Re: The New Atheists
[QUOTE=jay813;408333]i dont think you are understanding what im trying to say, now everytime i begin these types of conversations, its best to discuss the term of which we are talking about, if we can agree on what the word means then we can move on. if we disagree on definitions then we cant go any further.
i disagree with the word "god". no one has ever really defined to me what that means, theyve tried but i get all sorts of answers that are really subjective to the person, even when the bible tries to explain, it doesnt make sense to me. i also have heard many times that "god" will reveal him/herself to me and then ill understand. these revelations that these people have can be explained through science( you will probably argue that its my belief, perhaps you are right at that point) but since they cant quite explain it, they attribute it to god. i have no belief in the supernatural nor have i experienced anything supernatural to suggest a "higher power".
to me god is no different than lets say, santa clause. when i was a kid, i could not reason like an adult. i believed what i was told. hey there were presents under the tree, it must have been santa! now as we get older and our reasoning skills develop, and some of us will see through the facade ourseves when we catch our parents doing it themselves (empirical evidence) or we are just flat out told, its only then do we realize its a sham and learn to accept it, because its not really a big deal we know were still getting presents.
now how are people supposed to react when someone tells you god doesnt exist? this creates many problems as we built our lives around this supposed fact. questions of purpose and morality and immortality come to mind, we were happy with thinking that if i do good, i will live forever in paradise! how do you throw that away? it took me a long time to get to the point i am today. there was no switch in my head that made me atheist from christian. id say its a collection of my personal experiences and everything i have read and learned. i know that everybody is different nor do i expect everyone to come to the same conclusion i do.
there have been hundreds of thousands of gods throughout humanity. i just choose to believe in one less god than you do.
this post is long enough, i wont even go into why i dont agree with the term "faith" either,lol[/QUOTE]
I for me have for some reason never even believed in a higher power, but then again my parents have always left me free to think of life what I want. All it takes for me to discard the possible existence of a god is looking around, and especially looking at [I]people[/I]. It may sound strange, but seeing how fearful people are in general, how easily they can be influenced, how much they need something to hold on to...or to justify the way they live their life. it just doesn't work for me, but it does for many - and it's not that hard to imagine that religion might also be something grown from the need for explanations for terrible, frightening or strange things that could not be explained from an understanding of natural processes. Heck, imagine a Neanderthal in a cave looking at the lighting in the sky during a heavy storm, hearing the thunder rolling by...we all know what happens, but that guy probably didn't have a clue! So...enter higher powers that can be used to attribute certain inexplicable things to. I cannot prove it, but to me it sounds pretty damn logical (through reasoning and looking at people in an anthropological way) that religion is something that literally evolved from humanity in a quest to find answers or at least get an all-covering explanation.
I think I'll stick to not believing in a god or higher controlling power and simply take the world as it is, and how I experience it.