I’m an atheist, though I don’t like to call myself that way.
How can you believe in things that you know aren’t real? How can you be sure there’s a God if He has never answered your prayers?
Oh, and I thought Christians were supposed like their neighbors and friends. But most of my christian friends never do that. It’s really hypocritical when you force to me to call proper name of God and be selfish and betray your friends.
To me, religions aren’t what I rely on to get through hard times. They’re obstacles. They’re the reason why some progresses were made not as fast as it would have been if it weren’t for religious peoples.
So why do people say “Find peace in your religion when you’re depressed”? Religions are lies.
Attack me all I want, but I was so hurt by religious peoples that I’ve come to conclude that religious dogmas are only right on the surface.
17 comments
I agree that religion is an obstacle. I see two types of people – those who question without fear, and those who blindly follow, afraid to question.
As a Catholic and “born again” christian, I was told not to question, to simply have “faith”, and my soul will be spared. Sorry. I question. Until I’m blue in the face and exhausted, I question. If religion can’t handle that, tough cookies.
Humanity has a need to understand its origin, reason and destiny, and so devised the myriad religions to provide answers, as illogical as they might be. Wisely, we decided to inject the fear of some form of eternal damnation or punishment for failing to blindly adhere to religions unattainable standards of perfection into the mix. It helps keep the lemmings in line, as they wander around in futility and confusion.
On the positive side, I believe religion probably helps many. Any port in a storm, right? What better hope to have than the promise of eternal reward in the afterlife once we’re done with our earthly struggle. So, hey, if it helps a person, that’s a good thing.
Religion, like the majority of humanity, is afraid of these three words – “I”, “Dont”, and “Know.” “I don’t know.” Religion has it all figured out, but doesn’t see its own folly – the fact that we just don’t really know. We don’t know our destiny, so religion has skillfully crafted those answers for us, with absolutely no proof of what is to come, if there is anything. Religion is ashamed and embarrassed to acknowledge this fact, while science stands up and screams “Holy shit, we had no clue, but look what the evidence shows us!”
Religion demands that we do not ask, we MUST accept, or face the consequences, which are baseless, mindless guesses by those afraid to admit “We don’t know.”
Sorry, but if questioning what I was told is wrong, then so it is. I’ll face my consequences Frank Sinatra style – doing it MY way.
Hey, isn’t Catholicism just preschool for atheism? I’ve met more atheists who were Catholic than Catholics who were theists. These days, even Protestantism is churning out atheists who think they’re theists – one of the core, foundational pillars of any theistic system is the idea that the god(s)(ess)(es) are active, alive, and in control. And yet just about every square inch of the Christian world acts as though their head honcho can’t fight his own battles. We need legislation to defend him from people that don’t want to obey him properly! And we need a judiciary to punish the people who violate his will! I mean, clearly, he can’t defend himself, or punish anyone. Psshh, he’s got better things to do with his time. He probably has a huge stamp collection to organize or something. Just have faith in the holy stamp collection – that’s why god never talks to anyone or acts directly. Yeah.
I associate myself with the philosophy of atheism, although it’s not accurate for me. But close enough. That said, I certainly do not believe in a white bearded holy father in the clouds BUT I often defend Christianity and other faiths because, after all, even atheism is unproven.
“How can you believe in things that you know aren’t real?”
Even scientists do this on a daily basis. There is no explanation for why gravity exists. We just theorize it’s there and it isn’t going away. But truth be told, if this universe is indeed random and pointless, then we should wake up every morning believing in nothing. There’s no guarantee of anything beyond what we observe minute-by-minute, and yet we all go to sleep believing that tomorrow things will appear the same as today. Religion takes it a step further and ascribes faith to causes, not just observations. They believe gravity will exist tomorrow because God wills it so. I don’t see any difference between that sort of faith and faith in Isaac Newton’s scribblings. To the believer, both are “proof” of an observation. But in reality, even established scientific equations are subject to fault.
“How can you be sure there’s a God if He has never answered your prayers?”
I don’t think there are any religions that say God will always answer your prayers. That’s a construct of deluded minds. But, even if there is a God who receives & understands transmissions from organic beings who press their hands together, there’s no guarantee that this God will have the time or opportunity to answer every message on a personal basis.
“Oh, and I thought Christians were supposed like their neighbors and friends. But most of my christian friends never do that.”
