(October 11, 2013 at 2:13 pm)Dunno Wrote: I've noticed a lot of people on here discussing theology, especially Christian, and I just wanted to make a post here about why being an atheist is the right decision.
Not everyone is Christian. There are a myriad of different religions out there. I'd feel more comfortable if someone was trying to make me see why I shouldn't turn away from Buddha on here, I always liked Buddha. Don't worship the guy, but he was alright.
Anyways, if you have decided to become an atheist and are slightly conflicted about turning away from religion, there are a few questions you probably have.
1. If religion was invented by humans, then why?
2. What does religion do to people in an observable way?
3. If there's more than one religion, are all of them wrong, are all of them correct, or are all of them describing something we haven't yet correctly described?
4. But I'm terrified of death, what will happen when I die?
Now I will begin to answer these questions one by one.
1. This question is hard to answer. If I say that it was invented to enslave people to stories perhaps I am being too hard on people, if I say it was invented to explain the world I am not being realistic because it doesn't explain the world, the truth is I don't know why religion was invented, it would take an expert in human social behavior to analyze this, especially because of the madness religion sometimes causes.
2. I have observed that religion causes people to believe the impossible and behave in crazy sometimes damaging ways. It also brings people together at fun gatherings and encourages good behavior at the threat of supernatural punishment which never comes, although people punish others for bad behavior. They have power over marriage rituals which is a uniform custom in every culture, thus we can assume that a man and woman being together for life is an animal urge. They have power over funerals. This makes them an important part of human social structure, a part of what leads us, even if they are crazy.
3. All of them have value because all of them are interesting, however they are all unbelievable and fanciful. We must always be open to other people's ways of life.
4. You don't know what will happen when you die because you have never experienced death.
So why be an atheist?
Remember, being an atheist isn't all disbelieving, it is being open to an infinite number of possibilities. If you constrain yourself to one way of thinking and never change, then it is you who are left behind. It is observing. There are higher powers in the world, ones that are not fanciful, and only through observation and analysis can you truly know what these are, and that some are very dangerous, some are good, and some, like the power of nature, have no concept of good or evil, except that humans, as part of nature, have that concept.
There is a parallelogram in a game I played constantly as a child, a puzzle game from ancient china. The shape was specific, but it was called the parallelogram because here in the west it has no name. Does it have a name in china, the right triangles connected on the short side? The square is cut up into triangles, a square, and the parallelogram, and from there, you can make a huge variety of shapes. People are like this square. All varieties are just the square in disguise. I was wondering about it, sorry I put it in here. Anyway, end of this post.
I find your answers to be terribly inadequate. Here are a list of your mistakes.
1. You fail to make an important distinction between the existence of God and the existence of organized religion. Given all your critiques of religion, a deity of some sort could still exist.
2. Atheism is not a position on organized religion, it is a position on the existence of God. Thus attacking religion does not justify atheism.
3. The answers to your specific questions are inadequate.
-You have failed to determine that religion was "invented by humans".
-Assuming it was "invented by humans", your answer to (1) amounts to "I don't know."
-You have improperly used anecdotal, untestable and unverifiable observations of your own to answer (2).
-You have provided no evidence to support your answer to (3).
The only satisfactory answer you have provided is your answer to (4).
As such, reasonable people ought to reject your first three answers and accept answer (4).
