Atheists, please help?

"If you want to believe, there is ample evidence to support your belief".

Are you serious?

So beleive fire is cold and put your hand in it and you will quickly find out how false that claim and way of thinking is! Then you might just try looking at all the evidence for the truth!

The only way primitive religion exists today is through the child abuse of forcing it into very, very young children but thanks to better education and growing intellects so many teens are able to discover the truth, throw off the indoctrination and step into the real world!

Academia states that in the absence of any sort of evidence of the existence of something it must be deemed not to exist until verifiable evidence is found - thus god is held not to exist pending some sort of verifiable evidence.

The bible is what is called "Faction" A fictional story set in a factual time and place. Thus the time, place and real historical characters are all correct but the fictional characters and stories are not!

There is not one single mention of Jesus in the entire Roman record - that is right - not one! At the same time as he was supposed to have been around there were a number of Jews claiming to be the messiah - all of whom are well recorded!

There is not a single contemporary record from any source and even the bible mentions of him like all other references were not written until many years after his supposed death!

He was supposed to have been a huge problem to the Romans and produced wonderful miracles but still not one contemporary record?

Even the bible mentions of him like all other references were not written until many years after his supposed death!

Pilate is recorded in the Roman record as a somewhat lack luster man but no mention of a Jesus, a trial or crucifixion that would surely have been used to make him look brighter!

At best he was an amalgam of those others but almost certainly never existed!

The Roman Emperor Constantine produced the bible and he was a pagan not god! He took the Jewish religion, organized it into Christianity and then into the Holly Roman Catholic Church!! Not in Israel or any of the countries of supposed origin but entirely ITALIAN!

Not one word of it is contemporary with the period and was not written until several hundred years after the period the story is set in!! How did the apostles write their books more than a hundred years after they would have been dead?

What a wonder full disinformation and deception campaign he waged against his Jewish enemies by turning them into his invented Christianity - so good in fact that Christians are still following the deception to this day!

The first person to provide a shred of verifiable evidence for God will become world famous and mega rich!

So come on genius put away your wishful thinking and come up with the goods!

Ain't happened yet and it never will!

So how does this primitive belief in a god survive? The answer is simple and very down to Earth

Acceptance of a supernatural claim tends to promote cooperative social relationships. This communication demonstrates a willingness to accept, without skepticism, the influence of the speaker in a way similar to a child's acceptance of the influence of a parent. By encouraging this kind of behavior where the most intense social relationships occur it facilitates the lack of skepticism and deters more open minded thinking.

They are christian, Muslim or the other religions depending where they were born simply because they were indoctrinated by their parents as very young children. They will go on to indoctrinate their own children and those will go on to indoctrinate their grandchildren!

Atheists have the intellect to see through the conditioning and escape into the real world!

Agnostics have the intellect to see through the conditioning but lack the courage to throw of the conditioning entirely.

Sadly Christians, muslims and others are still held firmly prisoner by the self perpetuating brainwashing!

"Humans would't be doing anything wrong. They would be afraid."

Nah. If god wanted people to be moral but not afraid, he would have either shown himself but left out the BS about people going to hell if they don't follow him, or he would have stayed totally silent and hoped people figure it out on their own

"If you want to believe, there is ample evidence to support your belief. If you don't want to believe, no amount of evidence will convince you"

That's true. It's called 'confirmation bias,' and it's an incredibly powerful force. That's why its important to ensure that your logic is perfect and to use good science, because if you let your biases get in the way you will end up finding evidence for whatever you want to be true.

So when people weren't as educated two things could have happened:

God actually did what is described in the Bible or the people back then made the stories up and people believed them because they had lower intelligence.

Now lets see, as education increased, the amount of interaction God has with the world has diminished from flooding the world to appearing on toast and doors.

Also that argument could work for a number of different scenarios.

Could it be that people back then weren't very intelligent and made it all up because we couldn't communicate information like we can now, just like every other religion?

1) So God's failure to prove his existence is proof of his existence? This is silly. You could make this argument about ANY other mythological figure...

2) No evidence to support reincarnation. What were we before the Earth existed? What is this medium that is being transferred from one life to the next? Why can't we find it?

3) They have this completely backwards. The justification for belief is "faith" - which is belief without evidence. The justification for lack of belief is a complete lack of evidence. Whomever said that probably considered things like anecdotes evidence.

I applaud you. Very good insight! Were God to actually show Himself, that would take away our freedom of choice, our free will.

However, In the Way, God has shown Himself. He has shown Himself through His Manifestations such as Zoroaster, Krishna, the Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and others, The most recent Manifestation is Baha'u'llah (1817-1892, founder/Prophet of the Baha'i Faith).

