First off I'd like to stress that I tend to simply take people at their word: if someone says they were raised atheist and turned into a Christian I assume they are being honest, and likewise, if they say that they blew up a hospital because it was God's will I take them at their word. Of course, I remain somewhat skeptical of all claims that aren't backed up with evidence, but ceteris paribus, it seems churlish to withhold provisional acceptance of such claims.

However, applying Bayesian probability we can see that the posterior probability of someone being raised atheist and then becoming theist is very low.

- We know atheism is a very minority view (and we'll only talk about atheism here, not simply non-affiliated), let's say around 10%
- We know that significant conversions i.e. Christianity->Hinduism, Islam->Atheism etc rather than Baptist->Pentecostalist etc are generally very low. I've seen figures on Pew before, don't have time to source them right now, but lets say around 15% for the sake of argument.

Ok, so to cut a long story short, if we take a sample of 10,000 people from, say, America we get:

9000 Raised as Christians
1000 Raised as atheists

with a 15% adult conversion rate this creates:

7650 Raised Christian and still Christian
150 Raised atheists and now Christian
1350 Raised Christian and now atheist
850 Raised atheist and still atheist.

For the group that are currently adult Christians, 1.92% used to be atheists and 98.08% have always been Christians.

For the group that are currently atheist, 61.36% used to be Christians and 38.64% have always been atheists.

So, from a purely statistical POV, Mr Beer's skepticism is not completely unwarranted.

There are a few out there, just like there are people who start smoking cigarettes when they are over 30. It shows a terrible lack of intelligence to do so. At the end of the day, those who believe in things without evidence deserve the lack of respect most of them get. Those who make tremendous leaps of faith because they can't quite figure things out are not worthy of respect.

It is a pretty simple dilemma that the human brain is just not capable of solving. Rewind the tape back until the beginning of time. Our human minds demand that for cause there must be an action, and that is where the trouble starts.

Go back to the beginning. Lets say that there was a big bang, and that explosion started everything. With our minds, we demand more, since there had to be something before that initial explosion. Therefore, some would say it must be God. Others would then ask how did God come into existence? The answer would be that God is eternal. But then why can't the Universe be eternal?

The question cannot be answered by human minds. Period. Religion was the first attempt at science, as well as many other fields. When the skies lit up and it rained, people wondered who was responsible. Also, during the beginning of civilization, when ignorance ruled the day, how are you going to control someone who wants to steal something from their neighbor. You cannot just say to not do it. This is where the pressure of religion comes in. You will go to HELL if you do it. When that doesn't work then you need some sort of government to reel in the bad behavior. It can't just be that people fight it out for everything.

It all makes sense, if you go back to the beginning of time, then to the beginning of civilization. The God question cannot be answered, will never be answered, and deep down everybody knows it cannot be answered. If I told you right now that there was someone who could prove that God exists, or another who could prove that God does not exist, you would not be in a rush to see what this person has to say. You know that the human brain cannot answer the question.

The only reason it cannot be answered is because you cannot disprove a negative. The true odds that there is a God that is interested in human affairs is too small to be measured. And if there is a God that is not interested in human affairs then it doesn't matter anyways. I would take biology and science over religion. Do you ever wonder why religious people pray for someone to be cured of cancer, but never pray for someone to grow back their arms and legs if they were blown off in Iraq? There is a reason for that. Everyone knows that those arms and legs cannot grow back. Those who claim to know what the human mind cannot possibly know deserve ridicule and scorn.

If you get on a bus and someone is sitting next to you and they are talking to God, do you move a little closer or farther away...lol. If only one person on earth believed in God he would be the laughing stock of the world. There is comfort in numbers.

The governments of the world, including the United States government, isn't doing humankind any favors when they mention God in official discourse. People around the world who are less educated pick up on that nonsense talk, and that gives them a license to be irrational.

God sucks. It really is a waste of brainpower. Imagine how many millions of hours worth of children's lives.....billions and billions and billions of hours of human history wasted, that could have been spent on anything else and the world would be better off. It is a deal breaker for me. The most attractive and decent person in the world becomes the most undesirable when I hear the God talk.

Requires expansion in order for the logic to be mapped.

Initial problems
There is no apparent necessity to choose a religion (excluding: through word of mouth/printing of thoughts(cyclic deterioration of the validity of the true historical event)). You will find religion is a mixture of many philosophies.



...

You have chosen to use operating systems as the base relative comparison in metaphor.

Initial problems
Going way backwards from this jump, how did you identify that the language attempting to identify the operating system with its encoder- is even viable? And from then how did you come to the conclusion that it was correct? Are you aware of any illogical fallacies- which damage the consistency and validity of the platform that which has supplied the information resulting in your decision? i.e silly old testament stories. The new testament is clearly self serving, the parables and imagery result in a more behaved and communal society, until that society gets so far as to meet other philosophical factions which just so happen generally look different as in different geological areas where conflict ensues.

