Also polygamy was totally cool in the OT, as was marrying a girl 'not fit to bear a child'. Don't get me wrong; I'm no fan of Mohammed, but OT God is hardly a basket of kittens..

All the more reason to be grateful for grace The barbarity that existed in those days, my goodness, even a few hundred years ago would be unbearable conditions for us having become accustomed to the hard-won freedoms those who came before us, secured for us.

 

[MarkEFK]

I hear that!

 

[oldethennew]

'in the world', 'in-decision' is a part of our every-day-life - we can never grasp the knowledge/faith of God... -
because we haven't experienced it...
but, it is possible to grasp the evidence of God, for the 'heavens declare His handy-work'...

 

[MarkEFK]

again though.. to a non believer, them ain't nothing but pretty words. There are many ways to explain and appreciate beauty and the stars that don't require subservience to an omnipotent dictator. (with respect!)

 

[calibob]

The bible belt. I resent my grandchildren being taught being gay is a freedom of choice, mankind came from apes and going to school with crossdressers. View attachment 199995

We live in the so called bible belt. I shudder to think what children might be taught or permitted to act like or wear in more liberal states.

 

[Magenta]

again though.. to a non believer, them ain't nothing but pretty words. There are many ways to explain and appreciate beauty and the stars that don't require subservience to an omnipotent dictator. (with respect!)

And which is your preference? An artist's eye, a poet's, the scientist? Whom do you accept as an authority?

Hi Gang! Atheist here (a curious one, not an antagonistic one..)...

Non antagonistic, but you call God a dictator? What has He dictated to you recently?

 

[MarkEFK]

Well it depends what we're talking about; if it's beauty then the artist's eye and the poet, and if we're talking about science then i tend to lean toward the scientists. But I don't accept any authority.

 

[Magenta]

 

[calibob]

again though.. to a non believer, them ain't nothing but pretty words. There are many ways to explain and appreciate beauty and the stars that don't require subservience to an omnipotent dictator. (with respect!)

I guess they'll find out. Maybe the hard way.

 

[pomeranian]

I did plenty of praying in my youth and, if I'm honest, never felt a thing. If God wanted me to he could have willed it no?

GOD's will is always done, even if we are not privy to his plans,
In fact if you asked to be a member on a Christian Chat, I'm inclined to think he's already tapping you on the shoulder.
I have a hard time understanding "you felt nothing" in prayer with GOD some feel silly, some feel a connection, some feel uncomfortable but to feel nothing maybe you were meditating. "humor"
You say you prayed when you were young but you don't say how you were introduced to do so. Reciting rehearsed prayer with others is quite different than a private conversation with GOD, asking him to help you discover why he created you and what his plans for you are.
Many agnostics ( a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God) and atheists (a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods) have just as many doubts that they are wrong as anyone else.
An elderly atheist and I were having a discussion on faith and I said to him "at your age if you believe there is no reward or punishment after this life, you are a well to do physician why are you not enjoying the time you have left on this world with the pleasures it offers?" He thought about this a moment because this was not our first talk and he replied "because I may be wrong and you may be right." LOVE is always the answer

 

[pomeranian]

ok, well one I would say, is that, from my perspective, saying things like, there is only one god and Jesus is his son who died for our sins, or 'things from the spirit of god' don't mean anything to me, since I don't believe in those things. I wonder why if Jesus died for our sins, we can still go to Hell? What about those who lived before him? Why would Christians 'believe' Jesus but then not believe Mohammed? Why would God have to sacrifice his son/himself (sort of, after all he was resurrected!) for our sins? If God is all powerful couldn't he have just forgiven those sins in the first place without kicking the crap out of Jesus/himself?

Where does the knowledge you have come from, other people or have you been looking at scripture? If so what scriptures are you lookiing at? Many people who grew up in faith don't know what it's like to "not know" GOD or have forgotten how a relationship needs to begin. You don't go on your first date and tell the person about your medical family history and all the different idiosyncracies within yourself and your family if you did, then and still got a second date that relationship would have to be fate. (humor)
Have you ever known anyone who was a good parent (I'm going to assume yes) A parent (with the help of GOD of course) "creates" a child it is the closest humans will ever get to being able to feel what it's like to create something. The Creation theory is that GOD created you (if your here to debate Creation theory vs theory of evolution I'm told your to bring popcorn (humor)) If your searching for GOD really searching I have no doubt he will find you, he is after all your Father and has been calling you since you were born. LOVE

 

[Ohm]

The theory of evolution doesn't make any sense

It makes perfect sense to me and millions of other scientists.

At what point did creatures develop eyes or ears or mouths?

One mutation at a time.

their brains would need to have the ability to use all of these at the same time they were evolved

An eye is a complex organ that processes light into electrical signals, and allows for colour perception through pigmentation. More primitive forms are ubiquitous in nature. There was no point at which an eye just spontaneously developed. It is a cumulative mutation throughout billions of years.

It could not have been a slow progression..

