How did any of you arrive at your conclusion?

I'm a sympathetic atheist, I used to lean towards agnostic, but when I really looked into my heart, I knew there could be no god or other higher being, it makes absolutely no sense to me from both a scientific or spiritual viewpoint. But whatever floats your boat, I don't really care what other people believe.

Also abuse, don't be such a dick
 
I'm an atheist, because I see no need for the existence of God. Approaching the concept of God as a scientific hypothesis, I find it solves few problems and creates many. And no I am not an agnostic. The Russel's teapot analogy explained that ages ago.
 
I think it's pretty daft to arrive at a 'conclusion' when you're simply a human being.
 
First of all, I can't feel them myself, but believing in them has definitely cheered me up, so I'm not giving that up.

Second of all, my friend is female, and I trust her very much.

Thirdly, I have other friends that have spiritual troubles (ghosts acting like annoying roomies)

I don't have tangible evidence of my own, sadly, but it feels very right that ghosts exist.

A lot of factors can explain all this.

* Confirmation bias: statistically, many things will happen to anyone in a lifetime that would look like evidence for spirits, but people will only see these occurrences and inflate their importance.

* Selective evidence: people will see all the little things that point to spirits existing, and will not even see evidence that invalidates the theory.

* Skewed perception: a person who does not believe in spirits will see a cobweb, one who does will see a ghost.

Basically, if you believe in ghosts or if your mind is receptive to believing in ghosts, you will see ghosts.

Personally im a christian and i have been told about jesus and the bible since kindergarten. However i wasent truly a christian till this year when i joined up with my youthgroup and we started discussing the evidence of god. We found out about the bible having many, many copies in a very short timespan. This shows that whats written in the bible, specifically the new testament to be truth. At least we know as fact that there was a man named jesus who preached of god to the people.

A youthgroup is pretty much the last place you should look for evidence. I guarantee you that groups of other religions would present you with just as much evidence of the same dubious quality. I mean, what does "having many, many copies in a very short timespan" even mean and are you sure that, whatever it means, it is actually true? Have you verified? Have you verified properly? Please. If there are still many well educated atheists on this planet, that's because there isn't any decent evidence for any religion, regardless of what your youthgroup might tell you.

However what we dont know and cant really prove is that jesus actually did do the miracles he proposed. However i would rather live in a world where my life has a purpose that is more than just to exist. Rather i would like to believe that there is life after death and put my faith in something with a reward behind it and thats teaching good morales in the way of the commandments and jesus' parables.

You think religion gives you purpose? The "purpose" that religion gives you is to please your god. I think that's rather demeaning. I'd rather have my "purpose" to be happy and overcome the challenges that I encounter than honor some mysterious dude by doing what he tells me to do without even knowing what, exactly, I am doing it for.

atheism= lose/lose
christianity win/lose

Have you ever considered that God might be an ironic asshole who sends Christians to hell and atheists to heaven? Looks like lose/lose and win/lose just became lose/lose/win and win/lose/lose!

What color is the sky in your little world? If you believe that Man is naturally good and only commits atrocities because of religion, then think again. Some people don't rape and murder others, because of religion stops them. OTOH, some people rape and murder because they believe that is what their religion calls for (Terrorists, anyone?) A world without God is best summed up in the Charlie Daniels lyrics:"People are living by the Law of the Jungle". Without religion telling people that the Strong should not abuse the weak, people would do things just because they are Strong and the Weak would perish (either because they are weak or because the Strong Kill them).

This argument may only be applied to infer that religion is useful. It does not say anything at all about the truth of religion. All I can conclude, really, is "God doesn't exist but it is useful to believe he does".

Without God, why should people be nice or friendly towards you or anyone else? It is you who is living a lie if you think that religion is unnecessary.

So that I have a reason to be nice to them. I mean this isn't fucking rocket science. Civility is a win for everyone. Being anything but nice to someone who is stronger than you is retarded. And if someone strong is not nice to the weak, the weak will only take so much abuse before they team up against their oppressors. Results a perfectly rational equilibrium where people are mostly nice to each other.

For some reason, I have this intuition that there is a creator (universe seems too complex and perfectly designed), but I certainly do not prescribe to any religious dogma. And it could be the case that the universe is so complex and perfectly designed because it is necessary for existence (and we have existence).

