Confirmation Bias; Why Atheists cant see the Evidence for God

[sealybobo]

It is hilarious to watch the news and see a President who claims the border is sealed and secure against ISIS and yet unaccompanied children can get across it. The children just don't count somehow to support the view that the border is NOT secure. The feds deny that radical Islamicist groups are the primary source for terrorism, and so a violent radical Jihadist who shot a bunch of people at Fort Hood screaming 'Allah Akbar!' and who recently asked ISIS to let him be an honorary citizen of the Caliphate was not a terrorist, and the shooting just 'work place violence'.

But those are just a few glaring examples of confirmation bias, a thing where people insist on putting what they perceive into nice neat little pigeon holes defined by an ideology or inflexible philosophy.

There is an old 16th century story of three blind men who are feeling parts of an elephant, an animal that they have never seen and have no idea exists, and one feels the leg and says it is a tree, the other feels the trunk and says it is a vine, another feels the belly and says there is a bolder above him. When told that it is all one great big huge animal they laugh and say the narrator is deluded.

You cannot show evidence to someone who refuses to accept even the remote possibility of the thing claimed. No mater how complex a life form maybe, like the human cell, and no matter what Darwin knew about the complexity of the cell and the impact were it overly complex, the atheist will insist it is all the product of unguided chance. No matter how finely tuned the universe the atheist will insist that it proves nothing and it isn't so finely tuned anyway.

So don't pitch your argument to persuade an atheist of anything. Speak to other theists or to the lurkers who just read and move on. The atheist is a fringe element cultist who has closed his mind long ago.

Accepting something on faith does not demonstrate an open mind just one willing to follow the whims and beliefs of others.

Just because we may not know the origin of something does not necessarily mean a supreme being is responsible. it could be that we are simply incapable of understanding it given out limited sensory and cognitive abilities..

I consider myself an agnostic with atheist leanings but if I saw proof with my own eyes that there was a supreme being I would be compelled to believe. Some of you are willing to believe without such proof but I am not wired that way

Faith alone is sufficient to please God, otherwise the stupid would have no chance for salvation. But yes, these are people who accept their faith in a child's way, trusting those in authority around them.

But the evidence, reason and life experiences are there to lead one to believe, and if it is not so, and you honestly have found no evidence to believe in God, God does not call you to fake having faith.

For me, the strongest evidence has been the lives of believers compared to nonbelievers of similar background, the believers over all have fewer brushes with the law, fewer divorces, fewer addictions to drugs, etc. In fact AA has at its core values a belief and reliance on God that WORKS to help people beat their addiction. Compared to secular organizations, AA is way more effective in ending the plague of alcoholism in these peoples lives.

I heard a man once say that he has not seen Jesus turn water into wine, but he has seen Him act in peoples lives and turn wine into paid bills, a happy family and a peaceful contentment with life that they had never had before. I knew exactly what he meant, but my problem wasn't alcohol, and I don't want to discuss it, but yes, the power of faith is incredible, even when I didn't want it to happen to me.

Once I found a desire to know the Truth of what is Reality in my autistic obsessive way, I dug and dug and dug into the subject and I found much evidence of God's existence that previously I had attributed to circumstance or evolution. The funniest thing is to look at the design in living cells and say that it was complete chance that made them that way. Evolution was the tool God used, but He did not directly intervene. He made it the way He knew would work and let it grow on its own accord.

Using evolution to explain away the obvious design in the universe is like saying you cannot see the maker who is behind the chisel. Evolution is the chisel, but God's Hand guides it.

The fact that time must have had a beginning, that any eternal object responsible for the universe had to be infinite and have intelligence (set of all possible sets) and daily life with Christians and atheist in contrast....I have faith as much due to the absence of it in some as the presence of it in others.

But you have to make your own choices, obviously, and what may seem obvious to me might seem bewildering to a person who does not have those same experiences. Just be honest with yourself, treat the people in your life with respect/honesty/integrity and keep an open mind and watchful eye for God to get your attention,

I doubt he will fail you.

I don't buy your list of lifestyle choices as proof that god exists.

Lol, can we get a better example of confirmation bias than you reading all that and blowing it all off as 'life style choices'?

I doubt it.

But just stop it with the posturing that you are some kind of Truth seeker. You obviously are not.

Where did I ever once mention truth or seeking it?

So you admit to not having any intention of trying to grasp the Truth of these questions? So why are you here? To amuse yourself with all the Believer rubes? lolol

FYI plenty of believers drink and drug to excess so tell me how is that proof that a god exists?

It isn't, but the ratio of people with equivalent backgrounds in my experiences show huge help with dealing with issues in their lives and I am not alone on this observation, as AA using God to help people demonstrates.

And you just reiterated that not knowing something is proof of a supreme being.

It's not.

I said nothing of the sort. Show me what I said that sounds to you like 'WE do not know, therefore God exists.

We might never be able to understand the origin of the universe because we are too limited cognitively to do so that is not proof of a supreme being.

We are not too limited cognitively though your confirmation bias no doubt prefers to think that way rather than to look at the circumstantial implied answers. There is an eternal being, you just want to desperately believe ANYTHING other than the obvious.

If we are not limited cognitively then why can we not scientifically explain the origin of the universe without the magic man equation

because proving anything that is not repeatable and part of the natural flow of time and space is beyond the reach of science. It has nothing to do with any limitations of our brains or cognitive ability.

And I have never once denied the existence of a supreme being. I have merely stated that there is no proof of said being.

There is evidence for the existence of God, and I have repeatedly shared some. If you are demanding a lab tes, sorry, aint gonna happen.

I am not one to believe without proof. Faith is for followers I don't believe something merely because someone told me it was true

Bullshit. That vast majority of your life from day to day is lived, decisions made and actions taken without scientific proof for them.

Really? So if some guy approaches you in a mall parking lot and tells you the same story the bible tells, only he said Adam and Steve were the first humans and God told them and then Noel built a raft and put 2 asians, mexicans, indians, russians, europeans, indians, arabs on that raft and they were saved from a flood and then god sent jesus to talk to me and he told me I was the son of god......would you accept any of that?

So you are capable of realizing when someone is telling you a fairy tale or lying to you? Well how come you can't do that with Christianity?

And if you say you are not a Christian then you are admitting that all their wild stories are made up, fabrications or flat out lies.

So it isn't that I haven't seen enough scientific proof so much as the things theists tell me just don't add up. So I can't have faith in a story I don't believe.

