Atheism Is Not A Religion!!!

[Treeshepherd]

improved Tenets of Atheism

1. The universe is a great, uncaused random accident. No metaphysical will or instruction preceeded the universe which could have caused it. No 'purpose' exists outside of it. The Big Bang theory assumes a cause and was first proposed by a priest, which is unpalatable. Consequently atheism is moving past that theory to the Universal wave function theory among others. These theories postulate an uncaused universe.

2. Rejection of the Christian concept of free will, and free will as a suitable explanation for the existence of evil.
A developing concept among atheists is that human behavior is ultimately controlled by genes, by brain neurochemistry, and by interactions with the environment. In its most extreme form, determinism completely denies the existence of human free will. There is quite a bit of difference of opinion here among atheists.

3. Salvation through technology, leading toward transhumanism. In the absence of Providence, man must assume the role of Creator and tweak his own biology rather than leave the future to random possibilities.

4. The belief that the primary cause of war is theistic religion. Conflict theory that proposes genetic, economic or political root causes of war are completely ignored among the most ardent atheists.

5. The belief or propensity to postulate that the history of science is a simple story of rationality prevailing over theism. Like oil and water, they do not mix. For example, the Church was the root cause of the Dark Ages and not the collapse of the Roman Empire.

6. The atheist believes that love is merely an adapted chemical reaction in the brain. Any further meaning is something that an atheist may choose to humor himself with.

7. For utilitarian reasons of quality of life, the atheist invents moral rules by which a community should be governed, subjectively justifying that set of morals as well as humanly possible. Sometimes, the atheist postulates that morality is genetically inherited.

The list is not exhaustive and needs further work. But, in a nutshell, that's my articulation of atheist religion.

 

[CynthiaZ]

Militant athiests in the future won't be so bad when religions stop saying non believers burn for eternity.

How optimistic of you. Very naive but we can't fault you for your optimism. I noticed something about some atheists. You have the tendency to ignore some basic facts about the nature of this world and in particular you ignore the basic facts about human nature. We are always going to have conflict. We will have conflict even if religion were to disappear tomorrow. It is in our nature to conflict with not only other human beings but with the natural world. To deny this very basic truth is to deny reality. We live in a hostile and violent world and we ourselves are hostile and violent by nature. Those are the facts of life.

I noticed something about religious zealots: they tend to be self-loathing and incapable of envisioning a world without trembling in fear before angry gawds. Your comments are, naturally, reflective of those basic tenets of christianity: mankind is elementally base and evil because of original sin.

It's truly a sickness to accept such a worldview.

I would never raise a child by Instilling in him or her the presumption that they are evil or base or inherently sinful. That's psychologically and emotionally abusive. To promote such abuse speaks volumes about the fear, self-hate and hostility of the abuser.

Such abuse is a prescription for a maladjusted personality.

Wow. And you claim religious people are trying to deny reality. I am just stating the facts.
What kind of world do you think we live in? A world of unicorns and rainbows where good always triumphs over evil and everyone gets a happily ever after? I am sorry but we do not live in that world. We live in this world and in this world just about every living creature nourishes itself by metabolizing the death of other living creatures. In order to live in our world you have to kill and there are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Simple biology tells us that we are all basically animals and that we are driven by the same instincts and desires has any other animal. And like our closet evolutionary cousin the chimpanzee we are inherently tribal and violent primates who enforced hierarchical control by savage violence. This isn't something new, we have always been this ways and our biology isn't going to change anytime soon.

And as for your little myths of scientism and moral progress. It's just not going to happen. There is never going to be a scientific utopia where technology solves all our problems. Our nature will just not allow it. Every time human beings attempt to build a utopia the first thing they do is demonize others who they think are impeding their fantasy world and therefore make things worse by creating more conflict and the cycle of violence just keeps rolling on and on and on all because their are people who someone got it in their head that they can fix this. It was are attempt to control and fix nature to suit us that got us into this mess in the first place and impeding catastrophic consequence loom over us with are meddling with nature. Now we are facing a mass extinction event dues to our abusing the planet. If that reality frightens you then too bad. All your wishful thinking and sci-fi fantasy will do nothing to fix or prevent it. So you might as well accept it and come to terms with it. Nothing last forever in this world, all things are impermanent and that includes the human race.

 

[Avatar4321]

Militant athiests in the future won't be so bad when religions stop saying non believers burn for eternity.

