Atheism

Me too.

Me too.


Hinge, wonderful post.

Thank you Lil k, Edgar and Osso.

The grains of sand just reminded me of that exchange.

hinge, My growing out of religion was at a very young age when I saw that religion taught some stuff that just didn't sound right to me. All my siblings grew into religion like chicken soup, and by the time we all "grew up," they were totally immersed into religion, and I just fell out - totally. All this while all my siblings did very well in school and went into the "professions" like lawyer, doctor, and RN. I didn't have any plans for my future.

Looking back at our lives, I feel I've enjoyed it more than they. Luck like **** happens to some of us who just live our lives the best way we know how.

In the opening of this episode of This American Life, Ira Glass talks about losing faith. Very thoughtful words. The rest of the episode is worth the time to listen to, but the opening 4 minutes is about his personal experience.

Episode 202: Faith

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Maybe it's me, but what do you aim for with your initial 2 posts, the point escapes me.

These simple words bear a great meaning, just a shame so few has the rationallity to realize it.

I understand the distaste a lot of people have for religion - the things they cite about religion being the cause of some of the worst evils men have done to other men are well taken.

I understand the stance that Agnostics take - that it isn't possible to know certain things; I understand when they state that theirs is the only truly honest stance to take, as opposed to Theism or Atheism.

I understand what Atheists are saying when they declare unequivocably that there is no God.

Where the communication breaks down for me (and I admit, it generally happens fairly early on, so that any discussions I have on this subject with those who are passionately entrenched are pretty short lived) is when it becomes discourteous. Its almost as if they think that since so much of the miseries of humankind can be (legitimately) traced to some of the horrible things that men do in the name of God, it justifies them being nasty to anyone who purports to have faith. Mind you, this is just my experience with these type discussions. I'm sure there is someone out there whose experiences in this type discussion has had both sides respectful of the other.

It is my experience in these things that it is generally the one on the "not-believing" side of the discussion who lobs the first comment that suggests the other person is deluded, or ignorant, or naive. I generally don't hear the "believing" person start taking shots at the "not-believing" side. Celebrity Atheists like Bill Maher or Christopher Hitchens make a lot of hay simply sneering at Theistic people. Their jeers and sneers are supremely witty and literate and often funny, but they are jeers and sneers nonetheless.

So what am I saying? Well, I don't know. I guess that I wonder why, if the non-believing are okay with their system of unbelief (for lack of better words), why they have to be so damn mean.

I know, boo hoo. But, just sayin...

Uh huh. We're quick to jump on the evils done in the name of religion, but noone has ever proven that the same wouldn't have happened in the absence of religion. 20/20 hindsight is a myth. The most we ever know is what did happen after we made a certain decision.

The need for violence in man are great, and insatiable. We fight with different means, be it politics, religion, sports (hooligans), industry ..etc. Where there are competetors, there are rivals ..where there are rivals there will be war.

The problem doesn't arise with a person or persons believing in God, or a higher power. The problem arises when a person or persons begins to believe they are right and everyone else is wrong.
Solomon once said "let no man tell you that he knows, for he does not".
I tend to agree strongly with this wisdom.
Believe or don't believe, as you will, just don't try and tell me that you know anymore than the rest of us.

This statement may be politically expedient in a religiously polarized society. But on its merits, it fails to make any sense. Gods either exist or they don't. If you come to believe one proposition, why wouldn't you believe that the opposite proposition is wrong? Indeed, how is it even possible not to believe that the opposite of what you believe to be true is false? How does it not massacre logic?

We massacre logic because we can't live by logic. It is dangerous. It is only used as a status symbol by those who have a superficial smattering of knowledge when addressing people with an even more superficial smattering of knowledge and those who do so are carefully and determinedly kept well away from positions of power.

We could only live by logic if our brains were readjusted in one of farmerman's "re-education camps" to resemble a calculating machine.

