[Madam Corvax]

I am definitely an atheist. I really tried very hard to be something else, but I just could not. The idea of there being a god/goddes is just against reason.

And it actually made me a happier person. I can think for myself.

And I am glad that I am not the only one here...

[Just your average movie goer]

I'd like to add that I was happier once I chose to be an aetheist too. You stop worrying about this time-wasting notion of scoring points for the afterlife and concentrate more on making the most of this one.

[SimeSublime]

I tend toward agnostic, mostly as I find it easier to belive that we were created by something rather then pure chance, but its mostly the same.

[barend]

my main beef with religion is that i have flicked through most relgions and read alot of the bible... and found something beatiful in all of them...

and found in the end that religion is alot like communism...
a great ideal that can not be maintained by greedy fucktards who thirst for power...

christianity, for example, fails because the moment someone is looked up to for advise they instantly want to be god... it takes so little to quicken a christian... i that's a real fucking shame considering what kind of lifestyle is really on the plate infront of them...

the bible says not to take pleasure in the punishment that awaits those who do not follow god... and yet it seems to be the driving force behind every living one of them...

blessed are the meak...

not the loud-mouth american preacher who tells you you're scum for for not being as godlike as he...

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personally,i'm with the T-shirt I once saw...

"I like God... I just hate his fanclub!"

[SimeSublime]

Damn, somehow I missed the first page of this and feel I should speak further. As I've mentioned before, I'm a science major and view things from a scientific viewpoint. If you look at the probability that humans would exist, it's trivial. That is, it's so small, that it shouldn't have occured naturally. That leads to two possibilities. The first is infinite universes, one in which everything happens, and we happen to exisit in the one where we exist. The other is that there was some form of intelligence that manipulated the universe to support life. I don't like the former, on the simple point that I find it hard to comprehend, and so tend to favour the latter.

I know that I've mentioned it before, but theres a great show called John Safran Vs God on SBS(for those in Australia)which looks at a lot of religions and the like. A few weeks ago he put on his white shirt and black pants, got his copy of "History of the Species", put on his 'Atheist' badge, and went door knocking in Salt Lake City. He has a great sense of humour. Tonight he went to Mozambique to uncurse the Australian Soccer team. The speach he made when he arrived was something like this "So when I decided to go to Mozambique, I thought great, not only will this give me a chance to save the Austrailan soccer team, but also give me a chance to film a slowmotion montage of me playing soccer with a group of black kids. Fuck I'll look good!' He then accidentally kicks the ball into a kids face. Great.

[SimeSublime]

I have to add, that five years of catholic high school pretty much turned me off religion.

[Just your average movie goer]

You're points of view are very surprising for a Science Major, Sime. I would think in its infinite vastness (let's face it, this thing goes on forever), it wouldn't be too hard to believe that life can be created by mere chance.

And I said this earlier - for me, that's much more amazing than someone creating the world. If this world is just some guy's Lego playset, then I think that's terrible.


Note - I loved that T-shirt slogan, Barend....

"I like God... I just hate his fanclub!"

It reminds me of this great card I saw that is perfect for sending off to any religious fanatics you might know. The front page said -

"Jesus loves you."


Inside, it said -

"But everyone else thinks you're a wanker."

[SimeSublime]

Hmmm, I actually dislike the term God, as it has various connotations. I prefer the term creator, because it only sugests that he/she/they created us. Wether they're still watching us, don't care or long dead, is really up for debate. And apparantly my views aren't all that extreme. There are people who I consider to be borderline fanatics in my classes.

Rereading your post, I don't think I made quite clear how minute the chance of life existing is. If any of the four forces(gravity, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, weak nuclear)were different, even on a magnitude of 10^-10 or so, humanity would not exist.

I suggest reading the book "Calculating God" by Robert J Saywer. It's not that long. I got it from my local library, and it sums up a lot of the reasoning for my beliefs. Really good read.

