Atheist - Page 4

I'm also an atheist. I respect people's belief towards a divine God but I CANNOT respect the institution of the church. It is so ridiculous especially when you hear about all these greedy priests like the one in my town who wants to close a beautiful primary cathlic school just because they want to sell the building to the city and make some money.
I also don't like it how religion controls people's lives. I always say "make religion a part of your life but don't let religion make you a part of it".

And I kind of agree with ehfornue, I believe that there is something behind all this and there is a reason why everything is the way it is and why everything works so perfectly.. from things as big as mountains to things as little as human cells.. It's an amazing structure. However I do not think that something is a HE or a she or anything really. This is why I usually dont like to think about it because I always need to see to believe and I dont wanna stress myself out trying to figure out something that will never be answered.

Those were my 2 cents. sorry if it's a little long or if it offended anyone.

Oddly enough most of my fellow scientists with whom I socialize are of the agnostic kind. Now my artist friends are the more arrogant better than thou atheists.

Really, if you know a little astrophysics, it's kinda hard to accept the big cosmic fart being coincidental. There's just too damn many "miraculous" incidents to dismiss intelligent design altogether.

I am myself a "catholic christian". I find that the God I pray to seems to answer those prayers at an alarmingly high rate. Too many damn outliers as opposed to a statistically normal distribution.

That's not to say I blindly follow the bible and dismiss evolution and believe the earth is 6000 years old.

It's a little weird in a way. When living in Mexico, there wasn't this whole Religious nimrods bending reality on scientifically proven topics. In a way I feel there's a little more separation of state/church/education than in the states. I could never see a "kansas state board of education vs evolution fiasco happening down there. So that moderation of the catholic church stuck with me I guess.

I still remember a senator getting flak over forbidding his daughter from reading Garcia Marquez in middle school. The press was having a field day over how he was censoring education. For those unfamiliar, Marquez is for the most part rated "R" literature.

I see religion playing some part in my moral beliefs such as opposing capital punishment, being against abortion, and even though I hate to admit it opposing stem cell research and accepting homosexuality as "normal" (i have a few gay aquaintances so don't jump into the whole homophobe bandwagon just yet).

^You chose the wrong thread.

http://dreamact.info/forum/showthread.php?t=10228

Aaaaand you went from my favorite to my bottom two favorites just like that.

Thanks for playing.

While some old guy with a beard creating the world in seven days, then creating a man and from his rib a woman..that seems completely possible and realistic.

Please.

daff, I'm sorry but I just can't take Mr. Dawkins seriously after watching that episode on Southpark.

Well, it seems I have to stick to this thread since they closed the religious one.

Some priest are jerks pedophiles and evil. Some lawyers are too and a lot whole of people are. That does not mean all of them are bad or mean. In fact, most of the pastors I know are wonderful people and one of them is working extra hours for the Dream Act. At the end, religious institutions are lead by people, like us.

Religion, like everything in life has its pros and cons. We cannot deny we live in probably the most wonderful country in the world. Yet, it is far from perfect.
You might ask yourself why I am defending pastors in a thread that is not mine. If someone give pastors super human qualities, then I'll trash them and remind people that religious leaders are just people, like you us.

I know less about science than many of you but I know a lot of religious people and pastors and congregations. They are not one people, they are diverse. Some are conservative all the way, many belief in gay rights and the right to choose. People do not follow all the rules, just the ones that fit their lives. Just the same way we do with legal rules.

Mostly I believe in compassion towards my self and others. The worst people are selfish. If any of you is in a community college you probably meet the tool who has three years in college and less that 12 units completed. The person who uses the computes to download pornography for hours while there is a line of people waiting. They usually get money aid from the government. They get their books and their lunch for free. Yet, they are super piss about illegals getting all the benefits and democrats destroying the country as they cash their welfare checks.

That is what angers me the most, the people who are liberals to themselves and Republicans to the world. If you are one of them, you are dead on my book, otherwise we are buddies.

p.s. if you ever see those tendencies on me, please just find me and kill me. I rather die and find out whether there is nothing out there than to live in such a horrible manner.

Like Alexander Poe said, ""A little learning is a dangerous thing." Sometimes we think we know enough about a subject from hearing people quote random stuff (the Earth's axial tilt causing the seasons or the moon being just the right distance away from us to periodically block the sun in its entirety). However, when you realize the vastness of the universe and all the trillions of planets that are out there, then it's easier to understand that in at least one of them, all the variables could have come together to allow life to evolve. I can't justify believing in a deity because the moon causes the tides. The fact of the matter is that the evolution of life on Earth can be random.

Then when you shift your focus from astrophysics to the quanta, you're taken aback by the way particles behave (the uncertainty principle, for instance). "God does not play dice."

The universe could indeed have been created out of nothing or maybe it has always existed, and we're just a brane in the multiverse like String Theory suggests. Your scientist friends are right to be Agnostic; we just don't know... yet.

You misinterpret the point. I agree with the big bang, all I'm saying that it's hard to believe it was just one huge random coincidence.


locked.

Don't worry, gays are still 99.9% ok in my book. Really it's more of a nag, kind of how a friend may be annoying for being republican. Don't want to turn this into a hate debate, and have actually always wanted to have an open discussion on the topic.