Completely agree. I was passively christian until I hit puberty, when my more critical mind caused me to become 'agnostic'. While in that phase, I still had a tiny fear that some deity I didn't understand -that many many people believed in- might still in fact be real and looking to punish me for my thoughts. It was not until I studied the Bible in college, and read the thing cover to cover (OK, so maybe a skipped a beggat or two) that those fears were finally assuaged.

If you've read the whole thing, you'd have to be pretty uncritical, or pretty brainwashed to believe that this stuff was written by a God. It's a fascinating read, full of death, violence, adventure, betrayal, lust, perversion, treachery, and other elements of good story telling; but it is just that, storytelling.

It's obvious that this was written by many different humans. There are so many contradictions and the style of writing varies so much from book to book, passage to passage. It's illogical, nonsensical, and full of really ignorant guesses at cosmology. Also, the protagonist (YHWY) is so random, jealous, ill tempered, genocidal and corrupt. This is not the way an all good, all knowing, all powerful God writes his autobiography. If this God were real, he'd be a complete nutjob.

My God is pretty awesome, which totally makes sense to me. I don't believe He was ever jealous. Anyway, not believing in God, I think, would be very depressing. To think there is no spirit world goes beyond what is totally believable...in other words, a spirit world makes far more sense to me than a physical world.

Going back to the source material is always the best. When someone's trying to interpret something for you, they always have an agenda.

I read the bible and now I'm an Athe.

edit: gwiz665's title change made this comment irrelevant. Move along. Nothing to see here.

What I'm surprised most about is how so many people who profess to be of a particular religion but haven't read its holy book, let alone struggle to name the chapters of the text, or even in terms of Christianity, something as basic as the 10 commandments. I mean, here is a piece of literature that will determine whether you spend ETERNITY in hell, and yet haven't studied it?

It's like calling yourself a sailor when you've never been out to sea.

That's the simplest evidence to me at least that most people simply choose to be religious because it eases their fear about death, provides a 'supposedly' loving paternal figure to watch over them, or allows them to fit into a peer group with the least amount of friction.

Damn 60 char limit!
>> ^blankfist:

I read the bible and now I'm an Athe.

>> ^lantern53:

My God is pretty awesome, which totally makes sense to me. I don't believe He was ever jealous. Anyway, not believing in God, I think, would be very depressing. To think there is no spirit world goes beyond what is totally believable...in other words, a spirit world makes far more sense to me than a physical world.


Am I allowed to ask you if you're being serious?

Edit : I should just add that it's a genuine question, not a facetious one. I'd rather know for sure before responding.

>> ^lantern53:

My God is pretty awesome, which totally makes sense to me. I don't believe He was ever jealous. Anyway, not believing in God, I think, would be very depressing. To think there is no spirit world goes beyond what is totally believable...in other words, a spirit world makes far more sense to me than a physical world.


Good for you for sticking up for your beliefs. I can tell you that as an atheist, I can find comfort just as easily in the world we live in. I enjoy the "spirit" of Christmas. I love my family. I find snowy nights "magical". I irrationally fear zombies. I just don't pretend to know what's really going on at all. And I DEFINITELY don't believe that someone else call TELL me what's really going on. But I'll listen to people because I love stories. I'm interested in people's beliefs (the original ones), and I certainly don't pretend to know everything just because I don't believe in a god.

If someone needs religion to care about the world and the people in it. I find that scary.

I find it funny that a self respecting atheist can call himself a magician. It's illusionist damnit.

>> ^lantern53:

My God is pretty awesome, which totally makes sense to me. I don't believe He was ever jealous. Anyway, not believing in God, I think, would be very depressing. To think there is no spirit world goes beyond what is totally believable...in other words, a spirit world makes far more sense to me than a physical world.


I the LORD thy God am a jealous God - Ex. 20:5
For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God - Ex. 35:4
For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God. - Dt. 4:24
I the LORD thy God am a jealous God - Dt. 5:9
For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you - Dt. 6:15

>> ^lantern53:

My God is pretty awesome, which totally makes sense to me. I don't believe He was ever jealous. Anyway, not believing in God, I think, would be very depressing. To think there is no spirit world goes beyond what is totally believable...in other words, a spirit world makes far more sense to me than a physical world.


Not sure if I'm feeding a troll here but...

The idea that to not believe in some type of god or gods is depressing is just false. In fact, I think atheists tend to appreciate life more and just plain be happier.

Atheists don't live life thinking it's just some phase we have to suffer through until we can all get to PERFECTVILLE (aka: heaven). An atheist is perfectly happy knowing life is an amazing result of the wondrous blend of particles and physics that makes up what we see, know, and experience and that we are just lucky to be conscious enough to appreciate it. Where a religious person might see life as a series of rewards and punishments, an atheist will just accept that things happen and its only the individual who makes them "good" or "bad."

