Agnostics and Athiests...is there a more believeable religion in the world?

[Fingertrouble]

Just sitting here at work late at night, reading some Bill Maher material and it got me wondering.....if you were an agnostic or an athiest (or even if you were religious, but had to come to an unbiased opinion regarding religion) is there a religion in the world that is MORE believeable and if there is which one is it....and why???

 

[dumpthemonarchy]

Yeah yeah, I'm both. BM is trying to tell you to forget about religion. Look, he's an American and they're inexplicably nuts about the topic of religion and Jesus and related nonsense.

There's no evidence of g/God. I mean, if this g/God entity exists, doesn't it have to show once in a while how powerful it is to us little people? Yet it never happens. The old books from one-two thousand years ago is pretty lame. Like your significant other would be happy with a performance that often. Or your boss. Your welcome.

 

[Cliffy]

There is no religion that is believable IMO. I have studied a great many of them and they all get lost in their dogma, rules and punishments. Most are contradictory (God is love but he is going to burn you for eternity if you don't obey the rules 100%). Most at aim at such a high standard that no one can reach that you will be condemned anyway. But, of course, it is up to you to decide how much you will adhere to the rules and which rules you will abide by (witness over 2500 versions of Christianity alone).

No, best not to join a religion. Better to seek the truth on your own, then whatever it turns out to be will be custom make just for you. Besides, it is an adventure traveling the road less traveled.

 

[petros]

. Besides, it is an adventure traveling the road less traveled.

And that less travelled road is going to end where you didn't think existed.

 

[Cliffy]

And that less travelled road is going to end where you didn't think existed.

That's the adventure part of it. So far I haven't had any bum steers.

 

[Corduroy]

Raelianism is a more believable religion. There is no evidence for the existence of God or aliens, but aliens are more plausible.

 

[Cliffy]

Raelianism is a more believable religion. There is no evidence for the existence of God or aliens, but aliens are more plausible.

More plausible!? Just look around this forum. Aliens are more than plausible. My gawd, look whose running this country!

 

[petros]

That's the adventure part of it. So far I haven't had any bum steers.

Good thing the Hindus don't castrate the bulls or their would be a huge jump in steers. A month or so back I almost hit a big ass Charolais Hindu that got out of the a pasture and was grazing roadside.

 

[Cliffy]

Good thing the Hindus don't castrate the bulls or their would be a huge jump in steers. A month or so back I almost hit a big ass Charolais Hindu that got out of the a pasture and was grazing roadside.

There ain't too many asses bigger than a Charolais ('cept maybe a Danish Blue).

 

[Dexter Sinister]

...is there a religion in the world that is MORE believeable...?

I presume you mean more believable than others among those that exist. No. They all look to me to be compounded of roughly equal parts imagination, wishful thinking, delusion, ignorance, and fear. There's no evidence in favour of any of them that doesn't apply equally well to all of them, and also doesn't admit of much simpler explanations. Since they obviously can't all be right, the most reasonable conclusion to me is that none of them are.

Everybody's atheist or agnostic with respect to all deities but their own, and even the three major monotheisms that are supposedly rooted in the same deity reject each others' claims about his message and purposes. Sometimes they murder each others' followers over them, but historically they more commonly murder their own as heretics and schismatics over minor variances in dogma. I reject all of it as a guide to thinking, behaviour, or understanding the true nature of things. I think it's all flatulent nonsense, quite apart from being a dismal failure of imagination compared to what science has now revealed to us about the true nature of things. No religion ever came close to guessing any of it, and what they did guess at they usually got wrong. There's no good reason I can see to take any of them seriously except as threats to my life and liberty. That I take very seriously indeed, because I think Christopher Hitchens is right when he says we're in a contest between civilization and religion. If the theocrats win, we all lose, so I get pretty combative about it sometimes.

 

[petros]

I think it's all flatulent nonsense, quite apart from being a dismal failure
of imagination compared to what science has now revealed to us about the true
nature of things.

When do you believe things like the circumference of earth, moon and sun were first known? 200 years at most? 300?

 

[WLDB]

When do you believe things like the circumference of earth, moon and sun were first known? 200 years at most? 300?

It doesn't really matter when facts began to be known, what matters is they are known and more continue to come to light about the universe. I'd trust science before the ramblings of semi-literate peasants from the bronze age.

 

[DaSleeper]

When do you believe things like the circumference of earth, moon and sun were first known? 200 years at most? 300?

For the circumference of the earth....When did Plato live....or Posidonius ??????

 

[petros]

It doesn't really matter when facts began to be known, what matters is they are known and more continue to come to light about the universe. I'd trust science before the ramblings of semi-literate peasants from the bronze age.

The semi-literate peasants from the Bronze Age knew those facts. Even the Stone Age peasants knew those facts.

How did they know them 4500-10,000 years before Science?

 

[Dexter Sinister]

When do you believe things like the circumference of earth, moon and sun were first known? 200 years at most? 300?

See post #42 in eanassir's thread "the mirror image of the matter" in the Science and Environment section.

 

[WLDB]

The semi-literate peasants from the Bronze Age knew those facts. Even the Stone Age peasants knew those facts.

How did they know them 4500-10,000 years before Science?

In order to know those facts they'd need to use math, which is a science.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

How did they know them 4500-10,000 years before Science?

And how do you know that people who left no written records knew those things? I'd be pretty suspicious of whatever sources you used for that claim.

 

[talloola]

atheism is not a religion, no churches, etc., just a non belief of what many believe.

i am an atheist, I don't pray to anything, don't have to prove anything, I just live my
life on this earth focusing on my own reality.

when religious people throw 'stuff' at me, trashing me for not believing what they believe, it doesn't have any affect at all, that is their world, it is all about them, not me.

be happy, whatever you decide.

 

[wulfie68]

As an agnostic, the problem I have with religions (and atheism as well) is there is no real supporting evidence. I view most things in fairly scientific way: I have a question, I make some type of hypothesis, then comes the experimentation/methodolgy and finally a conclusion. With truly spiritual issues, I get lost in the experimentation/methodology and find it all but impossible to formulate a real conclusion. Religions ask for faith and don't provide real evidence. Atheism falls in with religions in this regard because (to me) an absence of being able to detect doesn't mean something is truly absent.

To my mind, Shakespeare said it perfectly in Hamlet (act I, scene V) :

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

 

[SLM]

I kind of think that it doesn't really matter what you label something, it's what you get out of it. Hopefully it's something positive of course.

If someone spends 5 minutes or so in prayer every day and someone else takes 5 minutes in each day for quiet contemplation/meditation, aren't they both reaching the same end? Peace and comfort? Does it really matter what they call it?

I've often felt when viewing an amazing sunset or beautiful night time sky a sense of awe. I don't label that feeling as God myself, but I can maybe understand why someone would. Is it the same feeling, the same sensation? I don't know, but I can imagine that maybe it could be.

I've never personally encountered any religion that felt "right" or "true". Maybe I'm missing something, but I feel pretty darned complete.