<p>Don’t worry OP, religion will die out [when</a> we all become robots](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism]when”>Transhumanism - Wikipedia) within the next hundred years.</p>
<p>OMGOSH! It certainly is astonishing to see some people so against this discussion and the question posed by the OP. How is it ignorant to ask this question? That is utterly ridiculous. You are so immature to disengage from this discussion for pitty reasons. </p>
<p>To answer the OP, i think people believe in God and see religion as necessary to exist because it provides a source of faith and hope for them. It’s a state of mind, and in believing that there is a higher being looking over them, it gives them a sense of comfort and inner security. </p>
<p>My personal take on this may offend some people but i am very open minded about things like this and have many friends of every faith and religion. I am 18 and am still exploring this topic, but what i have encountered so far only reaffirms that i am an agnostic atheist. Not to offend, but i have found christians to have a particular desire to lure you into their religion, to preach, and in general are the least open minded. I’ve also found muslims to be, by and large, the most friendly and open minded. </p>
<p><em>runs away quickly and hides in a shell</em></p>
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<p>Yes, very much so.</p>
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<p>There’s no need to. I agree with many of your observations and appreciate your genuine opinion.</p>
<p>^Yeah, because an atheist is scared of offending other atheists by stating his/her atheism. [noparse]:rolleyes:[/noparse]</p>
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<p>I think this is exactly why many do not believe in God - just as many Americans have an irrational fear of Marxism due to the Cold War, many also associate religion with completely irrational representatives such as Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham and trends such as the Spanish Inquisition and those Mormons that knock on your door trying to convert you. This is a natural reaction, but not a productive one - your views should be made by authentic experiences, not by negative reactions. My religious views are completely my own and there’s no reason we should have to form religious groups.</p>
<p>^^ So you are not following th Bible by being a Fisher of men?</p>
<p>I am an atheist, raised by an aloof atheist who believes in the scientific potential for reincarnation (energy dispursed) and a spiritual Pagan. I have been raised to find the beauty in the Earth, wonder in intracate patterns and marvel at the way all things adapt and change. If I am spiritual, it is on the level of a mathematician that takes the time to see the beauty of a solution. </p>
<p>To me, religion (versus) spirituality, has only been important personally since I moved to the Midwest. I had never met fundalmentalist, or even regular church people (excluding several Jesuit priests that hang with my Mom at peace rallies, etc) I can understand that some people find the certainty in religion comforting. What I can’t grasp, at least with most of the religious Christians that I have met, is the inability to get that morals can be apart from religion. I have morals, I believe in consequences, but it has to do with here and now, not in some distant future in a heaven. Historically, I find very little good that has come from the world’s organized religions. </p>
<p>So to answer the OP, no, I am a happy functioning atheist who doesn’t care what happens after I die. I am more concerned about my current life, and those that share my planet.</p>
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<p>Exactly. As a person affiliated neither with a religious group nor the vast swath of atheism-agnosticism, it seems to me as though modern Christianity has shot itself in the foot by permitting rabid and outspoken demagogues to gain control even of insignificant churches. The relative liberalism of the Catholic Church is degraded by this, just as the vast majority of Muslims have their religion tarnished by fringe groups. It seems to me that Atheism is a religion in unto itself - it has its own leaders (Richard Dawkins, for example) and governing bodies ([List</a> of secularist organizations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist_organisations]List”>List of irreligious organizations - Wikipedia)), and, just like religious proselytizers, has a missionary agenda.</p>
<p>Granted, I value free thought and expression above all other freedoms - I would live in an autocracy where I was forced into an occupation and not permitted to leave home without government permission were I permitted to think, believe, and express my thoughts as I wished. However, I still do not see the good in questioning people’s beliefs when the goal is clearly not to understand them, but to attempt to change them. This goes for both sides; many of my friends happen to be atheist, so I’ve always been unwilling to state my beliefs because I know that they would consider me less intelligent, and I’ve also had little respect for those members of the religious establishment that seek only to convert and not to understand and make this world a better place.</p>
<p>The idea that morality can exist without a supreme being is weak at best.</p>
<p>Morality is based on the dignity of the human person specifically because man was created in the image of God. If you remove that, you are saying man is simply a collection of atoms. Then, why should he be respected? Sure, you can establish arbitrary rules called “morality” but that’s all they would be, arbitrary.
Following those arbitrary rules with no rational thought behind them is hypocritical if you reject religion because you find no rational thought behind it.</p>
<p>Morality without spirituality is not impossible, but it is irrational.</p>
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<p>Death, struggle, and suffering are all part of this world. But I think that all of that has a place in life; a God has made this world so wonderful, yet so frightening. I believe that this balance, a sort of equilibrium, is proof of Gods existence. Who else could make a world prosper with a population with so much anger, hate, and evil? Why are humans able to have such a fascinating history, yet still be so horrible? I say it is because God has made us perfectly “imperfect” people.</p>
<p>^Um, I’d disagree, but…</p>
<p>I have morals; the majority of which that do not derive from my own religion. I also don’t want to “lure” you into my religion either. kthx</p>
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– Epicurus</p>
<p>The book I first read that in had “heavenly” in place of “celestial and atmospheric,” but in context, that Epicurus was referring to people’s beliefs in the gods was obvious.
At any rate, I’d like to see what fledgling pseudo-Nietzcheans have to say about that.</p>
<p>This debate is quite bland. No one actually believes in any of the extant mainstream religions. They’re rather silly and take an extraordinary amount of doublethink to cope with, the more you come to understand their full scope. </p>
<p>And personally, I that the existence of a god beyond those laid out in any religion would be trivial and inconsequential to our lives.</p>
<p>Has anyone read Sam Harris’s latest book, “The Moral Landscape” (I think that’s what it’s called)? In it he apparently argues that science has a proscriptive ability to determine what is moral, good, bad, right, wrong, etc. I think I might download it on my Kindle some time, but I’m not sure if it is a good read or not.</p>
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I get warm fuzzy feeling when I realize that although I fail at history, some people fail at it even worse than I do.</p>
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Just noticed this, and I don’t want to join either side, nor do I want this to expand to S-R v2 so that I’d have to read both, but can you, MosbyMarion, explain how Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory still applies to children who were not raised religiously?</p>
<p>omg I used Kohlberg’s (actually it was Erickson 
) stages of development in a thread once upon a time</p>
<p>I agree, I think it’s just human nature to have morals. I don’t think that has any implications as to the existence of God, but idk</p>
<p>no but if it is correct, morals can develop without religion
nowhere in his dissertation does he say that, at any stage, religion must be injected for the child to move onto the next stage</p>
<p>@antonio: Because most people, consciously or not, possess some degree of spirituality.</p>
<p>If you truly lack spirituality, and believe that everything is simply physical processes following natural laws, then there is no rational justification for believing one state of a system of matter to be “better” than another.</p>
<p>Or so says MosbyMarion.</p>