Do you believe in God? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Ascension
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That article needs to be read by everyone. I'll post it here:
Atheism isn't the final word
By Don Feder Mon Apr 16, 7:15 AM ET
Oh, for the days when one could safely stroll into a bookstore without tripping over the latest atheist title. Ironically, by writing their tracts, in the long run atheists might boost belief.
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My local Barnes & Noble has the following titles on display -Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam ; The Quotable Atheist; Letter To A Christian Nation; God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist; and The God Delusion, which is a New York Times best-seller.
Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., has become the first member of Congress to announce that he doesn't believe in God. He's probably just looking for a book deal.
Why the sudden outpouring of atheist advocacy? Perhaps it's a way for the cultural left to assert itself in the face of the religious right. Or maybe it's meant to show that the anti-God argument can be framed more intelligently than in a Bill Maher monologue. Whatever the impetus, as a believer, I welcome the phenomenon. After all, the great enemy of belief isn't disbelief but indifference.
Let the godless write their books and the faithful answer them. The disillusionment with religion that dominated British intellectual circles after World War I helped to shape the great Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. The surviving son of atheist icon Madalyn Murray O'Hair is an evangelical Christian.
The books referenced above assert that the debate is over and that atheism has won, but atheists have been saying that for more than 200 years. Since the French Enlightenment, the death of God has been confidently proclaimed. Religion has been made obsolete by egalitarian revolution, industrialism, or science, they insisted. Yet, early in the 21st century, faith endures.
Outlasting the Soviet Union
For 70-plus years, the Soviets tried everything imaginable to kill religion: show trials, mass murder of clerics, confiscations, indoctrination and even attempts to co-opt religious symbols and ceremonies. But belief survived, while scientific socialism is now defunct.
In China, where communism's war on God continues, the home-church movement thrives. Half a world away, America has the highest weekly church attendance in the industrialized world, notwithstanding attacks on faith from Hollywood, academia and a judiciary seemingly intent on purging religious symbols from public spaces.
In the USA - the most science-oriented society in history - Christian bookstores, radio stations and TV programming proliferate. It seems as though a hunger for the Creator is imprinted on the human heart.
What would a world without God look like? Well, for one, morality becomes, if not impossible, exceedingly difficult. "Thou shalt not kill" loses much of its force when reduced from commandment to a suggestion. How inspiring can it be to wake in the morning, look in the mirror, and see an accident of evolutionary history - the end product of the random collision of molecules?
A universe that isn't God-centered becomes ego-centered. People come to see choices through the prism of self: what promotes the individual's well-being and happiness. Such a worldview does not naturally lead to benevolence or self-sacrifice.
An affirmation of God can lead to the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount and the Declaration of Independence. In terms of morality, a denial of God leads nowhere.
There are no secularist counterparts to
Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, William Wilberforce (the evangelical responsible for abolition of the British slave trade), Martin Luther King Jr., or the Christians - from France to Poland - who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.
True, terrible things have been done in the name of religion. Terrible things have been done in the name of every noble concept, including love, charity, loyalty and kinship. Yet, the worst horrors of the modern era were perpetrated by godless political creeds. The death toll from sectarian conflict over the ages is dwarfed by ideological violence, from the Jacobinism of Revolutionary France to the charnel houses of communism and fascism.
This is not to say that atheism leads naturally to guillotines and gulags, but, just as "love your fellow man as yourself" can be corrupted, so too can liberty, equality and fraternity.
Signs throughout history
There is no irrefutable evidence for God's existence or non-existence. But, if you look closely, his footprints can be discerned in the sands of time.
Jews introduced the world to monotheism. They also were the first people to perceive history as linear- an unfolding story moving toward a conclusion. Is it a coincidence that this tiny, originally nomadic people generated the ideas that shaped the Western world, including equality, human rights and a responsibility to our fellow man? Jews are the only people to maintain their identity during two millennia of exile, and then return to their homeland and re-establish their nation.
Mark Twain wrote: "The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up, held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now or have vanished. … All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?" Had Twain been a believer, he might have answered his own question.
