I suppose it's not really fair to say that Atheists have no faith. They believe in science, don't they? Believeing that it's proof against the existence of God. They believe it because it's been chronicled in books and taught to them by appointed authority figures who they believe to be much more knowledgeable than themselves. Their own experience doesn't have to have anything to do with this belief. They just accept it because they've been told to and that's good enough for them. That's a form of faith, is it not?
I like it when Atheists claim not to believe in God because they've never seen any proof of His existence with their own eyes or some other such bullshit. There were, what, 50-something prophets in the bible? That's not that many and each of them served a unique purpose and none of them did it for the fun. If there are any prophets in existence right now it's probably safe to say that you're not one of them. Nobody gets to see or hear God, dumbass. Especially not just so He can prove himself, I'm pretty sure he's got more important things to do.
I wouldn't want to contribute to overpopulation.
ReplyDeleteScience doesn't say anything for or against the existence of God, but scientists often do. It's worth noting that the Vatican has supported and furthered science for hundreds of years, and a great number of successful physicists are members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifical_Academy_of_Sciences
As for belief, faith, non-belief, I think it's all bullshit. I learned of a loose "system of belief" called apathetic agnosticism. That's how I feel: I don't know what's out there and I don't give a shit. It never has and never will impact my life in the mortal coil in any way. It may or may not impact my death, but once I've died I am no longer among us, regardless of whether I just rot in the ground or whatever else may happen.
Nice one! It is worth noting that many top scientists do believe in God in some sense of the word, and the ones that don't are usually weirdos or are properly very smug about themselves.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, everyone who I've met or who has appeared on television who says out loud that they're an atheist is a smug cunt. They almost always have very poor understanding of what science is really about, have not done any "science" since high school (if they go to university they usually study a worthless arts degree like global social international anthropological communicational homosexual media studies) and they do not understand the basic problem of induction nor do most of them understand the work of Karl Popper and it's problems.
Furthermore, many atheists refuse to pop out more sprogs because their atheism hinges on their hedonism, using the self-professed triviality of their own existence as an excuse to fuck over their dead grandparents who worked so hard to feed their kids and meanwhile they run up huge credit bills since it's inconsequential to them in the long run.
Or, they do the exact same thing without claiming that their existence is trivial but instead claiming that all moral beliefs held by any generation prior to the mid-twentieth century exist solely because of the "control" that Abrahamic religions (except the Jews who are always being mistreated, which explains exactly why they tend to hold strong economic positions throughout much recent history) had over the people who have made countless revolutions against non-religious governing bodies but some how are "suppressed" to the point that in truth they have never successfully denounced religion except when replacing it with another.
Hence the atheist denies all honest morality by claiming it is part of their religion, sorry I mean "not religion", since all current religious beliefs are without a shadow of a doubt Christian or Muslim.
A theist may be deluded, an agnostic gives an honest view, but an atheist is a cunt.
They have a tendency to want to force others into their beliefs while accusing religious people of doing the same and taking offense at how wrong that is.
ReplyDeleteIt's fun to talk about lifting and stuff, but fuck atheists.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I can't name any genuine atheists from western civilisation who are also top lifters or athletes: clearly faith helps.
Consider then the possibility often promoted by atheists that faith helps only as faith in itself, that the religious focus towards some supreme being or entity is only there to give us humans something to look up to, something to give cause and reason outside our own control.
If God is just an artifact of the human condition, a mental construct that helps us get by, then you are still an idiot for maintaining atheism.
This is why they cling onto their beliefs about morality, science, ethics, whatever they think of, and cannot see the truth (like their mirroring their supposed enemy as you say) and cannot understand the things they choose to hold dear to them: To show a logical fallacy in their arguments is to them registered much like an attempt to prove that God doesn't exist to someone who believes He does, and this restricts their capabilities in the world by leaving them unconsciously less open to new ideas.
To put forth an example, I can come up with a postulate that I hope remodels physical expansion of the universe and when I work on it and it turns out it's wrong it's frustrating, but I don't face a moral dilemma, unlike these guys.
To put forth an analogy, when a normal guy feels heart-broken he feels it in his heart. Emotion may seem to come from electrochemical processes in his brain, but ultimately part of his brain gives him the feeling that the sensation is from the beating of his chest and his brain as he knows it carries on with the thinking.
Now these guys, they get heartbroken and they decide that the only "logical" thing is for them to start having a fucking headache.
There's no bigger group of hypocrites in general than Athiests. Put a gun to any of their heads and most of them will probably start praying.
