My journey into atheism and theories on life


Religion, by definition, means you have to believe things irrationally or at least without evidence - as soon as there are rational reasons to believe something, it becomes science. So yes, the very essence of religion is lack of reason. That doesn't mean that there are no people who can combine reason/science and religion - but they typically do that by keeping science out of their religion and religion out of their science. Sure, you can have a brilliant mathematician who also happens to be religious, but if he tries to mathematically prove the existence of God, or if he needs to invoke God to make the proof of some theorem work, then something is wrong. You can combine reason and religion only if you maintain a certain distance between them, schizophrenically.
Is this not what I would expect from someone describing himself as having a "secular humanistic morality".

This post is full of disrespect, and is insulting for the greatest majority of humanity. You should be ashamed of posting something like that
 
Actually, Einstein also firmly believed in God.


But each to their own. For me, I see life as a test of sorts, to see whether people are good or bad. I believe this is the reason God doesn't intervene.


As for whether God created the universe or the universe just happened as science will ultimately tell you . Neither of these are ever going to be proven to you In your lifetime/ever . Either one requires a leap of faith.
 
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Actually, Einstein also firmly believed in God.
Really? source? :)

Found here actually :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein

Your question [about God] is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.[19]
 
As far as I read him, Einstein seemed to be pantheistic and did not really believe the way his jewish heritage would indicate (monotheistic).
 
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well, thanks _wb_ for the tl;dr. congrats to SNESFAN. while i guess i would be considered an athiest, i go by a very basic set of rules in life.

religion....is like a penis. its okay to have one, its okay to be proud of it, BUT!....dont pull it out in public, dont shove it down peoples throats, dont think with it, dont write laws with it, and dont push it onto children
 
Actually reading about Einstein now, it seems people have quoted him both for and against believing in God.


Funny, I always was told he believed. Who knows which way it was.


Maybe I'm thinking of his famous quote , God doesn't play dice with the Universe
 
Actually reading about Einstein now, it seems people have quoted him both for and against believing in God.
There is a reason for that:

Dualistic thinking again!

Most western and middle eastern people only know Monotheism and Atheism, maybe Polytheism but they do not take it seriously.

Pantheism and Panentheism are way more interesting in my humble opinion.

Most people in my area are more into Agnosticism and Ignosticism, because they have other things to care about.

Dualistic thinking seems to be so common because we are surrounded by the number 2.

Two legs, two eyes, two sexes, two wings, etc...

"Two" offers stability with the least amount of energy, but the limitations are obvious.
 
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Actually reading about Einstein now, it seems people have quoted him both for and against believing in God. Funny, I always was told he believed. Who knows which way it was.
DId you read the quote above I mentioned? He clearly answered the question. Yes, he believed in God, but not in the sense people call God usually.
 
Re: Einstein -

A handwritten letter penned by Albert Einstein shortly before his death in 1954 has sold to an unknown online bidder for $3,000,100.00. In the so-called "God Letter," Einstein touched upon such themes as religion, tribalism — and his disbelief in a biblical God.
http://io9.com/5954119/einsteins-i-dont-believe-in-god-letter-has-sold-on-ebay--and-youre-not-going-to-believe-the-price

The passage in question:

... I read a great deal in the last days of your book, and thank you very much for sending it to me. What especially struck me about it was this. With regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common.

... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the privilege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolization. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e; in our evaluations of human behavior. What separates us are only intellectual 'props' and 'rationalization' in Freud's language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.

With friendly thanks and best wishes,

Yours, A. Einstein
 
Dont have time to read the whole post yet (got to the catholic school till 3rd grade part). ill finish it when I get home


But if you ever need support from a fellow atheist living in the Bible belt, PM me. Im happy to talk
 
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I've not read the entire first post, to much wall of text but I guess I've got the idea. ^^

I'm not into religion at all, born and raised in East Germany, religion was not much present there, afaik our region is one of the most confession-less ones in the world.  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Konfessionen-in-Deutschland.svg ) So I never was into religious stuff and I'm actualy pretty happy with that. For me, religious behaviour is alot of wasted time, combined with some weird rituals and questionable ethics, depending on religion. So much war and suffering come from religions people seems to pull out the worst of their own religion, I wonder how people can believe and pray in jesus and still kill other people "in his name" like Americans like to do. Pope in Rome prays pacifism but people seems to do not listen. "Thou shalt not kill", why do so much self called christians ignore that? 

