I wasn’t born with a belief in god. I know the majority of people I know (including those who believe) weren’t either. Most are happy to admit that they believe because their parents told them to, or that they decided to try it on later in life.
I too, sometimes wonder how smart people can believe in religion. Not in a snarky *I CAN"T BELIEVE YOU DON"T LIKE THE DECEMBERISTS * way, but honestly, why can’t smart people see though it? There are tons of smart religious people, and lots and lots of them are smarter than me.
If you read philosophy you see that so much time and effort is spent trying to reconcile god with what we see happening. But if you back up a bit and don’t accept god as a first principle then things get much easier. For example:
Why does god let suffering exist? There is no god.
What happens when we die? We decompose.
What is the purpose of life? Evolution and natural selection resulted in us being a machine that wants to perpetuate our genes.
It’s not fair to say that religious people are crazy. The only good definition of crazy is behavior or beliefs that interfere with your life. If you believe in the religions of your peers, and don’t go too far, then you are fine. Christmas, Passover, and Ramadan are nice, social holidays that bond you together with your friends and family and have a reassuring regularity to them. It’s kind of like sports: it’s fine to think your hometeam is best, even if they suck, but when you start to hate the other teams and their fans then you have gone too far.
Similarly, being an outspoken atheist in a community of belivers can affect your life negatively as well. The fact that you are “right” doesn’t help much when you are shunned by friends and family.
ETA: One more thing. I think the “orignal sin” in much of our thinking is the belief that we are different “in kind” from other animals rather than just being different “in degree”. When we think we are special we start to look for something beyond nature for explanations. Not many people wonder what the purpose of a dog’s life is, or what happens to rats when they die.
A lot of fans use “our team is best” rhetoric, sure. But do they honestly geniunely believe their crappy hometeam is literally the best team in the world and are just faking their losses to test the fans’ loyalty? I doubt it, and if they do I’d call that crazy, yeah.
Maybe, but the reason they’re “the worst” is because what they’re arguing for the wrong side.
You could say exactly the same thing about the sentence “Two plus two equals four.” Well sure, you could switch a word and it suddenly becomes “Two plus two equals twelve.” but that doesn’t make them equally wrong, it just means your complaint is stupid.
I think for the most part, this is true. However, when parents disown children for not believing or not marrying within their faith, it really IS interfering with their lives. That someone could put religion before their own children is beyond sad.
I have some friends who I’ve reconnected with after decades of no contact. I have avoided discussing my lack of belief with them at this point because I’m pretty certain it’s going to pose a problem. I’d like to get to know them again for a bit before I drop the A-Bomb on them.
Agree 100%. When I was growing up everyone went to church and believed in god, but there wasn’t this intense religiosity like there is now. They’d sit in church and then go home, mayve say prayers before bed. This current trend of visible piety seems odd to one raised in New England. You really want us all to hold hands and talk about our personal relationship with Jesus before we can eat?
You got whooshed and I am the moron eh?
I wasn’t talking to or about anyone but Der Trihs. 
And that goes for the rest of you little idiots who felt the need to defend the pathological little praiser because you thought it hit close to home.
Strange logic there. The absence of religion is a religion. That is illogical and absurd. Atheism has no structure and no central organization. it has nothing in common with religion. it does not give classes to children. It does not collect money. One mans reason for rejecting religion may hugely differ from the next . The only common denominator is rejecting the concept of a god. It is personal.
Be glad to – as soon as I find one I’m satisfied with! 
My definition of a monotheos – a god who is unique and supreme, believed in by a monotheism – is that he (or she or it) is self-limiting – that is, if he/she/it chose to, he/she/it could do or know anything. (Including logical paradoxes – e.g., because he/she/it is supreme: it can create a four-sided triangle by the simple expedient of creating a four-sided figure and proclaimig it a triangle: since it is The Authority, human definitions must give way to god’s definition.) A self-limiting god does not have to know everything or be capable of doing eveyrthing – it merely has to have the potential to be able to do so it if chooses. If it grants you free will such that it does not know what you will choose, that’s its prerogative – it had the potential to do otherwise, to not grant you free will and know what your ‘choice’ (actually no choice at all) would be, and chose to do that instead.
