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In light of what Bill posted not too long ago, (25 Confessions Of A Christian Dude) I have decided to do something of my own.
- I have a really hard time focusing when I am in a prayer group.
- I’m really sensitive.
- I actually think the movie Dogma is funny.
- I don’t exactly have the best self-esteem.
- I have OCD tendencies (especially when it comes to locking doors).
- As much as I love my Christian brethren for loving Jesus and having talent to sing, I’m not a fan of a lot of “Christian” music (Plus, a lot of the music sounds like it comes from like the early 90’s or something).
- When someone does something stupid on the road and almost causes me an accident, I swear like a sailor.
- When someone disagrees with me, I secretly judge them.
- I have never seen Lost and I’m not a fan of The Office.
- I believe that everyone has faith (regardless of religious beliefs) and that saying you don’t makes you either a hypocrite or completely clueless.
- I LOVE the Beatles.
- I am more girly than I’ll admit.
- I have a nasty temper.
- I’m all about receiving grace. Not so much giving it.
- I get pissed off when people interrupt me when I am saying something important.
- I love being the center of attention.
- When I know I am going to be around guys at an event, I have the desire to get them to notice me physically.
- I get so annoyed when preachers talk about their political beliefs on the pulpit.
- I am all about the crushes. Right now, I’m on about four I think.
- I’m a liberal (You hear that thud? That’s the sound of an old woman fainting. j/k!).
- I am in love with sketchy rap music and sometimes prefer it over Christian rap.
- Sometimes, I get so angry at some of the responses I see on this site that I almost spit fire.
- One of the reasons I believe in God is nature. It’s SO beautiful.
- Although I say that one of the reasons I want to lose weight is because of health (which is true), another reason is because I want to be hotter.
- Some of these things I do not want to admit on this list because I believe they may be used against me.
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Dogma isn’t just funny, it’s brilliant.
Faith in what? I don’t know if you’ve ever studied philosophy but philosophically speaking ‘beliefs’ have truth value. They are capable of being true or false. In everyday conversation though a ‘belief’ isn’t like that. A belief is simply a strongly held conviction. I wrote an article about this a few months ago which might be of interest. I believe in many things, I have faith in many things, God just isn’t in my list though.
Really? You’re not entertained by them? What makes you angry?
I agree that nature contains things of great beauty and awe inspiring wonder. For me that is not the product of the imagination of a god of any kind. it’s enough to witness nature without God.
I might have to do this too. “Confessions of an atheist chap” I couldn’t possibly call myself “dude”, I do have some standards. :d
hov
when i mean everyone has faith, I mean that people have uncertainty in their lives. Do Christians have more faith? Sure. Never said they didn’t. But I always find it interesting that no one can really be certain if God exists or not. Yet so many atheists (like hard-core) will say “There is no God” and in the SAME breath claim that they have no faith. Now lacking a faith in God? That’s a different story but no one says that.
as for some of the comments on this site, most I either agree with or disagree but don’t really take issue with. I only get angry when they seem to be so close-minded and unwilling to see any positive sides of Christianity. That’s when I get irritated.
“atheist chap” jeez you are British
I can agree with “everyone has faith”, but in a way that is different than christian faith. I have faith oncoming traffic will stay in the correct lane, I have faith my wife will pick me up on time, I have faith the water supplied to my house isn’t filled with poison (at least not enough to kill me). This “faith” is based on experience/interactions.
I don’t see how my lack of belief in god(s) is faith. I’m not putting my eggs in any basket, I’m not counting on something to happen or someone to do anything. I also don’t say, “there is no god”. I may say, I don’t see any evidence for god, but Ithat doesn’t require faith, at least of a religious/supernatural nature.
K, you’ve changed your name. It’s so confusing.
I thinks fair that atheists say that we have no faith in gods. This is faith with a capital F. I certainly don’t have any religious Faith but I do have faith in plenty of other things.
Also I think that the phrase “There is no God” is a bit of an oversimplification or perhaps a shortening of meaning. “There is no proof of God” or “There is no God as far as I can tell” would be better. Even the Archbishop of atheists, Richard Dawkins doesn’t say that there is no God. He says that God is extremely unlikely but that there is a tiny chance that he might be wrong.
I think lacking a faith in God is an entirely different thing. It presupposes the existence of God but casts doubt on his motives and abilities. That’s very different that doubting his existence at all.
Anyway, getting riled up about semantics is half of what blogging is about.
Technically I’m British but culturally I’m English.
Sorry hov for the confusion.
I’m starting to do counseling in the fall and my teachers warned me that people tend to “google” their counselors. Not like I put anything too sketchy on this site but I want my clients to see me as neutral as possible so that they can be as open with me as possible
“I don’t see how my lack of faith in god(s) is faith.”
I guess it’s more of a certainty issue. Lack of faith that God exists seems to have the same amount of certainty that God does exist. I believe no one can be truly certain.
maybe it is a semantics thing.
I prefer to see it as a probability thing. I’m fairly certain that there are no gods but I’d need to know everything in order to be entirely certain. As that is impossible for me I have to settle with what I know and make educated guesses. As far as I know, there are no gods. does the qualifier help?
meh. I almost see a certainty in the probablity. “God probably doesn’t exist” still sounds as if you are certain.
I feel as if the only way you could be completely scientific about it, you would say “it could go either way.”
k-dawg:
You wouldn’t say “it could go either way” about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, would you?
Between affirming a proposition for which there is no evidence and rejecting said proposition, the “more scientific” course is the latter. It is entirely proper to operate as though you are certain that the proposition is false, while acknowledging the possibility that you may be wrong and remaining open to the (remote) possibility that evidence might one day turn up. It doesn’t require any “faith” or false certainty. (by the way, maybe you could define “faith” for us, because in my experience it’s a slippery word, meaning anything from Orwellian “blackwhite” to cautious, qualified assent).
Think about what a headache science (and statistics) would be if, every time a researcher failed to refute the null hypothesis (i.e., the presumption that there is no relationship between variables), they shrugged and said, “meh, still a tossup.”
We atheists consider atheism to be the “null hypothesis” with regard to religion. Gods are presumed nonexistent until proven existent. That is why so many of us put the Christian god in the same class as Thor, Ahura Mazda, leprechauns, flying purple people eaters, the Force, and all other supernatural beings and phenomena that bear all the hallmarks of human invention and none of the hallmarks of factual, objective validity.
It’s true that nobody can be 100% certain about anything, but would you deny that within that “absolute” uncertainty there can be “relative” certainty? Like, I can’t be 100% sure that I’m not living in the Matrix, but I consider the possibility so remote that I can be reasonably sure I’m not. It seems that if we become epistemic nihilists, and declare every belief to be just as valid as any other, we are wasting our brains and our senses, and leave ourselves vulnerable to authorities who would rather just fill our brains for us.
Pardon me for butting in. I was just strolling through, and wanted to add my two cents (although, with inflation, it’s probably more like a nickel or dime).
Well, it’s just more semantics, isn’t it? If “God” refers to the Christian god, I find it highly unlikely that He exists, because of all the claims made by His followers that don’t match up with what we see in the world. If “God” is just any god or gods, then they very well could exist (but I doubt the god or gods would resemble any of the gods believed in or worshiped by people).
It’s more of a philosophical issue than a scientific one, anyway - we can’t live our whole lives with science as the only tool. Besides, considering the fact that scientists ignore supernatural causes completely, it’s kind of difficult (and a little strange) to talk about what would be scientific in this case.
:-w
Not me…although I do often pray to see God in his creation.
You too, eh? =))
“It’s more of a philosophical issue than a scientific one, anyway - we can’t live our whole lives with science as the only tool. Besides, considering the fact that scientists ignore supernatural causes completely, it’s kind of difficult (and a little strange) to talk about what would be scientific in this case.”
I agree which is why I say that scientists should stick with science.
Spacesocks,
here we go again with the Flying Spaghetti Monster. 8-|
Jeez guys. Come up with something original.
/:)
As for the whole “null hypothesis” bit, sorry. I don’t buy it. Also, just by you saying “there is a strong possibility that God doesn’t exist” still is an element of faith to me because there is hardly any proof. But this is where we must agree to disagree.
Bill, don’t judge me. I just don’t think the Office is all that funny. Except for the “That’s what she said.”
Dang, where did you come from, Spacesocks? I guess I sat on my comment too long. I like your response a lot, except for that whole Matrix thing, because I can totally believe that.
And, just so this comment isn’t a complete waste…
I think that most people do that. The important thing is if you act on that judgment by allowing it to color the way you see the person, or if you fight against it and continue to treat the person well.
“Sketchy” rap music? Is that like a “draw-along,” instead of a sing-along? :p
I like rap music, too - my problem is with the meaning of the lyrics. It’s weird, because I like how the words flow, I just don’t like what they say. I tend to avoid rap on principle, though (not that I listen to music much in the first place).
What am I, the slowest comment-writer on the planet? Sheesh. 8-|
That’s like saying athletes should stick with sports and comedians should stick to making jokes and being silly. Granted, too much weight is given to scientists sometimes, but the same is true of celebrities. Everyone should be free to explore their interests, whatever they are, so if scientists want to write books on theology (which has been done from both the believing and non-believing side), then they can. They’re not free from criticism, though.
K, OK then, it could go either way. However it isn’t a 50/50 chance. Given what we have determined about the universe it is unlikely that the events given for the formation of the universe in Genesis are accurate. The Big Bang is much more credible as an idea. It is unlikely that the human animal is a created being. It is a more credible idea that we evolved from proto apes who evolved from earlier forms. There are other ideas, obviously, that religious books put forward that seem incredible given the ideas that have been put forward in recent centuries.
I cannot say with 100% certainty that Odin did not make the world from the bones of Ymir, the king of the Frost Giants. I’m strongly inclined to dismiss the idea as fanciful based on what I know about geology and anatomy. What probability should I give it though because I cannot disprove it? 1%, 0.0001%? Lower?
Perhaps it is a metaphor rather than an explanation of real events. Fine, I can take it as such and glean whatever I like from the ideas without ever being wrong.
I’d rather put my faith in the evidence.
You know I think K through in the whole “everybody has faith” curveball to distract everyone into a war of semantics to hide this clearly outrageous statement
I believe you misspelled the name it’s spelled, “O-V-E-R-R-A-T-E-D”
Watch out, Beatles drive-by:
Yellow Submarine
What are Lost or The Office? TV shows?
Blasphemy!
I know there’s like 8 other people on earth who don’t like the beatles. I used to hang with the Grateful Dead crowd and man , don’t tell any of them you don’t like the beatles. I felt like black guy at a NASCAR race.
=))
For what it’s worth, I’ve never cared for the Dead. Huge Beatles fan, though.
“However it isn’t a 50/50 chance. Given what we have determined about the universe it is unlikely that the events given for the formation of the universe in Genesis are accurate. The Big Bang is much more credible as an idea. It is unlikely that the human animal is a created being. It is a more credible idea that we evolved from proto apes who evolved from earlier forms.”
Never really argued against evolution. And when I talk about “God”, I don’t necessarily mean the God described in Christianity. More or less Something more than just ourselves.
Skeptigator
I have to second Sara on the blasphemy charge. I used to not be a fan until I saw Across the Universe. Now I’m a little addicted.
Ben, Lost and the Office are both TV shows that many Christians seem to be IN LOVE with. It’s like an epidemic at my church. Just not a fan.
K said:
I know. I was just taking a lesson from the bible and highlighting how it doesn’t apply to how I understand the universe to work. There’s a lot of the bible that is like that. Enough that I cannot see myself accepting Christianity as an accurate philosophy for life. The same could be said for almost every other religion that I’m familiar with.
I give a little nod to Buddhism though. Except for that stuff about reincarnation it’s a philosophy that I can certainly understand and even accept to a certain extent. The idea of karma (the Eastern idea anyway) makes a lot of sense to me.
That isn’t to say that Christianity doesn’t have it’s good points. The idea of charity is strongly intertwined with Christian teachings and I can take a lot from that idea. Unfortunately there is a whole undercurrent of divine punishment as well that is a big turn off. As Loki put it so eloquently in Dogma:
That’s one reason why I believe that, if there is some kind of god out there, it is nothing like what we’ve imagined. Certainly nothing like Christianity, Judaism or Islam have shown us. I have no faith at all in those ideas. The idea of a vague…something…seems less unreal but as I have no idea what that something is I have to live as if the something is a nothing. If nothing turns out to be something it’ll be an added bonus for me but I wouldn’t bet on it.