Why Atheism?

[QuantumT]

To be fair, even before I became atheist, I thought the whole "you have to believe the right thing" stuff was nonsense. I tended towards DD's viewpoint much more, that all that was important was whether or not you were a good person.

That said, Daxx makes a very good point that most mainstream religions have additional requirements besides being a good person.

[DrunkDestroyer]

Actually quite a large proportion of religious people do believe that you have to do something more than be a good person to get into heaven.

Catholics believe you must be prayed for in order to ease your passage through purgatory.
Baptists, Catholics and many other groups believe that you must "accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior", or some variant thereof, in order to get into heaven - no matter how good you are.
The Orthodox church teaches that you must accept God's grace to be saved.
Lots of Christian groups believe that you can only go to heaven if you have been baptised.
In Lutheranism and Calvinism salvation is elective - that is, it has to be chosen.
Jehovah's Witnesses believe that only 144,000 people will ever get into heaven.
In Islam, people who do not believe in "The One God", or Allah, will not get into heaven.

This is far from a general consensus. In fact, it appears that the general consensus is that just being a good person alone will not get you into heaven.

Most of these groups you are mentioning have one god, and a pretty similar image of him. Most of them all originated from the same religion. We can assume here that the god here is the same. God is always portrayed as understanding and forgiving. In fact, one of the passages suggests that all that is necessary for passage into heaven is repenting at the deathbed (from the bible, so we shall take it to be near the original if not the original)

From here, the religions split up. And despite their good intentions (generally), a religion does need to attract and keep members. A church would find it very hard to keep running with only two people attending weekly. (I sound slightly negative here and I'd like to point out that those dedicated types are my favourites). So, over time, conciously or unconciously, the individual churches wanting to keep people in their system, may have changed slightly the 'requirements' to get into heaven, in according to how to subtly keep their members.
With that being said, the person preaching makes all the difference here. Sometimes you will get a self-absorbed guy who will say that all those who do not attend his weekly masses will find themselves in the fiery depths of hell. And then there are the ones trying to understand the original texts, and ignoring guidlines like "you must be baptised to enter heaven". Guess which one you are more likely to find on TV, or in a church of quite well off people wanting to here that one hour a week is enough to grant them entrance to heaven, and after that hey can go off to do whatever the hell they like as long as they feel bad about it after.

[Daxx]

It would be all well and good to dismiss those long-standing doctrinal points as just the personal takes of preachers who want to expand their churches, if these doctrines weren't enshrined in the holy texts themselves.

You can claim that God is always forgiving and understanding, but when the new testament talks in terms of unforgivable sins and talks about eternal punishment for those judged unworthy, and states that "no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit." (John 3:5), then you are in conflict with what the texts actually tell you about the christian god. Even the new covenant isn't as fluffy as you'd like it to be.

I could go on to talk about Islam as well, but you get the point.

[DrunkDestroyer]

Sorry I haven't posted here in a while, I've been away and counldn't get to here most of the time.

OK, I'm going to be honest here: I don't know much about religion. I'm not very religious myself, and don't do much reading of other religions ect.
To be fair, I'm arguing based on only my little knowledge, and If we are going to keep bouncing theories and knowledge around, I'm going to lose, since I have much less experience, in religion and in life (take a guess at my age if you'd like).

I just dislike the idea of athiesm, and thinking there is no point or reason for life.
The idea of a watcher, or a protecter, or anything, unseen and unheard, it reassures people. It motivates people. It keeps people doing good things.
There are examples of people who have been saved by the Bible or other sources - regardless of whether it is real or not. There are many cases of prevented suicide because someone found hope in religion.
At a more personal level: If someone you were close to died, you would gain hope from knowing that somehow, you would be with them again. If you were planning to steal from the poor and defenceless, you would be more likely to back out if you knew that somewhere there is someone watching and waiting to reserve judgement on you.

Religion is not for some people. But for others, it provides hope. And there should be no reason to tear down that thousand year old hope because of this new discovery called science. Wait another 1000 years and we'll see what is thought of our science and methods now. While it will almost certainly not prove creationism, or global floods (Noah's Ark)- it may just show us that we shouldn't be so prepared to just throw away our old beliefs because some new facts come out.

[Daxx]

For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true
-Robert Frost

I detest that sentiment. Truth is truth is truth. Believing something that is probably not true simply because it is comforting is the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty.

[QuantumT]

I just dislike the idea of athiesm, and thinking there is no point or reason for life.

I have no idea where this idea that atheists think life it pointless came from, but it is utterly false.

Atheism =/= Nihilism

The idea of a watcher, or a protecter, or anything, unseen and unheard, it reassures people. It motivates people. It keeps people doing good things.
There are examples of people who have been saved by the Bible or other sources - regardless of whether it is real or not. There are many cases of prevented suicide because someone found hope in religion.
At a more personal level: If someone you were close to died, you would gain hope from knowing that somehow, you would be with them again. If you were planning to steal from the poor and defenceless, you would be more likely to back out if you knew that somewhere there is someone watching and waiting to reserve judgement on you.

Ironically, it's found that atheists are less likely to be criminals, not more. This is probably do at least partially to the fact that an atheist has no one else to blame their actions on but themselves.

A recent study (http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm) found that atheists, who make up 8-16% of the population, make up only .2% of the prison population. Kind of throws a wrench in the viewpoint that one can only be moral with religion doesn't it?