How optimistic of you. Very naive but we can't fault you for your optimism. I noticed something about some atheists. You have the tendency to ignore some basic facts about the nature of this world and in particular you ignore the basic facts about human nature. We are always going to have conflict. We will have conflict even if religion were to disappear tomorrow. It is in our nature to conflict with not only other human beings but with the natural world. To deny this very basic truth is to deny reality. We live in a hostile and violent world and we ourselves are hostile and violent by nature. Those are the facts of life.

I noticed something about religious zealots: they tend to be self-loathing and incapable of envisioning a world without trembling in fear before angry gawds. Your comments are, naturally, reflective of those basic tenets of christianity: mankind is elementally base and evil because of original sin.

It's truly a sickness to accept such a worldview.

I would never raise a child by Instilling in him or her the presumption that they are evil or base or inherently sinful. That's psychologically and emotionally abusive. To promote such abuse speaks volumes about the fear, self-hate and hostility of the abuser.

Such abuse is a prescription for a maladjusted personality.

Wow. And you claim religious people are trying to deny reality. I am just stating the facts.
What kind of world do you think we live in? A world of unicorns and rainbows where good always triumphs over evil and everyone gets a happily ever after? I am sorry but we do not live in that world. We live in this world and in this world just about every living creature nourishes itself by metabolizing the death of other living creatures. In order to live in our world you have to kill and there are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Simple biology tells us that we are all basically animals and that we are driven by the same instincts and desires has any other animal. And like our closet evolutionary cousin the chimpanzee we are inherently tribal and violent primates who enforced hierarchical control by savage violence. This isn't something new, we have always been this ways and our biology isn't going to change anytime soon.

And as for your little myths of scientism and moral progress. It's just not going to happen. There is never going to be a scientific utopia where technology solves all our problems. Our nature will just not allow it. Every time human beings attempt to build a utopia the first thing they do is demonize others who they think are impeding their fantasy world and therefore make things worse by creating more conflict and the cycle of violence just keeps rolling on and on and on all because their are people who someone got it in their head that they can fix this. It was are attempt to control and fix nature to suit us that got us into this mess in the first place and impeding catastrophic consequence loom over us with are meddling with nature. Now we are facing a mass extinction event dues to our abusing the planet. If that reality frightens you then too bad. All your wishful thinking and sci-fi fantasy will do nothing to fix or prevent it. So you might as well accept it and come to terms with it. Nothing last forever in this world, all things are impermanent and that includes the human race.

To be fair, we are in a world of unicorns and rainbows. Rainbows come after the storm, and unicorns are just known as rhinos to modern society.

human nature is not something people want to deal with. They want to ignore it. It's nice to think everyone is a great person. But they aren't. We are all pretty crappy people if we just do our own thing. It's only when we are reborn spiritually that we become something greater than our fallen nature.

That's why the Atonement of Christ is so important. Through Christ's sacrifice we can literally become new people and have our nature changed. We can become good through Him. We can do good through Him.

 

[Treeshepherd]

Now we are facing a mass extinction event dues to our abusing the planet. If that reality frightens you then too bad. All your wishful thinking and sci-fi fantasy will do nothing to fix or prevent it. So you might as well accept it and come to terms with it. Nothing last forever in this world, all things are impermanent and that includes the human race.

I think it's likely that the human race could be extincted by an overly logical transhuman race.

 

[Hollie]

Militant athiests in the future won't be so bad when religions stop saying non believers burn for eternity.

How optimistic of you. Very naive but we can't fault you for your optimism. I noticed something about some atheists. You have the tendency to ignore some basic facts about the nature of this world and in particular you ignore the basic facts about human nature. We are always going to have conflict. We will have conflict even if religion were to disappear tomorrow. It is in our nature to conflict with not only other human beings but with the natural world. To deny this very basic truth is to deny reality. We live in a hostile and violent world and we ourselves are hostile and violent by nature. Those are the facts of life.

I noticed something about religious zealots: they tend to be self-loathing and incapable of envisioning a world without trembling in fear before angry gawds. Your comments are, naturally, reflective of those basic tenets of christianity: mankind is elementally base and evil because of original sin.

It's truly a sickness to accept such a worldview.

I would never raise a child by Instilling in him or her the presumption that they are evil or base or inherently sinful. That's psychologically and emotionally abusive. To promote such abuse speaks volumes about the fear, self-hate and hostility of the abuser.