America's survival and rise to global pre-eminence are equally improbable. Challenging the greatest empire of the 18th century, America should never have won its independence or should have self-destructed during the Civil War.
Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the genius of our infant republic lay not in its farms and workshops but in its churches whose "pulpits flame with righteousness."
Atheists are free to disbelieve and to try to propagate their disbelief in books and other intellectual forums. But saying the debate is over doesn't make it so. A bit of humility might make their case more convincing. Then again, humility is itself a religious concept.
Don Feder is a former syndicated columnist and author of Who's Afraid of the Religious Right?
-USA Today
That article needs to be read by everyone. I'll post it here:
Atheism isn't the final word
By Don Feder Mon Apr 16, 7:15 AM ET
Oh, for the days when one could safely stroll into a bookstore without tripping over the latest atheist title. Ironically, by writing their tracts, in the long run atheists might boost belief.
ADVERTISEMENT
My local Barnes & Noble has the following titles on display -Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam ; The Quotable Atheist; Letter To A Christian Nation; God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist; and The God Delusion, which is a New York Times best-seller.
Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., has become the first member of Congress to announce that he doesn't believe in God. He's probably just looking for a book deal.
Why the sudden outpouring of atheist advocacy? Perhaps it's a way for the cultural left to assert itself in the face of the religious right. Or maybe it's meant to show that the anti-God argument can be framed more intelligently than in a Bill Maher monologue. Whatever the impetus, as a believer, I welcome the phenomenon. After all, the great enemy of belief isn't disbelief but indifference.
Let the godless write their books and the faithful answer them. The disillusionment with religion that dominated British intellectual circles after World War I helped to shape the great Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. The surviving son of atheist icon Madalyn Murray O'Hair is an evangelical Christian.
The books referenced above assert that the debate is over and that atheism has won, but atheists have been saying that for more than 200 years. Since the French Enlightenment, the death of God has been confidently proclaimed. Religion has been made obsolete by egalitarian revolution, industrialism, or science, they insisted. Yet, early in the 21st century, faith endures.
Outlasting the Soviet Union
For 70-plus years, the Soviets tried everything imaginable to kill religion: show trials, mass murder of clerics, confiscations, indoctrination and even attempts to co-opt religious symbols and ceremonies. But belief survived, while scientific socialism is now defunct.
In China, where communism's war on God continues, the home-church movement thrives. Half a world away, America has the highest weekly church attendance in the industrialized world, notwithstanding attacks on faith from Hollywood, academia and a judiciary seemingly intent on purging religious symbols from public spaces.
In the USA - the most science-oriented society in history - Christian bookstores, radio stations and TV programming proliferate. It seems as though a hunger for the Creator is imprinted on the human heart.
What would a world without God look like? Well, for one, morality becomes, if not impossible, exceedingly difficult. "Thou shalt not kill" loses much of its force when reduced from commandment to a suggestion. How inspiring can it be to wake in the morning, look in the mirror, and see an accident of evolutionary history - the end product of the random collision of molecules?
A universe that isn't God-centered becomes ego-centered. People come to see choices through the prism of self: what promotes the individual's well-being and happiness. Such a worldview does not naturally lead to benevolence or self-sacrifice.
An affirmation of God can lead to the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount and the Declaration of Independence. In terms of morality, a denial of God leads nowhere.
There are no secularist counterparts to
Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, William Wilberforce (the evangelical responsible for abolition of the British slave trade), Martin Luther King Jr., or the Christians - from France to Poland - who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.
True, terrible things have been done in the name of religion. Terrible things have been done in the name of every noble concept, including love, charity, loyalty and kinship. Yet, the worst horrors of the modern era were perpetrated by godless political creeds. The death toll from sectarian conflict over the ages is dwarfed by ideological violence, from the Jacobinism of Revolutionary France to the charnel houses of communism and fascism.
This is not to say that atheism leads naturally to guillotines and gulags, but, just as "love your fellow man as yourself" can be corrupted, so too can liberty, equality and fraternity.
