I am one Step closer from being an AThiest. help Please I am a Sikh

[japjeev]

Well i am 15 and i was born and Raised as a Sikh. Sikh is a very rare religion. As i am growing i am thinking of not feeding into what my parents say. I am starting to question myself which bought me here. So i want to be a athiest but before that i want to get some questions answered from you guys.

1. How do you prove spirits and demons don't exist?

2. How do we get feelings and emotions because those traits cant be made by themselves? It looks like a upper being such as god can only give you those.

3. How come the holy book which i read already told us the stuff that science is still telling us? (For example: The holy book that is hundreds of years ago told us that there are many more earths,planets,glazxies,suns. Science is still proving this)


So i have some follow up questions later but i am really doubtful so any help will be appreciated.

[Jimble]

Our emotions and feelings have clear evolutionary benefits, and sources. Have you read any books on evolution?

What makes you think an all powerful creator is more likely to exist than animals with feelings?

Edit: I was responding to your original post before you edited it. I will reply to the rest in a moment.

[Jimble]

japjeev wrote

Well i am 15 and i was born and Raised as a Sikh. Sikh is a very rare religion. As i am growing i am thinking of not feeding into what my parents say. I am starting to question myself which bought me here. So i want to be a athiest but before that i want to get some questions answered from you guys.

That sounds interesting, but don't think you have to masquerade as an atheist if you aren't, just to get a conversation going here. Just sayin'.

japjeev wrote

1. How do you prove spirits and demons don't exist?

I'm afraid you're looking at unfounded claims from the wrong side. The sensible thing to do is to assume nonexistance of magical beings until they have been proven to exist. The more unlikely the event, the more proof you would need to believe. For example, if I told you I had a pet dog, you'd probably believe me at that. If I told you I had a pet dragon, I doubt you would believe me.
And if you didn't, the burden would be on me to prove to you that I had one, not on you, even if I said "prove to me I don't own a pet dragon!"
Remember that; the burden of proof is on the person making the claim.
Assembled on this board is a group of people who have simply not been persuaded by the various claims made by religious people.

So we don't prove spirits and demons don't exist. We say we have no good reason to believe they do exist. Just as you have no reason to believe in my pet dragon. Or the planet Jimbleland, made of solid gold, on the other side of the universe where I was born. You couldn't disprove it, but do you believe in my golden birthplace?
Along with there being no evidence for spirits and demons, they fit in with a number of other creations of the human mind (monsters, djinns, genies, fairies, giants, etc) that are anthropomorphic (imagined to be human-like, with human emotions and behaviour) and fit the pattern of make believe creatures.

japjeev wrote

3. How come the holy book which i read already told us the stuff that science is still telling us? (For example: The holy book that is hundreds of years ago told us that there are many more earths,planets,glazxies,suns. Science is still proving this)

I would like to see a quote from a holy book saying that there are many galaxies from a book written hundreds of years ago. Could you give me a reference please?
Even if this is true, I imagine your holy book also says many things that aren't true. If I was to make a large number of predictions, and a handful came true, that wouldn't mean the book I wrote had any divine inspiration.
If it had an accurate description of something that could not have been known by humans at the time, like the structure of DNA or the constance of the speed of light, I would be impressed. But anyone could have guessed there were more planets and stars, and written it down. So that claim is not impressive. You said that holy book has other examples of what science is still learning? Could you give me another one please?

PS, welcome to the forum Japjeev

[ghoulslime]

Jimble wrote

...Or the planet Jimbleland, made of solid gold, on the other side of the universe where I was born. You couldn't disprove it, but do you believe in my golden birthplace? ...

Please tell me more about this Jimbleland.

[Jimble]

ghoulslime wrote

Please tell me more about this Jimbleland.

I believe it is the home of the Leprechauns also, they tell me you have heard of them

[ghoulslime]

Jimble wrote

I believe it is the home of the Leprechauns also, they tell me you have heard of them

Praise to Their holy shoes!

[ghoulslime]

japjeev wrote

Well i am 15 and i was born and Raised as a Sikh. Sikh is a very rare religion. As i am growing i am thinking of not feeding into what my parents say. I am starting to question myself which bought me here. So i want to be a athiest but before that i want to get some questions answered from you guys.

1. How do you prove spirits and demons don't exist?

2. How do we get feelings and emotions because those traits cant be made by themselves? It looks like a upper being such as god can only give you those.

3. How come the holy book which i read already told us the stuff that science is still telling us? (For example: The holy book that is hundreds of years ago told us that there are many more earths,planets,glazxies,suns. Science is still proving this)


So i have some follow up questions later but i am really doubtful so any help will be appreciated.

Welcome to our humble forum, japjeev! I have some Sikh friends from many years back. They are still practicing Sikhs as a matter of culture, but they grew out of the silly superstition of religion long ago. I would like to point out that becoming an atheist is not really something you need to aspire to. Just aspire to being a rational person who is guided by reason. Atheism will follow.

As to your questions:

1. One does not need to prove that spirits and demons don't exist. One who claims they exist, needs to prove that they do. Aside from the insistence of ignorant and superstitious people, there is not yet any proof of these mythological creatures.

2. Feelings and emotions are traits that humans and other animals evolved over millions of years. A better understanding of these traits can be had by studying about the social evolution of humans.

3. Many followers of various religions often make this claim. None of these claims will hold up to objective scrutiny. Please let us know which great prophecies your particular holy book foresaw, and we will be happy to point out why they are not impressive to the educated members of humanity.