Finally, there are definitely things beyond what we understand, but just labeling the unknown the "spirit world" and explaining the unexplained by saying, "GOD DID IT" sure doesn't make me feel more comfortable. I mean, you end your post with stating that the spirit world makes MORE sense than what you can see, hear, feel, touch, and taste around you??? How depressing is that?

>> ^lantern53:

My God is pretty awesome, which totally makes sense to me. I don't believe He was ever jealous. Anyway, not believing in God, I think, would be very depressing. To think there is no spirit world goes beyond what is totally believable...in other words, a spirit world makes far more sense to me than a physical world.


I am an Atheist and have been since the early 80's. Being Atheist has made my life so much more meaningful. Everyday is spent enjoying my wife and kids, my home and neighborhood and my life, because I only have a limited number of days. I can teach my kids to be good people because that is inherently human nature, not out of fear of displeasing a hidden master, but out of the goodness of being a human being. I get to teach my kids to help less fortunate people by volunteering at retirement homes or feeding the hungry or donating old toys to the women's shelter not because if they don't the devil will snatch their souls, but because they have a pretty good life and many people don't have what they have and need help.

How is a life spent living in fear and servitude to a vengeful, jealous, wrathful thing with an empty promise that you may get to live in a magical happy place forever a good life? It isn't.

Assuming the average male live to be 75 years old, that's only 27,300 some odd days to enjoy. I treat each one like it is my last and relished in the everydayness of life.

There is nothing trollish, sarcastic or offensive about lantern53's comment. It's a straight forward, uncontroversial statement of what s/he believes.

This is once again just basic misunderstanding of the bible. It's nice that he mentions context, but he then goes on to mention a number of biblical elements as if they had no context at all.

I want you to know that as an otherwise staunch atheist, I don't resent you for believing what you do. I, however, feel exactly the opposite of what you do - believing with heart and soul in a God is depressing - the God of the Bible is a wholly unsympathetic character, and while "goodness" in itself doesn't say anything about existence, it certainly changes what I want to believe.

I am curious as to why a spiritual world makes more sense to you than a physical one? To me the physical world makes sense, because all I have sensed exists in the physical world, we can measure it, smell it, observe it, test and manipulate it. It's all really there and when you see some of the fantastics vistas the physical world presents to us or just contemplate the complexity of something as simple as a physical object like an hourglass, you cannot help be be in awe. Each grain of sand interacting against the other, causing each other to fall in a random but precise manner.

As Douglas Adams put it "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Putting in a spirit world makes no sense to me, seeing as it explains itself just nicely without it.

Finally I saw this comic which you might like or dislike, anyway, it's worth a read: http://www.everythingdiescomic.com/?s=44

>> ^lantern53:

My God is pretty awesome, which totally makes sense to me. I don't believe He was ever jealous. Anyway, not believing in God, I think, would be very depressing. To think there is no spirit world goes beyond what is totally believable...in other words, a spirit world makes far more sense to me than a physical world.

Assuming you are referring to the god of the bible. I think it is pretty clear that if you believe the bible at all you must believe that God is, was, and will always be jealous.

Here's the scriptures that have lead me to this conclusion:
Zechariah 8:2
Exodus 34:14
Joshua 24:19
Deuteronomy 5:9
Deuteronomy 6:15
Deuteronomy 4:24
Etc...

Go ahead and just search for jealous on biblos.com. You'll see that most of the references are to God.
>> ^lantern53:

My God is pretty awesome, which totally makes sense to me. I don't believe He was ever jealous. Anyway, not believing in God, I think, would be very depressing. To think there is no spirit world goes beyond what is totally believable...in other words, a spirit world makes far more sense to me than a physical world.

No, I'm pretty sure he understood it perfectly. If you go through the bible with a critical eye, you're likely to come to the same understanding. If you go through serious gymnastics of rationalization, however, you can generally come up with way to explain just about everything.

Regardless, for those of us who have actually read the thing (or most of it) this kind of argument holds no water...

>> ^r10k:

This is once again just basic misunderstanding of the bible. It's nice that he mentions context, but he then goes on to mention a number of biblical elements as if they had no context at all.

In the spirit of sharing:

For me, the opposite is definitely true. The idea that an irrational, arbitrary system (IE God) has some control over us and the world is far more frightening and depressing than the idea that there is no external agent who intervenes, but rather a system of consistent natural laws which govern the universe. Ultimately, this would mean that we can control our own destinies through the understanding and manipulation of the world around us. I don't know about you, but I'd rather play a fair game in which I can learn and master the rules.

But that's also just talking about preferences. Reality doesn't change based on what makes me happy - and that plays a lot into my world view as well. If I were confronted with proof of a spiritual aspect to the world, I'd change my mind in an instant. However, that's not yet happened and I care more about truth than anything else. Truth, or atleast the pursuit of it, is enough to keep me content if not happy.

