That is what you said. And I’ve never said that religion was the cause of all evil. Just a major one, and one that is massively more negative than positive.
I already mentioned it. As I said, the good that is inspired by religion can just as easily be inspired without it; probably more easily. The fact that some people overcome the morally crippling effects of religion doesn’t make it a good thing.
On occasion. But living in America, it’s the Christians who cause me the most aggravation and problems. How often do, say, the Hindus even come up on this board ?
I’m not “incoherent”. I’m just honest. I call religion what it is, and I don’t care if people try to shout me down for it.
How many unsubstantiated claims about something does it take for you to form a negative opinion about something? Perhaps the claimant has listened at length, for decades, and without evidence that religion has a solid backing and is used to justify a lot of nasty, annoying, intrusive stuff, has made a conscious decision to write it off.
If you have evidence, by all means present it. Supposedly, I’m annoying the OP by suggesting you have none and that none exists.
All believers claim to know something without any evidence at all. That makes them silly.
Please restate this point in grammatically cogent English. I really have no idea what you are trying to say.
Sure.
Well you believe I’m not a robot, but do you know? Looking around you can be pretty sure that we aren’t technologically advanced enough as a culture to create a robot that can so easily hand your silly ass to you in a debate. So I’m probably not a robot. That is how reason works. Why do you believe in a god?
There is no reason to believe in god or gods. None. Other than the fact that you would *rather *there were. There is certainly no reason to believe that your conception of god is the correct one. Other than you would rather it were. So pretty much you believe because you are arrogantly sure that the version of reality you would *rather *live in is the right one.
If you believe the moon is fairy shit for no reason I call you stupid. If you go to a room of like minded fairy shit enthusiasts every sunday you’re still stupid. You believe in a child’s story for no reason. I’m supposed to respect your intellectual integrity? Because you’re so afraid of death that you make up a best buddy behind the clouds? For fuck sake. Pathetic.
There are levels of inspiration applied to literature and music. As one writer put it, 'some songs you write, some you just write down". As the author of the article linked to earlier put it,
Aside from the many believers who just accept what they’re told I also believe many people {like me for instance} have extraordinary experiences where they glimpse or sense or feel, an unexplained transcendent other. It’s not mandatory that they call this God, but, since it’s their experience, they get to make that call. I tend to think of it as , we’ve only begun to explore understand that part of our nature that we now refer to as god. Until we know more it isn’t a bad thing for people use the personal god concept as part of their journey.
Okay they’re not meant to. That’s why I think they are ineffective. They are addressing the god concept in a very superficial way and missing the deeper stuff.
It’s pretty clear that many people are useing the god concept as their vehicle of choice. I think it’s a natural part of the process for people to gradually leave behind the great being in the sky concept for something else.
Sure it’s possible for people to explore those deeper things without embracing a god concept. Look at Buddhism. I’m saying it’s not for you or I to tell others which vehicle of exploration works best for them. We can suggest and share our own ideas and hopefully listen to them. {which you do and I appreciate that}
No doubt there’s a lot of work left to be done to sift the superstition and myth from the better aspects of religion. There’s no indication that losing the god concept will improve anything. I think we’re already in the process of refining and redefining it.
If you take superstition and myth out of religion, what exactly is left? Or are you saying you should take out all superstition and myth except for the concept of gods, which is the myth religion is based on in the first place?
Then I’m sure you’d agree that it’s extremely unfortunate that all these people call this feeling/part of themselves “god”, which is about the loadedest word in the universe. It would be much better if they agreed that it was just the working of some aspect of their brain, right? Like we atheists do?
Lohan you say there’s no reason to believe in God other than you’d rather have a God but I think this is a common misconception that atheists have about believers. MOST believers I know have had personal experiences which they consider evidence that there is a God. Most believers I know are not “blind faithers” but rather people who have had spiritual experiences for which God is the best explanation to them.
Why do angry atheists need to insist that believers are basing their beliefs on only superstition?
Something happens to you that you cannot explain. Rather than go with the rather mundane “I don’t know…yet”, you feel you must attach some supernatural explanation to it, such as God. I understand that you have had some sort of experience-it’s just that I feel you have ignored all the common and natural explanations possible and grabbed onto the most fantastic(and most improbable) answer. I feel that if religion wasn’t such a large part of our human history, you might not be as likely to use religion as an explanation for the unknown in the first place.
What’s more likely, that there is an all loving father figure in the sky or that some people have misconstrued random bullshit for evidence for his existence. What you mistakenly take as evidence for god is only evidence of your own wants and desires. It’s easier to believe that he loves you and is waiting on the other side of death to give you a big hug. It’s also unfounded.
So yeah, they are “blind faithers” because they chose to find something random they could hold up as evidence. Stupid crap.
