Just to clarify: Do you think I am stubborn just because I am well aware of the concept of God and have been taught about Christianity, yet still don't believe in him? I mean, there is no empirical evidence supporting his existence, so to me it seems like not believing in him is a default position. My guts tells me that there are no supernatural beings, and that it takes empirical evidence or indications for me to believe in something's existence. I would be more stubborn if I defied those feelings and decided to worship God anyway, as I see it.

And it's not like atheists are aware of God's existence yet are stubborn enough to ignore that knowledge. More like they are aware of how God is supposed to be like and don't believe in his existence.

If we link this to the OP, that person seeking the Jewish god would be stubborn if he kept trying to make himself believe that that god existed despite having no faith after all that effort. It is not the other way around.

One: I meant that people are aware of the concept of God and supposedly would be able to choose whether they want to believe in him or not.

Two: Well, all believers have different opinions on that matter.

Three: -''-

Four: How would anyone possibly be aware of God's existence? We don't even have any scientific evidence suggesting that he exist.

"If he saying a guy flat out ignores the evidence because it contradicts what they currently believe than that's being stubborn"

That seems more like a stance that a guy who believes in everything mentioned in the Bible would make.

I'm not an American, but I guess it's a huge topic since religion affects people's lives even if they don't believe in it. Gay marriage, for instance, is a huge topic, abortions are mainly opposed by believers as far as I know and going by some youtube videos I have seen there are even some people arising who want the church to be connected to the government for some reason.

That is mainly the far right blowing those out of proportion.  Most people (I hope) don't give a shit about gay marriage, abortion, etc.  We are ahead of some countries in some areas of thought and very far behind in other areas.  If you ask me it is because of the evangelical Christians.  They are so self centered that they will pretty much attach themselves to any issue and declare their train of thought is right while every other is wrong.  These are the same people that got booted out of Europe to live in USA away from persecution.  They escaped Europe only to wreck havoc on the USA.

That's what I thought. While people in Canada are aware of these issues, they seem not to make such a huge impact on the media. Mainly because even religious people in Canada for the most part believe in freedom of choice. Of course there will be some extremists that think if it's not their way than it's the wrong way, but for the most part I think people are a little more understanding here. 

Glad to hear that it's blown out of proportion. Hopefully the silent majority will stand up someday. Kind of sad how most people don't care about human rights.

Saying you don't choose what to believe is like saying you don't choose to eat - your stomach dictates that.

Which is somewhat true, until you decide to go on a hunger strike for the greater good.

Faith is by definition believing in the unseen. You have to choose to go against your senses. Why would you do that? Because so much of what is, is beyond the veil of our limited ability to perceive and understand. If you can only believe what you can see and understand you are like an ant trying to understand New York. While that ant might concieve people are going to work like it is, not all the ants in all of history will ever concieve of all the social, political, economic realities of New York. They cannot. Nor can we as a species ever fully comprehend the entirety of what God is. We simply cannot. But we can acknowledge our own limitations, that there's more too life than what science can explain and that maybe there is some guiding hand behind it all.

As to having to believe to goto heaven, thats akin to me telling you I'm going to take you to planet Xevious which is a perfect paradise. You can say I'm nuts and choose not to believe it because you can't see it and science doesn't support it (yet) but when I stuff you in the spaceship and take you there (aka death) you are forced to either A) continue to deny (believing there's nothing out there but the vacuum of space) and exist only in the spaceship or B) acknowledge you were wrong the entire time. Assuming I want you to enjoy paradise, of course I'm going to ask you to believe, even though you can't see it.

Except if you go for a hunger strike you know for sure that you do it for greater good no matter the result, while ignoring your guts indicates that you are uncertain about the outcome.

If we are to ignore our senses and believe in God, that's not any different from ants drawing conclusions from what they see in New York: It is close to (if not absolutely) impossible to guess right, so why take a guess when the guess will probably end up making us drawing false conclusions? We can acknowledge our limitations (like when science says that we simply don't know how the Big Bang came to be), but taking a guess and drawing conclusions from it is a foolish move.

As for your last paragraph, I really have no idea where you are going with it. If a guy I don't know says that there is a pie located somewhere on Neptune there obviously is no reason for me to believe him. And he would be foolish to demand that I do believe him for me to be able to eat it once he takes me there and shows it to me.

1st sentence.

acknowledging God and being a former-Christian are two different things.

acknowledging God is to know he exist. I corrected you here and if you would have noticed that you would understand your question would have fallen under ignorant not stubborn. If you knew God existed and then said they he doesn't exist because it conflicted with what you personal believe on things that called being stubborn.