>> ^lantern53:

My God is pretty awesome, which totally makes sense to me. I don't believe He was ever jealous. Anyway, not believing in God, I think, would be very depressing. To think there is no spirit world goes beyond what is totally believable...in other words, a spirit world makes far more sense to me than a physical world.

I don't disagree people can rationalise anything they like, but I don't see the critical eyed person as one immune to error. People are just as good at dismissing as they are at rationalising.

The idea is to employ both. Constantly. And, that's the problem here. He skimmed over the bible with a lack of understanding and instead of checking his opinion, he flew off the handle.

*citation needed

>> ^r10k:

He skimmed over the bible with a lack of understanding and instead of checking his opinion, he flew off the handle.

I don't always agree with Penn but he is bang on here. I have always been an atheist, even as a child I felt no connection to religion. Any involvement that I ever had with religion felt uncomfortable and plain wrong. No one could ever answer my critical thinking questions sufficiently enough to make me even consider it. When I got older I read through as much of the bible as I could manage and found none of the salvation or enlightening that was promised. All I found was a poorly written collection of stories loaded with mixed messages and undertones that I personally felt to be morally questionable.

For me I need no manuscript to tell me to respect my neighbor or to prevent me from harming another person. Oddly, many of those people who celebrate this supposed "good book" and it's message do exactly the opposite.

*citation needed

No one could ever answer my critical thinking questions sufficiently enough to make me even consider it.

For me I need no manuscript to tell me to respect my neighbor or to prevent me from harming another person. Oddly, many of those people who celebrate this supposed "good book" and it's message do exactly the opposite.

crumbs and tablespoons, crumbs and tablespoons

>> ^mizila:

In fact, I think atheists tend to appreciate life more and just plain be happier.

Actually, David Sloan Wilson in an amazing experiment using the "Experience Sampling Method" pioneered by Csikszentmihalyi (the guy who investigated psychological "flow" experiences) found the following:

"On average, religious believers are more prosocial than non-believers, feel better about themselves, use their time more constructively, and engage in long-term planning rather than gratifying their impulsive desires. On a moment-by-moment basis, they report being more happy, active, sociable, involved and excited. Some of these differences remain even when religious and non-religious believers are matched for their degree of prosociality." (From this article in which Sloan takes issues with some of Dawkins' statements in The God Delusion.)

So technically, your statement just hasn't been borne out by scientific investigation. That's not to say ALL religious people are happier than atheists. We're talking in the aggregate: on average, religious people tend to be happier (along with having other benefits). This should, of course, in no way interfere with your happiness as an atheist. You personally might be happier than everyone else that Wilson studied. But that doesn't mean everybody in the world besides you is better off without religion.

EDIT: What I would say, I guess, is that some people are happier and more productive being religious and others are happier and more productive being atheist. Depends on the individual.

r10k, I studied the Bible with a respected religious man; one of the few Americans allowed to view and help decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls. We used an annotated version of the Bible that explained the puns, double meanings and other linguistic aspects that would be lost on someone who just picked up a King James at Barnes & Noble. My Prof. provided context, historical and cultural. He showed us more ancient Mesopotamian mythology that contained stories remarkably similar to those in the Bible. He, a religious man (Jewish), presented the book for what it was, with no apologies or attempts to shield us from the books' many contradictions and logical inconsistencies. Warts and all.

I seem to meet all your criteria for being able to have an opinion on the Bible. I've got context, depth and the instruction of a very wise religious scholar. No offense, but I probably understand this book better than you ever will, and yet....

My critical mind tells me this is mythology, like Zeus, or Beowulf, or Gilgamesh, or Frodo, Bilbo and Dumbledore. These are campfire stories from pre-scientific times that attempt to explain the -then many- mysteries of existence. Those days are gone, and we now know that we are not at the center of the universe, that space isn't made of water, that stars are not lights, that the world is not flat, that humans are part of an evolutionary chain and that the earth is billions of years old. Perhaps it's time to embrace the future, r10k, and leave the cave drawings behind you.

Just one person's opinion.... I could be wrong.

>> ^r10k:

It's also a shame that once you got older and read it no one was there to help you with it.

You don't find it at all curious that an all-knowing being would write a book filled with ambiguous proclamations? Why are there no worthwhile revelations? Why are there no epiphany inducing moments? Why is the bible not clear about what it wants from us? Why isn't it Godly?

A book written by The Creator to his creations shouldn't require teams of people studying it to understand it's meanings.

The Bible is bronze-age dogma.

Let's not be ashamed of our past ignorance. Let us have respect for the awkward adolescent that humanity was when the bible was written. Like a junior high student at his first boy-girl party, experimenting blindly. Let us admire the valiant, if not adorable, first attempts of a child trying to understand his world. Let us be proud of histories best attempts.

