Theistic and atheistic influences on society

[InfiniteNow]

Why would I want to be an atheist? Is there some advantage in not believing

in a supreme being?

 

Yes. It's called possessing an accurate understanding of this little thing known as reality.

 

 

Reality doesn't give a rats *** what you believe. Having an inaccurate view of it is a problem for you and those around you.

 

 

Do you also think that thunder is from god bowling up in heaven and that the ringing of bells is because angels are getting wings? What about the tooth fairy? What's the benefit of not believing in the tooth fairy? Or, the flying spaghetti monster. What advantages to you obtain by not believing in the flying spaghetti monster? Or Zeus. What benefit does your lack of belief in Zeus bring you?

 

I can't believe people are even asking such ridiculously dumbass questions still in this day and age.

[questor]

Those that answer a question with a question don't have much to say. I am not one for you to address silly questions about silly beliefs, I asked what the advantages are of being atheist are? If you have none ,that is fine with me. I can't see many either.

[pgrmdave]

I doubt there are any advantages to being an atheist any more than there are advantages to being a theist. Atheists might be right. Theists might be right. I do think that, for some people, church is a good social gathering. However, I don't think that believing in a god necessarily gives you any advantage that not believing doesn't give you. You can go to church as an atheist (I know a number of people who have done thing). You can be moral without theism, and amoral with it, in rather the same numbers as you can be a moral theist and an amoral atheist.

[InfiniteNow]

Those that answer a question with a question don't have much to say.

This is the funniest thing you've ever said. I suggest you do a search on your own posts to this site, since my post was intended as a parody of yours.

 

Hello, pot? Meet the kettle. :hyper:

[questor]

I would assume you are at a loss for an answer, since you have not provided one. That's ok, I myself thought there were no good answers to the question.

[Moontanman]

I would assume you are at a loss for an answer, since you have not provided one. That's ok, I myself thought there were no good answers to the question.

 

I am not at a loss for an answer, I think the best part of being an atheist is living in the real world and not being controlled by fear and guilt and not being coerced by fear and guilt into giving away your hard earned money to people who just use it to coerce more people into giving them money. Religion is a parasite on society, it needs to be removed from the gut of humanity like the tape worm it is.

[InfiniteNow]

I am not one for you to address silly questions about silly beliefs, I asked what the advantages are of being atheist are? If you have none ,that is fine with me. I can't see many either.

 

I would assume you are at a loss for an answer, since you have not provided one. That's ok, I myself thought there were no good answers to the question.

 

Repeated since you seem to have missed it.

 

 

It's called possessing an accurate understanding of this little thing known as reality.

[modest]

Why would I want to be an atheist? Is there some advantage in not believing in a supreme being?

 

I agree with the answers that both Moontanman and Infinitenow have given. In short, atheistic beliefs are often-times necessary when some theistic belief is in conflict with atheistic fact. For example:

 

Here is a list of Roman gods. I doubt you have any particular belief in these beings which makes you atheistic toward Roman gods. This is a benefit for you because it allows you to explore rational explinations for attributes of nature that were once the domain of these gods. For example:

 

Fulgora is the goddess of lightning. To protect a building from lightning, a person might choose to make a material sacrifice to Fulgora, thus protecting the structure from any stray lightning bolts. You ask what the advantage is to not believe in a supreme being. In this particular case it is understanding that lightning is electricity rather than the personification of a goddess thus allowing a person to buy a lightning rod rather than buying an ox to sacrifice.

 

Your hard-earned money can be invested in your choice of stocks or bonds or a savings account. To ensure that any such investment does well you might decide to consult an oracle or a priest, or you might make some offering to one of the many gods or goddesses of fate. This is not to your advantage. Such beliefs (if genuine) are a detriment to a person's understanding of probability.

 

It is, therefore, often the case that atheistic beliefs benefit a person far above theistic beliefs. Any time decisions are made based on an assumption that has no evidence of validity there is the possibility of the outcome not being the expected or desired result. In other words:

 

Would I have insight others do not possess?

 

Yes - you would.

 

You could argue that there are benefits to theism such as delivering morality or bringing a people closer together as a society with shared principles, and you could be right on some of those points. But, saying that there is no benefit to atheism is way off base. Society has again and again improved in many ways at the expense of lost theism. The Greeks demonstrated this profoundly via philosophy and Europe demonstrated it during the renaissance via science.

