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Unsure whether my time at AF and TTA has been positive or negative.
#11
RE: Unsure whether my time at AF and TTA has been positive or negative.
(June 16, 2014 at 8:07 am)Losty Wrote:
(June 16, 2014 at 8:02 am)archangle Wrote: well, You have to decide if it is about "you" or "us". It is easy to hold my "tong" because I have a slight understanding of the human machine. So, if you say that you don't believe in heaven or hell that is not considered holding you tong to me. If you say, "no that won't happen to me because I don't believe in your god", that also is not holding your tong.

If you want to berate, mock, and put them down because you're the one who is "right" and owns the "real truth". Then I would suggest not only to hold your tong, but to also drink a cup of STFU and take an anti-self-centered egotistical maniac pull once a day.

Tiger

*tongue

Also, fuck off.

*where the hell is Chas when I need a coffee emoticon


lmao

I rest my case
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#12
RE: Unsure whether my time at AF and TTA has been positive or negative.
(June 16, 2014 at 6:27 am)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: And I just don't know if I can hold my tongue any longer. I just don't have enough faith to pretend I might wake up and believe one day, any longer.

God On The Brain

Quote:DAWKINS: If you ask the question 'what's the survival value of religious belief?' it could be that you're asking the wrong question. What you should be doing is asking what's the survival value of the kind of brain which manifests itself as religious belief under the right circumstances.

I'm guessing that you just don't have the kind of brain which manifests itself as religious belief. Nobody knows why humans evolved to have religion but it's very likely that this kind of brain was naturally selected for in the dim and distant past. A different kind of brain doesn't mean that there's something wrong, however, because there are different brain models. Some people have a talent for mathematics or music etc while others don't.

Realising you don't have enough faith to pretend any longer is a major step forward in accepting who you are as an individual. Maybe the next step is figuring out exactly what you're angry about and asking yourself if there's any point to being angry about it. For example, if your personal genome doesn't equip you with a 'religious belief' brain is there any point in being angry about genetics?

There are some things which are worth being angry about but anger can be used as motivation for doing something useful. Are you concerned with human rights? If so, join a human rights organisation or just sign petitions demanding that something's done about things. Organisations which work for change need the weight of public opinion behind them.

When it comes to dealing with people who have religious beliefs, maybe regarding them as individual human beings could help. Does Person X say that they can 'feel' God's presence? If so, their brain probably produces subjective experiences of something which they interpret as being God. Other people could be clinging onto wishful thinking beliefs because they aren't ready to cope with the reality of a universe where there is no karma or divine justice.

This doesn't mean you should always hold your tongue, of course, but how we say something is just as important as what we say. You're the only person in a position to judge if it's the right time and place for you to say something, though.
Badger Badger Badger Badger Where are the snake and mushroom smilies?
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#13
RE: Unsure whether my time at AF and TTA has been positive or negative.
(June 16, 2014 at 6:27 am)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: Recently, I was involved in a life-changing series of events. I'm a lifelong agnostic apistavist, and have been since before I discovered a word to describe what I was.

I grew up thinking there was something seriously wrong with me. I could not find a religion I agreed with or even believed the premises of. I have been told for 20 some odd years that I am going to hell for any number of contradictory reasons. And I learned pretty quickly to only tell people I have known and trusted that I'm agnostic.

I have experienced confusion to outright rejection for merely using the adjective, and have been told it's simply not possible to "not believe in anything."

I have watched the utter hypocrisy of people who claim to be religious, but only when it suits them. And I kept it under wraps for a very long time.

I have friends, family, co workers and acquaintances who I deeply respect, who are religious enough I don't think I can clearly state my views around without damaging interpersonal relationships, putting my career at risk, or otherwise ostracizing myself.

This came to a head today, when during a vaguely related fight, I laid into my wife with the grievances and hypocrisy I see in her relatively mild Christian faith, and absolute horror and inhumanity the religion apologizes out of sight.

Without going into too much detail, I have always surrounded myself with predominately female friends (just get along with women better) and for some accursed reason have the type of personality that I can board a city bus, and someone will sit down next to me and tell me their life story, and close friends will reveal lurid details I could live a perfectly happy life without ever having been exposed to.

Suffice it to say, I remember being 13, knowing hell didn't exist, and having my best friend's little sister describe experiences that made me wish it did.

I don't know if I can hold my tongue any longer. For decades, I have watched and listened to horror stories that "turned out alright" because God, and because God will punish terrible human beings whenever he's good and ready and gets around to it.

I hate knowing that karmic retribution, hell and heaven are bullshit.

