There is no god

[OldKingCole]

Inspired by another thread … I was surprised by the level of atheism professed … as I always though I was in a tiny, tiny minority.
would be interested to see the MN response.

IABU - there is a god
IANBU - there is no god

Yep why they comparing dna too , there is nothing. To compare it too

@XDownwiththissortofthingX thats interesting… yes it’s totally pagan not at all Christian. I find it fascinating that probably most of the ‘non believers’ on this thread celebrated Christmas. Even though it’s not actually the birth of Christ but they probably don’t realise that either…

@XDownwiththissortofthingX Cheeky monkey 😀 A lot.

@NestingSparrow

Richard Dawkins is no more typical or representative of atheists than the Iranian Ayatollahs are of all religious people.

If you really want to go down the route of picking the very worst, most abrasive examples of a group of people who have one common feature, then nobody comes out looking good.

Exactly this. I'm an atheist. I work in the NHS. I volunteer. I co-facilitate a support group for people who have loved ones in addiction. My co-facilitator is a devout Christian, btw. No team colours here, I just get on with doing my bit to make the world a bit better. Assuming that atheists don't do any of this stuff is a huge mistake. You don't need belief in a deity to be a decent human being.

I don't do the 'sky fairy' crap. It's rude. So is the 'pity those who do not know Jesus' crap I've heard almost every time I have been in a church.

I have no problems with believers believing what they want. Just keep your mitts off abortion rights, the gay community and equality for women.

The funny thing is you say you and Muslims don't believe in same god, but you do the christian, Islamic and jewish god are one and the same.

‘Haven’t read the whole thread but all those who don’t believe in God do you celebrate Christmas and if so why? Even though Jesus wasn’t born in December am curious as to why you would observe what many consider to be the date of his birth’

Well, culturally Christmas is a major holiday/celebration for this country and most of us have fond memories from childhood of That holiday.
but even most Christians are aware that ‘Christmas’ actually came from the pagan festival for the a winter solstice, where people have celebrated the longest night of the year - and the marking of the start of moving towards Spring and renewal - and that rather than Jesus being born on December 25th the early Christians timed the ‘birth’ of Jesus around the solstice to help with the conversion of the pagan people.
Good and clever Marketing/ PR basically.

I’m very religious. One of the best things about it is that you really don’t give a shit what other people do and don’t believe. Live and let live 🤷🏼‍♀️

Christmas falls in the darkest time of the year (shortly after the winter solstice where the days are shortest). I can see the logic of why it was a festival of lights celebrated by the pagans, something to bring a lighter mood and joy in being together in darkest depressing days. I enjoy giving presents and having an excuse to feast and be merry. Obviously in our culture, the day is the 25th of December as Christianity changed the date, rather than the 21st, but I don’t quibble as everyone else is doing it that day.

@Adelant Amen. And I mean that sincerely.

We do celebrate at other times of the year - Easter - lots of chocolate and Bank Holidays for time off work

we’re a ‘Christian’ country culturally speaking. So our major holidays centre around Christmas, Easter.
In non- Christian countries. It’s other dates - Ramadan, Hanukkah, Diwali, Yom Kippur.

doesn’t mean we all believe, or they all believe, but hundreds of years of heritage and tradition are hard to shift.

We realise it wasn't the birth of Christ becuase Christ neevr exiswted and people who never existed were neevr born. If you mean its not even when the mythical person was meant to be born, yes we do know that.

Christmas is just christians stealing the old pagan midwinter festivals anyway.

Because I think hope and faith are all we have. I of course don't think none believers go to hell.

If I suddenly got down on my knees and started talking to myself in the middle of EastEnders, then replied when questioned that I was talking to a bloke that no one could see, you would quite rightly think I'd lost my marbles.
Yet, folk do it in the name of Jesus or god and it's perfectly sane and sensible.
Mad.

@NestingSparrow

Just a further wee point about Dawkins -

I'm of the opinion that he rubs people up the wrong way because his neurodivergence leaves him a bit lacking in tact, so he often goes straight in with a no-holds-barred dismemberment of a distinct individual's personal testimony which even I find a bit over the top. He doesn't really do 'i respectfully disagree, and here's why...', but also on top of that I've long suspected that he is not, in fact, merely an atheist and verges more toward aggressive antitheism.

I have absolutely no issue with most of his contentions because I agree with him for the most part, but I do accept that he really doesn't do atheism much of a favour in the way he presents it because his stridence does play to accusations that atheism is about persecution of religiosity when it absolutely is not.

One other observation about your post - Big Bang theory does not suggest that 'all those atoms' are created 'out of nothing'. That is a misrepresentation. When the theory was first presented in an embryonic state, it was only concerned with the origin of the universe, not the cause of the 'big bang' itself. This has given rise to the notion that the big bang 'creates matter', when in reality it was originally nothing more than a hypothesis to explain how the universe expanded from it's origin point. This hypothesis has since expanded to explain how the big bang came about in itself, and this includes covering the part regarding where the matter that constitutes the universe came from.

@Againstmachine I can see your thinking here, they are all Abrahamic faith's. But the God described and worshipped is importantly different. I've done lots of reading and thinking on this particular topic recently.

I bet he didn't say he was the son of god...I bet his groupies did.

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait...
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unraveling the mystery,
That all started with the big bang!

Dammit. That was definitely supposed to be in response to How was the universe created? What triggered it? Where did the first matter actually come from?

So who is the correct one ?

You could apply this to any previous religion that existed.

I'd guess no religion is correct, because they have all been written and edited by humans

@CharlieD2020

Do you accept though, as alluded to up the thread, you can not credibly ask an atheist to 'describe the god you don't believe in' as you put it, because, first of all, atheism is not 'disbelief in god' but the denial that deities exist, all of them, and therefore it is impossible to simultaneously deny something exists and describe a non-existent thing?

If an atheist can describe their god, then they, by definition, are not an atheist. I can not describe anyone else's god, all I can do is describe how I observe their interpretation of their own god, but insofar as the god itself is concerned, that conversation begins and ends with 'your god does not exist'.

That's the oddity of it all, back then people believe in Jesus Christ and his philosophy etc, yet if people today said they were God's chosen ect, I believe it would be seen as ??

Re Christmas, our family (all ex religious) celebrated winter solstice as well as Christmas this time. It was really lovely.