Sam Harris: An Atheist Maifesto

[Lunar Shadow]

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl's parents believeat this very momentthat an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.


It is worth noting that no one ever needs to identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, atheism is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to " never doubt the existence of God" should be obliged to present evidence for his existenceand, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: Most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.

We live in a world where all things, good and bad, are finally destroyed by change. Parents lose their children and children their parents. Husbands and wives are separated in an instant, never to meet again. Friends part company in haste, without knowing that it will be for the last time. This life, when surveyed with a broad glance, presents little more than a vast spectacle of loss. Most people in this world, however, imagine that there is a cure for this. If we live rightlynot necessarily ethically, but within the framework of certain ancient beliefs and stereotyped behaviorswe will get everything we want after we die. When our bodies finally fail us, we just shed our corporeal ballast and travel to a land where we are reunited with everyone we loved while alive. Of course, overly rational people and other rabble will be kept out of this happy place, and those who suspended their disbelief while alive will be free to enjoy themselves for all eternity.

We live in a world of unimaginable surprisesfrom the fusion energy that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of this light's dancing for eons upon the Earthand yet Paradise conforms to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn't know better, one would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image.

Consider the destruction that Hurricane Katrina leveled on New Orleans. More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend.

Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm "of biblical proportions" would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina's path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn't have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. Nevertheless, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80% of Katrina's survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.

As Hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran: Their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence; their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God's grace.

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world's suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life isand, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.

One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the world's faith. The Holocaust did not do it. Neither did the genocide in Rwanda , even with machete-wielding priests among the perpetrators. Five hundred million people died of smallpox in the 20th Century, many of them infants. God's ways are, indeed, inscrutable. It seems that any fact, no matter how infelicitous, can be rendered compatible with religious faith. In matters of faith, we have kicked ourselves loose of the Earth.

Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God's goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If he exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: The biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world's suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religionto religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resourcesis what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.

[Lunar Shadow]

Continued: The Nature of Belief

The Nature of Belief
According to several recent polls, 22% of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to Earth sometime in the next 50 years. Another 22% believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44% who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews and who want to stop teaching our children about the biological fact of evolution. As President Bush is well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. Consequently, their views and prejudices now influence almost every decision of national importance. Political liberals seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from these developments and are now thumbing Scripture, wondering how best to ingratiate themselves to the legions of men and women in our country who vote largely on the basis of religious dogma. More than 50% of Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" view of people who do not believe in God; 70% think it important for presidential candidates to be "strongly religious." Unreason is now ascendant in the United Statesin our schools, in our courts and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28% of Americans believe in evolution; 68% believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.

Although it is easy enough for smart people to criticize religious fundamentalism, something called "religious moderation" still enjoys immense prestige in our society, even in the ivory tower. This is ironic, as fundamentalists tend to make a more principled use of their brains than "moderates" do. While fundamentalists justify their religious beliefs with extraordinarily poor evidence and arguments, they at least they make an attempt at rational justification. Moderates, on the other hand, generally do nothing more than cite the good consequences of religious belief. Rather than say that they believe in God because certain biblical prophecies have come true, moderates will say that they believe in God because this belief "gives their lives meaning." When a tsunami killed a few hundred thousand people on the day after Christmas, fundamentalists readily interpreted this cataclysm as evidence of God's wrath. As it turns out, God was sending humanity another oblique message about the evils of abortion, idolatry and homosexuality. While morally obscene, this interpretation of events is actually reasonable, given certain (ludicrous) assumptions. Moderates, on the other hand, refuse to draw any conclusions whatsoever about God from his works. God remains a perfect mystery, a mere source of consolation that is compatible with the most desolating evil. In the face of disasters like the Asian tsunami, liberal piety is apt to produce the most unctuous and stupefying nonsense imaginable. And yet, men and women of goodwill naturally prefer such vacuities to the odious moralizing and prophesizing of true believers. Between catastrophes, it is surely a virtue of liberal theology that it emphasizes mercy over wrath. It is worth noting, however, that it is human mercy on displaynot God'swhen the bloated bodies of the dead are pulled from the sea. On days when thousands of children are simultaneously torn from their mothers' arms and casually drowned, liberal theology must stand revealed for what it isthe sheerest of mortal pretenses. Even the theology of wrath has more intellectual merit. If God exists, his will is not inscrutable. The only thing inscrutable in these terrible events is that so many neurologically healthy men and women can believe the unbelievable and think this the height of moral wisdom.

