Serious The Atheism/Agnosticism thread

i don't think anyone can be an authority on religion, honestly. imagine christianity is correct...then all of the millions of muslims and buddhists and hindus and atheists and zoroastrians and whatever the fuck else is there is wrong. imagine there is no god. atheists cheer, but the billions of other people are wrong. i just can't imagine there being an authority on religion when legit more than half the world is wrong depending on if there is a god, what religion that god conforms to, etc. i can imagine there being an authority on religious BELIEFS and how a religion works and shit, but not on god itself. i don't know what the fuck is up, but i likewise don't think anyone does. i think you can believe your way or science your way or whatever the fuck you want to do to give yourself a religious answer, and i think that's absolutely fine and i hope everyone is at peace with their religious decisions. but nobody actually knows what the fuck is up, regardless of adamant beliefs saying they do. i 100% respect your faith in god, or buddha, or whoever, and as sure as you are that he exists, i'm equally sure that none of us have a bloody clue.

as such i don't think there's an authority, just a bunch of people believing what they want. i don't really fall either way and i don't really want to fall either way nor do i want to make a decision because i just don't have an authoritative stance on the matter. my stance is legit "don't have a fucking clue, we'll see what happens when i die." i don't think that's abhorrently illogical.
 
There doesn't have to be one correct religion. Christians can go to their heaven and other religions can go to theirs. My religion teaches tolerance towards other religions, and since the afterlife is not certain, faith towards what you believe in is the best way to approach death. If you think there is nothing after life and want to rot in a box forever suit yourself.

And grouping all Christians with murderers from 2000 years ago is crazy just like viewing Germans with... or Muslims with..... but I am not going to start that topic, but people with those views are just unintelligent and incredibly arrogant.
 
Actually Lolkomori, since some gods themselves are described as murderers, grouping followers of those faith with murder is extremely logical. Unlike the godless, since we all have our own version of godlessness, none of us can be automatically grouped together with the murderers we do not follow and do not ecstatically worship :)
 
CaptKirby said:
Actually Lolkomori, since some gods themselves are described as murderers, grouping followers of those faith with murder is extremely logical. Unlike the godless, since we all have our own version of godlessness, none of us can be automatically grouped together with the murderers we do not follow and do not ecstatically worship :)
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this is my favorite internet argument since the time imanalt said that the boy scouts were basically the kkk
 
hey I never called out any specific religion, even the greek and roman gods enjoyed murdering, and if you enjoyed the greek and roman gods then you god damn supported that murder with all your fervent adoration
 
I'm not going to give any opinion on religion itself because while I'm not religious myself I believe anything that induces people to be more moralistic(which yes, leads to lower crime rates) is quite good and thus I'm quite OK with people being religious.
One thing I disagree with is Creationism. To me, IF(big if there) a god existed, that god would probably (following Occam's razor which has ALWAYS worked) go the simpler and frankly more elegant scientific way. And that's just answering the people claiming science is ugly while creationism is beautiful.
Isn't it so beautiful just to see the variety of species all around us and marvel yet how all these species come down to ONLY 4 forces? Simplicity in the most chaotic of scenarios?

In my view, religion might be right or might be wrong, but EVEN IF religion is right, I'm pretty sure(as somebody who'd like to go into science one day) that the scientific view is still right.
 
Lavos Spawn said:
you seem to be trying your hardest to create/stir up controversial threads in order to argue with as many people as possible and nobody likes it. maybe get a fresh start on a new account eh friend
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Before I begin I know it was stupid to post that video, I wasn't thinking straight because I was stressed out, and I apologize for that.
Now back to your comment, first of all the only people I was arguing with was you and blitzlefan, so I'm not sure where you're getting the accusation that I'm trying to argue with as many people as possible. However if you mean arguing in the sense that i was responding to peoples' posts with my own opinion or my addition to that post, then you're also wrong.
Second of all if by saying I created a controversial thread in search of more people to argue with you're referring to the feminist thread, then that's a stupid fucking claim. If you're not then disregard the rest: let me remind everyone that I'm still unfamiliar with how the website works, so how the fuck was i supposed to know creating a thread like that would get that kind of response? One of my first impressions here was people making intelligent discussion on this thread, so I thought they would be able to do that on another topic, which was the main reason why I created that thread.
I've said it at the beginning and I'll say it again, I do apologize for posting that video.

GatoDelFuego said:
You seem to be one of the only people getting mad but are telling everyone to quit arguing.
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You admitted that you were a little harsh in that post, and I thank you for apologizing, but did you really not see what was happening on page three? I can assure you that I was not the only person getting pissy about something.

