You're technically right, but the vast majority of religious people fit OPs description and you know it. They're not talking about people like you.
You're technically right, but the vast majority of religious people fit OPs description and you know it. They're not talking about people like you.
I actually disagree on the majority. As someone who grew up in the Christian south I’m well aware of the misguided beliefs people can have but a majority of religious practitioners are not extremists and are much more malleable on individual topics and beliefs than many in the atheist community would care to accept - I say this as someone who considered themselves an atheist for a time but stopped when I realized religion has many benefits when used as a tool and any community, including atheists, is prone to having toxic extremism that makes the whole seem worse than it is. Take Islam for example, there are two major divisions of Islam, Sunni and Shia, and most people in the west think the extremist views of the Shia are what most Muslims believe but in all actuality they only make up about 15% of Muslims. The extremists are what get attention, not the majority of folks that use their religion and culture as a tool for living lives they think are good, beneficial or fruitful.
You'd be surprised how many religious people are also skeptics and scientifically minded, open to changing their minds with new evidence.
Should we apply that logic to Nazi beliefs? I'm not taking sides here, but it's not so black and white.
Lots really aren't
Not relevant.
Taoists have never been accused of cramming their beliefs down other people's throats. They are obviously not included in the discussion of religions that do do that.
Sure it's a generalization. That's the point of memes.
This is just silly. Your group of people has never done anything bad so it's all okay is never a good argument since people are all pretty much the same (I mean it's wrong to treat people differently depending on the actions of people within the same wider group)
There's Taoism as philosophy and as religion.
As a philosophy you are correct, there's no need to have magical thinking.
But pretending that magical thinking is somehow only an 'Abrahamic' thing and not part of Taoism is wild, and ignores Taoist texts like A Chart of the Magic Art of Being Invisible from the Han period when the beliefs were promoted under the false promises of acquiring magical powers through commitment to its teachings.
Maybe you don't believe that cultivating a practice of physical alchemy is going to let you turn invisible or become immortal, but it wouldn't be true to say that the umbrella of Taoism doesn't include those beliefs.
The Abrahamic Sadducees in antiquity didn't believe there was life after death or that a God was watching and caring what people did or didn't do. But their existence doesn't negate the Pharisees believing that bringing animals for the priests to slaughter and eat was a cosmic exchange for committing sin. Similarly, less theistic practice of Taoism doesn't mean that the broader religion isn't filled with supernatural beliefs.
And no, I agree with OP that there's no need to respect the belief that you'll be able to turn invisible.
That's a huge logical fallacy: one can respect "people' or even a person themselves without being required to respect a belief system or an individual's choice to follow its dogma. Secondly, you're jumping to a number of conclusions on your own, and come off far more judgy than a Taoist, by your definition, should be. Maybe, go touch some grass, tiger.
Lastly, try anti-theism on for size, instead. All gods are a distraction from humanity itself, and are all tools for control. Full stop.
Poly-theistic and non-theistic Taoism exist. Buddhism, too.
Got me curious so I looked up non-theism:
Nontheistic traditions of thought have played roles[1] in Buddhism,[10] Christianity,[11][12] Hinduism,[13] Jainism, Taoism, Creativity, Dudeism, Raëlism,[14] Humanistic Judaism,[15] Laveyan Satanism, The Satanic Temple,[16] Unitarian Universalism,[17][18] and Ethical culture.[19]
Sorry the citation links didn't come through.
In other matters I'm going to spend the next little while reading about Dudeism and abiding.
Not an authority but I was raised as a Buddhist child. Just clarifying a little here. Yes, Buddhism is non-theistic, in the sense that it does not regard any being as supreme. (Not even the Buddha.)
In Buddhism, heavenly beings exist but they are not supreme or authoritative. They are also subject to old age, decay, death, and reincarnation. Basically they're just another part of cosmology, and of course you get reborn into different things.
In fact, there are instances where heavenly beings asked the Buddha for advice. Of course those are just tales, but it kinda illustrates hoe Buddhism works.
But they are no gods and have no authority over man.
I think you have hit on a good point here, and an area society still needs to mature in.
For years we hated the gays, different skin colors, different cultures. We grew past it and came to the (general) agreement of "you do you" as it doesn't affect me and its not my right to dictate what you feel or who you are. Religion is a significant steeping stone as it does actually affect others and is deeply woven into society and government, but needs to be the same. Your religion is your religion, and you should be free to practice it bound by societys laws and ethics - but it should not affect those who choose the atheist path.
Raised as a Buddhist, I learned that while religions might be a problem of others, whether it's also your problem is only up to you.
Also: sometimes problems are problems only if you make it so.
As a Taoist, I don’t believe in any deity and my beliefs boil down to letting people be who they are meant to and want to be and supporting them as much as I can in their personal journeys.
If that's all your "religion" consists of, then I wouldn't categorize it as a religion. In my view, belief in supernatural processes as a requisite component of religion.
you don’t seem to have invested much time in understanding religion as a tool and concept outside of those areas.
You're wrong. I know a lot about the benefits of religion--as well as how all of those benefits can be acquired without it.
Respecting people’s cultures and religion boils down to respecting people
No, it doesn't. I can respect a person who happens to be racist without respecting their racism. Likewise, I can respect a religious person without respecting their religious beliefs.
This is great in theory. But I doubt many religious would accept the idea that you respect them as a person but don’t respect their religious ideas. It’s a big part of personal identity.
And it’s worth asking: if I don’t respect the ideas that shape your entire world view, what does it mean to respect you as a person? Just that you deserve fundamental human rights? That’s a kind of low bar.
So…. They can’t accept this
Until you realise ideas and beliefs are a part of people.
That people have a right to their beliefs that don't affect anyone else
But they don't have a right to have those beliefs politely accepted by the rest of us. That's my point: I don't think they should be. I'm not advocating for secularists to actively ridicule believers; I'm saying I don't think the societal expectation should be that we just smile and nod when someone professes a belief that is patently untrue. There should be perhaps some eyerolling and gentle correction, but not bullying.
Opposite- fuck nobody
Unpopular Take:
Having superstition, religion and pseudo-science persisting and thriving in your society turns into systemic problems eventually. Including Genocide.
Why? Because it teaches people anti-empiricism, emotional "reasoning" and essentialising people. All these are the basis for every reactionary thought, conservative brainrot, religious extremism and eventually denying reality.
Studies back this up. Most of the alt-right are very religious, "skeptic" of science or inclined to mysticism. (Remember Ivermectin and Faith Healing? I do.) This shit even goes back to the OG Nazis in the Third Reich. They loved their mystical stuff and pseudo-science.