Making room in this structure for a god which is not capable of altering fate, or which is a member of a polytheistic pantheon, but which is nonetheless possessed of godlike power and/or knowledge, is something that is proving remarkably recalcitrant to my thinking. Similarly an impersonal Force or Power with godlike attributes. And they all must come under the head of ‘god’ as the word is sometimes used, for a definition to be acceptable.
If you didn’t mean what you said, perhaps you need to work on your sarcasm generator. You stated that Atheism is a religion and that’s just fucking stupid.
You’re a general strong Theism apologist and for fuck sake you believe in Chi, it’s not exactly like you think real hard to form opinions. :rolleyes:
I apologize if your past history of casual stupidity and unexamined opinions made me not notice that you were stating something you didn’t believe.
No go run along and get your chakrams realigned, grasshopper. 
I read mswas’ post as being directed to Der Trihs specifically, not to the general population of atheists.
Yes but even to Der Trihs, it’s asinine to suggest that atheism is a religion to him. It’s a passion, but something can be a passion without being a religion. I love D&D, but I don’t seek moral guidance from it or think it created the universe. Liking something, or in Der’s case disliking something doesn’t rise to the level of religion unless you broaden the term beyond any usefulness.
So his insult was meaningless.
As a nonbeliever an all supernatural, I find it can be disconcerting to think too much about the majority of people who appear to believe in a g/God(s). Yeah, I can have a pretty high opinion of myself, but even at my best/worst I wouldn’t dream of thinking I was superior to each and every person who professed a belief in the supernatural. But the flip side to thinking myself gifted is to think like DT that I am simply normal, and all of the believers are in some way defective such that they are able and willing to believe something that impresses me as so irrational. So I no longer try to figure out exactly how I am different from believers, but am instead content to acknowledge that there is something different in our mental/emotional makeup.
As someone who rejects all of the supernatural, it is nigh inexplicable to me to hear someone claim their religion is the true one, and somehow or another better or more valid than some other religion. Whereas to me they are indistinguishable. It also confounds me that otherwise reasonable people will choose this ONE area in which to avidly believe something irrational and unproven, while rejecting so many other “supernatural” beliefs - ghosts, witches, UFOs, etc.
I also don’t understand why so many people, when confronted with something they do not understand or cannot explain, are so willing to accept one particular unprovable story, and reject other equally unproveable stories. If I don’t understand something, or understand that current science cannot explain something, I am willing to accept that. Or I can even accept that some things may be unknowable - I see no reason to believe that the universe was created such that it can be comprehended by man. Even if someone wanted to believe that there was something supernatural that could not be explained, I really cannot grasp their willingness to accept certain very specific prety clearly manmade stories.
I find comfort in believing that many folk believe due to the family/social pressures/benefits. And I’ve met many a believer who have less of a grasp on the tenets of their professed beliefs than I have as a nonbeliever. But the vast majority of time when you get down to the nitty gritty, most religious people I’ve discussed this with DO believe in something magical.
One thing I do believe, tho, is that professing a belief and belonging to some mainstream church would make MANY societal transactions easier.
Not Abraham Lincoln’s God, then.
I don’t understand the difference between a God having the potential to do anything and one who is capable of doing everything. Clearly a God does not have to actually do everything, because if he were he’d be constrained and thus not a God.
The interesting case somewhat like your example is not God interacting with us, but rather if an omniscient God is capable of doing something different from what he sees himself doing. Free will is not a requirement, and it seems to be honored about as much as the Prime Directive
This sounds reasonable. After all, once we beat death we’ll be more powerful than the Greek Gods were. (And no more moral.)
One question about capability. A common response to the question of why was Jesus necessary when God could just forgive sins whenever he wanted to seems to be that God is somehow constrained from doing this without blood payment. Or something like that - my old Jewish head can’t comprehend it. Does that kind of a God fall under your definition? He of course could choose to require a blood sacrifice, but I don’t get why he has to.
Lobohan
‘I’m smarter than you because I’m smart enough to be an atheist.’ - Is that the best you’ve got?