Such abuse is a prescription for a maladjusted personality.

Wow. And you claim religious people are trying to deny reality. I am just stating the facts.
What kind of world do you think we live in? A world of unicorns and rainbows where good always triumphs over evil and everyone gets a happily ever after? I am sorry but we do not live in that world. We live in this world and in this world just about every living creature nourishes itself by metabolizing the death of other living creatures. In order to live in our world you have to kill and there are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Simple biology tells us that we are all basically animals and that we are driven by the same instincts and desires has any other animal. And like our closet evolutionary cousin the chimpanzee we are inherently tribal and violent primates who enforced hierarchical control by savage violence. This isn't something new, we have always been this ways and our biology isn't going to change anytime soon.

And as for your little myths of scientism and moral progress. It's just not going to happen. There is never going to be a scientific utopia where technology solves all our problems. Our nature will just not allow it. Every time human beings attempt to build a utopia the first thing they do is demonize others who they think are impeding their fantasy world and therefore make things worse by creating more conflict and the cycle of violence just keeps rolling on and on and on all because their are people who someone got it in their head that they can fix this. It was are attempt to control and fix nature to suit us that got us into this mess in the first place and impeding catastrophic consequence loom over us with are meddling with nature. Now we are facing a mass extinction event dues to our abusing the planet. If that reality frightens you then too bad. All your wishful thinking and sci-fi fantasy will do nothing to fix or prevent it. So you might as well accept it and come to terms with it. Nothing last forever in this world, all things are impermanent and that includes the human race.

As I noted earlier, you're suffering from religiously inspired self-hate. It's a legacy of the myth of original sin wherein fundie christians believe they carry the curse imparted to A&E (not the cable station). Free yourself from that burden.

 

[Treeshepherd]

As I noted earlier, you're suffering from religiously inspired self-hate. It's a legacy of the myth of original sin wherein fundie christians believe they carry the curse imparted to A&E (not the cable station). Free yourself from that burden.

Like a fundie Christian, I don't think you're capable of conceiving of the Adam and Eve story as anything more than cartoonish. It couldn't represent to you a deep allegory having to do with a human shift of consciousness into ego.

Thanks for reminding me to add to my list of tenets the similarity of the fundie and the atheist in their approach to scripture. The sole difference is in the response, with one being an acceptor and the other a denier.

 

[Hollie]

As I noted earlier, you're suffering from religiously inspired self-hate. It's a legacy of the myth of original sin wherein fundie christians believe they carry the curse imparted to A&E (not the cable station). Free yourself from that burden.

Like a fundie Christian, I don't think you're capable of conceiving of the Adam and Eve story as anything more than cartoonish. It couldn't represent to you a deep allegory having to do with a human shift of consciousness into ego.

Thanks for reminding me to add to my list of tenets the similarity of the fundie and the atheist in their approach to scripture. The sole difference is in the response, with one being an acceptor and the other a denier.

The A&E fable is cartoonist. I've previously laid out the irreconcilable problems with the genesis fable.

Do let us know what parts of the bibles are literally true and which are not.

 

[Avatar4321]

Militant athiests in the future won't be so bad when religions stop saying non believers burn for eternity.

How optimistic of you. Very naive but we can't fault you for your optimism. I noticed something about some atheists. You have the tendency to ignore some basic facts about the nature of this world and in particular you ignore the basic facts about human nature. We are always going to have conflict. We will have conflict even if religion were to disappear tomorrow. It is in our nature to conflict with not only other human beings but with the natural world. To deny this very basic truth is to deny reality. We live in a hostile and violent world and we ourselves are hostile and violent by nature. Those are the facts of life.

I noticed something about religious zealots: they tend to be self-loathing and incapable of envisioning a world without trembling in fear before angry gawds. Your comments are, naturally, reflective of those basic tenets of christianity: mankind is elementally base and evil because of original sin.

It's truly a sickness to accept such a worldview.

I would never raise a child by Instilling in him or her the presumption that they are evil or base or inherently sinful. That's psychologically and emotionally abusive. To promote such abuse speaks volumes about the fear, self-hate and hostility of the abuser.

Such abuse is a prescription for a maladjusted personality.

