I've become atheist, but I don't want my family to disown me

Student Lounge College Life
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Galoisien, insulting people won't get you anywhere and makes you seem close-minded.

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<p>I viewed myself as a fundamental Christian a year ago. So now I'm a born-again atheist who has had the wool lifted, if you will (though the uneasiness started 6 years ago). </p>

<p>I'm not insulting anyone. I'm only echoing what Richard Dawkins (a much-respected evolutionary biologist) has warned intellectuals about. It's not an insult to call religion a delusion, because religion in every way resembles a cultural virus, in much as it is not insulting to call the variable-number tandem-repeats you have as particularly "virally" self-propagating in your human genome (because the structural properties those repeats give to their portion of the DNA molecule encourage the propagation of further repeats downstream during replication).</p>

<p>It's the scientific way of describing what religion is: a viral, parasitic cultural meme. Remarkably, things that appear non-living (prions, internet macros, variable-number tandem repeats, web videos, sugar-phosphate backbones of nucleotides encased membrane-interfacing protein coats, and yes, religion) can appear to have a "viral" will of their own sometimes. I insult no one by agreeing with Dawkin's hypothesis that this is how religion propagates and why it tends to be widespread. </p>

<p>The "viral hypothesis" also confronts the "if everyone believes it there must be some truth to it" argument. e.g. it's not insulting and actually enlightening.</p>

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<p>that Jesus Camp documentary is terrifying! (and it was really awkward to watch with my jewish friends) What's even scarier is I'm pretty sure there are people in my family like that, and more people where I'm from. It freaks me out.
I wouldn't say religion is an infection so much as just plain and simple brainwashing, most of the time, particularly fundamentalist/evangelical types of religions. Fundamentalism in any form is irrational. There are plenty of people out there who are a certain religion because they were raised that way, no other real reason. </p>

<p>PS I know plenty of people who are perfectly rational AND personally religious, but the very vocal minority tends to doom them in the eyes of the rest of us.</p>

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Ok, but now you're being condescending by acting like religious people are infected with some kind of virus making them stupid.

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But scientifically, "viral infection" is an appropriate way to describe religion.</p>

<p>The</a> Selfish Gene - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_beard_effect%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_beard_effect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>If you talked to all of your bio professors privately about the mechanisms of faith, 90% would agree with Dawkins that religion can be described as infectious.</p>

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<p>Evangelicalism/fundamentalism and atheism are the philosophies that attract the most self-righteous jerks, in my experience. Which is not to say that everyone, or even most people, following those philosophies are condescending and smug--just that they have a higher proportion of them than, say, Buddhism, Catholicism, Shinto, agnosticism, etc. Or perhaps the annoying ones are just more noticeable than the reasonable ones. </p>

<p>A lot of atheists also lump all religious beliefs with those of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (especially Christianity,) which is irritating. Not every religion is about an omnipotent God. Not every religion HAS a god. And on the flipside, some religions have many gods. Some religions have gods that aren't considered to be morally superior to men (like the ancient polytheistic Greek religion, for example, or the Native American trickster god Coyote who could be mischievious and downright foolish at times.) </p>

<p>Richard Dawkins is a prime example of a crazy, over the edge atheist, which I realized as soon as he said we shouldn't let children read fairy tales or Harry Potter because they are "anti-scientific." Sorry Mr. Dawkins, but you are just as much of a crazy zealot as the frothing fundamentalists who thinks that J.K. Rowling's aim was to turn kids into Satanists.</p>

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<p>On the contrary, Dawkins is an extremely insightful and intellectual evolutionary biologist that has ingeniously identified many mechanisms of selection that his predecessors failed to discover, and was the scientist who extended natural selection to the cultural realm and probably part of the people who helped bring game-theory and economic theory to evolutionary biology. Religious ideas should be discussed like any other myth, or powerful cultural representations like Daedelus and Icarus, but children deserve protection from their parents' delusions. We take children away from psychologically abusive parents, or from parents who view child sacrifice and female circumcision as a perfectly acceptable thing to do to preserve their "culture", and from a rational point of view, there's no reason why religion shouldn't be viewed as a form of psychological abuse as well.</p>

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Some religions have gods that aren't considered to be morally superior to men (like the ancient polytheistic Greek religion, for example, or the Native American trickster god Coyote who could be mischievious and downright foolish at times.)

