My only problem with religion is that people confuse it with Faith.

You can have faith that you won't get a flat tire on the way to work.
You can have faith the sky is blue.
You can have faith that the god Loki is behind everything bad in the world.

You can have faith in just about anything, it doesn't make it right. "My faith will show me the way" is a crock. Religion is a like minded belief shared by many and dictated by a set of morale codes to live ones life. Faith is just a thought, and no one persons faith should be above anyone elses.

If someones religion teaches them that they're superior, then they develop faith telling themselves that is correct. Faith is a dangerous thing that people hide behind, and it's something that those in power often use to subdue the masses. People will do just about anything if their faith convinces them to.

Long story short, and I have to work here soon, Religion breeds as much unhealthy faith as it does healthy faith. The problem being unhealthy faith has caused a lot of harm throughout history. The holocoust, the crusades, the fall of rome, the middle east, genocides, slave trades, WWII Kamikaze pilots, and the list goes on. If people could be in a religion without all this unhealthy faith, and just take the good parts of what they're taught, then I'd be all for it. For now though, it's too flawed for me to have any faith in an organized religion.

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It looks awesome, so do not do so.

I think that the best solution would be live and let live. Evangelizing is not a problem if it is done tastefully: and not using others personal tragedies for propaganda ... aka Jack Chick comics, or pushing into someones confort zone. Go about it in a cultured manner.

Your post is comical as well, considering your icon is also Shang Tsung, the man who turns into a clown

I know, lame...

QFT

On another note, I want to live "forever" and I remain atheist. WHY? well it is simple. life itself is suffering anyway. and it only lasts about 60-120 years depending on luck. That isn't nearly long enough for me to learn everything! I want to live until I am bored of life. after I've learned the secrets of the universe and become bored. then and only then should we be allowed to die. and by our own hands ffs.

You have every right to believe who I am is wrong.

I cannot and shall not judge you for it.

However, what I can judge you for is how you act on your belief. As long as you don't give me any stank about who I am or what I do, then all is good. It's when people choose to treat me differently that I get upset.

I am actually cool with a lot of people who feel I am sinning by being with men. It is because they choose to see me, and not my sexual orientation.

All I ask is that whenever and if ever the subject of sexual orientation is brought up, you do not behave truculantly towards me, especially with the use of religion.

I do not share your religious views and therefore your beliefs do not apply to me.

In any case, I hope we can be cool, regardless of our own views and beliefs.




To be honest, I feel using the existence of a higher power to answer the questions of how and why everything else exists seems like a much easier way out than being an Atheist.

In fact, the belief that one deity did everything, does everything, and no one else can top it, is to me quite a stubborn belief, and I say this with absolutely no offense to anyone.

Yeah, sorta this.

When I was 11, I realized I couldn't bring myself to believe in a god or a higher power and I was totally devastated. The thought that most all of the terrible things that happen in the world will never be redressed by a god was pretty horrifying.

But now I'm over it and I sleep in on Sundays like a champ

Fine I take it back. I'm back in... For now.

I dont follow you on the easier part? How so? What makes it harder to be an atheist? Religion might be an easier way out for most but try being a true Christian. It's not easy staying sin free. No sex before marriage is a tough one! I heard a survey that most women would rather marry a man they have previously had sex with than a man they stayed celibate with. Try not to covet your neighbors possessions, or gamble. I would say all that is Harder than being an atheist.

I know some Christians attempt to force theirselves upon people. I don't believe in that. I'm not gonna treat you differently. I work in a correctional facility which has helped me with this way of thinking. I don't disrespect the murders, thieves, or child molesters. Jesus never dissed people did in the bible. He simply stated what he thought you needed to be doing and he went on his way. So just because your a homosexual doesn't mean I'm going to call you names and slander your name. Your gonna get my two cents and I bet I'll get yours. But know this... I don't hate you.

For Christians, with any question ever asked, the answer can always be the same: God.

Who made this?
Why is this here?
How did this get here?

The answer for all three can be God.

As for an Atheist, answering questions of the mystery will require research and years of studies, instead of going with one simple answer every time. Once again, I say this with absolutely no offense to anyone.

I think another problem stems from people still associating God as some sort of wise archetypical old man with a beard. So to say, God may have been "over humanized".