There is certainly an owners manual, humans are always struggling against the tide of omniscience to create it.

And we still haven't touched on the nature of the 'study' that led them to become Theists.

Partly because I think theism requires a component of faith over logic and I don't think that's acquired through study but rather a 'need' in the person. And partly because the result of an objective analyses of the various options on the table so often results in the student picking their home team, as it were.

I think this is short sighted explanation for something much much more nuanced. I think you are hitting the right area though for talking about causality.

What causes the the sun to move from east to west? Apollo pulls it with his chariot across the sky.

If it was merely causality that we are looking for all of us would be satisfied with that and we would move on the the next great mystery of the universe. But it doesn't satisfy, so we make up stories about gods and goddesses influencing and fighting with each other. These stories don't just tell us how things happen, but reasons behind it. We are heuristic creatures. The great question humanity has been searching forever for has been what is the causality of life, but what is the MEANING of life?

This is why I dont get why Science and Religion need to always be at odds with each other. Science owns causality but can give very little towards meaning, Religion has always been a source of meaning but fails miserably as an expert in causality. So why do we force each field to do both or neither?

I think the ultimate science dilemma is easy. Go back to the big bang, or the first cause. Then the question becomes can something come from NOTHING. Those who answer that question in the negative will often state that the answer is God, while those who state that something can come from nothing are usually physicists like Laurence Krauss.

The answer could be that the big bang/first cause makes scientific sense in that it could be that there are other universes that are unknown to us, which would get us back to the original question of what started that other, or the original universe. These questions just cannot be answered.

On the moral side, even if one were to assume that there is a God, then we are still back to the reality of being conscious entities and sentient beings now. We would still have the same issues to decide about how best to navigate through that reality, whether there is a God or not.

A huge majority of people who claim to believe in God and base their lives on that idea have not put in the time to study all of the arguments for and against. I find it absurd that someone can tailor their most important life decisions around something that most of them have not put serious time into.

What percentage of people through the years who believed in God have actually spent 2,000 hours analyzing BOTH sides of the argument? More atheists put the time in looking at all of the ideas from each side, while a far smaller number of believers have the decency to do the real honest intellectual work.

All one has to work with is the conscious brain that a human being has. Yes, it is mysterious, but rational thought is the only answer. Those who believe in God based on faith are wrong even if they turn out to be right.

Plus, if there is a God who has an interest in human affairs, and he dishes out punishment, it is far more likely that he would reward rational thought over blind faith based on no evidence.

Many believers are the lowest of the low when it comes to moral character. A lot of what they do is based on getting some sort of payout in the afterlife, or even avoiding some sort of punishment. That is not honorable behavior.

If you lend someone a helping hand that should be good enough, and I believe that it degrades the deed to bring God into the equation. At some point doing something that helps another is a reward that doesn't need divine approval, and those who cannot do a good deed without giving credit to something that in all likelihood does not exist, are really hard to respect as human beings.

So nothing caused something to cause everything?...... ok

So you're willing to accept outside forces that we cant perceive or that may not even be of this universe but can only guess on making all of this but cant make the same unsubstantiated stretch for any kind if divinity? I bet you're the kind of person who hates lemons but loves all forms of yellow citrus.

You've never seen the American Political process.

Humans are stupid and irrational most of the time. Humans base their worldview on a whole host of factors, Ive found, that have had very little critical thought or contemplation put into them. ~3/10 people in the world are Christian. My guess is that only about 20-30% of the people in the world actually spend time on these kinds of ideas soooo only about 1/10 of the people you meet are both Christian and rational about their belief. Then you get to the Zen type qualities of Christianity where those who truly get into its teachings realize that the more you understand about God and the relationship He wants with you/us, the less they know about everything else (ALA end of Job) and clam up, or speak so softly the irrationals drown them out with all of their yelling. If 75% of rationals end up this way, then only 1/40 Christians, or 3/400 people you meet, will be both vocal and rational about their religion. 5-10 per average congregation.

Now these are just arbitrary, linked only to my observations, but this is as best as I can understand what the world around me is like.
The world is about 12% Atheist or 1/3 the size of the the Christian population. If what I said about above is correct (1/3 being rational in belief) then it ends up being about even especially if a greater percentage of Atheists are rational.

Yeah, lets totally forget about our conscious animal or emotional thoughts which often have no rational (like me wanting TacoBell right now). And go on to how rational is the only answer because rational dictates it not being the beginning of a circular argument.
By who's rational?

Well finally, something both you and God can agree on:
Now I doubt God wants you to beat yourself up, literally, for what you do. I think this is saying let what you do be between Him and you.

Because Scientific Naturalism eschews supernatural explanations?