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<p>Clearly then, teaching your children to believe in them and reject modern medicine and scientific thought is still acceptable. </p>

<p>Oh let's toss in human sacrifice too.</p>

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Sorry Mr. Dawkins, but you are just as much of a crazy zealot as the frothing fundamentalists who thinks that J.K. Rowling's aim was to turn kids into Satanists.

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<p>He's also probably ultimately responsible for half the material in evolutionary bio textbooks found in all colleges around the country.</p>

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<p>Galoisien, you sound like you worship Dawkins as your God :p Believe me, I grew up in an Islamic Fundamentalist family and hate religious zealots. But saying that all religious people are psychologically brainwashed is illogical. The majority of people in the world are religious, and you're suggesting that we're all crazy? </p>

<p>One thing I love about Agnostics/Atheists/Freethinkers is we're generally rational people who think things through and rely on logic and reasoning. Well, it's unreasonable to lump all religous people into a negative stereotype. You sound like those arrogant atheists Naturally described.</p>

<p>Naturally, I disagree Atheists are more likely to be self-righteous, based on personal experiences...but you're right that people focus on the main 3 monotheistic faiths and overlook things like Shintoism, but that's simply because those religions don't have as many followers.</p>

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<p>I do not think I am being arrogant, because for one, I'm using evidence and proof (You know, evidence that is actually falsifiable!), UNLIKE religious zealots. You can disagree with me by attacking the foundations of my argument. (Free market of ideas...)</p>

<p>Secondly, I used to be very religious myself.</p>

<p>Thirdly, it is not arrogant to attack others' religiosity, since mass ignorance tends to lead to bad public policy decisions. You know, in addition to stuff that actually affects my liberty, the liberty of my friends, scientific advancement of society, etc.</p>

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But saying that all religious people are psychologically brainwashed is illogical. The majority of people in the world are religious, and you're suggesting that we're all crazy?

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<p>The majority of people in the world also are infected with tapeworms or some form of endoparasite. A lot of them look healthy enough though.</p>

<p>There's also this thing called cognitive dissonance (aka doublethink)-- the thing that allows people to be "moderate and rational" and yet remain "religious" despite religion and rationality being two ultimately incompatible concepts.</p>

<p>Think of it as the brain's equivalent of the plant's response mechanism to a viral pathogen: it establishes a wall of separation between diseased parts and healthy parts. This mechanism however does not remove the presence of disease. It just mitigates it so some degree of normality can be restored.</p>

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<p>galoisien, unfortunately, you are not the judge of what is insulting or not. the people who you insult are.</p>

<p>You seem to be accusing all people of faith of being irrational, mindless, gullible fools who believe that the word of God, Jesus, or the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) is infallible, that we all think Harry Potter is a tool of Satan, and that when called upon by our silly invisible space friend, we will march upon the world and destroy all the nonbelievers. </p>

<p>Well, we aren't.<br>
There are people out there with arguments and logic that, to them, make just as much sense as your arguments do to you. They think that atheists like you are the cause of all the problems in the world. Why the hell should we believe you? Your prophet says we shouldn't let kids read Harry Potter because he thinks it will cause them to believe in magic and irrational. You also purport such ludicrous ideas as comparing religion to child abuse.
And do you think that our current president, a man of God, is going to get in the way of all scientific advancement?</p>

<p>You are an atheist fundamentalist. You are no better than a member of the WBC (you know, those religious nuts who protest at soldiers' funerals saying God hates gays). You believe your thought process to be infallible and all others to be delusional. Call yourself what you want, but you're just as bad as, if not worse than, the people you so despise</p>

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<p>What I believe and what we teach our children;</p>

<p>One can only be tolerant of those who are tolerant.</p>

<p>Snarky aggessive athiests are just as objectionable as snarky agressive Islamic Fundamentalists are just as objectionable as snarky aggressive Fundantalist Christians are just as objectionable as snarky aggressive Buddists (are there any of these?). When any of these attack, I react.</p>

<p>I and most of my family are Christian. It works. </p>

<p>Athiests believe that the religion meme is contra-survival. If that were true, it would have been eliminated from human society long before now. Happy, productive athiest civilizations would have supplanted the superstition ridden civilizations. This never happened. There has never been any great Athiestic civilization just as their has never been a great civilization composed of bears. </p>

<p>Religion acts to order and direct society. Most of the great institutions of higher education had their genesis as religious institutions. Athiests are attempting to hijack and divert the efforts of generations of people of faith. They offer faith that the actions of our poor five chemically based senses and a couple of lbs. of protoplasmic goo (the brain)
can interface with and explain ultimate reality.</p>