Complexity does not entail the existence of a creator. In fact, a creator is likely to be more complex than its creation, so the argument is pure nonsense. If the world is so complex that it requires a creator, then what does the creator require in order to exist? A super-creator? To claim that he could "just exist" is as senseless as to claim that the prior likelihood of anything is either proportional to its complexity or contingent on some arbitrary properties typically ascribed to creators.
 
I was raised as a Catholic. Everyone in my family is Catholic, So were my mom and dad. Then when I was about ten or twelve my mom decided to switch over to being a jehovahs witness. This of course caused lots of "debate" between my mother and father, and I was always there to listen to their arguments since I have always been interested in religion. They did, after all, raise me to be a religious person. When my mom switched religions, it opened up a new door for me, and i started to actually think about the concept of religion and God. The main arguments between my mother and father were about which religion is best. I started to think about this. I started to think about things logically. Of course, I eventually realized there is no "true" or "best" religion, and that the odd of there being a "God" were very very slim. I probably don't say right out that there is NO God, since i was raised with God as a very important part, and I'll probably always have doubts, no matter how much thinking I do.
My dad still makes me go to church with him ever single Sunday. If I had a choice, i would not go but sometimes they say things that make absolutely no sense, and I can use that to argue with them about religions. Now, it's not just the both of them that are arguing about which religion is best, but they also have to discuss with me about why religion and god are real. I try to use logical reasoning, and most of their arguments are fallacious. They will never admit, that what i have to say makes a lot more sense than what they are saying, but i have at times noticed they do stop and think a little more about the stuff they believe in so much. These little debates we have never end in anything. My mom beleives what she does, and wont listen to me that the bible is nothing more than a book (which is our main disagreement) and my father denies most of my arguments with a simple "you're stupid." When i get him to a point where he can not possible deny my argument, he always tells me stories of how something supernatural happened to him. When I propose logical or reasonable examples as to what may have happened in that specific case, he goes back the the usual "you're stupid."

So yeah, my reasoning against religion has got my parents thinking I'm "Stupid" for not believing in something that makes absolutely no sense at all.
 
Not sure how to say it, but I am a mix of a Roman Cathloc and an Atheist. I have been brought up with Roman Cathloisism, but I really wish there was some sort of explanation for certain hings in religoun. However I am sympathetic, and generally I respect all religouns.

I guess you could say I'm the guy who doesn't give a crap about religoun and is just going to enjoy life.

One of the main things though that makes me think there is something greater than us out their is this though: How the heck was the universe created? Sure the Big Bang, but what made the Big Bang? Why is the laws of the universe the way they are. Why can we think, what made molecules end up working to make the first cell and eventually eveolved into Sentient beings? There has to be some sort of outside force..............but then what created that outside force.........and what created the outside force that made the other outside force..*shot*

And if life didn't come to be, what would the universe be? Just a bunch of moving junk with no purpose. Its hard to imagine a universe with nothing thinking in it...

(brain fries from outburst of inner thoughts)

But in the end, I could care less. I exist, and I am happy with just that.
 
One of the main things though that makes me think there is something greater than us out their is this though: How the heck was the universe created? Sure the Big Bang, but what made the Big Bang? Why is the laws of the universe the way they are. Why can we think, what made molecules end up working to make the first cell and eventually eveolved into Sentient beings? There has to be some sort of outside force..............but then what created that outside force.........and what created the outside force that made the other outside force..*shot*
Which is why I believe that the Universe simply IS. It exists. It didn't have a cause or a creator. It has a first point in time, but that's just a property of it. The closest you can come to answering 'why' about any aspect of the Universe is to show that anything else wouldn't work, or more weakly wouldn't have intelligent life to ask why. (For example, 3 space and 1 time dimension appears necessary for causality and stable planetary systems.)
 
I looked at history. Greeks believed that a god pulled the sun across the sky. We found out that this could be explained, the god disappeared. Native Americans believed that a god made their crops grow. We discovered that sun, water, and nutrients make them grow, and thus this god is forgotten. Why should a god exist now?
 
I was raised as a Baptist Christian and pretty much just went with it for most of my childhood/early teens. As I reached adult age I began to examine myself and logically look at my beliefs and why I believed in them,etc. I came to the conclusion that either we're either the universe's statistical anomaly or purposely made.

