"God has a sense of humor. Just look at the platypus." - Kevin Smith
srsly, I realize this may sound like a cliche, and much apologizings, but I repeat what I once heard:
"Even if you don't believe in God...He believes in you."
What religion/faith are you?
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"God has a sense of humor. Just look at the platypus." - Kevin Smith
srsly, I realize this may sound like a cliche, and much apologizings, but I repeat what I once heard:
"Even if you don't believe in God...He believes in you."
Either God's the massive prick extremists say he is (so believing in him doesn't help you much) or he's a delightful, friendly chap who gives you a big cuddle when you arrive (so not believing in him doesn't make any difference either).
The afterlife only appeals to me because I want to know who will win the world cup in 2098. The idea that I won't know genuinely bothers me.
The afterlife only appeals to me because I want to know who will win the world cup in 2098. The idea that I won't know genuinely bothers me.
I want to sleep in a bed made of his voice.
Atheist. The older I get the more I think people are hard-wired for something "spiritual" or not. People wired with a spiritual space want something to fill that space, and whether or not their religion effectively explains the natural world is incidental. People wired the other way look at the religion based solely on its real-world implications and find it baffling. Very few adults change their minds on the subject.
I was raised in a very religious family and very homogeneous religious community (Mormon) and even as a young kid it just never rang true. The idea that existence is, to paraphrase Homer Simpson, "just a bunch of stuff that happened" always sounded about right to me.
I was raised in a very religious family and very homogeneous religious community (Mormon) and even as a young kid it just never rang true. The idea that existence is, to paraphrase Homer Simpson, "just a bunch of stuff that happened" always sounded about right to me.
That is completely meaningless to somebody who doesn't believe in God.
Indeed.
Not to mention, it illogically conflates two senses of "believe(s) in," the meaning of the first occurrence being "hold true the very existence of" and the second occurrence being the idiom that means "holds true the capability of." I can assume only that the illogical conflation is an attempt to rhetorically insult atheists, by trying to paint them as ungrateful.
That said, it meshes with one of the major reasons why organized religion is so popular: it offers people channels for moral support.
That's an interesting idea. Personally I think people who say things like that to non believers are patronising them, but i'm not sure deliberately so. I've always thought that sort of comment to simply be the result of some people's complete inability to comprehend what non-belief is. I think belief in a creator, and in the comfort that their sort of immortality gives them, is so much a part of some people they have no capacity to understand living without it.
I think a lot of religious people believe that deep down everybody has some sort of belief in God.
Yes, it's a good point that it may follow from the inability to comprehend non-belief. Thanks for that. I've run into the inability to comprehend non-belief a lot.
And I get that any patronizing or rhetorical insult may not be intentional. It happens a lot in discussions between theists and atheists that things can be said innocently and with good intentions that don't come off well at all.
Mighty To Save - Hillsong Worship
Much apologizings, I never intended to be patronizing.
Kinda like the often-quoted "Why do you hate god?" question/accusation. I'm glad I don't have to deal with stuff like that here in Germany, where atheism is far more socially accepted than in other countries.
I did go to a private Christian school, though. It was a relatively liberal one (even though it was part of quite the evangelist organization with them teaching "intelligent design", and "evolution is a theory").
My first day on that school was pretty interesting. I've been non-religious all my life, and I had never heard of creationism before. And there I was, first period history class, and the teacher was apologizing for our books treating evolution as fact. That was quite the culture shock, I tell you.
The most ridiculous thing anyone said there, though, was a guest speaker from said evangelist organisation at the celebration for the tenth anniversary of the school. He said, and I'm quoting as closely as I can while translating, "How can you expect people to behave themselves at sports events when you tell them they're descendants of apes".
I guess, mankind was one big happy family before Darwin came along.
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Just speaking for myself, but I don't think you were being patronizing. When I was a believer, and I would tell people such things, it was always sincere. I believed in a good, loving, kind God who wanted everyone to find that spark of divinity in themselves and fan that into a flame that would give them light in the darkness. That is what I believed.
I still find the concept of God fascinating, even in light of my disbelief. I've been asked often (mostly by Christians) why I still delve into such things if I don't believe a god exists. Well, because the vast majority of people on this planet do believe in a god or gods, and some of them get very angry at my mere existence, while others wish to punish me for not believing in their god. Just in the United States alone, there are millions of people in the upper echelons of power who believe in a god, and not only in a god, but a god they believe is THE God, and that any straying from that One True God is call for punishment. They want to punish me for not believing. They want to harm me for being pansexual, or for supporting transgender rights, or for breaking down gender stereotypes, because it flies in the face of what they can accept and that makes me a danger to them. They wish to silence me and either pretend I don't exist, or force me to believe in a god I cannot believe in.
What makes it all the worse is that I am an apostate. I did believe in God, a clergyman dedicated to the service of God, and not just any God but the "One True God," and that God was all powerful, all knowing, and omnipresent. Everything you were was a sign of His existence, and every space where you were not, He Was. You don't just walk away from that without pissing some people off, or at least pissing people off who think their God is pissed off by such a flagrant disregard for the Creator of All Things.
I harm no one, I take nothing from them, but I must not be left alone, lest my non-belief poison the well. My good deeds? They don't matter. My kindness, compassion, and desire to help uplift all of humanity? Burned like piles of refuse before an angry God who just so happens to look like an angry mob. So I have to be wise, and I have to be knowledgeable, because I get tested on so many levels by people who simply cannot let me be, because for them I should not be.
That is not to say all religious people are like this, because clearly they are not, but enough of them are that I have to keep my mind on religion, and religious matters, lest I find myself without rights.
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Shouldn't you have forgiven Philadelphia by now MLB?
I'm an Atheist and a Spelling Fascist-- the two most hated minorities.
You know I could be a spelling fascist since I was a spelling wunderkid from, basically, literacy. But not everyone has that innate spelling absorption. For some it is super hard, you know the hardness that everyone accepts with math as being just what some folk have.. but with spelling it's okay apparently to shit all over folk who can't do it. It's unpleasant and it's unkind. Not everyone can spell just like not everyone can math. It's a big blank in a lot of folks heads and at the end of the day what does it matter?
Oh my gosh! My nieces heard Morgan Freeman on a TV show and they said, "That's God speaking!"
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