The vast majority of Mormons I know become Atheists once they decide to follow the evidence to the only real obvious logical conclusion, that Joseph's Myth is a fraud.
I can relate. I became a Nihlist in response to 9-11, when God completely failed to answer the most fervent prayers ever uttered by any human.
Fortunately, that condition didnt last long, as I witnessed the increadible response to the inhumanity caused by religion, which had nothing to do with any religion and everything to do with common human decency. I recognized that kind of love and compassion as something I wante to nurture in my children, in lieu of the barbaric doomsday tribal narrative I inherited.

I finally found a non-anthropomorphic concept of 'god' that I could trust and believe in.

"Yes I believe in God, if by the word,  Gog, you mean the embodiment of the immutable laws that govern the universe." Carl Sagan


What embodies those immutable laws for me is the Tao, the balance between the yin/yang. (aka, Logos). 


Stoic philosophy began with Zeno of Citium c. 300 BC, in which the logos was the active reason pervading and animating the universe. It was conceived of as material, and is usually identified with God or Nature. The Stoics also referred to the seminal logos ("logos spermatikos"), or the law of generation in the universe, which was the principle of the active reason working in inanimate matter. Humans, too, each possess a portion of the divine logos."


That beautiful ancient Greek concept actually made it into the original Greek version of the Bible, which tead, 


John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. Logos was with God in the beginning. Through Logos all things were made; without Logos nothing was made that has been made. In Logos was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it."


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos


That ancient wisdom got lost in translation, when the authors of the King James version of the Bible, completely misinterpretted the Greek word "Logos" to mean, "the Word" (Jesus) which worked to consolidate power in a Patriarchal Heirarchy.  

What embodies those immutable laws that govern the universe for you?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2016 06:40PM by koriwhore.

It means a word people use to stand in for their ignorance and fear.
Otherwise...nothing.
Hey, you asked...:)

Ignorance and fear to you?
Our National Motto means nothing to you as an American?

koriwhore Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ignorance and fear to you?
> Our National Motto means nothing to you as an
> American?

It's not MY motto.
And it's unconstitutional as well.
Yes -- it means nothing to me.
I love my country...its religious-lobby-driven-motto, not so much.

Yeah, I know :)

How is our National Motto a joke?
How is it unconstitutional?
If you're American, you exchange hundreds of notes with people from all over the world, all day that say, "In God We Trust" on them.
And that means nothing, Nada, Zip, zilch to you?
I honestly don't have a problem with it, since most (89%) Americans believe in God.
I realize that the majority doesn't impose it's beliefs on minorities, and believe me, I was far to the left of Atheism after 9-11, I was more Nihilist than Nietzsche at that Moment.
One thing I saw on a door of a science lab at Salk Institute,

"In our evolution, from worm to Ubermensch, we are much closer to the worm than we are to the Ubermensch."

Nietzsche

Then when I saw the courage, determination, strength, and pure love, compassion, empathy, the humanity, of those people on the ground, you saw heroes. I saw angels. I saw our better angels. I saw what I wanted for myself and my children, and grandchildren. It had absolutely NOTHING to do with religion. It was a repudiation of what religion had inflicted upon us.
It was an inspiration.
Now, a decade and a half later,
I am no longer a Nihilist.
But that's what I see all around me is either Nihilism or Fanaticism. And very little in between.

But I work with people who are believers.
In fact, I survive because of believers.
I thrive because the people I work with really believe in something higher than themselves. They believe in something transcendent. They believe that the work they do has a higher meaning, a higher purpose.

And as a result, I get to go with 100 of my closest friends to Maui twice a year and hang out on a beach in the middle of Winter for a couple of weeks twice a year. As a result I get to do meaningful work. As a result, I get rewarded handsomely for my meaningful work. As a result, life is good, because I answered the question, "How are you with God?"

I wouldn't have gotten this job if I had said, "God means nothing, Nada, Zip, zilch to me. Gawd does not exist. God is a sign of fear and weakness."

I got this job because I answered the question, "It says 'In God We Trust' on the back of every dollar bill I've ever spent or received. If you can't trust God, who can you trust?"

They all laughed. The owner of the company, who is a minister in the church all my co-workers attend, said, "Look, it's ok if you're not good with talk of God sometimes, because sometimes people will bring it up and we've had people who get offended by it in the past."

I said, "Did they take their paychecks in American dollars that said, 'In God We Trust' on them?"

They laughed again, he said, "No. No. They still took the money!"

I said, "Well, then they couldn't get too offended if they trade notes every day that say, "In God We Trust" on them, right?"

I'm with the 89% of Americans who believe in god.

I'm not with the 68% who believe in God with absolute certainty.
I believe in mystery with absolute certainty, since even the best scientists will tell you 955 of the Cosmos is a complete mystery we call "Dark Matter/Energy" for lack of a better term.
I think that's a stupid term to describe 95% of reality.
Eternal Mystery works for me.
Immutable laws that govern the universe, worked for Carl Sagan, even though 95% of them are a a complete mystery to us now and probably forever.
Tao works for me since we exist between the God Particle and the Ghost Particle, between Singuarity and Super Symetry, between the infrared and the ultra violet, and that balance, that has existed forever, is what is responsible for permeating the universe and animating it.
God works for me because I believe in Einstein's God, like Richard Dawkins.
I believe in Sagan's God,
The immutable laws that Govern the Cosmos
I believe that is in a word, Aurelius's God, Logos
and Lao Tzu's God, Tao
and the god of Socrates', Daimon
http://daemonpage.com/socrates-daimon.php

I hope it's ok that I do find profound meaning in the word "God" and benefit from it, greatly, with lots of dollars that say "In God We Trust" on them, even if you don't.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2016 10:13PM by koriwhore.

