At 8/26/08 08:04 PM, Florox wrote: For some time now I've been meaning to ask a real atheist, why they'd give up their religious belief. Please, I'd like a response from someone who actually knows what he's doing, and not from 13 year olds who are just disgruntled because Mommy and Daddy make them go to church on Monday. Note that I'm not trying to imply anything insulting, nor am asking in a joking manner. I'd just like to know what drove you into atheism.

And please, religion does not equal Christianity.

all my life i had wondered how a flying fat man handing out presents was passed off as fictin while the fly giant man who made everything was 'fact' religion doesnt seem to match up with learned facts of the earth, such as evolution. I also became athiest because the way all the religions ffought for dominance was just wrong. soon i reliesed that one day anyone could have writin things in a book a bout someone saying that he was magic and that everyone should do the things listed or go to hell, to me that seemed more like dictatorship. then i started wondering if heaven was really all that, a land with no consicuence, no rules no problems, i was getting scared, life would become meaningless, and id never have to do anything. somewhere around then i came to an acceptance, and everything sort of fit in, and life made more sense, i just loved life more. so i stuck with it.

THE END

At 8/27/08 12:50 PM, jmaster13 wrote:

At 8/27/08 10:43 AM, pyromaniac616 wrote: My whole family is atheist, and the christian creation story makes no sense, and the big bang theory can be very easily proved.

Well then! Prove it to me. You can right?

very well. If you have a TV, and tune it to a channel with static, you are seeing background radiation.

Now, that in its self is part of an explanation, but basicly the universe was created several billions of years ago, when a pinpoint sized blob of compressed matter suddenly expanded drasticly, creating the univers we know in a few nanoseconds. The tempreture was well into many multiples of billions of kelvins, and the progress of the big bang can be traced by what I think is called red-shifting, or something along those lines, and the LHC (Large hadron collider) has been built to find theoretical particles created shortly after the big bang, then dissapeared, making them rather hard to find. One such particle is the higgs boson, and you may have heard about it. It has been refered to as the "God Particle" as it has many strange features and can supposidly "Travel between the planes of time and space." As to the creation of the big bang, it logicly came from the big crunch (in my view) which is where the universe stops expanding and starts contracing, crushing all matter into a tiny pinprick, then exploding again. what created this in the first place? no-one knows, but my opinion is that it just does exist, as space and time cannot exist outside of the universe, therefor time would be stuck, or everything would happen at once, both possibilitys mean that the universe probably wouldn't exist at all.

that along the lines of what you were looking for?

The red shift is good proof too.

People aren't interested in proof. The Big Bang is the statement that the universe started in one location which is well proven, not at all disagreeable even necessarily for a religious person.

Apparently science can't answer any important questions, but more trivial questions it gets spot on.

At 8/27/08 04:03 PM, Earfetish wrote: The red shift is good proof too.

People aren't interested in proof. The Big Bang is the statement that the universe started in one location which is well proven, not at all disagreeable even necessarily for a religious person.

Apparently science can't answer any important questions, but more trivial questions it gets spot on.

really? I thought that the big bang was the rival of the creation story.

At 8/28/08 07:51 AM, pyromaniac616 wrote: really? I thought that the big bang was the rival of the creation story.

You don't actually know what the Big Bang is, but you know you don't believe it, and you imagine there's no evidence without actually googling 'evidence for the Big Bang'. I see.

The Big Bang is the claim that the universe started in one point, which exploded and became the universe. Science has got everything from like .00000000000001 seconds after the Big Bang down. And then evolution happened and that's well proven too. There's a completely satisfactory and holistic explanation that tells you pretty much everything you could want to know without resolving to God. But many religious people still believe in ALL of it, because there's no decent reason not to.

At 8/27/08 02:28 PM, pyromaniac616 wrote:

At 8/27/08 12:50 PM, jmaster13 wrote:

At 8/27/08 10:43 AM, pyromaniac616 wrote: My whole family is atheist, and the christian creation story makes no sense, and the big bang theory can be very easily proved.