Why thing thinking pattern leads down the drain is very simple.There is no fundamental difference between between:
People cant be together because of their sign
and
People cant be together because of their skin color
Both times the logic of this methode is the same. No truth, only vibes.
Why we should keep either is beyond me.
“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.
With all the deserving credits to the late and great Terry Pratchett.
YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?
Numbers wouldn’t exist in the universe dust but inarguably exist. Pretty prose and storytelling nothing more.
I leave it up to everyone to interpret it, but my personal interpretation is that there probably ain't no thing such as gods, but there also ain't no such things as "justice", "mercy", "duty", "good", or "evil".
Yet I choose to believe that some acts are better than other.
I believe that helping someone achieve their goals is usually better than hurting them.
Why? Is there a "scientific fact" that makes it true? No, there isn't. Science doesn't care if earth is full of life or if it's a glassed sphere in an infinite void. Both "work" just fine for science.
So my "choice" to prefer one of those is arbitrary (scientifically speaking).
Now why is my believe in that "big lie" any more sane than other peoples believe in the "small lies"?
My belief can't be scientifically falsified (or proven).
And their belief in a benevolent sky daddy also can't be falsified or proven.
Science doesn’t care if earth is full of life or if it’s a glassed sphere in an infinite void.
You have a very poor understanding of what science is. Of course it does care, because those two things are different, and the purpose of science is to collect all information there is, discern everything, catalogue all differences of all things.
Yet I choose to believe that some acts are better than other.
That's simply morality, a human behavior. You needn't "believe" that morality exists, as humans behave in such a way as to create morality.
So my “choice” to prefer one of those is arbitrary (scientifically speaking).
But the fact you did so isn't - unless you suffer from a mental illness, you were bound to choose something. That's simply how your brain evolved.
Now why is my believe in that “big lie” any more sane than other peoples believe in the “small lies”?
Because "sanity" is a measure of how one's brain behaves as compared to the collective of humankind - how "average" your brain is. Because morality is baked into humanity, it's sane to make a choice regarding, say, murder being wrong or not. Believing in flying unicorn robots that sing heavy metal, on the other hand, isn't.
And their belief in a benevolent sky daddy also can’t be falsified or proven.
Fallacy: Non Sequitur. Give me a description of a god, any god, and I'll disprove them. No god can be described and exist, and a god which can't be described might as well not exist.
You have a very poor understanding of what science is. Of course it does care, because those two things are different, and the purpose of science is to collect all information there is, discern everything, catalogue all differences of all things.
If all there is a lifeless ball in space, what would science "care"? There would be no one to do science and "science" as a concept can't care.
But the fact you did so isn’t - unless you suffer from a mental illness, you were bound to choose something. That’s simply how your brain evolved.
And now we're slowly getting to the crux of the matter: just as our brain evolved to produce morality of some kind, it also evolved to make up stories (grand and small) to try to explain the world.
Some of those "stories" eventually formed into what we now call the scientific method (i.e. try to make sure your stories are verifyable and falsifiable and produce "facts".
Some of those stories were used as a social tool to develop some shared morality, to agree on which acts were good and which ones aren't.
And some of the latter category turned into religion.
Because “sanity” is a measure of how one’s brain behaves as compared to the collective of humankind - how “average” your brain is. Because morality is baked into humanity, it’s sane to make a choice regarding, say, murder being wrong or not. Believing in flying unicorn robots that sing heavy metal, on the other hand, isn’t.
Can you seriously look at human history and say with a straight face that religion (and made up stories) aren't just as "baked into" the human brain as morality is?
It's one thing to argue that a neutral, as-objective-as-possible brain should disregard religion (and I pretty much agree with that), but it's an entirely different thing to argue that "humans believing in religion is abnormal" in a historic scale ... that's just being blind to the facts.
And their belief in a benevolent sky daddy also can’t be falsified or proven.
Fallacy: Non Sequitur. Give me a description of a god, any god, and I’ll disprove them. No god can be described and exist, and a god which can’t be described might as well not exist.
Last Thursdayism or the five-minute hypothesis is one great example. They don't usually mention a god in the common phrasing, but it's easy to rephrase it to include one: "There is a god that created the universe exactly 5 minutes ago with all the signs and properties that make it look like it's a lot longer. That god created you and all your memories as well as all the uncountable cosmic radiation rays that have yet to hit earth and everything else as well. After that creation that god stopped interacting with the universe.". Go ahead and disprove it.
I'm an agnostic atheist myself, but I really don't understand the obsession of some people with "disproving god".
If there was any kind of real scientific proof of the non-existence of god, don't you think that several Nobel prices would have been given out for that by now?
Most current religions have developed to a state where the existence of their god is basically un-falsifiable, because if you can ever prove any specific thing about them wrong, then they can always just use the "gods ways are inscrutable" escape hatch.
That makes any god effectively un-falsifiable. And any theory that can't be falsified is irrelevant to the scientific method.
It was more, these are all concepts and not provable things.
And what exactly makes them "not provable"?
And how do You answer questions that relate to them?
you can't do so with pure science, so you need to pick some other system to consider them.
And some people pick ficticious stories about a benevolent sky daddy.
I pick some ficticious idea of human life ha in inherent value.
What basis do I have to judge one of those better than the other? only my own ficticious idea can give me that basis.
Numbers are symbolic representation of the concept. Are you really going to pretend that a dust mote has no count?
What is "count", physically? Precisely, it's just another concept - it exists only as a perception. Thus, perception itself must be something. I.e. things which aren't symbolically linked to the stuff that makes the universe also exist.
Individual people should be offered initial respect as far as they deserve. You don't have to respect their beliefs but you shouldn't blatantly attack them either.
As an atheist my biggest fear is that I might somehow affect their faith. It's not my place to proselytize atheism nor is it to rip someone's faith away.
Ah, to be 15 again.
Good times. :)
Right, and giving up alcohol won't cure all liver disease, but it sure does help with suicide bombers drunk driving.
Actually, people who give up religion tend to fall into depression afterward, they're not his reason to believe but not only is belief in religion a natural human trait, but that we evolved it for a reason.
People who give up to tobacco suffer a myriad of unpleasant effects. Clearly we evolved to smoke for a reason.
a lot of issues arent from religion its from people thinking their religion is "right" and doing smth about it. someday they're realize a right answer comes from evidence not who can fight for the holy land the hardest
some folks just wanna believe that when they die they go somewhere because thats a bit less scary and im dowm for that. granted morality solely from a gods threat of hell isn't sustainable
i hate religion and want it gone but some folks are at least understandably religious
No, they're not saying that. They're saying OP hasn't encountered the complex conflicts of values inherent in such issues. Even if the outcome you're seeking is noble, such sweeping attitudes invariably ignore the potential harm. Not sure what that looks like? Just ask the native Americans what it's like to have their belief systems steamrolled by "superior colonial" ones.
