RE: Atheists, tell me, a Roman Catholic: why should I become an atheist?
December 13, 2016 at 2:36 pm
(December 13, 2016 at 2:24 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(December 13, 2016 at 8:51 am)robvalue Wrote: I love people just fine without having to also love some deity. My love is reserved for real things that I actually interact with in some meaningful way. If I'm interacting with this "God" thing, I'm entirely unaware of it. I have no feelings towards it at all. I have no desire to love everything; nor could I make I myself, even if I wanted to. I hold no ill will against this weird "God" thing, I simply have no fucking idea about it or what it's meant to be doing.
If we have no choice but to love it, then it simply can't exist, because I don't love it. I don't even know what it is.
This also addresses the ideas I've sometimes heard that "if religion X is true then we have no choice but to love God". If that is the case, then the religion is not true, because I do not love God. Pretty simple.
A more simplified version: God is love and goodness. If you love those things, you love God. That is our understanding.
We already have perfectly good words for the concepts of "love" and "goodness". And those words are....wait for it..."love" and "goodness".
No need to hang all the silly supernatural baggage that goes along with those words. I love those things, yet, not only do I not love "God", I do not believe such a being exists.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
