I'm an atheist, but I don't have ANY bumper stickers on my vehicles, much less sacreligious ones. It's my opinion that every person's beliefs with regard to religion are that person's beliefs and that they ought to be left alone about them.
I don't encourage anyone to disbelieve, and I don't particularly welcome people encouraging me to believe. My atheism is the product of a great deal of study and thought, and slogans are not going to change my mind.
But I don't mind if others believe in deities. It doesn't affect me.
Although I am a very lapsed Catholic, you pretty much sum up what I believe. Although "agnostic" is probably a better term. Also, I might be something of a Deist, depending on what I just read, but officially, I claim publicly to be an athiest on religous issues.
I find I am much more able to engage liberals with that background. They seem to think that all conservatives are bible-thumpers. It is quite satisfying to destroy any straw men right up front. It leaves them quite disarmed.
LOL, that's one of the funniest things I've seen here in a long time! LOL
Your tag line is the cyber equivalent of a bumper sticker and it tells people the one thing that you want them to know above all other things about you. Hard to see that you want to be left alone about it.
Someone who does a great deal of study and thought can see in a second how ludicrous your statement is.
LOL, good stuff.
Ditto to MineralMan.
I think that talking to atheists is like talking to anyone else. If you do so with respect, you're likely to earn respect in return. I love having philosophical conversations with my church-going friends (one of whom is a Baptist minister) and wouldn't dare disrespect their beliefs. I do, however, ask the same in return. ;)
Exactly, -seems to me, that the "athiest" bumper stickers are more about mocking Christianity, than espousing the beliefs of the athiest.
It has been my personal experience that; The more vociferous someone is about their status as an "athiest", -the greater the likelihood that they are primarily "anti-Christian".
This is one of those landmine topics, I guess from my POV there's nothing wrong with athiesm, but it's just crass when it takes on the "in-your-face" mocking tones. The dude in the 1983 Ford Fiesta with two dozen Athiesm stickers is looking to shock someone for sure. I just don't see Christians tooling around with bumper-stickers that say "Repent or burn in hell losers"
Other than inspection and registration, I've never put any sticker of any KIND on any car I've ever owned. For awhile, I even stopped buying Chevy products if they had that goofy Alfred E Newman / Rusty Jones sticker on 'em. ;>
He also gave us free will to accept or reject Him.
If I am wrong, what have I lost? If you are wrong, what have you lost?
I hope you'll accept our prayers for your awakening in the spirit in which they are intended.
That's logical. As an athiest, you don't think it matter's what people believe, so each to his own.
However as a Christian. I believe it matters very much. I see eternal consequences for not having a relationship with our Creator and accepting the pardon He's offered us.
It doesn't impact me personally much what you believe. Oh, I'm sure there's some reward in Heaven if I could lead you to Jesus. But Frankly, I've got no clue what that is. And my salvation is assured, regardless. I could pass you by and never tell you about Jesus and I'd still go to heaven. It'd be a sin, but my sins are paid for.
The angels and God would rejoice if you accepted Jesus, and that'd be cool to make them happy. Heaven would be a slightly richer place if you make it. But it's not like I'm going to see that celebration any time soon.
On the other hand, I am called to love others. And if I see you are walking off a cliff, shouldn't I at least holler, "MineralMan! Watch where you're going." I mean, it just seems the decent thing to do.
I mean, sure, I know other's have probably warned you. And I know you are tired of people trying to tell you where to walk and where not to walk.
But DAMN man it's a cliff!!!!
In CPR class they tell you that if you push to hard, you could break the person's clavical. And then they tell you don't worry about it. He's got no pulse, he's not breathing. He's dead, and anything you do isn't going to make things worse, but might help.
So forgive me for being annoying. Forgive me for ignoring the line in your post that said you want to be left alone. Forgive me for not adopting a "live and let die" attitude. And by the way...
A curious way of putting it. I do wonder whether it has occured to you (and the other professed atheists on the thread) that monotheism as confessed by traditional Christians and Jews is not one god paganism, but the settled conviction that the ground of all being, the reason there is something instead of nothing, is more like a person than like anything else we have ordinary experience of, together with the desire to be in right relationship with that reality.
Certainly Jews and Christians differ on the nature and extent of the self-revelation of that which is beyond being. As an Orthodox Christian, I am convinced that the decisive self-revelation of that which is beyond being (and there is a reason--not sexism as feminists would have us think--that "He" is always used of God) is the person of Jesus, as well as many other things about God and our relationship to Him (some of which are admittedly abstruse seeming to those not trying to live as Orthodox Christians) which follow from the Church's experience of Him.
Spoken like someone who thinks religious beliefs are flights of fancy.
How would you react if you thought your beliefs about G-d were true, as true as your beliefs about gravity?
Shalom.
Yet
I would like to ask you a question: Are you afraid to die?
And when you die where do you think you are going?
And what purpose do you think you have in being part of the earth.
I am not being sarcastic, I just cannot understand atheism because in my view of atheism there would be no reason to be alive or to even be born. What is the purpose?
Mineralman,
You said: 'My atheism is the product of a great deal of study and thought....'
I am just curious. You stated you have given this much thought, so what convinced you that there is no God? Or why do you believe in no God?
Thanks.
disbelieve what?
"But I don't mind if others believe in deities. It doesn't affect me."
You've been so very effective at fooling me all this time!
Congrats, I guess.
Why are you somewhat unwelcoming to people encouraging you to believe?