I envy people who have Faith

[BlueBloodedBlue]

I don't but it must be a real comfort to believe in a higher power and have something that gives a meaning to everything.

That's it really.

@Malie your argument is called the Atheist Atrocities Fallacy.

michaelsherlockauthor.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/the-atheist-atrocities-fallacy-hitler-stalin-pol-pot-in-memory-of-christopher-hitchens/

Then of course there is the argument (often rehashed) that in these dictatorships, traditional religious faith was replaced with a cult of personality - the Kim family in North Korea are a good example of this; they are literally attributed to have divine powers.

Either way though, it doesn't matter. The point I made that bad things happen when bad people get organised stands - whether they be believers or atheists.

It's about Hindus in India persecuting Muslims there and desecrating their sacred sites. It's about Buddhists in Myanmar persecuting the Rohingya. It's about communist Chinese persecuting everyone who doesn't worship at the altar of The Party (note the key thing here is the state, not the lack of belief in a deity. The state is the deity). It's about the Catholic Church excommunicating a 9 year old girl and the people who helped her because she had an abortion after being raped. It's about that same Catholic Church, and the C of E too, shielding paedophile priests. Oh, and let's remember the Magdalene Laundries.

It's about bad people who have found themselves organised ruining human lives. Ultimately it's about power and the way it corrupts.

Which proves the point that man is essentially religious animal and he will worship a substitute for God if God is removed. He will worship the creature rather than the creator

@Malie, that's a generalisation. Lots of us atheists worship nothing at all. I don't even worship my cats, though I do love them a lot.

I'm not sure it's so much a matter of humans being religious beasts as a matter of humans being herd animals. The scientific evidence is conflicting.

No I don’t believe in God. It’s a human-manufactured concept to help us deal with death, pain, uncertainty & grief - all things we encounter in our lives. This thread alone is evidence enough for that. The posters who find comfort in their belief are numerous, particularly at points where they face crisis/despair/fear.

I would of course, love to put my logic to one side & quite literally suspend disbelief. But, I’m afraid that’s what belief is, a cushion for our human trials & tribulations, & our very limited ability to conceptualise our own pointless mortality. Because, there is no higher purpose or meaning to our existence.

Like all things we will have our time and it will pass. We die. To be able to face this very difficult fact we have invented a safety net, an answer to the death of the self - we have invented an afterlife & a God, who gives us purpose in our mortal life & looks after us when we die. So we don’t have to fear death, or what happens after it because there’s an answer. Nor do we have to contemplate our own mortality too much.

Religion is also a way of practising the moral code book on how to behave - with compassion, care & with consideration towards a wider purpose. The Bible is a behavioural code book for example. It quite literally, teaches us moral lessons & Christians aspire to adhere to it throughout their lives.

No I don’t believe in God. It’s a human-manufactured concept to help us deal with death, pain, uncertainty & grief - all things we encounter in our lives. This thread alone is evidence enough for that.

Which is interesting, because the atheists on the thread seem to have a much cheerier view of human nature than the big monotheistic religions at least would allow. If you think we’d all be capable of living in peace and harmony and happiness together if we just stopped focusing on silly religious stuff for a minute, in the face of all human history suggesting the opposite, you are far more of a starry-eyed optimist than most religious people

(not suggesting atheism is a human-manufactured way of coping with the brutal truths of human nature we don’t want to look too closely at, mind…)

@GoldenOmber

not suggesting atheism is a human-manufactured way of coping with the brutal truths of human nature we don’t want to look too closely at, mind…

Yes, good point; whether you have belief or not, you may hide behind your self-imposed construction to avoid facing the more unpleasant truths of the human condition.

What happens when humans make first contact with other civilisations and how would religions square that perspectives with their religions ?

Space Jesuits!

@GoldenOmber well, apparently we already have Jewish Space Lasers, so we're getting there.

God certainly help them, if they try to convert x civilisation,

Oh atheists worship alright. Some have even formed atheist churches

Firstly all due respect all, but why do humans even need God's ?

I feel the same. I really do believe when we die, there's just nothing. We don't remember before we were born, so why would we after. It's a miserable thing to think about and I think it must be lovely for religious folk to believe they're off to something better.

I often think about this; it's the sort of thing that keeps me awake at night.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but trust that God IS love and that He has a plan. The Bible says:
'I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more. Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days or an old man who does not live out his years...The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox'.

C.S. Lewis wrestled with the same question. In 'Mere Christianity' he wrote:
'My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?'. He concluded 'If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world'.

John Wyatt writes on the subject:
'The mysterious and wonderful truth is that we don’t get an explanation about the nature of suffering and evil. Instead God in the person of Jesus enters into the experience of suffering himself.

God himself enters into the experience of dependence – he becomes a pathetic fragile baby, he can do absolutely nothing for himself, he needs to be fed, to be kept warm, to have his bottom wiped, and at the end of his life on the cross with hands nailed to the wood he is again utterly dependent and through parched lips he croaks, I am thirsty,

The God whom Jesus reveals is a God who weeps at the graveside of Lazarus, a God who is deeply moved at the suffering of a widow in the town of Nain who had lost her only son, and a God who takes the suffering of the world into himself on the cross'.

Charles Dickens once said, "Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching...I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape".

(Apologies for the length of post!).

Fwiw the pope has said ET’s can be saved. There’s an interesting novel, “God of Strange New Things” about evangelising to aliens.

Well it is what we are made for! 😀

@Etinoxaurus it is incredibly arrogant of the Pope to presume that life forms on other planets will need 'saving', or that his god is the only true one.

😍😍😍😍

it is incredibly arrogant of the Pope to presume that life forms on other planets will need 'saving'

He said he’d baptise them if they asked.

or that his god is the only true one

Pope in ‘being Catholic’ shocker!

@GoldenOmber well, as long as he waits for them to ask. Because the whole missionary bringing Christianity to the 'natives' here on earth didn't end well.

I'm glad I don't have faith anymore. I grew up in an evangelical church where they talked a lot more about hell than heaven. As a child, I was constantly scared I might go to hell for doing something wrong (like squabbling with my siblings) and felt responsible for converting my friends so that they wouldn't burn in hell. When I was in my teens and realised I was a lesbian, the fear got worse to the point of considering suicide to get rid of my "sinful" thoughts.

I do think there are a few occasions where faith must be nice. Christian funerals seem slightly more optimistic, when people have completed faith that they'll see their loved one again in heaven.

But in my day-to-day life, I'm very happy as an atheist and don't feel like I'm missing anything.

Good grief! What would the extra terrestrials need be saved from?!

The pope and Catholicism, or any other denomination or religion, are really not that important. Seriously

Speechless

Again, the Pope is actually Catholic. He properly believes it. He believes in the set of claims Catholicism makes about God and about baptism and about all sorts of other things.

So if you ask “hypothetically, let’s say we met little green men on Mars and they asked to be baptised, would you do it?” he does at least have a hypothetical answer to that, because he thinks his religion does really matter outside his own head.

Honestly, if you say you’re okay with people having faith so long as they don’t act like they believe it’s true, then you’re not really okay with people having faith at all.

As I have said in another post I am a. Christian because I believe there is very strong evidence Jesus rose from the dead and was the promised Jewish Messiah and from then on Son of God and Saviour of the world, and through faith in him we come to God. I have also found it to work out practically for many years and often miraculously. As I said, the person with an experience is never at the mercy of the person with an argument.