Why do non-believers concern themselves with religion?

Nerin

kelly1 wrote: »

I'm not obsessed with atheism. I don't find it interesting or inspirational, it doesn't provide answer of any sort. The thought of life without God makes me shudder.

I am honestly concerned for the fate of atheists. My response to this is to defend religion and to try to point on the flaws in atheism. It seems I do this very poorly.

whats the point, they get it. theres flaws in all religions, theres flaws in atheism.
you know well that they dont believe that they will go to hell or whatever so whats the point?
{insert arguement about saving their souls here}

CerebralCortex

kelly1 wrote: »

....Take a look at the world around you tell me you don't believe in sin!...

I don't believe in sin

kelly1 wrote: »

it doesn't provide answer of any sort

Atheism isn't meant to provide answers its just a realisation and hardly a philosophy. Christianity doesn't provide any answers just fantasy.

Galvasean

kelly1 wrote: »

I'm not obsessed with atheism. I don't find it interesting or inspirational, it doesn't provide answer of any sort. The thought of life without God makes me shudder.

I am honestly concerned for the fate of atheists. My response to this is to defend religion and to try to point on the flaws in atheism. It seems I do this very poorly.

Don't worry, your contribution is appreciated.
While I'll agree there are flaws in atheism, I still prefer it to the worshiping of Gods (which by my calculations) probably do not exist.

Dades

kelly1 wrote: »

I am honestly concerned for the fate of atheists. My response to this is to defend religion and to try to point on the flaws in atheism. It seems I do this very poorly.

IMO the only way to find a flaw in atheism (as it is quite a simple concept) is to show a god exists. A belief is only flawed when the evidence on which it is based is flawed.

And for the record - it doesn't have to be your god - it can be Ganesh, Thor, Ra or any deity in fact.

Nerin

Dades wrote: »

IMO the only way to find a flaw in atheism (as it is quite a simple concept) is to show a god exists. A belief is only flawed when the evidence on which it is based is flawed.

And for the record - it doesn't have to be your god - it can be Ganesh, Thor, Ra or any deity in fact.

but the problem is, you believe none exist, he believes everyone else is wrong except his god...
so this isnt going to happen... :pac:

CerebralCortex

Galvasean wrote: »

Don't worry, your contribution is appreciated.
While I'll agree there are flaws in atheism, I still prefer it to the worshiping of Gods (which by my calculations) probably do not exist.

Where exactly is the flaw in simply not believing in a god/fairy tale/whatever?
You don't believe in Thor. Is that a flaw?

Nerin

CerebralCortex wrote: »

Where exactly is the flaw in simply not believing in a god/fairy tale/whatever?
You don't believe in Thor. Is that a flaw?

im sure,in a christian context, that the flaw is if they are right ye all fry

LaVidaLoca

"Sin" is just a word that is used within certain religions to denote behaviour that is not condoned by those religions, Kelly.

It doesnt mean anything outside the religion itself.

So in Islam, eating pork is a "sin". Outside Islam, it's simply eating pork.

Now this doesnt mean that atheists dont have a concept of wrong and right. Its simply that atheists usually base their idea of wrong and right on things that can be argued for rationally: Murder, it would be argued, is wrong because it causes hurt and pain to human beings which is unneccessary. The same for stealing, adultery, and so on.

The same cannot be said for the other more esoteric "sins" which cannot be argued for rationally: Keeping holy the sabbath day, not having sex before marriage, not using contraception etc.

Seeing sin in ourselves involves requires humilty, courage and honesty.

No it doesnt.

You are a religious person, you beleive that not only do you know God exists, but that you know what he wants you and the whole world to do with their genitals - I suggest you have a little humility.

You say that atheism provides no comfort and that you must beleive in God. I suggest you have the courage to look the facts in the face and admit that there is no proof for his existence.

You say that you beleive in God despite the overwhelming evidence that he has never lifted a finger to help anybody in all of the suffering parts of the world, despite the fact that that's where most of his most fervent devotees live. I suggest you try a little honesty.

kelly1

stereoroid wrote: »

Well, that depends on what you mean by "human", doesn't it? Have you gone back to the notion that there's some fundamental difference between humans and animals, some vitalist "spark of life" that elevates us to a whole different plane?
I don't see that, or any evidence for that.