Same thing with angels. There is a very good reason why angels when revealing themselves from human diguises or when appearing to someone in the Bible, or GOD itself to Moses when giving the commandments say first: DO NOT BE AFRAID!

Atheists are somewhat nifty along the thought that thinking about our deity as somesort of benevolent boss, basically as a human personality is..well, magical thinking. Move on from the bearded guy representation not just visually, but conceptually too.

Not everybody who attempts to find answers to the questions of what?, where?, and why? are Atheists. There are plenty of brilliant people who accept religion that try to answer these questions. Science has answered a lot of our questions but can NEVER answer it all, no matter how much we research and study. Science has also created more questions than answers. The simplest answer to all questions is that there is a higher power(s). The simplest answer is not always correct but I completely believe that this is the true answer. But I have no problem with people researching the answers of our existence. Just note that it isn't just Atheists who attempt to answer the ultimate question.

Actually the simplest answer is that nothingness created everything. Religion tries to convince us that nothing created an infinitely complex superbeing or beings with everything all in order who then create everything. Religion comes up and pretends to know what the answer is. where as Science looks into things and discovers that they are not so simple. Science discovers more questions and then expands to look at the new questions. Religion takes the easy way out and just says "God(s) did it". Religion remains the same archaic practice while science continues to evolve.

And should we survive long enough, who's to say science wont discover the answers to everything? Who's to say that if there is a god that it doesn't want intelligent life to figure out the answers for itself rather than look to be spoon fed the answer.

It is much easier to believe that nothing just created this chaotic universe of ours than to believe nothingness created an unfathomably complex God who then creates everything.

The way I feel nowadays, agnosticism is the easiest and most logical belief. This isn't to say that I'm an agnostic. It's just that it's easiest and most logical to believe that ultimately, we just don't know. You can have an apathetic agnostic who not only doesn't know but doesn't care either way whether or not the divine exists.

When it comes to different religions, to really start to understand them, you have to look deeply into the cultural factors, among other things. Religions were developed in response to what was going on in the lives of their creators.

Religion is meaningful to many people, but unfortunately, like other things, it can be vulnerable to misuse, hence religious extremism.

Most of what you said TP is very debatable. Thats the problem between religion and science. It will always be an argument that isn't answered.

But when I started replying on this thread it was to find out why there are Atheists. I personally would rather be agnostic or even an extreme Muslim terrorist than take the atheist route. Any hope of there being an afterlife and a God is better than just not existing anymore. I do not believe that eternal life is eternal torture because of my Christian views. So if Heaven is real and I believe it is and I end up going there the devil will have no influence over me which in turn takes away everything displeasing I'm my mortal state.

I guess to some a God is hard to believe and to others nothingness is hard to believe. So I will agree to disagree because no one knows the answers until they are deceased. And I don't see any zombies walking around to give us answers.

It's kind of funny, because 'El, the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon and whom some believe to be the father of YHWH, is depicted as a wise, bearded old man.

Of course Atheist aren't the only ones that do such, but with Christianity, the simplicity is at an all time high.

Not only is God credited for many things, but Satan is as well. Whenever something bad happens, people blame the Devil instead of taking responsibility for their own actions. They give Satan credit for all the wrong done in the world, as if we have no sense of reason on our own.

Now, I'm not saying it is the religion itself that does this, but the people within it, as my first post clarifies. Many Christians, from centuries ago 'til now, have tainted the religion of Christianity into a laughing stock. The religion is seldom taken seriously among many people now. Most of the people I know who claim to be Christians have never even read the Holy Bible beyond "Let there be light."

I hear many people complain of how the media ridicules Christianity on many occasions, and I tell them if they refuse to take in the religion fully, they have no one to blame but themselves. If [you] don't take it seriously, how can [you] expect anyone else to?

Except that the universe wasn't created from nothing. nothing begets nothing. As it stands, the current guess of science is the primordial singularity, which is is basically everything. Only just concentrated into a volumeless point.

