Who has changed their minds about religion on this forum?
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Anonymous
Believers don't believe that believing causes harm. |
Anonymous
They are all manufactured characters so...they are the same thing wrt "existence". |
Anonymous
That depends on which definition you use... https://www.dictionary.com/e/atheism-agnosticism/ agnostic vs. atheist There is a key distinction between these terms. An atheist doesn’t believe in the existence of a god or divine being. The word atheist originates with the Greek atheos, which is built from the roots a- (“without”) and theos (“a god”). Atheism is the doctrine or belief that there is no god. In contrast, the word agnostic refers to a person who neither believes nor disbelieves in a god or religious doctrine. Agnostics assert that it’s impossible to know how the universe was created and whether or not divine beings exist. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/ The word “atheism” is polysemous—it has multiple related meanings. [Atheism is] the view that there are no gods. A widely used sense denotes merely not believing in god and is consistent with agnosticism [in the psychological sense]. A stricter sense denotes a belief that there is no god; this use has become standard. (Pojman 2015, emphasis added) an agnostic is a person who has entertained the proposition that there is a God but believes neither that it is true nor that it is false. |
Anonymous
Yet I wager that all the believers here would say with certitude and intellectual honesty that they do not believe in fairies and goblins, who are supernatural beings, like God in the sense that you can't see them. Also, some people (adults, in the case of fairies and goblins) don't believe in them. Thus, agnosticism is not good if it, as pp suggests, allows for exploring "different aspects of reality". |
Anonymous
Yes words can have different meanings... but most atheists define the term as simply a lack of belief with no claim being made. Try and find one, here or publicly, who claims there are absolutely no gods. There are some, but they are rare. So the fact that it can mean a different thing than is most common doesn't mean they are equally weighted. They are not. |
Anonymous
Not sure I follow your reasoning but agree that most religious people are unlikely to also believe in leprechauns/ fairies/ goblins etc. Examples of Areas where I thought agnostics may be open to alternative metaphysical explanations are: - seemingly Miraculous recoveries (many medical doctors and nurses have experienced inexplicable recoveries of patients with extremely poor prognoses following their families or faith communities praying for them). - near death experiences where people who do technically die physically for some period of time. They often report similar experiences of observing their bodies from somewhere else and realizing they are dead. Many describe a deep peace and deep desire to not return to their physical bodies. They often describe being informed that it is not their time to leave their embodied human lives yet) - past life memories usually by children who remember details Of lives from historical periods where they could not have possibly Known about. I don’t know but that is my impression - not knowing opening up different possibilities. Interestingly, Buddhists often recommend a mental state of not knowing as being essential to developing mindfulness. My art teacher recommends it for creating meaningful art. |
Anonymous
Dieties and fairies/leprechauns/Santa aren't all equal, but they are all supernatural. Both adults and children believe in Deities (God). Only children believe in fairies/leprechauns/Santa. Adults no longer believe in fairies/leprechauns/Santa. They think they're silly and childish, but many adults still believe in God. They take God very seriously. |
Anonymous
Right. They are all figments of their imagination. |
Anonymous
Just as I can say there are absolutely no fairies I can say there are absolutely no gods. Either you believe in supernatural forces or you don’t. Most atheists don’t. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
Just last night, I saw a short, (1:57 min) George Carlin video on religion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoYyiNRtMEE . In it, he says something like "There's a man in the sky, who will punish you in a fiery pit for eternity if you disobey any of the 10 things he told you not to do - but he loves you." It's priceless. |
Anonymous
Another atheist comedian gets Christianity wrong. Not a surprise. |
Anonymous
That short video about god https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoYyiNRtMEE is not wrong. it's so right. Christians do actually believe that "there's a man in the sky, who will punish you in a fiery pit for eternity if you disobey any of the 10 things he told you not to do - but he loves you." That's certainly what I learned when I was a Christian - not in those words, of course, but that was the message: "Be good or burn in hell forever!" |
Anonymous
Well then they need to read about the harm in believing and learn about those harms. There is plenty of insidious harm besides the more overt harm. Even the more moderate sects of Christianity for example (there are tens of thousands of sects of Christianity ) are giving cover to the extreme fundamentalist sects who are perpetrating obvious harm. |
Anonymous
I can categorically say that as a Christian, I don’t believe that. Here is what I believe 1. There is no gender in the spirit 2. God is love, light and transcends time. space and place. 3. God shows love and mercy to all. 4. God knows the inner thoughts of all and knows our motivations. 5. Any thought or action that we carry out that is motivated by selfless love is of God and therefore transcends time and place and will endure after our physical bodies pass awY. 6. Everything in this life shall pass but God’s love and mercy endures forever 7. There are many paths to God and there is room for all of us. |