Yes, they are supposed to be good, friendly people. My guess is that you just got stuck with sh!tty friends (Christian or not).
How does one prove atheism? We can’t even prove that undiscovered subatomic particles don’t exist. We can prove that they do by discovering them, though.
AXYZ—-Atheism isn’t a “philosophy” it is simply a rejection of unproven or unprovable claims made by Theists, specifically the denial that any Gods exist due to a lack of evidence.
If you don’t believe in Zeus, Thor, Vishnu, Allah, Horus, then congrats you’re an Atheist with respect to those Gods, we Atheists just go one God further.
There is nothing for Atheists to “prove,” how do you prove Superman doesn’t exist? It is accepted ‘prima facie’ there is no Superman because he is a product of the human imagination, like all the other fictional characters humans invented including Gods. Additionally, we can observe that there is no such super-being who’s visited our planet.
Since Theists make the claim there is a God then the burden of proof rests with them otherwise their claims can be dismissed. And proof means to produce this God being and have him/her demonstrate their powers, nothing less would suffice and certainly not words or debating science.
As for the points that you raised, you need to educate yourself on Science, we know a great deal about Gravity, thanks to Newton and Einstein. Also scientific equations don’t change from day to day, they’re set in stone because we live in a universe governed by scientific rules/laws.
Science doesn’t require any belief or faith to be true, that’s the beauty and power of science. Anyone can discover the same truths about it on their own. They’re testable, repeatable and verifiable unlike any of the laughable claims by religion.
Don’t forget the “parties of god” are the same group of retards who told us the Earth was flat, that we’re the center of the universe, that jailed Galileo for telling us that Jupiter exists and we orbit the Sun and as I mentioned in another post, called mentally ill people ‘demon-possessed’ and used leeches/blood-letting to ‘cure’ diseases.
Religion has gotten every significant scientific, moral, ethical question wrong and yet people keep clinging to these outdated ideas. Prayer is more hocus-pocus religious nonsense and we know it doesn’t work, it has never worked, otherwise, we wouldn’t need hospitals to heal the sick or militaries to fight our wars.
Your excuses are so lame, God isn’t too busy to answer prayers-he is not there at all, why is this the hardest thing for Theists to understand? You’ll consider every possible idea under the Sun except the inexistence of God to explain why the world is the way it is. The simplest answer is usually the right one.
As for the ‘evil’ Christians, you use the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy to excuse the bad behavior of Christians. The fact is that they behave badly because that’s their true nature and they are arrogant, they think people who aren’t Christians are ‘fools’ and destined to go to hell for rejecting Jesus. They are hateful towards Atheists/non-Christians because Christianity taught them to behave this way to the ‘out-group.’
I’d actually find the dilution of faith into a mere addition of unnecessary variables to be insulting, were I a theist. If you page through the bible, every single example of faith goes like this: 1) God goes and tells someone something. 2a) The person accepts what God told them and does the thing he/she was asked to do. Or 2b) The person shrinks away in the face of what might happen if God doesn’t do his part. It gets diluted every time someone removes the part about God actually being there and telling someone something. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that this is the basis of almost all of Christian and Judaic scripture, and yet nobody’s heard a single peep from God in, supposedly, 2000 years. If godish things are happening when nobody’s looking, they might as well not be happening at all, especially if you take a cue from what’s written in their holy books.
I gotta disagree with you guys, unless you mean to say “agnosticism”.
“Atheism” (a = without, theism = belief in a deity) is the rejection of any possibility of any deities. Atheism cannot be proven. It’s as if I say unequivocally “There is no alien life in the universe.” Unless you overturn every rock in the universe to prove there are no aliens (or gods) hiding, it’s just another faith based opinion.
But now “agnosticism” (“the existence of gods is unknown”) is something I can wholeheartedly get behind.
Atheism is agnosticism’s older brother. It’s basically a disinterest in the question, where agnosticism is a mild curiosity and theism is full-fledged zealotry. You don’t need to prove that something doesn’t exist to not care about the question in the first place. There are better questions to ask than whether it’s leprechauns that are stealing my socks from the dryer, after all.
@rivets Perfect description of the spectrum with atheists being disinterested/closed off, agnostics being curious but unconvinced and theists being zealots. I personally like to stick with the alien life metaphor, because my personal belief is somewhat closer to Kubrick’s proposal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, that “gods” are simply superior alien races who passively assist in the development of species–but it’s not like they’ll answer your prayers for your football team to win.
