question for the atheist

What an idiotic rhetoric.

 

Free Will + God (as Omnipotent) led to my way of thinking.

The thought of creation.. Why create when you already know everything.

My Philosophy: Believe in any religion you want as long as it makes you a good person, able to forgive, able to see past differences, and love one another.

 

I could never stand looking at the crucifix, it grossed me out. Bible myths never sounded truthful. ADD'ed in church. I don't think I ever bought in to religion.

But, we don't know squat about the origins of the Universe so you have to leave the question open. However, dealing with this life is absurdist tragedy and religion helps people cope so I'm all for your religion as long as you don't go around damning me to hell for not being delusional.

 

Raised Catholic.

Let's see...
1.) Watching the church syphon money out of peoples pocket
2.) Watching religious leaders use that money for things not godly.
3.) Priests molesting boys.
4.) People using religion as an excuse to persecute others.
5.) The bible is just confusing and makes little sense / contradictory
6.) Growing up and learning how anyone will use anything to try and manipulate other people.
7.) Seeing how stupidly people interpret things and transfer that to other people, and extrapolating that out across two thousand years of the "original message"

Most of this led me to an agnostic view. IMO, too much extremely improbable occurrences have occurred for there not to be some form of intelligent design, whether that be Jesus, Cthulu, Magic Underwear, Spaghetti Monster, Computer Simulation, Ancient Aliens, or Other.

 

Thanks

 

Logic, reason, and facts.

I was raised in a deep religious tradition and biblical learning, including bible camps and multiple days of church per week. The bible just contained too many contradictions and painted the picture of a quite horrible, vengeful, angry god. Studying history and realizing so many people just don't really process what is in the "good book" or research its history just gave me freedom to let the baggage go. Well, that and a quite candid talk with a pastor who admitted he doesn't go into certain historical technicalities about the Bible because he knows everyday parishioners wouldn't be able to process it without tons of intellectual study. I still read religious history such as the work of Elaine Pagels because it is culturally interesting.

I am definitely not a theist. I don't believe in a god who created everything and monitors and intervenes in the world. So that technically, by definition, makes me an atheist. But, on the point of deism -- a clockwork god who created everything and just lets it all run, who neither intervenes nor makes it's presence known -- I have no idea, and don't pretend to.

 

Atheists have never had an answer to the simple question "What is the meaning of life?" Their logics falls apart upon being presented the question.

I see a few posters in this thread state that they simply don't know...that's a fair answer that I can respect. As a silly example -- science can only explain a tiny fraction of our world....ie there are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and there are roughly 400 billion galaxies (that we can estimate...might be more). The human race has made it only so far as our own pathetic moon.

Many others appear to reject religion not because they disagree with its teachings but rather they don't like the behavior of many of the hypocritical followers of the religion. That's a shallow line of thinking.

 

I don't believe in organized religion, not christianity, catholic or anything else... never had. I believe their might be some higher power out there, but IMO its definitely not the one in the bible or koran.

There is just too much things that I find either crazy, unbelievable, unfair or simply unjust in the bible and the (as I've been told) Koran for me to believe in Christianity or Islam.

Buddhism seems interesting, but I haven't study and am only slightly familiar with its tenets. Atheism sees just as presumptious as organized religions. As history has shown, the tenets of organized religion seems to convienantly support whatever is the dominant morality/truth at the time.

 

Was Christian. Simply didn't believe in all of it as I got older, obviously no solid proof of existence and logically it doesn't seem (with our current context of the laws of physics and nature) to be possible. Had little problems with believers outside of disagreeing with social/political beliefs and ideologies.

Now agnostic. Simply chalk it all up to "I don't know, feel free to prove god to exist or not exist. It's not my problem".

 

Bible thumpers kept annoying the **** out of me in college, finally I decided I wanted nothing to do with those people. Deism seems like a good belief system though.

 

Atheism/agnosticism >> blindly following any religion

 

Interesting thread.