I agree with you Riyakou! Christianity is filled with hypocrites and It's never gonna be turned around. Just because a person claims they're Christian doesn't mean they follow the laws of Christianity. But you also have to remember it ain't easy to do that. And when you sin you need to ask for forgiveness and be sincere about it. Atleast I do. I cannot speak for the entire Christian people. I've read the New Testament and I took a lot of knowledge from it. It's a myth that homosexuals go to hell. They go to heaven if they sincerely repent. A lot of Christians don't know what the Hell they are talking about and I apologize for that. I just do what is right and I don't judge people.

I myself am Catholic. I go about my days the same as any other decent human being, and I try to be the best person I can possibly be.

I don't know if I deserve everlasting peace in Heaven, but I hope that someday I will know what it is like.

One thing I do know is that life is precious, and arguing about what may or may not lie beyond death is pointless.

Some people believe in God, some don't, the point is, don't let that bother you or change your opinion of who that person is.

Lets all just be like the Dugger's on the T.V. show 19 Kids and counting. All of us will have 19 kids or more and because of the *Holy Bible*, we will have as many kids as we can possibly have because that's the bottom line cause jesus said so.

It's ok as long as you can support them yourselves. You start asking for Government assistance and that's when I have a problem with it. Jesus, Saul of Tarsus(Paul), and possibly most of Jesus' apostles were bachelors and might not have had children. It doesn't matter to Jesus if you have kids or not.

Listen, time and space are contingent. Neither has always existed. The ancients knew this because a string of infinite past moments is mathematically impossible, and the contemporary thinkers know this because of the 20th century discovery of time's relationship to space.

So if space and time did not always exist, then the cause of their existence must therefore be transcendent of both space and time. That's essentially God. You can call religious people idiots all day, but no one in the human history has had a decent response to the above argument. Before Nietzsche could kill the notion of God, he first had to destroy the possibility of any knowledge of anything: truly the way of a fool. He was prepared to do away with the entire endeavor of epistemology before he even let the possibility of God enter into his mind.

I guess the reason why I, as time advances, cease to believe more and more is my discontent with, as Chrome pointed out, exaggerated anthropomorphism in practically all religions of today. A college professor of mine, who taught me Introduction to Anthropology, once said Christianity is the most anthropocentric intellectual invention in history. Sad as I generally feel about abandoning Christ in whom I believed my entire life, I have lately realized it more deeply than ever.

Hell, I even read articles of a Russian theologian who openly demeaned Islam and quotes from Qur'an. Of number of "Christian" articles which poked fun at Hinduism and other polytheistic religions I won't even start.

Yet, there is also another side of the coin, the one which is in defense of Christianity's (supposed) inherent understanding of nature and love for all creation equally. If Christianity as such is not to blame, the civilization from which it had the misfortune to spring is. And its warmongering and imperialistic ideology only naturally made this religion of love and simplicity corrupt and pride-rousing.

This is the right idea if you ask me. People think they're attacking religion, when in reality, they're attacking conviction itself. Any time people feel strongly about an ideal, that ideal potentially becomes a cause for conflict. It can be religion. It can be communism. The two Columbine shooters were nihilists: does that mean we should all immediately turn to theism because nihilism leads to violence?

At the end of the day though, religion is no worse than politics, and no one is about to dispense with the latter (despite that it's killed WAY more people). The last 100 years were a secular revolution, and yet the 20th century was the bloodiest era in the history of man.

Only requirement of being a Christian and saved by that belief is in Romans 10:9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Also the only real rules given by Jesus himself are found in Matthew 22: 37-38 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.

Christians don't have to do much of anything after they're converted to believers honestly. The rest is just fluff and the negative aspects are usually just human nature. That said, when Jesus said to 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' He probably meant that you should at least try to let your friends know about him at some point in time. If they don't wanna hear it then there's no reason to push push push. You can only lead a horse to the water, as they say. I say that he meant that thought because as a Christian you believe that you're saved and you should want everyone else you know to be saved too so you can hang with them in heaven. Assuming you're a christian that's how it goes. Further more, if someone's a true Christian then they can never stop being one, because if they leave then then they were theoretically never a Christian in the first place. That's how alot of people are who find it hard believing in God. They'll take the Christian name as a kid and go through the motions then branch off to whatever when older.

Now I've forgotten what point I was going to make though. Something about alot of religions and non-religions are there with good intent but some people drag down the name. You remember negative more than positive so if you see one person fuckin up then its easy to see the mass as being that way too.