"empirical evidence "

here is the contradiction in your point of the topic you said based guts and know your saying empirical evidence you using terms that are the exact opposite. Going by gut has nothing to do with empirical evidence because its based on a feel something that isn't empirical which you described yourself in your own paragraphs. You have to put together something coherent together, is it based on guts that God shouldn't judge people or empirical evidence because as much as you try to combine words they are polar opposites.

But on the topic of there being no empirical evidence please define yourself because you have a bad history of not knowing your terms or using them in a incorrect manner. Please respond to this so can respond correctly.

3rd sentence: That is contradiction based on what your pior saying was. You said earlier that even if evidence contradicted what he you believed that your guts matter more than the actual evidence and that God shouldn't judge because our guts take over. Remember your fairy example? You are flip flopping around on should God not judge us based on guts or because of the evidence or lack therefor of. You keep saying oh evidence matters than but no he should not base because of guts not realizing that you are contradicting yourself based on poor wording.

4th sentence: Its almost like your poking at your words. Saying basing that its based on the evidence not your gut at all because your deciding factor isn't or ever was your gut it's the evidence. Evidence isn't based on the gut feeling and at this point your only using the phase "gut" so that it doesn't seem like you missed use it. Your last sentence basically destroyed your own argument.

"One: I meant that people are aware of the concept of God and supposedly would be able to choose whether they want to believe in him or not."

See that's so big different points then if only know of the concept of God that doesn't mean you acknowledge him that means you have idea of God. When I say I acknowledge God I'm saying "oh I know he exist" just like I acknowledge your existence.  If you mean in casual way like I heard of him or I know the idea of God you should have phased it better. Because in the bible to acknowledge God is to know he exist. 

"Two: Well, all believers have different opinions on that matter."

It's not a opinion if you go to anyone that has PH.D in the philopsophy of religion or theology they will tell you it's not able being good. But even beyond that there is quotes from Jesus in bible that specifically say no one is "good" but only God. This isn't debate able unless your a fundismentalist or just flat out ignorant of the teachings. Heck I'm not even bring up the atonement and why you would have uneducated in the topic to even suggest it would be about being "good". It's as much as a opinion as someone claiming the reason God stopped on the seventh day was because he tired even though it says he stopped because he was finished. If you think it's a opinion please tell me about the atonement and how/why it was so important in the first place. 

"Four: How would anyone possibly be aware of God's existence? We don't even have any scientific evidence suggesting that he exist."

historical evidence or even arguments that could have deductive reasoning based on certains facts based on our knowledge of the world or other reasoning. By the respond of science only evidence that is called scientism which is self-refuting if your suggesting that's the only way.

One can also could claim based on personal testimony (not use as an argument) based can believe to know God for these reasons like a event.

But even deist can say I know God(not Christian)  but still know based on what they know of the world. I'm using know in the sense of personal conviction based on facts that appear to you which is reality in a sense. 

"That seems more like a stance that a guy who believes in everything mentioned in the Bible would make."

sounds like someone I know that claim it's a contradiction on God if a human does something against what God encourages. Man that guy was stubborn! 

But all seriousness if someone reads the bible poorly and does no research on the backgrounds of bible Christian or not you are stubborn to believe you have a clue on what your talking about. 

In conclusion, you need to fix your definitions with terms like guts and empirical. God judges based on your knowledge not your guts because you said it's based on what facts and information the person has on them not there guts because ultimately your judged on your information.

@HesAPooka

To answer your question succinctly. It isn't actually a discussion about religion. It is actually a discussion about politics. Basically a few decades ago the Republican party coalesced around a new coalition, and that coalition had evangelical Christians as a major voting block. So they had a lot of say in what the parties social platform would be. Which was actually made worse, because the other voting blocks didn't have social agendas of their own. After all big business is just interested in making more money, and Nationalists just want more weapons.

Since they make up the core supporters, have the weight of numbers, and are mindlessly obedient. The religious leaders of the group have massive influence over their party. For the longest time they have been god, and have begun to think of themselves as god. Anyway during this last election cycle they finally just went all of the way, and not only did the public pass judgement on them, but it was made painfully clear that the Republican coalition doesn't have the strength in numbers anymore when it is compared against the Democratic coalition. Which is largely comprised of groups the Republican coalition has been terribly bigoted against in the past.

