I falsified religion. My deconversion came from investigating history, not science.

Interesting, Thom. I am constantly running across people who will claim that the events depicted in the bible have all been proven 1000 percent accurate and verifiable historically. I think they have absolutely nothing to back up this statement, it’s just something they’ve heard in Sunday school (like I did).

What historical investigations did you do that led to your deconversion?

I falsified religion. My deconversion came from investigating history, not science.

Apparently, the people who argued against me before couldn’t rise against me again.

Or everyone saw that you were only making claims without and evidence or support and didn’t bother.

For instance, use science to prove that instinctual belief in God comes from somewhere else other that God.

What if my instincts told me that unicorns and fairies are existent creatures because that is what I learned at a young age? Science can rarely disprove absence (although mathematics often does). Furthermore, what does “instinctual belief” have to do with anything? “Instinctual belief” sounds like an excuse to believe whatever you want. What if you were a sociopath and your instinctual belief was to murder people? This doesn’t make it a correct, it only shows you that your, for lack of a better word, “reasoning” process is seriously flawed.

You can attack Christians because the God and statutes in the Bible are contradictory, but what about those who already know these things, yet still believe in God?

I thank you for your permission for the former, but the for latter, who are you speaking to? Personally, I have no qualms with the belief in a god of some sort – I just am unsure of what this god’s job is or what this god has to do with me. I am not simply going to believe in it because the people around me do, I need a reason to do so – some substantial evidence of some sort. I could definitely go for Kenneth Miller’s sort of “quantum mechanics” god, but that feels like a grasping at straws or filling of an unknown gap than a real intimate experience with the divine.

Or what about those who have claimed to have had terminal illnesses healed by God?

Simply because people are ignorant of the natural processes, we shouldn’t assume that some equally unknownable being is behind it all – or else you risk, once again, science explaining away the mysteries that were once attributed to the gods.

It is good that you attack many scriptures of the world, but there will always be someone with questions and ideas jou’ ve never heard of before on this subject.

I don’t attack many scriptures. I criticize many of their religious and supernatural claims, but I find grand ethical and wisdom sayings in them. I don’t, however, believe everything I read.

Oh yeah, if you look up Einstien’s beliefs about God, they are quite surprising.

Sure, if you Google them out of context with no understanding whatsoever of Einstein’s view of science and religion. I would not be surprised because I have seen every quote of Einstein’s view on God in its entirety and I recommend you do the same (not that Einstein, or anyone else, should give credibility to theism, atheism, or anything in between).

And what’s wrong with trying to experience God for yourself?

Nothing. The problem is that you will spend your entire life trying to grab air.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that there is more stuff out there than you think, and if you are to defend your beliefs, you must have real answers to anything that might arise.

“More stuff,” eh? I don’t think I ever said I am some all-knowing being. If anything, that seems closer to your claim. I am only saying that if you want to convert people to some wishy-washy New Age belief, you better have something worth believing in.

The sole purpose of me coming here is to challenge your beliefs, as well as find someone who seeks the truth in this world filled with hypocrisy and lies. I guess I have to go elsewhere.

I have no idea why you came here. You haven’t engaged in anything anybody has replied to, which is why they are ignoring you. Feel free to find people who feel like talking to a broken record.

…clearly there’s no need in trying to de-convert me…

There isn’t. Nor I we trying. You found us, you came here with your sewage, you dropped a bit of pseudo-science and airy-fairy New Age spiritualism and left. We see trolls from a mile a way. Some are worth engaging with, others… aren’t. Personally, I have no problem with a discussion, no matter how obscure it appears, so long as my philosophical opponent has some initial and hopefully ongoing respect. My guess, however, by the way you “barged” in here giving a bunch of non-argument, that you wouldn’t do that in my house face to face. I don’t respect that. I wouldn’t crash into your house, point my finger making ludicrous assumptions about your belief system, build a straw man, push it over, and then stomp out the door, only to come back and laugh about the straw all over the floor and everyone ignoring the mess.

But if you need to know why we are ignoring you, it might have something to do with these following comments:

Life is empty without God.

A lot of atheists believe in God- they don’t want to admit it. If they do, they feel like there’s a God out there that will judge them.

Why is it that atheists only try to attack a God of vengeance? They find the most ignorant and hateful parts of the Bible to defend why they don’t believe in God.

Particles and subatomic particles are made up of quarks, and those quarks are made of particles as well. They go on for infinity. There are many atheists who are saying that there is a unifying intelligent field, a living field…

How can religions over thousands of years old say the same thing as the emerging sciences of today…

I believe in God because I know what God is like. I’ve experienced God. No one can truly know that God exists until they experience God for themselves….

…just because God doesn’t work for you, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t work for me.

Oh yeah, I didn’t get my “ideas” from my imagination. I got them from many ancient texts from around the world. Read upon them more often.

I don’t have to back up my ideas with science. All you need is plain common sense.

Everything needs to be made up of something in order to support itself. Since everything needs something else to support its structure, then that must go on for infinity.

It’s like everyone can criticize something without trying it for themselves, that is, if doesn’t harm anyone. Currently, you have not explained yourself, I think you are full of BS.

then how come they all say pretty much the same thing, that God is in everything, and yet they are centuries apart, some millenniums, and continents apart.

In the defense of my religious claims, there are many religions that do say that there is God in everythin, or at least everyone. The best way to prove this is to experience it for yourself.

Self-discovery is the key to knowlecge, and believe me, there’s much knowledge and wonder in the realm of spirituality.

[Einstein] belived that science and religion should be merged, and I believe so too

Spirituality in itself is a science, and it needs the same kind of attention as every other science out there. I guess people keep science and religion separate because they fear being wrong, and that’s for both sides.

You make a lot of claims but you back nothing up. If I am going to spend time “defeating” your claims, I need something to defeat! So far there appears only to be the ramblings of a New Age flake.

If many religions and cultures believe that all life is created from spirit and/or believe in a God figure, then how come they all say pretty much the same thing, that God is in everything, and yet they are centuries apart, some millenniums, and continents apart.

1) They don’t all say pretty much the same thing, that God is in everything. Panentheism is very common, but hardly universal: try pre-rabbinical Judaism/Yahwehism or many traditions of Buddhism for example.
2) Panentheism is easily explained as humankind’s perpetual need to comprehend the universe that surrounds it. Not only does panentheism attempt this, while obviously simplifying reality, it also allows the religionist to place him or her self at the center of the universe, often portrayed or replicated in his or her country (Palestine, Saudi Arabia), city (Jerusalem, Mecca), temple, or in the case of Christianity, soul.

I would suggest Mircea Eliade’s “The Sacred and the Profane” – you may find it enlightening.

Well, till next year then. I put an email addy in a comment to your blog introduction. If you do try to reach me though, do it here first. I don’t check that addy often at all.