Oh... so Atheists believe in Jesus?

:)

Yahweh and Jesus are one and the same, right?

So that is what the difference is between a monotheist and an atheist is.

Atheists believe that Jesus was real. They just don't believe the whole Christ thing.

Faiths like Judaism, Islam, Buddhists, Hindus and basically every single other religion on the planet believes that Jesus was a real person.

However Christians are the only ones on the planet that believe in the divinity of Jesus and that he was the Christ.

Henry, the point of posting this is to address the question "Why don't you believe in God (Yahweh)?" My response is "Why don't you believe in the other deities on the list?" I would like to hear your answer, but I'm guessing it's because you think those gods were invented by ancient people who were superstitious and pre-scientific.

What Danny said.

I don't hold to the other Gods because their stories do not make sense in the world as I perceive it. The story of Yahweh does and does better than any other story I have encountered.

I would not play the "superstitious and pre-scientific" card at all. I am guessing that it suggests that the people being referred to are not thinking rationally and have a "primitive" mindset. To do so would go against any/every good ethnographic study made recently about any ethnographic group. It also assumes that each and every belief be purely rational and devoid of doubt - if that were the case, I could not ever believe that I had a body, that any of you actually exist, or that I like ice cream.

The story of Yahweh doesn't make sense in the world as I perceive it. And it doesn't even stand out from the pack in it's earliest forms. Yahweh (or El, assuming it was the same deity) looks like just another tribal God in the Torah. He's petty, jealous and violent.

What do you expect from a tradition adapted from an earlier tradition of tribal peoples? Would not one expect it to reflect how they were experiencing Yahweh? It is a recording of their experience, one that was edited and collected by priests later on and combined with their perceptions.

The whole story of Yahweh/El/Addoni/Yeshua or whatever name you wanna use over the 4000+ year history of devotion to this God makes tremendous sense to me. This ranges from the nature and character of the God, to how it orients and purposes humans, and how it instructs us to live and relate to other humans and the rest of nature. Without which I can conceive of no real lasting purpose (which I intuit to exist) no reason to do good without reward (which I intuit to be valuable), no reason to not be self-absorbed, no reason to be peaceful, no reason to weigh human life and welfare in terms of numbers, and so forth. This story of Yahweh and her relation to and orientation of humankind gives my life and my view of life meaning, purpose, and hope for the future.

Furthermore, there is also the personal, yet unverifiable, experiential relationship that I have had with the Yahweh story that validates it for me. This last semester I has a terrible and powerful experience with directly and wisely answered prayer. To have prayers answered in gut-wrenching ways was a incredible validating and scary experience. Granted it is unique to myself, unverifiable and unrepeatable, but the experience of action combined with presence holds large amounts of water. I'll also say that my lack of such experience beforehand was just as damaging to my stance towards the story before this last semester.

The story of Yahweh is not without its problems with which I wrestle(see Joshua). There are all kinds of terrible versions of the story which to not make sense to me (see recent earth creationism and many, many many others). These things do not render the overall story void of meaning, purpose and truth in the best of my guesses.

You say it does not do so for you. That is the true difference between and atheist and a Xian. I cannot find meaning and purpose in the Void. I think the story of Yahweh is the best story out there, far better than any other one I have encountered, and I remain in disagreement with people that hold to others.

Your willingness to see and admit the problems with the Yahweh story is worthy of respect. I'll try not to misrepresent your beliefs and assume that you hold all the same beliefs as fundamentalists. I hope you'll do the same for me. I think your view of atheism is misinformed. Most of us do not give up purpose, value and love just because we don't believe in a supernatural source of those things. You said that if God doesn't exist, you see no reason to not be self-absorbed. But nature is replete with cooperation. Some of the earliest life we've discovered are the stromatolites left behind by bacteria colonies 2.4 billion years ago. Even then, organisms had discovered that working together is better than going it alone. Throughout the animal kingdom, peace and stability within a group is the rule. Billions of years of evolution have drummed into all animals the instinct for peace, nurturing and cooperation. Why would the large-brained, hairless primates be any different?

I view life as more valuable now than I ever did as a Christian. A scarce and fragile resource is worth more than an abundant one. If I was going to live forever in heaven, then life on earth would be something to endure. Let's get it over with and get on to the good stuff. If this is it, then every moment is valuable and every death is tragic.

I'm glad that you've had good experiences. As you said, it doesn't do much to convince me. I know that people have numinous and transcendent experiences, but I feel no need to resort to supernatural explanations for them.

Thanks for sharing this, Henry. I hope you'll expand on it, especially in how you deal with the origins of the religion.

The problem here is you're looking for a logical explanation to someone else's belief system. By definition, a belief system doesn't depend or rely upon logical explanations, so seeking a logical answer to a counter-argument is a moot point.

Try this: love exists. People fall in and out of it. But if you're in love can you logically prove it? You can explain how being in the presence of this special someone makes you 'feel' better in ways you value, and you can probably identify some measurable changes your body experiences in the presence of the other (such as eye dilation or smiling more frequently or sexual arousal), but that wouldn't PROVE you're in love. They would be indications that love, for you at that time with that person, exists, but it wouldn't "prove" love exists. Someone else can easily look at you and the person that sets your heart all a-flutter and think "that is the WORST match-up since Crosby Stills Nash and Olbermann", but they can't prove love doesn't exist any more than you can prove it does.

So if you are willing to ask someone who finds personal value in a god "if you believe in this god why don't you also believe in that god?" would you also be willing to ask someone in love "if you're in love with this person why are you not in love with that person?".

Anyway I think Christians don't hold faith in the other deities on the list because they don't feel love for the other deities.

Or something like that :)

Oh and a minor technical point: Jesus is not God in any religion that I know of. Yahweh eh? Christians identify Jesus as the son of God, but not God. For anyone to not believe in the factual existence of Jesus is ... well ... heck you might as well not believe in the factual existence of Edwin R Murrow. Whether or not Jesus (or Edwin!) is/was the son of the invisible man in the sky is up to the believer to disbelieve ;)

Ed,
If I took a survey of the Christians I know with the question "Is Jesus God?", I think almost all of them would say yes. I think the man actually existed, but there's no solid proof for that.

Who is Edwin R. Murrow?

oops. Edward R Murrow was a tee vee news figure from way back in the "McCarthy communists are everywhere" days.

Um... more than enough data exists to support the factual existence of a man named Jesus who was, in fact, ordered crucified by a man named Pontius Pilate for 'sedition'.

Many people believe he was the son of God. Apparently some believe he actually is/was God. Still others don't believe he even existed. If memory serves me, there is a group of people in Japan who absolutely believe Jesus escaped crucifiction and made his way to Japan where he settled down, married, and raised a family.

Anyway I'm still going with "people believe in a god they find love in" as the reason folks would dig on one but not another.