Anyway a lot of the religious talk you are hearing is probably the culmination of a lot of festering resentments being let out of the balloon. We have had to put up with a lot of oppressive crap for years. I mean this is the group that said gays dieing from AIDS was gods will. Applauded assassins who murdered doctors. Protested the funerals of soldiers. Even thought it was just in awesome taste to compare every politician on the other side with Adolf Hitler. Along with hundreds of other just plain cruel perverted acts that they bragged about in public.

Basically a lot of people are taking a great deal of pleasure in kicking the religious right when it is down, and on the way out. It has been a long time coming, and while I wouldn't call it vengeance. I think there is a degree of justice.

"acknowledging God is to know he exist. I corrected you here and if you would have noticed that you would understand your question would have fallen under ignorant not stubborn. If you knew God existed and then said that he doesn't exist because it conflicted with what you personal believe on things that called being stubborn."

So, do you think I am ignorant just because I have been taught about the Christian God yet don't find him believable? Ok... Still, your last sentence doesn't make any sense either. Just because someone thought they knew that God existed and later changed their mind, that doesn't make them stubborn in any possible way. Their beliefs simply changed.

"here is the contradiction in your point of the topic you said based guts and know your saying empirical evidence you using terms that are the exact opposite. Going by gut has nothing to do with empirical evidence because its based on a feel something that isn't empirical which you described yourself in your own paragraphs. You have to put together something coherent together, is it based on guts that God shouldn't judge people or empirical evidence because as much as you try to combine words they are polar opposites."

No, you don't exclusively listen to your guts when there is a problem at hand where empirical evidence is absent. Sometimes you get to choose between an empirically proven method and a belief based method. For instance, a religious person may listen to his guts when choosing between prayers and the empirically proven method of sending money to the poor. Some people's guts are more depending on religious beliefs than others, while other's guts tells them to ignore everything spiritual and religious. My guts tells me that God (and every other supernatural beings) do not exist, and if I don't listen to them I'd find myself in denial. The same guts therefore indirectly tells me to rely on empirical evidence since they don't believe in anything else.

"That is contradiction based on what your pior saying was. You said earlier that even if evidence contradicted what he you believed that your guts matter more than the actual evidence and that God shouldn't judge because our guts take over. Remember your fairy example? You are flip flopping around on should God not judge us based on guts or because of the evidence or lack therefor of. You keep saying oh evidence matters than but no he should not base because of guts not realizing that you are contradicting yourself based on poor wording."

What on Earth are you trying to say here? Your sentences are barely making any sense. Anyway, about your last sentense, I only said that evidence matters to me, as my guts tells me to ignore everything that is not empirically proven. I also said that God should not blame us for listening to our guts instead of living in denial. It's that simple.

"Its almost like your poking at your words. Saying basing that its based on the evidence not your gut at all because your deciding factor isn't or ever was your gut it's the evidence. Evidence isn't based on the gut feeling and at this point your only using the phase "gut" so that it doesn't seem like you missed use it. Your last sentence basically destroyed your own argument."

Again, my guts tells me to ignore everything that is supernatural which is why I am left with nothing but empirical evidence (well, or scientific theories) to go by. Nothing too complicated.

"See that's so big different points then if only know of the concept of God that doesn't mean you acknowledge him that means you have idea of God. When I say I acknowledge God I'm saying "oh I know he exist" just like I acknowledge your existence.  If you mean in casual way like I heard of him or I know the idea of God you should have phased it better. Because in the bible to acknowledge God is to know he exist."

Yeah, I can admit to a translation error here. "Acknowledge" was definitely not the word I was looking for. We all make mistakes.

"It's not a opinion if you go to anyone that has PH.D in the philopsophy of religion or theology they will tell you it's not able being good. But even beyond that there is quotes from Jesus in bible that specifically say no one is "good" but only God. This isn't debate able unless your a fundismentalist or just flat out ignorant of the teachings. Heck I'm not even bring up the atonement and why you would have uneducated in the topic to even suggest it would be about being "good". It's as much as a opinion as someone claiming the reason God stopped on the seventh day was because he tired even though it says he stopped because he was finished. If you think it's a opinion please tell me about the atonement and how/why it was so important in the first place."

You keep saying that, but in the end truth is believers are having different opinions on the subject. There even is a Christian priest in our neighborhood who doesn't believe in Satan. Sure, going by the Bible he is incorrect, but he is still a believer with an opinion just like anyone else. Different believers have different beliefs on the subject, which is the point I was trying to get across. I simply said "Well, all believers have different opinions on that matter." which is correct, even if their opinions are incorrect going by the Bible. Just because their opinion doesn't go in line with what the Bible says that doesn't mean it isn't there.