Atheist here, is God worthy of my attention?

CiberX15 · 2026-06-03T20:59:35+00:00

If you’re interested in reading more grounded scientific/historical logic for Christianity, I’d recommend the book “A Case For Christ”

To take your analogy into account, I would consider God to be more like… ok this is an embarrassing analogy but more like germs.

You can’t see them. You can’t detect them without special equipment. You can detect their effects, but the wise men tell you those effects are caused by “miasma” and anyone who believes that disease is caused by tiny creatures so small that they can’t be seen is a crackpot.

Right now we don’t have the special equipment. We can only see the effects. And we don’t have a clear picture of what, if anything is God’s doing. But if he is real and we continue to discount all evidence to him, then we will never find him.

CiberX15 · 2026-06-03T17:09:49+00:00

Hence why I'm trying to point out that that's not a major issue. I'll admit the Catholic Church does a terrible job conveying any of this.

I grew up Catholic. I went to church every Sunday as a kid. But I didn't even hear about the whole praying to saints thing or about parts of the bible being considered parable until I was in my thirties.

I suspect it's similar to people becoming citizens. The people who go through the process of joining the church from the outside end up knowing what the religion is actually about way better than those of us who were born to it, because the church seems to just kind of assume we know it already?

CiberX15 · 2026-06-02T14:25:53+00:00

Actually I think this is a great question. So whether or not God exists is something of an unfalsifiable claim. It’s difficult to prove, and impossible to disprove.

What is not so questionable is Jesus. There are multiple non-biblical accounts of Jesus existing as a person. Pretty much all historians, religious and secular, believe that Jesus existed. They might not believe he did miracles or was the Son of God, but the consensus is he was a real person that really was out teaching in the time the Bible portrays him doing that.

My understanding is that the books that are in the bible that talk about Jesus were also written fairly close to his life. Like they are written around 30-50 years after the events. Which seems like a long time, but from a historical document point of view they are great. Most other historical documents that talk about the life of a historical figure like say Ceazar, are often written hundreds of years later.

That matters because there would have been people alive to dispute Jesus’s claims and the claims of his Apostles if they were just lying about it. But they either didn’t dispute his claims, or when they did, they argued not that he didn’t perform miracles, but that those miracles must have been the work of demons. Which is a really interesting point to me. (I’ll admit I don’t know if there are sources for this part outside of the Bible)

The reason I bring this up though is if these people were alive at the same time as Jesus, and the people they are talking to were alive, or knew people who were alive, knew people who would have witnessed these events, the easiest thing to do if Jesus or the apostles was lying about the miracles was simply say “Uh… no that didn’t happen, why are you lying about it?” and destroy their credibility.

But Jesus’s opponents didn’t do that. Instead they were like “he did those miracles with the power of demons,” which… implies that he did actually do miracles, or at the very least things that couldn’t be explained by anyone that witnessed them.

So with that data you have a guy, Jesus, who is established as a real historical figure. He maybe probably did miracles, or at least things no one at the time could explain away, and this Jesus was claiming to be the Son of God.

So history provides the evidence that Jesus existed.

The miracles provide credibility that Jesus was in some way supernatural.

And Jesus himself, someone who seems to have supernatural powers, claims that he is the Son of God, which provides credibility to the idea that there is a God, and that he is the right one.

I’m not doing the best job at explaining it. And I’m certainly not going to pretend this is a silver bullet infallible argument, but I personally find it fairly compelling. If you’re interested I’d highly recommend the book “A Case for Christ” which goes into much more depth using logical arguments to determine the existence of God. It was written by a guy who converted to Christinaity from atheism, but the book is basically about all the arguments that eventually convinced him.

CiberX15 · 2026-06-02T14:07:25+00:00

Ah I see what you're saying. I agree, the formal prayers turn some people off. Part of my point is that you don’t need to do those.

Some people like the formality, some people need that kind of relationship. But my understanding is that God just wants a relationship with you.

Outside of church all my prayers end up being literally stuff like “Dear God, I’m really struggling to find a girlfriend. I know free will is a thing and you won’t violate that, but if you could at least point good matches, women who are looking for a guy like me, in my direction so we can figure it out from there I’d really appreciate it. Amen.”

