The unknown is a fearful thing indeed.

If we accept that the mind is a product of evolution, then the answer is simple - my brain structure is able to support such questions and also create the need for an answer. I need an answer because I evolved the need.

Yes.

But this question is too easilty turned around. If an atheist suddenly discovered that God was real, how would it change their life?

wavefreak wrote:

True, it would depend largely on which god was real. If it was proved that the Christian god was real, I dunno. I would probably go into a lifelong depression.

How horrible that would be! I couldn't kill myself because I wouldn't want to go to hell, but I couldn't live because I'd never want to spend eternity with that asshole. I suppose I'd become some kind of hypochondriac, afraid of anything that might shorten my life by even a millisecond.

I can honestly say I would wish I'd never been born, and that's really saying something, because i love my life.

I can't comprehend anything worse than discovering that Jesus or Allah was real.

If Buddhists were right, I'd just start doing yoga. It'd be ok.

Well, I've thought a lot about the possibility of a god.  And even if there was one, I refuse to believe that he is so ignorant to say that the majority of the world is going to hell because they don't support the Roman Catholic church, or whatever other belief you might suggest I find is the actual god.

I don't see any religion out there that preaches a truely accepting open minded god.  And I figure that if you were god that created humans and is all knowing, they would truely understand and be able to seperate good people from bad people regardless of the words that they say but by their actions.

I am quite confident that leading the life I lead would not be objected to if I were to meet my maker.

 I appreciate wanting to find the answer and trying to, but believing in a god and believing in creationism is not trying to find an answer, it's providing an answer without the persuit.

And as for your second paragraph, do you find nothing wrong with the idea that you don't try your best to live your life to the fullest? That you are going through your life half-assed instead of being the best you can be and doing the most you can just because there's a heaven aftewrwards? Do you think your god would approve of this approach?

I'm in the same boat as Hamby. If any of the Abrahamic religions turned out to be true, I would be very distraught and disappointed.

If there really was a Jesus, I'd ask him why he didn't oppose slavery and endorsed stoning disobedient children. If Jesus is the pinacle of morality and goodness, I'm off the charts apparently.

You don't see a use for ethics and social responsibility without god? That's quite sad.

Sounds dangerously like the "atheists don't have moral" argument...

I just had another thought dawn on me...

In this thread it's discussed the topic of believing in god and that he wants you to know about him.  I don't believe this actually has anything to do with how the universe got here, who you should have sex with, and all these other social or intellecutal issues.

I agree that there are religions that teach that you must believe everything they teach, but at the end of the day you are also taught that if you accept jesus and ask for forgiveness you will be granted it and go to heaven.

This thought does eliminate the "need to know" or "need to attribute" argument in my mind because it doesn't really matter.  At the end of the day "I dont know" is just as acceptable within the confines of religion and belief in Jesus (I'll use him since it's my familiar ground) as it is within atheism.

Saying I don't know and believing in god should not prevent you from accepting people of all faiths openly, or not stoning gays, or not allowing the advancements in social development, or even the abolishment of organized religion since at the end of the day it's all about what you believe in your heart that matters at the end of the day.

By admitting that, I suppose I reluctantly acknowledge a "patience" if you would call it in my arriving at my ultimate life's goal. I view steps such as going to college, getting degrees, working jobs, buying shit, etc. as all unecessary means in acheiving my lifes goal. For example, If I wanted to enrich young peoples' lives, why not sacrifice more time and volunteer or tutor when I would normally be working or shopping? Well, it seems that I need those things in order to one day achieve my desired end. I am merely acknowledging, that the "steps" I am taking now are in-the-here-and-now hinderances to actually achieving that goal.

Even now, you may not buy that explanation as to why I would admit a rightly judged, "half-assed" approach to achieiving my goal. None the less, I feel that is my current dilemma and is something that I must be patient during its passing (ie time in college, time working lame self fulfiilling jobs, etc). This patience time is all a means to an end. Although, for some reason when I thought about there being no God, I for some reason feel like I would throw caution to the wind and dive right in. I can't say exactly why that is. I have an inclination though that it has something to do with more than a belief or disbelief in God. Perhaps it an insight into a part of me I didn't know, the part that is lame and not devoting enough time to his dreams...I think that has more to do with me, than with God. Wierd how this thread brought me to realize such an aspect of myself as this. I feel lame. enough typing... 

Why should their mental faculties matter?  I pointed out that a person can be unethical without being reckless.  Is this refuted?  An appeal to self-interest is also inherently unethical, as it assumes unethical inclination without reward. 

Neither can Christians, or presumably any other theists. What does this have to do with the question asked?

Edit: Correction - Christians can do this, but so can atheists.  No playing the "no true Scotsman" fallacy in favor of atheism.

Are secular causes any less prone to amorality?  Politics, civil rights, economics, property ownership... all these things have led to horrible atrocities.

This still dodges the issue that morality and ethics are absurd without an absolute scale to judge them by.

Eliminating AIDS would be no less valuable just because there's still Cancer. 

The analogy is just an analogy where I was trying to show that just because there are multiple problems that doesn't mean it's not worth fixing one of them.

I admit to using disease because it's a bit more dramatic than others I could think up.

But I do see religion as the first major problem to solve enroute to globalization.  Borders and Economic Equaity being some of the other major ones which I feel are a bit harder.  So many borders are based off governments that are religious so those will never open up as long as religion influences government.  Economics is a much harder one.  Making people not selfish is very difficult.  And I don't claim to be leading the fight on straying away from that.

