How Many of You Are Atheist or Non Christian?

[Spops53190]

Agnostic.

If there's an all powerful God, why can't it stop all murders, rapes, suicides, etc. Does it just sits there saying "oh well, I wish I could do something about it". ?

The truth is, we really don't know who created us and what were its intentions. Our creator could be praying to its own God too.

My father is a scientific Atheist and raised me in that mode. He said something when I was young that has always disturbed me: what if our entire galaxy is just some kid's science project? What to us is billions of years, is just the first 3 days of a one week assignment.

The ending of Men In Black alludes to this idea a bit. The reality is this: we have no idea, and no way to find out.

This reminds me of Star Ocean: Til the End of Time. 

I chose Christian, because that's what I was raised as, and if anyone asks it's the simplest thing to say.  Technically though, I'm Panentheistic, with Christian leanings. Basically, I don't think God really does anything or interacts with us, but I believe in It. Whenever I've tried to go the Atheist route, the endless, mind-fucking spiral that is the creation of the universe from absolute nothingness crushes me- let alone the sheer notion that of all the incredible terrifying possibilities of existence/life, we have this incredibly streamlined and logical system.  But I'm not particularly Christian. I get into arguments with my mother about how neither of us are actually Baptists, because we don't believe the events of the Bible (or at least not most of them in her case) are real.

[kcjones]

My father is a scientific Atheist and raised me in that mode. He said something when I was young that has always disturbed me: what if our entire galaxy is just some kid's science project? What to us is billions of years, is just the first 3 days of a one week assignment.

The ending of Men In Black alludes to this idea a bit. The reality is this: we have no idea, and no way to find out.

true. Hopefully religion won't obstruct our search to someday finding out .

This is one of the biggest fallacies.  Religion has done far more to foster science than fight it. A large portion of universities in the US were started by religious organizations.  Hell, Harvard originally was started to train protestant clergy.

There are so many things wrong with this statement that I don't know where to begin. Galileo himself was prosecuted for heresy and convicted. Everything from the Scopes trial to attempts to ban stem cell research, religion (particularly Western Christianity) has steadfastly stood in the way of scientific progress.

You need to spend more time on your history. You could not possibly be more wrong even if you'd said the moon was made of green cheese.

The simplest example is to look at the institutions, where most scientific advancement has occurred over the past few hundred years, and you will see institutions that more likely than not were funded or founded by a religious organization for the purpose of science and learning.  The idea that Science and Religion are opposed comes from the debunked theory on the history of science called the Conflict Thesis.  

An Egyptologist, who teaches at religious university starts his intro to Archaeology class by stating," Just because you find irrefutable evidence of a biblical event doesn't prove that God was the cause."  Most Atheists are ignorant of how religious people approach science and history.

[Shotgun Styles]

The simplest example is to look at the institutions, where most scientific advancement has occurred over the past few hundred years, and you will see institutions that more likely than not were funded or founded by a religious organization for the purpose of science and learning.  The idea that Science and Religion are opposed comes from the debunked theory on the history of science called the Conflict Thesis.  

An Egyptologist, who teaches at religious university starts his intro to Archaeology class by stating," Just because you find irrefutable evidence of a biblical event doesn't prove that God was the cause."  Most Atheists are ignorant of how religious people approach science and history.

I'm going to leave off the first part of your statement because it isn't true, and even if it was, it's also irrelevant. A professor at a nominally religious school working on cancer research is not a man acting out of religious principle on behalf of the church. That's just bullshit.

The second part is more interesting. Because there is lots of "irrefutable proof" that the Bible is a work of fiction, particularly when it comes to scientific matters of evolution and physics. I am not aware of any "irrefutable proof" that sustains even one story in the Bible.

[kcjones]

"...religion (particularly Western Christianity) has steadfastly stood in the way of scientific progress. " This statement can't be true if the majority of colleges and universities were funded and/or founded by religious institutions. How is it irrelevant?

The creation story in the broadest sense makes up only half of the first book, of a 66 book Bible. The rest of the Bible spans at least 2000 years. The professor I mentioned was alluding to the story of Joshua leading a Hebrew army to capture a town named Jericho. Khirbet el-Maqatir is a site that was discovered in the 90s where artifacts were unearthed that prove the Hebrews were there, in the timeline matching the Bible (1400 bce). Doesn't prove God told the men to circle the city 7 times, and caused an earthquake (Although earthquakes have occurred in the area).

When it comes to cosmology, the vast majority of evidence is mathematical constructs widely varying theories of the universe itself. Stephen Hawkings believed in an infinite universe, with no beginning or end. I'm sorry but that's not a far stretch from believing in a deity that is everywhere, and has always existed.

[roterbo]

I'm agnostic but I don't mind other religion if they don't mess with my self/live
Sometimes religion is used as a moral code/compass and I can stand it.

[ligiby]

I am agnostic -though some mormons have tried to convert me back in the day

[Splinter]

I don't go to church but if I had to describe myself Id say I'm a Christian.

I honestly don't think strict atheism is very scientific. If you believe life can evolve into more and more complex varieties, why is it hard to imagine that a species (or being) could have evolved to the point that it is capable of creating and manipulating life and the physical world?

What if what we think of as god once belonged to a species that was no more advanced than we are now.

[ir-prince]

Agnostic.

Atheism is as silly as blind faith. You can't prove that there is no "god" anymore than you can prove that one does in fact exist.

Speaking as an Atheist. I can say That is not how Atheists define ourselves. and not how we go about proving anything at least not modern ones. I think what you are doing is conflating atheism and anti-theism. the two notions are similar but they are not the same. 

An atheist at least a modern one defines one self as some one who has made the conclusion based on the best available evidence that the likelihood of the existence of a god is so low that it can be set aside as an absurdity. 

An anti-theist is a individual who believes definitively that their is no god and they believe they can prove with no equivocation that a god doesn't exist. 

Modern day Atheists spend little to no time trying to prove the nonexistence of a deity. We just simple dont think about it at all.

[Faeginn]

The simplest example is to look at the institutions, where most scientific advancement has occurred over the past few hundred years, and you will see institutions that more likely than not were funded or founded by a religious organization for the purpose of science and learning.  The idea that Science and Religion are opposed comes from the debunked theory on the history of science called the Conflict Thesis.  

An Egyptologist, who teaches at religious university starts his intro to Archaeology class by stating," Just because you find irrefutable evidence of a biblical event doesn't prove that God was the cause."  Most Atheists are ignorant of how religious people approach science and history.

I'm going to leave off the first part of your statement because it isn't true, and even if it was, it's also irrelevant. A professor at a nominally religious school working on cancer research is not a man acting out of religious principle on behalf of the church. That's just bullshit.

The second part is more interesting. Because there is lots of "irrefutable proof" that the Bible is a work of fiction, particularly when it comes to scientific matters of evolution and physics. I am not aware of any "irrefutable proof" that sustains even one story in the Bible.

If anyone has the time, this documentary is pretty interesting. Religious censorship of science and perverting it to suit a purpose or agenda has always been a thing. It's interesting to see that there were some scholars who believed in free will and that the Quran was open to interpretation.



^Even modern science, especially social science which is complete bullshit imo is being corrupted by ideologies in very much the same way religion did in the past.

[kcjones]

The problem with social science is that many social experiments aren't reproduced, so peer review is the gold standard. There isn't even a standard for how many peers need to review a study/paper. Is it two peers or ten?

I really believe you guys need to research "Conflict Thesis". The continued belief in conflict thesis is similar to how the average Joe Blow still thinks people in the 15th century believed the earth was flat, despite historical evidence going back as far as 600 BCE that people thought the earth was round.