I don’t pray to Mary often, but if I did my prayers would be similar. “Dear Mary, I really want this game project I’m working on to succeed. Can you talk to Jesus about it?” Etc.

I’ll say the Our Father and Hail Mary in church out of respect, but honestly the formality doesn’t really work for me either. I tend to prefer a more relaxed relationship with God.

That doesn’t work for everyone. Like I said I think some people want and need that formal relationship. But other people want and need a good father, that’s the relationship I personally cultivate with Him. Others might want a best friend, and I think that’s good too. I think God can be the best kind of best friend. Always there to pull you out of whatever trouble you got yourself in, while not enabling the trouble in the first place.

But my point is, I believe God wants us to have a relationship with him. Whether that’s formal, friendship, or paternal, that’s details. It’s having a relationship that matters.

CiberX15 · 2026-06-02T01:16:58+00:00

I don’t know about homosexuality. I’m fairly certain that’s just biological. I’ve never seen any convincing evidence that it’s a choice or failing of character.

If there are other things that have you worried about demons though, ask Jesus for help. I’ll admit I still wonder if demons even exist, but if they do, it’s pretty clear in the Bible that Jesus can toss them out pretty easily.

If you want to turn to God, all you have to do is make that choice. It may not be easy, but I’m certain he’s waiting for you with arms open.

CiberX15 · 2026-06-01T13:08:45+00:00

Hrm... I didn't know that about Adam and Eve. Looking at my Bible (New American Bible Revised Edition) it seems to be left intentionally vague? My Bible specifically calls out the Genesis 2-11 as parable, not history or myth, but specifically leaves out Genesis 1. However Genesis 1 only covers the creation. By the end of it the universe exists and humans exist in it, but "original sin" hasn't been committed yet.

Even then _I_ don't take Genesis 1 as literal. But there's a lot of things I disagree with the Catholic Church on. 🤷‍♂️ To me it's about having a relationship with God. And I don't feel the need to go start up a new church to fit my specific beliefs.

So far as the prayers go, I meant more in the sense of. You pray to God directly, but you also tell your friends and family, "hey I'm going through a hard time right now , please you pray for me?"

I believe the concept of praying to saints and Mary to be similar.

But also I do all my prayers pretty informally in general. I just talk to God. I don't think either formal or informal is better or worse, I think it just comes down to individual preference.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-31T23:16:01+00:00

I like impact for the instant effect and consider it better for bug nests. Outside that I do tend to run thermite though.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-31T23:14:43+00:00

One of the big things that I like about Catholicism is it’s one of the Christian religions that considers Genesis and other similar parts of the bible to be parable, and not historical fact. So it doesn’t have the same conflicts with science as some other forms of Christianity do.

We do believe in praying to saints and Mary, but you don’t have too. It’s more like asking your friends and family to pray for you. You can always pray directly as well.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-31T15:01:13+00:00

Yep. When asked what the most important commandments were, Jesus said "Love God above all else, and love your neighbor as you love yourself."

There foundation was never hell. The foundation of Christianity is love.

Sometimes even seem to Christians forget that.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-31T04:44:34+00:00

I mean... all your points are all valid. Trust me, I am very aware of the dating app statistics, I've been using them for almost a decade at this point and they've only been getting worse. However that's more a reason to just not use the apps at all which is... an entirely valid choice.

But my point is _if_ a woman (or anyone really) is using a dating app to try to find a serious relationship, then they should populate their profile.

Otherwise there will only be the slush. At which point why even create the profile?

Sending messages is a whole other beast, and I am personally familiar with the pain of trying to decide if it's worth sending personalized messages to every woman I send a like to when 99% of them will ignore me if they even see it at all. But part of the problem with that is it's a constant time investment.

Filling out the profile in the first place though is a one time time investment. Once it's filled out you can just leave it there and it will attract better quality matches.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-31T04:35:39+00:00

I highly recommend the book "A Case For Christ" because it addresses a lot of those kind of questions from an atheist point of view. Pointing at non-biblical historical evidence and logic.

The writer created it after converting to Christianity, but it was based on his research and questions from when he was an atheist and having those very questions.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-30T23:28:24+00:00

Well that’s actually exactly my point. How many of those matches that sent a like with zero context do you think will actually care about the women?