If my memory serves me correctly, the Adi Granth (I have read it much of it.) was written in the 15th or 16th century CE. Please read about ancient Greek and Chinese knowledge of the universe before being too amazed about the universal observations of Sikh holy men.

[anthonyjfuchs]

japjeev wrote

1. How do you prove spirits and demons don't exist?

You don't. You don't have to prove that leprechauns and unicorns and fairies and mermaids don't exist, and you don't have to prove that spirits or demons don't exist either.

Now if someone else claims that spirits and demons exist, they have to prove it, or at least provide sufficient evidence for it (proofs are for math).

In the end, you don't have to prove a damn thing to anyone. You're not making a claim that X doesn't exist; you're merely stating that you're not convinced that X does exist.

japjeev wrote

2. How do we get feelings and emotions because those traits cant be made by themselves?

Emotions are the result of electrochemical signals in the brain.

japjeev wrote

It looks like a upper being such as god can only give you those.

Not once you begin to understand what a vast and complex neurochemical machine the human brain really is.

japjeev wrote

3. How come the holy book which i read already told us the stuff that science is still telling us?

Because you read the holy book first.

No holy book in the world contains any scientific fact that wasn't readily observable at the time the book was written.

japjeev wrote

(For example: The holy book that is hundreds of years ago told us that there are many more earths,planets,glazxies,suns.

Other planets and stars were observed and recorded not just hundreds of years ago, but thousands of years ago.

There is not one holy book in the world that recorded a piece of information before it was scientifically discovered. All of them are replete, however, with "facts" that are scientifically inaccurate.

japjeev wrote

So i have some follow up questions later but i am really doubtful so any help will be appreciated.

Ask, and ye shall receive.

[Sternwallow]

Welcome Japjeev

Supposing for a moment (only) that a particular scientific statement in your book was completely true, say the existence of animals, Kangaroos, who nurture their young in pouches, a fact unknown 1500 years ago in the region of the book.

That passage fails to be scientific on two levels. It does not inform science with evidence-supported information. That is, it cannot be selected from the other assertions and conjectures in the book that are not true. Second, its truth can only be determined after the fact of its real scientific discovery.

Can you find a passage in that book that makes a scientific, i.e. testable statement that has not yet been discovered?

If one extracts the collected scientific (testable) statements in the Old Testament of the Bible, IMV, they are found to fall into four categories:
1) those that were known in the region long before they were written down as though brand new,
2) those that have been shown to be wrong ("bats are birds"),
3) those that were intended to have different, non-scientific meaning,
4) those that are too vague to be meaningful, They are often retrofitted to pretend they are scientific and relate to some real scientific observation.

That is why the book's claim of the existence of spirits is neither true nor false; there is no real evidence either way, a condition shared by an infinity of other non-existent things and a relative few things which might exist but are simply unknown, like solid Gold planets.

There is no value in taking something to be true on faith that has no evidence in its favor. There is no value in believing the existence of something which has no effect in reality.

[japjeev]

WOw thanks guys for welcoming to forum i appreciate it.
Now one thing that makes me believe in god is this story.

I knew a woman and she was at her last stage of cancer and about 10 hours away from dying. One of her Sikh friends told her to pray to god and she prayed and prayed and she got cured. 6 Months later she went to a doctor to have a cancer report Doctor said there was no sign of cancer. Now i have met this woman and i know this was all real.

So what do you think about that?

[anthonyjfuchs]

japjeev wrote

Now one thing that makes me believe in god is this story.

I knew a woman...

Always, always, always be suspicious of anecdotal "evidence" like this.

Stories are not evidence.

10 hours away from dying.

Since no one knows when they're going to die (not even the very sick), there is no way whatsoever to know that she was ten hours, or two weeks, or six months from dying.

She was just very sick.

recovery story...

So what do you think about that?

Just another in the long list of perfectly natural occurrences that we, in our limited understanding of the human body, cannot explain. It is no more miraculous that her cancer went into remission than it is when a non-smoker exhibits lung cancer.

Additionally, somewhere within a kilometer of her hospital room, a man she doesn't know was urinating into a toilet. The coincidental fact of this stranger relieving himself at that exact moment had just as much of an effect on her recovery as her prayers.

Also, next door was a man who was dying from Alzheimers, while his eight children all prayed fervently that he would recover. Yet he died. So what are we to think of prayer? There is no rationale for explaining why some of the things prayed for happen while others don't, so prayer is far too unreliable to be useful.

Better to figure out some kind of action to take than to waste time begging the sky.

[ghoulslime]

anthonyjfuchs wrote

Additionally, somewhere within a kilometer of her hospital room, a man she doesn't know was urinating into a toilet. The coincidental fact of this stranger relieving himself at that exact moment had just as much of an effect on her recovery as her prayers.

Leprechauns! That really works? I'm going to have to start urinating for the things I really want in life.

[Sternwallow]

ghoulslime wrote

Leprechauns! That really works? I'm going to have to start urinating for the things I really want in life.

When you have to wait a long time to go, urination can be the answer to a prayer.

[ghoulslime]

Sternwallow wrote

When you have to wait a long time to go, urination can be the answer to a prayer.

Amen!

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below!

[Simoon]

japjeev wrote

WOw thanks guys for welcoming to forum i appreciate it.
Now one thing that makes me believe in god is this story.


So what do you think about that?

There are cases of people having remissions from cancer. They happen with equal frequency for any belief or no belief.

My atheist uncle had a remission from pancreatic cancer (the 2nd most deadliest cancer) over 10 years ago.

Spontaneous remissions are being seriously studied. But they are not evidence for the existence of any god.

Welcome aboard!