Don't entirely agree, but upvote for dandy lions.

*promote

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 7:19pm PDT - promote requested by original submitter Skeeve.

People who look through a religious lens will come up with different answers than people who look though a secular lens. The lens is just as important as the question. Innate meaning is also very different from man made meaning and will lead to completely different answers to these questions. I really don't understand why some people don't think being religious makes a difference in their world view.

I absolutely agree that theists and atheists (or religious and secularists?) will come up with different answers and that the lens through which we see the world is incredibly important, but I love his premise that we are all functionally nihilists and that, when we manage to pull ourselves out of our nihilistic quagmire, we all want to make a mark on the world.

As long as we are only asking "what are we going to do with our consciousness", our stance on the existence of a god is purely academic.

It's both unfortunate and fortunate that people don't stop there...
>> ^The_Ettin:

People who look through a religious lens will come up with different answers than people who look though a secular lens. The lens is just as important as the question. Innate meaning is also very different from man made meaning and will lead to completely different answers to these questions. I really don't understand why some people don't think being religious makes a difference in their world view.

>> ^The_Ettin:

People who look through a religious lens will come up with different answers than people who look though a secular lens. The lens is just as important as the question. Innate meaning is also very different from man made meaning and will lead to completely different answers to these questions. I really don't understand why some people don't think being religious makes a difference in their world view.


Agreed, and there are plenty of specific examples of why this is important (e.g. pedophilia and religious crusades/war).

I like that he spends the bulk of his message explaining the never-remarked-upon things that religious and non-religious people have in common. Nobody on the Internet seems to think these help build your side's case or cause the other person to finally see it your way. I think this is the only thing that will ever help anyone see things your way. Kudos.

I also agree that arguments over the actual existence of God are trivial on their own. However, lots of people in power make decisions based on what they think God wants even when it seems contrary to what would be best for everyone. This is where non-believers get irate and try to talk religious people out of their views. To their surprise, initially, it doesn't work, so they label them "the enemy", get labelled as such themselves, and thus ends any hope of a happy reconciliation.

Maybe there can never be a complete reconciliation without everyone leaving religion, or everyone converting to the exact same variety of religion, but if both sides focus on good things that we have in common, at least we can create something better than polarized extremism.

To be able to not worry about the lens and just focus on the question means you already have decided the lens isn't important.

Which means you have essentially taken a stance on the lens and you just wish everyone else would shutup about the lens already.

I think every atheist can agree with that.