ReplyDeleteMuch of their schtick is just an excuse to be immoral. A rationalization.
I have my own view on religion. It's my own thing and mostly consists of all of the good parts of other religions. So it's probably more a code of conduct.
ReplyDeleteI don't want kids. Neither does my wife. We have seen the face of humanity and realised it's not worth it to bring up kids in the god forsaken world (pun intended). Besides the both of us having faily good genetics and a very good lifestyle (that is medically speaking), we let the ratio dominate the feelings.
I would be a shitty father anyway, better to save up on all of their frustrations by not having them.
As far as atheists go, I know alot of so called atheists and they have at least two to three children. One of them is a decent lifter. I don't think those sorts of things have anything to do with eachother.
Unless the fact that as a lifter you will probably knock up your misses much faster due to better semen and higher testosterone levels. But even that us pure broscience.
Did you know that there are actually different kinds of feminism now? They all have different views on what feminism should be about and they all think the others are traitors or stupid or whatever. So feminism not only encourages women to hate men, but to hate most women also.
ReplyDeleteWomen all hate each other instinctively anyhow. Phil Hartman's character on News radio said it best: "You show me a woman who isn't jealous of another woman and I'll show you a man."
ReplyDeleteWhich brand of feminism were the Spice Girls into?
Hahahahahah.
ReplyDeleteYou know what would really give me freedom? Not giving a fuck about anything. If I could rape a child and not give a fuck, think how liberated I'd be. Fuck this American religious bullshit forced down everyone's throat, I believe in reason: Give me one rational argument that is based on true assumptions that tells me I it is wrong to rape a child. After all, they're only fertiliser, and not fertile, so I don't risk spreading my seed before I, myself, am rotten.
Look at McCharles going deep! I believe you're confusing causation with correlation, however. Atheism no more condones hedonism than does any other religion, and in some cases probably less. Hedonism is illogical. Therefore, it's not rational. Therefore, a true atheist wouldn't adopt it as a lifestyle.
ReplyDeleteAtheists are massive hypocrites, I'll agree, but no more so than evangelical religious adherents. They're both loud, opinionated, wildly uneducated, and completely intolerable, in my book.
As to the not fucking bit- I guarantee they're fucking- they're just careful about bc and mopping up the mess if bc fails. Though I'm not an atheist, I can say this is why I have no kids of which I know. Pregnant? Not if my $400 has anything to say about it.
One last bit- I would venture to guess childlessness stems more from solipsism than anything else. I know it does for me.
ReplyDeleteSelf-centeredness, I could see that. Being responsible for anyone else means less time and energy to devote to oneself.
ReplyDeleteOh, oh. Also I do not have a religion and have 1 son and a daughter on the way, to keep it within the point of the post.
ReplyDeleteWell, I had a retort written here that took me at least an hour to type including getting up and down constantly for the kids, wife, dog, etc, and when I tried to open google in another tab it opened it in this tab instead ansd I lost the post. I'm not typing it out again so you guys will just have to stay angry and defensive. It probably wouldn't have changed anything anyway.
ReplyDeleteYes that's right, Christians and atheists are polar opposites and so atheism is always to be compared to Christianity as the perfect juxtaposition. It is nice that you recognise Christianity as the one true faith.
ReplyDeleteBut never mind that. What has happened, Dread, is that you have said you "do not have a religion", but you have not said that you are an atheist, and these are not the same thing. Your point about people claiming to be Christian and acting otherwise is a good match up to the point about people saying they deny religion and acting otherwise and gives a nice view. But if so many Christians are lying to themselves, then why is it that they really do have kids?
What you have also done is said not to point the finger at a group. What if someone said "Why are so many prisoners black?" or more on-topic "why are so many women who have had unprotected sex getting pregnant?" The probabilities of going to prison if you're black and getting a woman pregnant if you have unprotected sex with her are both less than a half, but it doesn't mean it is a bad question.
"Sometimes she doesn't get pregnant and sometimes she gets pregnant artificially. I don't think pointing the finger at unprotected sex is the right thing to do."
Regardless, congratulations on the family.
Jamie, your religious interest is a curious example: I get the feeling that you believe in Thor or whatever because you want to and probably only when you want to.
The notion that hedonism is illogical relies on some idea of what it means to have something wrong about a lifestyle and for this it seems to me that valid ways forward must not be logical in the usual sense but must instead be axioms in themselves, by this I mean that a moral code cannot be fully logically derived
so under what morals (in your own view) is hedonism illogical?
