/atheism/ - Atheism

>>13674

You mean pro faith arguments?

For me it was stories(analogies). They are basicly all made the same. 2 characters arguing about [metaphor for God or faith]. We know [metaphor] is true so god must be real.

This sounds stupid now but it worked. I took long to realize that the stories are rigged.

>>13674

I wasn't convinced by arguments. I remained a theist by a combination of intellectual laziness, social comfort, ignorance of dissenting opinions and the apologetical ability to defend my religion at all costs without caring too much about truth. In the theist mind the question isn't much about truth and justified beliefs, it's a fight for honor and tradition.

Dualism. Then I realized that what affects the brain affects the "soul"; change a few neural pathways and you've transformed the pope into Sadam.

>>13716

the scientism it hurts

>>13719

Do you not understand what I was saying? I'm not even sure what scienceism is…

>>13726

He thinks you use sciency sound babble to make a point.

To be fair

> change a few neural pathways and you've transformed the pope into Sadam.

isn't something that happens often.

You could link some articles about people who changed after they had a brain injury.

>>13674

>You don't don't lose anything when you start believing but you get something. So faith is reasonable.

>>13727

Personality change:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/professor-cromer-learns-read/201203/after-brain-injury-the-dark-side-personality-change-part-i

Brain injury and psycopathy:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-you-make-sociopath-through-brain-injury-trauma/

Brain damage causes an increase in spirituality:

http://m.phys.org/news/2010-02-brain-modulates-human-spirituality.html

There is also a thread that I put up a few days ago where "split brain patients" would devolve into both atheists and theists, depending on which side of the brain you asked.

>>13727

>brain injury

>what is senility

>what is multiple sclerosis

>what is lethal brain damage

Probably cosmological arguments and the good ol look at all these famous scientist who where religious!

>arguments

More like emotional abuse. My parents raised me to submit to their wants and opinions, and religion capitalized on that (until I saw some shit that made it inescapably clear how awful the Church was).

>>13674

Probably stumbling upon the concept of deism was what started my doubts as a religious theist.

Then it was slowly realizing the rationalizations I had come up with to support God were not logically sound. (e.g. "The majority of people in the world believe in God - How can they all be wrong?")

Then learning that the so-called "near death experience" of a light in a tunnel and flashing memories could be replicated by a person in G-force chair. I realized at that point it was most likely a psychological phenomenon caused by a brain deprived of oxygen.

At the end I didn't have any rational reasons left to believe in God, just the emotional reasons, and I couldn't believe if I wanted to.

>>14014

are you implying that changing the brain structure doesn't change personality?

>>14018

Maybe so. We're linked from /christian/ and he came about that time. Maybe he thinks personalities are based on magic. That you can change all sorts of things in the brain but it won't change behavior because that's based on some sort of magic, spirit or some such bullshit.

>>13674

I think I can now articulate my own argument which once won me over. It began with a rejection of Christian aesthetics, and is kind of wordy though:

>All stories must end someday and it's better when characters stoically face their fate and exit the stage gracefully.

>No individual truly needs one thing or person to be happy; there are no sacred cows when there are so many substitutables.

>Real life is cold and nothing like the bible.

>People drop dead instantly.

>There are no dramatic speeches from God or to loved ones; no themes and readily apparent deeper meanings before most of us die.

>People just separate without goodbyes, which is the opposite of what you would expect if someone had put everyone in the universe on a stage before either an audience or some judges.

A compassionate God would allow you to take time making slow goodbyes before someone left you forever. But in the bible no major characters die without Angels giving speeches, God or Jesus giving a speech first. It's like how you can predict someone might die in a fantasy novel because someone just gave a long speech that made you care about that person. It's a set of cliches that foreshadow the future, but which you never see in real life when someone suddenly dies of a stroke or to an automobile accident.

Real life ends with "natural endings" which are always open-ended. There is no meaning expect what is interpreted by the observer, and there is no absolute sense of closure. A narrator never appears to tell you what its about. Grieving can be protracted because there is no final speech that explains why it had to be.

Life periodically shoves you from companionship into separation and loneliness, therefore the idea of an afterlife of eternal companionship is unnatural. Expecting eternal love from soul-mates or God is unnatural, selfish and oppressive. Looking for absolute promises flies against the randomness a universe that is perpetually changing; it's unrealistic. Reluctance to break our side of childish promises keeps us in religion.

The real world is more sophisticated than any fantasy or theology, because stories always use simplified models of reality, drawn from a subset of possibilities to focus on some variable. If you can move beyond idealization and can enjoy the details of muted shades of grey, then the real world will be more detailed & have better graphics.

never was a theist myself. the biggest gripe that kept me from actually believing any of that nonsense was the sheer amount of different religions. theres no point in praying to one god or one instance of a god that says they are the one true when there are literally hundreds of thousands of equally as plausible gods that say the exact same thing. its like playing Russian rullet with a revolver loaded with 99,000 bullets and one of thems a blank. best to just exept there never was a blank and accept your inevitable demise into nothingness

>>14411

I used to be big on conspiracy stuff. More the alien abduction sort of stuff than the 9/11 sort of stuff. For a while I subscribed to the ancient astronaut stuff which basically set me up as knowing that religion was bullshit.

Over the years I grew more distant with that stuff when I started getting into actual science and from there I ended up reading a bunch of stuff on the God debate.

Not exactly the most rational way of coming to the conclusion and had to be refined over the years. However, ancient aliens or not, the underlining premise of my reasons was basically "People in the past are capable of making mistakes, misinterpreting things, telling stories strictly for the sake of stories, or outright bullshitting."