Not believing that the universe has always been in existence or created by a random big bang leads me to believe 'something' decided,"Hey, lets make the universe." basically.

I consider myself a nondenominational Christian Bible believer, as I believe all the different denominations have flaws when directly compared to the Bible.

Edit:
Just now read the second page, this is not in response to anything said by anyone here.
 
Without religion telling people that the Strong should not abuse the weak, people would do things just because they are Strong and the Weak would perish (either because they are weak or because the Strong Kill them). Without God, why should people be nice or friendly towards you or anyone else? It is you who is living a lie if you think that religion is unnecessary.

Yawn... same old argument.

I suggest the books "Age of Empathy" and "Primates and Philosophers:
How Morality Evolved."

There is a huge amount of evidence that supports that our sense of right and wrong is the product of evolution.

First of all there is a biological basis for morality:

Impairment Of Social And Moral Behaviour Related To Early Damage In Human Prefrontal Cortex*by Steven W. Anderson, Antoine Bechara, Hanna Damasio, Daniel Tranel and Antonio R. Damasio,*Nature Neuroscience,*2(11):1032-1037 (November 1999)

Here's what this paper says:
Anderson*et al, 1999 wrote:The long-term consequences of early prefrontal cortex lesions occurring before 16 months were investigated in two adults. As is the case when such damage occurs in adulthood, the two early-onset patients had severely impaired social behavior despite normal basic cognitive abilities, and
showed insensitivity to future consequences of decisions, defective autonomic responses to punishment contingencies and failure to respond to behavioral interventions. Unlike adult-onset patients, however, the two patients had defective social and moral reasoning, suggesting that the acquisition of complex social conventions and moral rules had been impaired. Thus early-onset prefrontal damage resulted in a syndrome resembling psychopathy.


Indeed, further research in this area has established an interesting fact: if the pre-frontal cortex is damaged in childhood, before a child has begun to learn basic ethical precepts, that child becomes a sociopathic adult, incapable of responding to any impulse other than instant gratification of wants and desires, regardless of the cost to that person or others affected by said behaviour. If the damage occurs in adulthood, the behaviour is still antisocial, but is accompanied by feelings of guilt because ethical precepts have already been learned, and knowledge of this affects the individual adversely in terms of guilt feelings after the fact. Plus, when subjected to testing in a clinical environment, adults with pre-frontal cortex damage can give appropriate responses to questions about appropriate behaviour in social settings, but are unable to*act*upon this knowledge, and continue to be driven by immediate gratification, even when they know that this behaviour is self-defeating. The pre-frontal cortex has also been implicated as the origin of fear memories in normal individuals, as of 2006 (courtesy of researchers at the University of Toronto). Modern data with respect to this relies upon functional MRI scanning, which can track brain activity in real time, and those brain imaging systems have found a startling correlation between reduced activity, reduced volume and reduced interconnections with other brain subsystems, and individuals falling into the following categories:

[1] Sufferers of unipolar depression;

[2] Persons subjected to repeated high-intensity stress (e.g., battlefield shock cases);

[3] Incarcerated criminals;

[4] Diagnosed sociopaths;

[5] Drug addicts;

[6] Suicide victims (survivors of suicide attempts have been imaged via fMRI: successful suicide victims have had the pre-frontal cortex directly measured by dissection).

Therefore there is a*biological basis*for ethical behaviour in humans, and work on the great apes is being performed in anticipation of finding corollary brain activity related to socialisation and the establishment of behavioural 'norms' within great ape social groupings.

The pre-frontal cortex is regarded as being implicated in the presence of empathy not just in humans, but on other mammals too, though this work is in its infancy and detailed, robust findings have yet to be published. However, given what has been*verified empirically*in cases of pre-frontal cortex injury, scientists anticipate that empathy will also be found to be correlated with healthy functioning of the pre-frontal cortex.

Additionally, I have since found that pre-frontal cortex damage is implicated in schizophrenia, courtesy of*this page*from the Society for Neuroscience. Again, it refers to brain imaging studies, this time in*humans and other primates.

A letter to*Nature*is also apposite here (link), viz:
The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.*Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions12, 13, 14, produce an abnormally 'utilitarian' pattern of judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person's life to save a number of other lives)7, 8. In contrast, the VMPC patients' judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas. These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements.



