Raised an atheist, now an agnostic.
I don’t see that believing in God has harmed most of my religious friends. However, I have met some people who have carried their beliefs to extremes that I believe have resulted in harm to them.
For example, there are some Jehovah’s Witnesses in my family. My grandmother, because she is a JW, refused some operations that could have improved her quality of life because she didn’t want a blood transplant (a JW religious belief). My cousins, who are very smart, refused full-ride college scholarships because higher education is frowned upon in the JW community. As a result, they have very low-paying jobs and are unhappy with their work. They are also in a lot of debt. Now they are both pursuing higher education because they feel it’s a necessary evil…but they’re paying for it all themselves.
Many of the religious mothers of my female friends have urged their daughters to “hurry up and get married” because their religion taught them a woman should be married and having children. These were relatively mainstream religions (frequently Lutheran and Catholic).
Most of the Lutherans I know have fairly racist parents who told them not to date anyone who wasn’t white. (I can think of about 5 examples off the top of my head.)
So, general faith in God seems OK, but sometimes religious teachings have hurt these people.
I do think that it is a bit gullible to believe in a religion just because it is taught to you from birth. I also find it a bit childish if a person thinks they need the comfort of believing in God to give their life meaning and to make them feel less scared or more happy. I think many people who are religious haven’t thought through the inconsistencies in their beliefs, or even questioned them.
However, I do know some very intelligent, very thoughtful religious people whom I respect because they have carefully considered and examined their beliefs. There just aren’t very many religious people (that I’ve met) who have done this. Most of them just believe what they were taught since childhood, and I think this is awfully trusting.
Heck, my parents are atheists, and I’ve thought about that a whole lot. So I don’t confine this opinion to believers–the “unexamining atheists” would seem less intelligent and more gullible to me, too.
I don’t feel the need to explain the origin of anything. I’m sure that there is some explanation for the origin of man, the universe, etc., but I feel it is probably beyond human understanding. I think we can discover some of the answers through science, but that we will probably never discover the ultimate origin of everything. Maybe a God is involved, or maybe not. I can’t know. And I’m okay with that.
My answer on evolution is similar. The past is past, and we will never 100% clearly see what happened (or so I believe), so we will have to be satisfied with the bits and pieces of information we can gather via science and theorize from there. I am comfortable with the idea that I will never know for sure how we came to be. In fact, I think that makes life all the more amazing.
**
Crosses my mind all the time, but I accept that as just a natural process. I think it’s actually rather beautiful. If we were immortal, I don’t think we’d appreciate our lives very much. It would not seem as valuable. I feel lucky for the (hopefully) 80 or 90 years I might get.
I do think it’s rather sad, but there are other factors. First, I’m concerned about the quality of life that people already living have. Second, I’m concerned about the quality of life that baby might have if it were born. Third, I believe that embryos/fetuses in the early stages of gestation are a form of human life, but a lesser one, and that makes it somewhat less horrible. It’s hard to explain.
Yes, it’s sad, but there’s a lot of sadness in the world, and I don’t think abortion is so much worse than the rest of it.
Sure. I’d love to know that there was an all-loving God who’d reward me for being good and punish my enemies, and who would give me eternal life in a paradise in the sky. But to me, that sounds like just another fairy tale, one that almost certainly won’t come true. I wish I’d win the lottery too, but that’s probably not going to happen either, and I’m okay with that.
Rely on myself.
A lot of the true believers just seem to get really wound up in what their religion wants them to do. They seem to carry a lot of guilt and worry, and a lot of self-congratulation. A lot of them seem to get pleasure out of the idea that they will be rewarded and other people–bad people, non-believers–will get punished.
I have met a few true believers who were simply at peace, but most seem not to be.
Not sure. Maybe they just feel superior. Or maybe they’re having a hard time expressing what they feel. Or maybe they’re weird in other ways too. It’s probably different for different people.
I don’t think God has to be rational, or explainable in man’s terms, but then again, I don’t see why I should believe in something I’ve never seen or felt, either. I think that it’s possible there’s a God, but that if there is, that he’s unknowable to people.
I do think that religion is total B.S. made up by humans, however. There’s a difference between God and religion. Okay, so I don’t require proof of God, or proof that he’s not there. But don’t ask me to live a certain way or to believe certain things because “God” wants me to, because none of us know if he’s there or not.
Yes, but then I think that we’re not all that great, and that if I were an omnipotent God, that I could think of about 1000 ways to make human bodies better. Then I start to think of how weird human bodies are, and how they work, and I start to think that maybe it’s all a random cosmic joke.
Like I said, I don’t believe I get to know whether life is miraculous or just a weird quirk. And I’m okay with that.
I’d think non-believers would be more pessimistic, but it just hasn’t been borne out by my experiences.
I know a lot of non-believers who think that everything will balance out in the end, and who think humans have the power to change the world, and who are thus very positive.
And I know believers who think mankind is terrible and untrustworthy and full of evil, and so are very pessimistic and grouchy and unpleasant.
I know pessimistic non-believers and optimistic believers. I just don’t think belief is clear-cut on positive/negative personality. Both belief sets can be used to justify a positive or a negative outlook. I think it’s ultimately a question of inborn personality.
God is love seems to imply that that’s all God is, so that’s not really true. God feels love is certainly true. I’m not sure if God is “in” love or not. He rarely confides to us about his personal life. It would be more correct to say all love is of God.
So the second a thought hits your mind, whatever the source; you start using logic on it. Even those that come from a dream or whatever are completely logic driven, the second your eyes open. Your point.
All lying was strictly involuntary. I’m working on the other theists, but I don’t hold out much hope. Someone was trying to witness to me on the “did Jesus sin” thread tonight. That’s either a sign I’ve been talking to atheists too long and now sound like one or I’m being too flip about something that is waaay serious, to someone else. Sometimes I wonder why God gave me a free will and this weird sense of humor, when he knew how often it would get me in trouble.:eek: