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Religious belief is the opposite of evolution. Religious belief was borne out of ignorance regarding how the world truly worked (i.e. thunder/lightning as God's anger, disease as punishment, etc) and has diminished over time as knowledge and intellect increased. An increase in intellectual attainment does not correlate with increased religiosity, in fact the opposite is true. Nearly all religious people are either borne into religious belief, or develop it during a point of weakness in their life where they feel they need outside strength (i.e. prison, drug addiction, abusive relationship, etc). Faith runs counter to logic, therefore an evolving mind does not naturally gravitate towards religion.
You've switched from God to Religion.
Nice swerve.
You've got to be joking.!
He's an intellectual flyweight. You could do that show better than he does.
Matt wouldn't be called to do debates if he were as bad as you make him out to be -- but he is of a more militant bent so I'm sure that has something to do with why you think he isn't as "good" as a nice, polite atheist who continues to respect religion even as they debate against it. Yeah, he can be harsh to the point of being rude but, meh, so what. It takes all kinds to get a point across.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonesg
Why believe in God?
Because it works.!
No ... it doesn't.
Yeah, I've heard all the stories about the criminal, the drug-abuser, the person so down on his or her luck and desperate for a life preserver that he/she turned to God and their lives, as if by magic, improved.
But that's simply giving God false credit -- which is what religion does. It trains you to need God as a crutch, a medication, something you think you can't do without now that you have it.
The mere fact that you WANTED that life preserver is what caused your life to change. That's what works. Sometimes people need inspiration, that one thing to latch onto in order to pull themselves up. Yet ultimately it was THEY who did the pulling, the lifting, and the changing. God didn't do a thing.
It's like thanking God for your food at dinner. Yet God didn't grow the food. God didn't sell you the food. God didn't cook the food. Nor did God serve the food. Yet somehow God still receives all of the credit (note how no one else gets any thanks, not even the chef and certainly not the farmers and ranchers or truckers who transported it or the store owners who sold it to you).
The proof is that, if you sat there and did nothing, nothing would have happened. No magic occurred. No "divine intervention" took place. Nope. It was all you.
I know that's a boring, mundane, unsatisfactory answer, but reality usually is. It's much more wondrous, comforting, and reassuring to think that an all-powerful God took interest in you and lifted you out of your woes.
What about all those who turned to God and still sat there in their misery -- and nothing changed? Yeah, you don't hear about THOSE people, but they exist. Why? Because sometimes a person's circumstances simply cannot be changed. A God could change them. But a human cannot. In those cases, the poor sod who relied on God gets nothing ... because God isn't there.
If YOU cannot change your life, your life won't change. It's that simple. To me, that shows fairly conclusive evidence that there simply isn't a God at work in people's lives -- only a fervent desire for change if such change is possible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonesg
Because we are enabled , compelled even, by evolution to seek God. Stop fighting evolution OK?
Oh, I agree that in times of desperation you just want someone -- SOMEone to help you. For those of us born into a Christian world, we turn to the Biblegod. I guarantee you that people elsewhere turn to different gods and receive exactly the same help. I could turn to Allah or Vishnu or Kali or Shiva and, if I wanted it bad enough, strongly enough, I might find that inner strength to get up and start making changes. Trust me when I say that people who pray to all sorts of alien gods are just as enabled or compelled as any Christian -- which means there is only one common denominator: The human at the center of the story. As I said, change comes from within if such change is humanly possible. Strange how, if that change is not possible, it doesn't happen and God apparently sits idly by.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonesg
Its been proven lives are enriched by a belief in a Power greater than self.
We all want to belong to something greater than ourselves. That's even on one tier of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Where we find it is irrelevant -- it doesn't have to be from a belief in gods and supreme beings.
Unfortunately, I find any religion or belief system that orders you to put a god first, above those you love and care about, even above other human beings, to be distasteful. It is this command that causes so much divisiveness among our species. As I've said elsewhere, this clinging need to believe in deities might do the individual some amount of good, but it tears our society to shreds. Perhaps in our hunter-gatherer days this all worked well, but in large-scale societies like we have now, these beliefs have become the bane of our existence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonesg
If belief didn't work atheism would be 95% of the population.