I see pain and suffering in the animal world, and I see pain and suffering in the human world too. So what does it mean to be human, then? We can start throwing around ideas such as Ethics, Ideals, Consequences, Planning. An animal lives in the "now", follows its instincts and urges. Humans, according to my theory, don't just have Today: we also have Yesterday and Tomorrow to think of.

When I see e.g. the genocide in Rwanda, or the population explosion in the Gaza Strip, I see humans reverting to their baser animal instincts. From that I conclude that becoming human is not a "step change", or a one-way journey. It may be as natural as evolution, but it's not inevitable. So it helps to remember that we are still animals under the skin, and we have to work to discover what it means to be human, and fight to hang on to it. If you want a more detailed exposition of this idea, find a copy of Lord Of The Flies. So, to answer your question: yes, it is human nature, if you accept that human nature includes a major slice of animal nature :eek:

Have you asked yourself why humans have a sense of sin at all? Why do we have a conscience? And how are these the product of a material brain?

What did you think of the genocide in Rwanda? Do you just put it down to human nature and move on? Don't you wonder how humans can sink to such depths of depravity and cruelty? What drives someone to savagely rape and kill another human, to slaughter innocent children? Animals kill to survive. We go way beyond that. Some people have a lust for killing and destruction. How can someone rape an innocent child? Why do humans do these things????

Nerin

kelly1 wrote: »

Have you asked yourself why humans have a sense of sin at all? Why do we have a conscience? And how are these the product of a material brain?

What did you think of the genocide in Rwanda? Do you just put it down to human nature and move on? Don't you wonder how humans can sink to such depths of depravity and cruelty? What drives someone to savagely rape and kill another human, to slaughter innocent children? Animals kill to survive. We go way beyond that. Some people have a lust for killing and destruction. How can someone rape an innocent child? Why do humans do these things????

we are animals kelly1, some of us cannot control our primal urges or our behaviour.

kelly1

LaVidaLoca wrote: »

"Sin" is just a word that is used within certain religions to denote behaviour that is not condoned by those religions, Kelly.

It doesnt mean anything outside the religion itself.

So in Islam, eating pork is a "sin". Outside Islam, it's simply eating pork.

Now this doesnt mean that atheists dont have a concept of wrong and right. Its simply that atheists usually base their idea of wrong and right on things that can be argued for rationally: Murder, it would be argued, is wrong because it causes hurt and pain to human beings which is unneccessary. The same for stealing, adultery, and so on.

The same cannot be said for the other more esoteric "sins" which cannot be argued for rationally: Keeping holy the sabbath day, not having sex before marriage, not using contraception etc.




No it doesnt.

You are a religious person, you beleive that not only do you know God exists, but that you know what he wants you and the whole world to do with their genitals - I suggest you have a little humility.

You say that atheism provides no comfort and that you must beleive in God. I suggest you have the courage to look the facts in the face and admit that there is no proof for his existence.

You say that you beleive in God despite the overwhelming evidence that he has never lifted a finger to help anybody in all of the suffering parts of the world, despite the fact that that's where most of his most fervent devotees live. I suggest you try a little honesty.

Nice rhetoric. Unfortunately it's false.

Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? I would suggest that it has been handed down from generations who feared God. If there were no religion, would we know that it's wrong to kill? That's word thinking about.
Left to our own devices we would become savages just like the children in the Lord of the Flies.

Galvasean

Nerin wrote: »

im sure,in a christian context, that the flaw is if they are right ye all fry

But if atheism is right, then nobody has to fry for all eternity!

kelly1

Nerin wrote: »

we are animals kelly1, some of us cannot control our primal urges or our behaviour.

We are not just (smart) animals! That's another thing that bugs me about atheism. It tries to destroy the dignity that God wants to raise us up to. We were created in God's image!

It's not that we can't control our behaviour, we don't want to control it. We'd rather make excuses than change. We humans are very slow to look at ourselves honestly and see that we need to change and then have to courage to do something about it!

kelly1

Galvasean wrote: »

But if atheism is right, then nobody has to fry for all eternity!