I understand they are all man-made and to-date have been natural developments. But I see this as just a historical perception of things because of land-mass seperations. When one community would encounter another, it would be the joining of two communities and that may go good or bad. Eventually as they grow they would setup their borders, have their own traditions, and their own way of doing things. They would not want to immediatly accomodiate or adopt the patterns of the other group. Perhaps over time as generations go bye and they cross-breed etc they would develop shared laws etc to protect the differentiating communities traditions.

But I think that in today's day and age the connections between the world are getting closer and closer. The areas of physical seperation are becoming smaller and smaller, and the cross-breeding and cross-interactions are increasing. I see it as only beneficial that we treat the world as a whole as one community. But with the vast number of communities that is a daunting task. Religion plays a major roll in that because it educates that other groups are evil by nature. If Religion was just a belief about living your life and what happens after death and how you got here that's one thing. But religious organizations go far beyond that and teach discrimination and segregation and the majority of them don't adopt to the social changes of the world.

I don't know if it's part of our natural wiring to think that our own natural wiring is wrong. I think that questioning everything we know is a natural, and when we encounter conflicts or insufficient answers we assume error and try to fix it. We do have differing ways of going about how we 'fix' it.

I don't mean to imply that Religion is the only cause, nor that eliminating it is the ultimate solution. I believe it is one of the causes, and one of the major walls in social development.

As for the last bit...is life absurd? Assuming you mean is it irrational and meaningless...to a degree it is. But no more absurd than the concept of heaven, and here is why.

In the atheistic essence I can say "I don't know". Sure it's a bit absurd but if I find enjoyment in learning, in interacting with others, and with life in general then at l have a reason for living. I fear death because I enjoy life. I accept that it's all kind of pointless, but I'm not really doing anything at the moment so why not go along with it and make the best of the situation? And part of making the best of the situation, to me, is maximizing my time here and the time I can spend developing my life. Spending a large % of my life worshiping does not seem to honor that approach.

In the christian aspect it's absurd because you have an endless amount of people living their lives and then going to heaven...but then what? is that it? is everyone just "in" heaven and others in hell? Why create humans in the first place? What was the point in everything if you're just inhabiting heaven? Why not just create them in heaven? The whole idea of an infinite number of people being created only to all end up in one place with no real point is kind of absurd in itself.

And then there's the questions of why do christians fear death? If you go through your whole life and you know you're going to heaven, why do people mourn the dead? Why no celebrate death more? Why, when death comes, do people try so hard to stay alive if they know that they are going to heaven. Wouldn't death be a welcome transition into a greater existance?

I hope that answer is sufficient, if not I'll be happy to elaborate more.

Note: I haven't proof read this so I apologize for typo's etc. 

Partly, although personally I think it oversimplifies.  Homogeny seems to be contrary to human development.  I think it's tangential to the main thrust of our dialogue though, so not really worth pressing.

Some religions, sure.  I'd argue the vast majority are not conflict-oriented.  Judaism, Christianity, Bhuddism, Hinduism, Shinto, and all the nature/pseudospiritual traditions.  I can speak only for Christianity which teaches to love everyone, period.  The hatemongering and discrimination can more likely be attributed to social influences.  Irony?  I think so.

I've got some trouble here.  You enjoy learning, enjoy socializing (to paraphrase), and prefer to go along with things.  Certainly a comfortable if ambivalent existence.  Yet you also advocate uprooting an immensely large cornerstone of civilization?  Certainly you consider it worth uprooting, but your personal contribution is ambivalence?  I have trouble with learning and "go[ing] along with it" as compatible on their own, but the other seems a flat contradiction.

You also mention worship.  I suspect your belief on the nature of worship is really like your own professed ambivalence, but in an insular fashion.  First, I suggested above that this is really no different than what you say you do.  Second, I will say that there are people that treat worship this way, and it is equally deplorable.  The Christian directive is an active one.  Insularity ignores basic human responsability.

Well, what happens after death isn't as simple as a lot of folks here seem to think.  To make a long story short, on the way to the Day of Judgement Christians are "sanctified," made holy.  There is precious little said of what happens after death in the Bible.  Ironic again since a common misconception is that it's a religion to make people less scared of death.  I can suggest that eternal life is not sitting on the proverbial "cloud nine" all day.  Work doesn't end; there's things to do.  Life is still life, just without sin.

I think it gets a lot closer, thank you.  And thank you also for continuing to reply.

Sure, but this still doesn't concern me ("me" here as the devil's advocate with no god).  I'll likely be dead long before my disinterest erradicates civilization.

Loving and being loved is a more plausible cause for ethics, but it still doesn't explain why I shouldn't only be nice to people I like.  It doesn't explain why I shouldn't mouth off to my original hypothetical bystander just because.

The golden rule is off limits without an external moral authority, unless you have good reason for it to apply.  I can easily hate my neighbor and be loved by my friend - especially if my friend hates my neighbor, too.  One might suggest our friendship will deepen because of hatred.

It's just slightly irrational to assume that one would live in a world were everyone behaves like this.

How does it not explain that? Of course you can be an asshole and insult strangers, though that way you'll never make friends in the first place, who'd then, love you even though you are an asshole.

The external moral authority being god? That's by no means a necessary assumption. There are enough natural accounts for being ethical (I find Dawnkins explains this very eloquently in his book 'The God Delusion&#39. You say "unless you have good reason for it to apply", a good reason, for example, would be the survival of the species. Since we lived in small communities long ago, we did not want to offend people, whom we were likely to live with our entire life. They had to stick together to survive. Being moral and living as a community has great vantages.

Let me ask you, how did you make friends with your friend? Did you hate him when you met him for the first time? I don't think so.

You have to be kind to a person, at least respectful, for that person to return the favour (and become your friend in the first place). Of course you can hate your neighbour for whatever reason (or for none). But I'm sure he won't do you any favours, when you need his help.