No, you mean if brainwashing and peer pressure didn't work. First of all, I can assure you that there are FAR more atheists and non-believers than the polls give credit for. I would argue that the majority of atheists live in hiding, as "secret" atheists -- because of the social ramifications should it ever be learned that they no longer believe. Even the term "atheist" has been so demonized that some atheists won't even admit that they are one and prefer the term "non-religious" even though they don't believe in any gods.
I believe it was St. Thomas Aquinus who said that if you give him the boy, he'll give you the man. What he meant, of course, is that if you instill into children a belief in God when they're young, odds are, they'll believe in God for the rest of their lives. That's why religion survives, not because it works.
Yeah, I've heard statistics like believers live slightly longer, they poll as being happier, etc. but there are many other factors for this such as having large support groups, stronger community ties, and other, very worldly causes for those upticks. It has nothing to do with a God at work in their lives. Just, as always, people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonesg
I would further claim atheism doesn't work.
In what way are you claiming atheism doesn't work? Logically, empirically, realistically, it's the only thing that makes any real sense to me -- and while I might be forgoing some permanent smile on my face by embracing that reality, I can't put the toothpaste back in the tube even if I wanted to.
I would also argue that atheism does not necessarily mean a life doomed to hopelessness. Atheism doesn't make the claim that there's no afterlife, for instance. I just don't believe there's an afterlife officiated by some Bronze Age Hebrew or Muslim deity keeping the riffraff out as if Heaven were a cosmic nightclub. I am free to hope, even believe, that life after death exists. Except I get to do it without judging everyone who doesn't believe as I do unworthy to join me there -- to believe that even the nicest Hindu deserves eternal torment while the most vile Christian deserves Heaven. I can hope and believe without the 3,000 years of religious baggage.
Perhaps that's what you do, as well, I don't know. I haven't the slightest idea what your religious proclivities are. Yet I find no reason to believe in a Supreme Being as I've not seen any evidence of one at work anywhere in the world. Nor can I stomach the thought of having to spend eternity with a Supreme Being who spent his time helping, say, a murderer clean up his life while ignoring the Holocaust -- which is what apparently happened.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonesg
I used to visit many atheist forums and found the incidence of atheists suffering depression was high.
And then theres the suicides..
First, let me say this: I would argue that, for most God-believers, the main reason why their suicide rate *might* be lower is because many of them believe that committing suicide is a one-way ticket to Hell.
In other words, you cannot make the claim that believers somehow have better lives because they aren't killing themselves as often. Nope. It only means that atheists and non-believers aren't hindered by some ridiculous religious prohibition against it -- a prohibition, I might add, that doesn't even exist. The Bible never says suicide is a sin (suicide was decreed a sin by the Catholic Church in 264 A.D. to stop a rash of Christian suicide cults; no, you can't even claim that you're murdering yourself, either, because "murder" is killing someone against their will and, well, you can't commit suicide against your will.)
Therefore, it is impossible to make any definitive statements regarding happiness based on suicide rates given that the religious are hindered by religious beliefs that would stop them from killing themselves no matter how miserable they were. You might say that's still a good thing, but I don't necessarily agree - not in all cases. But I'm not going to dive into that issue in this post.
Secondly, let's assume for the moment that atheists tend to suffer from depression. That fact alone doesn't bode well for the existence of a supreme being.
Why? Because there have been numerous studies and experiments leading to the tentative conclusion that people who have depression have a firmer grasp on reality than those who tend to be happy. That, of course, makes perfect sense -- at least to me.
I think true happiness requires a lot of self-delusion, to be honest. One has to always assume, to delude oneself, into thinking things are much better than they actually are. If people lost sight of all those silver linings, they would be depressed, too because, in so many ways, reality, quite frankly, sucks much of the time. This ability most people have to engage in daily self-delusion makes them far more susceptible to things like religion and belief in deities -- especially personal deities that are taking a special interest in their lives.
It's not atheism that makes us depressed. That's a post hoc fallacy. Rather, it is because we suffer from depression that often gives us an edge in being able to see through the delusion that is religious belief. We see the reality behind the curtain and aren't as easily fooled.
I remember reading about one experiment that had normal subjects sitting endlessly at a rigged game trying to win because their positive, happy attitude wouldn't let them quit. They simply couldn't grasp the idea that something might be unwinnable, that something might be impossible, or that the game was rigged so that they would always fail. The subjects with depression saw through the ruse within a few tries and gave up, understanding quickly that the game was rigged.