Us atheists think theists who believe those stories are stupid. And I don't know what to say about people who know those are just stories but still believe. All I can say is I was one of them not too long ago. I finally woke up.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Your feeble attempts at psycho analyzing billions of people categorically is little more than a fantasy of your mind caused by your atheistic conformation bias.

The human race that has invented art, science, modern technology, gone the Moon, and so much more are all just superstitious little frightened knuckle draggers in your opinion because we can see what you refuse to see for your fear of having to live responsibly.

And so you lie to yourself and everyone around instead of facing the obvious Truth. There is a God and one day you will have to answer for your lies, the wrongs you have committed (probably staggering) and you will not be able to evade the justice that you will receive.

Not true. Science is finding out things like the fact that an intelligent person can hold an irrational belief is simply evidence that our brains are able to compartmentalize world-views and models from one another, usually in order to maintain a state of ‘ignorant bliss’ and escape the discomfort of cognitive dissonance.

We have long known that people can hold contrary beliefs for thousands of years. And you pretend that this is recently discovered? lolol

The validity of a claim, such as the existence of god, is not governed by the intelligence of the minds which hold it. Evidence and reason are the deciding factors.

Totally ambiguous statement with a high bullshit factor. There is no clear meaning to the statement 'not governed by the intelligence of the minds which hold it.' but it likely salves your conscience some, to whatever degree you still have one and buttresses your back slapping for mental superiority of yourself and your comrades. But it is still total morphological bullshit.

And evidence and reason are not the only factors, far more important are the cosmological assumptions that one starts with. You seem to be a Naturalist who has already decided that there is no way that an extra-natural cause can exist. So you engage in all kinds of prevarication, lies, twisted fantasy, contortionist logic and worse to avoid the obvious that 98% of the rest of us either knows, suspects or refuse to rule out; God exists.

But, it is true that atheists tend to have higher iq's than the normal person and we see the most religious parts of the country are also the most illiterate. Sorry it's a fact. Look it up.

The same biased IQ test crap that racists have used for centuries now. So what, now all believers are subhumans like your ilk used to say about blacks and Jews?

My ilk? Did you see 12 years a slave? Did you see how Masters used religion to keep their slaves ignorant and in line? But even some smart people are scared of death, not knowing, wishful thinking, etc.

I have not decided anything. There may be something that created us. I'm an agnostic atheist. I don't know what created us. What I do know is Christianity, Jew, Muslim, Mormon are all bullshit.

Mostly I only discuss with people who believe in generic god. And people who do that are amazing to me because despite understanding all the stories are bullshit they still believe?

And if you take the Noah's arc and Mary being a virgin stories literally then I don't know what to say to you. If you believe in the rapture coming and the mark of the beast you really should be committed.

You are a confused ignorant ass hole, and likely just trolling.

And citing a movie isn't proof of anything, twit.

Art immitating life.

No, your stupidity blinding your dull mind.

 

[JimBowie1958]

It is hilarious to watch the news and see a President who claims the border is sealed and secure against ISIS and yet unaccompanied children can get across it. The children just don't count somehow to support the view that the border is NOT secure. The feds deny that radical Islamicist groups are the primary source for terrorism, and so a violent radical Jihadist who shot a bunch of people at Fort Hood screaming 'Allah Akbar!' and who recently asked ISIS to let him be an honorary citizen of the Caliphate was not a terrorist, and the shooting just 'work place violence'.

But those are just a few glaring examples of confirmation bias, a thing where people insist on putting what they perceive into nice neat little pigeon holes defined by an ideology or inflexible philosophy.

There is an old 16th century story of three blind men who are feeling parts of an elephant, an animal that they have never seen and have no idea exists, and one feels the leg and says it is a tree, the other feels the trunk and says it is a vine, another feels the belly and says there is a bolder above him. When told that it is all one great big huge animal they laugh and say the narrator is deluded.

You cannot show evidence to someone who refuses to accept even the remote possibility of the thing claimed. No mater how complex a life form maybe, like the human cell, and no matter what Darwin knew about the complexity of the cell and the impact were it overly complex, the atheist will insist it is all the product of unguided chance. No matter how finely tuned the universe the atheist will insist that it proves nothing and it isn't so finely tuned anyway.

So don't pitch your argument to persuade an atheist of anything. Speak to other theists or to the lurkers who just read and move on. The atheist is a fringe element cultist who has closed his mind long ago.

Accepting something on faith does not demonstrate an open mind just one willing to follow the whims and beliefs of others.

Just because we may not know the origin of something does not necessarily mean a supreme being is responsible. it could be that we are simply incapable of understanding it given out limited sensory and cognitive abilities..

I consider myself an agnostic with atheist leanings but if I saw proof with my own eyes that there was a supreme being I would be compelled to believe. Some of you are willing to believe without such proof but I am not wired that way

Faith alone is sufficient to please God, otherwise the stupid would have no chance for salvation. But yes, these are people who accept their faith in a child's way, trusting those in authority around them.

But the evidence, reason and life experiences are there to lead one to believe, and if it is not so, and you honestly have found no evidence to believe in God, God does not call you to fake having faith.

For me, the strongest evidence has been the lives of believers compared to nonbelievers of similar background, the believers over all have fewer brushes with the law, fewer divorces, fewer addictions to drugs, etc. In fact AA has at its core values a belief and reliance on God that WORKS to help people beat their addiction. Compared to secular organizations, AA is way more effective in ending the plague of alcoholism in these peoples lives.

I heard a man once say that he has not seen Jesus turn water into wine, but he has seen Him act in peoples lives and turn wine into paid bills, a happy family and a peaceful contentment with life that they had never had before. I knew exactly what he meant, but my problem wasn't alcohol, and I don't want to discuss it, but yes, the power of faith is incredible, even when I didn't want it to happen to me.

Once I found a desire to know the Truth of what is Reality in my autistic obsessive way, I dug and dug and dug into the subject and I found much evidence of God's existence that previously I had attributed to circumstance or evolution. The funniest thing is to look at the design in living cells and say that it was complete chance that made them that way. Evolution was the tool God used, but He did not directly intervene. He made it the way He knew would work and let it grow on its own accord.

Using evolution to explain away the obvious design in the universe is like saying you cannot see the maker who is behind the chisel. Evolution is the chisel, but God's Hand guides it.