That is the entire point. Waynes comment recognized that very fact, so logic has already been dispensed.
I agree with him in that very few of the atheist persuasion try to intervene in a church worship service. That would be almost insane.
Yet the religious have no problem with heavy proselytizing over such things as science and history and trying to impose some non evidenced based conclusion on many things we can observe in the world.
Of course theres no logic to any of it and I think Wayne recognizes that point.

Not all atheists say unequivocally that there is no god. I think for most it's just a residual reaction, so that when confronted with god-based issues, they just say, "I don't believe that."

I would suggest to you further, that most people who are described as atheists (they don't necessarily label themselves, either), don't get into those kinds of discussions. I suggest that it is the militant atheist, or the militant agnostic who brings such things up.

But you are missing a point here, Snood. For the atheist, no one needs to get in their face. They are surrounded by god delusion everywhere. Christmas (the damned stores are closed), Easter (the damned stores are closed), Thanksgiving (yes, it's a religious holiday started by Lincoln, and yes, the damned stores are closed)--religious ceremonies to open Congress, religious ceremonies to open the Supreme Court, religious ceremonies at goddamned school football games, for pity's sake.

We are constantly surrounded by and bombarded by theistic messages. If some of the crew go off the deep end, and start ranting, small wonder. As i've said here many, many times--in real life, this never comes up for me. Just as with any strongly held belief, it is the lunatic fringe rather than the common run of believers (or, in this case, those who don't believe) who raise a stink. Then y'all take that as typical of all of the set, on the squeaky wheel principle.

Yes, either God is everything or nothing, but at the present time nobody, but nobody knows for sure either way. Just how does the truth of the matter massacre logic? Faith is a personal issue, it has nothing whatsoever to do with anyone else.
Religion is about belief, not faith, in spite of what they tell you.
True faith has nothing to do with being right or wrong.
That is the error made over and over through history, that faith is anything other than entirely personal. To think otherwise is not faith but weakness, and weakness always needs to be right.

This does seem to be very true at times. The problem that I see is there is no room for advancement in a dogmatic system, "all cultures seem to be this way.


Dogmatic systems are even against each other on some issues, this is where they know for certain [logically] that someone is wrong but it is not them because they know that they have the [truth] faith that god or their own mind has revealed this to them. You do not have to believe in a god to have this problem, but it does seem how a god delusion can begin.

This is a pretty naive statement. Anselm,the most reliable biographer of Charlemange, recounts how for almost every summer for 40 years, they marched off to slaughter the pagan Saxon. They didn't attempt to occupy and keep their land, they didn't bother to carry off their property (except what they could eat on the road), they didn't try to enslave them--they just slaughtered them because they were "pagan." Unsurprisingly, the Saxons soon developed a habit of slaughtering christians, just because they were christian.

Olav Tryggvason, essentially a pirate with delusions of grandeur, more or less unified Norway, and claimed to be its king. Christianity was his excuse, and he had wonderful techniques to gain compliance. One of his favorite was to go into a new town, find someone and demand that they convert. The first time someone refused, they'd put a funnel in their mouth, with a serpent in it, and the end closed off. Then they'd start heating the funnel until the serpent crawled down the man's throat to escape the heat. Usually, the other inhabitants would line up to sign up. Was Olav a vile, murderous son-of-a-bitch? Undoubtedly. Would he have molested these unresisting people had he not had the excuse of conversion to christianity? That is a matter for a good deal of healthy doubt.

The Knights of the Teutonic Order used to hunt down "pagan" Slavs, hunting them literally through the woods like game animals, just because they were pagan. They didn't take their property or attempt to occupy their lands--they hunted them just because they were pagan.

Then there's the crusades, which i suspect i don't have to explain to you. This has gone on right up until modern times. The examples of Catholics going out of their way to kill Protestants, and Protestants returning the compliment are numerous. In so many, many cases, religious bigotry is the only obvious motive.

Disingenuous drivel.