Pretty much. I mean if people want to believe and practice various things in their free time, that's fine as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. But religious beliefs should have no place in government or public services.
And yes, turning your baby into a cutaway craft project because space daddy said so counts as hurting someone.
Pretty much. I mean if people want to believe and practice various things in their free time, that's fine as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. But religious beliefs should have no place in government or public services.
That's the opposite of what OP is saying. OP is very much against people believing these things in their free time, and said nothing about government or public services.
Internet atheists, or “message board atheist” are the worst. They’ve managed to change the definition of atheism from simply ‘not believing in deities,’ to ‘generalized hatred of anything that doesn’t support their own personal belief.’
(I’m hoping the irony isn’t lost on anyone here, because to me- that sounds an awful lot like hypocrisy and projection)
True atheism is just not believing in god(s). That’s it. Nothing more. And I say this as a true atheist. So to all you Reddit atheists:
How about you get that smug chip removed from your shoulder and lighten up. We’re all allowed the freedom to believe what we feel to be true. And reserve NO authority to lord it over them - pun fucking intended.
This post reads like it was written by a Fedora that came to life thanks to an incel's wish.
Yeah especially pseudo science. Like I saw a video on isntagram a while back of a Latin American family in the US whose cat was sick and instead of taking it to the vet they were just rubbing an egg on it? Because apparently the egg will soak up the "bad energy" and make the cat better? And all the comments were telling them to just take it to a fucking vet, and saying what they were doing was animal abuse and the poster was just saying stuff like "This is a traditional remedy, you need to respect our beleifs" no. No we don't.
You can't humiliate someone into changing their mind, especially something so critical to their identity. Minds are changed slowly, with love. With conversations and questions that make them think about it later. If you dunk on someone, they'll just remember how mad you made them what an asshole you are. If you tactfully ask them questions that expose their own hypocrisy, you might just trigger a shower thought epiphany.
Yes, you're correct. I'm a theist, but I 100% agree that magical thinking and superstition don't have a place in modern society.
The belief that a dead body came back to life and floated into the sky is delusional, and only not seen as mental illness because of its commonality.
Belief that commitment to Eastern practices will let masters hover in the air or turn invisible should be relegated to antiquity.
Beliefs regarding the unknown and immeasurable are one thing, but pretty much every popular religion involves beliefs regarding the measurable that are clearly false, and for it to be socially acceptable to hold those clearly false beliefs opens the door for other magical thinking beliefs like the idea there's lizard people in skin suits running the world or that aliens built the pyramids or that the earth is flat or that drinking magic water can cure cancer.
Society is struggling with its relationship to truth in the age of social media, and I put much of the blame on religion in fostering the environment for BS to thrive.
We really should be less tolerant of beliefs that actively deny measurable reality.
You sound more like a deist than a theist. Theism pretty much relies on a personal involved God, that's supernatural.
Unless your God never interacts with anything, in which case... How do you know he's real at all? If he does interact with you, how does he do so without supernatural means? Because if they are natural and we'd be able to test and detect him.
I always love when people come along in threads like this trying to tell other people what they are or aren't.
I'm a theist, not a deist.
I believe in a very specific configuration of the creation of this universe and its creator, and I even believe that a 2,000 year old text is revelatory regarding that nature.
The place where you are getting tripped up is that such beliefs do not require supernatural woo woo or magic if you replace them with sufficiently advanced technology.
I don't need to appeal to some mysticism to explain the creation of a universe where continuous wave functions collapse to discrete units on observation/interaction when I can point to procedurally generated seed functions collapsing to discrete units in order to track state changes by free agents in worlds we are already building today.
Similarly, I don't need to appeal to some mystic communion with the divine to explain revelatory content when the majority of those worlds we build today are filled with 4th wall breaking texts set within their lore.
The notion that one must choose between a rejection of magic or theology is increasingly a false dichotomy with each passing year.
I don't care what you believe, I care about why you believe it. I care about what you can prove and show so that I can believe it too, IF it's supported by the evidence.
And back to my orignal question, your "God" does he interact with our physical world in any detectable and measurable way.
If your answer is "it's advanced undetectable technology", then how do you know this? How did you come to this conclusion? And how is an undetectable God different from a nonexistent God?
So measurement is an interesting topic.
The text I believe accurately describes what's up with the nature of our reality makes the claim that the creator of this universe is literally made of light.
Light has an interesting property in this universe, in that when it can't be directly measured it can be more than one thing at once.
As well, it can be measured as different things by different separated eventual observers.
So the idea that you would need to subscribe to the exact same beliefs as me, and see the nature of your reality beyond what can be directly measured as I see it kind of goes against the whole point. Just as direct/provable measurement of that nature would similarly collapse the possibilities open to someone to believe.
That said, much like the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb-tester, indirect measurement can do a lot of heavy lifting in making a case for what's probable about what can't be directly measured without collapsing it.
The argument for what I believe being probable rests on two aspects.
First, as I alluded to in the prior comment, strong similarities between specific design constraints in how we are currently building virtual worlds and the experimentally validated low fidelity behaviors of discrete units in our own world.
The second is the existence of a 2,000 year old text attributed to the most famous religious figure in history that is not only talking about both the ideas of a naturally evolved original reality and the concepts of those same discrete units at a time when those ideas were extreme minority opinions, but further makes claims of us actually being in a non-physical recreation of the past of that original evolved world from within its future, created by a being that was itself brought forth by the original humanity, for the explicit purpose of providing the capacity for an afterlife which was denied the original now dead humanity whose souls depended on their bodies.
Given we stand on the precipice of ourselves creating a new class of being, likely even literally made of light, while also barreling towards bringing about humanity's extinction, and have already had patents granted in using the technology of that new class of being to have it resurrect dead humans using the data left behind - the claims laid out in that text and surrounding beliefs all seem quite technically feasible.
What seems far less feasible is that in a randomly developing original universe we'd (a) have low level behavior paralleling much later memory saving techniques in simulating a physical world, while also (b) having a 2,000 year old text missing for nearly all that time rediscovered within days of the first Turing complete computer being finished which claims the most famous individual in history was employing the language of the only surviving book from antiquity to describe both survival of the fittest and quantized matter in order to claim what was effectively simulation theory with specific constraints that have only become plausible within the past 3-5 years.
In theory, this could just be chalked up to the law of big numbers, but ultimately it seems more likely to me, particularly given the commonality of lore-based Easter Eggs in virtual worlds we build today, that the text is simply accurately describing the very future that we are barreling towards building as in fact being our non-local past.