The fact that time must have had a beginning, that any eternal object responsible for the universe had to be infinite and have intelligence (set of all possible sets) and daily life with Christians and atheist in contrast....I have faith as much due to the absence of it in some as the presence of it in others.

But you have to make your own choices, obviously, and what may seem obvious to me might seem bewildering to a person who does not have those same experiences. Just be honest with yourself, treat the people in your life with respect/honesty/integrity and keep an open mind and watchful eye for God to get your attention,

I doubt he will fail you.

I don't buy your list of lifestyle choices as proof that god exists.

Lol, can we get a better example of confirmation bias than you reading all that and blowing it all off as 'life style choices'?

I doubt it.

But just stop it with the posturing that you are some kind of Truth seeker. You obviously are not.

Where did I ever once mention truth or seeking it?

So you admit to not having any intention of trying to grasp the Truth of these questions? So why are you here? To amuse yourself with all the Believer rubes? lolol

FYI plenty of believers drink and drug to excess so tell me how is that proof that a god exists?

It isn't, but the ratio of people with equivalent backgrounds in my experiences show huge help with dealing with issues in their lives and I am not alone on this observation, as AA using God to help people demonstrates.

And you just reiterated that not knowing something is proof of a supreme being.

It's not.

I said nothing of the sort. Show me what I said that sounds to you like 'WE do not know, therefore God exists.

We might never be able to understand the origin of the universe because we are too limited cognitively to do so that is not proof of a supreme being.

We are not too limited cognitively though your confirmation bias no doubt prefers to think that way rather than to look at the circumstantial implied answers. There is an eternal being, you just want to desperately believe ANYTHING other than the obvious.

If we are not limited cognitively then why can we not scientifically explain the origin of the universe without the magic man equation

because proving anything that is not repeatable and part of the natural flow of time and space is beyond the reach of science. It has nothing to do with any limitations of our brains or cognitive ability.

And I have never once denied the existence of a supreme being. I have merely stated that there is no proof of said being.

There is evidence for the existence of God, and I have repeatedly shared some. If you are demanding a lab tes, sorry, aint gonna happen.

I am not one to believe without proof. Faith is for followers I don't believe something merely because someone told me it was true

Bullshit. That vast majority of your life from day to day is lived, decisions made and actions taken without scientific proof for them.

Really? So if some guy approaches you in a mall parking lot and tells you the same story the bible tells, only he said Adam and Steve were the first humans and God told them and then Noel built a raft and put 2 asians, mexicans, indians, russians, europeans, indians, arabs on that raft and they were saved from a flood and then god sent jesus to talk to me and he told me I was the son of god......would you accept any of that?

So you are capable of realizing when someone is telling you a fairy tale or lying to you? Well how come you can't do that with Christianity?

And if you say you are not a Christian then you are admitting that all their wild stories are made up, fabrications or flat out lies.

So it isn't that I haven't seen enough scientific proof so much as the things theists tell me just don't add up. So I can't have faith in a story I don't believe.

Us atheists think theists who believe those stories are stupid. And I don't know what to say about people who know those are just stories but still believe. All I can say is I was one of them not too long ago. I finally woke up.

Because Christianity is not a fairy tale, dude.

You start with that conclusion then everything supports it that you see; bias conformation.

 

[Skull Pilot]

It is hilarious to watch the news and see a President who claims the border is sealed and secure against ISIS and yet unaccompanied children can get across it. The children just don't count somehow to support the view that the border is NOT secure. The feds deny that radical Islamicist groups are the primary source for terrorism, and so a violent radical Jihadist who shot a bunch of people at Fort Hood screaming 'Allah Akbar!' and who recently asked ISIS to let him be an honorary citizen of the Caliphate was not a terrorist, and the shooting just 'work place violence'.

But those are just a few glaring examples of confirmation bias, a thing where people insist on putting what they perceive into nice neat little pigeon holes defined by an ideology or inflexible philosophy.

There is an old 16th century story of three blind men who are feeling parts of an elephant, an animal that they have never seen and have no idea exists, and one feels the leg and says it is a tree, the other feels the trunk and says it is a vine, another feels the belly and says there is a bolder above him. When told that it is all one great big huge animal they laugh and say the narrator is deluded.

You cannot show evidence to someone who refuses to accept even the remote possibility of the thing claimed. No mater how complex a life form maybe, like the human cell, and no matter what Darwin knew about the complexity of the cell and the impact were it overly complex, the atheist will insist it is all the product of unguided chance. No matter how finely tuned the universe the atheist will insist that it proves nothing and it isn't so finely tuned anyway.

So don't pitch your argument to persuade an atheist of anything. Speak to other theists or to the lurkers who just read and move on. The atheist is a fringe element cultist who has closed his mind long ago.

Accepting something on faith does not demonstrate an open mind just one willing to follow the whims and beliefs of others.

Just because we may not know the origin of something does not necessarily mean a supreme being is responsible. it could be that we are simply incapable of understanding it given out limited sensory and cognitive abilities..

I consider myself an agnostic with atheist leanings but if I saw proof with my own eyes that there was a supreme being I would be compelled to believe. Some of you are willing to believe without such proof but I am not wired that way

Faith alone is sufficient to please God, otherwise the stupid would have no chance for salvation. But yes, these are people who accept their faith in a child's way, trusting those in authority around them.

But the evidence, reason and life experiences are there to lead one to believe, and if it is not so, and you honestly have found no evidence to believe in God, God does not call you to fake having faith.

For me, the strongest evidence has been the lives of believers compared to nonbelievers of similar background, the believers over all have fewer brushes with the law, fewer divorces, fewer addictions to drugs, etc. In fact AA has at its core values a belief and reliance on God that WORKS to help people beat their addiction. Compared to secular organizations, AA is way more effective in ending the plague of alcoholism in these peoples lives.

I heard a man once say that he has not seen Jesus turn water into wine, but he has seen Him act in peoples lives and turn wine into paid bills, a happy family and a peaceful contentment with life that they had never had before. I knew exactly what he meant, but my problem wasn't alcohol, and I don't want to discuss it, but yes, the power of faith is incredible, even when I didn't want it to happen to me.

Once I found a desire to know the Truth of what is Reality in my autistic obsessive way, I dug and dug and dug into the subject and I found much evidence of God's existence that previously I had attributed to circumstance or evolution. The funniest thing is to look at the design in living cells and say that it was complete chance that made them that way. Evolution was the tool God used, but He did not directly intervene. He made it the way He knew would work and let it grow on its own accord.