I hate knowing the statistics of sex abuse,
https://www.rainn.org/statistics

And that 97% of people who commit the most heinous, horrific, destructive act possible to another human being will go unpunished. And it was hard not to cheer out loud watching the end scenes of "Descent" with Rosario Dawson tonight.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(2007_film)

I have become more outspoken with friends and family, even when it complicates things. I have to endure constant ribbing and chiding from a close friend whose mother is dying, over "nihilism and anger at God," because I can't force myself to believe in the same nebulous deistic god he does, I don't want him to have to face facts.

But I'm fucking angry. I'm livid. At religion, at what it allows people to do to each other, because of a false cosmic do-over that I don't think exists.

I even hear it from my father. My lapsed catholic gnostic atheist father, who is pushing 60, grumpy as fuck, the embodiment of the "angry atheist" caricature religious people portray, and still wants to know "why I care what other people believe."

Because what some people believe allows for pain, suffering, and absolution of things no mortal deserves to be absolved of.

So I find it harder and harder to hold my tongue, from face-to-face, to Facebook, to friends posting pictures of sunsets as proof of God on Instagram.

And it's me. I'm the immoral one, never mind my nonexistent criminal record, who remembers the decades gone by where I held your daughter's hair back as she puked in the gutter from the drug addiction she used to get away from the images of her pastor father creeping into her room at night, an addiction so strong I eventually cut ties with her.

And I now sleep next to a woman who wakes up screaming several nights a month, stuck in the past, yet convinced there's someone else in the room.

And yet I'm the broken one, because I don't believe in God. The one who cried and prayed and begged to be shown what to believe in for countless nights on end.

And I just don't know if I can hold my tongue any longer. I just don't have enough faith to pretend I might wake up and believe one day, any longer.

Hey Rampant, I recognize you from TTA.

A very powerful rant, and I'm right there with you, on many points.

I wish there was something I could say to make this easier for you! I hope it helps for you to know, that many of us do understand.
[Image: graphics-rain-426733.gif]
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#14
RE: Unsure whether my time at AF and TTA has been positive or negative.
Quote:So I find it harder and harder to hold my tongue, from face-to-face, to Facebook, to friends posting pictures of sunsets as proof of God on Instagram.


[Image: rottenecard_1426211_sxvn62vkjc.png]


You need less stress. Go for it.
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#15
RE: Unsure whether my time at AF and TTA has been positive or negative.
Take the best and leave the rest.
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#16
RE: Unsure whether my time at AF and TTA has been positive or negative.
(June 16, 2014 at 10:28 am)archangle Wrote:
(June 16, 2014 at 8:07 am)Losty Wrote: *tongue

Also, fuck off.

*where the hell is Chas when I need a coffee emoticon


lmao

I rest my case

Dude. Why do you have to be such a dick?
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#17
RE: Unsure whether my time at AF and TTA has been positive or negative.
(June 16, 2014 at 6:27 am)Rampant.A.I. Wrote:




I suggest finding different people to hang out with. Your current ones aren't good for you and your beliefs just piss them off. So everyone is unhappy. If your stay in your current situation someone will have to change his attitude. If you won't change yours don't expect others to change theirs. Your future looks bleak.
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#18
RE: Unsure whether my time at AF and TTA has been positive or negative.
(June 16, 2014 at 9:26 am)fr0d0 Wrote: People fail, and religious people fail.

Some more than others...

(June 16, 2014 at 9:26 am)fr0d0 Wrote: It's not other people you have to sort out, it's yourself. And I don't mean any philosophy or faith.

Yeah guys, c'mon, stop pushing your atheist minority position onto the majority that causes the problem in the first place...

(June 16, 2014 at 9:26 am)fr0d0 Wrote: If you go around telling other people that they've got it wrong then you're just another idiot fanatic, and part of the problem.

Right, because reality is relative...

(June 16, 2014 at 9:26 am)fr0d0 Wrote: The problems you attribute to the religious are the problems of reality. The low down is that it's hard to cope with if you face it.

You're part of the problem for bringing that up ROFLOL

Maybe we should stamp out religion so they stop making these problems in actual reality about their fiction.
If the hypothetical idea of an afterlife means more to you than the objectively true reality we all share, then you deserve no respect.
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#19
RE: Unsure whether my time at AF and TTA has been positive or negative.
My answer is "everything in moderation".
Be and do who you are.

Holding it in can be hard sometimes, especially with loved one's but with practice it becomes easier.
I have never been in a relationship with irreconsolable differences, especially those deeply rooted belief differences.

Good luck man.
No God, No fear.
Know God, Know fear.
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#20
RE: Unsure whether my time at AF and TTA has been positive or negative.
(June 16, 2014 at 4:39 pm)rexbeccarox Wrote:
(June 16, 2014 at 10:28 am)archangle Wrote: lmao

I rest my case

Dude. Why do you have to be such a dick?

Because he's a unique little butterfly. Smile
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