Btw this elitist/clique shit you people got going on is really, really fucking stupid. I probably won't be posting again after this because of it.
 
okay this thread was okay, sorry for making a bad post and derailing it. i qualify myself as an atheist probably in that i see the idea of an all-powerful god as a bit silly. like, what even started the idea that there is some being that is omniscient etc? i understand that it probably stemmed from people seeing things that they didn't understand, explained them by gods, and it evolves from there, but in the modern era where we know so much more it seems quite silly indeed to continue basing HUGE portions of our lives off of books written thousands of years ago without "sources".

some of the tenets of religion, though, mostly all the 'be a good person' ones, are nice. it's good that there is some force that exists that propels people to do good (whether or not you see good deeds only for salvation as good, they are still good deeds). however the ignorant culture that the predominant religion where i live [southern baptist] really grinds my gears. people often willfilly ignore, to the point of refuting, science and the pursuit of knowledge. that's the biggest turn-off of religion for me, speaking from an outsiders standpoint. i don't want to belong to any organization that promotes the delegitimization of science, bigotry misogyny, violence, etc.

i don't chastise people for believing in god. i look down on some for being overzealous and oppressing other people's rights and forcing views on others on something with literally 0 imperial proof. and by look down upon, i'm not "that atheist" that intentionally gets into arguments with religious people (because i just realized that that is what it sounds like), and the average religious dude is always a civil conversation if it happens to pop up.

although i just thought of the fact this very moment that, if you truly believe in a religion, why would you not be a zealot? if it's truly truly true, why wouldn't you try to be a dick and force it on others, as it is for the 'greater good'? i understand that rational people realize that it just triggers anger usually, but it's just a random thought i had...
 
ceelan said:
let me remind everyone that I'm still unfamiliar with how the website works, so how the fuck was i supposed to know creating a thread like that would get that kind of response? One of my first impressions here was people making intelligent discussion on this thread, so I thought they would be able to do that on another topic, which was the main reason why I created that thread.
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I probably sound like a dick atm, but this is why lurking moar is always a good idea. These kind of threads go down the drain in the end anyways...

Bad Ass said:
although i just thought of the fact this very moment that, if you truly believe in a religion, why would you not be a zealot? if it's truly truly true, why wouldn't you try to be a dick and force it on others, as it is for the 'greater good'? i understand that rational people realize that it just triggers anger usually, but it's just a random thought i had...
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Because belief=/=zealotry?
 
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Poppy what do you mean by authority? From your more recent posts, it seems like you lack confidence in your opinions rather than whatever you mean by authority. I have no idea what 'personal authority' means, but it doesn't appear to mean authority in any conventional sense.

Blaj it seems you don't believe people should have opinions unless they are absolutely sure they can prove they are right. Billions of people can be wrong. If I picked a random number between 1 and 5 and asked everyone in the world to guess it, as long as most people didn't guess the same thing, billions of people would be wrong. Should that prevent them from guessing at all? Do you think people should avoid having any sort of opinions on issues that can not be proved one way or another?

And to anyone who feels this thread has run its course, by all means stop posting. There are many other threads in the forum that may interest you more, but I'm genuinely interested in the questions I'm asking and the answers I'm getting so I will keep posting here.
 
Yeah there are extremists in every religion/anti-religion/whatever-you-call-it. They make it very easy for people to stereotype that whole group. I am a Christian that hates pushy Christians. They are annoying as hell. Those are not the people you should use to define Christianity, cause the majority don't act like that. And telling yourself that most do is just a denial stage I guess.
 
I know others have already attempted this, but I'd like my own crack at it and maybe it will even be more thorough than the others.

A lot of people are confused about what atheism and agnosticism mean. They're "different", but not in the way that people seem to think. They're referring to answers to different questions altogether. You can easily be both, like me. (Might as well say it explicitly now. Yes, I'm aware of the social group. Actually, do social groups exist on Smogon anymore?)

As an agnostic, my answer to the question "Is there a god?" is "I don't know."
As an atheist, my answer to the question "If you had to bet for or against god's existence at gunpoint, how would you bet?" is "Against."

That's all. Being an atheist honestly doesn't even imply much of anything beyond what I said. A lot of atheists believe in some silly things, some of which greatly resemble religious beliefs, or are worse than them. So whatever.

