Good posts ksl, and everyone else. Mostly that is.
I too am not religious. A diet of George Orwell when younger, and some of Bertrand Russell for example later on in life does not make for a good christian (or muslim or anything else for that matter!).
I do not believe in a supreme being who created the universe, for the question of how the supreme being came about will never be answered either. Is it inherently any more believable that the world must have been created by omnipotent being than that it the world is the way it is, created and evoloving, and possibly ending by laws that may or may not be physics as we humans understand it.
What I mean to say is this: someone I knew once was laughed at for being a fan of silly wrestling entertainment. Everyone said he was silly for watching anything as 'made-up' as that. His retort, plain yet beautiful was: is it any more or less real than anything you watch in the movies or on tv?
Anyway, my disagreement with religion is the way it throws up as many questions as it does answers. Enough so to convince me that god, in his (his being more convenient to say than he /she!) mostly widely acknowledge guise, and with his guiding principles on how humans should behave does not exist.
To me, and I think most of us who have posted in this post will agree, god is a human construct. Why such a construct? And why it appeals to people?
To reduce it to it's most simplistic, it is the fact that humans have a capacity to think and feel that almost no other animal can. And the most primal fear any human can have, is that of death. Religion solves that.
Except to those of us who think about it, and find that it doesn't, or at least not in a way we can accept in our heart of hearts.
I had dinner with my wife's friends who are very pious christians. Over dinner, they quizzed me on my religious beliefs, which of course I told them. To which they said.' but surely you must think there's something bigger than you, that I should think about what happens after death'. The presumption of it all! The cheek!
My mother-in-law frequently asks me when I will allow myself to be baptized, and when she feels like it, demand that I should convert to christianity if I love my wife! Wow...
I would very much like to tell her why I am not christian, but I know I will get nowhere.
That is the problem.
Religion is not what causes humans to go at each other's throats, religion is not what makes some homosexual people feel persecuted.
Religion is merely the outlet, the convenient excuse for these people to persecute others. And some people don't even need religion to deny other people their dignity on the grounds of these other people being 'different in a lesser way'.
The real problem is human ignorance, and there is no easy solution to this. In fact. I'd say there isn't.
Most of you who have posted are not religious, yet believe you are capable of making a positive difference to the world, because of the way you think and feel. And where do you think you got these ideas from? From being educated, and taking it upon to educate yourself on many issues.
But this kind of mindset is the exception rather than the norm. Personal enlightenment is what the world needs, but there are as many factors working against it as there are for it. Religion will die out in such a world because it has no relevance.
Hopefully in time.
cutiebuttie,
'It depends if you believe in the words of your God and act accordingly.
Then, yes. It does make you a better person.'
You'd be surprised how many of us disagree, and we aren't murderers, rapists or even plain swindlers. And how contradictory we find the 'words of god' as well.
I think some of you are aware of the so-called new ten commandments, and obviously, you will have guessed it has nothing to do with religion at all.
I first came across it in Richard Dawkin's 'The God Delusion'. A book with a strident tone, comes across as sounding unduly harsh until you consider the fact that he does not intend anyone who has read his book and disagreed with it to burn in hell for eternity.
Anyway, I have dug out these commandments from some website:
1) First Commandment: Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.
2) Second Commandment: In all things, strive to cause no harm.
3) Third Commandment: Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.
4) Fourth Commandment: Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.
5) Fifth Commandment: Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.
6) Sixth Commandment: Always seek to be learning something new.
7) Seventh Commandment: Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.
8) Eighth Commandment: Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.
9) Ninth Commandment: Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.
10) Tenth Commandment: Question everything.
A lot of us have followed at least one, probably more of them without even consciously knowing so, but simply because we have felt somewhere deep inside, that's how we should live.
Apologies for this rambling.
As for death, yes I am still afraid of it and found no solution yet.
I think I'd better just get on with this life as it is first, not like there isn't enough to do here.
edit: Thought about it and maybe the link, if permitted would be interesting to some here:
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/new10c.html
It's a html link, no keylogger there.