Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Because it's a little hypocritical. If you don't believe in a God or an afterlife, there really is no reason to celebrate or grieve the death of a passed loved one. For an agnostic or atheist viewpoint, it's almost as if your family members never existed. They were living and then they died. They cease to exist anymore according to traditional atheist belief. If religion plays no role in most European's personal lives then there is no point in trying to have a funeral and sermon in a church and going to mass or to their graves. You can simply remember them in your memories like the other person said. What is the point of actually "going" somwhere to do it? Having their funeral and visiting their graves would only be in vain. If they wanted to take that moment to have a family or community bonding, why would they wait until a person died to do that?
Utterly and ignorantly false. Agnostics and atheists celebrate life as life. You don't need religion for that. Let me ask you this then. How on earth did humans get to this stage in our existence? I can bet you all the money I have it was NOT due to any one religion or belief set. We celebrate peoples' lives because they are alive, because of HUMAN bonds, not some hocus pocus gobbledygook of some higher power. Religion was formed around this human interaction, not the other way around. The ancient peoples of the world saw this and before they could develop psychologic studies and before the scientific method, they saw the world as hostile to them and humanity's existence at the whims of nature and "gods" that drove everything. It was a way of explaining the universe around us. Nothing more. They had a lot of time to do it too. Besides sex, eating, and doing some work, lots of time to sit around and think.
I just think this juxtaposition of CULTURE AND TRADITION versus THEOLOGICAL BELIEF (or lack thereof) just violates your own little box you try to put irreligious people into and you want to say "oh well it's hypocritical" or "oh it's like the loved ones never existed" because it's more convenient for you!
"Going somewhere" to visit them or bury them, etc. is a part of CULTURE. By no means is this the ONLY TIME that people choose to be a part of community. It's just atheistic foundations and irreligious customs of burial and marriage, etc. haven't caught on yet. Religious institutions offer a convenient framework to put forth human society's most cherished life transitions (and this is general, marriage, death rites, and coming of age, new years, etc. are worldwide phenomenons, not just Christian).
Culture evolves. And I think you fail to recognize that what is happening in Europe is more akin to a transitional phase, one that hasn't been seen in centuries, when a whole big group of peoples' belief sets change. It will be interesting to see what happens when people eventually do realize that it is probably better to celebrate in their own ways (i.e. a judge presiding over a marriage, or a family giving speeches at a death of a family member, instead of said hocus pocus currently celebrated).
Traditional atheist philosphy says that after you die, you cease to exist. So there would be no logical point in you physically going anywhere or doing anything to honor this loved one that you do not believe is anywhere but into a non-existence.
You can still honor someone's memory as an atheist. You may not see the point but I do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by allenk893
And just how was atheism here first when there has never been a documented atheist human culture anywhere in the world up until today? From ancient history, human beings have always had some kind of religion. So your incredibly inaccurate and highly misinformed if you believe atheism was here first. Atheism wouldn't exist without religion. So that automatically defaults religion as "being here first".
It was meant as a joke. Obviously from where I'm standing, as an atheist, "atheism" would be first. Because there are no deities and thus religion is makebelieve. You just read too much into my comment
Atheism is usually about rejection of deities which as you point out can't happen in that order.
That doesn't make any sense. Here in the U.S., bringing family together in one place is called a family reunion. And it is typically not held at a passed love one's grave.
Do you send out invitations to strangers when someone dies, and tell the family to stay home? How bizarre.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
11,974 posts, read 25,480,204 times
Reputation: 12187
I think what I like to call one's sense of their place in the world makes a big difference in how one deals with something like death.
First, there are widely different types of Christians. In American many Christians are very materialistic and individualistic. They look forward to heaven because there God will make them important individually (wiping their tears, tell them "well done", etc). Heaven is a place where they can continue their materialism that they enjoyed in life as the world's most affluent people.
I think for the "Group 1" people religion comforts them because they think they're deceased love one is now experiencing having great wealth and importantance.
Then you have your "Group 2" Christians, those who hold the Self Less view point. Basically they believe that contentment and helping those who are poor is the meaning of life - it's NOT all about them. Most people in "Group 2" are very environmentally conscious. I think they understand that if everyone never died then the earth would be over burdened and their could be no new humans born.
I think a "Group 2er" is comforted by the notion that the deceased is now in a place were there is equallity. Also, by dying the deceased has made it possible for new life to come about; part of the cycle of life which God instituted.
If you don't believe in a God or an afterlife, there really is no reason to celebrate or grieve the death of a passed loved one. For an agnostic or atheist viewpoint, it's almost as if your family members never existed.
What an ignorant, hateful thing to say. A person doesn't need to believe in an "afterlife" to value this life. In fact, if you think this life is all we get, then the short time you have with the people you love is that much more valuable because you know you won't see them again in some magical land in the sky.
What I am asking is: What are the grieving customs (or things people do when others are diagnosed with a major illness, etc.) in Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, etc.? If you don't believe in an afterlife, you obviously don't say "they're in a better place now". If you don't believe in a God, or some impersonal "life force", you probably don't put much faith in prayer. This is a question I've been curious about for a long time.
Im from Sweden but I have lived in the US for 12 years. In Sweden we are not religious like you are here in the States but when somebody close to us die we grieve just like you. We, most of us hope for something more, something better. Even if we dont come out and say it, we still wish for something and deep inside we "know" there is something beyond life on earth. Whatever that might be. The thing for me is, I don't know what will happen when I die. I don't believe any of us do. Not until I die I will know for sure.
Growing up in a very liberal country as far as religion goes, does not mean that I don't have these same feelings as a Christian American. They might not be based on Christianity but I still believe in something. I hope that my grandmother is in a better place waiting for me. I still pray. I don't pray before every meal or everyday for any old reason. But if my loved one was on the death bed I would pray. Maybe not to Jesus or God but to something. That is only human, to pray for something better.
Norway, Denmark, Iceland, we all believed in Tor, Odin and Freja and all the other mythology Gods. Then all of a sudden we became Christians or Catholics, and then by force, in the 1500, we became Lutherans.
Maybe Religion to us was showed down our throat so much over the centuries that we just had enough.
This is why I just cannot dedicate myself to any religion or any faith.
They hold civil funerals where they read poems and a disc jockey plays the favorite songs of the deceased, or so I hear. I imagine when his favorite song is Shake Ya Ass things things can get a bit anticlimatic.
Im from Sweden but I have lived in the US for 12 years. In Sweden we are not religious like you are here in the States but when somebody close to us die we grieve just like you. We, most of us hope for something more, something better. Even if we dont come out and say it, we still wish for something and deep inside we "know" there is something beyond life on earth. Whatever that might be.
If you believe that there is any existence at all for a person after that person dies (other than a decaying body), then that is by definition a religious belief.
Not necessarily Christian, but religious nonetheless. If you hope for "something more" or "something better," then you're expressing a RELIGIOUS hope.
Location: Kowaniec, Nowy Targ, Podhale. 666 m n.p.m.
355 posts, read 977,403 times
Reputation: 497
Quote:
Originally Posted by Trimac20
My personal opinion is non-Catholics/non-Christians shouldn't partake in it because it's meaningless and done in vain. Baptism and Holy Communion? What for? It's like applying for a job you have no intention of taking. Holidays and festivals I understand.
Whatever. Everyone knows you don't need to believe in God to be a good Catholic...
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
