Can former atheists explain what atheism is?

sideshowbob said:
I think reality is interesting enough. Using "God did it" as an answer for everything is boring.
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For some I suppose. Never gets old for me. We can still figure out it’s mysteries and complexities. He did create a fully functioning running Creation. Lots to know and do. We still have some animals to name;)
 
sideshowbob said:
But what's the point if it's just an illusion? (God sustaining plants without sunlight, etc.)
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It was only 24 hours, ( day 3 for plants and day4 for sun ) not long time; plants would have lived in that short period and people were not even around then so they would not have see this issue.
 
BlueSky said:
It was only 24 hours, ( day 3 for plants and day4 for sun ) not long time; plants would have lived in that short period and people were not even around then so they would not have see this issue.
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You said we'd expect to see what we actually do see. If we were there to see plants growing without sunlight, we wouldn't expect sunlight to be necessary for plant growth.
 
sideshowbob said:
You said we'd expect to see what we actually do see. If we were there to see plants growing without sunlight, we wouldn't expect sunlight to be necessary for plant growth.
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Plants can live for quite some time without sunlight, I am a amature botanist, 24 hours is nothing to a plant. This was a one time event, long over.
 
BlueSky said:
Plants can live for quite some time without sunlight, I am a amature botanist, 24 hours is nothing to a plant. This was a one time event, long over.
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But you'd have no reason to "expect" that.

When you say we'd "expect" to see what we do see, that's just a glib "bumper sticker" response with no real meaning.
 
sideshowbob said:
But you'd have no reason to "expect" that.

When you say we'd "expect" to see what we do see, that's just a glib "bumper sticker" response with no real meaning.
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Agree, not that issue. I am talking about others things, like the religiosity of mankind.

One would expect to see this is Genesis were true.

Since Adam and Eve, they would have passed down all they knew, but due to rebellion/sin/disbelief, we are left with the left-overs of millennia of manmade systems, yet all are similar and contain elements of the original truth.
 
BlueSky said:
Agree, not that issue. I am talking about others things, like the religiosity of mankind.

One would expect to see this is Genesis were true.

Since Adam and Eve, they would have passed down all they knew, but due to rebellion/sin/disbelief, we are left with the left-overs of millennia of manmade systems, yet all are similar and contain elements of the original truth.
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The problem is that all of your claims are reverse-engineered. What is there in Genesis that predicts what we might see? For example, evolution via mutation predicted the existence of DNA before DNA was actually discovered.
 
sideshowbob said:
The problem is that all of your claims are reverse-engineered. What is there in Genesis that predicts what we might see? For example, evolution via mutation predicted the existence of DNA before DNA was actually discovered.
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Genesis showed created kinds of creatures, reproducing after kind, exactly what we see. Micro EV, not macro. We see micro all the time, exactly as expected. Evolutions today have confused ( or assumed ) macro in face of micro. Depending on environment, food, ( Darwin’s finches ) stressors etc, creatures change and adapt.
 
sideshowbob said:
Genesis in no way predicted that.
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But it does follow. Look as what we see. Creatures reproducing after their established kind. We never see creatures change into a completly different creature, but see see slow drift and expansion of the species over time.
 
sideshowbob said:
On the contrary, speciation is well documented.
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Could you show me a link to a completely different creature turning into another ?

Again, that is not what we would "expect to see" from reading Genesis.[/QUOTE]

I respectively disagree. It’s exactly what we would expect to see.
 
BlueSky said:
Well I consider it all these things and more. Rudimentary agree, say in the science department or math department, but accurate nonetheless.
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Yikes.

Do you think all gays should be killed? Do you think ants don't have queens? Do you think that the Sun moves around the Earth?

I strongly suspect that you don't, and that you consider those aspects of the Bible to be quaint, or not to be taken literally, or leftovers from an earlier time. If so, congratulations; that's what most people do. They don't make the mistake of thinking that the Bible is a science, math or law book.
 
sideshowbob said:
You could start with the Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation

That's dishonest. There is nothing in Genesis that suggests adaptation.
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I will have a look. It’s not dishonest, that’s a unreasonable statement. It’s a reasonable conclusion if Genesis is the truth. God creates base kinds, they reproduce and drift/adapt to stressors after their kind. Cats stay cats and dogs stay dogs but with a wide margin for change.
 
BlueSky said:
But with all that, the worlds relgions are very similar. Some very similar with good reason. That’s a ‘tell’ that they could have had a common ancestor/background.
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So look at the similarities, for clues to that common ancestry.
Having a god is not one of them. Neither is having a holy book with nothing but truth in it. So there's no common background there.
 
BlueSky said:
Could you show me a link to a completely different creature turning into another ?
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Google "idiurus macrotis." It is a mouse evolving into a bird. It even has a new bone in its arm to help extend its (rudimentary) wing.

Google "pakicetus." It was the first step in something that looked like a dog evolving into a whale.
 
BlueSky said:
I respectively disagree. It’s exactly what we would expect to see.
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Nobody did.
Nobody. For tens of thousands of years, absolutely nobody.

The only people who have ever read Genesis and expected to see evolution and plate tectonics and a planet 3 billion years old and DNA in common between bacteria and bananas and so forth were the people who already knew about that stuff, and were trying to re-interpret Genesis as a biology textbook.

The Bible is a collection of stories. All of its biological and historical information is wrong, one way or another.
 
billvon said:
Yikes.
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Indeed.

Do you think all gays should be killed? Do you think ants don't have queens?
Do you think that the Sun moves around the Earth?

I strongly suspect that you don't, and that you consider those aspects of the Bible to be quaint, or not to be taken literally, or leftovers from an earlier time. If so, congratulations; that's what most people do. They don't make the mistake of thinking that the Bible is a science, math or law book.
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Agree. I don’t.

Different time, different perspetive. Literary devices need to factor in to imo. The Bible is not a detailed science book, agree, it’s a history book ( how God dealt with those before us ) and a instruction manual how to live and to prepare our deaths. Lots in between.
 
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