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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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@David Killens
I certainly wont waste my time on a religion. I stopped being a Christian for lack of evidence of a god. It is indeed a fantasy as much as quote "The scientific evidence for Mickey and Goofy is equal to the evidence for a god, and thus it enjoys exactly the same level of belief."
I will always be open for any scientific evidence if any should surface. I highly doubt any will surface however, so I ain't tying myself down to believing in a god.
@Fievel Mousekewitz
I welcome any scientific evidence of a god though, as some things, we just don't know for sure.
Agreed. But knowing billions of people been trying to prove their various god ideas for 4000+ years and still have come with absolutely nothing that is just "talk."
Everything we know about being "dead" so far. Makes it extremely unlikely the dead know eithir. ;) We are more likely to know then the dead are.
Yeah, dying and no afterlife is a scary thought for many folks. But it does not have to be. Go for a good long fulfilled life. And when you get very old and things start to get crappy and everything hurts, you can look forward your rest, truly free of any pain.
Your "life" world, everything is in your brain. When the tissue that supports these thoughts die, you die. They have basically proven this through testing. Certain parts of the brain dies, and that person simply does not come back, even if their heart beats and they breath eat etc.
@LogicFTW
Pretty much when the brain shuts down that last time, the individuals life is over.
Once my lights go out at death, that's the end of concessions forever.
I also try hard to live my life being nice to all, and being a good influence to others.
@Fievel Mousekewitz: Everyone is open to the concept of a god. What choice would you have if there were actually evidence. If there were evidence only an idiot could deny it. However; that does not mean we would worship the god. Any god that created this world has a whole lot of splainin to do.
@Cognostic
"Any god that created this world has a whole lot of splainin to do."
If there should happen to be one, (Highly Doubtful) quite a lot of explaining to do.
While I extremely confident there is no god anything like the major religions depict it, if there was, I would be intensely curious how this god would explain it self. The religions made such a horrific mess of the concept of god, I feel like even a god could not adequately explain it.
@LogicFTW
Yes people have made a mess of god. I agree to that. ;-)
But yeah it is either doubtful is a god exists but I also like the concept of unknown. ;-)
@Fievel Mousekewitz
"I also like the concept of unknown."
I fully agree, there are many unknowns. it could be personal, scientific, or group. It is arrogant to believe we know everything. But let is label "unknown" as "unknown" instead of "magic" or "god".
Until you dig down deep and conduct a proper investigation, it will always be unknown, and folly to label it as anything supernatural. This how science has peeled back the crap from the bible. Once upon a time theists and the bible believed the world was flat and the heavens were eternal and unchanging, with the exception of the wanderers, the Sun, Moon, and planets then visible to the naked eye. As anyone familiar with science knows, the earth was discovered to be a globe, the heavens were not static and unchanging, and definitely not eternal. This story has been repeated countless time, claims in the bible or other holy book have been disproven over and over and over. The best religion can do is accept this new and proven information, and attempt to warp it to fit their dogma and beliefs.
This is one example on how religion has made a mess of it. There has been a shitload of fallacious claims, later proven incorrect, and each time religion gets pushed further and further into the land of woo woo.
This has become such a quandary for theists they no longer assert that their supernatural beings can be detected, instead they now claim god as eternal, outside of space and time, undetectable, yadda yadda yadda. Yet the Old Testament continually tells stories of a god that interacted with the real world, causing floods, burning bushes, etc. Religion had to revise their position because their claims could not stand up to critical thinking or hard examination.
You interview any valid scientist and they revel in finding unknowns and questions. They want to find out what is under that orange peel. And any respectable scientist cannot label anything supernatural because their investigations reveal a real world cause, no god or supernatural event required.
In short, there's probably a big fat nothing waiting us at death.
There's no god.
@Fievel
Even if there IS . I disbelieve, but don't claims to know. This because the existence of god is unfalsifiable. So far nobody has managed to prove his existence nor non existence.
,Belief in an afterlife was not a common feature of ancient religions. The Greeks had a vague notion of 'hades, where the 'shades' of the dead dwelled. The Romans were a bit ambiguous., I guess 'pragmatic' would be reasonable way to describe their beliefs. .One reason Christianity was so attractive to the marginalised in Roman society ; it promised an afterlife far better than this one.
There' s a lot of information a bout this topic on line; Below is from Quora:
"-----------------. The truly ancient world had no concept of an afterlife at all and this was perfectly natural to them. What is so unnatural is that we are uncomfortable with the idea that anyone might disagree with our general consensus that there is life after death. To mention one example, none of the Mesopotamian neolithic peoples even thought about life after death. The tale of Gilgamesh makes this painfully clear. Another example would be Judaism.
( It is a spectacular example of cognitive dissonance that Christians read their edited version of the Tanukh without seeing that it contains no afterlife! Yahweh Elohim offers Abraham descendants rather than eternal life because neither of them has heard of eternal life. And Yahweh has not heard of Yeshuah/Jesus or the Holy Spirit either. All we have to do is believe the most important passages in all of scripture, far more credible than the Gospels which contradict each other no less than 250 times. Yahweh tells us in the most important sentence in the so-called Bible (“ta Biblios” means “the little books”, not “the Good Book!” ) , and the one no Xian believes now or will ever believe: “There is None beside Me.” )
https://www.quora.com/Were-there-any-ancient-people-that-did-not-believe...