Then an interesting article about animal morality:

Without God, we will live like animals!

After listening to the debate between Bill O'Reilly and Richard Dawkins, it struck me again that the resistance to evolutionary theory largely stems from the illusion that without God there can be no morality. Some believers feel threatened by evolutionary theory not because the theory is right or wrong -- the evidence doesn't seem to matter much to them -- but because accepting it would mean accepting that we have been created by natural processes including our morality. The final part is what bothers them the most.

O'Reilly exclaimed that at least Jesus had "advanced the human condition in a moralistic way" and another believer, Reverend Al Sharpton, expressed the same sentiment in a 2007 debate in the New York Public Library:

"If there is no order to the universe, and therefore some being, some force that ordered it, then who determines what is right or wrong? There is nothing immoral if there's nothing in charge."


Similarly, I have heard people literally echo Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov, exclaiming that "If there is no God, I am free to rape my neighbor!"


Perhaps it is just me, but I'd be wary of anyone whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior. Why not assume that our humanity, including the self-control needed for a livable society, is built into us? Does anyone truly believe that our ancestors lacked rules of right and wrong before they had religion? Did they never assist others in need, or complain about an unfair deal?

Human morality must be quite a bit older than religion and civilization. It may, in fact, be older than humanity itself. Other primates live in highly structured social groups in which rules and inhibitions apply and mutual aid is a daily occurrence. Acts of genuine kindness do occur in animals as they do in humans. Altruistic behavior serves a cooperative group life, which benefits the actors of such behavior, yet the behavior is fueled by its own autonomous motivations, which vary from self-serving to other-regarding.

The animal kingdom offers so many examples that I surely cannot summarize them here (see my new book, The Age of Empathy), but the interesting part is not so much whether animals have empathy and compassion, but how it works.

In one experiment, we placed two capuchin monkeys side by side: separate, but in full view. One of them needed to barter with us with small plastic tokens. The critical test came when we offered a choice between two differently colored tokens with different meaning: one token was "selfish," the other "prosocial." If the bartering monkey picked the selfish token, it received a small piece of apple for returning it, but its partner got nothing. The prosocial token, on the other hand, rewarded both monkeys equally at the same time. The monkeys gradually began to prefer the prosocial token. The procedures were repeated many times with different pairs of monkeys and different sets of tokens, and the monkeys kept picking the prosocial option showing how much they care about each other's welfare.

A flourishing new field of evolutionary ethics focuses on how humans solve moral dilemmas (usually not in a rational Kantian way), which parts of the brain are involved (often old "emotional" parts), why moral tendencies evolved in the human species (probably to promote cooperation), what kind of animal parallels can be found (from prosocial tendencies to obeying social rules), how empathy evolved out of mammalian maternal care (which explains why in human adults the hormone oxytocin stimulates trust and empathy), and how religion piggy-backs on moral sentiments to promote a cohesive society. The sequence of how various tendencies came into being is: first social instincts and empathy, then morality, and finally religion. This is of course quite the opposite from the origin story of Christian religion.

If human morality is part of the larger scheme of nature, there is neither a good reason to look at evolutionary theory as undermining morality nor to look at God as a requirement for it. Raping your neighbor is destructive to society whether you believe in God or not. Conversely, I have never seen convincing evidence that a belief in God keeps people from immoral behavior. Those who think that without God humanity would lack a moral compass totally underestimate the antiquity of our moral sense.
 
One of the main things though that makes me think there is something greater than us out their is this though: How the heck was the universe created? Sure the Big Bang, but what made the Big Bang? Why is the laws of the universe the way they are. Why can we think, what made molecules end up working to make the first cell and eventually eveolved into Sentient beings? There has to be some sort of outside force..............but then what created that outside force.........and what created the outside force that made the other outside force..*shot*

To ask "why" is to beg the question. "Why" requires an inside or outside perspective or objective. You end up concluding that there must be an outside force because it is the only way you can answer "why", but before that you need to ask yourself whether it actually makes sense to ask that question. At some point it's reasonable to assume that something just "is" and something is uncaused, and that thing would be the universe, because there is no evidence that anything else matters. Boggles the mind for sure, but since the alternative is to lose yourself in outlandish and unfounded suppositions, it's best to just deal with it :)

Also, the laws of the universe more or less entail, statistically, the existence of life. That is the only explanation you need for its existence.