Wow. And you claim religious people are trying to deny reality. I am just stating the facts.
What kind of world do you think we live in? A world of unicorns and rainbows where good always triumphs over evil and everyone gets a happily ever after? I am sorry but we do not live in that world. We live in this world and in this world just about every living creature nourishes itself by metabolizing the death of other living creatures. In order to live in our world you have to kill and there are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Simple biology tells us that we are all basically animals and that we are driven by the same instincts and desires has any other animal. And like our closet evolutionary cousin the chimpanzee we are inherently tribal and violent primates who enforced hierarchical control by savage violence. This isn't something new, we have always been this ways and our biology isn't going to change anytime soon.

And as for your little myths of scientism and moral progress. It's just not going to happen. There is never going to be a scientific utopia where technology solves all our problems. Our nature will just not allow it. Every time human beings attempt to build a utopia the first thing they do is demonize others who they think are impeding their fantasy world and therefore make things worse by creating more conflict and the cycle of violence just keeps rolling on and on and on all because their are people who someone got it in their head that they can fix this. It was are attempt to control and fix nature to suit us that got us into this mess in the first place and impeding catastrophic consequence loom over us with are meddling with nature. Now we are facing a mass extinction event dues to our abusing the planet. If that reality frightens you then too bad. All your wishful thinking and sci-fi fantasy will do nothing to fix or prevent it. So you might as well accept it and come to terms with it. Nothing last forever in this world, all things are impermanent and that includes the human race.

As I noted earlier, you're suffering from religiously inspired self-hate. It's a legacy of the myth of original sin wherein fundie christians believe they carry the curse imparted to A&E (not the cable station). Free yourself from that burden.

how is it self hate to recognize human nature for what it is and your capacity to do evil?

human beings are capable of great evil. Whether their our corruption, apathy, or willful choice.

that's human nature. You cannot avoid it or deny it

 

[Treeshepherd]

The A&E fable is cartoonist. I've previously laid out the irreconcilable problems with the genesis fable.

Do let us know what parts of the bibles are literally true and which are not.

You have an irreconcilable problem with any allegory when the source is scriptural.

To answer your question though, there are certainly some parts of scripture which approximate historicity. Cyrus the Great, for example, was an actual king of kings in Persia.

 

[Hollie]

Militant athiests in the future won't be so bad when religions stop saying non believers burn for eternity.

How optimistic of you. Very naive but we can't fault you for your optimism. I noticed something about some atheists. You have the tendency to ignore some basic facts about the nature of this world and in particular you ignore the basic facts about human nature. We are always going to have conflict. We will have conflict even if religion were to disappear tomorrow. It is in our nature to conflict with not only other human beings but with the natural world. To deny this very basic truth is to deny reality. We live in a hostile and violent world and we ourselves are hostile and violent by nature. Those are the facts of life.

I noticed something about religious zealots: they tend to be self-loathing and incapable of envisioning a world without trembling in fear before angry gawds. Your comments are, naturally, reflective of those basic tenets of christianity: mankind is elementally base and evil because of original sin.

It's truly a sickness to accept such a worldview.

I would never raise a child by Instilling in him or her the presumption that they are evil or base or inherently sinful. That's psychologically and emotionally abusive. To promote such abuse speaks volumes about the fear, self-hate and hostility of the abuser.

Such abuse is a prescription for a maladjusted personality.

Wow. And you claim religious people are trying to deny reality. I am just stating the facts.
What kind of world do you think we live in? A world of unicorns and rainbows where good always triumphs over evil and everyone gets a happily ever after? I am sorry but we do not live in that world. We live in this world and in this world just about every living creature nourishes itself by metabolizing the death of other living creatures. In order to live in our world you have to kill and there are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Simple biology tells us that we are all basically animals and that we are driven by the same instincts and desires has any other animal. And like our closet evolutionary cousin the chimpanzee we are inherently tribal and violent primates who enforced hierarchical control by savage violence. This isn't something new, we have always been this ways and our biology isn't going to change anytime soon.

And as for your little myths of scientism and moral progress. It's just not going to happen. There is never going to be a scientific utopia where technology solves all our problems. Our nature will just not allow it. Every time human beings attempt to build a utopia the first thing they do is demonize others who they think are impeding their fantasy world and therefore make things worse by creating more conflict and the cycle of violence just keeps rolling on and on and on all because their are people who someone got it in their head that they can fix this. It was are attempt to control and fix nature to suit us that got us into this mess in the first place and impeding catastrophic consequence loom over us with are meddling with nature. Now we are facing a mass extinction event dues to our abusing the planet. If that reality frightens you then too bad. All your wishful thinking and sci-fi fantasy will do nothing to fix or prevent it. So you might as well accept it and come to terms with it. Nothing last forever in this world, all things are impermanent and that includes the human race.

