HypnoPants
Posts: 32
Joined: 1/16/2006 From: Edmonton, Alberta Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: subtee It seems to me it just depends on who is in one's life and the tolerance of those folks. My brother is a born again Christian. He feels it is an integral part and expression of his faith to proselytize to me and mine. He vigorously does so. He won't really listen or engage with me about my own beliefs. I don't know anyone who feels the strength of their atheism to the extent that my brother feels the strength of his Christianity. So. hehe, like when it's said that this tyrant or that was atheist... I'm sure they were, but they weren't doing their evil deeds 'in the name of nothing' :P it was usually power, politics, control, etc... something neither theists nor atheists can deny has happened in the past on both fronts... moreso on religion's door though since Atheism has only really been this popular since the late 1900s. Whether theist or atheist... power, politics, all those sorts of things... can have an influence or effect on you, or on your leaders :P etc. (cough, ted haggard, cough cough) but the point I'm making is that theists do what they do, whether it be good or evil, in the name of their religion... Atheists, whether they do good or evil, never do so in the name of 'nothing' :P To make it a little clearer... humans evolved the ability to have teleology with one another... empathy and such, to understand each other even if just a little... and to try and understand what the other is thinking... it seperates us from most animals... However, it's called an 'evolutionary misfiring' when a human tries to find the teleology of natural things... that ability wasn't meant to be used on nature, but on other humans... when used on nature, it gives the feeling of understanding things more than just 'where we are' ... even though those feelings can mean absolutely nothing... it's why we have so many crazy religions out there, and why before christianity... we had even crazier ones :P christianity I'll admit has helped humanity along... but only until modern science... it was first tribal religions, then 'pagan' religions, then christianity, and now scientific method... they're steps in humanity's (staircase?) to the future. Anyways, point being... religion is an immature way of defending your psyche from depression, such as thoughts of death... it was useful back when people had no real schooling at all, and never thought about their beliefs anyways... nowadays, with schooling more common, when you think about your beliefs... it brings back that feeling of depression from being afraid of the 'unknown' like death... when in reality, modern science helps you to quell that fear of the unknown... it makes death just seem like something that's going to happen, so we should try to make the most of our lives while we're here... since this is all we get. On the other hand, if you believe there is more... you're a lot less likely to care about events that happen here on Earth... you let emotions cloud your logic... it also makes everything seem so... simple. when in reality, nothing is ever truly simple... if you think it is, you just haven't seen enough of it yet. Lastly, humans all live in their own realities, side by side with the universal reality of nature... I don't mean anything mystical by that, I just mean that if someone takes LSD, you're not going to see what they're seeing... because they're seeing thing through their own eyes, their own reality... and you see things through yours. Atheism, more importantly modern science, brings us closer to the universal reality... where we see things through the eyes of everyone in that universal reality, from many angles (metaphorically speaking), and we're able to make decisions and interepretations without the private prejudice of our own inner minds. ((private prejudices can be things like... how you feel about a certain group of people, or how you feel about how nature works, etc.)) So that we make reasonable logical decisions about the world and peoples around us... one that everyone can actually share. ((by that I mean, well... take this for example, with theism every religious group has their own view of everything... Atheism has only the universal reality view **and I don't mean those atheists who treat 'no Gods' as if that in itself is a God** or rather, if you take any one religion... and compare it's population to that of Atheism... Atheism always has more, because there are no Atheist sub-groups, as there are in Theism... like Muslim or Catholic, Atheism has only one... Atheism... so there will always be more Atheists than any one religion)) ... well, I successfully fought off boredom today.
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I am Hypno Pants! The man with hypnotic pants! Stare into my butt and you will be hypnotized! :)
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