And if life didn't come to be, what would the universe be? Just a bunch of moving junk with no purpose. Its hard to imagine a universe with nothing thinking in it...

No, it isn't hard. It would just be a bunch of moving "junk" (stars, planets, nebulae...) with no "purpose" (though besides the purpose sentient beings make for themselves, there is no purpose in this universe either).

The closest you can come to answering 'why' about any aspect of the Universe is to show that anything else wouldn't work, or more weakly wouldn't have intelligent life to ask why. (For example, 3 space and 1 time dimension appears necessary for causality and stable planetary systems.)

That's demonstrably false. An infinite number of rules can support intelligent life. Conway's game of life is one example of a 2D, discrete universe powerful enough to support universal computation and thus, arguably, intelligent life, assuming a large enough grid. There is no metaphysical reason that the universe could not have been that. Similarly, there exists a simple set of rules on a 1D universe where intelligent life could probably arise (look up cellular automata for more information about these things). Now, if you suppose very similar rules to this universe's (with particles, electromagetism, gravity, etc.) you might have a point, but even in the absence of planetary systems, knots and all that, there might be other sorts of structures in a 4D universe that could support life (or maybe not, I really don't know).

If you start from the premise that the universe can be defined as a computer program running on some abstract machine, then you can suppose that the universe could have been the output of any computer program you can imagine and thus that there are little to no limitations on what the universe could have been. To understand the universe is thus simply to infer, from what we see, what the smallest program to generate it would be, and assume that this is the best possible explanation and that anything else would be superfluous.
 
There's another key reason I believe in spirituality.

The Native Americans were very spiritually inclined, extremely in tune with life and death, etc.

Take a look at the medicine wheel and then compare where each race originated, by skin colour.

It's an exact match.

White = North
Red = West
Black = South
Yellow = East

I truly believe there are ethereal forces, and they had a solid grasp on them.
 
You think religion gives you purpose? The "purpose" that religion gives you is to please your god. I think that's rather demeaning. I'd rather have my "purpose" to be happy and overcome the challenges that I encounter than honor some mysterious dude by doing what he tells me to do without even knowing what, exactly, I am doing it for.
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus.
"Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"
He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'
"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."



I would hardly say "please your god" is the purpose of Christianity. In the end, you are just one person - you're so insignificant to the point where your actions will hardly matter. To think that a man can "please" a god is utter nonsense and arrogance. That is not the purpose of Christianity, at all. We don't "praise" God to "please" him, we praise him out of our own free will. We don't "pray" to God to "please" him, we pray him out of our own free will. We don't seek God's will to "please" him, we seek God's will because I have faith that it will lead to a far superior outcome than what I can do by myself. The purpose of Christianity is to have a relationship with God - it's not done to "please" him like pagans.



For some reason, I have this intuition that there is a creator (universe seems too complex and perfectly designed), but I certainly do not prescribe to any religious dogma. And it could be the case that the universe is so complex and perfectly designed because it is necessary for existence (and we have existence).
What makes you believe that the universe is perfectly designed? If you're going to cite laws of physics - realize that they are human approximations of what actually happens (models, rather than the actual thing). It seems as if you are staring at the universe as a model than the universe itself to me.
 
how can you have a relationship if you don't even know the guy's there

just sayin'
 
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus.
"Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"
He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'
"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

Why is "loving God" on top of that list? What does it matter if I love God or not? For instance I could simply be indifferent to him due to a severe lack of evidence, but do everything else he suggests!

I would hardly say "please your god" is the purpose of any religion. That's not the purpose of Christianity, by any means. In the end, you are just one person - you're so insignificant to the point where your actions will hardly matter. To think that a man can "please" a god is utter nonsense and arrogance. That is not the purpose of Christianity, at all. We don't "praise" God to "please" him, we praise him out of our own free will. We don't "pray" to God to "please" him, we pray him out of our own free will. We don't seek God's will to "please" him, we seek God's will because I have faith that it will lead to a far superior outcome than what I can do by myself. The purpose of Christianity is to have a relationship with God - it's not done to "please" him like pagans.