As I noted earlier, you're suffering from religiously inspired self-hate. It's a legacy of the myth of original sin wherein fundie christians believe they carry the curse imparted to A&E (not the cable station). Free yourself from that burden.

how is it self hate to recognize human nature for what it is and your capacity to do evil?

human beings are capable of great evil. Whether their our corruption, apathy, or willful choice.

that's human nature. You cannot avoid it or deny it

And, with a historical perspective, the religious entities have exceeded the brutality of the non-religious.

Let's not pretend that Christianity is the wondrous panacea you would like to portray it as.

 

[Treeshepherd]

Let's not pretend that Christianity is the wondrous panacea you would like to portray it as.

That's not my intention. My attention in this thread is to identify characteristics of atheism. I'm doing so by observation. Here is a good example of one of the tenets (religion is the root cause of war and violence);

And, with a historical perspective, the religious entities have exceeded the brutality of the non-religious.

 

[Hollie]

The A&E fable is cartoonist. I've previously laid out the irreconcilable problems with the genesis fable.

Do let us know what parts of the bibles are literally true and which are not.

You have an irreconcilable problem with any allegory when the source is scriptural.

To answer your question though, there are certainly some parts of scripture which approximate historicity. Cyrus the Great, for example, was an actual king of kings in Persia.

The A&E fable is cartoonist. I've previously laid out the irreconcilable problems with the genesis fable.

Do let us know what parts of the bibles are literally true and which are not.

You have an irreconcilable problem with any allegory when the source is scriptural.

To answer your question though, there are certainly some parts of scripture which approximate historicity. Cyrus the Great, for example, was an actual king of kings in Persia.

This is the first I've heard that you have been tasked with determining which parts of the bibles are literal renderings and which are not.

Give us your listing.

 

[Hollie]

Let's not pretend that Christianity is the wondrous panacea you would like to portray it as.

That's not my intention. My attention in this thread is to identify characteristics of atheism. I'm doing so by observation. Here is a good example of one of the tenets (religion is the root cause of war and violence);

And, with a historical perspective, the religious entities have exceeded the brutality of the non-religious.

Your homework assignment is to compile the relevant data.

 

[Treeshepherd]

This is the first I've heard that you have been tasked with determining which parts of the bibles are literal renderings and which are not.

Give us your listing.

That's really irrelevant to a thread concerned with atheist religion, and rather irrelevant to my approach to the scriptures of traditional world religions. Scripture is not meant to settle anything. Its purpose is to provoke thought and questions. In a historical sense, I think there's something to learn about the evolution of western thought.

But, I'll humor you. I would say that some small portion of the Bible approximates historicity, like the fact that Cyrus the Great was a real King of kings in Persia. I could probably find other examples. It's not something I'm interested in or take time to study.

 

[Hollie]

This is the first I've heard that you have been tasked with determining which parts of the bibles are literal renderings and which are not.

Give us your listing.

That's really irrelevant to a thread concerned with atheist religion, and rather irrelevant to my approach to the scriptures of traditional world religions. Scripture is not meant to settle anything. Its purpose is to provoke thought and questions. In a historical sense, I think there's something to learn about the evolution of western thought.

But, I'll humor you. I would say that some small portion of the Bible approximates historicity, like the fact that Cyrus the Great was a real King of kings in Persia. I could probably find other examples. It's not something I'm interested in or take time to study.

You have decided that genesis is an allegory. I'm just curious about the jeebus rising from the dead, thing.

Is that literally true, kinda' true but not really true or not true at all?

 

[CynthiaZ]

Militant athiests in the future won't be so bad when religions stop saying non believers burn for eternity.

How optimistic of you. Very naive but we can't fault you for your optimism. I noticed something about some atheists. You have the tendency to ignore some basic facts about the nature of this world and in particular you ignore the basic facts about human nature. We are always going to have conflict. We will have conflict even if religion were to disappear tomorrow. It is in our nature to conflict with not only other human beings but with the natural world. To deny this very basic truth is to deny reality. We live in a hostile and violent world and we ourselves are hostile and violent by nature. Those are the facts of life.

I noticed something about religious zealots: they tend to be self-loathing and incapable of envisioning a world without trembling in fear before angry gawds. Your comments are, naturally, reflective of those basic tenets of christianity: mankind is elementally base and evil because of original sin.

