Well I wouldn't call myself an atheist, I'm not sure what to call it but heck I'll try to explain.
To me religion is a great idea that has been exploited and misused by people to control and keep people in line and while it may not be the cause for war, it has often been used as a excuse to go to war...
Not to mention how people use it to prey on the weak to make money of them, teach them bigotry and intollerance("Our God is better than their God!!! Hate them!"). and not to mention the fact their there are so many religions in the world... how on earth can you possibly know which is the right one to follow?
Wouldn't it suck to life your life in the name of christ, all your life be as religious as possible and then stand in front of the glorious gate of heaven and Saint Peter says to you...
"Oh, sorry but the jews were right...you are going to hell..."
Or find your self in front of Vishnu, and he's explaining to you why it's a good thing you have to go back as a dungbeetle..."

So to wrap up... I got no problem with the concept, just how people misuse it.

[ 01-22-2003, 04:41 AM: Message edited by: Jorath Calar ]

I figured it out now. There IS a god and his name is money. Money rules all, and people pray so that they may have it.

Because God IS so powerful.

Can you make something which has enough incentive, choice, volition and emotion to love, destroy itself, build or create.</font>[/QUOTE]But there is no proof of God existing.

It has been proven that the universe was created by the Big Bang. All these people who have said they have seen Jesus or God and they have healed them, how do we know that these people weren't delirious or on drugs?

And how do we know that there IS such a place called Heaven?

I have been to religious classes when I was younger just to see what they were like. I found many of the stories interesting and some believable.

There COULD have been a person called Jesus who healed people but I think that people may have made up alot of stuff.

I also think that many people belive in God as a security thing. They don't know HOW the Earth was created so they say God did it etc. They so that after you die you go to Heaven because no-one KNOWS what happens....

This is just my opinion.....

(Sorry for all the spelling mistakes..I typed this really fast! And I can't be bothered to change them) [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[ 01-22-2003, 04:55 AM: Message edited by: GokuZool ]

I agree with you Gokuzool. You can also describe Jesus and his followers as some kind of cult, i think the Romans did that.

I can't believe in something I don't believe in. Just saying I believe would make me a hypocrite and any God doing his job properly would know that.

What are all these people finding if not nothing? Or, more to the point, what are they searching for? Faith? Happiness? Eternal Life? Peace of mind? Direction? (love? equality? empathy? etc etc etc?)

The answer to both is Answers.

Answers to every question any given person will ever ask or think about throughout the course of his/her entire life (and they will ask a lot). Humans have a desire to understand every detail of every minor aspect of their lives or their surroundings. It is a sad fact that there is not a single human who has ever lived that is qualified to answer all our questions. The sum knowledge of all the world's civilisations still falls short of answering the least of our great quandries. We are advancing in knowledge at an alarmingly fast pace but we simply cannot accept the fact that we will never know the answers to all our questions. Can't we just leave it at that?

Hell no. We have to turn to an imaginary higher being and ask it our questions. And when we don't get any answers we have to make them up ourselves and supplant them as accepted fact. And put them into print and mass produce them and distribute them so that everybody can share in this wonderful naivete that has brought meaning to an otherwise meaningless existence. And when we find that other humans just like us have already invented their own Answer to the questions of life, it offends us. It makes us angry that another does not accept our version of the truth. It makes us wrathful that our own version of the truth is belittled and holds less meaning in light of the new Answer. So what do we do?

We take up arms and go to war on behalf of our Answer. And in so doing, we contradict everything that it stood for and destroy any chance it ever had of providing bliss with acceptance rather than ignorance.

You are a human. You are a wonderfully complicated bundle of flesh and blood; chemicals and electricity; senses and reactions; thoughts and feelings. You are going to ask a lot of questions in your lifetime and, if you're smart enough, you'll realise that there is no single human or collaboration of humans that can answer all of them. You're going to have to get on with life by applying logic and reasoning to your questions and incorporating facts with your beliefs as you learn them.

