The Purpose of life for an Atheist

talk
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I know this is an odd way of looking at things but o well…

being a christian myself, if im wrong about my beliefs and the athiests are correct with their evolution, the only bad result for me would be getting criticized by people not of my faith. If other people are wrong about christianity they get some far worse consequences.

Im a firm believer that there will never be some rock solid evidence that God exists or Jesus is the Messiah(until the end of course), if there were faith would be meaningless. But faith isnt meaningless, its all God wants from us. So in my mind all the skeptics are taking a huge gamble with all the odds against them.

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Jesus died to bear all our sins, past and future. So I don’t care if I’m a non-believing sinner, since I’m already absolved by the Christ and sure to enter paradise in the end… I can kill, plunder and rape, I’m already forgiven :slight_smile:
There are so many non-christians anyhow, I’m sure we non-believers will make lots of friends in hell if there is a God…

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on the other hand:
god must be quite an a**hole if he lets people go to hell for not believing him.

imagine one was born in a family of atheists (or muslim,…), he will very likely stay atheist (or muslim,…)).
so - god sends children to hell?!

or: person1 believes in god but he’s a mean massmurderer. he kills people, rapes women,…whatever, but he prays to got 8 times a day. he escapes the police, lives the rest of his life in mexico molesting female mexican strippers, and dies in his sleep.

person2 helps people, is friendly n stuff, get’s hit by 3 bullets of person1 because he is helping one of the women person1 was up to rape and looses both legs and the inbetween. 3 years later he suffers from cancer, and dies after 5 years of pain with the age of 22. well person 2 was athest.

would
a)both go to hell
b) p1 go to hell p2 to heaven
c) p2 go to hell p1 to heaven
d) both go to hell?

btw:
if there is no god you waste your time praying and hoping instead of living your life.

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???

It’s pretty simplistic to say all sins are forgiven regardless of what you do. True, Jesus did die to absolve our sins, but that means that as we sin and repent, we’re forgiven. It involves work on our part.

John3:16-God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten son, in order that those exercising faith in him might not be destroyed, but have everlasting life.

Faith alone isn’t enough,though. James 2:17-Faith without works is dead.

Matthew 7:21-not everyone saying “Lord, Lord” will enter God’s kingdom, but only he who does the will of the Father.

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Ok mcgiver the question i have for those people would be, did they REALLY accept Jesus as their savior. If they had they would want to change and fallow the example Jesus set on how to live our lives. So the question i would ask to someone who says they accept Jesus then going out mass-murdering is, “did they really accept jesus in the first place or was it a crock?”

I dont have the actual passage, i can look it up if you want, but the Bible says that everyone in the world will get a chance to choose or reject Jesus, whether it be going to church and getting the chance, hearing about Him on a forum like this, or talking to someone about Him. So everyone gets a chance, noone is just screwed and cant make it.

on the other hand:
god must be quite an a**hole if he lets people go to hell for not believing him.

But if you put yourself in God’s shoes, just pretend for a second, we are the bad ones. We all get a chance to choose yet we dont choose to believe. How hard is it to believe? God desperately wants to give us eternal life in heaven, he even sacrificed His son to get us there, but we are too stubborn to believe in him while we are here on earth. I think we are the jerks, not God.

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Who says you can’t live you life while serving God? He wants, and expects us to enjoy life. He created us with that capacity. Ecclesiasted 3:1-8 tells us there’s a time for everything, including enjoying one’s life.

Exactly. Big reason for Jesus’ command to “go…and make disciples of people of all the nations.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

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Faith is a load of rubbish.

God want’s you to have faith in him without evidence… yeah right…

If he wanted us to believe in him he would present himself to us simple as that.

Note: I refer to God as him, “as god created man in his image” implying we are like God.

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that brings us back to the question.
why would I believe in god (or at least this god, there are at least hundreds of others, that are more or less as likely to exist)
if there is no evidence he exists (and don’t tell me ‘the “Creation” should be evidence enough’ because any religion keeps telling that, and the scientific version is more trustable for me).

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Who says you can’t live you life while serving God? He wants, and expects us to enjoy life. He created us with that capacity. Ecclesiasted 3:1-8 tells us there’s a time for everything, including enjoying one’s life.
but if there is no god, the time you prayed is completely wasted.

  • or -let me say it someway better:
    if you knew there was no god you wouldn’t have spent the time praying because you regarded it as a waste of time (wouldn’t you)

but since you will never know that, the whole religion lie works fine for those who believe in.
don’t get me wrong, as long as religion helps the people and does’t inhibit useful things or is the reasons for war, it’s a good thing. in can make people happy and be a backing in times like wars,…

but only few people get that border. (“axes of evil” and stuff)

so I can’t support any religious things - it will always end in someone doing things that affect others life in a negative way because he thinks he is doing that crap for his god

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mcgiver, just curious, where do you think you go when you die? is it just a void of nothingness? reincarnation? different dimension? I am just curious what your looking forward to when you die.

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I am just curious what your looking forward to when you die.

ha ha ha…

I look forward to having my ashes flushed down the toilet, as for me, well I am dead, there is no me.

Why do we need something to look forward to after death… Perhaps we are fine with no after life. Perhaps thats why we don’t need religion.

Note:
My g/f says she wont flush my ashes down the toliet even though she knows thats what I want… If it makes her feel better to spread them into the ocean then whatever… Not like it’s gonna make a difference to me, I am dead and will never know what she did…

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Some atheists argue that there is no proof that god exists, so therefore he must not exist… Fred argues, that there is no proof that he doesn’t exist, so basing your decision on that alone, is flawed… its like: Absence of proof is not proof of absence

There’s no proof that there isnt a giant frenchfry up my butt, but i can still say there is, even though it’s absurd…

The abscense is self-evident… untill you can prove attendance, you have no right to claim it… All signs point to abscence…

Quote:
I am just curious what your looking forward to when you die.
ha ha ha…

I look forward to having my ashes flushed down the toilet, as for me, well I am dead, there is no me.