Now, let's take this a step further. There have been some whisperings of "anti-theism". Frankly, even that isn't as extreme as people are making it out to be. Off the top of my head, an unreasonable atheist belief might be that god is too ridiculous a concept to believe. That may be true in the context of this century, but gods and spirits were perfectly reasonable explanations of phenomena in centuries past. Nowadays they're woefully inadequate, but what, then, does that say about how we explain the universe today? Beliefs we take for granted today will be considered moronic in the future.

Now, what is anti-theism? It's essentially the belief that religious institutions are doing more harm than good to society. People like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Lawrence Krauss get an undeserved amount of hate simply for being outspoken in their criticisms of religion (notice how Christian pastors don't get that level of hate). The contradictions in religious texts open the floodgates to arbitrary interpretations that serve to justify the hateful, violent actions of some people (e.g. Hitler, Westboro Baptist Church, religious terrorists), and a religious person just has to come to terms with that fact. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from criticism. And in the end, I'd say an anti-theist generally has more of a reason to respect other people's beliefs than many theists do (well, mainly Christians and Muslims, I guess), in large part because they don't have heaven or hell on the brain.

Now to conclude with an out-of-context quote:

Scarfwynaut said:
Also, we occasionally use to get this wacky priest from Scranton that hated abortions and use to make speeches about them every time he came.
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billymills said:
Poppy what do you mean by authority? From your more recent posts, it seems like you lack confidence in your opinions rather than whatever you mean by authority. I have no idea what 'personal authority' means, but it doesn't appear to mean authority in any conventional sense.

Blaj it seems you don't believe people should have opinions unless they are absolutely sure they can prove they are right. Billions of people can be wrong. If I picked a random number between 1 and 5 and asked everyone in the world to guess it, as long as most people didn't guess the same thing, billions of people would be wrong. Should that prevent them from guessing at all? Do you think people should avoid having any sort of opinions on issues that can not be proved one way or another?

And to anyone who feels this thread has run its course, by all means stop posting. There are many other threads in the forum that may interest you more, but I'm genuinely interested in the questions I'm asking and the answers I'm getting so I will keep posting here.
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I don't lack confidence in my opinions, but I don't have opinions on things I'm not confident in. I guess personal authority was a tautology, but I simply meant that I believe my own authority about the existence of a higher being is lacking. That does not imply that I believe there is a higher authority that could persuade me otherwise, simply that my lack of interest in the presence or absence of a god means that I have no authority on the subject. I have no confidence in my opinions about god because it's something I have no real opinions on. Which was basically the contents of my first post, defaulting to agnosticism.
 
Lavos Spawn said:
badass was trolling?!?!?!?!?!!?!?
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Bad Ass said:
although i just thought of the fact this very moment that, if you truly believe in a religion, why would you not be a zealot? if it's truly truly true, why wouldn't you try to be a dick and force it on others, as it is for the 'greater good'? i understand that rational people realize that it just triggers anger usually, but it's just a random thought i had...
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That assumes that that particular religion requires or suggests its followers do so. Christianity, for one, doesn't. We're told to offer it, but in the end everyone gets to make their own choice. The only place and time where the God of the Bible required His followers to force His will on other people was if you chose to live within the Jewish Theocracy, ancient Israel.
 
the godless are going to burn in hell blah blah theists are fucken sheep get a brain morons blahblahblah agnostics have splinters in their ass from sitting on the fence for so long blah fucking blah
 
Idk if anyone asked for my view but I have nothing better to do.

The first thing to know about me is that I 99% believe in the paranormal. I have seen it and actually felt "ghosts" with my own bodily senses and live next to / have been on the Queen Mary. Some sort of afterlife seems a given to me, but I acknowledge that I can never know if I see reality perfectly just like no one knows if we're dreaming / living in a black hole etc.

Some Catholic teachings have a sort of Godly sense of "perfection" to me, kind of like how we all feel when we read those cool Zen sayings except to a maximum. Being as forgiving / accepting as possible, being the best neighbor possible, avoiding greed / grudges etc. in the words the book puts those things speaks to me, and I think those lessons would apply even if we looked at the world as if there were no God. Basically being a good / hardworking person to me makes the world a slightly better place every single time someone does it and is therefore in our own interest.

With that point of view I don't expect good Athiests / Agnostics to be thrown away given there is an afterlife because their life experiences may fight their chances of seeing religion as a possibility, and I don't think a lot of people in that position are anything less than great people.

This is how I justify studying science and being annoyed when religious people solicit too much while being religious myself. This is also why I agree with that saying "There are an infinite number of ways to interpret reality, and whichever you choose is right for you." I feel best and literally physically perform the best on a Bible binge.
 
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