Is Atheism good?

[figsfiggyfigs]

Too lazy to link anything since I'm using my touch, but there are studies out there that show people who are not religious or less religious than the average tend to have more freedom judging things objectively, have a higher reading and writing level, and an overall improvement to their intelligence. So all this is a nice trade for ETERNITY IN HELLLLLL!!!!

 

[Synapse]

What?

to become consciously awake to spirit, your responses would be different.

 

[Poki]

I just wanted to know how exactlly does Atheism help you in your life? I mean how does it make you feel better to belive there is no God?

This is not meant to insult anybody but I'm just facinated about how some people can live without any kind of faith.

WAIT!!!! Where does not believing in god mean you have no faith? I am confused sometimes why people think that GOD is the only thing people can have faith in. I have faith in myself, I have faith in people around me, I have a ton of faith...I have yet to find a reason to put my faith in god. Doesnt mean I dont believe there isnt a god. /*afterthought...dont you love all those negatives...LMAO */

I am confused how people can put so much faith into a single thing...its like putting all your eggs in one basket. Not really though...I dont even think about that kind of stuff. I live life and put my faith in those around me...some hold up, others dont. Its part of learning who people are.

My best friend is religious, we tend to follow the same practices in life, we tend to abide by the same value system, everything. The difference is that she lets things go to God or Jesus...I just let things go.

Honestly, I dont need to "know". Things just are...thats life. You deal with it....period.

 

[Synapse]

so many lost folk, religious to atheist alike.

ah well. it is a strange illusion thy physical matrix decrees of spirit. more so considering the illusion that is propogated, whence thou fever breaks down into moments of flurry.

flushed are thee in municiple waste of constraint, confalgrance perchance earthen tied to mortality grove.

oh how destructive mortality consciousness creates thy hologram of impregnated ideas. such fast steel withdrawn and drawn alike into chasems that bind ropes and rods and bindings as sturdy as life.

perhaps ledgers of life are such creatures that ledgers spirit knows beyond dimensional realms. a dimensional matrix unto thy self constructed of the mind thus spake ego personality, with duality death is alive, death is asunder, death is quickening.

harken cries temporal visors who art not visors of temporal design. entreaty eternity in milanry of fire, brimstones burn not damnations reavers.

hahaha, would'st though proofes be virginal, like sigal emblems tatooed in graven space of etherial kind. whosoever understood beyohd thy door of flavour. how rich thy door truely is, spirit speaks to thy soul in quivering enthusiasm.

thy graces of lorded inner sparks in distorted perversion. who shall pass thy testaments veiled from eyes and ears and lips and flesh. art thou guardians a deathly palour of pale as hungery madness weakens mindedness unto thee. perchase thinning fibers of ale, lest rays of sunshine pour down upon thy face. circumstances beckon beastly maws, evocative, craven as large as beliefs and minds.

oh lordy how does one overcome overwhealming masks that blind, drapped within a textures of personal nightmares. a rabid fever of a kind that climaxes into impetus of indulgance in all that is and all that is is nought more than illusion, perhaps millions and millions of illusions woven into thy fabric of time.

a pretty damn good one, sensorial minds would have you.

sages anew forgotten their divine spark, a divine spark that speaketh unto thy name in tremulous anticipation of a longing, deeper than summer rain. deeper than autum winters, deeper than, for posterities sake. energy is amusing no!

who is a foxy, noxy, moxy. who is a boxy, loxy, toxy.

tis a jesters corner crooning for supper. hunger rumbles thy sensless, chatter growels unquenched, emotions prowel restlessly, minds hounorifically flop investment in temerity.

a makers delirium trumphets amidsts doors, doors trained and anchored, steeling programmed memories as cellular as pastures graze. scents dejavu seasoned to tender aromas, gently like a lovers ambrosia of life.

perhaps lovers reunite, dreamers remember, sleepers awaken, quixotica.

heheh. amused.

a penchant to arms.

 

[Synapse]

as baffeling as ever i c.

 

[Antimony]

Hrm. Okay.

If you believe Peguy represents G, can you provide an example of an individual that represents B to you, for the sake of comparison?