Why do we need something to look forward to after death… Perhaps we are fine with no after life. Perhaps thats why we don’t need religion.

Note:
My g/f says she wont flush my ashes down the toliet even though she knows thats what I want… If it makes her feel better to spread them into the ocean then whatever… Not like it’s gonna make a difference to me, I am dead and will never know what she did…

No kiddin :slight_smile: … I wanted my corpse to be strung up in a glass box in a public area, so people could see me rot (and i’d even supply the popcorn)… No, i am not joking…

*either that or to be eaten or used for compost… Something useful…

I live to seek immortality through science… To seize the world from the grip of imbeciles and create a true utopia…

Oh but the magical being was just always there…
Well I find it much easy to believe that rock was just there…
You want to know WHY this can’t be understood??? Humans have no grasp of WHAT TIME REALLY IS… it cant have a beggining or end… Yet a loop doesn’t make sense either

This will seem a little off topic but I can assure you that it’s not. Please think about this a little before slapping down “no, no way, how stupid is that”. Does anyone here beleive in supernatural beings? Has anyone ever seen one of those T.V. programmes about people and their experiences with them and sort of thought “hmmm, maybe that did actually happen” or something like that thats sort of made you wonder and maybe brought you to believe in it a little?
My brain can produce chemical-electrical field that interferes with electronics… (at least i think so) [akin to the so-called “vampirism” of today]

it’s the world u should be afraid and scared of not God…so when i say scared into it …think of it as u should be scared of what will happen to u if [color=black][font=Verdana]ur[/font][/color][color=black][font=Verdana] not with him…[/font][/color]

The world should be afraid of people not passing elementary-school english and then going on to ramble on in ignorance of something totally illogical…

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Nice anal-ogy :stuck_out_tongue:

But seriously, by your own reasoning, evolution cannot be accepted as fact. It’s foundation is built on a few old bones and a lot of failed scientific experiments. You’re telling me that I can’t claim there’s a god because I can’t provide some sort of tangible proof. You can’t provide any tangible evidence that life/humankind came about by chance. I’ve posted that before, and all I hear is “There’s enough evidence for me!”

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No, but you are wrong. There is ALOT of evidence supporting evolution, yes some of it was wrong, but there is still alot of evidence. (remeber I beleive in God) but I am not going to kid myself, there is no proof, none! (I dont need it)

But now you guys are going to say “*Abcence of Proof is not Proof of Abcence!!” *
Cute, but I’m sorry, but that dosent work in the scientific community.
It just dosent, no true sientist in the world will ever interpret that way, so God cannot exist in the realm of science, thats it! In faith yes! But not in sience.

The biggest reason for that is… it dosent work with the fundamental of science…

and what is the fundamental of science? Before Hypothesis, before Evidence… what do you do?

You observe…!

So there! Would you guys stop using that overused and quite lame phrase, no scientist will ever take it seriously.

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Not a single case of upward evolution (DNA change involving addition of information) has ever been observed. Any observable changes have only involved the loss of information, or mutation, which still did not result in an increase in DNA info, which would be necessary for advancing evolution. Theories exist, nothing more.

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Theories exist, nothing more.
No we have more, we have Fossils, we have Bones, we have carbon dating that already by age aone we can determine the age of the planet. We hae Cladistics, we have Molecular Ecology,research in to Biodiversity and we have Taxonomy we have lots of evidence. We can already predict E. Coli evolution under lab setting!

I dont want to say that we have all the proof we need, not its still a Sientific Theory, but it has 100% more proof than Creationism. Because Creationism has absolutley none.

People have to learn to discern a Theory from a Sientific Theory, you know that the earth rotates around the sun? Well thats a **Sientific theory **too!

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mcgiver, just curious, where do you think you go when you die?

I’m going on the graveyard.
so - void of nothingness

I want to have an Irish burial==all the people invited will drink and celebrate.
but I wouldn’t really care if my ashes go down the toilet.

I’m also hoping that in 10000 years humanity will invent a time mashine and go back to rescue the genius that programmed my footer :stuck_out_tongue:
just kidding.

plus: It would be quite boring to live infinite…especially with a bunch of every-day-to-church-walkers.
I don’t want to die soon, but I’m sure I wouldn’t care about it too much when I’m dead :stuck_out_tongue:

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Oh come on - some of you have the option that all people who believe in God live dull lives :slight_smile:

Come on over to MIT sometime and I will show you (and you and you!) the time of your life! It won’t even involve getting drunk or sitting in the back of a police car on the way back…if all goes as planned :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m a Christian. I don’t go to church, but I do a lot of religious reading related to Christianity beyond just the Bible. I do donate a percentage of my money to charity every month, and when possible, I volunteer my time at homeless shelters, food distribution places, libraries, local gov’ts, etc. In my view, try to live a good, respectful life. If you can help people along the way, that is even better.

In my opinion, in the big picture of life, it doesn’t really matter what religion you are or aren’t. You are going to be judged - by God (if you believe in him), by your peers, and by yourself for what you do or did not do.

[size=1]*anyone who counts the number of times I used the words, “I”, “in”, or “opinion” gets a gMail account. Seriously![/size]
[size=1][/size]
[size=1][color=gray]EDIT: Modified first and second paragraph to apply to nobody in particular.[/color][/size]

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not all people who believe in God live dull lives

never said all people who believe in God live dull lives, but if I remember the people I know, most of those hardcore religious ones are quite boring

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I take it back then :slight_smile: I’ll modify my quote to be more general.