If there is a god who created us, then it was She who gave our species the divine gifts of reasoning, intelligence, and free will.
Surely the biggest sin against this god would be to not use these gifts and to just have blind faith in superstitious rituals and some old text that is full of contradictions.
If there is a heaven, it is the atheists who get in.
If there is a heaven, it is the atheists who get in.
12 comments:
That's sort of a weak argument, as part of our make-up also allows faith, blind hope, and believing in the supernatural. Which side you choose, if you choose one at all, is your own choice.
Frankly, I don't know why you have such a big hard on against religion, nor will I speculate/profile.
The only thing about such organizations that ticks me off is the insistence that their way is the right way, with no proof for it. The same can also be argued about atheism.
Virtually everything in life can be explained through science. Who is to say with any proof that there isn't a supernatural layer to life, though?
If there is a God, my money is that he/she/it is a Psychopath. Nothing else could explain the indifference and sick humor, coupled by brilliance and mind-games.
so you think the truth is something that can be personally decided?
because it is the most obviously dumb thing ever and it really annoys me when it gets its hooks into an otherwise decent human being; teaching them to not think, which as my handle implies, i hold as being synonymous with being alive - religion takes part of someone's life away.
i agree with you that the main problem is with organised religion, rather than just thinking that there must be a creator and a purpose to life. i disagree that that same argument can be applied to atheism. not believing in anything that has no shred of proof is not a faith, it is called reason.
if it is part of the universe then it is not supernatural. if a force influences our lives then that can be measured - no such influence has been measured. the power of prayer, and the distribution of natural disasters are 2 obvious examples.
can you prove there isn't a teapot orbiting the sun? if someone believed it would you regard them as an imbecile and mock them, or would you say it is their faith and everyone should respect that?
yes definitely :) or perhaps a narcissist; arbitrary rules to gain favour with them, claims of being perfect but inconsistent actions...
There's nothing like 3rd hand Chinese Whispers, written in a dead language translated and re-translated, edited and manipulated as a guide to how to live your life.
Most free thinking people can see how rediculous this is, but thousands of years of indoctrination and influence has blinded humanity with this falsehood of right and wrong. Ask ten people from different walks of life what they think "sin" means. You will get ten different answers. The common thread wil be that it is somehow related to "evil".
It's too subjective - as I pointed out in my post everyday pathogens. what is evil?
oops have a visitor - will get back to this a bit later =)
No, I don't think that truth is something that can a be personally decided... I didn't realize I even implied that, hm. I was more implying on what a human is capable of feeling/utilizing.
The placebo effect is staggering, what it can do for people. If they genuinely think they are being protected by God, or whatever, and that their friends are praying for them, they can in fact get better. I don't see those are miracles, just the mind working to ease the body through a different means. It wouldn't be much different that giving someone a sugar pill and telling them it will cure their cancer. It will either work, or it won't, depending on how serious the person internalizes it.
My point about the potential of the supernatural wasn't to say that it was there, or not there. Just that it could be. Pardon my word usage, but if you have a better synonym for these so called creepy, whacked out, alternate dimensional super beings that apparently can bend the fabric of time, space, and tell the laws of physics to kiss their ass, by all means, I'm open to it. I've been up 34 hours, so my mind is a bit foggy.
I understand your intentions, and your classic arguments quite well. My point was simply that, I'm skeptical about it too, but if it is there, I'm not going to shit bricks if it's ever proved in my life time because I was so dead-set against it in the first place.
As far as I'm concerned, this whole planet is just a petri dish that has gotten out of hand.
Religion is for those who cant handle reality. It makes about as much sense as worshipping the teapot that orbits the sun. The original sentiment, for a better society, was probably well meaning, but that sentiment has been well and truly abused for thousands of years - I cant have any respect for that
The "god" that dominates our culture is a despot, for an enlightened being, he/she sure has a twisted sense of humour.
Off topic but perhaps an interesting metaphor, your comment about petri dishes made me think of it Note. We did a science experiment in school, first we touched agar plates with our bare hands, then we used toilet paper, first one sheet, then 2, etcetera etcetera. Funnily enough, more bacteria grew with each subsequent peice of toilet paper. The experiment defied all the logic we are taught.
Going away from that, I thought, perhaps we are more well protected than we think. hmmmm food for thought.
None the less, I've never been temped not to use toilet paper - that would just be gross.
TNP
the placebo effect is powerful indeed...
interestingly, the only large-scale double blind experiment i know of investigating the power of prayer found that people who were told they were being prayed for actually did worse. perhaps some sort of performance anxiety.
nuts
"Religion is for those who cant handle reality"
yup.
i wanna reproduce your experiment :)
and just remember bacteria<>germs; about 1.2kg of bacteria live inside you and you would die without them. i hate the adverts from bleaches etc that try to make out that all bacteria are bad. they have a vested interest to get people paranoid about disinfecting everything...
im thinking that we have more healthy bacteria living on us than unhealthy bacteria, and that these healthy bacteria help to destroy more harmful types
You might like this, if you haven't seen it yet.
middle class name drop - best line all year =)
hadn't seen that, cheers.
i read his book a while ago - def worth a read if you haven't already.
nuts - how does my middle class name drop of opera in verona rank? :p
It's morality that is harmful, not religion.
can't both be?
i'd say inflexible dogma is the thing that is harmful. religion doesn't have a monopoly on that but it is easily the biggest target.
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