Well that's how I read the post I had quoted and which I was answering, which also seemed to severely underestimate the purpose one can get from a godless life. Other people such as yourself may have more sophisticated reasons, though I can't say I care for them much more. I would say that as far as the masses are concerned, "please your god" is the perceived (and intended) purpose of religion, though some may be sophisticated enough to dig up a better purpose from their religion.
 
There's another key reason I believe in spirituality.

The Native Americans were very spiritually inclined, extremely in tune with life and death, etc.

Take a look at the medicine wheel and then compare where each race originated, by skin colour.

It's an exact match.

White = North
Red = West
Black = South
Yellow = East

I truly believe there are ethereal forces, and they had a solid grasp on them.
Slight problem: those directions are wrong. From the USA: Europe ('white) is to the northeast, Japan and China ('yellow') to the northwest, Africa ('black') to the east, and North America ('red') is where you are. Those are the great circle directions, the shortest routes.
 
If you are defining "religion" as some sort of dogmatic adherence to certain doctrines, a belief in the supernatural, and/or participation in ritualized activities associated with a particular religion, then I am not religious at all. Intellectually, I would consider myself closest to Buddhism, Daoism and certain forms of existentialist/postmodern/liberation Christian theology. I am an atheist in the sense of rejecting transcendence is favor of immanence (what Deleuze called "mystical atheist experience proper to Spinoza"). I find religious texts fascinating and valuable in the same way that a great work of literature or mythology is valuable and edifying, and I have a great problem with people who blindly take religious trope as dogmatic literal truisms about the nature of things (e.g. those like creationists who insert religion into areas it does not belong, those who live in fear of a vengeful bearded chap in the sky who will one day damn nonbelievers to eternal torment, those like homophobes and racists who use religion to justify asinine prejudices and the oppression of others).

Also, I really hope Linkshot's last post was trolling.

EDIT:
Take a look at the medicine wheel and then compare where each race originated, by skin colour.

This makes it even dumber, since all human beings ultimately originated in Africa.
 
I would hardly say "please your god" is the purpose of Christianity. In the end, you are just one person - you're so insignificant to the point where your actions will hardly matter. To think that a man can "please" a god is utter nonsense and arrogance. That is not the purpose of Christianity, at all. We don't "praise" God to "please" him, we praise him out of our own free will. We don't "pray" to God to "please" him, we pray him out of our own free will. We don't seek God's will to "please" him, we seek God's will because I have faith that it will lead to a far superior outcome than what I can do by myself. The purpose of Christianity is to have a relationship with God - it's not done to "please" him like pagans.

This is actually a very theologically thorny point, and some would say that the above is heresy. The simple truth is that Christianity (just like other major religions) has gone through so many theological reversals that attempting to pinpoint "what God wants" is incredibly frustrating.

Proto-Christians (Death of Christ-c.150 AD) believed that yes, the point of Christianity was to please God by living your life in an upstanding fashion. After all, that was the main point of Judaism, and at this point Christianity was considered by some to be a sect of Judaism. Many early Christians believed that the older ways of sacrifice to please God were necessary, and since there was no hard-set canonical reference (and there wouldn't be for hundreds of years) there really was little they could do about affirming or denying their ideas. This idea went slightly out of fashion before the Reformation, but then hard-line Protestant sects brought back this idea. The concept of Christianity as a personal relationship with God is actually a fairly new one. For the longest time in Christianity, there was a lot of predestination, a lot of obligation to please God, and in reality, there still is.
 
I don't have tangible evidence of my own, sadly, but it feels very right that ghosts exist.

What exactly is a ghost? A fragment of the person's soul/spirit?

Tell me then, what is a soul/spirit?

I look forward to your answer :)



Also I realize that I never answered the OP in my last post.

I arrived at the conclusion that god(s) most likely do not exist. I haven't been provided with a single meaningful piece of evidence for the existence of any gods. I am open-minded and am willing to accept the existence of any god provided that people provide me with critically robust evidence that supports that god's existence. Sadly I haven't seen any evidence for any of the supposed gods out there. Most people give me the argument from popularity, appeal to consequences, appeal to emotion, or one of many other logical fallacies.
 
A ghost is a wandering spirit, free from any physical form.

And..I wasn't trolling...it was an observation I made a long time ago, and it really hit me hard as "This can't be coincidence."
 