[Slade]

When I say things intangible in modern science, I mean so called "supernatural phenomenon" which many scoff at because you can't see how long it is with a ruler. Psychism, ghosts, and the like.

I like looking into ideas like that, because a solely physical universe can be rather boring at times, but I don't go around saying stuff about them for certain.

I don't really think there's a god in the Judeo-Christian way. I think that if there's anything, it might just be this big floating metaphysical entity with no consciousness in any form we know of. A big ole' etheral jellyfish thingamy-doodad. Or it could be Jung's collective unconsciousness.

Or it could be an angry all powerful creator who somehow manages to act far more human than he's given credit for. I don't know, haven't seen any evidence to support most of it, some that seems to point against it.

So, I worship Eris, Godess of Discord and Chaos. All you have to do in enjoy yourself, don't partake of hotdog buns on Fridays, and you're set. I'm not sure if partake is technically eating them either. We're here, who cares why, we should just try to enjoy ourselves without getting in the way of the joy of others.

"I'm Catholic, unhappy even before I was born. And now children, I must sell you all to medical experiments. Don't blame me, Catholicism won't let me wear a condom."

When in doubt, end a post with a quote from Monty Python.

[Chyld]

I'm not even going to start with the God-bashing, since its all been said and... said. Needless to say, the idea of organised religion offends me.

[Madam Corvax]

When I say things intangible in modern science, I mean so called "supernatural phenomenon" which many scoff at because you can't see how long it is with a ruler. Psychism, ghosts, and the like.

Hmmmm. Ghosts are not „aspects of modern science”. They have been present in people’s imagination for thousands of years. Maybe I have missed the development of modern science that ascertained that ghosts actually exist. I was hoping that by “intangible” you meant quarks, neutrinos, hypothetical elementary particles like tachions, string theory, gravitational waves etc.

If you put it like that, yes, I suppose being an atheist has something to do with being rationalist. I just cannot believe in ghosts, soul, life after death etc. I would dearly love to believe in such stuff. Gee, I would love to see a ghost. I would love to have supernatural powers, like pre-cognition or telekinesis. But so far nobody has proven to me that such things exist.

When I was little, a book was all the rage in my country which dealt with matters like UFO, Philipino doctors who performed operations without knives and cured cancer and such. The book advised you to do a little experiment to see if you have supernatural powers. You were to made a little boat with a paper sail, put it in a tub of water and try to make it move in your direction. I was staring at this damn little boat for hours and it did not move a millimeter.

[civilian_number_two]

All right! Another thread about religion. I can feel the blood rushing into my balls even as I type. Man, God talk makes me horny!

[Madam Corvax]

Ah, Civilian, nice to see you. C'mon, chime in. If the topic is hot and spirit is willing... Let's have some good bashing

[civilian_number_two]

Ok MC, just for you. Although I am an atheist, I will take the other side, since I think things are a bit imbalanced here.

First, jyamg: you say the Catholics are heretics, and you're an atheist. Hmm. Sounds like your "atheism" began as an affiliation with some Christian church. All the same, I'd like to hear your argument rather than laugh it off. Here's mine:

Fundamentalists say that unless you can make your argument using the Bible, then you can't make your argument. they claim that God buried secret clues in random quotes from centuries ago, so that the pre-scientific writers had a hand in leaving behind God's attitudes on space research and cloning, on the stock market and photography.

Catholics make the claim that God didn't just stop talking to Mankind 2000 years ago, and that he still appears, or sends saints and angels, to speak with Man and to offer guidance and counsel.

I think it's ridiculous to allow that God may once have spoken to Mankind on a fairly regular basis, and that he just stopped after a while. I also say that had the early Christians adopted the Fundamenalist point of view, they would never have Canonized the 27 books they came to call the "New Testament."


Some other things have been said here and there on the subject "the Big Three Western Religions are the source of all the trouble in the world," and "If God were good there would not be so much bad."