So I guess I’d fall in the agnostic group. But I’m definitely not an atheist saying there are no gods, no aliens, and I don’t wanna hear about it! Lol
I’d only nitpick about your usage of, ‘closed off.’ That’s not apt in this case. If you remain open to every possible explanation for every phenomenon both natural and synthetic, you’d never be able to form an individual opinion about anything. Some possibilities are remote enough to dismiss from the outset, given an honest assessment.
I also agree with you and take Sam Harris’ position also. We don’t define ourselves as “non-astrologers” for rejecting astrology. There doesn’t need to be a term for people who reject god-belief or religion. We simply examined the claims put forth by Theists, found them not to be credible and rejected them.
I used to be a Christian and can concur with your points about the duplicity of Theists. Christians pretend to be nice to others because they think they’ll be rewarded by their imaginary God. When they feel it no longer serves them to be nice, you’ll see their true ugly side come out. Not to mention there is a lot of hatred and demonization of people who reject their cult, esp towards Atheists.
All religions do the same-it’s a form of tribalism. It’s only when I left the religion that I was truly authentic with myself and others. If I liked people I treated them well and vice versa. In the past, I was nice to people I didn’t like because I thought I was required to, as a Christian and that never sat well with me.
Basically, religion is the wrong software code to run in your brain. The world would be a much better place if we rejected these desert fables written by peasants from the Bronze Age.
If we banned the teaching of religion to children until they became teens (and started learning to think for themselves), all religions would completely die off within one generation. Only children fall for these nonsensical belief systems and they continue to cling to these ideas into adulthood because they were brainwashed and are unable to recognize it or question these beliefs.
For me, my burgeoning atheism is part of the reason I am depressed. My entire upbringing, my family, my friends, my community is all based on this mutual love of God and understanding of what His will is. I was told all my life that God is the only Source of happiness and meaning, that without God, the human being is doomed to pain and isolation. The believers around me, including my family and friends, were always so happy, so blessed, so utterly uncaring about anything but God.
But me? I wasn’t a true believer. I pretended to be. I said the right words and did the right actions, but I didn’t believe. I knew in my heart that God wasn’t real to me.
What do you do with that? How do you cope when you are apparently the only person disconnected from the source of all joy, when everyone around you is so disgustingly happy and you are living a lie? I had nowhere to go. I was so conditioned and programmed that I couldn’t even conceptualize a life outside of the church. So I suffer. I fake faith hoping, praying that God would reveal himself to me, feeling nothing but an empty crushing agony when all I heard was silence.
Soon, death seems like the only option. If you know you can’t survive in the real world, your choice is narrowed down to suffering or suicide.
I don’t want to hurt the people I love. If I leave the church, I lose everything and everyone I care about. If I die, I’ll have peace but at the cost of hurting everyone. If I stay, maybe one day I’ll fake it so well that I believe again.
So I stay.
A loving, all powerful God and a heavenly afterlife are just wishful thinking. Religion is just a way for some to be in power and control gullible people (who often give them money, too)
There is so much illogical nonsense in religion and claims that have bever been backed up with evidence that it boggles my mind that atheism is the minority in a lot of places. In religious communities, free thought is discouraged. Blind allegiance and “faith” is required or one is ostracized, criticized and threatened with eternal damnation and torture.
It’s time to stop indoctrinating young children with this crap and accept life and death for what they are.
*never
Well said and agreed….likewise for other similar comments here.
I tried and failed. I guess religion is just too good for something like me. Anyway, I’ve made peace with that.
Well why do you want to kill yourself if you just believe after this your doomed to be a bunch of dust clouds why not live your life out make use of your days preaching to others how there is no hope and god doesn’t exist i dont believe theres a bunch of clouds somewere and you go through some gate to go either to hell or heaven i know there are discrepancies in the bible as i was. Raised by a muslim father who taught me these things but he also taught me heaven and hell are not a place its a mindset if you do good in this life and dont do evil and if you do repent for your sins you will live a heavenly life cause you have a heavenly mindset but if you do evil you will live a hellish life.theres no afterlife heaven. And hell are on this earth.god you dont have to believe in him but many people do because the ideal that theres someone who might save them and bring back the dead gives them hope.and hope should not be taken away from them.its wrong .atheist or whoever.