It was.

and did they develop any of their limbs all of a sudden,

Limbs are the same as every other evolutionary development. They are a result of cumulative mutations over billions of years.

or one at a time, or as buds that required many more generations of mutations before it was complete Were the limbs or organs in the evolving creatures useless and a burden? Then how could that make anything the fittest?

I would recommend really reading about the subject from a scientific source. It appears to me that you don't understand the terms you are using. Lots of people don't. But as simple as I can put it: evolution is a continuous process, driven by mutations that affect either positively or negatively, sexual selection. The mutations that are sexually selected for, survive. For example, in humans, intelligence and physical stamina were often selected for.

 

[Ohm]

The concept of irreducible complexity (IC) has become an important tool in intelligent design theory. One of the best examples of IC is the design of the animal eye

The understanding of evolution as a "bottom up" phenomenon will help with this.

Eyes are critical because, for the ‘vast majority of animals’, vision is their ‘most important link to the world’. Darwin vividly recognized the problem of eye evolution and the serious impediment that it was for his theory.

And yet he published it anyway. And the buck did not stop with Darwin, nor did the evidence for his theory. We understand now pretty comprehensively how the eye evolved throughout animal history.

Advanced vision appears almost at the very beginning of the fossil record.

The oldest eye in the fossil record, that of a trilobite, is a very complex faceted compound eye that ‘dates’ back to the Cambrian, conventionally dated about 540 million years ago. The fossil evidence shows that from the beginning of the fossil record eyes are very complex, highly developed structures.

The oldest fossils are at least 3.5 billion years old, not 540 million as you say.

The evolution of the eye has always been a dilemma for evolutionists from Darwin’s time to the present. Although Darwin, Richard Dawkins and other evolutionists have tried to explain how an eye could evolve, their solutions are clearly unsatisfactory. Many kinds of eyes exist, but no progression of eye designs from simple to complex can be produced in the natural or fossil world.

This is simply not true. The eyes are fundamentally very complex organs for the perception of colour and light. We can see an early example of light perception in sunflowers, as a relatively recent development, and colour perception in unicellular organisms like algae billions of years ago. The evolution of light perception is evident in the oldest, simplest lifeforms, as the most primal vehicle for energy absorption other than electron-gradients in variable salinity waters.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.ne.15.030192.000245

The Evolution of Eyes
Annual Review of Neuroscience
Vol. 15:1-29

Furthermore, the simplest ‘eye’, the eyespot, is not an eye but pigmented cells used for phototaxis; yet even it requires an enormously complex mechanism in order to function as a vision system. More here.

Eyespots are proteins that function as light receptors. That's it. Eyespots aren't "vision systems" in anywhere near the same way as you are asserting. They exist in single-celled organisms.

 

[calibob]

I only have 4 questions for you: Is God the creator of the universe or not? Is Jesus his son or not? Is the Bible the word of God or not? If you answered not 1 time, why are you on a Christian site?

 

[MarkEFK]

I only have 4 questions for you: Is God the creator of the universe or not? Is Jesus his son or not? Is the Bible the word of God or not? If you answered not 1 time, why are you on a Christian site?

1. Not as it is explained in the bible
2. No
3. No
4. I'm interested in how you guys think and how your religion influences your politics and outlooks, and found this site to learn more then thought it would ok, as per the rules of the page which i checked, if I created an account and asked some questions.

 

[MarkEFK]

Where does the knowledge you have come from, other people or have you been looking at scripture? If so what scriptures are you lookiing at? Many people who grew up in faith don't know what it's like to "not know" GOD or have forgotten how a relationship needs to begin. You don't go on your first date and tell the person about your medical family history and all the different idiosyncracies within yourself and your family if you did, then and still got a second date that relationship would have to be fate. (humor)
Have you ever known anyone who was a good parent (I'm going to assume yes) A parent (with the help of GOD of course) "creates" a child it is the closest humans will ever get to being able to feel what it's like to create something. The Creation theory is that GOD created you (if your here to debate Creation theory vs theory of evolution I'm told your to bring popcorn (humor)) If your searching for GOD really searching I have no doubt he will find you, he is after all your Father and has been calling you since you were born. LOVE

I was raised Christian, so I'm familiar with the bible, and actually have re-read both very recently, I'm not here to annoy people, just ask learn a little more about the community, because, if I'm honest, there are a few things I've seen and read here that are a bit 'off the wall' particularly in this conspiracy thread! I'm not here to judge nor to try and convince anyone of my beliefs (as if I could!). I became an atheist due to what you would call lack of faith, but I would call lack of evidence.

 

[calibob]

1. Not as it is explained in the bible
2. No
3. No
4. I'm interested in how you guys think and how your religion influences your politics and outlooks, and found this site to learn more then thought it would ok, as per the rules of the page which i checked, if I created an account and asked some questions.

Well the great commission is to preach the gospel of Salvation thru Christ to the world so expect to be preached at. Non Christians are welcome so we can try to convert them. If you hang around here expect to get preached at. We would like the world to give up it's humanistic ways and turn the real one and only God through his Son Jesus the Christ from the village of Nazareth and the tribe of Judah.

I'd bet (if I still gambled) you don't believe in the spiritual realm either.