Wishful thinking. Are you prepared to take the risk that you could be wrong (Pascal's wager)? Can you say with any certainty that when you die, it's all over? How sure are you that you won't have to make account of your life with your Maker?

tbh

kelly1 wrote: »

Nice rhetoric. Unfortunately it's false.

Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? I would suggest that it has been handed down from generations who feared God. If there were no religion, would we know that it's wrong to kill? That's word thinking about.
Left to our own devices we would become savages just like the children in the Lord of the Flies.

just because you don't follow a particular religion, it doesn't mean that you don't have a moral code. That's a ridiculous argument. Don't you think it's strange that all the major religions have a broadly similar set of recommendations for how we should behave? The reason being that they are the rules that make it easiest for us to exist as a society. For example, if I were to go around killing people with no censure, then I could only expect that the same would happen to me. I'd rather live in a society where I cannot expect to kill someone and get away with it, but can expect the same for myself. That's not religion, that's common sense.

Also, with the knowledge of humans that I have, I think it's far more likely that God was created to explain away the stuff we don't understand, and to that ends, God was created in Mans image, and not the other way around.

Naikon

kelly1 wrote: »

Have you asked yourself why humans have a sense of sin at all? Why do we have a conscience? And how are these the product of a material brain?

Some people have a lust for killing and destruction. How can someone rape an innocent child? Why do humans do these things????

They have the resources, and people simply make very rash and ****ed up decisions. Evil is simply the product of bad decision making.
Also, the personification of sin in religion implies that evil is an active "force" which is not the case.

Again "evil" stems from our ability to percieve the world and make the right or wrong decision. It's human nature that allows us to do these things. I have seen animals carrying out evil acts too, so evil is a result of active thought processes, not an active "force" like the religions believe. Granted it's a bit more complicated when you consider the reasons for a person becoming "evil"

Naikon

kelly1 wrote: »

We were created in God's image!

Science has proved otherwise....

kelly1

I'm taking this thread totally off the rails. Will start another thread on this topic.

Nerin

kelly1 wrote: »

We are not just (smart) animals! That's another thing that bugs me about atheism. It tries to destroy the dignity that God wants to raise us up to. We were created in God's image!

It's not that we can't control our behaviour, we don't want to control it. We'd rather make excuses than change. We humans are very slow to look at ourselves honestly and see that we need to change and then have to courage to do something about it!

im not an atheist kelly1.
what bugs me about christianity is that ye appear to be ashamed of nature.

and to be fair, did you go murder rape and steal last night?
no?
me neither, its because i can empathise.
some people doont do it because they are afraid they'll be caught, of what people will think of them, basically because they care about reprecussions.
others dont do it just because they care how their actions would affect other people.

then there are people who dont care.

Zombrex

kelly1 wrote: »

Of course you don't understand sin; you don't believe in God.

I don't remember saying I don't understand sin, I said that the concept of sin is a perverse way of viewing humanity and human relations.

kelly1 wrote: »

Seeing sin in ourselves involves requires humilty, courage and honesty.

No it doesn't, again that is my point.

"Seeing sin in ourselves" means giving in to the darker emotional and irrational sides of our human nature.

For example, a mate of mine fancies a girl at work. He seemed to have it in his head that she liked him back, though nothing ever happened beyond the odd flirtatious comments on night outs. He never asked her out (he is quite shy), and nothing came of it. A few weeks ago she turned up at a staff night out and ended up kissing another bloke at work and I think (or my mate things) that she is now going out with him.

Now, to hear it like my mate explains it, this girl turned up to this night out dressed like a Las Vegas hooker and "prick-teased" her way around the entire room until finally landing on this guy.

So basically, my mate is rationalising his feelings of jealousy and hurt by creating a scenario where this woman has done something wrong. He is doing this instead of looking at the situation in a rational fashion. His emotions are telling him that he has been hurt by her, so his brain is constructing ways that she is at fault. I have no idea what this girl actually did, but I do know that my mate was very hurt by the situation, and I know this is how humans attempt to deal.