^Let this scale represent religious individuals sorted by degree of open- to close-mindedness by your standards.

I would guess that B is very closed-minded. How about YLJ?

 

[Jack427]

There was no Big Bang. There was no explosion. Galaxies are not exploding away from each other, rather space is expanding, and expanding at an accelerating rate.

Indeed, there was no explosion. According to theory it was a rapid expansion of energy.

 

[Mole]

The Accelerating Expansion of Space

Indeed, there was no explosion. According to theory it was a rapid expansion of energy.

The recent Noble Prize for Physics was won by a Canberran who discovered that not matter nor energy is expanding, but rather space is expanding at an accelerating rate.

And interestingly, neither matter nor energy can move or expand at faster than the speed of light, but space can expand faster than the speed of light. And indeed space is already expanding at faster than the speed of light and so we are surrounded by an event horizon beyond which we cannot see, ever.

 

[Synapse]

You don't have to read what I write SmileyMan.

 

[entropie]

The recent Noble Prize for Physics was won by a Canberran who discovered that not matter nor energy is expanding, but rather space is expanding at an accelerating rate.

And interestingly, neither matter nor energy can move or expand at faster than the speed of light, but space can expand faster than the speed of light. And indeed space is already expanding at faster than the speed of light and so we are surrounded by an event horizon beyond which we cannot see, ever.

they gave a noble prize to an aussie for that ? Thought this was made clear already by Einstein and Hawking, who discovered the black hole entropy.

 

[Lark]

I tend to find that bad religion and good atheism are always contrasted, the worst of one and the best of the other, which is unfair and unrepresentative of reality in any case.

 

[Mole]

The Accelerator

they gave a noble prize to an aussie for that ? Thought this was made clear already by Einstein and Hawking, who discovered the black hole entropy.

I think his discovery was that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. He expected to find the universe was expanding but didn't expect to find that the expansion is accelerating.

So the universe has its foot on the accelerator and there appears to be no one at the steering wheel.

What all this means I don't know. Perhaps we need a new theology. We know the theology of Zeus and Poseidon no longer tells us what it all means. And it seems the theology of Judeo Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Tribalism and Marxism all seem tired, washed out or strident. What we need is a theology encompassing the acceleration of space.

 

[entropie]

I think his discovery was that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. He expected to find the universe was expanding but didn't expect to find that the expansion is accelerating.

So the universe has its foot on the accelerator and there appears to be no one at the steering wheel.

What all this means I don't know. Perhaps we need a new theology. We know the theology of Zeus and Poseidon no longer tells us what it all means. And it seems the theology of Judeo Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Tribalism and Marxism all seem tired, washed out or strident. What we need is a theology encompassing the acceleration of space.

The discovery of the universe is expanding was made by Hubble and Slipher. But people confuse their discovery often: they didnt discover that the whole universe is accelerating away from us but only the majority of the farthest galaxies. The galaxies in our vicinity like Andromeda are actually spectrally shifted to the blue spectrum which means they are moving towards us. You have to factor in as well that the light from the farthest galaxies needs soime billion years to come to us, so when we are looking into deep space, we are actually looking into the past. So how the actual state of the universe is and if its expanding is hard to tell, cause actually we see universe's past. Plus that comes the intresting fact that our nights on Earth and the universe is dark, tho actually they must be lit cause if all the light of the universe would come to us and light travels endlessly, the night must be lit on like a lightbulb. Since it it is not this could mean that the majority of the light hasnt reached us yet.

If you have the name of the aussie nobel prize winner we could look it up precisely.

 

[Munchies]

i think the baffled approach to thinking of there no being god is a feeble characteristic in man, and that relgion was used to manipulate this fact.

 

[Lateralus]

i think the baffled approach to thinking of there no being god is a feeble characteristic in man, and that relgion was used to manipulate this fact.

What?

 

[Munchies]

the normal human response is being baffled at the thought of there being no god. I think Religion is a tool to exploit it.



What ever happense to wonder? Why can't we admit we're not capable of thunder? So we welcome theyre lies with open arms we turn into succers when theyu turn on their charms

 

[entropie]

I am rather baffled at the thought of people believing there is a good.

