Your religion...

[agar]

I would like to find out if there is a higher power in the universe, but until then I'm not going to believe anything I've learned in church or any other religion. To me there just ways to help us give meaning to our lives. Hey live a good life and your rewarded by going to heaven. Thats a good way to make people behave. What would the point of living on earth if when you die you go somewhere perfect. Maybe all there is to life is what we observe and there is no higher power or after life. I can still live with that. I always have.

[Ashcrow]

That's the old classical Roman spelling of truth. Now days it means absolute truth, which is something that does not exist.

That is an absolute statment.

[binary_boy]

This summary at the Secular Humanism site sums it up nicely:

http://www.secularhumanism.com/intro.html

How do we know religion is false? *
If a religion is false one would expect it to have certain self-serving characteristics. *

Secular humanists find that most religions have at least some these traits. *

For example: *

God wants you to believe in and worship Him?
Why? *How does your belief benefit God or "His plan"? *Why does he care whether you worship Him, another god, or no god. *A false religion would be likely to teach that God wants you to believe that religion. *At the extreme they teach that you must establish a "personal relationship" with God, which translates into a total control of everything you think. *This prevents any freedom of thought that might allow you to consider otherwise. *

Through God you can live forever? *
Humans have a basic fear of death. *False religions are likely to capitalize on this by offering what they cannot deliver: the pie in the sky promise of everlasting life. *Even if this were real, so what? *Secular humanists must come to terms with death and accept it as a part of reality. *Accomplish as much as you can in this life. *It's the life you know you have! *It's a good life. *A bird in the hand is worth two in the burning bush. *

Without God you'll burn forever? *
When the everlasting life ploy doesn't work, religion resorts to threats. *Simple death isn't really so bad, but everlasting pain is, so this belief is very effective. *Fortunately religion pays a price for this nonsense. *Notice that God is becoming more and more insane as the beliefs get more extreme. *Clearly a loving God wouldn't allow such a thing. *To support this kind of belief they must add what might be called the "Shut Up Clause": *

Whatever the religion says about God is absolutely the word of God and to question either it or Him is sin? *
Here they are asking you to deliberately shut your very mind itself from wondering about the truth of God and your religion. *Those who have succeeded best at this have closed off their doubting, questioning minds. They believe their holy gospel is more real than reality itself. Any evidence countering their holy word must be wrong. *They are like a train that can only run on the tracks laid out for it. *They are afraid that any straying will cost them their precious afterlife. *Secular humanists don't make themselves subservient to the claims of others. *Don't fear your own thoughts! *

Everyone I know is religious; why rock the boat? *
Because your beliefs should be as accurate as you can make them. *Because your thoughts and your actions are all there is to you! *And your actions depend on your thoughts! *So it's important not to hold beliefs for any reason other than that they are true, to the best of your ability to tell. *And it's your responsibility to find out those facts as best you can. * *
*

[YaRness]

heehee.

secular humanism is a great answer to confuse the theists when they ask what religion you are

[Schotty]

That's actually the point I was trying to make, I guess I didn't clarify it well enough. ;)

Thats okay :) I wasnt sure if you were or not. Its just that thats how I interpreted the Bible the first time I read thru it. I jest feel that God doesnt need time. (S)He is at a different state of being than humanity is at. Glad that for once, during a political/religious discussion I didnt offend the person I was talking at :)

[cga]

That is an absolute statment.

;D

[NGene]

No I would try to figure out how someone can do such a thing. Just because someone does something we don't understand how the hell he/she/it does it, doesn't mean he/she/it is god. Not even if he/she/it claims to be god.

You're right - when someone does something we don't understand, it doesn't mean he/she/it/whatever is a god, but then again it doesn't mean he/she/it/whatever is not a god/goddess/whatever it wants to be called. That's the problem with things we don't understand: we want an explanation, and god is an easy explanation, and many people tend to believe in it even though there is no evidence.

But then again, there is no evidence that god/goddess/whatever does not exist. Scientists have some explanations that help us understand how the universe works and how life has evolved, but AFAIK science doesn't have much explanations of how and why it all begun: what caused the big bang, where the first living cell became from, etc. Like someone said it, science answers "how".

Science doesn't answer "why", and because of the methods science uses for examining our world, I'm pretty certain it can never give us the answer to the question "why". But people still want to know "why". And because science can't answer it, we have many different answers, and all the answers are just based on beliefs, not facts. Religions are based on beliefs, but then again the thought that there is no god is also a belief because it's not based on scientific facts.

So my humble opinion is that no matter if you're an atheist or a die-hard believer, you're still believing in something: either you believe that there is something or there is not something... or you believe that believing is stupid.

It might be members of a species far superior to us, who just wants to fool us. So while a big part of humanity runs around screaming "God is here! God is here!", they are laughing their asses (or whatever they use to take a dump) off up in their spaceship.

haha

It would be nice to know that if there is life somewehere else, it would have a good sense of humor.

[YaRness]

ngene, you can substitute the word "god" with "neon green hippopotamus" and the argument that "well you don't know that it DOESN'T exist" still applies.

you could keep making up stuff and doing that indefinitely, and your stuck with piles and piles of stuff that you don't know doesn't exist but you can't prove that it does.

[cloverm]

First of, I don't believe in God or any other supernatural force. However I can totally understand people who do. God is not an object that can be debated if it exists or not. Every believer have their on God. It is something that lives inside the person and gives answer to questions that science can't answer and makes the person feel they're not alone at any time and gives them extra mental strength. If you believe in it - there is God, if you don't - there isn't. In my mind it's that simple.
What I really hate, though is when believers try to convince (or even worse - force) non-belivers of there beliefs or non-believers do the same thing to belivers or one religion doing that to another, what we have seen one too many times throughout history.

[cloverm]

Now this is funny (or annoying, rather). A few minutes after I made my previous post, my doorbell was ringing and some people wanted to talk to me about the Bible and the scripture. I politely told them that I wasn't a believer and I did not want to talk to them. Why some people can't live happily with their own believes and let other people have theirs (or the lack of it for that matter), I'll never understand ...