*cartwheels through thread* USA, USA, USA, USA, USA

Haha, nobody is going to read any of those things you just wrote.

that is very interesting scubasteve wtf

anyone's who's waging war on the religious as an atheist should step back and take a look at themselves imo. why u mad bro?

hey scubasteve, good to see u dude. (not sirius tho lol)

as to that other part then, well, it's just to point out the pointlessness of being a militant atheist. whatever works, works. simple as. what does it matter who believes in what so long as they're not mental? nothing. and then atheism and religion become equal, but for that religion might be the less hospitable to change. that's what i meant.

and meh, not pointlessness either, but i mean that one should have some point more than just hurr atheism. atheism is america without a constitution.

u shouldn't be so quick to call ideas you've just encountered stupid, grannie, it basically nips the idea off at the bud by introducing ego into the equation. the problem, though, is that you're looking at the question the wrong way, basically just rationalising. were u an atheist all your life, i wonder? were you an atheist as an infant? what was your conception of 'being' like as an infant? people forget about these things. they come into the 'logic' of it with a whole bunch of prejudices and basically just talk rings around those prejudices. this is why the problem of evil is so commonly stated an argument against the existence of a god, for example, or just why most arguments against the existence of a god seem to be from resentment in general. and then what comfort in death would the existence of a god offer the religious person, looking at it from the other side? well? they get death just the same, don't they? so the existence of a god must be assuaging some other deep trauma within them, not that they will die, and why then shouldn't the atheist be with the same trauma? here's a question: do you know how much learning it takes to actually build a purely mechanical world inside of your head? heck, you're still going to be lost even if u do get it looking pretty damn mechanical, because our logic can only deal in cause and effect, and, well, it can't just be cause and effect the whole way through; there has to have been a beginning, sensibly speaking. but that aside, do you know how much of your psychology you're taking for granted (if indeed your psychology doesn't feed mostly on resentment, which is very common with the militant atheist)? do you know how complicated your conceptions of the world are? do you think you've always had those? do you not think you might have felt some existential fear, as so many great philosophers have, when you weren't with these conceptions? oh but death might certainly be a solace, mightn't it?

Interesting and relevant:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/world/from-studious-teenager-to-isis-recruiter.html

Also hey Sirius. How's it going dude?

belovedprincess says

atheism isn't much more than faith in death

Came back in the thread just to point out how stupid this quote was.

Religion isn't much more than a fear of death. Atheism (in a way) is an acceptance that we're all going to die - instead of buying into this fantasy where you get whisked away to an afterlife just by believing in this dude in the sky.

belovedprincess says

religious cultures might as well be atheistic cultures only with a constitution, if u really think about it

I thought about this for a while and it makes even less sense than when I first read it.

satan u r a cool human being imo

isis is powered by the US government, puppets n they're americans :) most muslims are jerks n make me uncomfortable, but they're not isis n most of them are against isis :p

Never said it was going away, just that we didn't need it as much anymore. It's purpose is to explain the "unexplainable" and much of the unexplainable has been explained using SCIENCE (unfortunately bill o'reilly still doesn't know how the tides work).

religion is never going to go away and it's pretty pointless arguing about it unless someone is really nuts.

yweah well can your precious science explain atlantis

Religion evolved with humans. As we became more advanced, religion changed. Ancient religions: No separation between spiritual and material things, universe is identical to the divinity (animism&pantheism), Polytheists: A bunch of gods made everything through various means (making this real simplified), Henotheists: A bunch of gods existed but one god was their leader, Monotheists: One god existed and created everything and all other ancient gods are forgotten or demonized. That isn't saying that the other religions don't exist, but that is the progression of how religions formed.

We're moving into a time where we don't need religion to explain natural phenomena. We can figure it out using science. That's why this is such a big deal now. Some religious people have been entirely dependent on their stories, they refuse to acknowledge scientific fact, others realize their stories are metaphorical in that they were just a way to explain things back when we had no way of explaining a phenomenon (science was non-existent).

i think it was mostly a spoof personally, a kinda 'hey brother' kinda thing telling people it was okay jesus loves them. but damn lol

did any of u see that thing where avicii cancelled his tour because he was masturbating too much then he went super into detail about it and a whole load of messed up fetishes?? what a crazy dude

religious cultures might as well be atheistic cultures only with a constitution, if u really think about it

I have no idea what point you're trying to make, because my post did not say "the answers to the questions through various religions are right".

Various atheistic cultures have existed throughout recorded history. Entire populations shaking in their boots about being in a godless universe. Whoa.

projectmatt says

They aren't what caused the development of religion, but religion has always tried to answer "why?".

As the questions of "what is fire?, "why is it raining?" and such were answered, the questions turned more existential.

Interesting point about conditioning, but I honestly don't think that humans need conditioning to be inherently attracted to religion as a prospect. The answers of "why am I here?" are far more comforting for many than they are without one

Whoa ... could it be that religion's answers to these questions have repeatedly been shown to be wrong?

The Abrahamic answer to "Why am I here?" for example has already been disproved. Woman didn't come from man's rib. No amount of anti-literalist apologetics/revisionism will change the fact that Abrahamic believers, along with all the other, were dead wrong.

belovedprincess says

good ole jesus fighting backing the fires of unbound existential consideration

lol