You only quoted one part so I dont know if you caught this or not. I stated that science can really only answer The How, which we crave but doesnt do so well with The Why which also we crave. Religion is great at the other way around. If you understood this then I guess what you are saying is that meaning (The Why) can only come by supernatural means? If true, then those who dont listen to or for the supernatural have trouble finding meaning in their lives--so then you have created a litmus test for the supernatural. Those who say they can glean meaning out of life believe in the farce of the supernatural. Those that have no meaning in their life are level-headed naturalists, doing whatever they are doing simply to do it.

But somehow I think you did your usual thing and only read what you wanted to read so then:

How do you know that what we live in is mearly natural? Do you know what a supernatural system looks like compared to the natural system?

Or do you know the same as everyone else and only know this one? If this is the only one you can observe, how can you be sure if this one has or doesnt have supernatural? Can you make or design some kind of model where one is created naturaly and the other supernaturaly (hint, you cant create a model for our universe that proves it could not have been created because you would create it).

How and why are pretty much the same thing in scientific context. (You are attributing why in terms of 'desire' and giving God a human characteristic of 'desiring events')

This argument is merely concluded as 'everything is supernatural'- logic dictates to me that everything is natural or everything is supernatural (both observable and not)- there is no distinction. It is religion which creates a paradoxical distinction. Theism is like 'Everything is supernatural, except God, God is natural'. SO apply your own statement to this (can you make/design system blablabla)

I offered a possible explanation for one part of what you posted, it wasn't a criticism nor a full answer to your entire post since that wasn't required. I was neither agreeing nor disagreeing with you.


And this makes me go, uh, like, whatever dude... I got better things to do. Later.

Or that its impossiable to be 100% sure how much is natural and/or supernatural. MM might be right, there maybe no supernatural and its all natural or the conculsioun your forced on me might be right that its all supernatural. We simply cant know either way because we only have one universial system to conclude from. Without comparing what we have to something that we know is supernatural or natural how can we know what it is we have?

Touche...and it would also be interesting for the opposition of theism to empirically support their stance. This is a two sided coin.

It's a belief that is either true or it isn't. The atheists I am familiar with are atheists because they have rejected whatever evidence / reasons have been proposed to suggest that it is true (much like we do with basically every other belief we hold).

Thinking in terms of 'evidence for atheism' is an incorrect approach, imo; atheism is the conclusion when the evidence for theism is found to be unconvincing. Some theists might understand atheism better if they accept that this is how many atheists approach the issue.

what's your definition of evidence? i'm asking because i think we'd all agree that there's no evidence. just arguments



that's got to be the most cliché atheist wall of text i've ever seen

Agreed, atheism literally means 'without theism'. It's not necessarily indicative of a contrary belief system, just a lack of theistic beliefs. I don't believe in the Loch Ness monster, not because I have proof that it doesn't exist, but because I don't accept the evidence that is supposed to support that it does exist.

Since you have reached a conclusion and rationalized the evidence...what is the evidence?

You still don't seem to be getting it.

We (atheists + many theists) cannot directly detect God with our senses. We might therefore say that God is not part of the empirical content of the observable universe; we are not looking at a God and saying "what's that?" We might, however, have good reason to infer the existence of an entity anyway - for example, if positing such an entity provided the best explanation for some phenomena. For example, John Dalton proposed the existence of atoms to explain the behaviour of gases, long before an atom was directly detected. However, positing the existence of atoms in our scientific/mathematical models provided a strong, though tentative, reason to believe in such entities. Confirmation of the existence of atoms followed pretty soon after, but that is kind of beside the point.

The atheist position is that 1) God is not part of the empirical content of the universe (i.e. we have no compelling direct evidence of Her existence) and 2) no good inference to best explanation holds up to scrutiny, or adds any testable predictions to our scientific/mathematical models (i.e. we have no compelling indirect evidence of Her existence).

No ladies and gentlemen, its you who does not get it. I am more than well aware that the "evidence" does not exist for either side. My question to Beau's comments stands as is, since he clearly wrote that the atheists he was familiar with rejected the proposed evidence. So what is the evidence?

You want us to reel off every argument and/or purported evidence we've rejected? For what purpose?

Because you don't have any...

Oh don't be silly. Just skip to the part where you get to your hopefully insightful and novel point.

Zumby, why don't you just humor me and answer the question. What evidence?

OK, the stuff that gets suggested as evidence for theism tends to fall into the following broad categories:

1) Personal experience
2) Inference to best explanation (e.g. Argument from Design, Fine Tuning argument, "Would someone die for a lie?" etc
3) Other philosophical arguments, usually attempting to define God into existence (e.g. ontological argument, natural law argument, moral argument)
4) Empirical evidence (can't think of a good 'standard' example, but obviously a lot of creation science attempts this by claiming e.g. Grand Canyon is evidence of Noah's Ark story)