Not even starting with islamic terrorism in the name of Allah, If I would have a time machine I would travel back and rewrite some of these books like Bible, Torah and especialy the Quran. How funny it would be if then in the Quran is written that woman shall rule over men. :D There were so much cooler gods back in the old days, the Greeks and Romans had alot of them, even hot females. :D  Then the nordic gods, good enough to make great todays Superheroes!

I don't say that there is no god (atheism) but I don't believe in god.
 
Didn't have a chacne to read all this yet, but will .. I was raised atheist, but married a catholic, so had lots of hoops to jump, and thinking to do.

FWIW .. Science has no disagreement with religion, by the very definuition. (Anyone who thinks otehrwise didn't think about it at all ;) -- by definition, religions (at least the Christian sense) define themselves as 'out of band', somethign outside of measurement or rational thought. It used to be define din things we can now measure or have theories on, so some would suggest religion is a moving target, an ever-shrinking area.. but nowadays its all just 'nebulous and unmeasurable', so .. Science cannot go near it, and therefore cannot agree nor disagree.

Following that, strikes me the only sensible philosophy is agnostic with atheist tendancies (which is how I am.) I don't really care if there is a god or not; if there is, he can show us the money and cool; but personally, I dont' realyl think there is any such being -- the overwhelming evidence certainly points towards not being one, or not needing one, so I'll go with that.

Also, I find it hard to rationilize some things .. if there is a creator, he doesn't care. Why are there birth defects? Little babies born with horrible problems -- they certainly did not sin to earn them. Why do murdered get away with things? They did sin, and often get away. Why all the many differing religions?

Given that evolution is fact (it is observable in nature), we can pretty much assume human evolution is a thing; thats okay, modern CAtholicism is pretty much okay with this .. a creator kicked things off from goo, and huamns came around. Fine. But again, the creator doesnt' seem to care -- otherwise we'd have a lot less flaws; humans have some of the worst vision in the evolved world -- in fact, the light entering our eyes has to pass through veins hanging in the middle of our eyeball, before reaching the optic nerve; this discolours everythign we see, and actually introduces massive error. Many other primitive animals have nearly the same evolved eyeball, but the optic nerve is not obscured like that. There are hundreds of bizarre things lik that in the body.. evidence suggesting long term evolution and relation wish fish etc, but also suggesting.. creator doesn't care.

(And there there is the deep south 'world is 6000 years old' crazy ... if its true, then the creator is a dick who likes to plant dinosaur bvones just to confuse people with daing technology.)

So to me.. I doubt there is a creator; if there is one he's either uncaring or a bit of a prick :)

But either way.. religion is okay; Christian religions generally preach good intentions and mean to be harmless (crazy people are crazy, not really the religions faults); we're raising our children catholic -- strikes me is no sensible person _becomes_ religions late rin life (why? big space ghost doesn't make sense, why would you convert to that? same as converting to scientology...) -- so we're raising our kids catholic, so that they have the chance to keep religion if they so desire. (Just so long as they don't come home and say 'it rains because god said so', I'm okay with catholic school). This gives them the chance at the sort of spiritual beauty that I can never really have, as long as they're clever and use their brains and not take 'the company line' as is. ("gay is bad", that sort of sillyness.) But if they abandon things later on, that will be their choice.

Its a funny thing though.. I try to be very fair; I repsect peoples beliefs, and I see how it works; I go to church every weekend, to make sure that I'm not an excuse for bad influence; also, its sor tof nice.. a family event, a time to sit for an hour of calm and meditate on life. Sometimes the priests are towing the line and need a slap, but I try to keep shut ('gay is bad' stuff again), but our priests are generalyl very well educated and good people, with a good set of thoughts.

