I have a few questions about Atheists that I have never understood.?

Question

I am Christian. Do not attack me or my religion please. This is just informative.

How can you explain supernatural events? Like psychics being able to find dead bodies or people being able to see dead relatives.

Who do you think Jesus was? How did he perform all of those miracles? How did he appear in front 500 people after he died?

How do you account for all prophecies that talked about Jesus before he was born? He fulfilled every single one of them. And just like was foretold, the temple was destroyed. It also seems like the end times prophecies are coming true as well.

I am not a biblical scholar or anything even close. I am not condemning anyone's way of thinking outright. I am just curious.

Answer 1

1. I don't, but various things labeled "supernatural" like psychics or astrology don't necessarily require deities, and thus don't conflict with being an atheist.



2. I don't think the Jesus depicted in the NT existed; I certainly don't think there was a Jewish magic man living in first century Roman Palestine. As for appearing before 500 people, he didn't; I don't accept the NT as a source compelling enough to make me believe in resurrection. A book saying Jesus appeared to 500 people doesn't equal 500 witnesses, it equals one writer *asserting* he appeared to 500 witnesses, an event that even the other Gospels neglect to mention. Combine that with the fact that the very author in question *wasn't* an eyewitness to the event himself, but got it second-hand, this is a weak chain of "evidence" for an extraordinary event (resurrection).



3. No, he did not fulfill the messianic prophecies. Just ask any Jew. And texts written about Jesus by authors who knew, who had access to, the very scriptures they claimed he fulfilled, about events like the temple destruction that had already occurred at the time they were written...prove nothing. With all the political unrest in Judea in the preceding 50 years, it is not exactly an astute observation that the Romans would inevitably be forced into draconian measures like stripping the Jews of what little political autonomy they had left.

Answer 2

I haven't heard of many cases of psychics finding dead bodies. If it was that common I'd imagine police would have psychics on the payroll. Over active imaginations or extreme grief are the cause of seeing dead relatives.



He didn't perform miracles or appear in front of 500 people. One man claimed he did (in the original gospel), and the other gospels are just copies with slight differences to add credibility.



You do realize that as Atheists we don't believe the claims made in the bible right?



edit:

Check out the history of the earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Earth If you want to go further back check out the wikipedia article on the big bang.

Answer 3

1. They don't happen.



2. At most a preacher of some sort, at the least didn't exist. Miracles didn't and don't happen.



3. They were written about in fiction. That needs no explanation. How do you explain the prophecy that either Harry Potter or Vlodemort must die? All the Biblical prophecies are vague or after the fact.



EDIT



The Big Bang, abiogenesis, evolution.

Answer 4

You are close to becoming atheist if you just look further and ask more questions that nobody can answer at the church. Keep questioning everything and you'll find they really have no answers. You seem smart and on the right track to be free and figuring out that it's all BS...The church preys on NORMAL, NATURAL human emotions, biology and feelings and make you feel bad about it to keep you in control. Wake up, religion is based on fear and guilt.



You say how did he perform all those miracles? How in the hell do you know he performed all those miracles?? That was THOUSANDS of years ago. lol, and they didn't write the bible for a few hundred years after his so-called death. lol.....Jesus is a ripped off story from earlier religions. Watch the movie religulous.



The end times prophecies are coming true? EVERY single generation says that dating back a few thousand years. Everyone in their lives thinks they are SO special that he's coming back in their time. But in reality it's just to keep you in fear.



You say you don't understand how something can come out of nothing? Well, so you think a magic story is better? You believe in magic and miracles & that's a better theory? I suggest you go to college and study philosophy and science. Shoot, start reading philosophy now. Start with plato books. here's a few books you should read. God is NOT great, by hutchins. The future of an Illusion, by Freud.



Did you know that everything in the universe is expanding outward at 1000s of miles an hour? Like take your hands in a ball, and then make and explosion with your hands and keep your hands moving away from each other, that's what we are doing as we spin around the earth at the same time. We're flying through space at 72km per second if I remember right and we are flying around the sun at like 30km per second.



I think you should keep asking questions, that's how I figured out religion is just fairy tales for primitive man. Think of it this way, you are following a story and book written 1000s of years ago by people that still thought the world was flat. They refused to believe it was round when SCIENCE discovered it. They also refused to believe SCIENCE when they told them that the Earth went around the sun and the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. lol...& NOW, they are refusing to believe evolution exists. Do you want to be looked back on as one of those idiots?



If you think evolution doesn't exist--explain why our DNA is 98% the same as Chimps? Explain why we have nipples and you have milk for babies and we are hairy like animals? Want to know why? Because we evolved over thousands of years of cross-breeding apes to what we are today. Don't listen to the church's dumb response like, "well, why doesn't a monkey we see today evolve in front of our eyes." That's so uneducated.lol --We have common ancestors of apes. They just found another link in the missing chain of our ancestors that filled a huge gap. Big discovery. I can't really explain it all to you, you have to do your own research and study and read books and question everything.



You can't seriously believe miracles and magic, can you?...howcome you don't see any with your own eyes? Cause it's stories & fairy tales. You know how you were afraid of Santa and believed in Santa, then you grew up? What's the difference with Jesus? If you're brought up on it at such a young age, it's easy to trick a kid through fear.



Last, I'll leave you with this. If you were born in Pakistan, you'd be a MUSLIM right now believing in all the fairy tales and stories they have and you'd be bashing christianity. See my point? You are what you were born into and what your family is, nothing more.