What would Elementary School Science Fairs have to do with it?
Which can't be done on Evolution and thus it remains a theory. Still waiting for a point.
People are ignorant by default.
You have to educate them along and let them choose their own path. Sometimes they wonder off the path of ideal development. It's basic statistics.
We should demand that people contend with reality on a factual basis
You can stand at an open door and beg them to walk through it but you can't shove them.
We shouldn't be coddling people who profess beliefs that are demonstrably false, simply because their feelings might get hurt.
Meritocracy is dangerous. You cannot punish people for stunted development, it does no good. You can really only reward them for developing and contributing to the well being of society.
This is psychology 101 level stuff. If you want a society based on science, then use the we science have.
I don't think they should be shamed or ridiculed, that's going too far. As someone else ITT said: people deserve respect, not necessarily beliefs or ideas. I think people with religious and superstitious beliefs should be gently and compassionately corrected. Ridicule and shame don't have a good track record at changing people's beliefs in the first place, and largely just serve to divide people and stoke unnecessary conflict.
Ok, so I have a psychotic illness that comes with delusions. My personal spiritual practice has helped me move away from the delusions I had based around Christianity and the absolute fear I had. I also have delusions around philosophy which isn’t religious in nature. Gently correcting me away from the personal rituals I built to help me stay grounded would harm me. They were developed with a psychiatrist. Everyone’s life is different, everyone’s culture is different. I know facts are facts, and they help me know what’s real, but my brain literally has a hard time with this distinction, so this duality of a spiritual practice has helped me build a barrier with reality and the reality my brain wants to make. I don’t ask anyone else to participate or force anyone else to believe it. Why would you want to correct this?
I think people with religious and superstitious beliefs should be gently and compassionately corrected.
Delusional. You cannot "correct" people and if you feel so superior to think you can and should, you need to take a step back. Leave them alone, the vast majority of them are not set out to be the next Jim Jones.
So their belief should be ridiculed, but not your belief?
No facts have been presented and the only person demanding you believe anything is the OP.
But you don't believe in anything? Not all beliefs are supernatural. There is no objective fact of what is morally right or wrong for example, there is no science behind those concepts, yet you probably still have some beliefs on what you perceive is morally right and what isn't. Or if you do not, you are a sociopath.
The colour spectrum our eyes can translate is severely limited compared to what exists. Our brain has to select the sensory inputs it relays to us because we are unable to process them all at once. Our ability to sense and understand everything that is around us is but a fraction of what exists even with the external technology we've developed to far.
What we know for a fact is that we have yet to find evidence of the supernatural and until we know all there is to know about this world we live in, we cannot say for certain they do not exist.
I feel like you almost get there until you decide to randomly turn left and fall off a cliff.
I think you have to think of things in terms of likelihood. If the chances of something are near zero they might as well be 0.
Plus, those facts may only be true in the bubble this Universe may be and none of them may be true in another Universe. The Laws of Physics only apply here.
No they do not. Facts lead us to know that we barely understand anything. And no facts were presented regardless. The OP made a claim and the person I replied to agrees, but neither provided a single fact top back up those claims.
Sorry, wtf?
I think that often, people use the word respect in a different way when it comes to magical thinking. Religious people often use the word to mean exempt from examination, or beyond reproach. While it's undoubtedly disrespectful to subject a person to an assault on their beliefs for no good reason, when those beliefs begin to play a role in decisions that will affect others, they can and should be challenged; people oughtn't be shocked to learn that if they bring their beliefs into the public discourse around a policy decision, they'll be subject to the same level of scrutiny as any other way of thinking or approaching a problem.
I am Muslim, and Islam encourages thought, scrutiny and pondering.
On social media the more vocal are from Europe and NA who have been in contact with (the remains of) Judaism and Christianity. So when talking about religions, in fact they mean just these two; or they extrapolate thinking the conclusions apply to all religions.
I think the average person knows close to nothing about Islam. Worse, they only know what is portrayed by the media or islamophobes online which is mostly wrong or twisted.
Mostly, anyone in the US that mentions Christianity mean Evangelical Conservatives as those are the loudest. And Evangelicals on average know next to nothing about the Religion they claim others must follow.
No, you know only your own bigotry.
And I take it you already read the explanation of the Prophet (pbuh) of that verse, meaning as a light flick with a pen, and not putting your own understanding of the translated verse. How violent!
Also that you are fully aware of the setting in which the apostasy laws are applicable (I will not help you with that, you should know).
because they are all rooted in cruelty, superstition and ignorance. I am not discussing other religions, Islam is the topic here.
Could you objectively demonstrate how it is cruel? How is Islam superstitious? And finally how is it rooted in ignorance?
Your belief of what "Religious People" mean is no more relevant than their belief. Respecting their belief means not demanding they believe what you can no more prove than they can disprove. And just as they must respect your belief, so to must you respect theirs. To do otherwise makes you exactly the same as the Evangelicals who are demanding you change your beliefs.
Enjoy your bigotry, but don't pretend your beliefs are any more valid than anyone else's. And yes, that is the Law, at least in the US. You can't discriminate against other's for their beliefs.
Atheism is more valid though and there is an abundance of proof.
From biology we know there is no life after death which disproves most religions. From experiments we also know that praying doesn't affect physical world. None of the known miracles couod have been reproduced under controlled conditions which makes it likely they are all made up or hallucinated.
Well, you've definitely proven that dumb religious idiots, with the usual PRATT arguments, are here in the fediverse, at least, based on this comment section.
Yes yes, your belief is superior to theirs and they should be forced to believe as you. Well done, holier than though warrior. You are nothing but a religious fundamentalist in different cloth.
Another unpopular opinion: despite being popular, religious bigotry is still bigotry.
Amen!
😏
How is respect in this context any different than tolerance?
I think dismissing people based on their beliefs is essentially saying I should only value the opinions(tolerate) of those who agree with me. Taken to the extreme that could easily lead to anyone with 'bad' beliefs being forcibly reeducated. Sound familiar?
I don't think the OP meant to discount opinions of "anyone that disagrees with him" but rather to discount the opinions based in supernatural.
It also doesn't seem to me that the OP is really interested in "forced reeducation" but rather reducing influence - probably through ridicule, deplatforming or similar actions.