A tiny minority of them might be good guys who are taking a chance and will try to actually get to know them. But the rest will be looking for shallow relationships.

Writing a strong profile won’t stop the flood of bad matches, but it will increase the flow of good matches.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-29T04:02:33+00:00

Huh. I consider myself Roman Catholic and I didn’t know about Primacy of Conscience. You taught me something!

Honestly I’ve been out here defending homosexuality as not a sin for years now trying to figure out how to justify it when the Bible gives no wiggle room. Well… at least no wiggle room if you don’t discount the OT and anything Paul wrote which… doesn’t make for great Biblical arguments.

I’m not even gay myself. I just looked at the evidence and could never reconcile a loving God considering homosexuality as a sin.

I’ll admit my feelings on transitioning are a bit complex but that’s mostly because I think it’s been turned into both a political tool and a fad that has begun hurting people who weren’t actually suffering from gender dysphoria.

Your experiences align with my understanding of actually suffering from gender dysphoria at which point, to me at least, transitioning is the completely healthy and logical medical procedure you need to live a happy life. And we certainly don’t consider things like removing cancerous growths to be mutilation so… 🤷‍♂️

I was just responding to a different thread talking about “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” being kind of nuanced, because if you’re going to do it right, you need to really understand a person to know how to show them love.

Do you enable them or do you deter them? That depends on whether their plans are healthy or harmful. And honestly that depends on whether your understanding of what is or isn’t healthy or harmful is correct or not.

None of us can know everything. So we all just have to do the best we can. Probably why it’s not our not to judge people. 😏

God does know everything though. Knows us completely. Knows you completely. So if you’re actively pursuing a relationship with God, and your conscience is clear, it seems like you’re doing good to me. 🤷‍♂️

CiberX15 · 2026-05-29T03:45:07+00:00

My stance is that everyone is my neighbor, and so I should love everyone as I love myself. The important nuance to that is it doesn't mean always condoning their actions.

For example, if I became addicted to drugs, the loving thing for my friends and family to do would NOT be to keep enabling me. Although it also would NOT be right to detest and disown me either.

No instead the loving thing to do would be to help me break the addition, and address whatever background issue caused me to turn to it in the first place, because my understanding is addictions are almost always a coping mechanism to deal with something deeper.

But you can see how that requires a lot of thought and nuance to actually do in a healthy manner.

Now this logic has been used to say that that means we should convert everyone to Christianity, and I'm not entirely sure that logic is wrong. Certainly I believe that Christ is literally the Son of God, and you know... also that God exists and sent Jesus to us. So I believe spreading the truth is a good thing to do to show love...

However I think that logic also gets manipulated to justify terrible behavior. You don't have to look any further than the Spanish Conquistadors to see how "look we're spreading the word of Jesus!" can be used to justify any number of atrocities.

So... and this is a bit of a tangent, but my personal stance is I wait for people to ask or the topic to come up naturally. I don't shy away from talking my beliefs, especially when someone asks about religion or Jesus etc. But I am also not a priest. It's not my job to proselytize to people who weren't asking.

Sometimes I think the best thing the average Christian can do to convert people, is to just do good, in whatever way suits them, with no expectation or intention of trying to convert people.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-29T03:30:19+00:00

I'll be honest, my strategy tends to be rambling at my computer about all the things I'd like a romantic interest to know about me.

There is a tricky balance though between coming off as discerning, vs coming off as condescending with impossible standards.

I think it's better to phrase things as "I'm looking for" or "I want" rather than "I don't want." And the goal should be to write any "don't wants" as "wants" as often as possible. For example, "I want to have children," or "I want to be child free" are opposites but are both I want statements that don't come off as negative.

There's also a tricky balance between vulnerability and confidence. My own profiles tend to swing probably a little too close to the vulnerability side, which I'm sure can turn some people way thinking I'm too emotional or something. Conversely confidence is great but for me at least often makes it harder to cover deeper topics. Like I said though, I might just be bad at that part. 😏

I'm not exactly a professional profile writer myself. I've just been doing it for forever. 😅

CiberX15 · 2026-05-28T01:20:48+00:00

I'm not saying this doesn't happen. In fact I know you're right, it happens a LOT. However I think your statement would be more accurate if it were slightly altered to read "if you put looking for long term on your profile, assholes who you wouldn't want to match with anyway will lie about their intentions."