Answer 5

Well, Brooke...I can't claim to have all the answers either. The only difference between you and me is that since you don't know everything you tend to believe that someone out there does, while I tend to think that there is noone there. I don't think there is a thing such as supernatural, merely really weird natural events. Since I don't understand the event, I can't really claim to know its cause can I? Prophesies are peculiar because they all come to pass. No matter how particular an occasion that you can imagine, its either happened or will happen eventually...is that spooky or just obvious? I hope your curiosity is sated.

Answer 6

1) The supernatural doesn't exist. If it did, someone would've won James Randi's prize by now.



2) If Jesus existed, he didn't perform miracles or rise from the dead. I don't know or care if he existed.



3) The same way I account for the prophecy stating that Harry Potter would kill Voldemort being filled.

Answer 7

Ok there are no supernatural events,psychics do not find dead bodies,people SAY they see dead relatives,there is no evidence for Jesus,his story is a mix of other older myths.Why do you not believe in Allah?because where you live the main belief is Christianity.

Answer 8

So-called supernatural events are simply misunderstandings of natural events. Jesus may or may not have been a person who actually lived, but who anyway became a fantasy after death. Christians believe in the myth, with a mythical birthday on the winter solstice, rather than a real entity.

Answer 9

I do not have any problem with people believing whatever they believe, I have simply never been convinced to accept the claims about the existence of any God - so I remain an atheist.



I have never encountered any evidence to support the claims of alleged "supernatural events". As far as I can see the ratio of failed predictions to the ratio of correct ones is consistent with random chance. If you know of some actual empirical evidence that supports claims of the supernatural then you should reference the link.



I think Jesus was an ordinary man. I am not convinced that he performed any miracles, and it is possible that he simply survived his crucifixion, some people did apparently if the crucifixion was stopped before they had died. In fact there is an ancient historical record of one person who survived a crucifixion that was intended to be lethal, but that was interrupted. The historian Josephus recounts: "I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to assist their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician's hands, while the third recovered."



It is quite possible that the account of the death of Jesus on the cross was actually a case of trauma induced coma (which closely resembles death) being mistaken for death.



The "prophesies" that were supposed to be about Jesus are part of a set of predictions from the Jewish beliefs about a Messiah (in Hebrew: מָשִׁיחַ‎; mashiach, or moshiach, simply means "anointed [one]" since priests and kings, were traditionally anointed with holy anointing oil as described in Exodus 30:22-25) however the term came to refer to a future Jewish Priest-King from the Davidic line, who it was predicted would be "anointed" with holy anointing oil and rule the Jewish people.



The predictions or prophesies in the Hebrew Bible regarding the mashiach were *not* fulfilled in the Jewish view so It would seem that there is some controversy on that point. In fact according to Maimonides, Jesus of Nazareth is not the Messiah, as is claimed by Christians. and while he mentions about two chapters of his Mishneh Torah, a 14 volume compendium of Jewish law, one of the more significant points of dispute would be that "There will be no more hunger or illness, and death will cease" (Isaiah 25:8) although there are some 118 other very significant prophesies that would need to have been fulfilled within the life of Jesus including the return of the members of the Hebrew sons of Gad to their homeland (Isaiah 11:12).



The meaning of the word atheist is simply someone who does not believe in any God. We have no other set of beliefs - it is not a religion, it is just a way of describing someone, like saying they have brown eyes or like to watch football.



Not every atheist actually accepts either evolution or the Big Bang - Just as many Christians actually do accept these things - including the leaders of both the Anglican and Catholic churches.



For atheists it is really pretty simple to understand. Since we do not believe in any God, quite naturally we do not have a "creation story", and as a consequence we typically accept the explanations for questions like "how did the Earth come to exist?" as are offered by science.



Unfortunately a detailed answer cannot be provided here in the available space. But if you are serious and you really want to learn about the scientific explanations that most atheists accept, then you can get a nice summary from this link; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Earth

Answer 10

I don't think supernatural events ever happen. Mainly they're caused by phenomena people can't explain, and their ignorance and superstition causes them to attribute supernatural causes.



Jesus was just a man. Please prove that he performed miracles and rose from the dead. Just because it says so in a book doesn't mean it's true.



Given the vague nature of prophecy and the lack of historicity surrounding Jesus' life, you don't actually know that Jesus fulfilled prophecies. Religious people only claimed he fulfilled prophecy, incidentally, decades after his death. Those aren't reliable sources by any stretch of the imagination.

Answer 11

Supernatural: something we don't understand yet



Jesus is an amalgamation of several stories of that time.



His story was written specifically to make those "prophecies" seem as though they came true.



Atheism makes no claim as to the origins of life, it is merely a lack of belief in any deities (not just yours).

Answer 12

I will admit that there are things in life that cannot be explained, but I prefer to keep my mind open to all the possibilities and not just assume it must be a god

Answer 13

1. Hallucination, mental illness or just plain liars.



2. A guy. He didn't. He didn't.



3. All relatively vague, and you can't prove they occurred.

Answer 14

Brooke, I am christian too. Atheist just do not know enough about christianity to comment on the things you ask. They have their minds made up that none of it happened even though excavation, history, research proves it did. You will get many different answers, such as that it is all a myth. Sad but true

Answer 15

They deny it all and wallow in ignorance.