Ever hear the old joke, “It’s just that 95% of lawyers give the other 5% a bad name”? Sometimes it seems that way with regard to religion and religious people. (Heck, sometimes it seems that way w.r.t. atheists, too—and Republicans, and Democrats, and environmentalists, and businesspeople, and …)
I often wonder if religious beliefs and practices obey Sturgeon’s Law: 95% of them are crap.
However, I still want to Pit the atheist zealots whose method of argument is to present a silly caricature of what religious people believe and then ridicule them for believing it.
I want to pit the religious zealots who, when I present a reasonable, meaningful comparison with something else that the theist only thinks is silly because they don’t happen to believe in unicorns, inaccurately present my argument as if it were a silly caricature.
And evidence that this isn’t our subconscious at work? Damon Knight, in his book on writing short fiction, calls it Fred, and says you have to give Fred information and listen for Fred to tell you he’s done. I listen to my Fred all the time.
Sometimes it is the transcendent other, and sometimes it’s just the chili you ate for dinner. A personal god can be a really bad idea when it encourages people to translate their individual quirks into commandments for the world - especially when that person has power. I don’t think people believing in a general mystic force tend to do this.
The problem of the existence of god is not deeper stuff? :eek: What the hell have we been arguing about then? Don’t you think the world would be a very different place if no one believed in an actual god but everyone believed in a god concept? You may have made that jump, but you’re quite uncommon as of yet.
The just release Pugh study show 16% of Americans unaffiliated with any religion. They said they were going to explore this population further, but what I read said they were definitely not all atheists. So you may be right about the growth of this population, but they are not anywhere close to being the majority yet.
A world with no concept, or even a god concept but no god, would be a much different (and better) one than ours. Theology gets brought back into mainstream philosophy. Morals become equivalent to ethics. No judges trying to put the 10 commandments in their court, they now become the 10 suggestions. (Trying to avoid breaking into John Lennon here.) The question of the existence of god, and the characteristics of a god who does exist, is absolutely crucial to the way we live our lives. While men of good will will continue to do good, and men of evil will continue to do evil, I think there are many people who will be forced into considering their ethical choices, and not have the excuse of getting them from a holy book. I’m an optimist, so I think this will be for the better, but we have the old “I’d run amok without God” issue also.
I guess that would be me. Okay, why do you believe in something that has utterly no evidence for it? Because you want to. And people who base life decisions on fanciful stories they’ve chose to believe for no other reason that that they are comforted by them aren’t adults. They are waiting for the tooth fairy and dreaming of all the yummie candies they’ll buy with that quarter.
Religious people don’t deserve any level of respect for their beliefs. They deserve to be pitied because something so terrible has happened to they they can’t face the real world.
More than that. Every believer believes that all the religions throughout history and not his own are crap - or at least wrong.
However, I still want to Pit the atheist zealots whose method of argument is to present a silly caricature of what religious people believe and then ridicule them for believing it.
[/QUOTE]
What’s the silly caricature again? That religionists believe without evidence - or beyond what evidence dictates? You’re the people who invented faith, not us. The only thing approaching evidence I’ve seen around here is personal experience. That’s the kind of thing you pooh-pooh just like us when the experience is of alien abduction.
A couple of theists give logical arguments, or at least structure their arguments in line with evidence. But the rest seem to say “boo-hoo, you’re calling us names.”
I can think of four reasons why religious people believe.
[ol]
[li]Personal experience[/li][li]Everyone else believes - thus societal pressure, or just by default. [/li][li]Wonder at a natural world they don’t understand[/li][li]Philosophical arguments (very rare.)[/li][/ol]
2 and 3 are just dumb as reasons. 1 needs to be backed up by empirical evidence, since we know our minds play tricks on us. 4 is the only decent reason, and there are problems with all such arguments. Got anything else?
Atheist zealot: “If you believe this, you’re an idiot!”
Religious zealot: “If you don’t believe this, you are damned and will burn in Hell for all eternity!”
What’s the silly caricature again? That religionists believe without evidence - or beyond what evidence dictates? You’re the people who invented faith, not us. The only thing approaching evidence I’ve seen around here is personal experience. That’s the kind of thing you pooh-pooh just like us when the experience is of alien abduction.
A couple of theists give logical arguments, or at least structure their arguments in line with evidence. But the rest seem to say “boo-hoo, you’re calling us names.”
I can think of four reasons why religious people believe.
[ol]
[li]Personal experience[/li][li]Everyone else believes - thus societal pressure, or just by default. [/li][li]Wonder at a natural world they don’t understand[/li][li]Philosophical arguments (very rare.)[/li][/ol]
2 and 3 are just dumb as reasons. 1 needs to be backed up by empirical evidence, since we know our minds play tricks on us. 4 is the only decent reason, and there are problems with all such arguments. Got anything else?
[/QUOTE]
Number one should be training. Taught from the time you are a kid ,then through schools and going to church. Taking a forming mind and directing it to a desired end.
A personal god can be a really bad idea when it encourages people to translate their individual quirks into commandments for the world - especially when that person has power. I don’t think people believing in a general mystic force tend to do this.