It is perfectly absurd for religious moderates to suggest that a rational human being can believe in God simply because this belief makes him happy, relieves his fear of death or gives his life meaning. The absurdity becomes obvious the moment we swap the notion of God for some other consoling proposition: Imagine, for instance, that a man wants to believe that there is a diamond buried somewhere in his yard that is the size of a refrigerator. No doubt it would feel uncommonly good to believe this. Just imagine what would happen if he then followed the example of religious moderates and maintained this belief along pragmatic lines: When asked why he thinks that there is a diamond in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered, he says things like, "This belief gives my life meaning," or "My family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays," or "I wouldn't want to live in a universe where there wasn't a diamond buried in my backyard that is the size of a refrigerator." Clearly these responses are inadequate. But they are worse than that. They are the responses of a madman or an idiot.

Here we can see why Pascal's wager, Kierkegaard's leap of faith and other epistemological Ponzi schemes won't do. To believe that God exists is to believe that one stands in some relation to his existence such that his existence is itself the reason for one's belief. There must be some causal connection, or an appearance thereof, between the fact in question and a person's acceptance of it. In this way, we can see that religious beliefs, to be beliefs about the way the world is, must be as evidentiary in spirit as any other. For all their sins against reason, religious fundamentalists understand this; moderatesalmost by definitiondo not.

The incompatibility of reason and faith has been a self-evident feature of human cognition and public discourse for centuries. Either a person has good reasons for what he strongly believes or he does not. People of all creeds naturally recognize the primacy of reasons and resort to reasoning and evidence wherever they possibly can. When rational inquiry supports the creed it is always championed; when it poses a threat, it is derided; sometimes in the same sentence. Only when the evidence for a religious doctrine is thin or nonexistent, or there is compelling evidence against it, do its adherents invoke "faith." Otherwise, they simply cite the reasons for their beliefs ( e.g. "the New Testament confirms Old Testament prophecy," "I saw the face of Jesus in a window," "We prayed, and our daughter's cancer went into remission"). Such reasons are generally inadequate, but they are better than no reasons at all. Faith is nothing more than the license religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail. In a world that has been shattered by mutually incompatible religious beliefs, in a nation that is growing increasingly beholden to Iron Age conceptions of God, the end of history and the immortality of the soul, this lazy partitioning of our discourse into matters of reason and matters of faith is now unconscionable.

[Lunar Shadow]

Continued: Faith and the Good Society



Faith and the Good Society
People of faith regularly claim that atheism is responsible for some of the most appalling crimes of the 20th century. Although it is true that the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were irreligious to varying degrees, they were not especially rational. In fact, their public pronouncements were little more than litanies of delusiondelusions about race, economics, national identity, the march of history or the moral dangers of intellectualism. In many respects, religion was directly culpable even here. Consider the Holocaust: The anti-Semitism that built the Nazi crematoria brick by brick was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. For centuries, religious Germans had viewed the Jews as the worst species of heretics and attributed every societal ill to their continued presence among the faithful. While the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominately secular way, the religious demonization of the Jews of Europe continued. (The Vatican itself perpetuated the blood libel in its newspapers as late as 1914.)

Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields are not examples of what happens when people become too critical of unjustified beliefs; to the contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers of not thinking critically enough about specific secular ideologies. Needless to say, a rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem that the atheist exposes is none other than the problem of dogma itselfof which every religion has more than its fair share. There is no society in recorded history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

