Religion - Athiests, Christians, and Others OHMY!

[akada]

Ok, something that has been on my mind, for almost the past 10 years, from the point where I stopped going to church on Easter with my Grandmother. My family, in general are Christians, as I hear so often, many people believe that Christians have come to the point where its being forced down the throats of their children. In a sense, this is true, but it is not so much the parents, as it is the society which flows around you.

Ask yourself. If everyone is following one trend with clothing, you dont necessarily have to follow that trend, but 9 out of 10 people are going to want to find some way to follow it, so they do not feel different, then you have the other 10% who dont seem to care at all? Is that true? or do they have some other realization that they have come across. At that, do you think the bible and other religious documents throughout time were set in toll to be aware of what was going to follow in the elapsed space inbetween that documents creation and the time today?

Definitely not. It is from these religious documents, and the changing of both technology of the human race, as well as the trends and beliefs that are set upon each society in turn that forces many problems that come today. You take a land where religion plays a MASSIVE role, and infest it with the belief of athiesim. What happens? Those athiests will most likely become the target of quite a few issues, this isnt only based on religion, but on a instintual nature put into most people from birth. To avoid those that are different, and to shun them as if they are not worthy of the attention you are able to give. It may be sad, and may be what people say to not be true, but sadly. It is.

You look at a box, a bland brown box, and next to it is a box that has many different colors and designs on it. If you are asked which you would choose. Most people would immediately grab the one with the designs on it. There have been studies on children involving what is perceived as beautiful in society, and like that , 9.5 out of 10 times, a baby will stare at a face that is considered beautiful in the society where her parents have grown up. So does that mean that in turn what we see as acceptable is alright? Most of the time?

If this is the case, how does one know that religion itself is able to be unproven if it is passed via a scientific method over the terms that each person can make their own beliefs from their birth. I have heard from numerous people, and from my own observations seen, that it is true. People do make assumptions far more quickly then you would think, regardless of the old phrase that you dont "judge a book by its cover." It simply does not work like that. Harmony is something that is unobtainable. Especially with the foundation that all things can be based off of either faith or by fact.

Fact. Something based off of numerous observations by multiple sources, who all perceive it as the same thing, my own definition of fact. In terms, it is well accepted that this is fact by MANY people, both religious buffs and science addicts alike. For what reason would fact not be considered faith? That it is proven correct? Well. If you wish to follow such a thing, then look upon this. Fact was originally belief, in that without belief, nothing could have ever been proven. Does one think that everything came about because of the strict guidelines of book smarts? Far from the truth. Each discovery was made by the natural curiousity and creativity of a human being, even if the natural book smarts helped, without the previous two mentioned, all else would be impossible.

Can you think it over for yourself, and come to the conclusion, that millions of people THROUGHOUT time, are all wrong in the fact that there is some kind of supernatural being? Everything is set in terms of this. Something that is out of the ordinary to someone of their own time will consider it supernatural. To bring a helicopter back in time, and allow it to fly through a medieval city, will of course spark the notion that all helicopters are alien beings. For what reason? It does not yet EXIST in that frame of common knowledge. Anything that someone does not see on a common basis will enspire awe. Anything that has not EVER been seen by a society, will inspite the action of a supernatural power.

Does that not mean, that throughout time, the foundations of all religions were not sparked by some sort of supernatural event? The same that follows with the explanation that science can disprove the existence of a deity based on the common fact of observation. If everything was always made through obeservation, then those new discoveries would take FAR longer to come true. Everything spouts from an ideal, if a scientist only made things come true based on observation and not first comign with an ideal and putting faith in that ideal, then how can science be any different then the religions of the world? It cant. Athiesim itself is a belief, in that you follow the belief that there is no God. There for it is a religion, the excuse that just because a christian does not believe that there is a norse god cannot be brought fourth.

In that a christian follows a deity that is of a higher power, not by the name of Odin or Zeus, but by the simple name of God. Christianity is the exercise of following "God" and Jesus's belief system, while all other gods are non existant on the plane which they are, while an athiest follow that one life, is your life, that no supernatural deities control the flow of our world. Making it a religion in itself.

[Sean Timson]

Children do indeed learn things from their enviroment, and whatever they are exposed to the most become what they assume to be the norm. Though it is not neccesaraly "forced down their throats", religeon is something that is passed on from parent to child, and the children do not know anything else and lack the experience to make more thorough observations independently. Why not accept something that the general consensus has agreed uppon? However, when someone different (Atheist in a strongly christian community, for instance) joins a population that is otherwise homogenous, the general consensus is that there is something wrong with the new/different person, weather it be stupidity, foolishness, insanity, ect. It is natural, and healthy to a degree, to want to remove destructive elements from a population.

It is that something different is probably destructive that leads to this behavior of exclusion. It is a societal immune system in a sense. Your skin doesn't decide to let some things in and others not, it assumes anything trying to gain entrance is destructive, which is a fair assumption. This is the same thing that tightly knit communities that do not see many people come or go do, they assume anything from the outside is dangerous. However, communities that have many people coming and going to and from different places (IE: Large cities) behave more like the mouth or nose, allowing easy passage of anything that wishes to enter. However, this results in more destructive elements being able to enter such as drug dealers, gangs, ect.

Science is not as similar to religeon as you make it seem. Science is an accumulation of preceptions, though it is often inspired by a beliefe. Preception is the key difference. Religeon usualy does not require you to precive with your sences the existance of god(s). Most never personaly hear, see, touch, taste, or smell a god. Instead, it requires only faith in the idea of that religeon. Science requires that theorys and beliefs be tested against preception before being accepted as true.