However, let us put history in the history books. Let us enshrine our obsolete belief systems in a museum, where they belong, to be worshiped as a parent worships a child's first steps. Not for it's content, but for it's context.

Please, let us. It's time.

We don't want to have to drag you into the 22nd century kicking and screaming

I like Penn, admire and respect him. And I understand the rejection of the contradictions of the Bible. While faith is a personal matter, rejecting any religion on its contradictions alone seems narrow-minded. Life itself is fraught with paradoxes and contradictions. Many liberals believe in higher taxes on the wealthy, yet no one can make sense of the US Tax Code, filled with more than its share of contradictions, paradoxes, hypocrisy and passages that should have been ignored long ago.

It's possible to Believe and have faith in something without it being "perfectly" understood.

>> ^quantumushroom:

I like Penn, admire and respect him. And I understand the rejection of the contradictions of the Bible. While faith is a personal matter, rejecting any religion on its contradictions alone seems narrow-minded. Life itself is fraught with paradoxes and contradictions. Many liberals believe in higher taxes on the wealthy, yet no one can make sense of the US Tax Code, filled with more than its share of contradictions, paradoxes, hypocrisy and passages that should have been ignored long ago.
It's possible to Believe and have faith in something without it being "perfectly" understood.


Agreed, but religion is a special consideration because it claims to know of a divine, metaphysical truth of enormous importance. Being an atheist, I've no issue with people subscribing to religion - not at all. I take issue with religion being imposed on children, inserted into the wrong canals of education and being so significantly involved in politics and government.

If a national leader, as an example, relies upon their religious faith for aspects of decision making, that strikes me as uncomfortable but tolerable - if their decisions have honest merit. However, it's grotesque when politicians bandy about their blind faith as if it were to their credit, and I don't believe there should be any religious references in the structure of government. Likewise, children should be educated about religion but not have it installed into them; on such an important matter, the decision to become religious needs to be made by a fully autonomous, intelligent person.

I'm not an anti-theist, but considering the (especially Abrahamic) religious claims, the stakes could not be higher. Religion deserves great attention and scrutiny for exactly that reason.

>> ^SDGundamX:

>> ^mizila:
In fact, I think atheists tend to appreciate life more and just plain be happier.
Actually, David Sloan Wilson in an amazing experiment using the "Experience Sampling Method" pioneered by Csikszentmihalyi (the guy who investigated psychological "flow" experiences) found the following:
"On average, religious believers are more prosocial than non-believers, feel better about themselves, use their time more constructively, and engage in long-term planning rather than gratifying their impulsive desires. On a moment-by-moment basis, they report being more happy, active, sociable, involved and excited. Some of these differences remain even when religious and non-religious believers are matched for their degree of prosociality." (From this article in which Sloan takes issues with some of Dawkins' statements in The God Delusion.)
So technically, your statement just hasn't been borne out by scientific investigation. That's not to say ALL religious people are happier than atheists. We're talking in the aggregate: on average, religious people tend to be happier (along with having other benefits). This should, of course, in no way interfere with your happiness as an atheist. You personally might be happier than everyone else that Wilson studied. But that doesn't mean everybody in the world besides you is better off without religion.
EDIT: What I would say, I guess, is that some people are happier and more productive being religious and others are happier and more productive being atheist. Depends on the individual.


Like Karl Marx said, religion is a drug. But what I would add is that instead of being opium, it's a mild performance enhancing drug. At least that's what religious people think. But it's simply a placebo: religious people think that by believing in god they are protected/doing good/gaining eternal afterlife/etc. and so they feel better. Classic self-fulfilling prophecy type of thing. The problem of course is that this changes their mental balance, and if something comes that challenge their world view they will get angry, like the addict you try to reason with. If something happens to make their religious worldview crumble, they get depressed, i.e. withdrawal syndrome.

On the other hand atheists are always on neutral. If new scientific evidence challenge their worldview, they'll just say "well, my experience of the world is the same, but my understanding of that experience must change". This is exactly to the contrary of the religious, who always thinks that his experience of the world itself is at stake. Religious people think their experience of the world includes a god, when in fact only their understanding of the world - gotten from the Bible or whatever source of authority - includes a god to explain Everything Else. This is why, I think, the theological debate hasn't advanced in two thousand years: religious types try to prove or disprove the experience of a god - which with the way they usually define god is impossible either way - whereas scientific types say with Laplace that a god is a superfluous hypothesis in the understanding of the experience we have of the world.

So atheists are more mentally stable and view the world and our experience of it in a more reasonable, detached manner. These, I think, are two things needed for humankind to not destroy itself with its own technological marvels. With this in min, it is no wonder that fundamentalists think global warming and weapons of mass destruction are "necessary" : they think the world is ok as it is and all is well with their god's plan, whereas they must also protect themselves against the guys that do not believe in their own god (the atheist commies and the islamic terrorists).