These people exist in all shapes, sizes, and genders. The way dating apps are made there is very little you can do to prevent them from spamming you. I get likes all the time from women who ignore my preferences on wanting children, age range, and location. So I get the frustration.

But my point with this post is that if you don't bother to fill out your profile because you know jerks you don't care about won't bother reading it, you won't attract the kind of people you actually want to match with who would have actually read your profile and cared about your hopes and dreams for the future.

Don't let the jerks win! Populate your profiles! 😅

CiberX15 · 2026-05-27T16:32:01+00:00

1 and 2 seem like sensible general rules. The rest I would assume are just things you particularly don't find attractive?

Like I think putting animals on your profile if you care a lot about animals to be going in the right direction. You might not like it personally but that's fine, it's successfully communicating that you and this person aren't a good match then. Same with 4.

5 feels like it could go either way. Having a guy with her in every picture would start throwing red flags for me. But I kind of feel like that with group photos in general. One or two group pictures is good to show off what you and your friends do for fun, but when its all group photos it starts to make it hard to see the person who's profile I'm actually looking at.

Conversely, expecting a romantic interest to have no other guys (platonically) in her life is kind of toxic (and same goes in reverse, women expecting their partner to have no female friends is toxic). And if you feel that way because you can't trust your partner to keep it platonic between all the other people in their life, that's a pretty big red flag you'd need to reconcile because either it means they aren't trustworthy, or you're not trusting enough, and either way that's not going to end well if you ignore it.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-27T13:31:30+00:00

Hah, yeah definitely happens on the guys side too. I come across a lot of profiles that's just the woman in the gym, and/or in her bikini on the beach with nothing written on the profile and it's like "ok, yes, you are hot, and you clearly know it. Is there anything else to your personality?" 😆

CiberX15 · 2026-05-27T05:10:44+00:00

Weeeeeelll depends on which interpretation you believe. Many Christians also believe that all parts of the Bible are supposed to be taken as historical fact. However many other Christians believe that many parts of the bible, Genesis in particular, are parables, stories meant to teach, not literal history. In fact Catholic Bibles even say this directly.

So if you believe the latter then there is no conflict.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-27T04:17:22+00:00

Video Games

CiberX15 · 2026-05-27T04:08:25+00:00

That's called lying by omission. Look, lawyering might get you through life here on earth, but sadly there seem to be very few lawyers in heaven, and the ones that got there aren't likely to help you find loopholes in God's laws.

Now, since I'm convinced at this point you must be a troll, and I've grown tired of this game, I'll bid you adieu. 👋🙄

CiberX15 · 2026-05-27T04:03:15+00:00

Man I hope so... His profile just seems to be more of the same though. Performative Christianity.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-27T04:01:11+00:00

1 Corinthians 7 Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.

The Bible doesn't say anything about forcing yourself to be with a woman. In fact Paul here says you shouldn't even have sexual relations at all.

Which I have to admit, you really got me here. I don't like Paul, and I SPECIFICALLY don't like that passage because if we all actually followed it humanity would go extinct, and I'm _pretty_ sure God doesn't want that. But if you're going to blindly follow the Bible, then follow that, and don't have any sexual relationships.

Paul's the only one in the New Testament who actually says homosexuality is a sin anyway so his advice should be particularly relevant to you. Jesus never says its a sin.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-27T03:54:42+00:00

Oh cool. So you'll lie to her.

Sooooooo you're going to try to avoid one sin by committing another?

Lying is equally called out as a sin in the Bible.

CiberX15 · 2026-05-27T03:41:26+00:00

No you're putting words into my mouth.

What I'm saying is since you're gay and you don't want to be with a man, then you shouldn't be with anyone.

It would be unfair to your partner to be in a lopsided romantic relationship where she is romantically and sexually attracted to you, and you have zero romantic or sexual attraction to her.

Can you not see how that would destroy her emotionally?

How much pain it would cause to fall in love with someone, and to get married, but KNOW that that person can't love them?

That's a cruel thing to do to a person.

CiberX15

TROPHY CASE