Well then! Prove it to me. You can right?

very well. If you have a TV, and tune it to a channel with static, you are seeing background radiation.

Now, that in its self is part of an explanation, but basicly the universe was created several billions of years ago, when a pinpoint sized blob of compressed matter suddenly expanded drasticly, creating the univers we know in a few nanoseconds. The tempreture was well into many multiples of billions of kelvins, and the progress of the big bang can be traced by what I think is called red-shifting, or something along those lines, and the LHC (Large hadron collider) has been built to find theoretical particles created shortly after the big bang, then dissapeared, making them rather hard to find. One such particle is the higgs boson, and you may have heard about it. It has been refered to as the "God Particle" as it has many strange features and can supposidly "Travel between the planes of time and space." As to the creation of the big bang, it logicly came from the big crunch (in my view) which is where the universe stops expanding and starts contracing, crushing all matter into a tiny pinprick, then exploding again. what created this in the first place? no-one knows, but my opinion is that it just does exist, as space and time cannot exist outside of the universe, therefor time would be stuck, or everything would happen at once, both possibilitys mean that the universe probably wouldn't exist at all.

that along the lines of what you were looking for?

Well, as interesting as this was, I asked for proof. Not a theory. Then again nothing can be proved with absolute fact. Thats just how it happens.
So, proof, no. But and interesting theory. I'm fairly open minded for a christian. I have yet to find anything that can completely remove any faith I have, but it's interesting to here what other people have to say.

CAN I JOIN?
No one responds me!!

At 8/29/08 06:39 PM, Gabriel234 wrote: CAN I JOIN?
No one responds me!!

IF YOU'RE AN ATHEIST YOU CAN JOIN.

I was born Catholic. Until about, 4th grade, I was so devote I would've punched someone in the face if the told my god wasn't real. Then my school started learning about war, poverty, crime, corruption, and some deadly diseases. After the first few chapters I said to myself "God WANTED this shit to happen?" My faith slowly started to unravel. By the end of the year, I was almost as devote an Atheist as I was Catholic before.

technically nobody can provee that there was a big bang because there in no indesputable evidence(then again much of the dispute is, god put it there for you to believe, blah blah, forcing doubt to make the faithful more pure, blah blah, etc. then again, seeing as the whole creationist theory falls apart as soon as someone passes the age of 125, then effectivally the big bang is fact. but dont tell your preist that

and yes, i do know that all i basically did was agree with the people who stated that the big bang ws fact, but im bored and felt like posting something that was of at least marginal relevance.

At 8/29/08 01:17 AM, jmaster13 wrote:

Well, as interesting as this was, I asked for proof. Not a theory. Then again nothing can be proved with absolute fact. Thats just how it happens.
So, proof, no. But and interesting theory. I'm fairly open minded for a christian. I have yet to find anything that can completely remove any faith I have, but it's interesting to here what other people have to say.

We obviosly cannot prove that this is exactly how it happened but what this is is evidence to support the theory.

See, the difference between a scientific theory and God is that Science must be backed up with evidence, where as God can have no evidence which should make God and all those stories BS in the first place.

Explosion-

Starting off we have the compressed exploding matter idea, which is proven even in modern day, as you compress something that contains energy (as all matter does), that energy and atoms will become closer and closer until they are touching or atleast hitting each other. This is called "Critical Mass" when electrons begin to crash into Nuetrons and split them to release energy, that energy makes the Atoms more "agitated" in a way and creates even greater explosions as the Electrons move faster. This is noticed when you heat something up, when in actuality you are just adding energy to the Atoms to make them move faster.

Now to create energy, we usually use matter (as seen in Atomic Bombs), but the opposite can be said. It takes energy to create matter, thus if some gigantic form of matter with a large energy rating were to be compressed into it's critical mass, all that energy would begin to be released in a matter of lightspeed or maybe even faster. Now if in some places there were large enough quantities (let's say bunched up) it would convert itself into matter. This converted matter could be anything really, planets, stars, but most probably just the basic building blocks of all things, Atoms. Now that we have Atoms let's explain gravity. As we know gravity doesn't exist in Space, this is because everything that has mass attracts other mass or matter, the bigger the mass the stronger the attraction (Thus why the Moon has less Gravity or attraction than the Earth). Now even Atoms have this attraction, but it also takes ENERGY for them to bind to make Molecules. So Atoms pair with Atoms to create Molecules, which then pair up to create larger matter, and so on and so forth.

