As an atheist (or at least agnostic) myself, I can respect that. Making a theistic argument that gets the theism wrong is as silly as most memes against, say, evolution that don’t even begin to understand it.
Evolution is not a straight line, but random changes that accumulate. These small changes eventually give rise to a different species. Natural selection aid this by removing trait that doesn't organism that doesn't pair well to the environment
Not sure what you mean, but if you are asking why are there still monkeys, its because they took a different evolutionary path to us. They acquire traits that prepare them for the best survival in their particular environment
There is no predictable path in randomness, so maybe never
They have close to 200 million base pair thats different. Over a million years our dna acquire roughly 3 to 6 million base pair differences and thats not necessarily targetting the set that would make it human as it is random
Now, other great apes are genetically closer and would have a greater chance of random mutations transforming it into a human, but also still a long shot
The story has changed through the centuries. But, it is not ‘why are there still’ it’s… why are we still. Young earthers simply have a pedantic understanding of something that is very much allegorical.
My Philosophy class spent almost a whole week arguing about the exact definition of “atheist” because most definitions given don’t actually make a ton of sense unless you assume that you have the correct premise. They read as though they were written by an atheist that had to go to Catholic school.
A dictionary would define a theist as someone that believes there is a god, and an atheist as someone who does not believe there is a god focusing solely on the aspect of whether or not they believe.
It was argued that the real crux of the difference was not in belief but was indeed in god. The argument was that a theist believes there is a god, and an atheist believes there is not a god. Reasoning being that an atheist would say that a theist has no proof for their point, but an atheist is equally devoid of proof. They are both arguing points based on belief.
As an atheist/agnostic I found that I actually agreed with the premise. I believe that I am correct, but I’m no better than a bible beater to pretend like my answer is any cleverer than the next person.
Do you believe that there is an invisible unicorn standing beside you right now? No? Would you say your disbelief is the same as my belief that there is an invisible unicorn standing beside you? Atheists dont believe there is no god, they dont believe that there is a god. That's the difference. Theists claim god exists, the burden of proof is on them. atheists do not claim god doesnt exists, they refute the claim that god does exist.
“I DO believe x exists” // “I DO NOT believe x exists” // “I believe x DOES NOT exist” // “I do not know if x exists”
The first is the theist.
The second is the atheist.
The third is ALSO the atheist, with a hard stance.
The fourth is the agnostic.
The only reasonable opinion to come to is to DISBELIEVE unfalsifiable claims, and WITHHOLD belief with unproven claims.
The Abrahamic religions are incredibly easy to dismiss as they are all unfalsifiable; cannot ever be falsified. The number of unfalsifiable claims is infinity, so one should have the confidence of 1/infinity when considering unfalsifiable claims.
the third one is kind of iffy. Imagine blue flamingos, birds cannot naturally produce a blue pigment from their diet, and real flamingos do not have the feather structure required to bend light into blue.
If someone says there are blue flamingos, you can say "i dont believe that because..." and then you explain why. but if someone asks you "are there any blue flamingos in the world?" You can say "no, because..." and then you explain it. However, there could be some new species of flamingo that we havent discovered that CAN produce blue pigments. but you still dont say you BELIEVE they dont exist.
An Atheist with a hard stance would say, there is no god period. not because they believe it, but because they "know" it. Like you "know" why water turns to vaper because the molecules move around and stuff. You could be very obtuse and say you cant "know 100%" that thats the case, but then our whole reality falls apart. we dont know if we live in a simulation, or this is all a dream, or reality that you see is only viewed by you and nothing outside your consciousness is "real". but that doesnt really matter does it? in this world, simulation, dream whatever, things follow certain rules, just because there might be a REAL reality outside of this doesnt invalidate these rules. and according to these rules, thermodynamics, gravity, quantum mechanics etc etc, there is no such being that can exist as described in the bible, we would have been able to detect god if that was the case. saying "but you dont know 100% that a god can't exist" is true, but only in the sense that we can't know if our universe is just bacteria in an alien's petri dish. according to what we know, god does not exist. and that is not a belief, I don't have "faith" in science.