<p>How is a car different from a planet? We see a car. Do we suspose that ore was smelted, parts machined and assembled, rubber grown and harvested, all without the conscious application of intelligence? Is a planet or a galaxy so much simplier than a car that we can rationally suspose it just happened without conscious application of will and intelligence? What is more likely; things just happen or things happen because there is some sort of direction?</p>

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<p>Galoisien, you are no better than the religious people you mock. Your own views sound extremist - it seems to me as though you've gone from being a Fundamentalist Christian to fundamentalist Atheist. You've channeled your extreme beliefs from one side of the spectrum to another. </p>

<p>BigG, your argument doesn't make sense to me either. You keep saying Atheists believe this and that - that's like saying all religious people worship Jesus Christ and think Harry Potter = evil. No, the only thing Atheists have in common is lack of religious belief, nothing more, nothing less. Your statements that Atheists believe religion is contra-survival and they're trying to hijack society are ridiculous. That would be like me saying all Christians are trying to hijack society by turning us away from science. No, not all Atheists even believe in science or evolution. What defines an Atheist is simply not believing in religion, not any of the false stereotypes you seem to believe. As for your argument itself, it doesn't make sense to me because it's based on stereotypes rather than facts. But I'm sure you have the common sense to realize the reason there's never been a great "atheist civilization" is simply because most are religious - nothing wrong with that. Religion "orders society" because people do things believing they will be rewarded by an omnipotent power, whether it's a Christian child saying his prayers at night or a suicide bomber strapping on a bomb; if your argument is Religion is a good way to manipulate and control the masses, I'd agree. But what good does that do? The 3 major world faiths - Christianity/Islamic/Judaism all advocate against violence, yet look at all the destruction they've brought to the world. Anyway, your attack on atheism doesn't really make sense to me (as a religious person).</p>

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<p>"There has never been any great Athiestic civilization just as their has never been a great civilization composed of bears."</p>

<p>Isn't it funny that today, the most atheistic societies have:
- The highest quality of life/health
- Greatest level of happiness
( The</a> Virtues of Godlessness - ChronicleReview.com )
- Lowest levels of crime</p>

<p>Oh, and here's one of my favorites: Atheists are vastly underrepresented in the U.S. prison system, whereas the proportion of Christians in the population and Christians amongst the jailed population are identical. </p>

<p>I could go on.</p>

<p>"They offer faith that the actions of our poor five chemically based senses and a couple of lbs. of protoplasmic goo (the brain)
can interface with and explain ultimate reality."</p>

<p>The fact that, without god, you describe your own brain as a "couple of pounds of protoplasmic goo" shows either your dishonesty, complete lack of understanding of science, or complete lack of confidence in humanity. </p>

<p>"How is a car different from a planet? We see a car. Do we suspose that ore was smelted, parts machined and assembled, rubber grown and harvested, all without the conscious application of intelligence? Is a planet or a galaxy so much simplier than a car that we can rationally suspose it just happened without conscious application of will and intelligence? What is more likely; things just happen or things happen because there is some sort of direction?"</p>

<p>There is direction - it's called the laws of physics. People have adequately and thoroughly explained our universe without resorting to "well... god did it". I'm going to play Occam's Razor here and say: what is more likely; the universe came to be in accordance with laws that we have never seen broken, or there is a Judeo-Christian god watching over us and intervening in the material world?</p>

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I've never come across a religion that is entirely logical. Can you actually name any religions that are?</p>

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He is not a "prophet". Richard Dawkins is highly respected for his scientific accomplishments. That is in no way related to his opinions on non-scientific issues, such as whether children should be allowed to read Harry Potter. Unlike in religion, one can most definitely accept his scientific discoveries without agreeing with his subjective views on other topics.</p>

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I have no idea where you got this idea about what atheists believe. In any case, unlike with religion, where everyone blindly believes the same thing, atheists have many different viewpoints. In fact, scientific research has shown that religion</a> is evolutionarily beneficial.</p>

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Now you're really not making any sense. You're making subjective judgment on the quality of human senses and the human brain, though you really haven't said anything useful here.</p>

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It is more likely that things just happen, because we have no conclusive evidence that there is any "direction" by anybody or anything. Unless and until there is, the most compelling theory for the origin of species is evolution.</p>

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Your prophet says we shouldn't let kids read Harry Potter because he thinks it will cause them to believe in magic and irrational.