It *is* a joke. The banknotes received the "In God We Trust" inscription in 1954. It was political posturing to distinguish us God-fearing Muricans from those evil godless commies. Around that time, Congress passed the blatantly unconstitutional law requiring the President to declare a "National Day of Prayer" every year, and the words "under God" were inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." But they did, and they got away with it too!

The United States is a secular nation founded on secular principles. Ego non deos credo.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2016 10:13PM by byuatheist.

Try 1864.

You might want to brush up on your history while you're at BYU.
I understand it's tough to get an education at a university named after a rapist, but try to get an education on your own. Wikipedia is free!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_we_trust

And it's not a joke to the vast majority of Americans who believe in God. It's only a joke to people who want to denounce what's meaningful to the vast majority of people, by denying them the pleasure of deriving any kind of meaning in life around them and get pissed when other people find something as simple as our national motto, or simple words in the English language, like the word "God" meaningful.

Obviously it's only meaningless to you if you're in a tiny, (grumpy) minority in America.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2016 10:24PM by koriwhore.

I said, "The banknotes received the inscription [In God We Trust] in 1954." I erred slightly; the article says that it was added in '57. The coins received the inscription in 1864. Interest-bearing notes got a similar motto in the same year, "God and our Right". I said nothing about either. It remains unconstitutional, whatever year it's done in.

Had you read the article you linked to me, you would realise that "In the 1950s the Red Scare prompted conservatives to distinguish the United States from the Soviet Union, which promoted state atheism." I stand by every word of my post except the year 1954.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2016 10:27PM by byuatheist.

I knew that long before you linked me to the wiki article.
That's not the point.
The point is, it's not a joke to the vast majority of Americans, 89% of whom believe in God.
So why piss off the vast majority of your fellow citizens by taking an adversarial attitude towards their beliefs?
I'm not at war with anybody, in fact, my beliefs are no different from those of Sam Harris, Dawkins, Neil DeGrass Tyson, Michio Kaku, Sagan or Einstein, although I disagree with him in that God does play dice with the universe all the time, he just couldn't reconcile Quantum Physics with the Standard Model. To his credit, neither has anybody else, really. Although I think Michio Kaku has the best String Theory I've heard so far.

Nor do I have big differences with the Dalai Lama's beliefs, especially when he says, "If my beliefs conflict with some new scientific discovery, I have to change my beliefs, even if the Buddha himself said it."

How come he's the only religious leader I know of who's capable of saying that?

“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.” Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description.”

Albert Einstein

to word it more hostilely, expounding on the argumentum ad populum you made in another place and calumniating people who lack belief in gods. The number of people that believe something is immaterial. What is important is the evidence that can be obtained for it. You may or may not be interested to know that fifteen per cent of the United States disclaim religion *and* spirituality. That's over 47 million persons, three times all the Mormons in the world! but again, the number of people that believe something is irrelevant.

I have never tried to deny anybody the pleasure of invisible friends. I have not legislated my opinions on others. However, Christians have legislated their opinions on others, and continue to do so. I have every right to be pissed off about that, just as you would if I did in fact legislate my opinions on others.

Ego non credo deos.

Not much.

RB

I didn't become an Atheist because the mormon church is fake,

I became an Atheist because there is no ghawd. The mormon church

has nothing to do with it.

I'm a atheist after Mormonism. I look at it this way I will try my hardest to be the best human being I can. I expect no reward for this. I believe it to be my obligation to everyone I come in contact with to treat with the utmost respect and compassion. As long as I'm here I'll do what I can to make this the most positive journey I can. When I die if there's no life after death I certainty won't know it. If there is I will be pleasantly surprised and suspect it will be nothing even close to the Bible, BOM, or any other so called holy book or man made B.S.

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but...will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."
Marcus Aurelius

Oh yeah, and what does the word God mean to me? Nothing. Nada, Zip, zilch.

It's what you call a backwards dog.

God is an excuse for bad behavior.

Borrowing on my Masonic background it would be "The Great Architect of the Universe (GAOTU)", but, cannot be further defined or known. He/She/It/or Whatever in my mind can never be a personal god. The idea that someone is out there who listens to individual prayers and directly responds is a most preposterous concept that only a non-thinking individual could believe. The Mormon god is right up there with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

The George Burns "Oh, God!" character is about as close to my thought of what god may possibly be like. "I gave you a world - what more do you want? Now, the rest is up to you".

I am not entirely comfortable with the word "God", but I do think there is an active, intelligent, creative power and that it has attributes like love, peace, joy, and wholeness. It works through the laws of it's own nature, and the entire physical universe is the manifestation of it.

Maybe that's kind of like Logos?

Of course, sometimes I don't believe. And then I am an existentialist in an experience of the absurd laughing at myself searching for meaning in a meaningless world. Waiting for Godot.