Religion is not for some people. But for others, it provides hope. And there should be no reason to tear down that thousand year old hope because of this new discovery called science. Wait another 1000 years and we'll see what is thought of our science and methods now. While it will almost certainly not prove creationism, or global floods (Noah's Ark)- it may just show us that we shouldn't be so prepared to just throw away our old beliefs because some new facts come out.

I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with religion if it wasn't constantly shoved down my throat. If you want to believe in something because it makes you feel better, than whatever. But forcing your beliefs on other people when they have no grounding in reality is completely unacceptable.

[DrunkDestroyer]

I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with religion if it wasn't constantly shoved down my throat. If you want to believe in something because it makes you feel better, than whatever. But forcing your beliefs on other people when they have no grounding in reality is completely unacceptable.

To be fair here, you can get aethiests subtly doing this too. If I openly said I was religios in front of 500 aethiests, I'm sure one would decide to tell me how stupid I am.
The same with religions, although it is much more open and direct, and quite frankly, I get sick of it too. The people who really do this the worst are not the true and silent believers, but the obnoxious ones who seem to believe that they have been chosen.
However, I am hoping that there is a distinction here between saying something like "Oh, I go to church twice a week, and for the most part I enjoy it" or "God bless us before we eat this food" - statements that are directed towards you, the listener but are not aimed at converting or pressing their religion on you, and "Everybody! God himself, appeared to ME, in a dream, and I need to recruit YOU, who are not worthy of His or MY presence, to go out and stand upside down wearing sombreros and singing YMCA to please him, and thousands of people on Youtube".
I am hoping by 'having religion shoved down your throat' you mean the second kind, in which case I completely agree with you. And, if there was any ambiguity in my previous posts - I am not trying to convert anyone here, just stating my views on religion and aethiesm (although in a very biased way).

[QuantumT]

I guess I should add that I don't really think the whole "Religion makes people feel better" idea is a very good argument, just that I can't force someone to give it up.

To me, this argument seems analogous to a 2 year old with a security blanket. Sure it makes him feel better, but eventually he's expected to give it up and move on with his life.

Note: Other arguments can be made for religion. This analogy is just for that one argument.

[DrunkDestroyer]

I guess I should add that I don't really think the whole "Religion makes people feel better" idea is a very good argument, just that I can't force someone to give it up.

To me, this argument seems analogous to a 2 year old with a security blanket. Sure it makes him feel better, but eventually he's expected to give it up and move on with his life.

Note: Other arguments can be made for religion. This analogy is just for that one argument.

While I should stop now, and it's clear that arguing with Daxx and QuantumT isn't going to get me anywhere (you are both superior debaters, and have much more experience than me here, possibly on both sides), I'd like to bring up some lines from another source of inspiration and wisdom: Men In Black.
Why don't they alert humans to the presence of aliens, space travel and unavoidable doom for the planet? Because "Humans are dumb, panicky stupid animals" (quote taken from memory-may differ slightly from actual quote).
It's not the same situation here, the quote does generalise, but it does hold some value.

[Sir Rebrl]

I used to be an atheist till a little over a year ago. I looked around me and saw nothing that even remotely implied a God watching over us. I felt nothing to indicate a continuance beyond this mortal existence.

Starting a little before Halloween last year, though, I began feeling things beyond the purely physical. Those feelings, some powerful enough that I call them spiritual experiences, have become the foundation for my own personal belief system. I won't go into that in depth here and now, because it's not a response to the topic title.

Why atheism? Because we're born atheistic. We may carry on in the religion of our parents, but if we don't feel it then it's just a facade and we are truly atheistic. I don't understand people who can follow a religion, or especially convert to another, without religious experience. Where's the foundation for belief there? It's absent.

No true theism without a foundation of religious/spiritual experience to build it on. That's why atheism.

[Ele124]

Okay, my little bit. Karl Marx, a clever chappy, worthy of much respect once said that "religion is the opium of the people". From personal experience, I have seen many christians deliriously happy to have found the "real religion" and to be honest, im not someone who will kick a persons crutch out from under them, mental or otherwise.

But, IMHO religion is an evil war-mongering (e.g. crusades) genocidal (e.g. Bosnia/Ireland) machine of hate that only exists to provide those at the top with power, money, fame and glory. Herein lies the dilemna, if someone is able to function properly only by using a mental crutch made from poisonous snakes, do you dash in and kick it out of their hands? or leave them be?

Just to answer this one little point:
"I guess I should add that I don't really think the whole "Religion makes people feel better" idea is a very good argument, just that I can't force someone to give it up.

To me, this argument seems analogous to a 2 year old with a security blanket. Sure it makes him feel better, but eventually he's expected to give it up and move on with his life."-QuantumT

This is an interesting point, which is answered quite well in Richard Dawkins "the god delusion". Admittedly the guy is MASSIVELY biased, but he makes some valuable points. In his book he makes the point that everyone is wired up differently (literally) and that some people (from a certain age) need a reason to live. This can be fulfilled in many ways, but that religion often wins out, supporting this persons capacity to live. Hence the mental crutch analogy.

Also, I have absolutely nothing against budhism or confucianism, which to the best of my knowledge are both atheistic religions.

Chow.

[quantumcreater]

Philosophy: Guys looking in the dark for the right way.

Theology: Guys looking in the dark for the right way and say: "Found it!"

After I had Philosophy in shool I became atheist. Atheists don't know what happens after death. Religious don`t know what happens after death but they say they know. This is sham imo. So why should I be religious?

Greetings