Why is "loving God" on top of that list? What does it matter if I love God or not? For instance I could simply be indifferent to him due to a severe lack of evidence, but do everything else he suggests!

Loving God is a sign that you admit that we as humans are imperfect and we need higher guidance. The "loving God" symbolizes this and is the literal splitting point between Christianity and your brand of Atheism - you believe that it all doesn't matter and thus you do your best with the imperfection - while the main idea of Christianity is that through the relationship with God you can overcome many of the imperfections.

Well that's how I read the post I had quoted and which I was answering, which also seemed to severely underestimate the purpose one can get from a godless life. Other people such as yourself may have more sophisticated reasons, though I can't say I care for them much more. I would say that as far as the masses are concerned, "please your god" is the perceived (and intended) purpose of religion, though some may be sophisticated enough to dig up a better purpose from their religion.

Fair enough.

This is actually a very theologically thorny point, and some would say that the above is heresy. The simple truth is that Christianity (just like other major religions) has gone through so many theological reversals that attempting to pinpoint "what God wants" is incredibly frustrating.

Proto-Christians (Death of Christ-c.150 AD) believed that yes, the point of Christianity was to please God by living your life in an upstanding fashion. After all, that was the main point of Judaism, and at this point Christianity was considered by some to be a sect of Judaism. Many early Christians believed that the older ways of sacrifice to please God were necessary, and since there was no hard-set canonical reference (and there wouldn't be for hundreds of years) there really was little they could do about affirming or denying their ideas. This idea went slightly out of fashion before the Reformation, but then hard-line Protestant sects brought back this idea. The concept of Christianity as a personal relationship with God is actually a fairly new one. For the longest time in Christianity, there was a lot of predestination, a lot of obligation to please God, and in reality, there still is.

I would say that such thought processes were necessary to get to the point we are at today. Our interpretations aren't perfect, nor is any interpretation from someone from 1500 years ago - there's no reason to hold any interpretation as "standard", but all interpretations of the Bible should be strictly tested and slammed with other ideas.

I would argue that the rapid change in christianity is because of the liberalization of other ideas - 30 years ago saying you were atheist would make you seem insane, now it's better accepted. This liberalization of ideas give Christianity a chance to improve the interpretations they have of Christianity. I'm not going to say that the current interpretations are perfect, but I would argue that it is better than interpretations that were around long ago - simply because there are more things to test the interpretation with.
 
I was raised Jewish, but I found it sort of dull. This is rather strange, but I actually practice my own religion. I made it by crossing Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism. I am a firm believer in evolution, but I also believe it's possible (won't go to probable just yet) that something supernatural exists. I don't believe in gods as much as just something. My religion forms around my beliefs, and while some aren't very religious, they are in mine.
 
A ghost is a wandering spirit, free from any physical form.

And..I wasn't trolling...it was an observation I made a long time ago, and it really hit me hard as "This can't be coincidence."

What is a spirit responsible for in human beings (personality, intelligence, etc....)?


Now the problem with your observation is that you probably didn't even bother to look for another explanation. You jumped on the ghost idea, without exploring any alternatives. It is equally likely that an advanced alien race was just fucking with you and all of your friends. Our hypotheses have equal merit. However, I do commend you. You are one step closer to possibly proving the existence of ghosts. You made an observation, and then formed a hypothesis. Now you simply need to perform an experiment to test that hypothesis. Of course other people must be able to reproduce said experiment. I wish you luck. It would be interesting to see if ghosts actually exist.
 
Well, first off, I am an Atheist.

I was never seriously religious and when I finally decided to think about it the whole premise of believing in a religion is silly. Religions come from the human mind. The imaginative power of the human mind is infinite. Therefore, the number of possible religions that humans could come up with and believe in is infinite. So, if I were to devote myself to a religion, not only would I be wasting an hour every Sunday, I would have an infinitely small chance of being right.

And don't say that your god gave you religion, he didn't. A long time ago, someone needed to control everyone in their village of over 100, so they declared themselves a god and used some fancy magic tricks, and ta-da! Religion.

And another point: Were you born religious? No. You learn religion from you family and peers, just like everything else in your life.

And, above all, science gives me answers while all religion does is tell me to "have faith."
 
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