Using evolution to explain away the obvious design in the universe is like saying you cannot see the maker who is behind the chisel. Evolution is the chisel, but God's Hand guides it.

The fact that time must have had a beginning, that any eternal object responsible for the universe had to be infinite and have intelligence (set of all possible sets) and daily life with Christians and atheist in contrast....I have faith as much due to the absence of it in some as the presence of it in others.

But you have to make your own choices, obviously, and what may seem obvious to me might seem bewildering to a person who does not have those same experiences. Just be honest with yourself, treat the people in your life with respect/honesty/integrity and keep an open mind and watchful eye for God to get your attention,

I doubt he will fail you.

I don't buy your list of lifestyle choices as proof that god exists.

Lol, can we get a better example of confirmation bias than you reading all that and blowing it all off as 'life style choices'?

I doubt it.

But just stop it with the posturing that you are some kind of Truth seeker. You obviously are not.

Where did I ever once mention truth or seeking it?

So you admit to not having any intention of trying to grasp the Truth of these questions? So why are you here? To amuse yourself with all the Believer rubes? lolol

FYI plenty of believers drink and drug to excess so tell me how is that proof that a god exists?

It isn't, but the ratio of people with equivalent backgrounds in my experiences show huge help with dealing with issues in their lives and I am not alone on this observation, as AA using God to help people demonstrates.

And you just reiterated that not knowing something is proof of a supreme being.

It's not.

I said nothing of the sort. Show me what I said that sounds to you like 'WE do not know, therefore God exists.

We might never be able to understand the origin of the universe because we are too limited cognitively to do so that is not proof of a supreme being.

We are not too limited cognitively though your confirmation bias no doubt prefers to think that way rather than to look at the circumstantial implied answers. There is an eternal being, you just want to desperately believe ANYTHING other than the obvious.

If we are not limited cognitively then why can we not scientifically explain the origin of the universe without the magic man equation

because proving anything that is not repeatable and part of the natural flow of time and space is beyond the reach of science. It has nothing to do with any limitations of our brains or cognitive ability.

Of course it does. if we can't comprehend the math needed or perceive other dimensions involved we are incapable of the cognition to explain the origin of the universe.

And I have never once denied the existence of a supreme being. I have merely stated that there is no proof of said being.

There is evidence for the existence of God, and I have repeatedly shared some. If you are demanding a lab tes, sorry, aint gonna happen.

Belief is not proof. All you have done is site the fact that we can't explain some things as proof that a supreme being is responsible for them.

Quite frankly the only roof of a supreme being I will accept is seeing it with my own eyes.

I am not one to believe without proof. Faith is for followers I don't believe something merely because someone told me it was true

Bullshit. That vast majority of your life from day to day is lived, decisions made and actions taken without scientific proof for them.

[/quote]

But the reason for every decision can be quantified even if some of those decisions are habitual and subject to change. I can if I so chose give you a reason for everything I did in a day and back it up with some sort of explanation based on empirical data.

 

[Hollie]

Your feeble attempts at psycho analyzing billions of people categorically is little more than a fantasy of your mind caused by your atheistic conformation bias.

The human race that has invented art, science, modern technology, gone the Moon, and so much more are all just superstitious little frightened knuckle draggers in your opinion because we can see what you refuse to see for your fear of having to live responsibly.

And so you lie to yourself and everyone around instead of facing the obvious Truth. There is a God and one day you will have to answer for your lies, the wrongs you have committed (probably staggering) and you will not be able to evade the justice that you will receive.

Not true. Science is finding out things like the fact that an intelligent person can hold an irrational belief is simply evidence that our brains are able to compartmentalize world-views and models from one another, usually in order to maintain a state of ‘ignorant bliss’ and escape the discomfort of cognitive dissonance.

We have long known that people can hold contrary beliefs for thousands of years. And you pretend that this is recently discovered? lolol

The validity of a claim, such as the existence of god, is not governed by the intelligence of the minds which hold it. Evidence and reason are the deciding factors.

Totally ambiguous statement with a high bullshit factor. There is no clear meaning to the statement 'not governed by the intelligence of the minds which hold it.' but it likely salves your conscience some, to whatever degree you still have one and buttresses your back slapping for mental superiority of yourself and your comrades. But it is still total morphological bullshit.

And evidence and reason are not the only factors, far more important are the cosmological assumptions that one starts with. You seem to be a Naturalist who has already decided that there is no way that an extra-natural cause can exist. So you engage in all kinds of prevarication, lies, twisted fantasy, contortionist logic and worse to avoid the obvious that 98% of the rest of us either knows, suspects or refuse to rule out; God exists.

But, it is true that atheists tend to have higher iq's than the normal person and we see the most religious parts of the country are also the most illiterate. Sorry it's a fact. Look it up.

The same biased IQ test crap that racists have used for centuries now. So what, now all believers are subhumans like your ilk used to say about blacks and Jews?

My ilk? Did you see 12 years a slave? Did you see how Masters used religion to keep their slaves ignorant and in line? But even some smart people are scared of death, not knowing, wishful thinking, etc.

I have not decided anything. There may be something that created us. I'm an agnostic atheist. I don't know what created us. What I do know is Christianity, Jew, Muslim, Mormon are all bullshit.

Mostly I only discuss with people who believe in generic god. And people who do that are amazing to me because despite understanding all the stories are bullshit they still believe?

And if you take the Noah's arc and Mary being a virgin stories literally then I don't know what to say to you. If you believe in the rapture coming and the mark of the beast you really should be committed.

You are a confused ignorant ass hole, and likely just trolling.

And citing a movie isn't proof of anything, twit.

Art immitating life.

No, your stupidity blinding your dull mind.

This thread is just another in a long line of threads opened by hyper-religious Christian fundies making claims of evidence for the gods. This thread has failed to support that claim just as all the others have.

 

[sealybobo]

It is hilarious to watch the news and see a President who claims the border is sealed and secure against ISIS and yet unaccompanied children can get across it. The children just don't count somehow to support the view that the border is NOT secure. The feds deny that radical Islamicist groups are the primary source for terrorism, and so a violent radical Jihadist who shot a bunch of people at Fort Hood screaming 'Allah Akbar!' and who recently asked ISIS to let him be an honorary citizen of the Caliphate was not a terrorist, and the shooting just 'work place violence'.

