What is up with Atheists? - Political Forum

FRYandBENDER · #1 (**permalink**) 11-13-2006, 10:27 PM

I don't know if you've heard, but there is a new book out called 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins. I saw him talking about his book on CSPAN2's Book TV and I couldn't believe that someone could hate religion that much. Now I'm not particularily religious, and I'll be the first to admit religion's shortcomings, but come on, is religion really that bad? I mean that once you get past the crazy religious "leaders" and their followers who molest alter boys, or protest at soldiers funerals, or try to impede gay marriage, or even fly planes into buildings, the majority of religious people just want to practice their beliefs and trust that there is something higher than them. I just don't get it.

One of my biggest problems with atheists is that a good many of them use science to try to discredit an existence of a God. I was talking to someone who was an atheist and he thought he would use science to make me look stupid. He went so far as to say that someday science would totally prove that there is no God. He said that life was totally random and there was no order or meaning to anything, yadda, yadda, yadda. But isn't it true that the more we learn about life, from the smallest building blocks to the ginormous universe, we find that there is a definate orginization that is guided by ceartain laws? I would submit that the more we learn about physics in particular, the closer we come to understanding God, or at least to understanding that there is a God. Can people really look around and think that existence is just a random occurence? I don't know.

I don't think I would have such a problem with it if some of them were not so smug and hypocritical. They will bitch up and down that religious people shouldn't ram their religion down others throats, but then they'll say that religion should be banned. I don't know, I'm pretty down about it.

There was a bitch on O'Reilly tonight that said that she was against religion because religious people were "unenlightened." Who the hell is she? Why can't people just leave others the hell alone and let them believe or not believe what they want to? I really just don't get people I guess.

Any thoughts?

By the way, did anyone see the past two weeks of South Park? It was about atheism and it was pretty damn funny. If you missed it I highly recommend catching it when they begin to replay the season.

USViking · #2 (**permalink**) 11-13-2006, 10:33 PM

What is up with atheists?- well, for starters,
what kind of God would allow one child to ever suffer
while at the same time requiring of all human beings
knee-worship, prayer, and praise?

I want no part of such a God.

FRYandBENDER · #3 (**permalink**) 11-13-2006, 10:57 PM

I don't particularily believe that God takes any kind of role in our lives. I just kind of think that "he" or "it" set everything in order and that it is up to us to make life better where we can. I thought the same way you do when my cousin died a few years ago. I can't know what makes you feel that way, but I've learned that most people that feel that way do so because something bad happened. Denying the existence of a God is anyone's choice, but it won't make anything any better; but sometimes, for some people, acknowledging that there is a God and a meaning and a purpose can make it better.

Anyways, I wasn't trying to say I have a problem with people being atheists, but how is an atheist saying that a religious person is stupid any different than a religious person saying that an athiest is going to hell? Do atheists hold their disbelief in God as sacred and personal as religious people hold their belief?

Any ways, I wasn't trying to piss anyone off. I just don't see how Elton John can say that religions should be banned, and then bitch about other people trying to ban or criticize things he believes in.

Scruff · #4 (**permalink**) 11-13-2006, 11:07 PM

I agree with you Fry, but it comes in on both sides. I was listening to the comments from interveners in the Wallace v. Jaffree case concerning teacher lead prayer in school where a woman said "I think prayer should be in school because it is the right thing, and it's something I think should be, and I think that anyone who thinks otherwise shouldn't be allowed to live in this country."

What kind of argument is I don't think people who believe in seperation of church and state should be exiled BECAUSE I SAID SO.

Anyone can believe whatever the hell they want to, I don't care.

USViking · #5 (**permalink**) 11-13-2006, 11:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FRYandBENDER

I don't particularily believe that God takes any kind of role in our lives. I just kind of think that "he" or "it" set everything in order and that it is up to us to make life better where we can. I thought the same way you do when my cousin died a few years ago. I can't know what makes you feel that way, but I've learned that most people that feel that way do so because something bad happened. Denying the existence of a God is anyone's choice, but it won't make anything any better; but sometimes, for some people, acknowledging that there is a God and a meaning and a purpose can make it better.

Anyways, I wasn't trying to say I have a problem with people being atheists, but how is an atheist saying that a religious person is stupid any different than a religious person saying that an athiest is going to hell? Do atheists hold their disbelief in God as sacred and personal as religious people hold their belief?

Any ways, I wasn't trying to piss anyone off. I just don't see how Elton John can say that religions should be banned, and then bitch about other people trying to ban or criticize things he believes in.

My criticism was not directed at Deists, Pantheists,
and the like- those who believe in an impersonal God:
The Guy who made the watch, maybe out of himself,
or some such thing, but has never has anything to do
with the people who get ground up in the working parts.

Maybe so. I just think the introduction of God into Nature
adds an unneeded step, or level, whatever you want to
call it. If there was one Prime Cause, then Nature itself is
more economical than God's Creation of Nature. God is
an unneeded character.

FRYandBENDER · #6 (**permalink**) 11-13-2006, 11:20 PM

Exactly. I think it is all a plow for political power, when it comes to any topic or belief these ass holes, on either side, are standing up for. Are people so bored/ depressed/ sad/ hatefilled/ whatever that they can't just live and let live? I always thought that the great thing about our country was that anybody could believe anything they wanted without worrying about someone who disagrees with them lobbying or scheming against them.

CHUQ · #7 (**permalink**) 11-14-2006, 05:54 AM

God only knows and he /she probably not listening. I would say he is pretty busy to really give a shit.

superbug · #8 (**permalink**) 11-14-2006, 08:12 AM

God cares more than any of us will ever know. He has a plan for everything and we are not able to see it. It would be like trying to see the forest through the trees.

Izzibeth · #9 (**permalink**) 11-14-2006, 10:52 AM

I think it is a complete waste of time for atheists to attempt to "convert" theists. When people get too invested in it... it BECOMES a religion (trying to "preach" non-belief to others). I understand the want to explain to others what you feel is right but... it falls on deaf ears much of the time and it's really just a waste of precious energy and time. Go love somebody or something!

emptypepsi · #10 (**permalink**) 11-14-2006, 12:14 PM

WRT atheists, from my experience most people who give atheism a bad name usually don't even understand it or aren't what I would consider real athetists. They're usually teenage kids or very young adults just acting out, not having read much about it. Atheism is actually a very interesting school of thought and it is actually the counter-point that I love to read in response to philosophical theory, along with Agnostic thought (which I am more along the lines of).

WRT Dawkins -- he is a very intelligent but militant atheist that cannot get past his own acidic and hostile world view. I've not read this recent book mentioned, but I've read "The Selfish Gene". Dawkins does have a distaste for religion and an impartiality for straw-mans. He will generally pass his detractors off as "insane" or some other ad hominem.

Dawkins believes (from what I gather of that book) that we are machines created by our genes, which is strange because elementary biology is incompatible with Dawkins' reductionist, gene-centric interpretation of life. Genes are not the drivers, but rather they're components of the complex cell cycle known as Meiosis and Mitosis.

To be more succint, he uses his gene-centric theory to supplant belief in a higher power. For it, does none of that. It merely sheds light on what may or may not be going on at atomic levels. I remember reading an interview of his once where he called that book "The thinking man's bible".

How condescending.