Atheism

Indeed!

>prime example

 

Agnostic. The belief of 'leave me the f*ck alone, I'll question what I wish'

 

Thank you. So many people misunderstand this. Religion isn't to explain how the world works, it may have done one day but we know better now. It's there to give people something else entirely.

If there is anything I have faith in, it's humans. We're utterly detestable, horrible, stupid, mean, base and vile. But we're also capable of so much more. We can rise above that. We can rise above anything. You and I definitely won't live to see it, but we'll find out one day, because we are humans and humans are brilliant.

 

Yeah, I have faith in humans too. We are bogged down with the news and hearing all these terrible things and then experiencing and being victimised but those are the things we remember- we barely ever remember when people have been good to us or treated us well. I don't understand why but the bad always stands out far more than the good.

 

It takes a lot of effort and good to create a noticeable difference and it only takes a moment of bad to make it on the news. It's partly the way our society feels the need to know about everything that is wrong and sort of ignores things going right as business as usual.

 

Alright, agno-bros. ♥

 

GUYS, STOP DEBATING. YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT. I MADE A ****ING PUN.

I read that as "someone's tooth gets beat." I was like, wow, your Catholic family is definitely not my Catholic family.

There is nothing that says science and God can't coexist, but a bunch of..."godly" stuff and science can't. My anthropology professor said it perfectly, in one example, "You can believe in evolution and God. You can't believe in evolution and Creationism."

 

LOLOLOLOL, I liked the pun... I don't know how this thread got so serious all of a sudden : D oh well, too late now.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Creationists believe the world was made in seven days flat exactly as stated in the bible which contradicts Darwin's theory so yeah, I agree with your professor. You can believe in evolution and God though (I do :3)

 

It's kind of my fault that it got serious. I actually was trying to start something with that first post in case anyone missed that. But it was more out of curiosity about how you guys would respond than anything else.

 

You know what I think? I think God was suicidal. When he was writing the laws of science, he wrote them such that his existence would be impossible, thus writing himself out of the universe.

 

Ahh it's fine, seriousness is good sometimes. I enjoy talking about my beliefs when people are willing to listen so it's a pleasure. I prefer the curiousity to downright mocking >.<

 

Don't get why people bother with the mocking when there are identifiable psychological reasons for everything people think on this topic and all you really need to do is pick it apart and separate what views are conducive to a smoothly working society and what things are not. Also, mocking is not constructive criticism and shouldn't be done with any degree of seriousness.

 

I agree, mocking in any sense just gets everyone no where basically. And yet, people still feel the need to put you down >.<

 

Man goddamit I'm an atheist so I can be unobjective when teaching and this is making it really hard

 

I don't what I believe sometimes.

I'd like to think there is a God sometimes, someone to pray and hope to, a friendly ear to express yourself to.
Other times I just think it is pointless to worry about something that has never shown itself to be true or real in any sense.

I still debate whether I am a follower of the Dao or not anymore, I don't think I prove myself as a good one, I don't follow the ideas all the time. I don't even realise if I do something in turn with the Dao until i think on it later.
Then again sometimes I surprise myself. But I guess that if I don't realise I am doing it then I have achieved it so naturally that I need not worry that I am in following with it.
I guess i'm not even religious really, since I lean more towards the philosophy side of the Dao. I just don't see myself as religious, I don't pray, I don't visit holy areas and I don't know any other followers of the Dao in real life or online. But I still list my religion as Dao, I still commit to it no matter what mind I am in. Maybe i'm agnostic as well kind of. I try not to dwell on it much.

I don't feel any greater for what I believe in, I just feel more in tune with the world. I feel like I can do more, have the confidence to do more, the ambition to achieve almost.
I don't care what you believe in, I just care if it is a fulfilling belief for you.

I wish more atheists and agnostics were more understanding and open about the idea that religion can be good for people, all i hear from them is that they think religious people are ignorant and stereotypical. I know not all are like that, i'd like to think i'm not, but it just seems to end up like that.

