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funny thing is, if you were really a atheist you would be dead already. so stop the scam. If you really are a atheist then there is zero reason to live, so kill yourself.
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<p>you are easily the most ignorant and uninformed person on this website. if you base your entire existence on a faith in some story which could possibly be a fairy tale, you are pathetic and brainwashed. there are so many reasons for athiests to live and enjoy life, and if you can't understand that then you should be the one killing yourself. religious people are worthless compared to secular scientists. you're seriously retarded.</p>
<p>"funny thing is, if you were really a atheist you would be dead already. so stop the scam. If you really are a atheist then there is zero reason to live, so kill yourself."</p>
<p>Camus and others would disagree</p>
<p>"Is there any logical reasoning behind this "hunch" of yours, or is it of the same vein as belief in a magical space daddy? "</p>
<p>I'll disregard the snide nature of your tone and answer the question at hand. The closer a person moves to the panic-laden anticipation of nothingness, the more willing they become to accept spirituality. They may not become true believers, but they will be comforted by the very idea of their lives meaning something, anything, objectively. A sort of cognitive dissonance may form as well. </p>
<p>There is a saying in the military: "There are no atheists in fox holes". And it implies the same thing. When the bullets are flying and you're wallowing in death all around you, many find the thought of something greater than themselves a sort of necessary coping mechanism to even allow you to endure.</p>
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you are easily the most ignorant and uninformed person on this website...you should be the one killing yourself...you're seriously retarded.
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No, you don't understand Dr. Horse. He's not an idiot, he just has multiple personalities on CC. He goes to the Engineering board and calls Engineering stupid and worthless to get reactions from people. In another thread, he pretends to be an Engineer and insults Business/Finance and calls them worthless. In this thread, he pretends to be an ignorant-religious type who thinks Atheists are satanic and should kill themselves, but in a different thread he might pretend to be atheist and insult religion. Really, he's just a troll pretending to be several people.
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They may not become true believers, but they will be comforted by the very idea of their lives meaning something, anything, objectively.
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I agree with this...it explains why so many turn to religion in their old age. As they get closer to death, they become afraid and turn to religion. They don't want to believe they will merely die and decompose - they want something more. They want life to go on forever. I think this is what stops many people from becoming atheists - for example, my common sense tells me religion is BS, but I'm not an atheist because I can't handle the thought of there not being anything after life.</p>
<p>"And why would this coping mechanism become more necessary as one ages? "</p>
<p>It need not occur only during aging. Many are drawn to religion after near-death experiences or some disease diagnosis early in their lives, and as I mentioned, on the battlefield. In all of these cases, the anxiety of anticipating a state of non-existence is present.</p>
<p>jazrie481 - well it depends - i'm from a fundamentalist family, meaning that basically my parents take the quran seriously word-for-word. they're also pakistani which means they grew up in a stricter environment (dating = no no). Now, I've met many muslim kids who had normal American parents who weren't crazy like this at all. :p</p>
<p>umm growing up my mom taught me dating = evil western sexual practice I was not to participate in. i've read the quran multiple times (arabic and english!) and it says very clearly people aren't supposed to "date" before marriage, but that doesn't mean an arranged marriage either - you pick your own spouse but no dating? that's what my parents did.
i had 2 boyfriends in high school and now another one in college...:) but I'm agnostic so I don't care for my parents beliefs, whereas i've met muslim teens who do follow their parents religion (nothing wrong with that) and actually abstained from dating/sex/drinking etc.</p>
<p>Belief doesn't matter. Behavior does. (You can probably tell that I am Jewish because I said that! We also have this thing where the community is way, way more important than the individual.)
But, you can come up with an alternative explanation of "God" to still believe in. For example:
1) As much as science explains, there is always that which is just beyond explanation. That is "God". OR
2) Something made the DNA molecule come together and form. That is "God". Perhaps it was coincidence that made this happen, in which case God is coincidence. OR
3) God can be found in the good works that people do for each other, or the positive relationships people have with each other. OR
4) Humans created God because there is a part of the brain that needs belief and spirituality. It does not even matter whether this is "real" or not; it seems to serve a purpose in human existence.
5) As far as an afterlife goes, our DNA passes on to the next generation, which is our afterlife, or we live on in the memory of those who survive us, or in the impact that we had on the world.
So, you can believe in an alternative explanation, call it "God", and then you are not an atheist, and then you don't have to tell your mother anything. Keep behaving as a moral, ethical person, you have a personal belief system, and then what's the problem?</p>
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Here's my advice Galoisien: Do not tell your parents you're an atheist.
