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RE: How I feel about my atheism and why I'd encourage religion
May 19, 2014 at 12:39 pm
(This post was last modified: May 19, 2014 at 12:45 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(May 19, 2014 at 1:57 am)Kitanetos Wrote: Unfortunately, so long as the religious belief thrives, there will always be religious people who will thwart societal progress because they feel it is their moral imperative to inform others how they must live. So long as there is religious belief, there will always be suffering and violence directly caused by those religious beliefs.
The flaw in this position is there is no provision in your arguments for showing that without religion, there would be fewer people who would do these things, or they would do them less effectively.
It may very well be true, but it is sufficiently vital to your argument that you can't gain traction with your argument by simply assuming it to be true.
(May 19, 2014 at 1:57 am)Kitanetos Wrote: There is no reasonable argument in favor of religious belief. It makes me feel good or It brings me comfort are mere irrational excuses to maintain a hold on that which is absolutely unnecessary.
There are. 1) placebo effect. 2) social cohesion via common reference. You can say the reference is false, but alternative references that have tended to replace it, such as nationalism, tend also to be based heavily on mythology.
(May 19, 2014 at 1:57 am)Kitanetos Wrote: To encourage religion and religious beliefs is to encourage ignorance and a destructive future.
True. But many societies that have argued against ignorance steming from traditional religion have also found it necessary to replace that ignorance with another based on something which is religious in all but name.
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RE: How I feel about my atheism and why I'd encourage religion
May 19, 2014 at 1:20 pm
(May 19, 2014 at 12:34 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: You seem to believe in an ontological reality to greatness. A lot of atheists see greatness as a perception and a subjective value rather then an actual property of reality or a being.
If you believe it's an actually property, I offer the following argument.
All possible levels and instances of greatness require a basis.
The only possible basis to all possible levels and instance of greatness is ultimate greatness.
Greatness exists in reality and is not simply a matter of subjective perception.
Therefore ultimate greatness exists.
1 and 2 fail as unproven and vague premises, hence, the rest of such argument crumbles. Exempli gratia:
1 All men that wear hats are from mars.
2 I wear a hat
3 Therefore I am martian
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RE: How I feel about my atheism and why I'd encourage religion
May 19, 2014 at 1:26 pm
(May 19, 2014 at 1:20 pm)LastPoet Wrote: (May 19, 2014 at 12:34 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: You seem to believe in an ontological reality to greatness. A lot of atheists see greatness as a perception and a subjective value rather then an actual property of reality or a being.
If you believe it's an actually property, I offer the following argument.
All possible levels and instances of greatness require a basis.
The only possible basis to all possible levels and instance of greatness is ultimate greatness.
Greatness exists in reality and is not simply a matter of subjective perception.
Therefore ultimate greatness exists.
1 and 2 fail as unproven and vague premises, hence, the rest of such argument crumbles. Exempli gratia:
1 All men that wear hats are from mars.
2 I wear a hat
3 Therefore I am martian
The opposite of 1 is all levels of greatness and instances of greatness don't require a basis. That sounds illogical though and seems completely false. How can they simply exist without a basis?
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RE: How I feel about my atheism and why I'd encourage religion
May 19, 2014 at 1:28 pm
For starters, what is this 'greatness you speak of?
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RE: How I feel about my atheism and why I'd encourage religion
May 19, 2014 at 2:06 pm
(May 19, 2014 at 1:28 pm)LastPoet Wrote: For starters, what is this 'greatness you speak of?
Winning the Stanley Cup. That is all.
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RE: How I feel about my atheism and why I'd encourage religion
May 19, 2014 at 2:30 pm
Welcome.
"Superior to inferior" is redundant. If you just say "superior", it's more concise.
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RE: How I feel about my atheism and why I'd encourage religion
May 19, 2014 at 3:16 pm
(May 19, 2014 at 1:32 am)Mozart Link Wrote: Even though I'm an atheist, I truly wish I wasn't. I'd rather be the dumbest person on Earth who believes in a God and afterlife than be a smart young man who is logical and doesn't believe. If you could limit the ignorance and lack of curiosity to only religious belief, I guess it might not be so bad. But dumb people tend to be dumb about everything, and people who lack curiosity aren't curious about anything. I'd rather be intelligent enough to know, even if the knowledge isn't what I would like for it to be.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: How I feel about my atheism and why I'd encourage religion
May 19, 2014 at 8:43 pm
(May 19, 2014 at 12:34 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: You seem to believe in an ontological reality to greatness. A lot of atheists see greatness as a perception and a subjective value rather then an actual property of reality or a being.
If you believe it's an actually property, I offer the following argument.
All possible levels and instances of greatness require a basis.
The only possible basis to all possible levels and instance of greatness is ultimate greatness.
Greatness exists in reality and is not simply a matter of subjective perception.
Therefore ultimate greatness exists. I'm just going to add something here which is that having a limited perception of yourself such as that we as human beings are not worthy of having god-like powers of immortality and such and to make the best of this life we have is just what this inferior life "wants" you to think. Through its "inferior" concepts (such as not being immortal, no God, this life being full of problems, etc.), this life "wants" you to have such a limited perspective of yourself. But whatever perception that you give yourself makes you who you are. Therefore, if you give yourself a superior god-like perception of yourself that is worthy of these things, then this is who you would be. Which is why I have chosen to defy what perception this life "wants" me to have with a perception of my own that makes me superior and worthy of those things. And this perception actually makes me feel empowered (not distress).
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RE: How I feel about my atheism and why I'd encourage religion
May 19, 2014 at 9:19 pm
You seem to be fighting your most important battles in your own head. I'm not so sure our thoughts are as powerful as you think.
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RE: How I feel about my atheism and why I'd encourage religion
May 20, 2014 at 12:50 am
Atheism doesn't require anyone to live in absolutes though. I'm an atheist and I still allow myself to wonder. Religion nor atheism provide absolutes. There may be something ...somewhere...after we die. There may not. The freedom to not live in absolutes, worrying over an afterlife that may or may not exist, is simply awesome. Atheism set me free from absolute thinking. I think what I want. If there is a higher power, so be it. But the beauty of how I see things now is that I no longer need to know.
Let go of your need to know, and you will see atheism in an entirely new light. 
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