>> ^quantumushroom:

I like Penn, admire and respect him. And I understand the rejection of the contradictions of the Bible. While faith is a personal matter, rejecting any religion on its contradictions alone seems narrow-minded. Life itself is fraught with paradoxes and contradictions. Many liberals believe in higher taxes on the wealthy, yet no one can make sense of the US Tax Code, filled with more than its share of contradictions, paradoxes, hypocrisy and passages that should have been ignored long ago.
It's possible to Believe and have faith in something without it being "perfectly" understood.


I reject religion based on the fact that it requires you to turn your brain off and submit to belief without proof (a.k.a. have faith). All the contradictions in the bible are simply proof (to people who think this way) that the bible cannot be a divine document, but is rather a compilation of stories and myths. If I have any faith, it is in the process of understanding the world via exploration of evidence and observation (a.k.a. scientific process).

Also, making comparisons between tax code and the bible probably isn't a good idea, especially since in this case it's essentially a straw man tactic on your part. To add some cognitive dissonance to your assumptions about liberal beliefs, I'll point out that I have zero faith in the US tax code. My belief in higher taxes for the rich has nothing to do with thinking the tax code is a perfectly executed creation, as you suggest. It's a general principle based on my values and experiences, and my values include the "haves" helping the "have nots" to a certain extent. Not because they have it to give away, but because it's in every rich person's self interest to maintain a stable working class and therefore a stable economy/country.

Agreed, but religion is a special consideration because it claims to know of a divine, metaphysical truth of enormous importance. Being an atheist, I've no issue with people subscribing to religion - not at all. I take issue with religion being imposed on children, inserted into the wrong canals of education and being so significantly involved in politics and government.

You've just said, in so many words, that you have no problems with religion, as long as it's invisible and has no effect on society. Children are incapable of making rational, informed decisions (same with a lot of "adults"). While Bertrand Rusell is correct that children's religious beliefs is installed at the mother's knee, there's not a better way. The State has no morality.

Like Karl Marx said, religion is a drug. But what I would add is that instead of being opium, it's a mild performance enhancing drug. At least that's what religious people think. But it's simply a placebo: religious people think that by believing in god they are protected/doing good/gaining eternal afterlife/etc. and so they feel better. Classic self-fulfilling prophecy type of thing. The problem of course is that this changes their mental balance, and if something comes that challenge their world view they will get angry, like the addict you try to reason with. If something happens to make their religious worldview crumble, they get depressed, i.e. withdrawal syndrome.

You've also just described liberalism. Liberals believe they are doing only good and that liberalism is altruistic. Who's going to argue against caring for the poor? But when the latest social program not only fails to reduce an evil but instead legitimizes and expands it, it's depressing. It has to be the fault of The Other. It's the Republican/Devils' fault--or lack of money--when the real answer is flawed human nature.

On the other hand atheists are always on neutral. If new scientific evidence challenge their worldview, they'll just say "well, my experience of the world is the same, but my understanding of that experience must change". This is exactly to the contrary of the religious, who always thinks that his experience of the world itself is at stake. Religious people think their experience of the world includes a god, when in fact only their understanding of the world - gotten from the Bible or whatever source of authority - includes a god to explain Everything Else. This is why, I think, the theological debate hasn't advanced in two thousand years: religious types try to prove or disprove the experience of a god - which with the way they usually define god is impossible either way - whereas scientific types say with Laplace that a god is a superfluous hypothesis in the understanding of the experience we have of the world.

Atheism is not neutral. It is a declaration that there are no deities and no supernatural influences, because they have never been scientifically proven. Yes, the religious are 'dependent' on their God/s, but the idea that atheists are Vulcan geniuses is equally absurd. Man remains a vicious animal with only a thin veneer of reason. If a stranger struck your child for no reason, rare is the fellow who would stop and say, "This stranger is obviously mentally unbalanced or just having a bad day, that's why he did that." The other 999 out of a thousand would have to be restrained to keep from killing the SOB.

So atheists are more mentally stable and view the world and our experience of it in a more reasonable, detached manner. These, I think, are two things needed for humankind to not destroy itself with its own technological marvels. With this in min, it is no wonder that fundamentalists think global warming and weapons of mass destruction are "necessary" : they think the world is ok as it is and all is well with their god's plan, whereas they must also protect themselves against the guys that do not believe in their own god (the atheist commies and the islamic terrorists).

There has never been a successful State sans religion. Remove God and the State becomes god, and the results of that are never good. Put another way, "As long as there is poverty, there will be gods."

@quantumushroom

No, I didn't say that. Read it again.

Secular state, keep it out of the wrong classes, educate children about religion and religious history, leave it up to them as much as possible. Don't threaten them with the torment of hell for touching their genitals, for example.