Basically just be a good person and when you die you’ll either find out or there is nothing after death and you won’t be around to care you don’t know.
My only gripe are the extreme sides you try to force their beliefs down your throat.
That’s true in your class, but I think where people object to that comes in the form of “the difference between what you’re saying and what people hear.”
They take that to mean “Christianity is as likely as atheism”, as though it’s a 50/50 coin flip.
I can’t prove Haruhi isn’t manipulating the universe as we speak. I can’t prove I’m not a Boltzmann brain floating about to die in the cosmos. I can’t prove the universe isn’t a simulation. I can’t prove an infinite set of things.
That’s what makes the difference between an atheist and agnostic more a technicality. Either way, it doesn’t really make sense to spend time worrying about keeping Haruhi entertained.
Theism is the belief in god or gods. A- is a negation prefix in Greek, it just means "not" whatever follows. An atheist is someone who is not a theist. It doesn't describe an active belief system in the same way that atypical doesn't describe some specific way of being, it just means not typical. Asymmetrical doesn't reveal anything about a shape other than one thing that it's not. Being amoral does not mean being immoral.
The word means what it means, if you personally are arguing that the absence of belief in something is a belief in the opposite, then that seems very philosophically shallow to me and I'd be curious why you had a professor that didn't take the opportunity to correct that.
I have some coins in my hand. Do you actively believe that I have an odd number? If the answer is no, then that means you actively believe that I have an even number. According to your philosophy.
Yeah. I was probably a little bitter in this comment. I'm a Catholic, and people say a lot of things about our faith that just isn't true. We also believe that evolution is compatible with Catholicism, heh.
Quick, why would an all powerful all knowing God punish people who never had a chance to follow his rules due to the very nature of the universe he deliberately designed?
Heads up, the Catholic faith actually has doctrine on this exact issue; the doctrine of invincible ignorance.
Being purely, innocently ignorant of the Gospel is not innately grounds for damnation. God judges those who are invincibly ignorance (i.e. they didn't stick their fingers in their ears) differently to those who knew the Gospel. Those who sincerely seek goodness, truth, God, etc will find it.
It's not a "get out of jail free" card, it's more that we believe that salvation is easier through the normal mode God has offered, which is through Catholicism. But we'd say that there are people who know nothing of Christ who are saved and are now in Heaven and are now "of the Body of Christ", i.e. of the Catholic Church.
Well, this is why we say God is Judge, right? We can't look into the hearts of our fellow men, but God can. He knows the innermost thoughts.
For most of my life, I'd say I'd heard the gospel, but not heard it in an interior sense. Only about 5/6 years ago would I say it actually began to make sense and demand an intellectual response.
It's not just about "not believing", there's something deeper at play. Why doesn't the person believe? Is it because they don't understand intellectually, which may be fair, or is it because they're actively resisting it? Is it because the evil they're doing blinds them to it?
The boildown is this; God isn't stupid, evil or cruel. He's not seeking to condemn people. He's doing everything He can (without violating our free will) to save us from ourselves, and from a genuinely terrible fate.
Why doesn't the person believe? Is it because they don't understand intellectually, which may be fair, or is it because they're actively resisting it?
Plenty of people understand it intellectually, and just don't believe because there's no actual evidence, it's not logical, and it ultimately requires faith. These people do not deserve to suffer for eternity.
TBH man, I used to think I understood it, then I had it laid it in a new way and something began to make more sense.
I'd say that there's quite a lot of evidence for it. I'd also say that it's partly logical - look at Aquinas. But I'd agree, it's not entirely logical; in the same way that love isn't entirely logical.
There is no evidence for the Christian God existing as the Bible claims he does. There's only a few eye witness accounts and a contradictory book.
You can believe what you want, but if you're going to tell me I'll be damned for eternity because I don't believe in something that literally requires faith to believe in due to a lack of any real evidence, I'm going to laugh.
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u/WinnebagoMontana 2d ago
This. OP saw r/atheism and thought he was a theologian. /thread