While most Americans believe that getting rid of religion is an impossible goal, much of the developed world has already accomplished it. Any account of a " god gene" that causes the majority of Americans to helplessly organize their lives around ancient works of religious fiction must explain why so many inhabitants of other First World societies apparently lack such a gene. The level of atheism throughout the rest of the developed world refutes any argument that religion is somehow a moral necessity. Countries like Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on Earth. According to the United Nations' Human Development Report (2005) they are also the healthiest, as indicated by measures of life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate and infant mortality. Conversely, the 50 nations now ranked lowest in terms of human development are unwaveringly religious. Other analyses paint the same picture: The United States is unique among wealthy democracies in its level of religious literalism and opposition to evolutionary theory; it is also uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, STD infection and infant mortality. The same comparison holds true within the United States itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious superstition and hostility to evolutionary theory, are especially plagued by the above indicators of societal dysfunction, while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European norms. Of course, correlational data of this sort do not resolve questions of causalitybelief in God may lead to societal dysfunction; societal dysfunction may foster a belief in God; each factor may enable the other; or both may spring from some deeper source of mischief. Leaving aside the issue of cause and effect, these facts prove that atheism is perfectly compatible with the basic aspirations of a civil society; they also prove, conclusively, that religious faith does nothing to ensure a society's health.

Countries with high levels of atheism also are the most charitable in terms of giving foreign aid to the developing world. The dubious link between Christian literalism and Christian values is also belied by other indices of charity. Consider the ratio in salaries between top-tier CEOs and their average employee: in Britain it is 24 to 1; France 15 to 1; Sweden 13 to 1; in the United States, where 83% of the population believes that Jesus literally rose from the dead, it is 475 to 1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to squeeze easily through the eye of a needle.

[Lunar Shadow]

Continued: Religion as a Source of Violence



Religion as a Source of Violence
One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the 21st century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concernsabout ethics, spiritual experience and the inevitability of human sufferingin ways that are not flagrantly irrational. Nothing stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord religious faith. Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communitiesChristians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc.and these divisions have become a continuous source of human conflict. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews versus Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians versus Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians versus Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants versus Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims versus Hindus), Sudan (Muslims versus Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims versus Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims versus Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists versus Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims versus Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite versus Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians versus Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis versus Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. In these places religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last 10 years.

In a world riven by ignorance, only the atheist refuses to deny the obvious: Religious faith promotes human violence to an astonishing degree. Religion inspires violence in at least two senses: (1) People often kill other human beings because they believe that the creator of the universe wants them to do it (the inevitable psychopathic corollary being that the act will ensure them an eternity of happiness after death). Examples of this sort of behavior are practically innumerable, jihadist suicide bombing being the most prominent. (2) Larger numbers of people are inclined toward religious conflict simply because their religion constitutes the core of their moral identities. One of the enduring pathologies of human culture is the tendency to raise children to fear and demonize other human beings on the basis of religion. Many religious conflicts that seem driven by terrestrial concerns, therefore, are religious in origin. (Just ask the Irish.)

These facts notwithstanding, religious moderates tend to imagine that human conflict is always reducible to a lack of education, to poverty or to political grievances. This is one of the many delusions of liberal piety. To dispel it, we need only reflect on the fact that the Sept. 11 hijackers were college educated and middle class and had no discernable history of political oppression. They did, however, spend an inordinate amount of time at their local mosque talking about the depravity of infidels and about the pleasures that await martyrs in Paradise. How many more architects and mechanical engineers must hit the wall at 400 miles an hour before we admit to ourselves that jihadist violence is not a matter of education, poverty or politics? The truth, astonishingly enough, is this: A person can be so well educated that he can build a nuclear bomb while still believing that he will get 72 virgins in Paradise. Such is the ease with which the human mind can be partitioned by faith, and such is the degree to which our intellectual discourse still patiently accommodates religious delusion. Only the atheist has observed what should now be obvious to every thinking human being: If we want to uproot the causes of religious violence we must uproot the false certainties of religion.

Why is religion such a potent source of human violence?

Our religions are intrinsically incompatible with one another. Either Jesus rose from the dead and will be returning to Earth like a superhero or not; either the Koran is the infallible word of God or it isn't. Every religion makes explicit claims about the way the world is, and the sheer profusion of these incompatible claims creates an enduring basis for conflict.
There is no other sphere of discourse in which human beings so fully articulate their differences from one another, or cast these differences in terms of everlasting rewards and punishments. Religion is the one endeavor in which us-them thinking achieves a transcendent significance. If a person really believes that calling God by the right name can spell the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, then it becomes quite reasonable to treat heretics and unbelievers rather badly. It may even be reasonable to kill them. If a person thinks there is something that another person can say to his children that could put their souls in jeopardy for all eternity, then the heretic next door is actually far more dangerous than the child molester. The stakes of our religious differences are immeasurably higher than those born of mere tribalism, racism or politics.
Religious faith is a conversation-stopper. Religion is only area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give evidence in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet these beliefs often determine what they live for, what they will die for, andall too oftenwhat they will kill for. This is a problem, because when the stakes are high, human beings have a simple choice between conversation and violence. Only a fundamental willingness to be reasonableto have our beliefs about the world revised by new evidence and new argumentscan guarantee that we will keep talking to one another. Certainty without evidence is necessarily divisive and dehumanizing. While there is no guarantee that rational people will always agree, the irrational are certain to be divided by their dogmas.