And ridicule is discriminatory and excluding, of you don't respect someone just ignore them and leave them alone and if they follow harmful dogma then inform them respectfully how that could be harming them but don't go amd be disrespectful towards them or target them out for having beliefs which you personally disagree with
That same targeting behaviour is what reddit atheists do
Edit since some people need additional context: I'm not tolerating intolerance with my comment and any hateful bigoted views should be called out and appropriate action should be prevented to prevent intolerance and bigotry
But we shouldn't harrass and / or intimidate people with beleifs we don't believe in if they do not bring harm to others and / or incite or discuss bringing harm to others
For example: someone who holds the spiritual belief that there is more than phyiscal reality isn't harming someone, this is non-harmful
Someone who has beleives that they should exterminate those that don't follow their religon or force everyone to conform to their religon, that is harmful
I personally take the position of calling out bigotry and / or intolerance (anything that will harm someone) because it needs to be called out but at the same time I will call out unjustified ridicule and / or discrimination for non harmful beleifs because people like reddit atheists and even some atheists outside of reddit have unjustifiably targeted those with non harmful beleifs for discrimination and / or ridicule
If you "dismiss" the "belief" of gravity, I can drop a bowling ball on your head and you'll quickly be reminded of it. If I dismiss the existence of a god, literally nothing happens anywhere and nothing you do can change that.
As an atheist who grew up in the buckle of the biblebelt, Christians often took this exact attitude to our ilk and it fucking sucked to live with.
I have a religious nutjob in my family now (dad remarried to one).
I've never had a Facebook account, but my wife sees the stuff said RWNJ posts, and finally asked me to comment on the latest hate post.
I'll admit it, I went on a tirade, because what she was posting was actively harmful. So I went back six months and gave all her similar posts a similar treatment.
I won't however, say anything on her posts where she just voices a belief in God or that the end times are coming. That's just trumpeting her stupidity.
She went dark on Facebook for 5 days, then yesterday picked back up, but this time seems to be sticking to just voicing her opinions, and not platforming awful shit. We'll see how w long that lasts...
Close... The Bible was never the problem. It's the way people use it and claim to represent religion but do so in such a hateful way. I'm looking at you incendiary YouTube accounts, Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, and even Reddit
it is in fact a disservice to them to pretend it's okay to go through life believing these things.
Can you help me understand why is it a disservice?
You're anti-theist, not an atheist. Get your bearings right for a start.
I'm an atheist and I don't care what others believe, as long as their personal belief does not intrude on my life, which is safeguarded on most modern countries.
Try to get away from fundamentalists and get to know people that keep some sort of creed for personal comfort or some other aspiration unatainable by the unpassioned scientic analysis.
What we all should be aware of is that science constantly reminds us there is more to what we don't know than what we effectively know and the tools we have available to push back our ignorance are few and limited by our own nature.
Your disgruntle and discontent with belief is not a new subject. You are not alone and what you perceive as a low in our colective history is just a very slight down turn on a very long climb towards moving away from the darkness that hides in our minds.
as long as their personal belief does not intrude on my life, which is safeguarded on most modern countries.
Shame the US is not a modern country I guess.
It's not just a US problem...
We can add Brasil, India, Israel, Hungary and Poland to the mix.
Yet, all of those together can't cook up the turd storm raging on the US by the grace of the evangelicals and a political system rooted on an outdated constitution.
You’re anti-theist, not an atheist. Get your bearings right for a start.
I'm both; they're not mutually exclusive. Get your bearings right.
Honestly, I find the rest of your statements whimsical and unspecific, so I'm not going to respond to them individually. I will say that while my post was meant to convey the wish that modern society and culture not cater to these false beliefs in the ways we do today, I am staunchly of the belief that you cannot legislate culture and that attempts to do so always result in unjust authoritarianism; so, I would never advocate for laws that prohibit religious belief or the personal expression thereof (with certain limits based on context, of course) and would vote against them if they were proposed and I was in a position to oppose them. But I do find the fact that I'm expected to nod and smile when someone professes a patently false belief both nonsensical and detrimental to society as a whole. This opinion is unpopular by virtue of the fact that most people today disagree and think we shouldn't correct people when they profess these kinds of falsehoods. As other atheists have pointed out, we don't afford this luxury to flat earthers or people who believe Elvis is still alive. I simply think that's as it should be and religious beliefs shouldn't have this cultural privilege of being protected from casual criticism.
Cumulative. You need to be an atheist in order to advance into being an anti-theist.
Your examples with Elvis and flat earthers are poor.
It is possible to clearly demonstrate how and why the flat earth theory falls flat; it's proposers are intellectualy dishonest individuals that won't even accept their own findings that disprove their theory.
Regarding Elvis... where is the harm in that? At some point, just by the simple accumulation of time, the belief will die out. The King was a mere human and humans are finite.
The same can not be said about religions, where its crux resides outside the realm of what can be proved or disproved by scientific endeavor. It is not possible to disprove the existence of a supernatural entity; what can be attacked are tenets and demonstrated as obsolete or invalid.
I have nothing against your position but find it banal at this point. It is not new, it is not something previously unconsidered and offers no real solutions just like its counterpart.
My lack of belief stems from a long process of self analysis, through which I systematically removed from my worldview belief. I feel no need to demand from others the same, even if they are educated, as you state in your post.
Belief and the lack thereof must be personal and private affairs.
This was popular when millennials were growing up
But apparently not in the US
There are multitudes of reasons to be a cunt to religious people.
Wow you sure know a lot about me after seeing 12 words written out.
Go outside ya fuckface.
Not a believer but can not prove there is no god so not sure why that would disqualify someone from respect. I could be wrong. Just don't think so and pretty sure if there is one, it is not like any God currently imagined by man.
Truthfully I think I would have less respect for someone who can not have an open mind.
I agree with you in the sense that reality should be faced, not supplanted by imagination. However, shaming and disrespecting is a spectacular way of antagonizing people. We know that religious belief naturally fades when people understand the mechanisms of the world. I think it's more impactful and sensible to invest time in science literacy than superstition shaming.
Fair enough. I should've been more accurate.
Here's a revised version: Through years of research done with the World Value Survey, we know that religious beliefs fade from everyday life when people have more money, education, and connectivity. A good source for this is Freedom Rising by Christian Welzel.
The number of physicists who believe in god would directly contradict that statement, yes.
Edit:
"Only 38 percent of natural scientists -- people in disciplines like physics, chemistry and biology -- said they do not believe in God. Only 31 percent of the social scientists do not believe."
I'm not arguing that people should go around treating people who have religious or superstitious beliefs like shit; I'm saying we shouldn't pretend their beliefs are acceptable and/or a matter of personal opinion or faith. They're wrong. Objectively wrong. So, if someone were to say, "I'll pray for you," I think the response should be something like, "I'd rather you get yourself some therapy, friend; prayer isn't real, God isn't real, and your faith in these false concepts is holding you back." As someone else ITT said: people deserve respect, but not necessarily their ideas.