 

I believe in a form of life after death, I'd like to think there is one, I just don't accept one that any major religion would like to have us believe, this is my belief system.

 

the only life after death is becoming mulch.

 

Don't remember where that quote's from but your post reminded me of it.

 

As a Christian I agree with you. I believe in being saved for a deity for something they did. I've been given that salvation even if I don't deserve it and I try to do good as my way of showing thanks. It isn't about earning anything because the price has already been payed for me. I just need to accept it. Redemption wasn't written in any abstract way, they meant it very literally like in economics. If you redeem a check you get the payment while someone else pays for it. For us you would normally have to do something to be given said check, but Christianity teaches that you would never be able to earn it and that it is given to you by grace. And while I would not wish the sacrifice be done, it already has been and thus I don't want it to be in vain.

/Jesus rant

They don't have to contradict. In the original Hebrew, yowm is the word we translated into day. This is a good translation generally since two of the meaning for yowm is the daylight hours or a full 24 hour day; both of which we can take from "day". But yowm has a third meaning for an unspecified (usually long) period of time. If we take this third definition it actually follows scientific theory of the beginning of the world surprisingly precisely.

First note that god created the heavens and the earth right off the bat and then moved to the surface of the earth to be the perspective of Genesis. Much happened to the Earth before the events of Genesis, and even more in the general universe, but these are just considered part of this initial general creation phase.

• The first "day" God creates light and makes it day. This mirrors the idea that when the Earth was formed the was a ton of gasses, clouds, dust, etc. that would have made it constantly dark, as that began to settle light from the sun would come through making day and night. Unnoted by Genesis single celled organisms would be coming up in these waters.
• The second "day" God separates the sky and sea and makes land. At this point the water cycle would be stablizing and tectonic movement would have brought plates up above the water to be land.
• The third "day" God creates plants. Plants came well before animals.
• The fourth "day" God made the sun, moon, and stars. Well the plants would be cleansing the air even further as they performed photosynthesis until eventually it would be clear enough to visibly see celestial objects. Also note worthy is that Genesis claims that the sun and the moon would govern seasons, days, and years; which the sun does all of that for us today, and back then they followed a lunar calendar, so the moon would be governing their year instead of the sun.
• The fifth "day" God created fish and birds. Now that there was an abundance of oxygen and plants to feed on animals had a chance to begin. While land animals would have been coming into play here as well birds and fish dominated due to the location of the plants.
• The sixth "day" God creates animals and man. Now that the world is becoming more stable animals start thriving more and more until eventually evolution provides us with man.
• And the seventh "day" God rested. In our short time on the Earth things have been pretty stable, nothing as huge as new complex forms of life or anything. And many Biblical scholars believe that it was simply unneeded to continue telling the story of the world at this point as we are here to see it ourselves.

This isn't a perfect telling to be sure, but it was an artistic story not a detailed technical document. If you look at this more like a painting instead of a photograph I would say this is pretty freaking good.

 

I hate to randomly jump in, but I've been reading all of the posts here, and I found it strange how different my beliefs are.

I'm Wiccan, but also polytheistic in the fact that I believe in "gods", but more as spirits than deities. I only pray in front of a candle, and only when I feel like it. I'm not totally committed to it 24/7, but I do believe there is some sort of higher power, being the universe(god). It's almost the same as a Christian, minus the practices, and the fact that, in comparison to people I have met personally, I'm very open about learning as much as I can about people, and other beliefs, and I love all kinds of different practices.

Atheism though is probably one of my least favorite beliefs, and I mean no offense to anyone here, it's just that most people I have met are the type of people that, when they exclaim that they're an Atheist, they also like to bash other religions, Christianity the most, and sometimes I think they just hate Christians for believing in something. I don't think you guys on here are like that, though I don't expect anyone who hangs out on the internet would. I'm not sure why that would be the reason, but I actually think it is.

On a side note: I dwindled in Buddhism for a good long while, more than a year, and it's one of my favorite Eastern beliefs.