Hence my point. We (because I have horrible bouts with depression) see reality a bit more clearly, which isn't always a good thing, per se.
But to claim that atheism is somehow the cause of depression and therefore it doesn't "work" (I'm still confused by this terminology since reality is reality regardless of how it makes you feel) is patently incorrect. Even if we found God tomorrow, we'd still have depression because it is a mental disorder, not an attitude. You can't cure it with religion. I think you need to do a little more research on what depression actually is before making these kinds of sweeping generalizations.
You've switched from God to Religion.
Nice swerve.
If so, the correct course of action is to bring the discussion back on line Not to try to score a cheap point. I am disappointed that an initially promising discussion degenerated into sniping and niggling.
It is doing you no good and wasting everyone's time.
Matt wouldn't be called to do debates if he were as bad as you make him out to be -- but he is of a more militant bent so I'm sure that has something to do with why you think he isn't as "good" as a nice, polite atheist who continues to respect religion even as they debate against it. Yeah, he can be harsh to the point of being rude but, meh, so what. It takes all kinds to get a point across.
No ... it doesn't.
Yeah, I've heard all the stories about the criminal, the drug-abuser, the person so down on his or her luck and desperate for a life preserver that he/she turned to God and their lives, as if by magic, improved.
But that's simply giving God false credit -- which is what religion does. It trains you to need God as a crutch, a medication, something you think you can't do without now that you have it.
The mere fact that you WANTED that life preserver is what caused your life to change. That's what works. Sometimes people need inspiration, that one thing to latch onto in order to pull themselves up. Yet ultimately it was THEY who did the pulling, the lifting, and the changing. God didn't do a thing.
It's like thanking God for your food at dinner. Yet God didn't grow the food. God didn't sell you the food. God didn't cook the food. Nor did God serve the food. Yet somehow God still receives all of the credit (note how no one else gets any thanks, not even the chef and certainly not the farmers and ranchers or truckers who transported it or the store owners who sold it to you).
The proof is that, if you sat there and did nothing, nothing would have happened. No magic occurred. No "divine intervention" took place. Nope. It was all you.
I know that's a boring, mundane, unsatisfactory answer, but reality usually is. It's much more wondrous, comforting, and reassuring to think that an all-powerful God took interest in you and lifted you out of your woes.
What about all those who turned to God and still sat there in their misery -- and nothing changed? Yeah, you don't hear about THOSE people, but they exist. Why? Because sometimes a person's circumstances simply cannot be changed. A God could change them. But a human cannot. In those cases, the poor sod who relied on God gets nothing ... because God isn't there.
If YOU cannot change your life, your life won't change. It's that simple. To me, that shows fairly conclusive evidence that there simply isn't a God at work in people's lives -- only a fervent desire for change if such change is possible.
Oh, I agree that in times of desperation you just want someone -- SOMEone to help you. For those of us born into a Christian world, we turn to the Biblegod. I guarantee you that people elsewhere turn to different gods and receive exactly the same help. I could turn to Allah or Vishnu or Kali or Shiva and, if I wanted it bad enough, strongly enough, I might find that inner strength to get up and start making changes. Trust me when I say that people who pray to all sorts of alien gods are just as enabled or compelled as any Christian -- which means there is only one common denominator: The human at the center of the story. As I said, change comes from within if such change is humanly possible. Strange how, if that change is not possible, it doesn't happen and God apparently sits idly by.
We all want to belong to something greater than ourselves. That's even on one tier of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Where we find it is irrelevant -- it doesn't have to be from a belief in gods and supreme beings.
Unfortunately, I find any religion or belief system that orders you to put a god first, above those you love and care about, even above other human beings, to be distasteful. It is this command that causes so much divisiveness among our species. As I've said elsewhere, this clinging need to believe in deities might do the individual some amount of good, but it tears our society to shreds. Perhaps in our hunter-gatherer days this all worked well, but in large-scale societies like we have now, these beliefs have become the bane of our existence.
No, you mean if brainwashing and peer pressure didn't work. First of all, I can assure you that there are FAR more atheists and non-believers than the polls give credit for. I would argue that the majority of atheists live in hiding, as "secret" atheists -- because of the social ramifications should it ever be learned that they no longer believe. Even the term "atheist" has been so demonized that some atheists won't even admit that they are one and prefer the term "non-religious" even though they don't believe in any gods.
I believe it was St. Thomas Aquinus who said that if you give him the boy, he'll give you the man. What he meant, of course, is that if you instill into children a belief in God when they're young, odds are, they'll believe in God for the rest of their lives. That's why religion survives, not because it works.
Yeah, I've heard statistics like believers live slightly longer, they poll as being happier, etc. but there are many other factors for this such as having large support groups, stronger community ties, and other, very worldly causes for those upticks. It has nothing to do with a God at work in their lives. Just, as always, people.
In what way are you claiming atheism doesn't work? Logically, empirically, realistically, it's the only thing that makes any real sense to me -- and while I might be forgoing some permanent smile on my face by embracing that reality, I can't put the toothpaste back in the tube even if I wanted to.
I would also argue that atheism does not necessarily mean a life doomed to hopelessness. Atheism doesn't make the claim that there's no afterlife, for instance. I just don't believe there's an afterlife officiated by some Bronze Age Hebrew or Muslim deity keeping the riffraff out as if Heaven were a cosmic nightclub. I am free to hope, even believe, that life after death exists. Except I get to do it without judging everyone who doesn't believe as I do unworthy to join me there -- to believe that even the nicest Hindu deserves eternal torment while the most vile Christian deserves Heaven. I can hope and believe without the 3,000 years of religious baggage.
Perhaps that's what you do, as well, I don't know. I haven't the slightest idea what your religious proclivities are. Yet I find no reason to believe in a Supreme Being as I've not seen any evidence of one at work anywhere in the world. Nor can I stomach the thought of having to spend eternity with a Supreme Being who spent his time helping, say, a murderer clean up his life while ignoring the Holocaust -- which is what apparently happened.
First, let me say this: I would argue that, for most God-believers, the main reason why their suicide rate *might* be lower is because many of them believe that committing suicide is a one-way ticket to Hell.
In other words, you cannot make the claim that believers somehow have better lives because they aren't killing themselves as often. Nope. It only means that atheists and non-believers aren't hindered by some ridiculous religious prohibition against it -- a prohibition, I might add, that doesn't even exist. The Bible never says suicide is a sin (suicide was decreed a sin by the Catholic Church in 264 A.D. to stop a rash of Christian suicide cults; no, you can't even claim that you're murdering yourself, either, because "murder" is killing someone against their will and, well, you can't commit suicide against your will.)
Therefore, it is impossible to make any definitive statements regarding happiness based on suicide rates given that the religious are hindered by religious beliefs that would stop them from killing themselves no matter how miserable they were. You might say that's still a good thing, but I don't necessarily agree - not in all cases. But I'm not going to dive into that issue in this post.
Secondly, let's assume for the moment that atheists tend to suffer from depression. That fact alone doesn't bode well for the existence of a supreme being.
Why? Because there have been numerous studies and experiments leading to the tentative conclusion that people who have depression have a firmer grasp on reality than those who tend to be happy. That, of course, makes perfect sense -- at least to me.
I think true happiness requires a lot of self-delusion, to be honest. One has to always assume, to delude oneself, into thinking things are much better than they actually are. If people lost sight of all those silver linings, they would be depressed, too because, in so many ways, reality, quite frankly, sucks much of the time. This ability most people have to engage in daily self-delusion makes them far more susceptible to things like religion and belief in deities -- especially personal deities that are taking a special interest in their lives.
It's not atheism that makes us depressed. That's a post hoc fallacy. Rather, it is because we suffer from depression that often gives us an edge in being able to see through the delusion that is religious belief. We see the reality behind the curtain and aren't as easily fooled.
I remember reading about one experiment that had normal subjects sitting endlessly at a rigged game trying to win because their positive, happy attitude wouldn't let them quit. They simply couldn't grasp the idea that something might be unwinnable, that something might be impossible, or that the game was rigged so that they would always fail. The subjects with depression saw through the ruse within a few tries and gave up, understanding quickly that the game was rigged.
Hence my point. We (because I have horrible bouts with depression) see reality a bit more clearly, which isn't always a good thing, per se.
But to claim that atheism is somehow the cause of depression and therefore it doesn't "work" (I'm still confused by this terminology since reality is reality regardless of how it makes you feel) is patently incorrect. Even if we found God tomorrow, we'd still have depression because it is a mental disorder, not an attitude. You can't cure it with religion. I think you need to do a little more research on what depression actually is before making these kinds of sweeping generalizations.
I don't have time to read your novel , if you could simmer it all down to a couple of sentences...
I'm sure it would convey the same info.
I don't have time to read your novel , if you could simmer it all down to a couple of sentences...
I'm sure it would convey the same info.
But if God is a crutch, I'll take 2.
*sigh*
Like hell you don't have the time. You're just too damn lazy to read ... like most people these days. You want everything handed to you with just a few easy to read sentences, preferably written at a nice 8th grade level, too, right?
Sorry, but no ... I can't "simmer it down" to just a few sentences and convey the exact same info ...
Are you suggesting that 90% of what I wrote is just useless garbage?
At any rate, I think I'm done here since this is what it has come down to.
Forums are now just fancy Twitter accounts. Yay!
True intellectualism is obviously dead.
P.S. I remember when novels used to be around 400 pages. I guess now publishers are selling books that are a single page long.
*sigh*
Like hell you don't have the time. You're just too damn lazy to read ... like most people these days. You want everything handed to you with just a few easy to read sentences, preferably written at a nice 8th grade level, too, right?
Sorry, but no ... I can't "simmer it down" to just a few sentences and convey the exact same info ...
Are you suggesting that 90% of what I wrote is just useless garbage?
At any rate, I think I'm done here since this is what it has come down to.
Forums are now just fancy Twitter accounts. Yay!
True intellectualism is obviously dead.
P.S. I remember when novels used to be around 400 pages. I guess now publishers are selling books that are a single page long.
Your posts are some of the only truly intellectual posts on the forum, Shirina, don't stop posting. We are so pleased to see your posts again. I hope you are feeling better. Chronic pain is such an awful burden.
I don't have time to read your novel , if you could simmer it all down to a couple of sentences...
I'm sure it would convey the same info.
But if God is a crutch, I'll take 2.
Another snowjob like you did on Matt Dillaunty. If you can't be bothered to read Shirina's post you are missing a treat. I think I can speak for most of my fellow posters in saying that she is the queen of posters and the best writer we have, and the most informed, were it not that we have a couple of experts here.
Of course, you may not want to hear what she says, but that's not her fault.
Are you sure you're not Eusebius? The style of 'Win in any way you can' seems awfully familiar.
Like I say, this is a shame. You began with some decent arguments. Your choice to take God as a dose of mind-numbing opium is fair enough in its' way, but no answer to the point. "We need religion, true or not" is not a good answer and never has been.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Your posts are some of the only truly intellectual posts on the forum, Shirina, don't stop posting. We are so pleased to see your posts again. I hope you are feeling better. Chronic pain is such an awful burden.
And that, Jonsey old sunshine, is the opinion of one of our most chronically stubborn Theists on the forum, and a post I an pleased to endorse. .
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 04-08-2017 at 11:47 PM..
Another snowjob like you did on Matt Dillaunty. If you can't be bothered to read Shirina's post you are missing a treat. I think I can speak for most of my fellow posters in saying that she is the queen of posters and the best writer we have, and the most informed, were it not that we have a couple of experts here.
Of course, you may not want to hear what she says, but that's not her fault.
Are you sure you're not Eusebius? The style of 'Win in any way you can' seems awfully familiar.
Like I say, this is a shame. You began with some decent arguments. Your choice to take God as a dose of mind-numbing opium is fair enough in its' way, but no answer to the point. "We need religion, true or not" is not a good answer and never has been.
And that, Jonsey old sunshine, is the opinion of one of our most chronically stubborn Theists on the forum, and a post I an pleased to endorse. .
Don't need to spend my time on a convoluted manifesto which looks more like an inner war.
Unless I ask someone what they think I really don't care what they think. Its none of my business.
As a rule, we do not care for the posting of video, website address or title of a book, with the implication that we should do your research for you. If you have a point to make, make it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jonesg
Don't need to spend my time on a convoluted manifesto which looks more like an inner war.
Unless I ask someone what they think I really don't care what they think. Its none of my business.
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, quite frankly. And if you don't care what we think, why are your even posting here in A/A?
I doubt now that you are Eusebius -Omega: he was an independent Christian with no preference for Papism, but you are already worth a division to us.
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