But you say you're an atheist or agnost, and people look at you funny; like, thats a bad thing. Strikes me those who are rational thinkers shoudl get the benefit of the doubt, but those who beleive in supernatural get the pass instead :)

*Shrug*

Richard Dawkins is pretty interesting reading, but he's a hardcore atheist.

jeff

A friend of mine was raised fire and brimstone serious religious; he almost went to seminary to become a priest; I lost touch with him for a few years, and when we hooked up again .. it broke my heart; he'd given up on things, and moved on; the fire and brimstone was too hardcore and he just got sick of the 'you shodul be ashamed for _everything_' guilt. Was such a shame.. the one guy in life who really tried to balance science and faith despite the hardships, and to really make a go of living the best he could be for everyone else... and then dashed on the rocks; such a shame. I really admired him (Well still do, but I admired his ability to keep his hardcore faith despite the challenge.)
 
I believe that everything is connected.

Does any scientist or member of some sect disagree with me?

The fact that I read oozens of religious and philosophical texts and that abstract things mainly are the most important for me may indicate, that I indeed am a spiritual man (I do not care if someone calls me Atheist or Daoist, but I would not give myself a label), but nearly all members of cults/sects/religions seem to hate me at least a little bit, because I am always looking over the edge of some fixed perspective and they often feel that their base in life is threatened by this kind of thinking.
 
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Thanks SNESFAN for an interesting and thought provoking thread.

As a fellow atheist I can get some idea of where you're coming from but being from the UK I appreciate that I have very little understanding of what it must be like to be considered to be very much in the minority by holding such a belief, or lack thereof.

From my perspective a lot of human problems such as religion stem from the widely held belief that human beings are somehow 'special' when compared to other animals, from my perspective we just happen to be the most intelligent animal (in human terms) on Earth. Some species must be the most intelligent, it just happens to be humans at the moment. 

As for 'theories of life' the simulated reality theory has given me a few sleepless nights, especially when you consider the possibility of nested simulations. The monumental weirdness of 'quantum' behaviours such as the effect of concious observation makes me think that perhaps these effects could be explained by some sort of short cut being taken by the 'computer' behind the simulation. 
 
Very interesting read.  Thanks for sharing.

One thing about science/evolution and our so-called intellect and knowledge.

EVERY generation that has come and gone thinks it knows everything and is way more advanced than the past generations. 

And every generation has it's theories and hypothesis on every subject.

But when looking back after they have been proven scientifically impossible, we all make fun and laugh at those "ignorant" and "foolish" people who believed those things.

So what "theories" and so-called facts that we have in this day and age are others going to look back on in a hundred years and laugh at us about ?

So we probably shouldn't place so much confidence and be so belligerent about  what we think we know to be facts. And we probably shouldn't talk about how much more "intellectual" we are than others. Might come back to bite us right in our backsides. :)
 
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I would describe my experience with religion with a quote from George Carlin "Catholic — which I was until I reached the age of reason". :)

Code:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RT6rL2UroE
 
Religion, by definition, means you have to believe things irrationally or at least without evidence - as soon as there are rational reasons to believe something, it becomes science. So yes, the very essence of religion is lack of reason. That doesn't mean that there are no people who can combine reason/science and religion - but they typically do that by keeping science out of their religion and religion out of their science. Sure, you can have a brilliant mathematician who also happens to be religious, but if he tries to mathematically prove the existence of God, or if he needs to invoke God to make the proof of some theorem work, then something is wrong. You can combine reason and religion only if you maintain a certain distance between them, schizophrenically.
Is this not what I would expect from someone describing himself as having a "secular humanistic morality".

This post is full of disrespect, and is insulting for the greatest majority of humanity. You should be ashamed of posting something like that
How so? What is disrespectful about what I said?

I respect all people, regardless of their religious beliefs. I also think that religions are irrational.
 
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