Life is not meaningless. Even without an Answer, your life will be full of amazing experiences. Do you really need to Know to be able to enjoy them?
Are you going to enjoy/experience more by subscribing to someone elses Answer?
Are you incapable of thinking for yourself? Two of my favorite unanswered questions.

where does it say that if you dont believe in god you dont get into heaven? way i see it even saddam hussein gets a chance [img]tongue.gif[/img] (believes in a different religion and is an evil psycho) , heaven seems to let just about anyone in so long as they repent, and if your standing outside heaven then you'd probably be pretty heartfelt in your repenting. IF there is a heaven and IF it follows what the bible says then you pretty much guaranteed to get in, unless your evil and have no care for anyone else, if you live a good life thats far more important than believing in god, if god is what hes said to be then which would he prefer? would god prefer you to live a good life and not believe or would he prefer you to lead a terrible life whilst being very religious? im 100% that i believe god would choose the former and would let you into heaven regardless of your faith.

reason to your original question vaskez that i dont go with the guaranteed win/win situation is that

a) i dont believe at all so would be hypocritical to do so, and surely if god is all power he'd know i was lying about really believing, so what would be the point?

b) even if a god did appear in front of me and started telling me things, id be highly suspicious for one, and for two i wouldnt feel like i owe ANYTHING to him, its my life, i lived it and i shaped it, so what i do is my business.

c) IMO life is about living it to the full, its a simple as that, you get your life then it ends, do what you can in between.

d) you can only ask your original question because you believe in christianity, forget atheists, what about every other religion? they all believe something different, should they believe every other religion just to have a great afterlife? it doesnt work like that...

the best thing i saw is in the film the Mummy where that weaslly guy is confronted by the mummy for the first time, he goes through about 5 or so religions (he has the religious symbols around his neck), talk about hedging your bets [img]smile.gif[/img] so effectively he believes in all of those religions, he cant lose then surely, whatever way it goes he gets in? Thats basically what your saying with your original point, its not about what you believe in, its about your actions in life that define your faith, as i said before, if there really was a god that would be what he cares about, not how devout you are....

Some people see what they want to see and some people just imagine. I'm not saying it's not true, I just need to see proof for myself before I really believe. It's not like I'm a definate non believer, I leave my options open. And the similiare things in all those cases, well, people tell stories, same with the alien abductions. For instance, if I were supposed to drug myself heavily with hallucinating drugs and I would hallucinate about alliens, then I can almost be sure what they will look like because of pictures from movies and other people's stories about it.

Another example:
I went on holiday this summer to Chersonnisos (Creta) with some friends. One of the guys got a psychosis attack in the hotel one of the last days (he had to spend the rest of the holiday in the psychiatric hospitol and go with a special plane home :( ). He dearily believed what he saw was reall, he thought he was being haunted by a ghost and that the ghost tried to invade him. There were a lot of matters which made out clear that it was not true, but he himself believed in it, which made it so convincing. It all comes back to what you want to believe in that moment.

That is not the religious attitude... that's pragmatism... not faith... and that's agnostics are... people often say atheists when they mean agnostics... agnostics are awaiting proof either way... and (some long word here) atheists believe that there is no god...

More or less

(I didn't read this topic... so this MAY have been said... ;) )

Vask, people can force themselves to believe lots of things, which they will actually truly start to believe in the end. Now, if someone started to believe in God because (s)he's "got nothing to lose and everything to gain" wouldn't that 1. be one of the worst reasons to start believing 2. be a completely hypocritical and unreal faith? I've always thought people believed in God because they truly experienced his presence at some point in their life. That to me is the way you can truly become a believer. I absolutely agree that atheists have just as little or as much proof about the existence of God. But it's a big step to go from accepting that there's no proof God DOESN'T exist to actually truly believing in him. I don't think that's the way to go about it. You don't decide to become religious, all you can do is open yourself to the possibility and faith is something that will have to come from the heart, not the head.

Dagorion, you mentioned one of my pet peeves... that the Muslim God is called Allah by Westerners (and non Arabic-speaking Muslims as well for that matter). (warning, radical opinion following) I feel this is a terribly stupid thing to do, and in some cases may even be done to widen the gap between Christians and Muslims. When translating something like "Allah Akbar", from a linguistic point of view it's just WRONG to translate Akbar into English but not Allah. Allah means God! Christians who speak Arabic pray to Allah! They pray to the Christian God, the word for whom is "Allah".
I often hear people talk about how Muslims did this or that because "Allah wanted it", in a derogatory or conspiratorial tone. That's deliberately increasing and encouraging the feeling of the Muslim's "Otherness" that many people secretly already have. If you speak Arabic, call God Allah, regardless of whether you mean "the Christian one" or "the Islamic one". When you speak another language, call God whatever God is called in that language, no matter which one you mean. Will that cause confusion?? I don't think so. After all, it IS the same word for the same thing.
Whew... I have to stop going off on these offtopic rants.... not good [img]redface.gif[/img]

BTW... pssst, Hugh? I think you mean Lebensraum (Space to live) rather than Lebenstraum (dream of life) ;)