Glen and anyone else that comes this way, I think the Spice Girls are into this kind of feminism:
http://www.thenewsvault.com/cgi/news.pl?t=1258
Blobb- I really don't care enough about the metaphysical world to form a strong opinion one way or another. I think it's possible that all of the gods ever worshiped exist on some plane. I don't pray beyond the occasional "toast, boast, oath", which isn't much of a prayer. In times of strife I'm more likely to resent the concept of a god than pray to one, so the "no atheists in a foxhole" thing doesn't even apply to me.
ReplyDeleteAs for the antithetical nature of hedonism and atheism, atheists by and large champion science over all else. The pursuit of pleasure over all other things is illogical, they'd posit, as it generally arrests scientific progress. In terms of ancient philosophy, the Stoics and the Epicureans were more or less perfect examples of the two groups- the stoics denied themselves anything that gave them strong emotional responses, whereas the Epicureans engaged in virtually nothing but.
This place got pretty ridiculous since the last time I came through, hahahahaha.
ReplyDeleteanon- Your argument is as extreme as anything I've ever seen. The existence of a moral code is more or less innate to all religion and philosophy. It has no meaning for your innate moral code, except if you do lack one. People like that, we call sociopaths.
Jamie- I find it interesting that you compare atheism and hedonism to Stoicism and Epicureanism. I've heard Epicureanism called a form of hedonism, so on that point it's apt, but I'm a little confused as to why you think that Stoicism is analogous to atheists. Atheism is a religious/antireligious belief, rather than a life philosophy, so it seems to me that any atheist could deny or indulge in either or both scientific or hedonistic pursuits. I would also question that scientific progress is arrested by the pursuit of pleasure, mainly based on the fact that Einstein apparently got more pussy than John Holmes.
Glen- I wouldn't ascribe all lack of children to a self-centered nature. That's like ascribing all shootings to the victim being a douche. As great as that would be, it's not the case; there's hundreds of possible reasons for each.
My opinion of Atheists is based entirely on the ones I know in real life. All of whom are apathetic manchildren who seem to be afraid of anything even remotely resembling personal responsibility or maturity. Most of them don't even vote and if you ask me, the reason they don't have any kids is because they'd rather get drunk and high and jerk off to Internet porn than make any attempt to get laid.
ReplyDeleteDray - I don’t think it's extreme. You may consider it extreme, but that doesn't mean that it is extreme.
ReplyDeleteReligions were probably the primitive attempts to ascribe meaning and order to existence. The moral codes we ascribe to religions in many cases, such as murder make sense. Other rules are just insane. But the faithful are rather selective aren't they? This brings us to my main point. Religious people, by and large, all through history have been very average at putting religious moral codes into proper practice, when they impede natural human impulses.. I.e. they’ve planned murder with impunity in the most horrendous ways in spite of (in the Judeo-Christian way) some scripts or whatever telling them not to.
Extreme hypocrisy in religion, basically. But then atheists are also extreme hypocrites in most cases, aren't they? Because they're humans. And humans always deceive themselves, because of their concepts and words and so called 'moral codes'.
So to say if you have a faith, you're automatically a fantastic responsible person is very simple minded at the least - the evidence says otherwise. i.e. someone in my family is a professor of anthropology, an atheist and has 2 children and a successful happy family life. He chooses to engage in political discourse, is very well read and doesn't impose his ideas on anyone else. So automatically I know your generalization is false.
Nor do I accept that being an atheist precludes one from comprehending and experiencing the luminous. I think there is a transcendental realm of experience, and this can be had without subscribing everything to a gaseous invertebrate and religious idol - something like Zazen, the rejection of all belief, as a means to off and on freedom. But that's a whole other kettle of fish.
So, some Hebrew ravings that got out of control for a number of years - (you would have to be a lunatic or joking to believe in a 'true faith' anyway)...it's just madness. And to subscribe morals to one faith, and then say without faith you can't have them anymore? And then the inconvenient barbaric morals in these books, what do you do with them? Just throw them away? That doesn't make sense either if you say you MUST have religion as the basis of 'morality'.
I don't hurt people because it makes sense not to. I won't go to jail, I won't experience retaliation, and everyone can enjoy themselves. I don't need god to threaten me into submission. I like those ideas, they make sense, even if religion spawned them.
As I 've stated before people can say they have morals because of religion and still be murderous raping maniacs. So any presumption that religion is a requirement for good behavior towards others does not in any way add up.