@Bidouleroux

I'm sorry to have to disagree with the compadre, but atheists aren't necessarily any more rational than the religious. The processes that form a rational idea are absent in most people; it's much more of a process of tribalism. Basic human inadequacy is not unique to the religious, it's ubiquitous.

Wall of text warning. No tl;dr. Learn to read dammit (see what I did there?).

@quantumushroom

Unusual post from you there qm. But again you miss the point (what did you expect?).

First off, religion necessarily has an effect on society otherwise no one would care if you adhered or not (i.e. there would be no religious wars, no religious-based hatred etc.). The problem is not that religion enhances your sense of well-being, it's that as a consequence (or side effect if you will) you close yourself off from people of a different religion and from contrary opinions on many different matters: you trade freedom of thought for psychological safety and by doing that you deserve neither. Now, if you're a "religious scientist" type then your either not really religious or not really a scientist. Compartmentalization can only get you so far.

Second, wtf does any of this has to do with liberalism? Your tangent does not intersect my argument at any point. I bet you can't derive for shit. Do you even know what derivation is?

Third, atheism is neutral. Atheism is to theism as amoralism is to moralism. The antonym to moral is not amoral but immoral. In the same way, the antonym to theism is non-theism. A non-theist can be religious, he simply does not believe in a deity or deities. Atheism was a term invented by theists to vilify non-theist and polytheists. It has been adopted by non-religious people like "nigger" has been adopted by African-Americans, as a way of empowerment. It encompasses many views, most of them non-religious. It does not mean atheists cannot suffer from the same delusions as religious people, only that they are less likely because by identifying and refusing to accept the kind of bad thinking that goes on in religious circles, they have inoculated themselves to a point.

Fourth, on the contrary one could say that there have never been a religion without a state. Every religion needs a vector of power to affirm its authority and convert others. The Jews in Pharaonic Egypt formed a state within a state, electing their own leaders and applying the laws of Abraham to their brethren, much like Muslims try to do in western countries by following sharia law and even trying to make it official. I would go so far as to say that religion is the prototype of the state. Look at Buddhism. Not a year after the Buddha died and already sects formed and tried to control the movement he started. The conflicts may not have been overtly violent, but they were power struggles and as such quite far from the detachment from worldly matters taught by the Buddha. All prophets are dictators. Their intentions may be good, but it will always turn sour when they're gone as they, and not their god or teachings, are really what unify their followers. The continuation depends not on the person or the teachings but on the institutions that they or their successors build, just like a state. You could see what I mean if you had read the Leviathan of Hobbes (that's not what he says, but the parallels he makes and his insistence that religion is necessary for the state's well-being goes in this direction). This, to me, argues for anarchism but of course with people like quantumushroom - not to mention the potential for greed and cruelty still in all of us - I would have to say we are not ripe for it just yet. It may well be that a great part of the population will need to be forced to become atheists just to live among an atheist society comfortably, like atheists were once forced to recant their views in religious societies. While it would mean some psychological violence, as long as we stay in a democratic state it would not do more damage than what religion does now and I believe it would benefit humankind in the long run.

@Gallowflak

Nowhere did I say atheists were more rational than the religious. In fact, most rationalists (like Descartes) are religious for various reasons, one which I will explore below. I said that atheists are more reasonable and detached in their understanding of the world. Now, while "reasonable" comes from "reason" it does not mean here that a reasonable person uses more reason than another. It means that a person is more sensible than another. For example, there are no empirically verifiable evidence of a god or gods. Any religious person not mentally ill will agree. They may argue for the acceptance of anecdotal evidence or of natural phenomena as "acts of God", but just saying something doesn't make it so and anecdotal evidence is not verifiable/repeatable by a third-party and thus of very little value. So there doesn't seem to be any evidence for deities, even Pascal admitted that fact in the frickin 17th century, that's why he had to make a wager with non-believers: he tried to say that by betting on an infinite reward you cannot lose (many think that Pascal says the odds are infinite, but that would be empirical. Pascal says that since god is presumably infinite, and that you presumably gain this infinity when you die, you should take the bet since by doing so you lose nothing in this life. Of course the last part I think is false, also the dying part. Only the "god is infinite" has any kind of weight and it is very light). Of course he didn't really understand mathematical infinity and thus didn't realize that doing so meant you only had an infinitesimal chance of winning in return.

Digression aside, this means that the natural state of a rational being would be non-theistic. Only non-rational belief (based on logical fallacies or the sentiment of faith) or logical arguments based on non-empirical premises can lead to the existence of a god as part of one's thinking. Thus, while not necessarily non-rational, religious thinking most of the time is. In other cases, when dubious premises are used, we would say that the conclusions are not reasonable, meaning that they do not agree with our raw, unfiltered experiences of the world. This is exactly why many religious persons and theists resort to rationalism, as it lets them bypass primary experience in order to define god a priori as the creator of our experiences by some logical argument with dubious premises. Of course this comes from an empiric viewpoint, but then again rationalists don't have a monopoly on reason even though they let us empiricists have a monopoly on experience: that's where the Kantians enter, but that's a story for another time I'm afraid.

