Oh GOD.

[SaiKar]

no u

[Darkfox]

People are people. Some of us are just crazy, religion is just a tool for some people to bring out their craziness, or as a reason to do bad things. But there are also crazy atheist, and people do bad things and try to justify it with anything they can.  Point being, don't blame religion for people being crazy, or good for that matter, blame the person themselves.

This post is filled with fact. I find the whole thing rather immature, but historically proven to be true that a whole group will be labeled for the actions of some of its members. Case and point, people hate all Catholics because the actions of the few. People actually believe all Catholics are evil or something. For a while I too was convinced of this until I grew up and saw how ridiculous it was.

Ultimately, there are extremists everywhere that will label an entire group by their actions. For extremist atheists and overly religious alike, it is little different from racism. Though to be technical, and fair, the "atheists" who behave this manner are anti-theists, rather than atheists, because they openly oppose religion rather than just not believe in anything regarding it.

[Darkfox]

It varies here, we have nutjob extremists, but we frown on it.

Also, yeah, there is a substantial amount around aimed at Catholics. Dawkins and Hitchkins for the pure reason of gaining spotlight is saying to arrest the pope, their followers getting into Catholic hate. Is an actual... thing going on. Isn't like they didn't have enough as it is already. But this is off-topic, so pardon me.

[zuhane]

I'm not biased or anything, but I despise religion and I'm a strong 100% atheist humanist. I also hate religion.

[Dragonium]

I'm pagan. Pantheist, to be exact. I keep it to myself, but in mingling with others it's become pretty obvious that faith, of any kind, becomes not only a great source of happiness and spiritual enrichment, but also a big part of one's identity. It's how you, a single human being, choose to interface with the greater universe. For that reason I'm quietly opposed to any militant stance on religion; trying to force your beliefs on another isn't cool, and neither is telling someone that they are somehow "deluded" or "foolish" or "closed-minded" for having any kind of faith. While I follow science, I think there are many things that science and human understanding will never be able to measure, quantify and explain. Focus on your own beliefs, not others'.

Part of me feels lucky for being British. Religion isn't really a big deal over here. Most people just don't bother with it, or have a casual attitude to it. I've met plenty of very vocal anti-theists, but I've never met an "extremist". One of my best friends is Catholic. I tell him to stop molesting choirboys and he tells me to stop burning people in wicker men. It's all good.

[Dragonium]

It's pretty broad and mostly down to interpretation. A lot of people take a deistic/scientific approach to it (which seems to contradict itself when I word it like that, I don't know). My approach is essentially Germanic paganism without deities. Even "pagan" is a blanket term used to describe folk religions.

I have my own silly beliefs about trees being fonts of energy drawn from within the soil and such, but we won't get into that.

[_JeT_]

Well just going to put my two cents in. I don't consider atheists stupid or deluded, people should have freedom to think what they wish, especially in spiritual matters. Spirituality is a personal thing, so it should not be used to look down at others. My only problems are what, I guess, you would call anti-theists, like someone mentioned here earlier. I consider them the equivalents of religious zealots, who I dislike as well. I just think people need to calm down on both sides really.

Or something.

[Dragonium]

Okay maybe not quite that Germanic.

There's not a lot I can say, to be honest. I never decided "I am going to be this now", I already had those beliefs developed through introspection and experience, did some Googling, found that "pantheism" was the most accurate name for it I could find. You'll be infinitely happier deciding what you believe and then finding a name for it, than getting a list of religions by name and deciding if you believe them or not. I'm far from any kind of sage or expert, but it just doesn't work that way.

[SaiKar]

You DO realize that you can believe in both science and religion, right? With the possible exception of internet conversations, it's not that hard to maintain the balance.

[Darkfox]

You DO realize that you can believe in both science and religion, right? With the possible exception of internet conversations, it's not that hard to maintain the balance.