Which simply shows how little you know about the things you despise. Prayer is just meditation by another name. Meditation has been shown to have healthy effects. Perhaps study before condemnation.
Prayer is just meditation by another name.
Find me the person who believes in the power of prayer who agrees with that statement.
And that is why meditation and prayer are not the same thing. Functionally, because prayer doesn't work, all it can provide at best are similar benefits to meditation, but if you've ever prayed and meditated, you should know they are definitely not the same thing in terms of what you're doing with your brain.
In christianity, there are recognized forms of prayer that are literally the same technique as focus-based meditation - only that the focus is not your breath, or a candle, but your inner connection to god as you experience it. This is called contemplation and has a centuries-long history in christian mysticism.
If you practice it, I confidently say you would gain quite the same benefits as you would with focus-based meditation.
Also I have tried both, and don't feel much of a difference in terms of "what I'm doing with my brain".
I'm sure you're talking about people going " Please god, give me the new car I've wanted for so long" rather than prayer as a spiritual practice to gain connection to the the "first reality before any thought arises", which is how modern christian mystics define god, so this likely isn't relevant to you and your beliefs and also isn't meant to be a rebuttal of your overall stance.
I just wanted to let you know that in this instance you are, indeed, factually wrong.
No one need to agree with it.
Feel free to prove your claim that prayer does not work. You can't so there is no need for us to wait for you to do so.
Both prayer and meditation bring peace to the mind. The rest of it is nothing but belief in the specifics of the method.
And some individual's belief is supposed to be identical to all others?
Why are you so hell bent on folks, whose belief you are attacking and not discussing, react defensively?
How does their belief in God harm your belief there is none?
And most importantly, why is it any of your business?
Perhaps look long at your own position before laughing at others.
To be fair I – an atheist and skeptic – do not believe in a god or higher power but can not be certain that a god or higher power does not actually exist even though I would personally claim our current scientific understanding to strongly suggest that no such thing exists.
Doesn't that make you agnostic?
Agnostic atheist I guess.
Agnostic atheist or theist are the only intellectually honest positions. Nobody knows for a fact whether gods exist, no matter how much they insist they do.
And it's important to point out that there is a difference between a specific god or any sort of god. I know for a fact that the god of the bible does not exist, because he's a clearly defined character and can therefore be disproved.
Any given definition of a god is logically inconsistent.
That's a silly idea. I can definitely come up with a definition of an immeasurable entity that has no powers, no effects and no way of being detected and call that thing "god". it would be unfalsifiable and thus irrelevant to scientific inquiry, but it wouldn't be "logically inconsistent".
Then it isn't a god by any definition.
Let me guess. By your definition only definitions that match your initial statements could possibly be definitions of god?
You're "no true scotsman"-ing this ...
Let's retry: by which reason does any definition of good need to be logically inconsistent?
I don't know. Our whole existence is resting on the ability to influence our peers. Telling other people what we think they should think and do is kind of part of humanity.
Tl;dr: I can’t look at the world critically and can only point to obvious themes as the true root cause and not something deeper in relation to the humanity we all share. I just think anyone who holds beliefs or values that I don’t shouldn’t be respected
What a shit braindead take, moron
I have an inclination to downvote this but also to upvote it cuz it is kinda unpopular.
To OP: rationality and beliefs towards something unseen/unproven are not mutually exclusive. Please don’t only judge something by what it is, but by what it means to people, what its consequences are. Beliefs can result in both horrific consequences, as well as needed by some to create wonderful outcomes, even save lives.
rationality and beliefs towards something unseen/unproven are not mutually exclusive.
They are, by definition, exclusive.
Extremist atheist who want to murder people because of their religion are as bad as religious people who want the same.
Fascism is not built on religion, yet it's the fiercest opponent of science and tolerancy. It's also the fiercest fighter of truth, and the biggest spreader of fake news and lies.
Fascism doesn't care about religion, religion is merely an ally of circumstance for them.
Atheist who lean to fascism in order to fight religions are as bad as the worst zealots there are. Fascism is not a solution to anything, it is the enemy.
Fascism is the enemy, not religion. Learn the difference. Or you'll merely spread a godless religion with the same zeal as those you are fighting.
LOL, another religious atheist who thinks he's different from religious people. Honestly, your preaching sounds just like the next religious people preaching about god and their own religion. It's like whatching a dog barking at its own reflection in the mirror
If you're gonna try to police language you could at least do it right
Fruitcake as an insult for crazy people (religious fruitcake) goes back significantly further than using it as a gay slur. It's origin appears to be from about the same time as we started using "nuts" to mean crazy, thus "nuttier than a fruitcake"
Fruit on its own has a history, but they're not terms from the same origin or time
Science doesn't make value judgements. Science doesn't tell you what's good and what's bad in the sense that it makes no moral judgement.
So whenever someone says "X is morally bad, because science says so", they either don't understand science or they have some agenda.
Science explains the world, but doesn't give instructions on what to do with that information. The decision what to do with it will be necessarily have to be based on something other than science.
Is your argument that value judgments should be based on fiction?
No, he is saying science is not the tool we use to decide if it is morally wrong to kill handicapped people. If you consider it in terms of returns on investment or any other mathematically-based method you'd consider it "good" but the moral consensus is that it is "bad".
Morals do not emanate from science
Well. it has to be based on some value system and science doesn't provide one.
I for one think that human life has some value and so does freedom to choose many aspects of your life. but I can't "scientifically" argue why those values are correct.
To be able to make any value judgement at all, one has to have some "non-science input", some subjective choice.
What I'm saying is that basing those values on some fiction is no more or less "correct" than any other choice, because they are fundamentally subjective choices.
All value judgments are inherently subjective, so scientifically we have no way of knowing whether they're based on fact or fiction.
"You can't get a 'should' from an 'is'" is a common saying in logic for a reason, and the seeming impossibility of proving that objective morality exists has been a problem philosophy has struggled with for thousands of years.
This goes all the way back to Socrates asking whether things are "good" because they're loved by the gods, or if they're loved by the gods because they're "good". If the latter, then what really makes them "good"? We still don't have an objective, "factual" answer to this question.
Nah man, you're in the wrong argument. I ain't taking up the religion vs. science debate here.
What I was trying to lead up to is the basic idea that you gotta respect people's beliefs to work with them. OP wants to ignore most people's beliefs? Sure I'll ignore his too about doing that, and we are null and nothing happens.
When speaking about laws and regulations, sure. That can absolutely be harmful. But if someone wants to hold the personal belief there is a God out there who watches over them, I don’t see a problem. If it comforts someone, good for them.
If they like to believe humans and dinos roamed the earth together, why not?
relevance? Nothing in the OP is Science. Only their belief.