 

~modest

[InfiniteNow]

YouTube - Why Atheists Care About YOUR Religion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1ImMtHrrKo

[Galapagos]

I asked what the advantages are of being atheist are? If you have none ,that is fine with me. I can't see many either.

 

Sagan said it best:

 

"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

-Carl Sagan

[Moontanman]

I can see at least one advantage to being an atheist, if you are an atheist you wouldn't go to a pastor to get help for mental illness and be told it's a spiritual thing and even be told to stop taking your medication, see News post "Church Pastors Dismiss Mental Illness".

[pgrmdave]

Sagan said it best:

 

"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

-Carl Sagan

 

To play devil's advocate - couldn't that be said of either side?

[MikeRadUNH]

To play devil's advocate - couldn't that be said of either side?

 

How is Atheism in any way reassuring? We believe that instead of going to a place of eternal pleasure, you decompose regardless of the life you live on Earth, be it virtuous or otherwise.

 

So no, it can't be said of either side.

 

Belief in God as seen in the Bible (there are some people who have a more reasonable idea of God than hardcore Christians) is fear induced.

 

Atheism is denying the supernatural, theism denies nature.

[Not half- but whole!]

Jumping late into the thread with a few points that popped into my head as I read through the 6 or 7 pages.

 

1. What are the advantages of being atheist?

It is simply life without training wheels. I don't have the internal comfort of hitting the afterlife lottery. I must make my life meaningful. Living vicariously through some sect of righteousness is not an option. I will not turn a blind eye to suffering and injustice under the guise "god's plan". I do not have to sheepishly follow CLEARLY immoral codes under the auspices of piety. I do not have to distort fact to comfort myself and propagate pseudoscience as fact to ease my conscience. I understand my truly minute role in the cosmos and do not need to have humans as the crown jewels in some deist menagerie. I don't have to try to find things to look good for me on the "bottom line" to get past the doorman in the sky. My job is helping others (I run a non-profit animal shelter), not because it will give me a gold star on my ledger, but because it is the right thing to do.

 

2. Hitler/Stalin were atheists...

They had mustaches too... must we all shave to stay safe. The rebellion begins with the goatee... Maynard G Krebs; the anti-christ of the island..

 

3. "Under God"/ "In God we trust" phrases.

Both were essentially anti-communist propaganda. On coinage it had been used erratically since the end of the Civil War. It was made the official motto in 1956 by Eisenhower. Right about the time (1954) the Congress added "under god" to the pledge. Both events right in the heart of McCarthyism...

 

4. Religion as a source of morality.

This is absurdly false. The King James version of the Bible is replete with VERY direct and specific rules and laws. The various sects have picked what they "thought" were useful laws and ignored the rest. Adultery ( One of the 10 Commandments... not really a bit of the Bible that is up to too much debate, pretty cut on dry on this one) as well as wearing clothes of mixed fibers are directly and specifically listed as violations of God's laws. Yet neither are particularly on the forefront of most Christian groups.....But Gay marriage... now there's a real problem...

Humans have been forming moral standards independent of religions since they have been around. The faithful find what is convenient for them to follow and for them to segregate out the others without the threat of actually having to truly look at their on human morality.

 

Atheists are not an organized group. There is no anti-pope that we rush to see pass by in the anti-pope-mobile to deliver our daily mass spectroscopy lecture. Atheists do not form groups and go do things as atheists regularly (there are some, but its VERY rare). Yet as an atheist I get tired of being bombarded with the irrational, the superiority, the discrimination, the ridiculousness of others trying to impose their "right" upon me. I don't want "under no god we trust" added to the pledge, but I want my son to grow up and not be constantly indoctrinated with the absurd. I don't want to scrawl no in front of every religious reference to god, I just simply want it kept in the church and amongst those that want to see it.Theology kind of like porn. There is a time and a place for it, and some people really like. Others hate it. As long as its consenting adults go for it. Just monitor it and keep it away from the kids.

[pgrmdave]

How is Atheism in any way reassuring? We believe that instead of going to a place of eternal pleasure, you decompose regardless of the life you live on Earth, be it virtuous or otherwise.

 

So no, it can't be said of either side.

 

Belief in God as seen in the Bible (there are some people who have a more reasonable idea of God than hardcore Christians) is fear induced.

 

Atheism is denying the supernatural, theism denies nature.

 

I merely meant that if we are to perceive the universe as it truly is, and there is a god, then atheists are perceiving it wrong. If there is not a god, then theists are perceiving it wrong. There is no strong evidence for a god, but that doesn't mean that there cannot be one, it merely means that we cannot know that there is one.

 

And remember, terrible things have been done in the name of a god, but good things have been done in the name of a god as well. I would suggest that the majority of the good things exist on a smaller, more local level, and the majority of the bad things exists on a larger scale, but I hope that nobody here is daft enough to think that theism is all bad or all good.

 

However, very little has been done in the name of atheism, whether bad or good. Things are done by atheists, sometimes for atheists (scholarships and the like) but atheists are not a unified social group for the most part.

 

This means that there is another factor to be addressed - namely that large groups of people can do more, good or bad, than individuals working independently. That means that so long as theism remains a mostly group idea and atheism an individualistic idea, there will always be more bad things done by theists, simply because there will be more done in the name of theism.

[InfiniteNow]

Amazon.com: Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment: Phil Zuckerman: Books http://www.amazon.com/Society-without-God-Religious-Contentment/dp/0814797148/?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwsamharriso-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0814797148

 

 

Amazon.com: Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment: Phil Zuckerman: Books

Contrary to the views of many conservative pundits and the Christian Right, the least religious countries in the world today are not full of chaos and immorality, but are actually among the safest, healthiest, most well-educated, prosperous, ethical, and successful societies on earth. Based on a year's worth of research conducted while living in Scandinavia, SOCIETY WITHOUT GOD by Phil Zuckerman explores life in a largely secular culture, delving into the unique worldviews of secular men and women who live in a largely irreligious society, and explaining the reasons why some nations are less religious than others, and why religious faith doesn't seem to be the secret to national success that so many claim it to be.

 

"

Most Americans are convinced that faith in God is the foundation of civil society. Society Without God reveals this to be nothing more than a well-subscribed, and strangely American, delusion. Even atheists living in the United States will be astonished to discover how unencumbered by religion most Danes and Swedes currently are. This glimpse of an alternate, secular reality is at once humbling and profoundly inspiring--and it comes not a moment too soon."

 

-Sam Harris, a Co-Founder of the Reason Project and author of the New York Times best sellers The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation

[HydrogenBond]

America was found not on religion, but on religious freedom. The Pilgrims needed to leave England because the secular influence had altered the religious teachings of Christianity. It was now the church of "England" and under monarch rules, which is secular.

 

If you look in terms of Christianity, the name sake is Christ. Logically, what he taught should be the basis of the purest form of the religion. Secular will add things that will contradict this or extend it in ways that were not originally outlined. For example, blessed are the poor and the humble. Secular will add riches and power. The final secular-religious hybrid will be lumped as religious, with the secular affect usually behind the atrocities. Th original doctrine did not accommodate any of this, which is why the earliest Christians were sitting ducks.

 

The Church of England broke away from the Catholic Church when the king wished to divorce his wife. Killing his wife was not easy to get away with like Henry VIII. This was a secular wish, that the church would not grant. The King added this secular addendum as part of the new religion. What you see today in religion, which atheist don't like for valid reasons, has a lot of secular character and agenda.

 

The definition of the hybrid, as religious, is analogous to the old definition of black, with respect to race. If one is 1/8 black this was called black based on a subjective standard. If we used an objective standard like DNA, the same person would be called white. A religion can be more than 50% atheist/secular and is still called religion by the subjective standards of both religion and atheism. Maybe if a religion is more than 50% secular it should be called atheistic. The buzz word good should not count as 7/8.

 

The earliest church call this "gospels of men", or men playing god like an atheist, adding new clauses, based on their own secular interests. Christ says, whoever wishes to be your leader shall be your servant. A pseudo-atheist might alter this by playing god. He will become the leader by making others the slave. This is where atrocity begins. To maintain his secular position in the power structure, he needs to put down anyone who practices the pure religion, since it doesn't contain the clause he needs for his secular interests. This will be called religious atrocity but occurred due to the secular addendum added to the religion.