Haha, what a funny story Harv. But seriously, your absolutely right there. In fact, a number of scientists ARE actually of a religion. So... whats the issue?

Edit: Oh, right. Those extremists...

[DragonBlaze]

You DO realize that you can believe in both science and religion, right? With the possible exception of internet conversations, it's not that hard to maintain the balance.

Agreed! Personally I like to believe that a higher power started the "Big Bang". According to the theory of the big bang, all the matter in the universe was super condensed into a very small clump in space, and from there exploded and thus the universe was born. There's two things I find 'wrong' with this. The first is that this point was essentially a super massive black hole. Except instead of having the mass of a single star (or several star systems for a large black hole), it had ALL the matter in the universe condensed into this single point. When one collapsed star has enough gravity that light can't even escape its gravity field, just imagine how much gravity all the matter in the universe condensed into one point must have. In order for matter to escape this gravity field, matter would have to accelerate faster than the speed of light to escape the gravity field. The problem with this is that if matter accelerates to the speed of light, according to Einsteins theory of relativity (E = mc ^ 2), if matter accelerates to the speed of light, it requires an infinite amount of energy, which in turn means that the mass would become infinite (mass and energy are interchangeable), and with an infinite amount of mass, you have an infinite amount of gravity, which means the universe would collapse at that point.

The other problem I see with the big bang is that 'most likely' there was no such thing as time before the big bang. Time is relative to light, or rather the speed of light. The faster you go, the slower time moves. We actually have to program our GPS satellites to compensate for the time difference when providing directions. Time also slows down around gravity, time moves much slower around a black hole than in normal space. My point being, if there is no time, there can be no cause or event to start the big bang.

And finally, in my philosophy class, we learned of the theory of causality. Every action has a cause. From the instant the big bang blew up, it was already predetermined that we would end up here today, or if you believe in free will, it was predetermined that the earth would form, because there is a chain of causes and effects that lead to this point in time. And since the universe always follows a set course of rules (as opposed to randomness), each cause will lead to a specific reaction, thus leading here. My point with this theory is that if a higher power wanted to create humanity (or anything else) they could have planned to do so 20 billion years ago when the big bang first blew up.

Because I find it physically impossible for the big bang to happen naturally. I find it much easier to accept that a higher power set things into motion. But that's just me personally. :p

[Prpl_Mage]

a better explanation.

Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood

[Archem]

So much for this not being a religion thread. Totally called it.

Anyway, I'm a non-participating member of society. Don't care who's right or whatever, I've got better things to waste my time trying to figure out. If I was strong-armed into picking something with a name, I'd go with "hopeful-agnostic", because I'm likely to believe whichever view offers undeniable proof first, but I'm kinda hoping for that sweet-ass afterlife thing. It would be nice to see my cat again (and I mean that with the utmost seriousness. That cat was the number one most beloved being I've ever spent my life with).

[aboutasoandthis]

Don't know the exact idea of this thread, but I really wish we had world peace and acceptance of all beliefs.  You believe this. I believe that. If our arguments didn't convert the other, we're each okay with that. That's how the world should be.

To anyone with a negative opinion towards Christians/The Religious in general, please try to understand that we're mainly trying to become akin to Jesus/our respective prophet. For a lot of people, that just means being a good person with a compassionate heart like Jesus was. Even if he wasn't the Messiah, Jesus was still a nice guy who cared for the sick and the desperate. Unfortunately, a lot of people need a list of rules to help them do that, and that's why the bible has such a strong influence. In Christianity especially, the big argument is over who is the closest to God and that's where all the bad stuff comes in. I've gotten into many a fight over being a real Christian just over my statements above.

[zuhane]

One of my best friends is Catholic. I tell him to stop molesting choirboys and he tells me to stop burning people in wicker men. It's all good.

Similar setup here. I tell my mate to go and fly into a building screaming "ALLLLAAAHH" and he tells me to go and **** Richard Dawkins!