We use that to show that he isn't there. We have only ourselves to rely on to fix these things but the religious insist on attempting to pray away the problems instead of doing something practical.
Atheists Corner – A place to post your opinion
- Thread starter Goober
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We use that to show that he isn't there. We have only ourselves to rely on to fix these things but the religious insist on attempting to pray away the problems instead of doing something practical.
Nope, controlling people who PERCEIVE themselves as being religious are. Religion is just a belief, it DOESN'T DO anything.
People fight for their god on all sides so ya,religion is a belief that some folks will kill for just to show there imaginary guy in the sky is better then the other guys,quite juvenile actually,Some of us grew up and saw the "light"
About age 14 I realized what a scam religion was,think for yourselfs peeps,god wont help you in a ground blizzard at the arctic circle in January.Your on your own and then realize you are on your own,no god is going to help you.
The folks that realize this survive and the ones that dont perish.
take a big breath, i'm not interested in argueing with you, do what you must,
if you must, I don't really care what you think either way, and i'm not interested in argueing. I will argue an issue that is worth argueing about, this isn't it, some people believe, some don't, so what, it doesn't really matter in the big picture, only to each individual.
I can't be mad about it, there is nothing about this conversation worth getting mad about.
yee haw, Canucks won the presidents' cup and the western conference championship.
A place to post my opinion, eh? As if most of you don't already know what it is, but okay...
I think religious belief is a delusion. It seems to be one the human brain is hard wired to fall for, and one all human cultures have approved of, every culture has invented a pantheon of usually supernatural good and evil agents that have to be dealt with in various ways. I've always liked Christopher Hitchens' characterization of religion as our first and worst attempt at explaining the reality we find ourselves in. We're so focused on pattern recognition that we'll see patterns even where there aren't any--just look up at the random scattering of stars in the night sky, every culture has found patterns there--and attribute agency to pretty much anything that moves, and I'm inclined to think that that plus our obvious need to find explanations for things, and our tendency to invent one when we can't find one any other way, is the source of the delusion.
For myself, I find the evidence and arguments offered in support of religious claims to be simply insufficient to justify accepting them as even provisionally true, quite apart from the fact that they fly in the face of everything I understand about how the world works. That is perhaps a consequence of a good scientific education, I didn't arrive at the atheist position until I was well into my 30s. I came from a deeply religious household and never really thought much about the truth or falsity of religious claims before that, they were just part of the background of my life and I took for granted the lessons learned at my parents' knees, so to speak. Then a number of deeply affecting events in my personal life brought them to the front of my mind and I began to examine them with the analytical tools I'd learned and worked with at university and in the jobs I'd had, and found that they just didn't stand up to skeptical scrutiny. So at about the age of 35 I arrived at the atheist position, which is to say, I concluded that religious claims about the nature of reality and the meaning and purpose of it all deserve on the evidence to be rejected. It's like Kakato said, in a ground blizzard at the Arctic circle in January, you better rely on yourself, you can't just sit there and ask some supernatural being to rescue you. I was never in a situation as threatening as that, but I've been close enough that I think I understand what he means.
And one day I heard Sam Harris talking about these things. Around the world, 9 million children under 5 years old die every year of starvation, malnutrition, disease, and violence, often in great pain and terror. Do the arithmetic, that's about 17 every minute. Their parents, mostly believers in some deity, will be praying for their children to be saved, and their prayers will not be answered. I simply cannot believe in a deity who routinely allows avoidable suffering, particularly of such innocents, to exist on that scale. Far as I can tell, no prayers are ever answered. Given all that this supposedly just and loving deity does not accomplish in the lives of so many, despite their desperate prayers for help, it seems extremely improbable to me that he exists at all, and certainly is not to be counted on in a crisis.
I think religious belief is a delusion. It seems to be one the human brain is hard wired to fall for, and one all human cultures have approved of, every culture has invented a pantheon of usually supernatural good and evil agents that have to be dealt with in various ways. I've always liked Christopher Hitchens' characterization of religion as our first and worst attempt at explaining the reality we find ourselves in. We're so focused on pattern recognition that we'll see patterns even where there aren't any--just look up at the random scattering of stars in the night sky, every culture has found patterns there--and attribute agency to pretty much anything that moves, and I'm inclined to think that that plus our obvious need to find explanations for things, and our tendency to invent one when we can't find one any other way, is the source of the delusion.