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Agreed. They don't have to know everything...</p>
<p>My dad's a southern baptist pastor so if I said anything like that, I WOULD be disowned/devil has gotten me or something. o_O LOL definitely don't tell them if your mom's a hardcore christian or something.</p>
<p>you know what's worse for a religious person than having people who are more observant than you preaching all high and mighty and warning you that you will burn in hell?</p>
<p>equally obnoxious atheists who insult you and call you mentally weak for your faith. </p>
<p>I can understand and respect those who believe in God or don't. I can understand and respect those who believe it is their religious duty to save the souls of their fellow man. I have high disdain for people who advocate either atheism or faith because they think that as a subscriber to a particular religious philosophy, they are smarter, better, and more enlightened people than anyone else.</p>
<p>^ Right, but it seems to me that most atheists are generally more tolerant whereas i've run into a number of religious freaks. But I'm biased since I grew up in a fundamentalist religious family and have been an agnostic for a while now. Between a religious nut and atheist nut, I guess i'd prefer the atheist nut because at least he wouldn't tell me how to behave/act/talk/dress/live my life according to superstitious beliefs. I mean, I'm not atheist, but I'm fine with that crowd. and I really hope this doesn't turn into a Religion vs nonreligious argument because i think the OP just wanted advice.</p>
<p>Religion is a delusion that <em>does</em> prevent the enlightenment of others. Witness whole generations of kids growing up in the midwest right now being deluded by the idea of "creationism" and that someone else, not them, owns their lives (a stepping stone to the robbery of liberty). And the encroachment of delusion upon campus communities by proselytising religious groups.</p>
<p>There aren't enough equally-militant atheist groups on campuses fighting back for truth and liberty, and freedom from delusion.</p>
<p>^my experience is rather contradictory. I know more obnoxious atheists than obnoxious people of faith. They're big on the FSM nonsense, they laugh at religious people for having mysterious space friends, and they think that because they have been enlightened to atheism ('saved' by it, if you will), they are so much smarter than everyone else. Hell, they even call agnostics 'atheists without balls.'</p>
<p>My experience is likely a result of me living in an area where being extremely religious is rather rare and being extremely atheist is not abnormal, but I suspect that there are an equal number (or at least proportion) of really arrogant and obnoxious atheists and religious folk.</p>
<p>^^My point exactly. Self-righteous fools like the poster above me are as obnoxious as any proselytizing mormon or bible-thumper telling me to repent for my sins before Christ Almighty, or as wicked as a radical imam calling for murder to serve the Prophet Mohamed, Peace Be Upon Him.</p>
<p>you equate religion with God. Religion is an entirely human construct. It is thus open to such foolish interpretations as fundamentalism. </p>
<p>God is beyond the human realm. God is not what makes religion seem so foolish. People are.</p>
<p>Sure there are cocky atheists out there, but remember they are a minority. Religious people make up the majority of the U.S and world. I've met some craaaazy religious nuts out there, but like I said, I'm biased because I grew up in a fundamentalist islamic family. </p>
<p>Agnostic is totally different from Atheism - one group doesn't believe in god, the other does, so the "atheist without balls" argument makes no sense, it's something an ignorant person would say. In my experience, religious people tend to be more ignorant and might not know what an Agnostic is at all, whereas I would guess most Atheists know what an Agnostic is. </p>
<p>I don't know, my boyfriend is atheist and so's his family and I feel like I can relate to them more than my own fundamentalist family. And they're not arrogant people, they're very openminded. But yeah, there's nutty people on both sides of the spectrum - problem is, the religious side is much bigger. And I hate arrogant people of both mentalities. </p>
<p>Galoisien, insulting people won't get you anywhere and makes you seem close-minded.</p>
<p>The problem is that when religion runs rampant unchecked in the free market of ideas because people do not have the courage (or the passion) to speak up against a delusion, a particularly vicious meme is allowed to spread and encourage further ignorance in people - in effect, spreading a virus of thought that needs to be stopped before it threatens others' liberty and learning. </p>
<p>Religion is a particularly viral cultural meme because those infected with this cultural disease exert selective pressure on religious traits in their offspring and on others (for students of evolutionary biology -- see Richard Dawkins' green beard effect). Perhaps equally important, religion immunises those infected from the inconvenience of outside ideas and refutation. </p>
<p>The funny thing is that religion cannot offer a cogent or falsifiable explanation for evolutionary radiation and adaptation, but evolutionary theory has much more plausible explanation for why religion propagates: natural selection of cultural traits.</p>
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God is beyond the human realm. God is not what makes religion seem so foolish. People are.
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<p>This is what I thought too. I thought there was a God to be found beyond religion.</p>
<p>What I did not realise (until it was pointed out to me) that it was just cognitive dissonance. And there's no reason why the gaps in our knowledge should automatically be assumed to be the God that cultures have recognised, and making such an assumption is dangerous. </p>
<p>So let's use some statistical sense: until we identify some greater entity out there (behind the physical constants perhaps) such that p < 0.05, let's assume the null hypothesis: no God exists.</p>
<p>^ Ok, but now you're being condescending by acting like religious people are infected with some kind of virus making them stupid. And no, they're not sheltered from outside ideas.</p>
<p>I once saw a documentary called Jesus Camp about Christian extremists (the kind that think Harry Potter = Satan brainwashing children) and they interviewed the families, and several of the children didn't have their parents crazy beliefs. When their parents weren't around, they admitted they watched Harry Potter and listened to non-Christian music and didn't think everyone is evil and doomed to hell. My sister and I sure don't share our parent's beliefs, neither do many children of fundamentalists - we have common sense. You're acting like religion is an infection and the children are also infected and can't "recover".</p>
religion is an infection and the children are also infected and can't "recover"
This isn't entirely false. Many religious people depend on it as a form of mental support. Being born into a religious family makes the likelihood of coming to depend upon religion higher.</p>
<p>The root of all religion is (a) people don't like feeling like they have no control over their destiny and/or (b) people don't like not understanding everything about their environment. These attitudes are usually acquired during childhood.</p>