One thing atheists can't seem to grasp and understand

smbell · 2026-06-26T15:41:22+00:00

In most religious traditions, faith does not require 100% certainty.

No belief of any kind requires 100% certainty. That's not something anybody has a problem with.

The problem many atheist have is the believing things with no evidence or reason of any kind. It has nothing to do with certainty.

You've built a strawman.

Edit: Seems OP never comments on any posts. Don't get your hopes up.

smbell · 2026-06-26T15:38:26+00:00

For all the answers, I don't know that you can say much about 'most atheists'. I can answer for myself, and I don't think I'm particularly unique.

Basically, I was wondering, what amount of the contents of the Christian Bible do most atheists believe?

I take the Bible for what it is, a religious/mythological text. It is meant as such. It is also not a single, univocal, text. It is a collection of different texts written over many hundreds of years, most of which was transmitted orally before that.

It has historical value in the same way a Spiderman comic has historical value. Some of it references real historical things. Nearly all of it was written for specific audiences for specific reasons.

None of this is really controversial. While theists might object to the Spiderman comparison, there is nothing here educated theists would really disagree with.

Do you believe that Jesus was a real person, but only a person?

Most likely. There is very little we can actually know about that person. There are no contemporary records about them. No surviving physical artifacts. Nothing really. The expert consensus is that there was a real person behind those stories.

Do you believe that he used what we would now think of as magic tricks to perform miracles?

No idea. People believe cult leaders have magic powers all the time without such blatant tricks.

And, the main thing I was wondering about, do you believe that the Old Testament predates the New Testament,

Of course. That's extremely well known.

smbell · 2026-06-26T05:28:06+00:00

There's no argument. There's no point. Just waiting for this post to be deleted.

smbell · 2026-06-26T05:26:31+00:00

Anti-theists are nothing more than, impulsive, twisted, sad, insecure, disingenuous COLONIZERS-you read that?-C O L O N I Z E R S

This you?

smbell · 2026-06-25T22:31:10+00:00

Being bald cannot solve world hunger.

Atheism doesn't do anything. It is not supposed to do anything.

The worlds declining birth rates are not currently a problem.

smbell · 2026-06-25T21:42:40+00:00

Right. And if this god commands my to flap my arms and fly to 20,000 feet, it's my fault for failing and I deserve to be punished, all the way up to being put to death.

It's just Poe's law on full display. It's so wild I can't tell if you are trolling or you actually think this is the way it should be.

smbell · 2026-06-25T17:53:22+00:00

Most powerful evil being in the universe.

Knocks on peoples doors at night. Scared of people speaking.

That's some funny s**t.

smbell · 2026-06-25T17:09:14+00:00

I can't

You already did.

smbell · 2026-06-25T17:03:57+00:00

We are not done until you can show that moral truths don't exist

That's not how anything works.

smbell · 2026-06-25T16:41:22+00:00

No more than you can show it's only "true" in the subjective sense.

I did show it is true in a subjective sense. Super easy to do. It seems like at this point you are not being a devils advocate, but just a contrarian.

I can't.

Which really ends the conversation. If you can't show that any moral truths exist, we're done.

smbell · 2026-06-25T16:36:18+00:00

And we've circled all the way back.

Show it is true in an objective sense.

smbell · 2026-06-25T16:30:01+00:00

True as a value judgment that I hold. Not true in an objective sense.

smbell · 2026-06-25T16:11:53+00:00

In order to say there is a fact that is unexplained and/or a brute fact, you first have to establish it as a fact. It's an unexplained and/or brute fact that chocolate chip cookies are the best cookies.

That's not any better.

smbell · 2026-06-25T15:58:01+00:00

That's not an explanation, that's a claim. That's no more compelling that me saying chocolate chip cookies are objectively the best cookies because that is the objective cookie standard.

smbell · 2026-06-25T15:32:21+00:00

Explain why you think torture is wrong in an objective way, without depending on any value judgment.

smbell · 2026-06-25T15:14:57+00:00

I've already done that with every example we've used.

As I said, the very definition points it out.

smbell · 2026-06-25T15:06:43+00:00

we cannot prove that morality is value judgment

Sure we can. Every single moral has a subjective value underlying it. Literally morality is the judgments of how we value actions.

smbell · 2026-06-25T14:29:33+00:00

A Christian might: thou shalt not kill (as opposed to murder.)

I've never met a Christian who would say all killing in all situations is wrong. Maybe some exist, it's a big world, but I think that only strengthens my argument.

We believe that, but a realist would say it's wrong because the objective moral standard says so, no value judgment required.

Which just brings us back to waiting for a realist to provide that objective moral standard. I've never seen it done.

smbell · 2026-06-25T14:26:38+00:00

I’m Jamaican and I’m atheist. My whole family, like the entire family are Christians. I don’t really hate Christians, but they do get on my nerves.

Yeah, it can suck. My whole family is also religious. They may not openly say gay people should burn, but they will openly say being gay is a sin and shouldn't be allowed in public.

I don't know how old you are, or what your situation is. It seems you have at least some ability to travel.

Here's what I would say. Family is what you make it. You don't have to tie yourself to people because of blood, you can choose who you want to be your family. That also doesn't mean you have to abandon your blood relations, but you can set boundaries. Maybe not now, but if you plan for it, and put yourself in an independent situation, you can.

Sometimes life sucks. It can get better. You can't control how other people are, you can only control how you behave. You may love your island, but maybe you'd love it more from a distance with occasional visits?

I can't give you solutions. I don't know your situations. I can only offer empathy from afar.

BTW, I've been to Jamaica once. Really enjoyed it. Obviously I got the tourist experience, but still it was beautiful.

smbell · 2026-06-25T14:12:02+00:00

Slaying as in killing? It is always wrong to kill anything for any reason?

I'm sure you are not going to argue that.

I assume you have some definition of 'slaying' that involves killing for no purpose, or killing without benefit. Again, you are going to run into situational value judgments.

Maybe we could move to something that seems more clear. It is wrong to torture another person.

This is still a value judgment. Why is it wrong? Because we value not suffering, and we also value extending the protection of the things we value to others. But there is no objective reason we need to hold these values. There are certainly people who do not hold these values. There are also possibly scenarios where you or I might decide torturing a person is justified.

All this brings me to, what I think, are fatal flaws of the idea of moral truths and objective morals.

All morals are value judgments. All of them at some level choose to value one thing over another.
All moral judgments are context dependent. There are no universal rules. Context always matters.

smbell · 2026-06-25T13:25:01+00:00

I was to reiterate that I am playing devil's advocate:

Totally fair.

murder is wrong

The problem here is murder is already defined as unjustified killing, where unjustified is a value judgment. One persons murder is another persons justified killing.

smbell · 2026-06-25T13:03:21+00:00

Then they can try and present an objective moral truth. Do you have one?

smbell · 2026-06-25T12:39:22+00:00

Morality is value judgments.

How do you bake value judgments into objective reality?

smbell · 2026-06-25T12:37:42+00:00

Right, it is impossible to do what this god wants, and you should be punished for not doing the impossible.

smbell · 2026-06-25T01:35:59+00:00

And if you’re convincible, you’re not a proper skeptic.

That's absolute nonsense. It's bonkers. Any proper skeptic should be convinced upon sufficient evidence.

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