However, that is not to say the two are completly dissimilar. Both religeon and science attempt to solve the puzzle of existance, where reliegon concentrates more on the "why things work out the way they do" and science on the "how things work out the way they do". I do not consider the two as mutualy exclusive. The fathers of most modern sciences (Newton, for example) were devoutly religous and thought science was a tool to help understand how god's creation works. If you pick up a watch of the ground and take it appart to see how it works, that doesn't inherently mean that you don't believe that there was a watchmaker somewhere who designed and built it. Existance could very well just be one awesome mechanism that does not need further intervention from it's maker.

Then again, even scientists admit that they cannot possitivly quantify the universe because of the very rules that the universe works under, and that makes me wonder if we are not meant to ever be able to quantify existence. The creator may have left a catch-all in so that intervention could occur without ever being distictly precieved on the exact level, though preception of the larger picture may still have that subtle suspision.

[Aureus]

I'm not gonna type up a rant of my own since just about everything Sean said I agree with. However, I thought that this would be interesting reading material. Sean's example of the watchmaker really reminded me of this. The Watchmaker

[akada]

Science, may be the point of a "perception" itself, but the few founding fathers of science have been gone for quite a while, in a sense, everything I see around me is that Science itself is the absence of religion. Why? I live in a big city, or maybe I just live in a place where Science is beginning to take a harder toll on the area around us then thought.

I believe in those precsie desires. That Science is not an answer that everything came to be from a one in a zillion chance happening, that instead, the creation itself was to put it bluntly, like the game of a child. We may just be the vastly populated world of a game, a video game in which the hands of someone far more advanced holds, we may even have the effect of being a massive ant farm. You cant know what is the truth in that, the finding of all truth will cease the need to have science in place, and in effect, humans will become inate.

This is part of the reason I believe their can NEVER be a "Perfect" world. As without problems, many people will become naive, and through being naive, we become the cows of the world. No longer moving forwards, in a perfect standstill. This is part of the reason religion was created, as means to control people, the same as government was created. Religion was put in place in mainstream sense to put a hold over people, its a control factor. This is why I dont really follow a mainstream religion, my philosophy, is that it doesnt matter what you believe in, so long as you do believe.

You also need to remember that through fear, is the reason why many "fanatics" WILL shove religion down their childrens throats.

As for a close nit community, that may be the case, but without the introduction of those foreign objects, one must think of our immune system. If our immune system didnt have the constant intruding of viruses and bacteria, then it could not strength its defenses, and it would turn out bad for the body, as an introduction of something big would topple the entire body, and probably destroy it. This is why I believe that close nit communities that follow on the belief that everything else is wrong but what they have done forever. WILL fail eventually. - Shrug. -

[Sean Timson]

I agree completely that isolated population with no outside input are potentially week. It is a basic concept of natural selection that undiversified populations suffer more from a disease than a more diversified one. Such isolated populations are unable to adapt as quickly, so when something large interrupts the system, everything falls apart, where as a system that is constantly being bombarded with threats will be able to survive the worst of it more effectively.

I believe that whatever power created our universe was imperfect, which lead to an imperfect creation. I also do not follow any organized religion, and in fact, I based Sean's religious beliefs on my own. Those beings that control our universe are more than likely getting entertainment from, or at least killing boredom with their creation. How else would you explain how the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, a relatively minor figure at the time, set in motion the events that define the 20th Century. Without WW1, communism would probably not have taken hold of Russia, WW2 never would have happened, and neither would the Holocaust. Without communism, there would have been no Cold War and it's side battles(Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan). Without the Holocaust, Iseal as a country most likly would not have been formed so quickly, which may or may not have prevented the middle-east from turning into a hotbed for terrorism(hard to tell on this one for sure, need to do more research), and without the Cold War, our country would not have given weapons and money to people like Sadam Hussain, Usama Bin Ladin, and varrious other corrupt leaders. We might still be considered undefeated because the Vietnam war, even if it occured, would have gone much differently.

However, whithout these tragedies that spawned out of control from 1 man's death, those treties that created so much chaos in WW1 may not have been diffused before the creation of atomic weapons. The US would have probably remained an isolationist nation and not taken it's roll as a superpower in the latter half of the 20th century, and Communism might still be considered a reasonable path of government to be taken without quite the stigma that it currently has. None of these what-ifs are for sure though, and we have no way of telling which are true and which are not.

It is this ability for one minor incident to shape the world in a way noone could have predicted that leads me to believe that there are beings that influence the path of human society other than the mortals we see in power. Maybe it's a game, maybe they are trying to make us powerful enough so that we may survive some event in our future, and maybe that's just how the clock ticks.

We have no way of knowing for sure until we are allowed to speak with whatever is in power, which for most doesn't occur until after death, if it occurs at all. And personaly, I'm content to continue living without that knowledge. We all die eventualy, but so far as we know, only one person has ever even claimed to have come back from the dead, so enjoy life while you've got it.

[akada]

At that, even if the war had not occured, you gotta look at the fact the UN would have probably never been formed at that point, and maybe not even to date so many countries may not have been involved if the wars had not occured, and the example of sheer power displayed by a nuclear attack would have never occured meaning it would have caused issues world wide with what one could have done anywhere. Without fear, you cannot always control the masses, and without control, who knows we may have had FAR more attacks then we have had.

Religion wise however, I made my own assumption with that, I agree fully that the world may be just that a creation for boredom, but I also believe that there may be a possibility that we all create the world itself, sort of how if you have ever had a dream, that others have at times. It may work like that. We may all contribute to one center need, and that if we ever were to find out everything, in that we have all the facts of the world itself, we will cease to exist. Afterall, what would be the point if we knew everything? Hence also why I believe the human race, regardless of if it is considered a virus or not, is amazing, especially in its abillity to adapt, create, and think. With this it will never cease to exist, even if at one point those close nit communities circling around religion or the lack there of do. - Shrug. -