Ceeboo wrote:Yeah - that and I would imagine that atheism provides a soft spot to land in - and live in. But what do I know, I'm not an exM0 or an atheist.
Peace, Ceeboo
For the record, I'm not an atheist either. I think atheism goes to the opposite extreme and tends to engage in TBM-like thinking for a belief in the nonexistence of god. For examples see Philo and historical Jesus debates. Atheists "know" god doesn't exist like Mormons "know" the church is true.
I'd think you'd want data that could establish the rate at which LDS apostates are becoming atheists compared against the rate at which is this occurring from people who are losing faith in other religions in America. While the population of atheists is relatively low, it is growing rapidly in America and presumably atheists numbers are increasing at least impart because of people disillusioned with their faith.
Ceeboo wrote:Yeah - that and I would imagine that atheism provides a soft spot to land in - and live in. But what do I know, I'm not an exM0 or an atheist.
Peace, Ceeboo
For the record, I'm not an atheist either. I think atheism goes to the opposite extreme and tends to engage in TBM-like thinking for a belief in the nonexistence of god. For examples see Philo and historical Jesus debates. Atheists "know" god doesn't exist like Mormons "know" the church is true.
Atheism is rejection of belief in gods. It doesn't require one to claim they know gods do not exist.
Ceeboo wrote:Yeah - that and I would imagine that atheism provides a soft spot to land in - and live in. But what do I know, I'm not an exM0 or an atheist.
Peace, Ceeboo
For the record, I'm not an atheist either. I think atheism goes to the opposite extreme and tends to engage in TBM-like thinking for a belief in the nonexistence of god. For examples see Philo and historical Jesus debates. Atheists "know" god doesn't exist like Mormons "know" the church is true.
Well, it'd be nice if we can define what we're supposedly rejecting before we're accused of being extremists. For example, I'm fairly confident an uber-hominid occupying a planet near a star called Kolob doesn't exist. However, if you want to claim that a God or gods exist outside of our functional reality then I just have to shrug my shoulders because how do you argue against something like that?
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
because there is no reason to believe in a God. For many personal evidence was the main reason, so without personal evidence you are left with nothing.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote: However, if you want to claim that a God or gods exist outside of our functional reality then I just have to shrug my shoulders because how do you argue against something like that?
- Doc
There's a few ways. The two most important types of atheological argument for the nonexistence of gods are:
1) The definition of a god is incoherent and it is necessarily true that incoherent things cannot exist.
and
2) It's actually reasonable to think things do not exist when you note the lack of evidence for them and the body of evidence that indicates they are products of human imagination. Such things are improbable to exist and the statement "X does not exist" is just another way of saying, "the likelihood X does not exist is sufficiently high that one can be confident in it."
A lot goes into these type of arguments and my one or two sentence summary might sell them short in your mind. I disagree with both, but they are probably have more merit than you think.
We could get into the definition debates, conflating agnosticism with atheism, belief vs lack of belief vs belief in a negative, which is always how this tedious conversation goes. For me it usually just boils down to those identifying as "atheists" being arrogant pricks.
Aristotle Smith wrote:I think it seems like all become atheists because most in this neck of the woods or in the bloggernacle go that route. Since people tend to go to locations on the internet they agree with, and since you are here, you likely see most ex-Mos go atheist. I'm guessing if you went other places you would see more continue in some kind of faith.
You can see this when John Dehlin interviewed Sandra Tanner. He asked her why most ex-Mos are atheist. She replied that the ones she works with tend to stay religious. I believe both were making accurate observations and telling the truth, they are just observing different populations of ex-Mos.
Lynn Wilder, back in the day, was a fairly well known individual...professor at BYU...that left the church with her family and found a home within one of the flavors of Christianity.
She obviously doesn't post here...as far as I know. So it's different strokes for different folks. The ex-mormons on this board are mostly of a similar stripe, except for a few exceptions. Lynn Wilder is more likely to hang out at a Christian related board with other like minded folks.
So it's different strokes for different folks. The ex-mormons on this board are mostly of a similar stripe, except for a few exceptions. Lynn Wilder is more likely to hang out at a Christian related board with other like minded folks.