On the lunacy of free will

[vulcanlogician]

Actually. Fuck it. Nevermind.

[Spongebob]

You people care about proof too much.......and the afterlife isn't solely a Christian idea, many religious/spiritual schools of thought include an afterlife.

Any why shouldn't we?  Does that strike you as somehow bothersome or strange?  Humankind has been searching and asking questions of the expanded universe for as long as we have historical records.  This includes everything from medicine to power to spirituality.  Why would we be any different now?  Why is searching for truth and reality a bad thing?  The sad people are those who accept children's stories as truth when the evidence and human history are stacked against such immature fantasies and those who are so delusional that they believe they have some connection to an omniscient being because of an overactive imagination.

The afterlife is a multitude of ideas spanning all of human history and this history includes the idea of no afterlife at all, so atheists aren't new to this idea.  Our modern concepts perhaps put a little different spin on it, but we certainly didn't invent the idea.  And as others have pointed out, the modern ideas of heaven and hell are not ancient, but were formulated mostly in the late Roman Empire and later medieval eras.  And they have continued to evolve into the modern era all based on interpretations of stories with no objective evidence at all.  And this isn't even scratching the surface of newly invented ideas of the afterlife, such as the Mormons and Scientologists, again, all invented from human imagination.  To believe in just one of these religious modalities takes nothing except the willingness to ignore objective reality and give yourself over to the will of others.  To resist takes disciplined reasoning and often enormous courage.

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Interestingly enough , "jesus" didn't.  That was an effect of romanization, as I think we've discussed.  At any rate..and since you have a pronounced "many people believe" habit...many people can be wrong.

There is no afterlife.  No heaven, no hell.  These are thematic elements of greek tragedy that got rolled into christian belief in the scuffle for political power in rome.

If most people believe in something, how likely is it that they're all wrong? Versus how likely it is that the naysayers are wrong?

That's called the fallacy of popular appeal.  Just because something is popular doesn't in any way guarantee that it's real or genuine.  All it means is that the idea is popular.  I could give you tons of examples but you never seem to be open to actual logic or reason so I suppose there's no point.

[Ahriman]

To resist takes disciplined reasoning and often enormous courage.

Lol no. All it takes is a desire to be different.

[Spongebob]

To resist takes disciplined reasoning and often enormous courage.

Lol no. All it takes is a desire to be different.

This informs me that you have a profound misunderstanding of what drives other people, particularly those who reject religious modalities.  For starters, you should ask yourself why you think atheists just want to be different?  What value is there in being different?  In what way does this improve one's life or make life better or more appealing.  This reminds me of arguments against homosexuality that centered around it being a choice and the desire to be deviant.  Homophobes have clung to such arguments despite the fact that being homosexual or identifying as anything other than what society considers "normal" relegates one to a life of persecution.

But lets examine your deep ignorance even further.  If we go back in time to the early Roman Empire, there was a new religious cult forming that was based on the life and teachings of a renegade Jew who dared to challenge the authority of the Hebrew priests.  The cult started small and began to grow, defying persecution and oppression.  At least this is the generally accepted story, not the actual historical account.  But in this story, would you also accuse these followers of Jesus as just wanting to be "different"?  Please extend that to the Muslims, the Protestant reformation, the Mormons, Scientologists...even Socrates for that matter.  In fact, every religion has had a beginning and in most cases each one had to compete with another, already established and powerful religion.  So by your way of thinking, every religion known to man arose merely because its adherents wanted to be "different"?  Do you see the ignorance of your position?

Now lets get to the reality.  It's seems almost fundamentally stupid that someone needs to explain to you (or anyone) that most atheists grew up immersed in religion but at some point in their life began to question the validity of it, and there could be thousands of thing to initiate that.  But said questioning led to the eventual understanding that all of these religious people don't really know much of anything and certainly can't wrestle with the contradictions between religious beliefs and objective reality.  To merely accept those beliefs and put your questions to rest requires nothing except a willingness to bow down to others and live in ignorance.  There's no honor or dignity in that.

[Ahriman]

There's no honor or dignity in being different, either. And let's not pretend "being different" means the same thing as it did when those religions were formed.

[Spongebob]

There's no honor or dignity in being different, either. And let's not pretend "being different" means the same thing as it did when those religions were formed.

Unless you know some other definition for the word "different", it most certainly is the same thing.  What is not the same, is different.  Didn't you learn that when you were a child?

I didn't claim there was honor in being different, but there certainly is in not blindly following the will of others just to prevent the boat from rocking.

And on a personal note, just to embarrass you even further, I can say that the decision to part from the religion of my upbringing and family was tremendously difficult and caused some serious problems with my family that exist to this day.  And it continues to be a source of difficulty because so many people just assume that others think like them and accept the same cultural standards.  I would have been a fool to choose this just to be "different".  What advantage is there in that?  No, you need to re-evaluate your thinking on this and probably everything else you've spoken about on this forum.  Your intolerance is rather disgusting.

[The Grand Nudger]

Ahri, has a large number of people believing something that you did not compelled you to believe in that thing?  Is that why you hold whatever beliefs you do, and do you defer to the majority in such matters?  

You never seem to shy away from telling us how wrong majority opinions on things like heaven and hell and gods are.  Something is amiss.

[Spongebob]

The reality is that the vast majority of people accept the form of religion handed to them by their parents because in many cultures and families great pressure is placed on them to accept this.  In most cases it comes in the form of indoctrination and sometimes even brainwashing.  A significant percentage of people stray from the religion they were indoctrinated into but not by far, moving from one protestant Christian religion to another or maybe Catholic to protestant.  Fewer still move between Jewish - Christianity - Islam or Hinduism (name whatever major religion).  An even smaller number join small cults.  And the smallest number reject religion altogether.  Atheists are generally considered the least trustworthy people in the US, based on broad polls.  Absolutely no one makes this move out of a desire to be popular or considered eclectic in any way.  Only a genuinely stupid person would believe this.  And only a tiny sliver of atheists walk around with that knowledge being public.  A great many intentionally keep this hidden.  If anything, most atheists make this move reluctantly and only after trying for years or even decades to make it work within whatever religious modality they were taught to believe.  I've been personally close to only a small handful of open atheists in my life, but I've known perhaps 10 or 20 times that many who's beliefs aligned with my own about 98% yet they continued to keep up the façade of religious belief out of a desire to fit in with everyone else.  That is deeply disturbing.

So why in the world would Ahriman believe that atheists just want to be "different"?

[Ahriman]

Atheists have a little problem, I'm not sure why, but they all seem to have the same problem. They can't just go with the flow. It's not because they're smarter, or better people, but just because they have this intellectual problem that forces them to consider themselves different than their religious peers.

[arewethereyet]