I recently dated a great woman who was a devout christian. One who truly knew scripture and didn't use it for her own purposes. No matter how great our chemistry and relationship was, she made it clear that she needed me to be a christian for us to have a future.

As a child, I was raised catholic. Sunday school, CCD, et al. As others have stated, it all rang a bit hollow to me and more of a moral code to keep people in line. As a teenager/young man - I read the bible cover to cover and found it to be hypocritical, full of flat out unbelievable events, misogynistic and really twisted.

I've always believed in a higher power, but more of the benevolent nature. Something greater surely created this existence - but I could never get into the fairy tales of heaven and hell. Surely a god so loving as is evoked by christians wouldn't make/allow the creation of hell and continued condemning of souls for so many crazy reasons. And frankly, heaven bores the hell out of me . Too much of anything gets mundane right?

Well, back to the girl - coming off a divorce several years back, this was the first girl ive dated that exudes the attributes I crave in a partner; intelligence, whit, style, hawt (yeah, i'm shallow - crucify me) - so I truly tried and purchased a book "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist". the premise of the book is a logical look at the bible and why it is more logical to be a christian and believe in the bible, than it is to be an atheist. The loosely structured, poorly backed arguments only furthered my inability to believe in the text. (not to mention the amount of death and destruction in the name of a religious god that only followers get redemption from).

Long story not so long - had to let the girl go. I don't believe in what she believes and it's core to her as a person. I can't convert back to religion and it would only end up hurting her the further I let it play out.

dem's da breaks

 

I've never had the chance to ask someone this...but it's odd to me that the only reason most practice a religion is because they were born into it.

Do people realize or think about this? Think of all the major decisions you make in life...college, career, spouse, etc..you go through some form of trial and error in choosing...but with religion most don't...it's just accepted. You could have been adopted as a baby and that could have completely changed what you believe in...no choice.

I personally am not religious, but i respect people who at least question their beliefs, even if they end up right back where they started...at least they made their own choice. Some people need religion to function...for me, it just did the opposite because it didn't make sense to me..

 

How would the logic of a theist lead to an answer to this question?

 

The first inkling was in 4th grade, I was getting told all about the creation story, quasi-literally, and I just raised my hand and asked (I was a rock/fossil collector as a kid) "what about the dinosaurs?"

Ms. Berry did not have an acceptable answer.

 

Why must there be a meaning of life?

We can create our own meaning. Or not.

To me, something that makes life meaningful--which is not necessarily the meaning of life--is to reduce suffering of others and myself. Sure, maybe it all ends in a void and the perceived meaning disappears. Doesn't bother me. People believe that they suffer. Let's ease their experience, and ours.

 

God and religion were not major parts of my upbringing but my parents definitely believed in God and we did attend church off and on thougout my life.

Religion always seemed like bull**** to me. Even at 8 years old it just felt like a scam and actually pretty disgusting that all these grown ups told these stupid, creepy stories like they were true. The more I got into science and history the more I realized religion was bunk. It wasn't even some sort of epiphany. As I became more educated, everything slowly fell into place and confirmed what I thought.

I didn't even realize not believing in God was something that would set me apart until I started high school and people began talking about and judging each other based on things like religion.

 

Raised Catholic but as I grew older Logic and Reasoning made more sense to me and religion and god figures became more mythical.

One logical exercise I studied was the Omnipotent Paradox. i.e., an omnipotent being can do anything, then it can create something it can't do. This means it cannot be omnipotent, we have a logical contradiction.

Same logic applies for mathematical axioms. PI (which shows up everywhere in the universe) for example is derivable, it is what it is. But an omnipotent being could make PI equal something else but then he can't because it's derivable. So then he is not omnipotent.

Things like that make sense to me.

 

Do not ever try to use logic when talking about religion.

 

That's true but I have to try an explain it by some means because religious people refuse to. The reality is that any theist must be responsible for explaining how their god coexists with the world as we know it. But they don't for many reasons including because they can't.