I have no problem with that stance on the existence of god. Everyone reaches their spiritual awakening in their own way, if they choose to at all. A god is not necessary for spirituality and is certainly not necessary for human emotion and morality. A god / gods may influence human morality and emotions, but ultimately they are our responsibility.

That said, after studying both sides of the atheism/theism issue and evolution/creation, I have come to the following conclusion:
Atheists know there is a god, but choose not to look towards it for guidance.
Agnostics don’t know if there is a god or not.
Theists know there is a god, and choose to look towards it for guidance.

That being said, atheists who are evolutionists are missing an important piece of the puzzle; evolution creates other entities out of existing entities, otherwise, why would we have a DNA chain in our cellular nuclei? Therefore, I submit the following notion as a logical conclusion based on analysis of the above three observations, and the empirically proven theory of evolution: all life on this Earth, including us and maybe even other beings across the universe, EVOLVED from seeds of life CREATED by some supreme deity / force / being of order and chaos.

It is a scientifically proven fact that our universe is governed by immutable laws of physics and chemistry. Those laws are abstract notions that cannot be seen, but have observable effects. Our universe has been tuned precisely in the manner it needs to be to support human life, and possibly life elsewhere. I think someone or something had to design those laws and put them into motion in order for their evolutionary plan to unfold. As a rationalist, I find it easier to believe that we evolved from lesser life forms than that we were instantaneously spawned from nothing. Our natural world doesn’t work that way.

I have personally renounced Christianity once and for all years ago. There’s some good in Christianity, to be sure, but I can’t seriously consider myself as one of them after all of the horrible things they do around the world in the name of their god. This includes fundamentalists of every religion who choose to piss all over everything their saner, non-fundamentalist counterparts tried to build up over centuries. I still believe in a Supreme Deity or Eternal Entity who may or may not bring us into eternal existence after death, however. I don’t believe that the entity is concerned with how we live our lives, since whatever path we choose we will reap the rewards or curses resulting from our positive or negative actions, respectively.

Well- because Evolution being true does not cause a problem for Christians who don’t take allegorical stories literally.

I’m not entirely convinced by evolution- not because I believe in a literal Adam and E Eve, but because I can’t see how it is the one answer for all of life’s complexity.

How for example does it explain butterflies. The caterpillar turns itself into a goop which then reforms as a butterfly. How could that happen in small incremental changes?

I think something much more complex than simple survival of the fittest and gene mutation is occurring. Perhaps something we have yet to fully grasp.
When we do understand it, it wont affect my belief in God or my faith in Jesus, because my faith isn’t based on a magical supernatural God making everything work.

That may be hard to understand but I believe that reason and faith are not mutually exclusive.

If atheism is true- the answer is, that there is no reason to help the poor.
There is no reason to do anything.

If atheism is true then were are a cosmic accident. Just chemicals sparking in the darkness.

You might as well do whatever you like as there is no right and wrong. No morality.
It’s all just an illusion created by our own arrogance- that we somehow matter.

Let the poor starve- or feed them. At the end of the day it’s irrelevant.
As are you.

There are personal reasons, of course, and cultural reasons. I think it is well argued and a failry stable theorem (not fact, or proof) that Morals and mores involve within a culture, as well as individual members of that culture for a variety of reasons (enviromental, religious, practicalism), and vary midly from member to member of a culture. So in general (grossly general, and not proven but a guess with good numbers) Morality for people comes from the culture or society at large (present and historical), derived from a variety of sources.

If you want to look at it from an evolutionary stand point, I have to ideas…
But to be clear, I don’t think any evolutionary scientist takes Darwin for science or fact, he was a savant who stumbled on very rudimentary piecves and estimated a sum whole of a concept, but really didn’t a firm grip on things or any functional detaisl, we’re still working them out. Saying evolution is “survival of the fittest” is like saying cake is made of Flour, eggs, sugar, levening, a liquid and heat… Right, but not really all there. Even Darwin acknowledge that evolution was more about speces survival and change than individual members of a race.

1. Improvement, protection and support for disadvantaged members of the speces (particularly of fruitful breeders) could be an evolutionary advantage to our speces over those that don’t. Mamals in general have a tendancy to care or rear their own kind, for example the raising and protection of offspring to a self-sufficient age has proven to be a very successful survival technique for many species.

