Atheism

It's not all that safe in the womb these days.

I only resort to "ignore" with the incomprehensible , ( or possibly the inebriated)
That's an interesting point about the Greeks. You might have to be resurrected.

When I was very young, I remember going to church, and I remember not liking it. I didn't like getting dressed up in hard shoes, I didn't like getting up early, I didn't like the hard pews and I didn't like sitting quietly in the big room with the boring man talking. I also remember going to Sunday school and not liking that either, but in particular I remember not liking Sunday school because the stuff they were telling me just didn't make any sense. I don't remember *why* it didn't make any sense because I was only about 5yrs old, but for some reason I was uncomfortable with what they were telling me.

In retrospect, it makes me wonder if much of my feelings about religion may have derived from the very simple feelings I had about clothing and hard pews and boring talks. It's possible that I was soured on religion for the most basic of physiological reasons that all kids experience. I don't know.

Shortly after my 5th birthday my parents stopped taking us to church and simply ignored religion. They didn't need it and I didn't either. From the age of 5 to 10 I never really thought much about religion, it simply wasn't on my radar. During my teen years I began to contemplate more esoteric possibilities related to consciousness and spirituality and theological options. I never really settled onto a particular viewpoint until my 20's, but by then I had pretty much ruled out any reasonable possibility of deities other than "Spinoza's God" type of stuff. As time goes by I find myself moving ever closer to a more absolute Atheistic type of view. The most elegant solution to everything (at least for me) is to simply accept Nature just as it is and to try not to modify it to fix my expectations.

I did not consider whether there was a god at the time I began attending church. I had heard a few believers describe how wonderful is the life the Christian leads, and, being in poor and abused circumstances, I felt I wanted some of that. I read much of the Bible and I read a set of about 12 books that retold the Bible for young readers. I faithfully attended services for a year or two. My disillusion grew, slowly at first, but at last I knew for certain I had no faith. Each night, I lay in bed, working it out in my mind. When I accepted that I was irrevocably an atheist, the prospect of no afterlife seemed stark and frightening. Once I got beyond that I relaxed and life went on for me.

Certainly, Roswell, i detested the entire ritual of church-going for exactly the same reasons. In addition, though, we were catechized each week, and it was in those torture sessions that i developed a deep and abiding resentment of a deity so petty as to torment small people.

EB, the afterlife part made me uncomfortable at first, too, while i was an adolescent, but the feeling did not survive the consideration that i was not losing anything the prospect of which had ever been more than illusory.

ros doesn't seem to realise that having some period in every week of having to do things one doesn't like is the whole point. Having one's ego inflated by fawning parents, unrelieved, is not the best way to start out in life.

And there is no chance that he "accepts Nature just as it is". Not the faintest chance. ros only imagines he does that because he obviously has no idea what such a fatuous notion it is.

Spendi, Fiasco and Setanta - please take it down a notch.

David Hume said that it required great goodness of disposition to withstand the baleful effects of Christianity.

One gets the impression these guys would hate Ice-cream if the chap who sold it when they were in their formatives had bushy eyebrows and a gruff voice.

What utterly silly reasons have been provided here for mature men to reject Christianity with fervour.

I'm getting rather tired of this, Kay. This is the second time in this thread that another member has seen fit to begin name-calling, without that provocation from me. I don't intend to accept being abused without serving the abuser in like kind.

I'm not interested in going back to see who started what.

And i'm not interested in being berated for having been berated by others to whom i had offered no such insults.

I'm sorry. I'm BERATING you? I don't think so.

You're addressing me as though i were no better than the two other fools you named. DTKO responded to one of my posts by saying he was confused, and i said that i wasn't responsible for curing his confusion, but that i would respond to his post. He went off the deep end and immediately began making invidious personal reflections and indulging in name-calling. Now i have the temerity to question Fresco's claim about the origin of deities and it takes him all of two posts to descend to name-calling. As for Spurious, i have no idea how he figures in any of this because i have not read his posts in literally years, and don't intend to start now.

So it is too much for me for you to see you come in here and talk to me as though i were your unruly student. I don't deny being a "sinner," but in both of these cases i was sinned against before ever i responded in like kind. Therefore, i don't appreciate your remark.

Oh my God, Setanta. Give me a friggin break.

Why don't you give me a "friggin' break?" As i said, both of those clowns saw fit to make personal reflections and to indulge name-calling when i had not served them in that manner. I not only make no apology for responding as i did to such provocations, i resent your remark which lumps me in with the two who started the name-calling.

So you say. As I have said, I won't go back to check. I just want it to stop. And frankly, I am outraged that you are making me feel badly for asking that it stop.

Does that mean you are going to stop chasing me from thread to thread desperately searching for "twaddle" ?

fresco. stop

No problem littlek. My post overlapped your most recent exchanges.

So far I have read the whole thread very interesting stuff. There was a post about there being no atheist in the foxhole. I kind of disagree with that. Just coming out of Iraq and getting in the heap of it all, I have to say I I thought about it a lot.

Having killed a little boy indirectly as a trigger man used him as a shield in a house, I often found myself asking how could a god allow me to do that. How was that a plan for anyone. It really messed with me. I can honestly say i haven't been the same kind of religious person since.