It seems profoundly unlikely that we will heal the divisions in our world simply by multiplying the opportunities for interfaith dialogue. The endgame for civilization cannot be mutual tolerance of patent irrationality. While all parties to liberal religious discourse have agreed to tread lightly over those points where their worldviews would otherwise collide, these very points remain perpetual sources of conflict for their coreligionists. Political correctness, therefore, does not offer an enduring basis for human cooperation. If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith.

When we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; when we have no reasons, or bad ones, we have lost our connection to the world and to one another. Atheism is nothing more than a commitment to the most basic standard of intellectual honesty: One's convictions should be proportional to one's evidence. Pretending to be certain when one isn'tindeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivableis both an intellectual and a moral failing. Only the atheist has realized this. The atheist is simply a person who has perceived the lies of religion and refused to make them his own.

[SecretWeapon]

Starting threads like this in a religion forum is like walking into a buddhist
monastary a saying "f**k Buddha". Exactly what type of response does
an atheist expect from this type of action? Why do you have to try to mess
everyone else up just to feel powerful, and then accuse religion of atrocity?

[Lunar Shadow]

Quote: (Originally Posted by SecretWeapon)

Starting threads like this in a religion forum is like walking into a buddhist
monastary a saying "f**k Buddha". Exactly what type of response does
an atheist expect from this type of action? Why do you have to try to mess
everyone else up just to feel powerful, and then accuse religion of atrocity?

I have a question for you Secret Weapon. When did you actually decide that god exsisted? I am willing to bet most people on this board never made a decision in that regard because their parents made it for them. Be honest, because we are men of honor and there is nothing greater than a mans word if a man can not be trusted on his word then that man is of no use.

This is a Faith and Religion section, in that regard me being an Atheist ((a)meaning with out (theist) meaning belief in god) is that it is a philisophical stand point I have taken much like a buddist is an Atheist but they are seen as a belief system. This is not a Christian board true many of the members of the baord are christian doen't mean that you get the run of the place. There are Atheists, Agnostics, Christians, Catholics, Muslims, and many more on this baord who have just as much right to voice their opinion... so I am exercising my right as a member of this board.

the point of posting this since I am sure you couldn't figure it out, is to acutally look and think about some of the rediculous things that people believe, and the atrocities that they carry out in the name of that belief. So before hoping on some band wagon you should think long and hard about weather you are wasting your life in what ever you do. the easiest way to do this is to use Occums Razor. if you don't know what it is then google it.

[metalchris25]

Occums Razor? So you would rather do things the simplest way rather than put some work into it? I was respecting that post till you got to that part. If my understanding of the razor is wrong, please disregard this post.

[Lunar Shadow]

Quote: (Originally Posted by metalchris25)

Occums Razor? So you would rather do things the simplest way rather than put some work into it? I was respecting that post till you got to that part. If my understanding of the razor is wrong, please disregard this post.

no its the less elaborate answer tends to be the most correct because there are exponetually less failure points (which religion in general has many) now I am not gonna sit here and claim that Atheism is problem free (it isn't) but it has far less failure points tha any religion I have come across let alone there is nothing in Atheism that is recycled from another belief or disbelief.(i.e. the story of jesus, or any other religious figure head)


the problems in Atheism can be fixed when we learn the in's and out's of the workings of the universe or even Abiogenesis and science is on its way to doing so. The evolution of human understanding is limitless and unanswered questions are being answered all the time you just have to pay attention. One big thin I have learned is that Understanding isn't reached by asking questions but rather asking the right question the right way because most people don't even realize that most of the questions they ask are loaded with a presuumed answer just because of the way it is asked. this is probably the most common but hardest intellectual fallacy to spot.