I say Bullshit to both. The source of the world's troubles have always been Mankind's interest in Money, Sex and Power. Religion is a scapegoat. Before Christians Muslims and Jews invaded their lands, we had genocidal wars in South Asia, we had the Mohawks and the Romans and the Vikings, the Zulus and the Cthulhu-worshipping Incas. There have been all kinds of violent societies outside the worlds of Judaism and Christianity and Islam, and had those three not caught on in the west we'd still be fighting over oil reserves today (BTW: try to delay that election, will you? The longer OPEC supports Bush by lowering oil prices, the cheaper it will be to gas up my Hummer!)

And the other argument ignores the most basic rebuttal: God made the world for Man, and the troubles and the hardships of the world are Man's to deal with. Disease, poverty, war, starvation: these are not insurmountable troubles. Also, there's a queer irony in hearing an atheist say "God does not exist because he made a world that is hard to live in." It's like saying "Licorice jawbreakers do not exist because they taste awful."

God made a world with challenges, and man could overcome these challenges if he were living up to his potential. Some guy jacks your car and leaves you paralyzed? Well, that wouldn't have happened if we had a) a better society and stem cell research and better medicine. So to the argument that if things are bad then God is bad (or nonexistent) I blow a big wet raspberry. God is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good, while Man is weak and willful and not at all working in his own best interest.

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Now I have to jump off the wagon for the probability argument: working out the chance of a thing happening is only interesting before the thing happens. I could set up a chess tournament, 50-man, six rounds Swiss style with a single-elimination follow-up for the top eight. The odds of any particular chess game are phenominally low, by the way. So if we number the tables, and consider that important, we have 153 unique games in one unique order. Throw in the nationalities, the hairstyles and the first names of the players, and we have an event of such low probability that we may as well say that it could never happen.

Here's the thing: the universe is very improbable, yes, but it's here. What would be more interesting about its improbability would be if someone had predicted it. That someone becomes God, and there we are. But you can't go from "life in the universe required very precise conditions" to "there is a God" without any further evidence. That's not science. What you need to do is to go from that statement to a prediction ( prediction that would prove God), and then peform a repeatable experient the success of which would make your argument.

Get back to me on that one. I guarantee I can get it published.

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PS: these Google ads are great! They base themselves on the topic they're in! Thead I see at the top right now is for Christian music! What could be more cool than that? Apart from seeing a ghost or meeting God or owning your own spaceship / time machine ...

[Just your average movie goer]

Just a quick reply....

First, jyamg: you say the Catholics are heretics, and you're an atheist. Hmm. Sounds like your "atheism" began as an affiliation with some Christian church. All the same, I'd like to hear your argument rather than laugh it off.

What I meant is that according to their own wider religious beliefs, they are breaking the rules... they claim to follow the Bible and that they are a denomination of Christianity. However, the Bible says there's to be no-one standing between God and men yet Catholics have this guy called the Pope. They also put a lot of other stuff in the mix.

So according to a Christian standpoint, they would be heretics.

I don't give a stuff if they call themselves Christians when they're not... that's their problem. I was just making the pont that they're hypocritical.


One of the funny things however is that even though I'm an aetheist, I know far more about the Bible than most Christian extremists I meet. So for me, it's always fun to point out their hypocrisy.

And if you want to argue against Christian fundamentalists (which I strongly advise against as it just a complete waste of your time - try arguing with a brick wall instead)... one of the best weapons you can have is to know their own guidebook inside out.

I'm probably not going to spend much time arguing in this thread however... as I've already been here many times during my life. I'm not interested at the moment.


Is there a God? Maybe. Maybe not.

If you wanna believe there is, fine. Just don't discriminate against me because I don't.

If people don't infringe upon the rights of other people when following their own beliefs... and religion and the state always remain seperate... then I'm happy.

That's all I ask from the religious peoples of the world.