It's truly a sickness to accept such a worldview.

I would never raise a child by Instilling in him or her the presumption that they are evil or base or inherently sinful. That's psychologically and emotionally abusive. To promote such abuse speaks volumes about the fear, self-hate and hostility of the abuser.

Such abuse is a prescription for a maladjusted personality.

Wow. And you claim religious people are trying to deny reality. I am just stating the facts.
What kind of world do you think we live in? A world of unicorns and rainbows where good always triumphs over evil and everyone gets a happily ever after? I am sorry but we do not live in that world. We live in this world and in this world just about every living creature nourishes itself by metabolizing the death of other living creatures. In order to live in our world you have to kill and there are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Simple biology tells us that we are all basically animals and that we are driven by the same instincts and desires has any other animal. And like our closet evolutionary cousin the chimpanzee we are inherently tribal and violent primates who enforced hierarchical control by savage violence. This isn't something new, we have always been this ways and our biology isn't going to change anytime soon.

And as for your little myths of scientism and moral progress. It's just not going to happen. There is never going to be a scientific utopia where technology solves all our problems. Our nature will just not allow it. Every time human beings attempt to build a utopia the first thing they do is demonize others who they think are impeding their fantasy world and therefore make things worse by creating more conflict and the cycle of violence just keeps rolling on and on and on all because their are people who someone got it in their head that they can fix this. It was are attempt to control and fix nature to suit us that got us into this mess in the first place and impeding catastrophic consequence loom over us with are meddling with nature. Now we are facing a mass extinction event dues to our abusing the planet. If that reality frightens you then too bad. All your wishful thinking and sci-fi fantasy will do nothing to fix or prevent it. So you might as well accept it and come to terms with it. Nothing last forever in this world, all things are impermanent and that includes the human race.

As I noted earlier, you're suffering from religiously inspired self-hate. It's a legacy of the myth of original sin wherein fundie christians believe they carry the curse imparted to A&E (not the cable station). Free yourself from that burden.

Curse? Who said our animal nature is a curse? It is just the way we are.

 

[CynthiaZ]

Militant athiests in the future won't be so bad when religions stop saying non believers burn for eternity.

How optimistic of you. Very naive but we can't fault you for your optimism. I noticed something about some atheists. You have the tendency to ignore some basic facts about the nature of this world and in particular you ignore the basic facts about human nature. We are always going to have conflict. We will have conflict even if religion were to disappear tomorrow. It is in our nature to conflict with not only other human beings but with the natural world. To deny this very basic truth is to deny reality. We live in a hostile and violent world and we ourselves are hostile and violent by nature. Those are the facts of life.

I noticed something about religious zealots: they tend to be self-loathing and incapable of envisioning a world without trembling in fear before angry gawds. Your comments are, naturally, reflective of those basic tenets of christianity: mankind is elementally base and evil because of original sin.

It's truly a sickness to accept such a worldview.

I would never raise a child by Instilling in him or her the presumption that they are evil or base or inherently sinful. That's psychologically and emotionally abusive. To promote such abuse speaks volumes about the fear, self-hate and hostility of the abuser.

Such abuse is a prescription for a maladjusted personality.

Wow. And you claim religious people are trying to deny reality. I am just stating the facts.
What kind of world do you think we live in? A world of unicorns and rainbows where good always triumphs over evil and everyone gets a happily ever after? I am sorry but we do not live in that world. We live in this world and in this world just about every living creature nourishes itself by metabolizing the death of other living creatures. In order to live in our world you have to kill and there are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Simple biology tells us that we are all basically animals and that we are driven by the same instincts and desires has any other animal. And like our closet evolutionary cousin the chimpanzee we are inherently tribal and violent primates who enforced hierarchical control by savage violence. This isn't something new, we have always been this ways and our biology isn't going to change anytime soon.

And as for your little myths of scientism and moral progress. It's just not going to happen. There is never going to be a scientific utopia where technology solves all our problems. Our nature will just not allow it. Every time human beings attempt to build a utopia the first thing they do is demonize others who they think are impeding their fantasy world and therefore make things worse by creating more conflict and the cycle of violence just keeps rolling on and on and on all because their are people who someone got it in their head that they can fix this. It was are attempt to control and fix nature to suit us that got us into this mess in the first place and impeding catastrophic consequence loom over us with are meddling with nature. Now we are facing a mass extinction event dues to our abusing the planet. If that reality frightens you then too bad. All your wishful thinking and sci-fi fantasy will do nothing to fix or prevent it. So you might as well accept it and come to terms with it. Nothing last forever in this world, all things are impermanent and that includes the human race.

