Richard Dawkins considered himself a spiritual person and advocates spirituality while denouncing religion and advocating the primacy of science. As did Carl Sagan. Sometimes spirituality is conflated with religion. And the search for spirituality and answers to existential questions doesn't necessitate making stuff up and passing it off as fact.
Everybody has their own beliefs and that's cool with me. After years of my dad stressing out my mom she finally got the courage to divorce him. She was in bad physical health afterwards (what years of stress does to a body). Rediscovering her faith helped her to get the strength to fight through all her physical pains that she was dealing with at the time. She still deals with stuff but she's much more active nowadays and it's great seeing her rebound when she was at the point of giving up because she was so weak physically. If religion can give people that kind of confidence and power to believe in themselves when maybe they might be ready to quit on themselves then I am totally for that. I'm not religious myself (and if I had to give myself a title it would probably be an atheist), but I am sickened whenever I see atheists go on rants belittling religious people or acting as they are high and mighty.
As an atheist, I am glad your mom found a way to recover from the traumatic experience and it happened to be religion. What atheist say about this topic is that religion is not the only pathway to recovery. Some people achieve the same thing by traveling, biking, basketball, etc. The contention happens when somebody says... "x person is happier now because of religion and you could not achieve it without it".
I'll take the explanation for non-science majors. http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Soul-Q.../dp/1571743324 As long as their is some testable experimental evidence.
Precisely... I still don't understand rocketsjudoka's reasoning for spirituality/religion, of it being logical to question the nature of existence... Yes, it's logical... how does that, however, lead to indoctrination...? It's like applying the same reasoning to fear... it's logical to fear for the purpose of survival... therefore, it shall be established from here forth that we should avoid all things that scare us and never confront them, or we will all die horrible deaths... The truly evolved have learned to question our primitive beliefs of fear... that there are times we should heed fear and avoid certain situations (like an approaching tornado, or an incoming tsunami, or a crime riddled section of town with high murder rates), and times we should confront fear (like the risks faced by personal failures, of venturing into the unknown for the small chance of a greater something waiting just past the darkness, to forego self-preservation of an individual for the "greater good" of a race/people/group, often times not to simply preserve life, but to enhance it's quality of life.) How we question the nature of existence should equally show us why we shouldn't just go along with our first instinct or interpretation... Our civility provides the means for us to question what we question... not to establish certainties on pure speculation...
...doesn't belong with the others. We can PROVE the existence of The Force even if we cannot hope to understand it.
Indoctrination? We're all indoctrinated. This is the point. We're indoctrinated with mores, cultures, ideals, etc. etc. We don't examine everything rationally - we can't examine everything rationally. If you want to live, to be human, you can't shut yourself in some library and question everything endlessly. The problem I have with atheism and the reason I don't call myself one with is that atheism has two elements. First is of course that God doesn't exist. Second is its obsession with reason. The second part is my problem. We aren't rational creatures. We're just not. And I don't think we should be wholly rational creatures. Rationality may separate man from beasts - but irrationality separates man from machines. And it's the latter, in our current post-industrial society, which is far scarier and likelier then the former.
Er, no... We don't create worlds of fantasy, indulge our imagination, create art, consider morals, or create this belief in the sanctity of life because we're irrational... If we did, there'd be nothing to stop us from blurring the lines of fantasy and reality when ever so given to our human impulses... The world would be more insane than it is... as we'd all be insane to the detriment of our species... We do all these things rationally... we do so keenly aware of the distinction between real and make-believe.... we do so with the understanding that the application of meaning is an entirely human construct... The universe didn't give meaning to life... we did... We do these things to improve the quality of life from our perspective, for the benefit of our fellow man... not to irrationally twist the universe into something it's not just because we say it's this and that... Which is what religions do....
Maybe you mean human have emotion and emotions fk up our logic and reasons. We certainly can be logical and rational... Heck we created logic and reasons. We created mathematics and science as tools that we use... Those tools certainly is rational and logical. Or maybe you mean our logic and reasons has limit and through them we may never know our true nature... That's possible if our true nature is beyond human comprehension.
And I would said that irrational doesn't belong to just religious folks. Religion is not necessary for that. Atheist can certainly be irrational. You can't just claim that human trait for yourself.
God created men and women with original sin. Then he impregnated a virgin woman with himself as her child, so that he could be born. Once alive, he killed himself as a sacrifice to himself - to save you from the sin he originally condemned you to. Our Jesus failed Jesusing school.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/QZ8hefESt7c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Atheism is a religion as well. Any belief system is just that. A religion. There is no rational explanation for existence.