That is the same type of thing that happens with religious people when they start constructing systems of blame around supernatural authority, in the case of Christanity, "sin"

It is giving in to our more instinctive emotional responses of our more primitive selves. We attempt to externalise our own emotions by constructing moral frameworks around them.

Your example of "lust" is classic. I've said it before, but Christianity is obsessed with sex and sexuality. This isn't that surprising, sex and concepts of attractiveness are a massive part of humanity and human identity, as my poor friend is evidence of. He have an evolutionary need to be considered attractive, and the flip side of that is that we can be very hurt over issues of our own suitability as a mate. The end product of this can be seen in how religions deal with matters such as sex. The rules are set up to confirm to us, from a higher authority, what we want to be true.

People who are having sex outside of marriage (ie people who are having more sex than us, or who can have more sex than us) are wrong. We aren't wrong for thinking they are wrong, they are wrong for doing it. The correct way is the way of least sex, which re-enforces the hang-ups some people (particularly men) have about sex in the first place.

kelly1 wrote: »

Even on a humanistic level, are you perfect in every way with flaws? Of course not, nobody is.

No, I'm not. And one of the biggest problems I, and all humans have, is the desire to rationalise and externalise our own emotional hung ups and issues. Which is why some people embrace systems like your religion's ideas of sin, because they appear to do that.

We want people to tell us that we are correct for feeling the way we do.

Our girlfriend breaks up with us, we want our mates to tell us that she treated us badly and that we deserve better, even if that isn't true. We want an external authority to confirm what we are feeling emotionally.

We see people having sex or drinking or doing drugs, and we feel inadequate and unsure and we want someone, such as a religion, to tell us that what they are doing is in fact bad, and we are good for not doing it.

We see homosexual people and it repulses us, we want someone to tell us that we are right to feel this way, that we are right because it is wrong what they are doing.

Etc Etc Etc

It is all people searching for external confirmation of what they cannot themselves justify, their emotions. And revelling in this, as religions do, is ultimately unhealthy and damaging.

LaVidaLoca

"Nice rhetoric. Unfortunately it's false.

Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? I would suggest that it has been handed down from generations who feared God." Wow, what a killer argument.

So if it wasn;t for religion I simply wouldnt know that killing someone was bad?

Thats complete baloney. At the very basic level our morality comes from empathy. All human beings (apart from psychopaths) have the ability to imagine how something would feel if it were being done to them, the desire to avoid pain for them, their relatives and their friends. Later this is extended to other members of a tribe, then nation, and eventually humanity itself.

Of course for most of history this was done through the vehicle of religion. Religion is humanitiy' first attempt to explain why things are as they are. And it is simple and can be easily understood by an illiterate. But there is absolutely no reason why one cannot be moral without ever having heard of religion.

In fact it is arguable that , without a strict moral code such as one gets from a religion or a passionate political beleif such as Communism, that human beings will behave more morally. The non-religious dont try and burn people for heresy, cut women's clitoris' off, stone people to death for holding hands, or excecute people for counter-revolutionary thoughts.

If you have to use reason to come up with your morals, you will probably arrive at reasonable morals.

kelly1

Wicknight, you must be quite pleased/smug with yourself, having a rational/natural explanation for everything. Do you have difficulty admitting that you could be wrong?

Zombrex

kelly1 wrote: »

Wicknight, you must be quite pleased/smug with yourself, having a rational/natural explanation for everything.

Smugness doesn't really come into it.

The fact that my post appears to have annoyed you though is interesting. Is there something wrong with having a rational explanation for everything? Is that worse than having an irrational explanation for something?

kelly1 wrote: »

Do you have difficulty admitting that you could be wrong?

Did you ask me to admit I could be wrong?

LaVidaLoca

Wicknight, you must be quite pleased/smug with yourself, having a rational/natural explanation for everything. Do you have difficulty admitting that you could be wrong?

You kelly1, are a religious beleiver, ergo, you do not even allow yourself to entertain the idea that you could be wrong. That is the very nature of 'beleif'. Put it this way: Is there anything I could say to you or any evidence I could show you that would make you deny God's existence? Thought not.