>> ^lantern53:

To think there is no spirit world goes beyond what is totally believable...in other words, a spirit world makes far more sense to me than a physical world.


What irony, given that you can't see, hear, taste, smell, or touch the spirit world, that it makes more sense to you than a physical world.

@Bidouleroux

I was referring to this in particular:

"On the other hand atheists are always on neutral. If new scientific evidence challenge their worldview, they'll just say "well, my experience of the world is the same, but my understanding of that experience must change".

I just take issue with the suggestion that atheists are generally more capable of that sort of self-examination, reflection and honest deconstruction of their own ideas, sentiments and preconceptions. To be an atheist is to maintain a rational position about the validity of religion and/or the existence of a divinity, but that doesn't necessarily reflect a greater rationality or intellectual maturity. I'd like for it to, but I've found people to be quite disappointing regardless of their religious or irreligious inclinations.

That's pretty much all I'm getting at. Have I neglected your actual meaning?

@Gallowflak

I would argue that it does require at least a greater intellectual maturity to stay an atheist and live with the conviction that there is no big brother in the sky to help you or alleviate your suffering. For example, Jesus said the suffering will be alleviated only when you die, but most Christians ignore that part and think that prayer acts in this world, hence the strong placebo effect seen in some. Now I am much more impressed by the Buddhists monk who, after years of training, can use this placebo effect almost on demand, but you have to wonder if at that point religion is necessary at all. It seems more like mental discipline. Religious belief may help to persevere in your attaining this mental discipline, but I very well doubt that it is beyond science's grasp.

Also, you seem to have missed a crucial part: the atheist says that his understanding of that experience must change, not that it will (automatically) change. Herein lies the shortcomings of the human mind. But the potential for change, the openness, is there. Of course, if you think that I mean that "openness" also means openness to religious ideas, then you are sadly mistaken. Religious ideas have been rejected by the atheist because they do not adhere to the basic premise of trusting only experience (I could broaden this to accommodate the odd rationalist atheist but they are so rare in my experience that the effort would not be consistent with the Pareto principle to do so).

Now, you may think that compartmentalization can give you the best of both worlds: I use religious ideas in some domains (like morals and ethics) and science in others (basically everything else). But that is wanting to eat your cake and have it too. Religious ideas presuppose some weird metaphysics that will creep in your science sometime or another. Plus, counting on religion to guide your morals blinds you to the actual psychological underpinnings of those judgements. And really, if you change some of your religion's moral teachings because they do not agree with you, can you still say you are of this religion, nay that you are even religious at all? If you do compromise your religion's teachings in a kind of modern pragmatism, then you are misguided about religion: you do not need it. What I think is that many prominent religious figures come to this conclusion, that they do not need religion since they are "beyond" those kinds of petty worldly matters. But since they think they are special and that everyone else is below them, they think the masses still need religion. But really how they come to this conclusion, by falsely believing themselves superior, is ultimately irrelevant, and in fact many lay religious persons reason the same way with regards to their fellow citizens: others need religion, not me, so I need religion to protect me from them, etc. They do not see that a rational discourse about morals/ethics is possible, so they stick to religion as a default answer because they were educated that way.

Now, if we were perfect reasoning machines it would not matter whether we were "religious" or not, "theist" or not: we would never base our reasoning on false or unproven assumptions except as a way to partake in thought experiments, i.e. we would not base our actions on those thought experiments, except to verify the validity of their conclusions. That is the kind of perfect reasoning the atheists want. Of course, a perfect reasoning machine that has religious beliefs would suffer quite rapidly from extreme, possibly debilitating, cognitive dissonance. That is why I think religion must be erased if we want our reasoning to evolve towards something like perfection. You may not like the prospect of becoming a Vulcan now, but will you even be able to mind when you will have become one? No. Of course, those who will become Vulcan-like will be our descendants, not us, so they will care even less.

@Bidouleroux

I think this needs to be clarified... When I refer to "atheists", I'm talking about the demographic that self-identifies as being atheistic. If we're talking about the best and brightest then, yes, I'd concede that atheists are, and I'm trying to minimize pretentiousness, of greater intellectual maturity and honesty than their religious counterparts. They, however, aren't representative of their demographic by definition; the best and brightest are a minority. Mature, open minded, intelligent, critical, Socratic individuals who think for themselves and take pride in the exploration of ideas are a goddamned rarity and, whether they identify as atheistic or rastafarian, they're not much different from one another in basic function. The critical analysis of ideas doesn't seriously take place, or at least it doesn't seem to... a congregation is split between the shepard and the sheep; ideas are absorbed from the figurehead, processed and adopted or rejected. The same thing occurs in secularists, atheists, humanists and so on; assimilation of ideas from figureheads or icons or humans who people feel represent their own sentiments better than they do. There's also a sort of intellectual osmosis, depending on the environment. Essentially, I've come to accept that people mostly adopt their ideas from other sources, and free-thinking individuals can do that and modify those ideas or cultivate concepts of their own, but do so on a much more active, serious, engaged level.