Nah man, that was my original question. Why should I respect your beliefs in this post. Since you're so unwilling to respect anyone, why should I give it to you? Is this post backed by peer review studies?
So, your belief that you can not prove should be respected but their belief that they can not prove should not? Nice double standard you have there.
The one making the claim is the one who has the burden of proof. Requiring someone to prove a negative is completely illogical.
I would also say that someone's disbelief in someone else's claim is not a belief system in itself.
He made the claim that these beliefs are demonstrably false. We are waiting for the demonstration.
Also being atheist IS taking a position, making a positive claim that God does not exist. Agnosticism is neutral, not taking a stance.
Every child is born an atheist.
Science disagrees with you:
Summarising scientific experiments conducted with children across the globe, Professor Barrett illustrates the ways human beings have come to develop complex belief systems about God’s omniscience, the afterlife, and the immortality of deities. He shows how the science of childhood religiosity reveals, across humanity, a “Natural Religion,” the organization of those beliefs that humans gravitate to organically, and how it underlies all of the major world religions, uniting them under one common source.
There are a few proofs against existence of god. Ineffectiveness of prayer. Impossibility of miracles under controlled conditions. Biological nature of human cognition which precludes life after death.
Which is why I am calling out the OP. They are making a claim and thus have a burden of proof which they can not achieve.
And no it is not illogical in the slightest. Merely impossible. If they demand the negative be accepted as a given then they must prove it first. To do otherwise is to fall into the same trap being claimed Religious People are in.
One can't prove Evolution, despite it being the most complete explanation for the observations. Thus it is a Theory despite being accepted as the explanation by the vast majority of Scientists who study it.
They are not making the claim. The are denying the claim that there is some sentient creator. Those making the claim that there is are the ones who are responsible for proof.
Proving a negative is basically the definition of illogical. If it's impossible, then requiring it is illogical.
They are not demanding the negative be accepted out of some unproveable belief. They are demanding that people use logical reasoning when forming conclusions.
No, they did not. They demanded everyone accept their belief that "creator deity" be "obviously fictional" while providing nothing but their declaration as proof of that claim.
One can't prove Evolution, despite it being the most complete explanation for the observations. Thus it is a Theory despite being accepted as the explanation by the vast majority of Scientists who study it.
This right here is all I need to know you're a moron.
Evolution IS proven. A scientific theory is NOT the same thing as the common usage of the word "theory"(Source).
No it is not. It is impossible to prove by current Human abilities. No one every said it was the same. You are assuming when someone says it is a theory that they mean a baseless guess. That is not at all what is meant. It is accepted as the best possible explanation at this time, nothing more. You assume accepting that means Creationists get to pretend the same about their claims. Creationism doesn't even hold up under Biblical research much less Scientific. Calling Evolution a theory gets a lot of panties in knots because most folks didn't study Math long enough to know what theory and proof actually are. For Evolution to be proven you'd have to predict the mutation before it was observed and then prove how it becomes dominate after the millions of Years it takes to do so. There simply isnt time to have proven it. Same with Continental drift and Pangea. The time it takes is too long to prove the theory for Humans to have done so.
From Wikipedia:
Scientific theories are broader in scope, and give overarching explanations of how nature works and why it exhibits certain characteristics. Theories are supported by evidence from many different sources, and may contain one or several laws.
Evolution as a Theory explains why and how species have tranformed over millenia. This Theory is absolutely supported by various sources and works on our current understanding of the laws of physics.
What's great about a theory is that it has the potential to be disproven if a new source of evidence is provided. We may never obtain evidence saying it doesn't exist, and we likely never will with how we currently understand the world and its properties. But the fact is that it is a theory.
For all we know we are in a simulation and we're slowly learning how our universe is coded. Or maybe we do have a sentient God or God-like figure who has meticulously guided our evolution though the ages. Maybe one day several hundred years in the future we'll be able to propose a new Theory using evidence found by using equations that we simply can't imagine in our current state.
In short, person you responded to is generally right. If you're going to argue against it, please provide something to work with.
Yes it is. It means that it is not proven. That is the very definition of theory. Once it is proven it is no longer a theory. Acceptance of it means nothing much like how tired you are of People pointing out you've not a leg to stand upon.
One can't prove Evolution, despite it being the most complete explanation for the observations. Thus it is a Theory despite being accepted as the explanation by the vast majority of Scientists who study it.
So is gravity. Feel free to disprove it at the nearest cliff face, thanks.
And to dogpile on your statement that you can't prove evolution despite it being one of the most complete observations. There's recorded history of mystical, spiritual, and religious events happening.
The fact that we've lost or never had the ability to scientifically verify the spiritual for some reason doesn't really invalidate the claims of the past, rather it places them into a position where you should not rely upon them for specific outcomes.
At most, it suggests that there is some other actor at play and that other actor has not been identified yet, whether that be a I don't know a form of ergot that has died out due to changes in CO2 levels in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution or something like that.
Maybe magic existed in the silphium plant that was lost to antiquity, maybe the strange gases that accumulated in the Grecian oracles put human beings in the State of mind needed for prophecy but their sources have dissipated.
Maybe the cause is three of the four peoples of the earth breaking their sacred Wheels according to the Hopi religion.
My opinion is that as an individual what I believe should be respected as long as it does not directly impact another.
If I want to hang up candles for Beltane then that's me and whatever.
When an atheist flips out online because religion is being discussed amongst people who have religious inclinations then they are the assholes every single time, the same as when I as a religious person flips out that atheism is being discussed online then I am the asshole.
There may be recorded history of people making claims of religious events but none with any actual evidence. You don't need to invalidate claims that were never validated in the first place.
Maybe this.. maybe that. You can claim maybe for literally an infinite number of things, but unless there's evidence or logic to follow, then it's meaningless.
If you want to believe then go ahead, but don't expect others to take you seriously. That's my biggest problem with religion. Expecting others to believe the same things you do is incredibly arrogant.
I wonder if you have not spent time in religious and non-secular communities. I have, and they are not joking. They have great conviction. It is so powerful that it guides many of their everyday and life-trajectory decisions.
After all, humans are able to conjure imaginary situations and take them as reality. Why wouldn't that happen with superstition? Why would taking imagination seriously only apply to corporations (imagined entities), nations (imagined communities), or intrusive thoughts that cause anxiety (imagined situations)?
Sorry about appearing as if I was assuming something about you and sorry about appearing as patronizing. I should've said that I wondered what lead you to say what you said.