If so I’m pretty safe in assuming you are a mental lightweight, which is something I assumed quite some time ago. The irony is you jumping to Der Trihs defense because you identify with his belief system. Morons of a feather.
Don’t worry, I have a lot of respect for atheists, I have known many atheists who by themselves exceed the combined IQ of you two keystone atheists. Have fun with your co-religionist. 
Religion is a con game. If you study religions from a social and historical point of view, you will find that they all share common goals, and they all use the means to accomplish those goals. The goals are accumulation of wealth and gaining power over the adherents to the religion. The means of accomplishment is the exploitation of the human fear of death.
Who is the man behind the curtain then? The idea that there is a beneficiary of a grand con that takes hold of the minds of billions of people is at least as extraordinary a claim as the idea of a God dictating religions to people. I mean we make fun of 9/11 Truthers for believing in a grand con that would involve thousands of people being complicit. In this case you are arguing for the complicity of millions and even billions of people throughout history.
Yeah, I don’t see it. It is one thing to see many historical instances in which religions appear to have been used to sooth or control the poor, weak, and ignorant, or as outright scams. And that is one difficulty for the atheist, to try to figure out why modern, apparently competent and capable people eagerly continue to believe these ancient relics. So much more than geocentricism, say. (Yes, I know - that was subject to scientific disproof.)
But I agree, not everyone involved in organized religion is a con artist or a control freak. In fact, I am willing to accept that the vast majority of such people are not, and are truly motivated by a desire to do good.
I can find many aspects of most organized religions repugnant, but that is far from declaring them an intentional con game.
Religion. Religion exists to propagate and preserve itself; it’s a form of contagious insanity. A psychological version of a virus. Believers are just expendable hosts.
Well in my experience, atheists are just baffled by what theists get out of religion. I have tried my hand at an explanation but it’s an incredibly complex issue. Usually the scientific responses regarding the existance of the supernatural are utterly trivial and beside the point, as someone I know put it, “It’s not what it IS, but what it DOES.” Some people genuinely loathe Christianity and that clouds their judgment on the issue. The bargain basement sociology and psycho-analysis that goes into these threads speaks to an extreme intellectual laziness on the part of the people making the critiques.
People like to say that Religion is the root of all evil. To me the root of all evil is the desire to be superior to your fellow humans. Religion for all of its faults, particularly Christianity holds up humility as a very high virtue. The intellectually lazy like to say that Christians use Christianity as a tool to proclaim moral superiority, and they do, but this is the opposite of humility. The failure of Christians to be humble IMV does not invalidate the value of Christian humility. The argument usually goes, “I don’t need those things, so they shouldn’t either.”, implying that those people are weak willed. First of all those people making that argument really COULD use a dose of humility wherever they might find it, and even if they don’t, so what if someone else needs it? If the religion encourages them to be a better and more loving person then it’s got a civil utility that renders the supernatural mythology underlying it irrelevant on anything but a personal scale.
As it is no force other than religion binds people socially around a shared set of moral principles. A tribe is bound genetically, a nation is bound by laws, but only religion binds people together morally. Pointing out the failings of large swaths of individual Christians is pointless, and it’s unfortunate that this passes for intellectual discourse in a lot of circles.
In the end, as far as I can tell it is the egomaniacal drive to be superior, and the necessity of bonding with fellows of shared character that leads to the grandest atrocities. It doesn’t matter what you believe or don’t believe, this is a primary trait of the human species. We are born to collectivize and selfishness is a natural and inherent survival trait. These two things are at odds with one another. The drive to be part of a collective and the desire to grab what you want, when you want it are at odds, and yet both part of our nature. This by its very essence causes conflict within mankind. Part of the process of collectivization is to transpose our individual ego drive into a collective ego. That collective ego drive occurs regardless of what its intellectual foundations are. The same impulse to consider themselves as better people collectively that is found amongst Christians is seen among atheists when they gather into groupings like message board flamewars. The hate is not unique to any particular social grouping, and neither is the impulse to try and label the opposition group as MORE hateful than the shared-identity group.