There was more here but it was essentially irrelevant, and I've been as excessively verbose as I'd ever like to be.

@Gallowflak

What you're describing does not pertain to the debate of religion vs. atheism per se, but of human psychology, social hierarchy, etc. Of course there will always be dumb people that need to be spoon-fed what to think. The question is, will they function better with religious ideas or atheistic ideas? For now, since atheism is frowned upon by the majority, atheists will indeed represent more of brightest members of society, those that can think for themselves and that can stand up for their convictions. The same can be said of original prophets and their first followers, who decide to go against the flow of society in order to gain what they perceived as an advantage: they invent a new religion and stand up for their beliefs. The difference, again, is in the aims and consequences of religion vs. atheism. Religion restricts your thinking to a subset of the "world" with added "unworldly" dependencies like god that enforce the limited "world", whereas atheism expands thinking to the "world" with nothing more or less added/subtracted. I think atheism is thus a better suited worldview for everyone and is especially liberating to those in-between the brightest and dumbest, the "middle class" of intelligence, those that can think for themselves but may fear the risks associated with it in a religious society or do not know where to start or how to think correctly/productively (avoiding fallacies, etc.). You may think, like Voltaire, that this is only a matter of tolerance. Maybe it is, but again I would argue that tolerance is a value easier to maintain in an atheistic environment than in a religious one (mostly because atheism, being neutral, does not fix a priori what the boundaries of the "world" are since it has no arbitrary dependencies, except maybe for human experience itself; but that is something we cannot do anything about as long as we do not evolve into something more than homo sapiens, whether through natural selection or technology).

EDIT: Changed my response to be less confrontational. Trying to be less of a dick these days (but not always succeeding).

@Bidouleroux

I read your reply (and subsequent replies to @Gallowflak) and I have a question: what is the empirical basis for your claims? I ask because I'm unaware of any literature in the psychology of religion that would justify your conclusions that atheists are "more mentally stable" or that religious folk "get angry" or "depressed" when their worldview is challenged (or research showing that atheists don't). If such research exists I would be interested in reading it.

On the other hand, if no such research exists, then I think you'd have to reconsider the opinion that atheists are somehow more "neutral," as it would seem the opinion is based wholly on conjecture and personal experience... similar to how most religious adherents base their beliefs on conjecture and personal experience rather than empirical proof.

@SDGundamX

Haha, your editing is moot since I received your original post by e-mail!

Anyway, as far as I know not much research has been done on this, maybe because American researchers fear they will not get grants for possibly "debunking" religion. In any case, I do not put much weight on psychological studies. Neurological studies are another matter though, and concerning the Buddhist monks (and other yogis) research has been done that demonstrates neuronal patterns similar to being high on drugs while meditating. Nothing concrete on the placebo effect (we don't even know how it works on a neuronal level), but I would bet money that what I said will be found true at least in some cases.

Now, the rest is conjecture based on accounts of religious experiences by religious people and on my own lifelong feelings and introspection as an atheist that never believed in the christian god even though my grandmother was a pastoral teacher and fervent catholic; and comparing those thoughts and feelings with those of other prominent atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins, while also reading much of the science behind human behavior in general. I am also a philosophy major, for what it's worth (not much if we're talking strictly about scientific evidence, but can be worth lots if we are talking about science or religion in themselves). And really, its not that only religious people get angry when their worldview is challenged, it's that most people that set hard limits on what is real and what isn't will get angry when you present evidence that they cannot refute against your beliefs. That's why most religious scientists don't get angry, but try to find flaws in theories instead: they compartmentalize well, mostly because they are more intelligent that the general population. Still, I think that compartmentalization is a dead end on all levels.

On a closing note, it is not wrong to have opinions on subjects based on conjecture, etc. as long as they are in line with what has been demonstrated so far in science. Physicists don't have any proof about string theory yet many believe that it is "true", meaning that they believe the basic approach is sound and will ultimately give the best answer to today's unsolved problems in physics. The problem with religious thinking is that none of the basic and necessary premises of religion have any empirical evidence, i.e. it's all metaphysics. This is what I meant by non-rational beliefs: they are not irrational, but they are based on indemonstrable premises, fallacies or faith.

@Bidouleroux

So there is no research. Thanks, that's all I wanted to know.

@SDGundamX:

There is research, just not the kind you want.

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