 

[reason]

My atheism makes me feel superior to everyone else--well, at least those religious folks. I usually just assume that everyone else is religious and I am the only voice of reason left in an irrational world. It's like the media outlets that I enjoy exist only for me, and everyone else just watches Fox News. I know it's stupid to suppose hundreds of thousands of copies of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion were published just so one might end up in my hands, but it really feels like that's what happened. I'm the only one, or one of few, actually, and therefore special.

What I really like to do is try to convince other people that they're wrong by calling them idiots; I find that tactic works very well. It doesn't change their minds, but their defensive and dogmatic response just confirm how much smarter I am--that's what it's all about, really. You see, I have reason, rationality, logic, science, and sociology on my side. I may not really know what the word 'valid' means, but I know that theism is invalid like a teapot. I tacitly accept some naive form of empiricism, because I find that to be a useful stick to hit theists with. I don't really understand it, truth be told -- some technical stuff to do with hypotheses, evidence, and probability. It doesn't matter, because smart people somewhere understand it and they tell me that's it's true. What's more important it that most theists can't argue on that level anyway, so whatever the case, they end up looking stupid.

Anyway, I'm really fired up about being an atheist. Good stuff. Shout out to the all pastafarians ... W00t!

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

I tend to find that bad religion and good atheism are always contrasted, the worst of one and the best of the other, which is unfair and unrepresentative of reality in any case.

I've seen that happen, but I've also noticed that whether it is religion or politics, people's perceptions are naturally skewed to singling out those events and statements that are dismissive, rejecting, or even threatening to their position. In politics conservatives feel like the news media and the whole world is out of control liberal (or some more modified versions of it) while liberals feel that conservationism (at least in the U.S.) has gone to the extreme right flooding most of the media. Christians feel a loss of power when "Merry Christmas" and nativity scenes are removed from public places while their numbers remain in the vast majority. Atheists feel persecuted when when statistics show that for "least desirable belief system to have your daughter marry into" places them below nearly all religions.

Having switched perspectives I remember feeling oppression from atheists for having theist beliefs and being made fun of -mostly in academia or online. My major professor at university made me feel quite embarrassed and stupid for composing a piece about the flood, but I never understood why because so often the atheist position can be to take superiority and revel in the "stupidity" of others. In many settings I had to be careful not to be too open about my specific religion and its requirements. Ironically enough, now that I am an atheist/agnostic I feel like I wouldn't dare be public about it because of the detriment to my career which is peripherally steeped in religion. The consequences for the few things I've shared with people close to me have been pretty hurtful. It's not that great socially on either side because what people still need to learn is tolerance.

I think in a way every group faces alienation and even persecution in certain contexts and power in others. We become more keenly aware of the former and so the overall assumptions of people is inclined towards feeling entitled to have more power. it is really a complex issue and it is not equal for all - there are dominant, privileged groups, and underrepresented, misunderstood, and oppressed groups, but for some reason people in general feel their entitlements for power and respect are not yet met.

edit: Statistics for atheism in the U.S. 85% adults are Christians, 12% of adults are atheist/agnostic.

 

[Mole]

The discovery of the universe is expanding was made by Hubble and Slipher. But people confuse their discovery often: they didnt discover that the whole universe is accelerating away from us but only the majority of the farthest galaxies. The galaxies in our vicinity like Andromeda are actually spectrally shifted to the blue spectrum which means they are moving towards us. You have to factor in as well that the light from the farthest galaxies needs soime billion years to come to us, so when we are looking into deep space, we are actually looking into the past. So how the actual state of the universe is and if its expanding is hard to tell, cause actually we see universe's past. Plus that comes the intresting fact that our nights on Earth and the universe is dark, tho actually they must be lit cause if all the light of the universe would come to us and light travels endlessly, the night must be lit on like a lightbulb. Since it it is not this could mean that the majority of the light hasnt reached us yet.

If you have the name of the aussie nobel prize winner we could look it up precisely.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011 was divided, one half awarded to Saul Perlmutter, the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae".