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I found an interesting video on youtube that talked about why atheism matters. Given the fact that many religious people think that religion matters very much so to society, it made me start thinking about why atheism may matter in the same way that religion is often considered very important to society. To me atheism matters because:
the promotion of reason, critical thinking and free thought.
progress of real scientific inquiry.
morals and laws that are formed by rational thought rather than just obeying moral strictures that are passed down by an authority figure.
Tolerance, diversity and peace over division.
Even if a divinity does exist, it seems rather irrelevant to ones life.
Religion is just a waste of time and energy that could be given to an actual person(one of my value judgements).
It allows for the admiration of beauty and love without needing to give credit to a supernatural entity.
Out of curiosity, to any other atheists if they thought that atheism matters to society and/or why it does.
I found an interesting video on youtube that talked about why atheism matters. Given the fact that many religious people think that religion matters very much so to society, it made me start thinking about why atheism may matter in the same way that religion is often considered very important to society. To me atheism matters because:
the promotion of reason, critical thinking and free thought.
progress of real scientific inquiry.
morals and laws that are formed by rational thought rather than just obeying moral strictures that are passed down by an authority figure.
Tolerance, diversity and peace over division.
Even if a divinity does exist, it seems rather irrelevant to ones life.
Religion is just a waste of time and energy that could be given to an actual person(one of my value judgements).
It allows for the admiration of beauty and love without needing to give credit to a supernatural entity.
Out of curiosity, to any other atheists if they thought that atheism matters to society and/or why it does.
Well, I'm not sure that my atheism matters much at all to the rest of society, my belief structure, or, my lack of belief structure, did not evolve as it has to keep others happy, to irritate them, or to give them food for thought. It has evolved because I have given a good deal of thought to the religious before I dismissed the notion. I did not renounce christer faith as an act of spite, I simply could not, continue to pretend to believe in christerisms. I really don't believe the fox gave up on those grapes, that sysiphus continues attempting to roll that stone up the mountain, that icarus died because of a sunny day or all the ills of human kind were the fault of pandora. The christer book is just another book of fables that somehow manages to get quite a few people to believe it. As a child I kinda believed because it was a nice story and sunday school gave us cookies and milk. Somewhere around the age of 13 I started changing the stories in my mind, they no longer made sense in their original form, soooooooo, I think the first one I mentally altered was Samson killing the lion with the jawbone of a politician. I had a great time with this type of diversion, I changed characters around, had Soloman dressing up in womens' clothes....and when I mentioned this to the sunday school teacher, I got fussed at. Actually I was expecting a laugh, the hissy fit took me by surprise and got me thinking that perhaps I was closer to the truth than I thought. Shortly thereafter I quit any pretense of believing in their mythology. The Atheist Dusty had arrived, he is still here, alive and kickin' as it were. I have been an active atheist for over 45 years, without regrets. In Hamlet, Polonius got at least one thing right when he said "to thine own self be true!"
I found an interesting video on youtube that talked about why atheism matters. Given the fact that many religious people think that religion matters very much so to society, it made me start thinking about why atheism may matter in the same way that religion is often considered very important to society. To me atheism matters because:
the promotion of reason, critical thinking and free thought.
progress of real scientific inquiry.
morals and laws that are formed by rational thought rather than just obeying moral strictures that are passed down by an authority figure.
Tolerance, diversity and peace over division.
Even if a divinity does exist, it seems rather irrelevant to ones life.
Religion is just a waste of time and energy that could be given to an actual person(one of my value judgements).
It allows for the admiration of beauty and love without needing to give credit to a supernatural entity.
Out of curiosity, to any other atheists if they thought that atheism matters to society and/or why it does.
I think this is going to be a short thread. Not much can be added to this succinct list of the advantages of reason over religion. All I can add is that I do not think that atheism should be, strictly speaking, credited with these things. This list exists only because of the shortcomings of faith-based approaches. The day religious belief dies is the day that atheism dies as well. Atheism exists only because of faith. When that day comes, all we are left with is reason.
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