As I noted earlier, you're suffering from religiously inspired self-hate. It's a legacy of the myth of original sin wherein fundie christians believe they carry the curse imparted to A&E (not the cable station). Free yourself from that burden.

how is it self hate to recognize human nature for what it is and your capacity to do evil?

human beings are capable of great evil. Whether their our corruption, apathy, or willful choice.

that's human nature. You cannot avoid it or deny it

I think atheists do an awful lot to deny it. It is one of the reasons they scapegoat religion and demonize believers. They need someone to blame for this mess and they do not want to accept that it is our very nature that has cause calamity because they would have to admit that their own nature is subject to the same things as everyone else.

 

[Treeshepherd]

You have decided that genesis is an allegory. I'm just curious about the jeebus rising from the dead, thing.

I have to go to work. It would take more than a messageboard post to explain the J-man. In the simplest terms I would say that to me, Jesus represents the idea that there is an element of sacrifice to the process of creation. Our existence came at great cost.

 

[Hollie]

Militant athiests in the future won't be so bad when religions stop saying non believers burn for eternity.

How optimistic of you. Very naive but we can't fault you for your optimism. I noticed something about some atheists. You have the tendency to ignore some basic facts about the nature of this world and in particular you ignore the basic facts about human nature. We are always going to have conflict. We will have conflict even if religion were to disappear tomorrow. It is in our nature to conflict with not only other human beings but with the natural world. To deny this very basic truth is to deny reality. We live in a hostile and violent world and we ourselves are hostile and violent by nature. Those are the facts of life.

I noticed something about religious zealots: they tend to be self-loathing and incapable of envisioning a world without trembling in fear before angry gawds. Your comments are, naturally, reflective of those basic tenets of christianity: mankind is elementally base and evil because of original sin.

It's truly a sickness to accept such a worldview.

I would never raise a child by Instilling in him or her the presumption that they are evil or base or inherently sinful. That's psychologically and emotionally abusive. To promote such abuse speaks volumes about the fear, self-hate and hostility of the abuser.

Such abuse is a prescription for a maladjusted personality.

Wow. And you claim religious people are trying to deny reality. I am just stating the facts.
What kind of world do you think we live in? A world of unicorns and rainbows where good always triumphs over evil and everyone gets a happily ever after? I am sorry but we do not live in that world. We live in this world and in this world just about every living creature nourishes itself by metabolizing the death of other living creatures. In order to live in our world you have to kill and there are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Simple biology tells us that we are all basically animals and that we are driven by the same instincts and desires has any other animal. And like our closet evolutionary cousin the chimpanzee we are inherently tribal and violent primates who enforced hierarchical control by savage violence. This isn't something new, we have always been this ways and our biology isn't going to change anytime soon.

And as for your little myths of scientism and moral progress. It's just not going to happen. There is never going to be a scientific utopia where technology solves all our problems. Our nature will just not allow it. Every time human beings attempt to build a utopia the first thing they do is demonize others who they think are impeding their fantasy world and therefore make things worse by creating more conflict and the cycle of violence just keeps rolling on and on and on all because their are people who someone got it in their head that they can fix this. It was are attempt to control and fix nature to suit us that got us into this mess in the first place and impeding catastrophic consequence loom over us with are meddling with nature. Now we are facing a mass extinction event dues to our abusing the planet. If that reality frightens you then too bad. All your wishful thinking and sci-fi fantasy will do nothing to fix or prevent it. So you might as well accept it and come to terms with it. Nothing last forever in this world, all things are impermanent and that includes the human race.

As I noted earlier, you're suffering from religiously inspired self-hate. It's a legacy of the myth of original sin wherein fundie christians believe they carry the curse imparted to A&E (not the cable station). Free yourself from that burden.

Curse? Who said our animal nature is a curse? It is just the way we are.

You should read your bibles.

 

[Hollie]

You have decided that genesis is an allegory. I'm just curious about the jeebus rising from the dead, thing.

I have to go to work. It would take more than a messageboard post to explain the J-man. In the simplest terms I would say that to me, Jesus represents the idea that there is an element of sacrifice to the process of creation. Our existence came at great cost.

What process of creation?