[SecretWeapon]

Quote: (Originally Posted by Lunar Shadow)

I have a question for you Secret Weapon. When did you actually decide that god exsisted? I am willing to bet most people on this board never made a decision in that regard because their parents made it for them. Be honest, because we are men of honor and there is nothing greater than a mans word if a man can not be trusted on his word then that man is of no use.

I think that we have a similar background, actually. I was raised in an Assembly of God home, my father was a minister at the time. (He's since "resigned his credentials") I was always under the impression that God was a very legalistic, unmerciful God, and if you sinned without asking His fogiveness, and then you died, or the end of the world came, and somehow you didn't have a chance to "repent" (a very religious word that meant nothing to me) then you would go to hell.

Like you, I grew up hearing Bible stories that sounded too good to be true,
and I was always told that "God answers prayer" although I never experienced that myself. And when I was about 12 or 13 I got fed up with
being embarrassed of my beliefs and home-life and upbringing, and spending all my time and patience serving a silent God, so I decided to abandon Christianity altogether. I still believed in a God, but I was really not interested in thinking about him. Ever. I thought "what good could it do me?"

I spent the next year or two of my life doing whatever I wanted, acting how I wanted and saying what I wanted. But when I was 14 I got another Bible
(for traditional and sentimental reasons, mainly) and I read in it occasionaly.
After a while I started reading it more and more, even hours every night.
And that's really what brought me back to Christ, not just reading words on a page, but the way they spoke to me was different than anything I had ever known. There is something in Christianity that is in nothing else I have ever looked into since. I can call it nothing but a feeling or a knowing. Or (drumroll) the Holy Spirit. Don't ask me to explain it, because it is was possible for me to understand it, then all of the Christian philosophy would be nothing.

Years later, talking with you made me wonder about what was really true, so I started to search, and eventually basically became a scientologist. After spending hours a day reading and researching things on the web, my views on alot of things changed. (Don't let it go to your head, btw. ) But eventually I realized that in science, anything can be disproven, all you need is some evidence, so what I believed would be limited to today's headlines.
I couldn't live my whole life in ignorance of absolute truth. It's not like I'm going to life forever. I did alot of thinking and nothing really has given me enough reason do disbelieve what I already believed, so I became content.

As an afterthought, I think that alot of our religious arguments were caused by miscommunication- I was normally in defence of Christianity as a philosophy, you were, I think, usually talking about Christian individuals or actions.

I apolgize for any rude or curt things I have said to you, and I honestly tried to be patient with you for a long time. Just as a disclaimer, though, I'm not going to reply to anything you say to me anymore unless you can talk civil about something. I enjoy a friendly debate or even just a conversation, but I don't like having my intellegence insulted (as if that were a valid couner-argument) and I don't respect someone who thinks they need to rely on mudslinging to win an argument, because I've seen 5 year-olds who behaved themselves better than that. I hope we can be at ease with each other now, and if you don't feel the same, well then I'm not going to subject myself to any more swearing, shouting or mudslinging.
It gets me down.

Quote: (Originally Posted by Lunar Shadow)

This is a Faith and Religion section, in that regard me being an Atheist ((a)meaning with out (theist) meaning belief in god) is that it is a philisophical stand point I have taken much like a buddist is an Atheist but they are seen as a belief system.

Yet this is not a "belief system" forum. It is a quote-"Faith/Religion"-forum.
And last I checked, Atheism is the opposite of both.

Quote: (Originally Posted by Lunar Shadow)

This is not a Christian board true many of the members of the baord are christian doen't mean that you get the run of the place. There are Atheists, Agnostics, Christians, Catholics, Muslims, and many more on this baord who have just as much right to voice their opinion... so I am exercising my right as a member of this board.

Please show me were I said that this was only for Christians. All I meant to say was that you shouldn't go around raining on other people's parades just for the heck of it.

Quote: (Originally Posted by Lunar Shadow)

the point of posting this since I am sure you couldn't figure it out, is to acutally look and think about some of the rediculous things that people believe, and the atrocities that they carry out in the name of that belief.

Do you get annoyed when Christians keep trying to convert you? Same difference. Hypocrisy swings both ways.

Quote: (Originally Posted by Lunar Shadow)

So before hoping on some band wagon you should think long and hard about weather you are wasting your life in what ever you do. the easiest way to do this is to use Occums Razor. if you don't know what it is then google it.