Red Shifting-

This one I've read up on only a little but I know it's true. Red Sifting was discovered by a scientist when looking through a telescope at space over a long period of time. He then noticed that the stars and other things seemed to be moving away in a certain direction. Since science has to be tested and retested they soon found that everything was heading to a certain spot, either towards the center of the explosion or towards the fringes.

-Other stuff-

We can't know what might, if there is anything, be outside the explosion, or universe, but for all we know this could all have happened before. My thoughts?

This explosion could have happened 100 times, exploding outward to create matter, then coming back to it's origenal position to reach critical mass again, only to explode once more. 100? It could have happened 1000000times! We would never know! What if this isn't the only explosion? There could be several outside of this one, but all inside another space. Remember, to ants a house is like a universe, we arn't that big, well with no other civilization to compare to we look big, but compared to Space we arn't.

That is the difference between God...

now show me some proof of God?

At 9/1/08 03:26 AM, JakFro5t wrote:
now show me some proof of God?

Well, the fact being of God is that Christianity is a faith based religion, not a fact based one. (Meaning that not matter how many facts there are it dosn't change our way of thinking, because it's faith) But there are things like the fact that Jesus exsisted and is proved to have been real through documentation. Also, things like finding evidence that there really was a gigantic flood. And I could keep going, but thats the thing, christianity is totally faith based.

At 9/1/08 01:34 PM, jmaster13 wrote:

Well, the fact being of God is that Christianity is a faith based religion, not a fact based one. (Meaning that not matter how many facts there are it dosn't change our way of thinking, because it's faith) But there are things like the fact that Jesus exsisted and is proved to have been real through documentation. Also, things like finding evidence that there really was a gigantic flood. And I could keep going, but thats the thing, christianity is totally faith based.

I hate to generalize you with every other theist I've had this arguement with, but you seem to help me do that. This right here is the standerd theist cop-out, just say "It says it in the Bible", then quote mine all scientific data until it supports your statement.

Ofcoarse it takes faith to believe in a God but that's why it's called faith. The problem is that why would you trust your "soul" to something that either is not there, or maybe you have it all wrong. What if everthing is mixed up and you believe in the wrong God? (not saying there is one) Then you go to that Hell place...this isn't something to be taken lightly.

The real difference between Atheist and Theist is that Atheist have reason to backup thier choice, where as Theist have practically none.

Hopefully I didn't come off as too much of a jackass, but I think I made my point.

At 9/1/08 01:34 PM, jmaster13 wrote: Well, the fact being of God is that Christianity is a faith based religion, not a fact based one. (Meaning that not matter how many facts there are it dosn't change our way of thinking, because it's faith) But there are things like the fact that Jesus exsisted and is proved to have been real through documentation. Also, things like finding evidence that there really was a gigantic flood. And I could keep going, but thats the thing, christianity is totally faith based.

Ok, I'll use an example to show how BS i think that post is:

Kid1: I believe there is no such thing as gravity and we subconsciously choose to come back to earth because our souls are bound to this rock.

Kid2: You HAVE you be fucking kidding me. Gravity is as proved a fact as the earth is round.

Kid1: I FUCKING BELIEVE IT SO BACK THE FUCK OFF!!!!1!!1!1!!!1

Kid2: <insert scientific mumbo jumbo about gravity>

Kid1: BUT BIRDS DON'T USE GRAVITY BLAH BLAH BLAH STUPID SHIT

Kid2: <insert lift aerodynamic science here>

Kid1: FUCK YOU IT'S DOCUMENTED.

Kid2: Go jump off a cliff and see how real gravity is.

Kid1: FUCK YOU!

</example>

^^is how I see most of these types of discussions.

At 9/2/08 10:39 AM, NeonFlame126 wrote: Kid2: Go jump off a cliff and see how real gravity is.

Kid1: FUCK YOU!

</example>

^^is how I see most of these types of discussions.

Sooo, you see them as total retardation? Then why are you reading them? Go be condesending somewhere else. No one needs you to say, "hey look at these retards!" Come on man.

Why are you convinced you know anything about God? Can't you just think 'it's too mysterious for me to be Christian'?

At 9/3/08 12:45 AM, jmaster13 wrote: Sooo, you see them as total retardation? Then why are you reading them? Go be condesending somewhere else. No one needs you to say, "hey look at these retards!" Come on man.

I see them as a complete waste of space, time, and energy. They ALWAYS end the same way, the Atheist/Agnostic flaming the Religious for flaming, and nothing changes from beginning to end. I wonder if the side that starts it honestly believe anybody would be converted.

At 9/3/08 04:46 PM, NeonFlame126 wrote:

At 9/3/08 12:45 AM, jmaster13 wrote: Sooo, you see them as total retardation? Then why are you reading them? Go be condesending somewhere else. No one needs you to say, "hey look at these retards!" Come on man.

I see them as a complete waste of space, time, and energy. They ALWAYS end the same way, the Atheist/Agnostic flaming the Religious for flaming, and nothing changes from beginning to end. I wonder if the side that starts it honestly believe anybody would be converted.

And your still here complaining about it! You'd think with all this dislike of the subject you would have left. But I guess you just like to complain? Or what? Your not proving a point. We all know this already. You just complaining.

So why are you still here?

At 9/3/08 06:22 PM, jmaster13 wrote: And your still here complaining about it! You'd think with all this dislike of the subject you would have left. But I guess you just like to complain? Or what? Your not proving a point. We all know this already. You just complaining.

Too bad this isn't the "HEY! Flame Atheists here! Club" This is about being an Atheist and what little it takes to be one. This club wasn't made for flaming, but it did practically beg for it.

So why are you still here?

I should ask you the same question.

both of you shut the fuck up

don't even fucking know or care what you're arguing about

shut the fuck up

talk about something interesting

I was brought up by my parents as an Anglican Christian but I am now an athiest to the bone.

I've been an Athiest for about a year or 2 on my own accord. It was my choice, all of my family is part of the religious scene, though my grandparents don't seem to care to much for it.

But now I get here (into the Athiest "Society") and it seems like half of these people just call them selves Athiest just so they can look badass. They want to say they don't believe in God just so they can have no obligation to be good or atleast representable. For FUCK christ these people are stupid mother fuckers!

I gave up God to be a better person, to start fresh and not be an associate of the damned blood-shed and blind stupidity. I became an Athiest so that logic and reason along with personal morals wouldn't interfere with religious beliefs. So for Chuck Norris sakes....

God =/= morals, just because we don't believe in god doesn't mean we can't be good people, if anything we should be better people. People want to generalize all of us into the select few dumbass' that think without god they can do any damned thing. If that's what you wanted then be a Christian again, don't come here and fuck it up for me.

If anyone knows of "The Amazing Athiest" on Youtube then you'll know what I'm talking about.

Thanks Mexify, even though I don't agree with religious people, I dislike religious people who can't even take the time to even try to defend thier beliefs with some sort of logic istead they use cop-outs so they don't hurt thier little brains....

A little news for all of you in the states for the upcoming election:

McCain is an Evangelical Christian who believes everything in the Bible. Including killing homosexuals so say goodbye to gay marrage, abortion is wrong so say goodbye to pro-choice for women, most likely he believes black people are bad and should be slaves...

His running partner for Vice President voted to have Intelligent Design (Creationism for those who dont know what ID is) be taught in school in Alaska...

"Friends don't let friends vote Republican" Keep these idiots out of the white house!

At 9/3/08 09:06 PM, Earfetish wrote: both of you shut the fuck up

don't even fucking know or care what you're arguing about

shut the fuck up

talk about something interesting

You first. You started this thread.

