Religion Is A Pop-Culture

Just wondering if anyone agrees. I am an athiest, but not a prick about it. Theists are welcome to give input and I do not encourage insulting, only debating.

Now, why do I see religion as a pop-culture? Pop culture is the bubbly way we wish things were. Every girl wishes they had Britney Spears body, every guy wishes their lives were half as cool as Tommy Lee's. But things aren't that way in real life... Britney is controlled by her mother and Tommy beats his wife and kids... The perfection they're selling is a lie. And so is religion. Not a very convincing lie, but the believers are content in filling in the blanks with their desire to believe it, further perpetuating the lie. Even as an athiest, I would love for there to be a God. I would love to be able to see my dead relatives once I too die. I would love to believe I will be rewarded for my good deeds. I would love to believe that there is actually a meaning to life. But other than the fact that I want to believe it, I really have no reason to.

Athiests are often critisized for needing proof. I have yet to understand why this is a bad thing. Why should it be a bad thing to see the world around you and adapt accordingly? If there was a God, couldn't he understand my prediciment and understand why I do not believe in him. It seems to me anyone who has faith in the TRUTH would end up where I am... Because truth has nothing to do with opinion, emotion, or wants... God In The Gaps... God has always been where science can't explain. And science is explaining more and more, and the space for God to exist is getting smaller and smaller...

Now I'm sure many people will say science is the new pop-culture these days... And you know what, I agree! Every religion, it seems, these days is running back and forth to explain science's discovries. But I'm athiest... And athiesm is NOT pop-culture. Less than 10% of this planet is athiest. The way I see it, less than 10% of this planet has the guts to live in the real world, 90% get to live in whatever world they want to build themselves.

Just some thoughts. Replies will be greatly appreciated, wether they be for what I just wrote or against it... I

 

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So athiests are like, the opposite of pop-culture? Because we're a minority? Like, totally radical, dude.

Shit. I can't talk like this.

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Ya, pretty much. As long as I've been an athiest, I've been the antagonist in most philosophical conversations. It's like I'm alienated from society for willingly accepting what I see. It gets lonely. I have no church to go to and share my beliefs with other believers. And quite often I'm made to feel like I'm no more than a calculater, who has no concept of emotion or feeling...

Ah well, mainstream has never much liked me anyway.

 

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Notme:

I see my athiesm as a good thing in this. I've always felt seperated from most of what you call "mainstream culture" -actually from most other people - my athiesm simply brings this out.

You know, notme, most of the people who make you feel this way have no concept of emotion themselves. I doubt they will know a true intensity of emotion - either joy or agony.

According to your profile, you're 18, my age. I'm told one accepts this as one gets older.

Nolo te bastardes carborundum.

 

Well, I feel sorry for you people living in a country so full of religion, that it makes you feel like a minority because of your beliefs. That's gotta suck.

 

Atheism it seems to me is the search for the absolute truth, the truth is infalable so does it matter how you search or is it just important that you search?

 

Empty Dragon:

How do you consider athiesm to be the search for the absolute truth?

I'm curious.

Adam: Actually, we're a minority worldwide.

 

As long as you are willing to learn... Not start with total knowledge and stay there. That's how it seems to me. When you realize the basis of your beliefs are wrong do you simply change a small part of your beliefs to avoid serious redefinition of your beliefs, or do you realize the implacations can change everything!? Before anyone says anything about athiests not willing to do that, we just recently accepted the universe is expanding faster and faster. That changes everything. Hooray!

 

Does Athiesm mean just not to belive in God? if So then hoe does it differ from religion where you believe with out evidence that here is a god. It would take the same amount of faith to BELIEVE that there is not a god. Untill we understant the ultimate nature of the universe Can anyone really know for sure?

 

I have no faith that there is no God. If evidence were presented to me that led me to believe there was a God, it would do just that, lead me to believe there is a God. But it's been a few years now and nothing has made me really wonder if there was a God. All evidence given to me thus far just has only furthered my belief that religion is based on a need to believe... It has nothing to do with truth.

 

Why are you athiest Xev? I would assume because you believe that to be the truth... It all depends on how far you want to take it. How far are you willing to go for the truth. I was willing to give up my God, and if truth led me back to him, I would be willing to re-accept him... But truth doesn't seem to be leading me that way at all...

 

notme:

Depends on whether you have the intellectual balls to deal with the implications.

Although....you and Dragon seem to think that truth exists.

Dragon:

Athiesm is the absence of belief in God. Athiesm is commonly thought of as a negation.

It is not. It is a neutral state, the one in which all humans are born.

Have you ever heard of something called "Ockham's razor"?

To say that athiesm requires faith betrays either ignorence of the nature of athiesm or rank stupidity.

We simply see no evidence, so we don't believe. The difference between not believing in something for which there is no evidence, and believing in something for which there is no evidence, should be obvious.

A: There is a pen of white unicorns with golden manes in my backyard.

B: There is not a pen of white unicorns with golden manes in my backyard.

Bear in mind that nobody has ever seen a unicorn, and that there is no evidence that unicorns exist.

Are A and B equivalent?

Who says that the universe has an ultimate nature?

notme:

Because I've never seen any evidence that God exists. I do not feel God's nonexistance to be the "truth" - truth is changing anyway.

I'm an athiest because I am a skeptic. I am a skeptic because - well, it is just my nature. I'm incapable of faith, and always have been. I need evidence to believe in something.

 

Would it be foolish to assume that humanities has learned enough about this universe to say anything with absolute cetainty?

 

Dragon:

Who says that absolute certainty exists?

In any case, since when did athiests claim absolute certainty?

And please answer my question about the unicorns.

 

I do not have the Wisdom and understanting to say there is a truth out there just as much as i cannot say there is or is not a god. Mostly likly doesn't nessarily mean truth, if there is truth is it dependent on humans to observe it? The most likly awnser is either

 

It seems to me there has to be a truth. In my case, I believe the underlying truth is physics. But I don't know all of physics, thus I don't know the whole truth. But what drives me is the desire to know. It seems to me nothing can exist or operate without a fundamental set of rules, ie. ONE truth.

 

We simply see no evidence, so we don't believe. The difference between not believing in something for which there is no evidence, and believing in something for which there is no evidence, should be obvious.

A: There is a truth in the universe
B: There is not truth in the universe

Bear in mind that nobody has ever seen absolute, and that there is no evidence that truth exist.

Are A and B equivalent?

 

Empty Dragon:

Are you equating truth and God, trying to prove the existance of truth (interesting, that), or just trying to confuse me?

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In any case, you've dodged the question. Truth is not the same thing as God. Truth can exist and God not exist, and God can exist with truth not existing - if anything could be said to exist if truth does not -

Truth and God are separate categorys. So.....

Could you please answer my question?

 

Xev, please help me out. Explain, theoretically of course, how the universe can exist without a truth?

 

Just asking a question (directed at the universe) waiting for yours, and Notmes imput.