I don't need to reply to this, but since you seem to like accusing people of dodging your questions, or ignoring what you say, I decided not to leave any of your post out.

P.S. : I didn't hop on any bandwagon.

[bilal]

Quote: (Originally Posted by Lunar Shadow)

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl's parents believeat this very momentthat an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.

about the incidend that is picturised in the begining.....and its conclusion only tells me one thing.....that those who dont believe in God are those who demand heaven on earth!....and if that was the case, why would have Adam have had been exiled in the first place...... Earth and its life is never supposed to be eternal....its just a stay... where Good and EVil are in its play....... i leave home for work daily but it will be naive of me to assume that if i leave my place with taking the name of God, i will be all safe and wont come any harm........ Holy EESSA (Jesus Christ) was crusified, Hoy IBRAHIM was was thrown in fire, Prophet Mohammad spent 13 years in Makkah under great suffering, and all these tells us just one thing, that this world is just a temporary stay and God do not play like the commic Super-hero........ he created a world, wrote a mannual for it (the Holy books) and gave us a short span of life here, evil do happen cause people do follow evil...... casue its there.....you cannot see evil but its there, inside you , inside me, and so there is faith to counter it, morality to prevent it........... denial of God would have came in any case........even if there was no crime, even if in place of Holy Books, God Almighty might have came himself to earth and told the people of that time that what this place is and what we are supposed to do, the people still would have denied it anyways, you and I might have too....saying that its only some illusion the people saw back then......


then in the second paragraph....the start is relating faith and religion to Philosophy.......... i used to think wether philosophy is the right thing to justify God, or say religion, yes, philosophy can be used to verify the existance of God, but its certianly not above religion itself ,, and philosophy remains and aid, rather than jsutification of relgion or faith......


what is obvious?....... its just my personal opinion, i might be wrong here....but i thinkg that the soul foundation of atheisim is based on the fact that THEY DO QUESTION EVERY THING AROUND THEM......... i think that ATHEISM BELIEVES IN GOING DEEP INTO ONES CONCIOUS AND QUESTIONING THOSE FUNDAMETALS THAT USUALLY A RELIGIOUS PERSON WILL NEVER DARE TO ARGUE OR WILL LEAVE UNQUESTIONED UNINTENTIONALLY......... this is indeed a very brave and somewhat essetntial practice ,,,, to me... this will either leave you more strong in your belife or will change ones belive alltogether......... to me , this is something that differentiates sterotype religious followers with those who have faith beyound any shadow of doubt (or lunar shadow..hehe)..... so if this is done in keeping the denial part in view... the results of this ESSENTIAL practice or exercise will lead you towards only denial..... so i will just say that this QUESTIONING need to be done not jsut to prove wrong but to explore the indefinite and unseen.......






i am starting to read this post ... and will try to make it till the end

[Lunar Shadow]

Quote: (Originally Posted by SecretWeapon)

I think that we have a similar background, actually. I was raised in an Assembly of God home, my father was a minister at the time. (He's since "resigned his credentials") I was always under the impression that God was a very legalistic, unmerciful God, and if you sinned without asking His fogiveness, and then you died, or the end of the world came, and somehow you didn't have a chance to "repent" (a very religious word that meant nothing to me) then you would go to hell.

Like you, I grew up hearing Bible stories that sounded too good to be true,
and I was always told that "God answers prayer" although I never experienced that myself. And when I was about 12 or 13 I got fed up with
being embarrassed of my beliefs and home-life and upbringing, and spending all my time and patience serving a silent God, so I decided to abandon Christianity altogether. I still believed in a God, but I was really not interested in thinking about him. Ever. I thought "what good could it do me?"

I spent the next year or two of my life doing whatever I wanted, acting how I wanted and saying what I wanted. But when I was 14 I got another Bible
(for traditional and sentimental reasons, mainly) and I read in it occasionaly.
After a while I started reading it more and more, even hours every night.
And that's really what brought me back to Christ, not just reading words on a page, but the way they spoke to me was different than anything I had ever known. There is something in Christianity that is in nothing else I have ever looked into since. I can call it nothing but a feeling or a knowing. Or (drumroll) the Holy Spirit. Don't ask me to explain it, because it is was possible for me to understand it, then all of the Christian philosophy would be nothing.