At 9/1/08 01:34 PM, jmaster13 wrote: But there are things like the fact that Jesus exsisted and is proved to have been real through documentation.

Such as? Let me ask you this. Who is this charactor?

Someone Born of a virgin, born on the winter solstice, visited by wise men, performed miracles, murdered, assended into heaven.

Sound like Jesus?

Actually it's the stories of Hercules, Osiris, Hermes, Mithra, Apollo etc.

There are more people with the same charactoristics that came BEFORE Jesus. So does that mean these other Religions can claim copyright?

Also, things like finding evidence that there really was a gigantic flood. And I could keep going, but thats the thing, christianity is totally faith based.

For the exception of the fact that it's impossible for Noah to build an ark with the techology, man power and supplies to build a boat, get all the animals to one area, put all the animals on the boat with sufficient food and supplies along with all the diseases, parasites, infections etc not to mention all the plants and trees considering the rest would've been flooded. Actually it wasn't on till the 19th century the size of the ark was exceeded. Over 4000 years later.

To cover the entire earth you would need about 200 times the amount of water we have on land. Or you could flood it from the air, but that would require over 300,000 times of fluid in the atmosphere. Which would drown everyone by just breathing and when the flood came all the creatures that we'ren't on the ark would've been crushed and when the water (suddenly) the remains would explode.

Also, what about the cultures that came before the flood such as the Egiptions?

At 8/14/08 07:42 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: This place is so dead lately I'd welcome those flame wars

Holy shit.

I like have mystical powers or some shit.

Um, I really miss having Jessica Alba sit on my face :D

I'm gonna join this club. So there.

So yeah, I became an atheist around the same time everyone (*everyone*) else did: when I was born. Then my parents taught me to be a Catholic. I don't think I ever really bought it. I went to church every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, did Sunday school, went to two different Catholic schools, read a bunch of crap from the Bible, did confessions, prayed at dinner, etc, etc, the works. Even visited the Vatican.

Never bought it. I just nodded my head, smiled, genuflected a bunch of times, and got genuinely creeped out whenever a baby started crying in those giant, echoing churches. It just never made sense. Perhaps there was no incentive, cause I did believe in Santa for the longest time, but that guy had toys, so it was cool. But even then, I always had this suspicion that Santa and the Tooth Fairy and all those were just made up for kids, cause if they weren't bookin it to the point of lighting on fire, then there was no way they could do their jobs.

A lot of atheists I know had to go through a process of shaking off their original beliefs. I knew one guy that couldn't believe in a God that allowed war, rape, murder, yada yada. He'd rant about it every once in a while and cap off all of these rants by saying something to the effect of ". . . so fuck him! I hate him!" To which I would respond, "But, how can you hate someone that's not real?" He was a little slow.

I never had to shake off my belief in God. I only donned the title of "atheist" when I discovered the word, but I had fit the definition long beforehand. The only things I got from religion were the big questions, like "Why are we here?" "What's it all mean?" shit like that. Those are the things I had to shake off. They're useless questions, like "What color is sex?" They're certainly fun to entertain, but all too easy to brood on. That's the best and worst part of language itself: it's so fucking malleable.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. I just joined newgrounds and thought I should check out the forums. It seemed like a subject change was needed here, so I thought I'd put out a bunch of ideas.

I wish to join im a athiest.

At 9/7/08 06:18 PM, Dante-Son-Of-Sparda wrote: I wish to join im a athiest.

You totally just let the guy above you have the best joining post huh?

I cant type that much im working on PSP lol it's kinda LOONNG . plus I dont have much time on NG as I use to.

So . . . atheism wasn't such a big step for me, but I don't it's that way for a lot of other atheists. My father was a devout Catholic his whole life, as were his parents. Only recently, he lost his faith. Indeed, he shook off the notion that "faith" was a good thing to have about anything. It took him a long time to come out with it, and I can't imagine how my grand parents took it. But lately, he seems happier and more confident.

To current club members and any newcomers, how did it feel for you?