That’s why they should worship the Salamander God.
Make her head explode. Tell her that seeing how happy your sister is with her partner is what made you believe that there is a God.
I am not looking for a battle, but only to expand your imagination from someone who does not find the atheist worldview depressing.
That went through an amazing journey to make you who you are today. I find that learning how those complex chemicals interact, and how they evolved, and even possibly one day knowing for sure how it all started adds far more richness to my life than considering all that to be just the works of a superior being.
You have the free will to choose whether to love or to hate. You have the power to create life. Giving the credit of the benefits of your decisions and the decisions of those who came before you to an unknowable and unfathomable being is to shortchange yourself.
Won’t you miss them?
Go forth and multiply is both God’s command and a natural imperative of life. You want meaning? We are meant to fill up this massive universe with life. IMHO, in my philosophy, that is our purpose. With that as a goal and a purpose, I can make decisions in my life that furthers that goal.
If believing in God gives you a purpose, that is no different than some random guy on the internet’s arbitrary opinion giving you a purpose. It is something to guide your decisions, even help to define your moral code.
We can find our own meaning in life, and I find that to be much more fulfilling than being told how to find meaning.
But that’s because they haven’t thought it through. What is eternal bliss? Shove an electrode in the right spot in my brain (according to Niven, who gets some stuff wrong, so I will not be offended by a correction on this), and I will be in bliss. The right drugs will make me feel blissful for what may seem an eternity.
But, I can’t see how I wouldn’t eventually get tired of bliss. The only way I would not go insane in such an environment is that if what is me at that point is fundamentally different from who I am now, and if it is not who I am now, then knowing that zombie me will be stoned out of his gourd and unaware of the passage of time for all eternity actually doesn’t excite me all that much.
Religion comes with community and people like community. It’s good and healthy to be around people, and it’s fun to sing and chant. I actually do think that religion has historically done more good than harm, in holding communities and even nations together, giving them a shared purpose and belief. Governments make their legitimacy through having a monopoly on violence within their jurisdiction. The Church asserted their legitimacy through having a monopoly on your soul.
The church leaders were often relatively educated people who could give helpful advice and even act as therapists for individuals or families. They served a useful and beneficial purpose, except of course, when the were corrupt, and wearing the cloth and a crucifix does not make one immune to corruption.
Not looking for any prizes on the internet, just looking to provide you a perspective.
Less Pascal’s wager, more Pascal’s roulette wheel.
(and in looking up to see if that phrase had been used before, I find that Pascal invented the roulette wheel.[and that the phrase had been used before])
Or one gets enough followers to impose a theocracy and require you to observe their rituals or be burned as a heretic. Probably wouldn’t make me believe, but may make me not admit that.
I think I was depressed at first. When I believed in God, but didn’t believe in God. I was supposed to have this personal relationship that I didn’t feel. I went through the motions, studied the Bible, extensively, and never found myself compelled to take it seriously. The more I studied the church, and chrisitanity, and theology in general, the more I lost faith that it actually could have anything to do with a benevolent deity.
Giving up the search for something that, if found, would only disappoint, made me much happier.
The only afterlife that I find plausible is that, when we die, we see a screen that says, “You have died. Reincarnate:3 credits.”
Of course, we have to start counting turtles then.
And maybe it’s a super powerful but not supernatural being that loves the taste of a righteous person’s soul. We are encouraged to live good lives to make us tastier.
Actually makes more sense than the eternal bliss scenario.
I think some of younger and newer atheists are positive atheists. College age people questioning the beliefs that they grew up with. Rather than just being dismissive of the beliefs when the find the answers lacking, sometimes they become angry about it. It’s how people are, my neighbor threw a week long tantrum when he found that there was no Santa. Learning that there is no god or afterlife can cause some people to lash out. They aren’t many, but they are vocal, and they have the internet now to put out their views. Most tend to simmer down when they realize that there actually already is a fairly large atheist community, and that that community is not going to get behind them.
Being a positive atheist in your early 20’s makes you a misguided asshole. Past 25 and you’re just an asshole.
Someone who can bring the same empirical evidence to prove their beliefs as someone who is certain that there is.
I thought about it when my best friend died. He was religious, I was not. I actually considered joining his church from the standpoint of getting to go wherever he went.
But then, there are many things I wish for, and if not getting what I wish for made me sad, then I’d never get out of bed.
I have his memories, I know his friends. We all still remember him and talk of him. I hear stories about him that I didn’t know, and tell stories of things that we did together.
Isn’t that enough?
I’d like to go back in time and do something to save him, or bring him back, or at least get to spend time with him once again, but I don’t see wishing for an afterlife being any more productive than wishing for a pimped out Delorean.
Does that make me sad? Sure, sometimes, right now in fact, but depressed, not any more so than someone who thinks that they have to jump the right hurdles and chant the right chants to have a chance of seeing them again.
How depressing would it be to become a believer in the hopes of seeing your loved ones again, only to have to worry that even if your faith is vindicated in the afterlife, you may fail to make the grade for entry?
And believing that they are watching her may keep her on the right path, but the anxiety of knowing she is being watched may devastate her further if she doesn’t live up to those expectations.
Yeah, there’s some sort of weird religion thing growing up around pet owners. What was once just some cutesy stuff to console others for a loss that most do not find important enough to show true sympathy, they went a bit overboard with the religious imagery, and there are some who are starting to take it a bit more seriously than I personally feel is healthy.
But, back to the point, you earlier said that religion gives one comfort that they will see their loved ones again, and I do love my pets. So, do I not see my loved ones again, or do dogs go to heaven?
Doing what, being in eternal bliss?
Sure, just like the pets, it’s something nice we say to help our grief. Grief is real, and it is not rational, and doesn’t respond any better to logic than it does to belief. You want to believe that your child who was taken too soon is in a better place, I have no desire to disabuse you of that notion. But if you try to console my grief with a similar platitude, I will not take it as a kindness, but rather, a plaintive rote saying that is used to feign sympathy for someone’s suffering.
I wouldn’t be angry, of course, but no more impressed than had you picked a random greeting card off the rack. It’s the thought that counts, and I suppose I appreciate it, but what is it actually doing to alleviate my grief?
Some find meaning themselves, others find it elsewhere. Nothing wrong with finding meaning in religion if it inspires you to improve the world, but there have been those who have found meaning from religion that were less productive.
Happier than what? Happier than they would be without believing in God, or happier than atheists? I can agree to the first, even if it is just a delusion, it may be that that delusion is what gets them through the day. The second, what this thread is about, I do not agree with, and see no evidence of.
I have said that it has done good things at certain times and places, and it is my opinion that overall, it has done more to hold civilization together than to drive it apart. That doesn’t mean that it necessary now.
Like to see where you are seeing these projections.
Where do most atheists come from? Countries that are not theocracies that discourage such heretical beliefs.
If a community does not enforce belief, whether through law or peer pressure, and encourages critical thinking and sciences, it’s going to start producing more and more atheists, no matter what base religion that it had in its past.