But those are just a few glaring examples of confirmation bias, a thing where people insist on putting what they perceive into nice neat little pigeon holes defined by an ideology or inflexible philosophy.

There is an old 16th century story of three blind men who are feeling parts of an elephant, an animal that they have never seen and have no idea exists, and one feels the leg and says it is a tree, the other feels the trunk and says it is a vine, another feels the belly and says there is a bolder above him. When told that it is all one great big huge animal they laugh and say the narrator is deluded.

You cannot show evidence to someone who refuses to accept even the remote possibility of the thing claimed. No mater how complex a life form maybe, like the human cell, and no matter what Darwin knew about the complexity of the cell and the impact were it overly complex, the atheist will insist it is all the product of unguided chance. No matter how finely tuned the universe the atheist will insist that it proves nothing and it isn't so finely tuned anyway.

So don't pitch your argument to persuade an atheist of anything. Speak to other theists or to the lurkers who just read and move on. The atheist is a fringe element cultist who has closed his mind long ago.

Accepting something on faith does not demonstrate an open mind just one willing to follow the whims and beliefs of others.

Just because we may not know the origin of something does not necessarily mean a supreme being is responsible. it could be that we are simply incapable of understanding it given out limited sensory and cognitive abilities..

I consider myself an agnostic with atheist leanings but if I saw proof with my own eyes that there was a supreme being I would be compelled to believe. Some of you are willing to believe without such proof but I am not wired that way

Faith alone is sufficient to please God, otherwise the stupid would have no chance for salvation. But yes, these are people who accept their faith in a child's way, trusting those in authority around them.

But the evidence, reason and life experiences are there to lead one to believe, and if it is not so, and you honestly have found no evidence to believe in God, God does not call you to fake having faith.

For me, the strongest evidence has been the lives of believers compared to nonbelievers of similar background, the believers over all have fewer brushes with the law, fewer divorces, fewer addictions to drugs, etc. In fact AA has at its core values a belief and reliance on God that WORKS to help people beat their addiction. Compared to secular organizations, AA is way more effective in ending the plague of alcoholism in these peoples lives.

I heard a man once say that he has not seen Jesus turn water into wine, but he has seen Him act in peoples lives and turn wine into paid bills, a happy family and a peaceful contentment with life that they had never had before. I knew exactly what he meant, but my problem wasn't alcohol, and I don't want to discuss it, but yes, the power of faith is incredible, even when I didn't want it to happen to me.

Once I found a desire to know the Truth of what is Reality in my autistic obsessive way, I dug and dug and dug into the subject and I found much evidence of God's existence that previously I had attributed to circumstance or evolution. The funniest thing is to look at the design in living cells and say that it was complete chance that made them that way. Evolution was the tool God used, but He did not directly intervene. He made it the way He knew would work and let it grow on its own accord.

Using evolution to explain away the obvious design in the universe is like saying you cannot see the maker who is behind the chisel. Evolution is the chisel, but God's Hand guides it.

The fact that time must have had a beginning, that any eternal object responsible for the universe had to be infinite and have intelligence (set of all possible sets) and daily life with Christians and atheist in contrast....I have faith as much due to the absence of it in some as the presence of it in others.

But you have to make your own choices, obviously, and what may seem obvious to me might seem bewildering to a person who does not have those same experiences. Just be honest with yourself, treat the people in your life with respect/honesty/integrity and keep an open mind and watchful eye for God to get your attention,

I doubt he will fail you.

I don't buy your list of lifestyle choices as proof that god exists.

Lol, can we get a better example of confirmation bias than you reading all that and blowing it all off as 'life style choices'?

I doubt it.

But just stop it with the posturing that you are some kind of Truth seeker. You obviously are not.

Where did I ever once mention truth or seeking it?

So you admit to not having any intention of trying to grasp the Truth of these questions? So why are you here? To amuse yourself with all the Believer rubes? lolol

FYI plenty of believers drink and drug to excess so tell me how is that proof that a god exists?

It isn't, but the ratio of people with equivalent backgrounds in my experiences show huge help with dealing with issues in their lives and I am not alone on this observation, as AA using God to help people demonstrates.

And you just reiterated that not knowing something is proof of a supreme being.

It's not.

I said nothing of the sort. Show me what I said that sounds to you like 'WE do not know, therefore God exists.

We might never be able to understand the origin of the universe because we are too limited cognitively to do so that is not proof of a supreme being.

We are not too limited cognitively though your confirmation bias no doubt prefers to think that way rather than to look at the circumstantial implied answers. There is an eternal being, you just want to desperately believe ANYTHING other than the obvious.

If we are not limited cognitively then why can we not scientifically explain the origin of the universe without the magic man equation

because proving anything that is not repeatable and part of the natural flow of time and space is beyond the reach of science. It has nothing to do with any limitations of our brains or cognitive ability.

And I have never once denied the existence of a supreme being. I have merely stated that there is no proof of said being.

There is evidence for the existence of God, and I have repeatedly shared some. If you are demanding a lab tes, sorry, aint gonna happen.

I am not one to believe without proof. Faith is for followers I don't believe something merely because someone told me it was true

Bullshit. That vast majority of your life from day to day is lived, decisions made and actions taken without scientific proof for them.

Really? So if some guy approaches you in a mall parking lot and tells you the same story the bible tells, only he said Adam and Steve were the first humans and God told them and then Noel built a raft and put 2 asians, mexicans, indians, russians, europeans, indians, arabs on that raft and they were saved from a flood and then god sent jesus to talk to me and he told me I was the son of god......would you accept any of that?

So you are capable of realizing when someone is telling you a fairy tale or lying to you? Well how come you can't do that with Christianity?

And if you say you are not a Christian then you are admitting that all their wild stories are made up, fabrications or flat out lies.

So it isn't that I haven't seen enough scientific proof so much as the things theists tell me just don't add up. So I can't have faith in a story I don't believe.

Us atheists think theists who believe those stories are stupid. And I don't know what to say about people who know those are just stories but still believe. All I can say is I was one of them not too long ago. I finally woke up.

Because Christianity is not a fairy tale, dude.

You start with that conclusion then everything supports it that you see; bias conformation.

Do you really believe Mary was a virgin? REALLY??? LOL.

 

[MaryL]

Let's cut to the chase here. Prove God exists. PROVE it. No bible quotes, no philosophical mind games. PROVE IT. No theories or spiffy pithy quotes from the past, proof. Can you do that?

 

[Indeependent]

Why the heck are some Christians so damn hung up about what other people believe?
Are they going to go back to the good old days and torture people to save their souls.
When someone tells me they're an atheist, I reply, "Gezuntite!".

 

[MaxGrit]

Let's cut to the chase here. Prove God exists. PROVE it. No bible quotes, no philosophical mind games. PROVE IT. No theories or spiffy pithy quotes from the past, proof. Can you do that?

God's name is I AM.

 

[MaxGrit]

Here's how to reframe the origin argument:

Atheist was shot. Atheist is bleeding to death.
Atheist sees the bleeding and finds the bullet.
He tells himself that the bullet was there all along. The atheist convinces himself that the ways things are is the way they always have been. Therefore, there's no need to stop the bleeding.
The atheist wants proof that the bullet wasn't there all along, proof of the method by which he was shot, and proof of the shooter's existence, all before he can accept that he needs treatment to stop the bleeding.

 

[JimBowie1958]

It is hilarious to watch the news and see a President who claims the border is sealed and secure against ISIS and yet unaccompanied children can get across it. The children just don't count somehow to support the view that the border is NOT secure. The feds deny that radical Islamicist groups are the primary source for terrorism, and so a violent radical Jihadist who shot a bunch of people at Fort Hood screaming 'Allah Akbar!' and who recently asked ISIS to let him be an honorary citizen of the Caliphate was not a terrorist, and the shooting just 'work place violence'.

But those are just a few glaring examples of confirmation bias, a thing where people insist on putting what they perceive into nice neat little pigeon holes defined by an ideology or inflexible philosophy.

There is an old 16th century story of three blind men who are feeling parts of an elephant, an animal that they have never seen and have no idea exists, and one feels the leg and says it is a tree, the other feels the trunk and says it is a vine, another feels the belly and says there is a bolder above him. When told that it is all one great big huge animal they laugh and say the narrator is deluded.

You cannot show evidence to someone who refuses to accept even the remote possibility of the thing claimed. No mater how complex a life form maybe, like the human cell, and no matter what Darwin knew about the complexity of the cell and the impact were it overly complex, the atheist will insist it is all the product of unguided chance. No matter how finely tuned the universe the atheist will insist that it proves nothing and it isn't so finely tuned anyway.

So don't pitch your argument to persuade an atheist of anything. Speak to other theists or to the lurkers who just read and move on. The atheist is a fringe element cultist who has closed his mind long ago.

Accepting something on faith does not demonstrate an open mind just one willing to follow the whims and beliefs of others.

Just because we may not know the origin of something does not necessarily mean a supreme being is responsible. it could be that we are simply incapable of understanding it given out limited sensory and cognitive abilities..

I consider myself an agnostic with atheist leanings but if I saw proof with my own eyes that there was a supreme being I would be compelled to believe. Some of you are willing to believe without such proof but I am not wired that way

Faith alone is sufficient to please God, otherwise the stupid would have no chance for salvation. But yes, these are people who accept their faith in a child's way, trusting those in authority around them.

But the evidence, reason and life experiences are there to lead one to believe, and if it is not so, and you honestly have found no evidence to believe in God, God does not call you to fake having faith.

For me, the strongest evidence has been the lives of believers compared to nonbelievers of similar background, the believers over all have fewer brushes with the law, fewer divorces, fewer addictions to drugs, etc. In fact AA has at its core values a belief and reliance on God that WORKS to help people beat their addiction. Compared to secular organizations, AA is way more effective in ending the plague of alcoholism in these peoples lives.

I heard a man once say that he has not seen Jesus turn water into wine, but he has seen Him act in peoples lives and turn wine into paid bills, a happy family and a peaceful contentment with life that they had never had before. I knew exactly what he meant, but my problem wasn't alcohol, and I don't want to discuss it, but yes, the power of faith is incredible, even when I didn't want it to happen to me.

Once I found a desire to know the Truth of what is Reality in my autistic obsessive way, I dug and dug and dug into the subject and I found much evidence of God's existence that previously I had attributed to circumstance or evolution. The funniest thing is to look at the design in living cells and say that it was complete chance that made them that way. Evolution was the tool God used, but He did not directly intervene. He made it the way He knew would work and let it grow on its own accord.

Using evolution to explain away the obvious design in the universe is like saying you cannot see the maker who is behind the chisel. Evolution is the chisel, but God's Hand guides it.

The fact that time must have had a beginning, that any eternal object responsible for the universe had to be infinite and have intelligence (set of all possible sets) and daily life with Christians and atheist in contrast....I have faith as much due to the absence of it in some as the presence of it in others.

But you have to make your own choices, obviously, and what may seem obvious to me might seem bewildering to a person who does not have those same experiences. Just be honest with yourself, treat the people in your life with respect/honesty/integrity and keep an open mind and watchful eye for God to get your attention,

I doubt he will fail you.

I don't buy your list of lifestyle choices as proof that god exists.

Lol, can we get a better example of confirmation bias than you reading all that and blowing it all off as 'life style choices'?

I doubt it.

But just stop it with the posturing that you are some kind of Truth seeker. You obviously are not.

Where did I ever once mention truth or seeking it?

So you admit to not having any intention of trying to grasp the Truth of these questions? So why are you here? To amuse yourself with all the Believer rubes? lolol

FYI plenty of believers drink and drug to excess so tell me how is that proof that a god exists?

It isn't, but the ratio of people with equivalent backgrounds in my experiences show huge help with dealing with issues in their lives and I am not alone on this observation, as AA using God to help people demonstrates.

And you just reiterated that not knowing something is proof of a supreme being.

It's not.

I said nothing of the sort. Show me what I said that sounds to you like 'WE do not know, therefore God exists.

We might never be able to understand the origin of the universe because we are too limited cognitively to do so that is not proof of a supreme being.

We are not too limited cognitively though your confirmation bias no doubt prefers to think that way rather than to look at the circumstantial implied answers. There is an eternal being, you just want to desperately believe ANYTHING other than the obvious.

If we are not limited cognitively then why can we not scientifically explain the origin of the universe without the magic man equation

because proving anything that is not repeatable and part of the natural flow of time and space is beyond the reach of science. It has nothing to do with any limitations of our brains or cognitive ability.

And I have never once denied the existence of a supreme being. I have merely stated that there is no proof of said being.

There is evidence for the existence of God, and I have repeatedly shared some. If you are demanding a lab tes, sorry, aint gonna happen.