Reincarnation is a greatly misunderstood phenomenon. According to Baha'u'llah, God would not allow man to go through a dark, dismal existence such as this a second time. The state of our soul in the next existence as determined by what we do in this one, but while we are constantly advancing, we do not come back to this existence ever again.

That is very true about evidence. And the fact is that when it comes to God, there is quite a bit of evidence that goes both ways. It seems to me what very few people do is embark on a journey for the truth, determined to follow the truth wherever it may take them. But that is what I did, although the journey was long and at times arduous. Very few people are willing to study more than one or two religions before they become Atheists. Very few believers truly understand why the typical Atheist does not believe. In short, I have studied more religions than most people know exist, and took about a decade to decide that atheism made the most sense. But then I took a second look at one particular religious group, spent a decade and a half trying to prove it wrong but could not, I ended up embracing it simply because it does make so much sense. I am now a Baha'i.

Some people claim all faith is blind, but my faith is a carefully considered, carefully reasoned and very reasonable, rational and defensible faith. Were atheist Stephen Roberts (1901-1971) standing in front of me this moment, I would say back to him, “I contend that we are both men of faith. I just have faith in one more thing than you do, and for very good reason. When you fully understand why I disdain all the devisers of superstitions and dismiss the gods of vain imaginings, you will understand why I believe in my God, and you will believe also." -- B. Knott Wildered (Not my real name, but the quote is mine.)

"Wildered" is an archaic word meaning to mislead or to be misled, ergo my nom de plume simply means do not be misled.

As a proud atheist my response would be "The reason god does not show himself to the people would is because he is not real. If this supreme being came down that loved each and every one of us, and created all of us as individuals. I can't comprehend why anyone would be afraid. Christians have a amazing ability to bypass their intellectual mind to believe in nonsense. Reincarnation does not make any sense at all. How many gang members or murderers and rapist are there? To believe in reincarnation would to be saying they have lived numerous "Lifes" as good people to be born as a human. To which they go against our society's rules.

There is only one good reason why "God" does not show himself. He is a product of the human imagination, and exists only in the human mind.

Certainly, NO ONE can argue that to date, there is no UNIVERSALLY-ACCEPTED, empirical evidence for the existence of not just "God," but any and all other deities that humans believe in and worship TODAY. The singular-God believers are hard-pressed to prove their deity is the "real" one against the array of thousands of other deities others currently accept as "real."

Homo sapiens have this unique ability to use their brains to conjure anything and anyone in their imaginations - something that no other sentient being on this planet is capable of. In short, all gods/goddesses are invented, and not a single one has a "true" spark of divinity in them.

So basically he doesn't show himself because he wants people to burn in hell? He *does* tell people to fear him in the bible and just states not to do stuff- the things that are sins w/o logic he just says not to do or ___. He still demands people to believe in him and to fear him though... I'd think if that were the case, if he wants this non-afraidness evenly spread, he'd not say anything about himself or his punishments. (which *would* drop discipline especially where sins don't make sense as being "bad" by themselves aka w/o thinking god said so)

A particular standard of evidence is required to prove any claim. This ‘standard’ is adjusted depending upon the nature of the claim. Since god’s existence is an extraordinary claim, perhaps the most extraordinary claim, proving it requires equally extraordinary evidence.

The standard of evidence required to prove a god’s existence is immediately more than any personal anecdote, witness testimony, ancient book or reported miracle – none of which can be considered extraordinarily reliable. The human mind is also highly susceptible to being fooled and even fooling itself. One could be suffering from an hallucination or a form of undiagnosed schizophrenia, hysteria or psychosis, ruling out even our own senses as reliable evidence gathering mechanisms in this case. As strange as it sounds, misunderstood aliens might even be attempting to interact with us using extremely advanced technology. In fact, reality itself could be a computer simulation which we unknowingly inhabit.

Every conceivable argument, every imaginable piece of evidence for god is not without some fatal flaw or more likely explanation which precludes it from being used as definitive proof. Note: This is not the same as being close-minded.

There is, however, a simple answer to this question: God is what it would take to convince an atheist. An omniscient god would know the exact standard of evidence required to convince any atheist of its existence and, being omnipotent, it would also be able to immediately produce this evidence. If it wanted to, a god could conceivably change the brain chemistry of any individual in order to compel them to believe. It could even restructure the entire universe in such a way as to make non-belief impossible.

In short, a god actually proving its own existence is what would convince any atheist of said god’s existence.

God exists.

Isaiah 45:18

SDA