Atheism/Theism thread

[Cavernio]

"When an atheist rejects belief in God, he rejects any source of confidence beyond his own level of reasoning or understanding."

Yep, and that's why if my Dad gets alzheimers like his mom did, he's going to be impossible to manage if he doesn't recognize his kids, like his mom did.

In regards to what you wrote earlier mollecephalus, about being in a personal loophole and that being the dangerous thing and that's why religion causes wars/harm, etc, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gone around harming people if I felt God wanted me to. Because my own morality, like everyone's morality, religious or not, comes from many places but nearly always involves an inborn innate feeling of feeling bad when someone else is getting hurt. So I strongly think that even if I had gotten feelings from God to kill someone or some such, I would not have done so. Or in another situation, if I had gotten feelings to kill someone and acted on that, I may afterwards convinced myself God had wanted me to do that, which clearly the cause of religion. I mean, seeing that god doesn't exist, individuals have to get their morality from somewhere, and even a religion that preaches immoral things are going to have to get passed and silence the innate empathy that we all seem to have.

I see that the thread about burning a witch (which I assume isn't a troll or fake, I didn't want to watch the video), you say that religion caused it. But I would say that it's the need to belong and be a part of a group that caused it, and although religion binded the group together, the idea of burning independent women for witchcraft is something that's been passed along outside of religion. The Salem witch trials weren't particularly founded in religion but superstition, and could easily have been avoided even if people illogically decided 'hey, she's a witch' but morally decided 'but killing her is still wrong'. For what it's worth, I myself am not entirely convinced this 'loophole' is as easily brushed off as I'm making it, (in that the illogical person will not believe it in the first place, or someone like me who is logical but chooses to believe anyways wouldn't question it when it gets to a certain point), but I'd like to think it is.
(On an aside, it really is crazy to see people get carried away by groupthink to persecute. If you've ever seen it happen from an outside viewpoint, it's pretty disgusting.)

Religious people who try to convert you are honestly just trying to the spread joy they experience from knowing God, a joy that they feel they only get from God. I'm still trying to decide if such a feeling is what everyone would call belief in something, God or some sort of connection to the universe or spirit or what have you, is always characterized by belief. As in, if someone would feel the need to call the sort of emotional experiences I had would have to feel like it were...supernatural to some degree. Certainly if imbedded in/part of the feeling itself is the notion that there's something more that you're a part of that is unknown but since you experience it then you DO know it, then perhaps hardcore atheists can never experience the sort of happiness/fulfillment that so many people have.