I am not one to believe without proof. Faith is for followers I don't believe something merely because someone told me it was true

Bullshit. That vast majority of your life from day to day is lived, decisions made and actions taken without scientific proof for them.

Really? So if some guy approaches you in a mall parking lot and tells you the same story the bible tells, only he said Adam and Steve were the first humans and God told them and then Noel built a raft and put 2 asians, mexicans, indians, russians, europeans, indians, arabs on that raft and they were saved from a flood and then god sent jesus to talk to me and he told me I was the son of god......would you accept any of that?

So you are capable of realizing when someone is telling you a fairy tale or lying to you? Well how come you can't do that with Christianity?

And if you say you are not a Christian then you are admitting that all their wild stories are made up, fabrications or flat out lies.

So it isn't that I haven't seen enough scientific proof so much as the things theists tell me just don't add up. So I can't have faith in a story I don't believe.

Us atheists think theists who believe those stories are stupid. And I don't know what to say about people who know those are just stories but still believe. All I can say is I was one of them not too long ago. I finally woke up.

Because Christianity is not a fairy tale, dude.

You start with that conclusion then everything supports it that you see; bias conformation.

Do you really believe Mary was a virgin? REALLY??? LOL.

Yes, I know it. Had she not been a virgin, the laws and customs of her time would have had her stoned to death for adultery. If you had any actual knowledge of the time you would know that. Joseph knew what happened and so he protected Mary despite the damage to his honor she caused him.

But confirmation bias just eats your ass up.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Here's how to reframe the origin argument:

Atheist was shot. Atheist is bleeding to death.
Atheist sees the bleeding and finds the bullet.
He tells himself that the bullet was there all along. The atheist convinces himself that the ways things are is the way they always have been. Therefore, there's no need to stop the bleeding.
The atheist wants proof that the bullet wasn't there all along, proof of the method by which he was shot, and proof of the shooter's existence, all before he can accept that he needs treatment to stop the bleeding.

Lol, good analogy, and the stupid ass bleeds to death while trying to make up a new lie so he can show you how wrong you are about the damned bullet.

 

[Skull Pilot]

It is hilarious to watch the news and see a President who claims the border is sealed and secure against ISIS and yet unaccompanied children can get across it. The children just don't count somehow to support the view that the border is NOT secure. The feds deny that radical Islamicist groups are the primary source for terrorism, and so a violent radical Jihadist who shot a bunch of people at Fort Hood screaming 'Allah Akbar!' and who recently asked ISIS to let him be an honorary citizen of the Caliphate was not a terrorist, and the shooting just 'work place violence'.

But those are just a few glaring examples of confirmation bias, a thing where people insist on putting what they perceive into nice neat little pigeon holes defined by an ideology or inflexible philosophy.

There is an old 16th century story of three blind men who are feeling parts of an elephant, an animal that they have never seen and have no idea exists, and one feels the leg and says it is a tree, the other feels the trunk and says it is a vine, another feels the belly and says there is a bolder above him. When told that it is all one great big huge animal they laugh and say the narrator is deluded.

You cannot show evidence to someone who refuses to accept even the remote possibility of the thing claimed. No mater how complex a life form maybe, like the human cell, and no matter what Darwin knew about the complexity of the cell and the impact were it overly complex, the atheist will insist it is all the product of unguided chance. No matter how finely tuned the universe the atheist will insist that it proves nothing and it isn't so finely tuned anyway.

So don't pitch your argument to persuade an atheist of anything. Speak to other theists or to the lurkers who just read and move on. The atheist is a fringe element cultist who has closed his mind long ago.

Accepting something on faith does not demonstrate an open mind just one willing to follow the whims and beliefs of others.

Just because we may not know the origin of something does not necessarily mean a supreme being is responsible. it could be that we are simply incapable of understanding it given out limited sensory and cognitive abilities..

I consider myself an agnostic with atheist leanings but if I saw proof with my own eyes that there was a supreme being I would be compelled to believe. Some of you are willing to believe without such proof but I am not wired that way

Faith alone is sufficient to please God, otherwise the stupid would have no chance for salvation. But yes, these are people who accept their faith in a child's way, trusting those in authority around them.

But the evidence, reason and life experiences are there to lead one to believe, and if it is not so, and you honestly have found no evidence to believe in God, God does not call you to fake having faith.

For me, the strongest evidence has been the lives of believers compared to nonbelievers of similar background, the believers over all have fewer brushes with the law, fewer divorces, fewer addictions to drugs, etc. In fact AA has at its core values a belief and reliance on God that WORKS to help people beat their addiction. Compared to secular organizations, AA is way more effective in ending the plague of alcoholism in these peoples lives.

I heard a man once say that he has not seen Jesus turn water into wine, but he has seen Him act in peoples lives and turn wine into paid bills, a happy family and a peaceful contentment with life that they had never had before. I knew exactly what he meant, but my problem wasn't alcohol, and I don't want to discuss it, but yes, the power of faith is incredible, even when I didn't want it to happen to me.

Once I found a desire to know the Truth of what is Reality in my autistic obsessive way, I dug and dug and dug into the subject and I found much evidence of God's existence that previously I had attributed to circumstance or evolution. The funniest thing is to look at the design in living cells and say that it was complete chance that made them that way. Evolution was the tool God used, but He did not directly intervene. He made it the way He knew would work and let it grow on its own accord.

Using evolution to explain away the obvious design in the universe is like saying you cannot see the maker who is behind the chisel. Evolution is the chisel, but God's Hand guides it.

The fact that time must have had a beginning, that any eternal object responsible for the universe had to be infinite and have intelligence (set of all possible sets) and daily life with Christians and atheist in contrast....I have faith as much due to the absence of it in some as the presence of it in others.

But you have to make your own choices, obviously, and what may seem obvious to me might seem bewildering to a person who does not have those same experiences. Just be honest with yourself, treat the people in your life with respect/honesty/integrity and keep an open mind and watchful eye for God to get your attention,

I doubt he will fail you.

I don't buy your list of lifestyle choices as proof that god exists.

Lol, can we get a better example of confirmation bias than you reading all that and blowing it all off as 'life style choices'?

I doubt it.

But just stop it with the posturing that you are some kind of Truth seeker. You obviously are not.

Where did I ever once mention truth or seeking it?