For myself, I find the evidence and arguments offered in support of religious claims to be simply insufficient to justify accepting them as even provisionally true, quite apart from the fact that they fly in the face of everything I understand about how the world works. That is perhaps a consequence of a good scientific education, I didn't arrive at the atheist position until I was well into my 30s. I came from a deeply religious household and never really thought much about the truth or falsity of religious claims before that, they were just part of the background of my life and I took for granted the lessons learned at my parents' knees, so to speak. Then a number of deeply affecting events in my personal life brought them to the front of my mind and I began to examine them with the analytical tools I'd learned and worked with at university and in the jobs I'd had, and found that they just didn't stand up to skeptical scrutiny. So at about the age of 35 I arrived at the atheist position, which is to say, I concluded that religious claims about the nature of reality and the meaning and purpose of it all deserve on the evidence to be rejected. It's like Kakato said, in a ground blizzard at the Arctic circle in January, you better rely on yourself, you can't just sit there and ask some supernatural being to rescue you. I was never in a situation as threatening as that, but I've been close enough that I think I understand what he means.
And one day I heard Sam Harris talking about these things. Around the world, 9 million children under 5 years old die every year of starvation, malnutrition, disease, and violence, often in great pain and terror. Do the arithmetic, that's about 17 every minute. Their parents, mostly believers in some deity, will be praying for their children to be saved, and their prayers will not be answered. I simply cannot believe in a deity who routinely allows avoidable suffering, particularly of such innocents, to exist on that scale. Far as I can tell, no prayers are ever answered. Given all that this supposedly just and loving deity does not accomplish in the lives of so many, despite their desperate prayers for help, it seems extremely improbable to me that he exists at all, and certainly is not to be counted on in a crisis.
You're playing semantics on his words. He says he doesn't believe in a deity.
Further to that. If there is a God he is letting these children starve on purpose. It's part of his great plan, obviously. We do need to control the surplus population. When you have no food to start with and you churn out child after child then you can't expect God to save you, you're screwing up his plan, obviously. You can tell by his actions of killing the excess children.
I think THAT perhaps may be a little presumptuous, as I know that there are many more intelligent people than I who not only live it but study it ad infinitim, it's a big part of their lives and these are NOT stupid people. I've also noticed that the real scholars of religion (they are interviewed periodically on C.B.C. radio) are not the who are trying to ram it down your throat. :smile:
I guess anything is better than taking the blame yourself! :lol::lol:
So you believe delusion is the same as stupidity? I know some dumb and smart atheists as well as dumb and smart religious people.
I've probably heard those scholars as I like to listen to Tapestry on CBC. I like hearing any intelligent person's point of view on anything.
You realize how stupid that sounds? It is and can only be religious people that are no willing to take responsibility for themselves. When you believe an omnipotent being is in control of the universe then everything is obviously that beings responsibility.
As an atheist I reject the premiss that a being other than the one that resides in my consciousness, or as I like to call it, me, is responsible for anything I do, or anyone else for that matter.
Whenever you see a ":lol:" at the end of my post you should automatically know THAT is a distinct possibility. :lol:
That makes no sense. Why would you take the Bible as a way to designate anything? Do you use Christianity to define Muslim holidays?
That whole thing just shows how threatened some Christians are, they have to run around defining what other people think. If you were secure in your own faith, you wouldn't have to worry about others.
Maybe there is hope for atheists on this forum:
Atheist Adopts Christianity After Church's Collection
Atheist Adopts Christianity After Church's Collection
No I have no need to argue with you - Others yes. Some I argue with are aholes and you do not meet that standard.
People like to go around saying that you cannot prove that a god does not exist, but this is just silly. Sure you cannot prove that no god exists, but that is just moving the goal posts. For the purpose of atheism, I find it sufficient to prove that the gods presented to me don't exist.
First the easy ones. There isn't a god throwing lightning bolts down at the earth or making women fertile. There isn't a god making flowers bloom and spring come. There isn't a god controlling the tides or earthquakes. All of those things happen because of the machinations of the world.
There isn't a god that has written the bible as his literal word. Somewhere in one of the gospels, and I don't really care to look up where, Jesus states that he will provide anything to anyone who asks for it in his name. Well, that is quite clearly literally false. So the god of the literal bible doesn't exist.
It goes on and on like that, until I arrive at a god without definition. A god which makes no sense. A god like that cannot be believed in. That is like believing that honor is purple.
First the easy ones. There isn't a god throwing lightning bolts down at the earth or making women fertile. There isn't a god making flowers bloom and spring come. There isn't a god controlling the tides or earthquakes. All of those things happen because of the machinations of the world.
There isn't a god that has written the bible as his literal word. Somewhere in one of the gospels, and I don't really care to look up where, Jesus states that he will provide anything to anyone who asks for it in his name. Well, that is quite clearly literally false. So the god of the literal bible doesn't exist.
It goes on and on like that, until I arrive at a god without definition. A god which makes no sense. A god like that cannot be believed in. That is like believing that honor is purple.
Delusions?
Such as the human brain developed helter-skelter, without a design, by natural selection?
Such as the simple fact that it took mankind several thousands of years to develop a poor imitation of the EYE? You know, in digital cameras.
Such as the wonder of the Grand Canyon? The Canadian Rockies?
Such as the love a parent has towards his/her offspring?
Such as your self-declared "intelligence" coupled with your derision of anything and anybody you disagree with?