Well the consensus between Christians is that if you are good, you go to a heaven. (Haven) I don't believe in any of that. Just about every religion there is, they all claim theirs was first. Hence the reason which I am an atheist in the first place.
So I agree with you here. ;-)
Yair. What makes you think he'd give a continental about what a talking ape thinks about anything ? .
Lately I've started questioning the idea that a god would necessarily be interested in being worshipped by beings which may be to him/her/it as ants are to us.
Unless course he/she/it is a Greek god, or YHWH of the OT. Perhaps the Babylonian Moloch. Or Kali, or one of the blood thirsty Mexican / South American gods---after all, if one looks objectively, the existence of the more terrifying 'pagan" gods is no loopier than the beliefs of the Abrahamic religions, or even of Scientology or Mormonism.. .
At this point I'm an agnostic atheist about all of them too
Boomer47: Everyone is agnostic. I have never met a person who was not agnostic. Even the most devout Christian or Muslim eventually gets to the point where they have to admit they do not know and then invoke faith. Being Agnostic is about what you know, knowledge. The majority of atheists freely admit they are agnostic. The majority of Christians, on the other hand, pretend they know something and only when you pin them down with facts do they admit to being agnostic. EVERYONE IS AGNOSTIC. There is no knowledge about god or gods.
The question is not about knowledge but rather about belief. Agnosticism and Atheism are not mutually exclusive. Agnosticism is about what you can know. Atheism is about what you believe. .... What do you believe?
No way I can possibly know what ONE other person really thinks about anything.
How on earth can you make a claim which covers billions of people and about 2000 religions?
At the Catholic school I attended, we were taught that only a fool doesn't doubt his faith from time to time.
There are of course dogmatic believers of all kinds. They include suicide bombers. When confronted with that, , I have trouble believing such faith. That is my failing ,matters nothing to reality --I have no way of knowing.IE I'm agnostic about the beliefs of others .
All I have to go by is what people do, and to a lesser extent ,what they say. After all hypocrisy is part of the human condition. I think it's so pervasive that we do not grasp to what extent it permeates our dealings with others. . .
I'm also aware anecdotally that ordained clergy "often die badly" . Fair enough. However, I may not reasonably infer a general principle from that.
I like your point.. when I first admitted to myself that I was atheist, I still had this little glimmer of hope inside me that we had something in the afterlife.... and I probably will always hope but I’m growing more and more comfortable with life being just a result of the Big Bang. (Which is really cool)
God does not exist. Period.
@vladking51
"God does not exist. Period."
REALLY? WOW! I didn't know that !
Can't wait to see your proof . So let's have it .----you have just made a positive claim, and that attracts the burden of proof.
Boy, you are going to be SO famous! The first person in recorded history to prove god doesn't exist .
One question. To which god do you allude?
@vladking51: Which God and How do you know?
I’d want some answers if there was a god. It would at least need to be a Buddhist type of situation for me to accept haha.
Part of me is struggling with no souls or life after death as I want to reunite with loved ones and want to give my kids peace of mind... but sadly, I’m weening myself from needing that.
I realize this probably doesn't help you much, but I think your struggle with rejecting the attractive fantasies of Christianity is normal for an ex-Christian. Teaching people that they are never going to lose their loved ones is fucking cruel.
/e And I suppose I'm cynical enough to wonder if that is the intended purpose of those attractive fantasies (to keep you on the hook).
Treehugger17, I am now 69 years old. In my early 20's I turned my back on organized religion, yet held out for something, anything spiritual. And for near forty years I never gave up, always searched. But the answers I received were the same as theism, you can not support that position with facts or evidence, you must believe without question.
My soul is my self-awareness, and when my body ceases to function, so will this soul. Bu I enjoy each day as if it was my last, enjoying every small wonder. I know that when I die, I will not enjoy the company of my loved ones, so I do that when I have the opportunity, NOW.
Yes, the big bang is fascinating. What stirs my pot is that on the instant this known universe began, the temperature was 10x32 K and the dimensions were zero. Not even the width of a hydrogen atom.
Treehugger17:
I recommend going to your favorite torrent download site and watching, "The Invention of Lying." You can get it on "PutLocker." You have to click through the advertisements to get to the movie. You will click on the movie and get an ad window. Just close the ad and click on the movie again until it starts. Usually takes 3 to 4 attempts. Those people really want you to see their adds.
@Treehugger: "I’m weening myself from needing that."
It's interesting that there is such a distinction between "wanting" and "needing." Look at the two sentences.
I would really like to have a soul and an afterlife where I meet my friends and relatives in a wonderful place and live with them for all eternity.
I need to have a soul and an afterlife where I meet my friends and relatives in a wonderful place and live with them for all eternity.
Then you think about the facts. None of the facts line up to meet your "needs." As long as your "needs" do not line up with what is real you are in conflict with the world around you. On the other hand, simply wanting to have a soul and wanting to have a place were cotton candy grown on trees, is no conflict at all. We all want things that we may never have. I want to be a billionaire but I fully accept my chances are slim to none. Statistically, I'm willing to bet my chances of being a billionaire are better than your chances of having a soul and going to heaven. Yes, it would be nice if such a fairy tale were true. I want Santa to bring me a million dollar check for Christmas. It's not going to happen; however, imagine the stress I could put on myself by needing Santa to give me that check. The more our beliefs comport with reality the more rational we become and the better we get along in the world.
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