Signs throughout history
There is no irrefutable evidence for God's existence or non-existence. But, if you look closely, his footprints can be discerned in the sands of time.
Jews introduced the world to monotheism. They also were the first people to perceive history as linear- an unfolding story moving toward a conclusion. Is it a coincidence that this tiny, originally nomadic people generated the ideas that shaped the Western world, including equality, human rights and a responsibility to our fellow man? Jews are the only people to maintain their identity during two millennia of exile, and then return to their homeland and re-establish their nation.
Mark Twain wrote: "The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up, held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now or have vanished. … All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?" Had Twain been a believer, he might have answered his own question.
America's survival and rise to global pre-eminence are equally improbable. Challenging the greatest empire of the 18th century, America should never have won its independence or should have self-destructed during the Civil War.
Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the genius of our infant republic lay not in its farms and workshops but in its churches whose "pulpits flame with righteousness."
Atheists are free to disbelieve and to try to propagate their disbelief in books and other intellectual forums. But saying the debate is over doesn't make it so. A bit of humility might make their case more convincing. Then again, humility is itself a religious concept.
Don Feder is a former syndicated columnist and author of Who's Afraid of the Religious Right?
-USA Today
Humanism is a world view (not a religion) that is centered on the well being of people, and it too embraces morality as its central theme.
The thing is that mankind has been developing up the curve over in it's history; not down the curve. Everything has in a way been a precursor to the next. We wouldn't have Aristotle without Plato (who knows 
) the mobile phone without the invention of electricity, etc. The art of concrete was lost after the fall of the Roman empire, and not re-discovered until the 1600's. That tells me that our past influences our future.
My point is, if it wasn't for the morality taught by religion, and you can't argue about the state of man before religion was fine because it wasn't, where would be today? Just like he says " 'Thou shalt not kill' loses much of its force when reduced from commandment to a suggestion." That's assuming that such a suggestion would have even been introduced, in a world without any divine authority and guidance.
) the mobile phone without the invention of electricity, etc. The art of concrete was lost after the fall of the Roman empire, and not re-discovered until the 1600's. That tells me that our past influences our future. My point is, if it wasn't for the morality taught by religion, and you can't argue about the state of man before religion was fine because it wasn't, where would be today? Just like he says " 'Thou shalt not kill' loses much of its force when reduced from commandment to a suggestion." That's assuming that such a suggestion would have even been introduced, in a world without any divine authority and guidance.
What I'm saying is this. And correct me if I misunderstand you.
Ze: Before we had religion, everyone was a barbarian, people had no ethics and no morals, it was a complete anarchy, everyone was selfish and blood thirsty.
I won't debate this, so I'll just accept this assertion.
Ze: And so religion opened the door to human decency, to selflessness, to regard for others and so on. It's through religion people first became good.
Again, a potentially very incorrect assertion, but again I accept it.
Be that as it may, there is no reason to flag the same argument right now. We are not barbarians anymore, those of us who are supremely atheists and anarchist do not go around plundering and killing. There is no basis for this argument anymore. It may have been applicable around 1000 AD but it certainly stands in a different light today. Yes, morality and ethics are central to religion but they DO NOT DEPEND ON IT. And if you think so, how can you possible prove/argue it?
EDIT: And Bes brings up a Dawkins-point about morality in religious books, the ethics are very ambiguous, so it would be ridiculous to claim that the Bible teaches you to be good when God kills people all the time.
Ze: Before we had religion, everyone was a barbarian, people had no ethics and no morals, it was a complete anarchy, everyone was selfish and blood thirsty.
I won't debate this, so I'll just accept this assertion.
Ze: And so religion opened the door to human decency, to selflessness, to regard for others and so on. It's through religion people first became good.
Again, a potentially very incorrect assertion, but again I accept it.
Be that as it may, there is no reason to flag the same argument right now. We are not barbarians anymore, those of us who are supremely atheists and anarchist do not go around plundering and killing. There is no basis for this argument anymore. It may have been applicable around 1000 AD but it certainly stands in a different light today. Yes, morality and ethics are central to religion but they DO NOT DEPEND ON IT. And if you think so, how can you possible prove/argue it?