Whereas with me, there are many many things that you (or God) could do that would make me instantly say "I was wrong. God does exist" - a couple of decent miracles for a start, or a holy book written 2000 years ago that was aware of something a 1st century sheep herder wouldnt be aware of. Or God intervening in somebodys life, somewhere, at some time for the better.

That is the difference in our beleifs, they are not on a level playing field.

The burden of proof is on you. You've had 2000 years to come up with something. C'mon, whip it out already...

adamd164

kelly1 wrote: »

I'm not obsessed with atheism. I don't find it interesting or inspirational, it doesn't provide answer of any sort. The thought of life without God makes me shudder.

I am honestly concerned for the fate of atheists. My response to this is to defend religion and to try to point on the flaws in atheism. It seems I do this very poorly.

Why are you concerned? Don't be. Mind your own business, get on with pleasing your god, and stay away from me and my family.

Sangre

kelly1 wrote: »

If there were no religion, would we know that it's wrong to kill? That's word thinking about.
Left to our own devices we would become savages just like the children in the Lord of the Flies.

No we wouldn't at all. Its not worth thinking about, its worth laughing about. Everyones principles come from the same place, man. Some of these ethics and morals are made under the guise of religion and sin but they are still man made. People knew murder was wrong before JC came along. His coming hasn't exactly stopped murder, even in believers.
What about the countless billions of people who have never believed in your god or jesus? What about those who never heard it or never will? Their society isn't falling apart. The likes of Japan seem to be doing ok for themselves.

Why do we have them? Mostly because man is a community creature and without these boundaries and social rules the community would fall apart and man could not function correctly. These social rules can be seen in any community of animals e.g. dogs, elephants, meercats.

humanji

kelly1 wrote: »

I'm not obsessed with atheism. I don't find it interesting or inspirational, it doesn't provide answer of any sort. The thought of life without God makes me shudder.

I am honestly concerned for the fate of atheists. My response to this is to defend religion and to try to point on the flaws in atheism. It seems I do this very poorly.

As was pointed out to you by (I think) Soul Winner in another thread, look after your own soul instead of worrying about everyone elses. And bear in mind, you are insulting all athiests when you make statements like that. You are doing exactly what you're accusing athiests of doing.

edit: hmmm, for some reason this thread didn't update for the last 2 hours, so pretend I posted this earlier!

Dades

humanji wrote: »

And bear in mind, you are insulting all athiests when you make statements like that. You are doing exactly what you're accusing athiests of doing.

For the record - I'm not insulted! Incredulous, as usual, but not insulted!

Mena

kelly1 wrote: »

Wishful thinking. Are you prepared to take the risk that you could be wrong (Pascal's wager)? Can you say with any certainty that when you die, it's all over? How sure are you that you won't have to make account of your life with your Maker?

For one, my parents "made" me, I'm pretty sure they're not going to want a full account of my life after I die, seeing as though... I'll be dead.

However, should I be in a position to stand in front of these mythical pearly gates and get asked a question by some guy with a beard ( sorry ), I'd be pretty happy with how I could respond. I'm a good person, not because of your God, but because that's what I choose to be. If the fact that I certainly would not bow down to a fairy tale works in my disfavour, then so be it. I don't have time for deity's that short sighted.

Galvasean

kelly1 wrote: »

Wishful thinking. Are you prepared to take the risk that you could be wrong (Pascal's wager)? Can you say with any certainty that when you die, it's all over? How sure are you that you won't have to make account of your life with your Maker?

I have two retorts:

1) If God is as omniscient as they say he is, he will know I'm only believing him to avoid the Inferno, rather than because of genuine love for him. Seeing through this deception he may only get madder and create an even worse afterlife scenario for me.

2) What if I chose the wrong God/religion? There are literally thousands of choices, each with their own unique strong/weak points. The first Commandment said you shouldn't have false Gods before the real one. Ergo, believing in a fake God will anger the real God more so than not believing in him at all.

If I do meet my creator some day (Dad?) I'll ask him why he tricked me into thinking he didn't exist.