Years later, talking with you made me wonder about what was really true, so I started to search, and eventually basically became a scientologist. After spending hours a day reading and researching things on the web, my views on alot of things changed. (Don't let it go to your head, btw. ) But eventually I realized that in science, anything can be disproven, all you need is some evidence, so what I believed would be limited to today's headlines.
I couldn't live my whole life in ignorance of absolute truth. It's not like I'm going to life forever. I did alot of thinking and nothing really has given me enough reason do disbelieve what I already believed, so I became content.

As an afterthought, I think that alot of our religious arguments were caused by miscommunication- I was normally in defence of Christianity as a philosophy, you were, I think, usually talking about Christian individuals or actions.

I apolgize for any rude or curt things I have said to you, and I honestly tried to be patient with you for a long time. Just as a disclaimer, though, I'm not going to reply to anything you say to me anymore unless you can talk civil about something. I enjoy a friendly debate or even just a conversation, but I don't like having my intellegence insulted (as if that were a valid couner-argument) and I don't respect someone who thinks they need to rely on mudslinging to win an argument, because I've seen 5 year-olds who behaved themselves better than that. I hope we can be at ease with each other now, and if you don't feel the same, well then I'm not going to subject myself to any more swearing, shouting or mudslinging.
It gets me down.

Thank you for that post SW see this is what I am looking for (now mind you I don't know by what method you came to your conclusions) You came to you conclusion honestly after gutwrenching research and just not taking things for granted (this is as you say, but I can not be certain but I am willing to take yoru word for it) you an I came to different conclusions but I can respect your journey and I can respect where you have landed although I whole heartedly disagree.


I have made an effort to refrain from using four letter words. and hurling mud agreed that thoes tactics are uneeded but I will say sometimes are incidental and unintentional. So I guess at this point its only prudent to say LET THE GAMES BEGIN

Quote: (Originally Posted by SW)

Yet this is not a "belief system" forum. It is a quote-"Faith/Religion"-forum.
And last I checked, Atheism is the opposite of both.

yes you have a valid point that this is a faith and religion forum and I have neither but as you have noticed I can't pass up a good debate. I enjoy the ones that Uncertain Drummer and I have had from time to time even though they could get heated I would still take him out for a beer if the oppertunity ever arose.

Quote: (Originally Posted by SW)

Please show me were I said that this was only for Christians. All I meant to say was that you shouldn't go around raining on other people's parades just for the heck of it.

You never said it was a Christian only board but the general aditude that I get both when I was a Christian on this board and now that I am an Atheist is that it is (mind you I am saying that this is the vibe the board gives off and the way some people treat it)

Quote: (Originally Posted by SW)

Do you get annoyed when Christians keep trying to convert you? Same difference. Hypocrisy swings both ways.

Yes But see I am not trying to convert here I amd just trying to get people to be skeptical of their own would voew so they might examine it and maybe get a better understanding of things, I am not here promoting Atheism I am here to promote thought

[Lunar Shadow]

In response to bilal


I really can't say that I agree with you 100% with you on this Yes Questioning is key it is important you need to ask the hard question the right quetions. but when it comes down to it the biggest question is Where is god and if he is there Where is the proof?

The answer fom this can not come from religious doctrine because it is unrelyable we need an unbiased un corrupted source and the closest thign to that is science and science has yet to prove god. and they way things go in science is that things aren't until proven so much like the US legal system innocent until proven guitly. the problem is god has yet to show up to testify in heis own defense. the last thing I really want to see is more apologetics to defend faith I would love to see proof rather than doctrine.

[bilal]

Quote: (Originally Posted by Lunar Shadow)

In response to bilal


I really can't say that I agree with you 100% with you on this Yes Questioning is key it is important you need to ask the hard question the right quetions. but when it comes down to it the biggest question is Where is god and if he is there Where is the proof?