2. Who says that it’s not for the betterment of the speces to help the poor? The “poor” members of our species (generally disadvantaged in many ways) are somehow way more successful biologically than the so called sucessful or wealthy. The breed at a much higher rate than the wealthy and educated, and their children generally suffer the same disadvantages, and with more children the disadvantages should increase, and become worse as more struggle with less and less resources.

While this happens the “successful & Wealthy” are not breeding to maintain their numbers and they have access to resources to provide for better, healthier, more educated offspring. And lets face it… they were successful, so they should be producing more offspring, and the unsuccessful less, this would improve the species’ chances for survival… But that’s not happening, so our measure of sucess is apparently not correct by an evolutionary measure at present. The poor seem to be leading the direction of the species at present, and education and the access to an abundance of resources is apparently not what our species needs.

BUT, if you’re like me and you think being a member of a speces that can hardly feed itself, breeds beyond the level of resources that can support it, and can’t think it’s way out of a paper bag is a bad thing, and Not the best bet for us in the long run, then improving the lot of the poor is generally a good idea. If you don’t agree, then… Let “Idiocracy” come to pass.

But that’s only a few reasons for helping the poor, and those are the just “cold” reasons.

December 2nd, 2010 at 2:48 am
You need to know that God did not create us like a robot. He created man with a freedom of choice. A choice can be both negative and positive. But you decided to think negatively about Him. This is the greatness of God. God is not afraid of how you think about him? You can choose to reject him. But, just because you chose to reject Him does not mean God does not exist. Atheism is simply a denial of God. Why do you deny God? Because God exists.”

- However if you “choose” to reject God you will be tortured horribly for eternity, in a Hell that he created.

Not really a choice in my eyes, like the robber who puts a gun to your back and states “You have a choice, you can choose to give me your wallet, but if you dont, i’ll shoot you” and the robber is not only your Father, but the inventor of firearms.

How loving and moral your God is.

Note: I do not “reject” God, I do not “choose” to deny him, I simply CANNOT believe in such a ludicrus idea, with absoloutly no evidence to support it.
I DO NOT, AND CANNOT MAKE MYSELF BELIEVE IN GOD….this is different to rejection or denial, do you honestly think I would not love the idea of an almighty loving being to be true?

Why do the faithful have such a hard time grasping the concept on non-belief?
Its as if they’re so brainwashed they simply cant understand that I just can’t bring myself to believe in an omnipitent, omniscient, omnipresent being .

We are social animals, we require morality to function as a society, we have evolved this function to survive.
Morality is also, a bit selfish, i’ll try to explain:

Your a pre-historic Cro-magnon, you live in a tribe.
Someone in your tribe is running around killing other tribesmen with rocks.
Now out of fear that anyone could be next, the tribe comes together and the offender is dealt with (exhile or death etc).
Now your not going to start killing people with rocks are you? because you dont want to be exhiled or put to death yourself!
Thus – Murder is wrong, the tribe flurishes.

As a social animal we have also evolved to help eachother, if the tribe is stronger, the individual is stronger.
So it is in the best interests of the tribe to help the old/frail/poor because if they are stronger, the tribe is stronger, so you are stronger.
We have actually evolved this way, so the fact that we help the poor, is yet more evidence of evolution, so the makers of this sign have really shot themselves in the foot.

Not that they would be intelligent enough to ever realise that…

Note: Other animals have basic morals and help eachother, Dolphins have saved Humans, Dogs have saved their owners (both social animals) and im pretty sure they never read the bible.

The evolutionist might answer: “Why? Because you feel like it. If you don’t feel like it, then don’t help. Evolution will pick the correct action. If helping is good for humanity, then the helpers will have a stronger community; if not, then the non-helpers will hold the competitive edge. Eventually, one will outnumber and assimilate/annihilate the other.”
Evolution is not an answer, it’s a process; and far too complex a process to easily predict the outcome.
The beauty is that evolution is a leaderless process, and it functions perfectly without anybody understanding it. Religion on the other hand has to be steered, and is always at the whim of our bumbling, adolescent race.