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...Is this a joke?! Wow I didn't know people were this ignorant...</p>

<p>Atheism is LACK of religious belief. There are NO Prophets, Messiahs, God's, Satan's, Angels, Saints - get it? I'm surprised so many people don't know what Atheism even is - did you guys think it was Devil-worship or something? :)</p>

<p>Forget about Richard Dawkins. He is 1 person, he doesn't represent all atheists! Adolf Hitler was Christian, do Hitler's personal beliefs represent Christianity? No way! So why on earth would you think some random biologist represents atheism? Use your common sense. There are Christians who believe JK Rowling is secretly Satan and is trying to lure Christian children to devil-worship through magical rituatals - does this represent Christianity?</p>

<p>Guys, there's crazy folks on BOTH sides. But I wish people could be tolerant instead of making crap up and attacking each other...sheesh.</p>

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<p>1) I never said they were right. But his self-superior and condescending attitudes are greatly reminiscent of theists who speak with the same conviction that their ideas are infallibly right because they see everything around them pointing to such a conclusion.
Also, no religion is entirely logical, of course. Religion is a human construct, and is thus pretty much guaranteed to have significant logical fallacies. </p>

<p>2) I understand that.</p>

<p>3) Unfortunately, Dawkins was being cited not in his capacity as a biologist or a scientist, but as a philosopher of religion, where his ideas are based not on scientific fact, but on the desire to feel superior to theists and make him feel special.
I use the term 'prophet' sarcastically, as you would see if you read further back. Come on, you don't take me to be that ignorant, do you?</p>

<p>Moreover, I was citing him as an example of how the furthest ends of the theological spectrum are used as indicative examples for anyone with a similar basic theological construct. Just because the Westboro Baptist Church is a religious organisation doesn't mean that all Christians share their ideology, their hate, their 'disease,' and their threat to liberty.</p>

<p>My criticism is of the poster I was referring to, not of atheism. I have no problem with folks who have their own ideologies and don't try imposing them on others through a sense of self-superiority and arrogance. I do have problems with both theists and atheists who preach their ideas based not upon a belief that they actually have, but on a desire to feel better than anyone who doesn't share their views.</p>

<p>And Hitler wasn't much of a Christian. If you want to use ad hominem examples, think of someone better. Say, King Freddy and Queen Izzy of Spain, or how about the Klan?</p>

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<p>Dawkins is an Oxford professor who you know, having extended evolutionary concepts to the cultural field, also uses those same concepts to describe religion. He is using a scientific description of religion, and you can neutrally say that religion has a "viral" nature. </p>

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Athiests believe that the religion meme is contra-survival. If that were true, it would have been eliminated from human society long before now.

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<p>Uhh...
Selfish gene? (Selfish meme in this case.) </p>

<p>Remember, genes and memes care only about propagating themselves. This can occur at the expense of the organism. It is why eventually the organism dies. It is why kin selection and eusociality occurs. It is why the workers are willing to work for the queen even though they will not have any offspring of their own. </p>

<p>Thus, religion can act as a "parasitic meme". Religion probably confers some advantages in itself (that prove inconvenient today), but it probably piggy-backs on child-teaching mechanisms and other psychological traits.</p>

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What is more likely; things just happen or things happen because there is some sort of direction

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<p>I think you need to go back to school and actually pay attention in bio, orgo and physics class and maybe actually understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics and reaction kinetics.</p>

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<p>"Oh, and here's one of my favorites: Atheists are vastly underrepresented in the U.S. prison system, whereas the proportion of Christians in the population and Christians amongst the jailed population are identical."</p>

<p>That is largely because atheists come from much more privileged backgrounds. People of such backgrounds are underrepresented in the prison system, and thus it follows that atheists would be, as well.</p>

<p>It isn't because Christians are more likely to be criminals. It's because atheists are likely to either not be in a position to be exposed to crime or that they have a good lawyer to call when they get busted with pot.</p>

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"human construct" is nothing more than a euphemism for BS. Religion's foundations are based on blatant misconceptions of the world around us.</p>

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OK, good for him. I don't see how that's relevant at all.</p>

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Well, there are many religious people who have no idea of what atheism entails, so it was not too far-fetched to believe.</p>

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What makes you think that any of the preachers don't actually believe what they say?</p>

<p>Besides, atheism is not a belief, it's the lack of a belief. When we are born, our minds contain no preconceptions about the topics that religion covers. Atheists simply see no logical reason to shift from that position.</p>