Thought I would pull this out of another thread, as it seems to merit its own discussion outside of evolution / creators.
For me when I ponder I might be wrong and the impacts that has, I quickly dismiss, because to me its not if not an Athiest then it must be XXXX. I mean if I am wrong which God is the one true God I should worship. For the most part they all believe that only if you worship them you will be saved, if it exists who has it rigth??? I have decided to stick with Atheism and just being a good person. I hope if I am wrong the Mormons have it right cause then I have a chance after I die to still be saved and get my own planet to be god like over.
Thought I would pull this out of another thread, as it seems to merit its own discussion outside of evolution / creators.
For the most part they all believe that only if you worship them you will be saved, if it exists who has it rigth??? I have decided to stick with Atheism and just being a good person.
Christianity believes neither of these things. You aren’t saved by worshiping God, and you are also not saved by being a good person. No one is that good we all sin against each other and God.
A related, but important question is if you are wrong, why do you want to go through life on your own when you could have a relationship with God? Life is better with God. When you live according to God’s will, life is much better and you avoid many of the heartaches of living according to your own will.
If you don’t believe there is an invisible lion standing behind you, you aren’t really concerned with the consequences of being wrong. “What if the invisible lion eats me?” doesn’t really enter our thoughts because, well, you don’t believe it exists in the first place.
If you don’t believe there is an invisible lion standing behind you, you aren’t really concerned with the consequences of being wrong. “What if the invisible lion eats me?” doesn’t really enter our thoughts because, well, you don’t believe it exists in the first place.
Crap, now you have me all worried about the invisible lion. What’s really worrying is the invisible tiger that is waiting to pounce right as you look over your shoulder for the invisible lion!
“Life is better with God. When you live according to God’s will, life is much better and you avoid many of the heartaches of living according to your own will.”
The ultimate shift in responsibility. I have no problem with those who are religious, but I personally do not need the comfort of blaming someone else for my woes or giving credit to someone else for my successes.
People place way too much importance in what they believe, or what they know. All these beliefs and fragments of ideas we think we know are just to make us feel all cozy and accepted, accepted by our family, friends, lovers and maybe even by a God. But all this ‘stuff’ is unnecessary ego-baggage.
A related, but important question is if you are wrong, why do you want to go through life on your own when you could have a relationship with God? Life is better with God. When you live according to God’s will, life is much better and you avoid many of the heartaches of living according to your own will.
Well, I went through the first 40 yrs as a Christian… then thanks to some discussions with Christians on this site, I realized I had no clue what they were talking about in a relationship with God, or God’s will (I did understand living by some made up rules of man, but it seemed to have no real impact on my life). I find I have far less heartaches living by my will, then trying to create a relationship with something that wont show it self to me, and expects blind trust. But this is really not what I was talking about.
So do you ever wonder what if the Jews, or Muslums, or Mormons etc. are correct, and your damned?
If you don’t believe there is an invisible lion standing behind you, you aren’t really concerned with the consequences of being wrong. “What if the invisible lion eats me?” doesn’t really enter our thoughts because, well, you don’t believe it exists in the first place.
See but as an engineer I am trained, to prepare for events and things you can not see or predict… So yes I am worried about that Lion I don’t see thats around the corner about to attack me… Well not really a lion but what if for some unknown reason my brakes fail while hauling it down a big hill on my bike… or a squirel attacks… Of course maybe I am just paranoid… But i don’t hear voices.
If you don’t believe there is an invisible lion standing behind you, you aren’t really concerned with the consequences of being wrong. “What if the invisible lion eats me?” doesn’t really enter our thoughts because, well, you don’t believe it exists in the first place.
Crap, now you have me all worried about the invisible lion. What’s really worrying is the invisible tiger that is waiting to pounce right as you look over your shoulder for the invisible lion!
Your jest brings up an interesting point. If you make like Pascal and try to appease the invisible lion of Christianity by worshipping the Christian “God” and Jesus, then don’t you thereby run the risk of angering the invisible tiger known as Allah? And vice versa?
Christianity believes neither of these things. You aren’t saved by worshiping God, and you are also not saved by being a good person. No one is that good we all sin against each other and God.
A related, but important question is if you are wrong, why do you want to go through life on your own when you could have a relationship with God? Life is better with God. When you live according to God’s will, life is much better and you avoid many of the heartaches of living according to your own will.
I was a Christian for the first 20+ years of my life. I must say things weren’t really better back then.
One of my wife’s friends in college became born again during college and tried to convert my wife with a pretty poor rendition of Pascal’s wager. Her argument was something along the lines that there were only two possibilities, so the odds were 50/50, etc. My wife told her essentially thanks but no thanks, but couldn’t help passing on the story to me and laughing about that stunning bit of logic. The friend was an engineering major at MIT! Pretty shocking how peoples brains seem to shut off about this stuff.
My question to you is why does god not want a relationship with me? Or any of us Atheists? He could just let us know he is here.
This is one of a myriad of problems religion must address. One cannot simply choose to be convinced of something. I lack the ability to start believing that 1 + 1 = pi.
I became convinced that in nearly all circumstances that 1+1 = 2 because one can observe that when I place 1 apple on a table and then place 1 more apple on that table there are now 2 apples on the table. You don’t just choose to believe.
I suppose there is a scenario where I’d believe there was an invisible lion behind me, but there would have to be a series of compelling reasons to believe that.
Religion makes it a failure in the non-believer when they do not have faith in a god, not in the god who has the ability to convince. This is the opposite of how we treat things we need convincing of in other areas of our lives.
And what if Pascal is just offering a countably aleph-naught infinite happiness and Allah offers aleph-one infinite happiness? I’m going to have to do some work on the odds to recompute my religion…
Most religions have a set of rules that boil down to “be nice, don’t be a dick”, these rules are often ignored by people practising these religions, sometimes in ways so egregious to make one wonder, “How can the deity allow such things?” It is probably at that point that they question their faith - how could they not.
When I read about Catholic priests raping little boys, when I read about the Vatican actively covering up child rape by their priests, when I read about Mormons slaughtering settlers, when I read about Muslims throwing acid in the faces of girls who go to school, when I read about Muslims using female genital mutilation, when I read about Mormons marrying and then raping underage girls, when I read about witch burnings, Catholic burnings, the Inquisition and other zealous slaughter of other human beings, when I read/hear about all of the other atrocities perpetrated in the name of a god I don’t question my athiesm, I question why anyone would worship a god that allows such things to happen in his/her name.
As an athiest I try not to be a dick, I think most people also try not to be dicks. But, with 6-plus billion of us on the planet there are bound to be a number of them whose “wiring” is messed up. Sometimes these people are in a position of power, and very bad things happen. "
We need to stop believing in imaginary friends, these beliefs are an impediment to the pursuit of knowledge and are a facilitator of magic beliefs that do far more harm than good.