The answer fom this can not come from religious doctrine because it is unrelyable we need an unbiased un corrupted source and the closest thign to that is science and science has yet to prove god. and they way things go in science is that things aren't until proven so much like the US legal system innocent until proven guitly. the problem is god has yet to show up to testify in heis own defense. the last thing I really want to see is more apologetics to defend faith I would love to see proof rather than doctrine.

fair enough..... Lunar...... you see.... here i would like to say just one more thing ......that i would ask you to read .......since i am sure, reading my post must be a bit hard due to most of the grammatical mistakes you have to endure...anyways..... its exactly what i belive in too....that i am sure in earlier days when religion was new to the world, or new to still some parts of the world, the series of Prophet hood was in continueance..... many scripts were also given to these prophets, most of them are not known to the world now, except for some prophets of ALMIGHTY GOD and 4 famous books.......... now... there will be no more prophets or holy books coming to the world, cause all that needed to be taught to the world was concluded by LORD ALMIGHTY ............. but i belive...... the prophet of present day world is Science....... now.... science obviously cannot give proof of the existance of GOD, as science itself is the explanation of the world and processess created by the Supreme being that created all.......but science can validate those unexplained things in the holy books...... that were obscure or meaningless for the people of the past........since the only heavinly thing present in the world are the holy books................. no one seeking interest in religion needs to see how much faith does an already relgious person has, or by what the people of a particular religion has made out of it.......but he needs to seek the source.....and that is the holy books........... as science progress...it has unlocked many misteries contained in these only heavinly objects between us.......... like the orbiting of every single thing around its axis ( we know now that even atom has molecules rotating in its axis) ....... the last thinkg i recall from my recitation of my holy book related to science was a verse saying that if you want to escape from the boundries of the earth, you cannot do it unless you use great force ( we see how the space rockets are fired by great force)...... the point i am trying to make is that i belive Science is the present day Prophet......and one seeking interest in religion should consult the source......i.e holy books............... again i will appreciate your logical arguments ...... but i hope that you will use your efforts not just to prove something wrong but as i said about questioning earlier......... do direct this questioning against your own beliefs (non-beliefs too) .....ofcource ...it wont hurt......

[metalchris25]

That was an interesting post man.^

[Lunar Shadow]

Quote: (Originally Posted by bilal)

fair enough..... Lunar...... you see.... here i would like to say just one more thing ......that i would ask you to read .......since i am sure, reading my post must be a bit hard due to most of the grammatical mistakes you have to endure...anyways..... its exactly what i belive in too....that i am sure in earlier days when religion was new to the world, or new to still some parts of the world, the series of Prophet hood was in continueance..... many scripts were also given to these prophets, most of them are not known to the world now, except for some prophets of ALMIGHTY GOD and 4 famous books.......... now... there will be no more prophets or holy books coming to the world, cause all that needed to be taught to the world was concluded by LORD ALMIGHTY ............. but i belive...... the prophet of present day world is Science....... now.... science obviously cannot give proof of the existance of GOD, as science itself is the explanation of the world and processess created by the Supreme being that created all.......but science can validate those unexplained things in the holy books...... that were obscure or meaningless for the people of the past........since the only heavinly thing present in the world are the holy books................. no one seeking interest in religion needs to see how much faith does an already relgious person has, or by what the people of a particular religion has made out of it.......but he needs to seek the source.....and that is the holy books........... as science progress...it has unlocked many misteries contained in these only heavinly objects between us.......... like the orbiting of every single thing around its axis ( we know now that even atom has molecules rotating in its axis) ....... the last thinkg i recall from my recitation of my holy book related to science was a verse saying that if you want to escape from the boundries of the earth, you cannot do it unless you use great force ( we see how the space rockets are fired by great force)...... the point i am trying to make is that i belive Science is the present day Prophet......and one seeking interest in religion should consult the source......i.e holy books............... again i will appreciate your logical arguments ...... but i hope that you will use your efforts not just to prove something wrong but as i said about questioning earlier......... do direct this questioning against your own beliefs (non-beliefs too) .....ofcource ...it wont hurt......

Yes Your post can be a bit hard tt read sometimes. The problem I have with religion is that they deem something a mericle when it can now be explained simply by science so how is it a mericle? Well its not. If it were it would be a mericle I do try to be skepticle skepticle of my own world view because it is kind of a check and balence type of system because that is what seems to work best. but I really don't see what place some holy book (the tora, the bible, the qran, or the book of mormon for that matter) has in the modernday world due to the fact that they have little knowlage in them (yes I see the myths that are with in a a valuable) but there are when it comes down to it they just don't cut it for a standard of living or a standard of ligic for that matter.