These are not problems that god has dictated the answer to, but problems that humans have been trying, with many failures, to collectively sort out for a long time.
Glenn - Maybe it's the caliber of person you're around? Do you live in government housing areas or something? they listen to Dimmu Borgir and smoke dope all the time, and think they and they alone are fucking awesome? Their supposed atheism serves merely as a reflection of their own biases , dislikes and personality and not of objective fact or sound philoosophy.
I know lots of 'atheists who from what you've said, in your mind would be considered 'mature and responsible.'
So I don't get these sweeping generalizations. There practically and philosophically false and serve as a reflection of your own biases and dislikes more than objective fact.
In short, the human is usually a hypocrite religious moral or not.
BTW I don't vote, those bastards are fucked.
So... You suggest we have no freedom unless we have no god. You made reference to paedophile priests, however a priest's child abuse is an action he takes contrary to what he thinks God wants him to do (if he is really Catholic) i.e. he acts freely.
ReplyDeleteYou say that people can have moral beliefs without believing in God. You say you don't hurt people because you're worried about imprisonment and retaliation and people not enjoying themselves. Does this mean that if you could get away with it you would rape a child after all, but only if they enjoyed it?
For a thought experiment, what if there was a "magic" pill that made a child forget what happened fro an hour and you could tell them anything happened and they'd believe you (you can even tell them Jesus walked across water). And let's say that there's, I don't know, a machine or something not human or alive that's watching you and if you rape this child and give them the pill you are $1,000,000 richer or something. Something that will let you "enjoy yourself". So do you rape the child?
No, of course you don't, but you can't say why not ("I'd feel bad about it" doesn't count) where as the Catholic can say "I'd go to hell".
Or, is your school of thought of a genuine Buddhist nature, in which case you can call Karma "God" and call the Buddha "Jesus" and start calling yourself religious after all?
Your scope is still somewhat limited if religion means worship of a gaseous invertebrate.
On the other hand, your hypocrite stuff's probably true.
On the third hand, consider from your apparently upper-class existence that the majority are living among drug users and support-frauds and a view which is given on reflection by interaction with a majority is a generalisation but not a bias.
btw the One True Atheism is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being
Most of the criticisms of religion I hear tend to be criticisms of people's use of religion to manipulate other people rather than the religion itself. Not all, but most.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I find that a lot of Athiests harbour a resentment towards God and religion in general because they somehow feel fucked over by life. Understand that your life is yours to do with what you want, if you're not enjoying yours, well, too fucking bad, do something about it.
Then there's the complaint that the ten commandments or whatever go against human nature. This is a retarded criticism because if they did fit nicely into what everybody was thinking, feeling and doing already, there would be no point for them to exist. Think about it.
Then you get people who hate Christianity in particular because apparently you can be an scumbag all your but still go to Heaven in the end by accepting Jesus and being "born again." This is both true and false. What you need to realise is that faith can't be faked. Not when it counts anyway. So if a person claims to have found and accepted Jesus and is able to fool most of the otehr people around him, he still won't have fooled God.
Saul is a good example from the bible of a person who was a total motherfucker his whole life and then saw the light, so to speak, so these types have been around right from the beginning and have probably been judged the same way the entire time. Most critics of the bible haven't even read it anyway.
Nothing is perfect, no system is perfect, no person is perfect. I doubt if any religion is exactly right because it's impossible for any human being to properly interpret. It's beyond our scope. You can either believe or not believe but you can't pretend either way because in the end you'll only be fooling yourself.
For what it's worth, I know some pretty fucked up Christians too. Whatever. At least they've got the balls to have chosen a side.
A lot of teenagers choose Athiesm as a form of rebellion. Believing in God is not cool, and being cool is important.
It actually makes no difference to me what anybody's religious beliefs or opinions are. You guys obviously feel a lot more strongly about this than I do. Picking each other's posts apart line by line and shit.
I just reread the above and noticed a few typos and grammatical errors. There are also a few spots where I left out entire words altogether. Hardly the first fuckup I've ever made and probably not even the last one I'll make today. Somebody should point it out though. He'll get to feel smart for a couple of minutes. I would do the same thing.
ReplyDelete'Since you have no faith you obviously see yourself as just another mammal in which the only purpose of your existence is to survive and reproduce'. I'm genuinely curious to know what a 'believers' purpose is then in having children, if this is what (according to you) Athiests believe. Note, I say genuinely. I'm not having a go.
ReplyDelete