As to accuracy, maybe I can explain what lead me to say what I said. In Yuval Harari's Homo Sapiens, he shows that coordinated human action requires imagination. We all need to agree that certain imagined things are reality, such as money, nations, institutions… The mechanism by which this happens, I think, is through our capacity to relate any concept in our mind and take it as true. This is based on Relational Frame Theory and Steven Haye's work on how human cognition works. This is what leads me to say that people are not ironic or duplicitous in their claims that superstition is real.
Let me know if you have questions about anything else ☺️
Absolutely going to get downvoted since Lemmy and Reddit both hate the LDS church, but here's one of our core beliefs from our Articles of Faith:
We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.
Every religion has bad actors. Those who will turn a blind eye to core tenets. Those who hate their fellow people in the name of their god.
My religion fully respects other faiths and beliefs, even when they don't align with our own. I'd say that for many, if not most, religions are welcoming and at a minimum help people in need, comforting those who need it. Those are to be respected.
We absolutely have a problem with religious zealots and they deserve whatever form of karma and consequences that happen to them. They will reap what they sow. But that doesn't mean disrespecting or putting down those who really do believe and live the teachings of their religion. Actual teachings from their holy books, not the "Religion of this particular verse" that gets used to belittle others.
Your church has a stranglehold on the State of Utah and regularly influences the State government to pass laws that favor your faith above others. There was an article on Lemmy not a month or so ago about how the LDS church has been making acceptance of their views a condition for receiving social services. The "few bad actors" you and most religious people try to waive away as fringe elements of your communities are almost always present at the highest echelons of your churches and organizations, so I find it either incredibly naive or disingenuous that you ask me to ignore them.
No, I put it to you that you are in fact the innocent sheep that hides and defends the wolves in shepherds' clothing. You point to the seemingly innocuous tenets of your faith while ignoring the harm your religion does to society. Your beliefs should not be respected because they are objectively wrong, but you don't deserve ridicule for being indoctrinated; your defense of your church on the other hand should be actively ridiculed, because you're defending something quite pernicious and harmful--and you should be ashamed of that.
I am not ashamed of my beliefs, and I don't shy away from the fact that the church has people who don't abide by our teachings. Many choose to put our beliefs first and vote for policies that harm society, and I hope that they can see reason and stop the harm being done. All members should follow Christ's commandment to love one another, and yet they do not. They are fallible, as are all people regardless of religion, spirituality, or lack thereof.
Your beliefs should not be respected because they are objectively wrong Which of my beliefs are you referring to? There are many parts of our doctrine. Unfortunately, the church has erred in the past, they do in the present, and will in the future, on social issues far and wide. They may put policies in place that do not match the current order of things, or that offend. Church policies are not perfect as they are made by imperfect humans.
But our doctrine doesn't change, our beliefs stay the same. Our core values depend on loving each other and caring for each other. From our current church president:
Any abuse or prejudice toward another because of nationality, race, sexual orientation, gender, educational degrees, culture, or other significant identifiers is offensive to our Maker! Such mistreatment causes us to live beneath our stature as His covenant sons and daughters!
In times of trouble there's a need for god. An anchor of hope, if you will. Intellectually I agree with you completely. Furthermore, religion should never be allowed to exist if that religion won't accept other religions or a lack of religion.
I'm not religious at all. If I want people to respect that, I have to respect others right to think what they do.
There aren't many really religious people where i live, but i used to work for a pretty hardcore jewish family once. They were pretty nice people, but if they refuse to shake my hand because i'm "dirty" and lowkey belittle me because i'm not Jewish, it makes it really hard for me to have any respect for their believes or them as people in general.
You make a solid point, that I fully agree with. I absolutely hate all forms of organized religion.
I made an error in claiming that religion is a good thing. I live in very secular part of the world. Maybe the type and frequency of lies (in a religious area of the world) guides you away from it.
The benefit can be reached by far better means.
You believe you see things clearly, but, in fact, things are not so black and white. Believing that you know that God does not exist because you have no experience with him is faulty logic. In fact, it is a religious belief.
People being fucking morons is a provable assertion where as "Bigfoot, loch ness monster, leprechauns, the goat sucker, etc..." not existing can not be proven.
I think to rephrase what they are saying, that the adamant belief that there is no religion is a belief system.
Because it can't be disproved or proved with any non-supernatural intervention, you must grapple with the divine to address the issue.
The burden of proof is on whoever is making a claim. You are making a claim (God does not exist). If you want to think logically, the correct conclusion, in the absence of proof, is "I don't know".
For example. Let's say I have 100 opaque cups set upside down on a table and ask you the question "Is a ball under one of these cups?". It would be logically inappropriate to conclude that there is not until you have looked under every cup. Even if you looked under 99 and found nothing, it would not be proper to extrapolate that there is no ball. Do you understand?
Atheism isn't faith-based. If you show me reproducible evidence for the existence of a god, I'll change my tune no problem.
You are not clear on what faith is if you believe atheism to be faith-based. Atheism wouldn't even exist if religion did not. Because religion and unfounded beliefs are so common, there is an actual name for not believing in a god. There aren't a lot of specific terms for a lack of belief in other things without evidence.
The belief "there is no God" is not implied by the absence of evidence for God. The absence of evidence for something implies the belief "I do not know if the thing exists". Atheism requires a logical mistep. It is unreasonable to jump from an absence of evidence to a claim on non-existence.
You can't prove there isn't a teapot circling Neptune.
It's pretty good at describing the origins of the universe, actually, with more proof of how they came to the conclusion of the big bang than there is evidence for God. Working backwards using mathematics and what we can actually see and observe right now is pretty neat.
Unfortunately you can make self-proofing mathematical models about anything you want in this universe. But those models are recursive in nature and don't prove anything outside the premise of its hypothesis. Billions have been spent to prove the big bang theory. But many astrophysicists beg to differ on whether we will ever be able to bring proof to that theory
God and voodoo are as real as the cosmic teapot on the other side of the sun. If your only argument is that you can't definitively disprove God, so I have to respect people who think God is real, that's a pathetic argument and is yet another testament of poor intellectual standards.
Voodoo is real, or at least the zombie bit.
What used to happened is "witch doctors" would delibrately posion their patients. They would seemingly die, have a funeral, and a few days later be working on a plantation with severe brain damage.
thanks for using Leebra!
go to feed...
As a Taoist, I don’t believe in any deity and my beliefs boil down to letting people be who they are meant to and want to be and supporting them as much as I can in their personal journeys. That’s not an outdated or childish belief system. You’re conflating Abrahamic religions and mysticism with all religion and you don’t seem to have invested much time in understanding religion as a tool and concept outside of those areas.
Respecting people’s cultures and religion boils down to respecting people - if you believe that people shouldn’t be generally respected then your views are no more developed than that of a selfish child and you are the thing you’re complaining about.
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