So you admit to not having any intention of trying to grasp the Truth of these questions? So why are you here? To amuse yourself with all the Believer rubes? lolol

FYI plenty of believers drink and drug to excess so tell me how is that proof that a god exists?

It isn't, but the ratio of people with equivalent backgrounds in my experiences show huge help with dealing with issues in their lives and I am not alone on this observation, as AA using God to help people demonstrates.

And you just reiterated that not knowing something is proof of a supreme being.

It's not.

I said nothing of the sort. Show me what I said that sounds to you like 'WE do not know, therefore God exists.

We might never be able to understand the origin of the universe because we are too limited cognitively to do so that is not proof of a supreme being.

We are not too limited cognitively though your confirmation bias no doubt prefers to think that way rather than to look at the circumstantial implied answers. There is an eternal being, you just want to desperately believe ANYTHING other than the obvious.

If we are not limited cognitively then why can we not scientifically explain the origin of the universe without the magic man equation

because proving anything that is not repeatable and part of the natural flow of time and space is beyond the reach of science. It has nothing to do with any limitations of our brains or cognitive ability.

And I have never once denied the existence of a supreme being. I have merely stated that there is no proof of said being.

There is evidence for the existence of God, and I have repeatedly shared some. If you are demanding a lab tes, sorry, aint gonna happen.

I am not one to believe without proof. Faith is for followers I don't believe something merely because someone told me it was true

Bullshit. That vast majority of your life from day to day is lived, decisions made and actions taken without scientific proof for them.

Really? So if some guy approaches you in a mall parking lot and tells you the same story the bible tells, only he said Adam and Steve were the first humans and God told them and then Noel built a raft and put 2 asians, mexicans, indians, russians, europeans, indians, arabs on that raft and they were saved from a flood and then god sent jesus to talk to me and he told me I was the son of god......would you accept any of that?

So you are capable of realizing when someone is telling you a fairy tale or lying to you? Well how come you can't do that with Christianity?

And if you say you are not a Christian then you are admitting that all their wild stories are made up, fabrications or flat out lies.

So it isn't that I haven't seen enough scientific proof so much as the things theists tell me just don't add up. So I can't have faith in a story I don't believe.

Us atheists think theists who believe those stories are stupid. And I don't know what to say about people who know those are just stories but still believe. All I can say is I was one of them not too long ago. I finally woke up.

Because Christianity is not a fairy tale, dude.

You start with that conclusion then everything supports it that you see; bias conformation.

Do you really believe Mary was a virgin? REALLY??? LOL.

Yes, I know it. Had she not been a virgin, the laws and customs of her time would have had her stoned to death for adultery. If you had any actual knowledge of the time you would know that. Joseph knew what happened and so he protected Mary despite the damage to his honor she caused him.

But confirmation bias just eats your ass up.

You fail to see you suffer from the same bias

 

[JimBowie1958]

Because Christianity is not a fairy tale, dude.

You start with that conclusion then everything supports it that you see; bias conformation.

Do you really believe Mary was a virgin? REALLY??? LOL.

Yes, I know it. Had she not been a virgin, the laws and customs of her time would have had her stoned to death for adultery. If you had any actual knowledge of the time you would know that. Joseph knew what happened and so he protected Mary despite the damage to his honor she caused him.

But confirmation bias just eats your ass up.[/QUOTE]
You fail to see you suffer from the same bias[/QUOTE]

Show the specifics, dude. Then we can discuss particulars rather than these grand sweeping notions you post.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

If there were any irrefutable evidence of God there'd be no such thing as atheists.

 

[JimBowie1958]

If there were any irrefutable evidence of God there'd be no such thing as atheists.

The facts refute you. We know that there is an Eternal Object that started the flow of time and space. We don't scientifically know much more than that because science cannot penetrate into the time before time began.

Philosophically the case is strong enough that Greek philosophers, using just pure reason, gave a good model of the Trinity centuries before the Christian branch of Judaism called Christianity formed.

So with a situation where parallel groups independently form very similar conclusions one cannot argue that there is no evidence or reason to support the belief that there is a Creator.

As to 'irrefutable evidence' there is nothing irrefutable in this day and age, as any kook fringe group can deny or claim just about anything and you will find 10% of the population willing to go along.

Except atheism which only gets about one fifth of what the Lunar Landing Denialist fanatics do, around 2%.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

There's no facts, evidence, or proof God exists.

Si

 

[Delta4Embassy]

There's no facts, evidence, or proof God exists.

Since that's the case, I've tackled the issue from that perspective. Assuming God does in fact exist, why no evidence? Well, if we had such proof of a being we call God, would we still be able to function, or would we be paralyzed for fear of being sent to hell?

The world as it is functions the way it does because no one in power truly beleives in God. That's fairly obvious. If anyone did they wouldn't have government function via money talks. It'd all be pious clergy in charge doing exactly as whatever religious texts said. There'd be no global trade, no wars, no sins of any kind. The way the world does in fact function attests to the absolute lack of evidence of any God(s). No one in charge is worried about being sent to hell.

But if there is a God, why set things up this way? Maybe letting things unfold as they do is by design. Rather than have a global theocracy which would stiffle evolution and development, God stays subtle and discreet to encourage our development as a people giving us the choice of believing and obeying or not.

As it says in Deuteronomy 13 about false prophets being a test from God, God does test the faithful. Maybe then the utter lack of evidence of God existing is just another test? See who has the love and piety to submit and worship and believe even in the face of nothing concrete reaffirming such devotion.

Or, maybe there isn't a God afterall and it was simply something primitive Man came up with to answer the incessant and annoying "Why does x happen?"

 

[JimBowie1958]

There's no facts, evidence, or proof God exists.

Si

Lol, I and others have given pages after page of fact, evidence and reason that support the existence of the Creator and you simply dismiss it without any justification then repeat your predrawn conclusion.

Do you know what a discussion is? It doesn't appear to be the case.

 

[JimBowie1958]

There's no facts, evidence, or proof God exists.

Since that's the case, I've tackled the issue from that perspective. Assuming God does in fact exist, why no evidence?

Lol, you make an unproven or unwarranted assertion that there are no facts, no evidence no proof that God exists, ignoring all the facts presented to you, then you ask a completely rhetorical question, 'Why no evidence?'

You are not using reason or digging for data. You have already made your conclusions and are doing nothing more than engaging in mental masturbation on a message board.

Why? You trying to pump the atheist percentage from less than 2% of the population to maybe a meager 3%?