EDIT: And Bes brings up a Dawkins-point about morality in religious books, the ethics are very ambiguous, so it would be ridiculous to claim that the Bible teaches you to be good when God kills people all the time.
Welllll .. I don't think that's a ridiculous statement at all !! 
In fact, I happen to agree with it . Whyy ?? Well look at it this way - What's the harm in believing in God ? Can anything bad really come of it ? Like if we live all our lives following the bible, being the people that God "calls" us to be blah blah blah, what do we have to lose ? So we die and there's no God .. at least we strived to be good people on earth and can be happy knowing that we lived honourable lives. It's not like we missed out on anything. (except having to wake up early every Sunday morning to go to church. lol )
But for those who don't believe in him .. they don't really gain anything in the afterlife if it does happen to exist. They're pretty much screwed because they can't go to heaven right ?
So, yeah, why NOT believe in God ? It just makes sense to do it. :eyebrows:
P.S. I don't mean to say that people who don't believe in God aren't good people or anything .. because that obviously isn't the case .
In fact, I happen to agree with it . Whyy ?? Well look at it this way - What's the harm in believing in God ? Can anything bad really come of it ? Like if we live all our lives following the bible, being the people that God "calls" us to be blah blah blah, what do we have to lose ? So we die and there's no God .. at least we strived to be good people on earth and can be happy knowing that we lived honourable lives. It's not like we missed out on anything. (except having to wake up early every Sunday morning to go to church. lol )
But for those who don't believe in him .. they don't really gain anything in the afterlife if it does happen to exist. They're pretty much screwed because they can't go to heaven right ?
So, yeah, why NOT believe in God ? It just makes sense to do it. :eyebrows:
P.S. I don't mean to say that people who don't believe in God aren't good people or anything .. because that obviously isn't the case .
WORD
juventina has to understand that no, it is not because of religion that people are good. they do not need to be scared of a higher power to be good.
the reason people should not be religous is because plenty of times that belief is abused and poor good people are made do things against what they morals
to make myself more clear: one of the reasons hitler's germany killed so many jews is because hitler, whether he believed it or not, told them that jews killed jesus, or because of religion people were convinced that flying the plans to the world trade center was going to make them martyrs and they would be repaid in the latter life, or because of religion people push crazy ideas life intelligent desing, or becuase of religion, in one of the most developed countries, there is only one polititian that has declared not to believe in god and if they do they essentially they lose all chance of being elected.
the reason people should not be religous is because plenty of times that belief is abused and poor good people are made do things against what they morals
to make myself more clear: one of the reasons hitler's germany killed so many jews is because hitler, whether he believed it or not, told them that jews killed jesus, or because of religion people were convinced that flying the plans to the world trade center was going to make them martyrs and they would be repaid in the latter life, or because of religion people push crazy ideas life intelligent desing, or becuase of religion, in one of the most developed countries, there is only one polititian that has declared not to believe in god and if they do they essentially they lose all chance of being elected.
okayyy .. umm, well the question was whether you believe in God or not .. I never denied that religious conflicts happen all around us all the time.. However I don't really think religion is completely to blame for it .. i think it's the messed up people that interpret it the wrong way. As for the whole 9/11 thing, the people who did that were extremists who mis-interpreted the Koran. And I'm no expert in the muslim religion or anything so I don't really want to get in to it because I don't want to offend anyone or say something that's not accurate. BUT I don't think it's fair to say that so many bad things occur because of religion and therfore it shouldn't exist. Think of all the good things that come of it !! Yeah of course there are problems with it, and maybe the world would be a better place without it .. who knows ? Don't you think there would be conflict even without religion ? probablyy ..
You also said that people shouldn't be "scared" in to being good .. well I didn't really mean it that way .. i was just trying to say that it makes sense to believe in God because YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE !!!!!!
I don't know it If really explained myself any better .. but whatev.