I think this is probably inevitable as science fills in more and more of the blank spots on the map, and as religion loses its status as something that shouldn’t be challenged or blindly accepted.
Few atheists (outside of, say, Stalinists) would argue that religion should instantly be eradicated, or that that would be a good thing. Religion should be slowly be outmoded by superior ways of explaining the universe.
Of course, you’ll always have crackpots out there, but I think the day will come when religious views are held by a minority who will be regarded with the same disdain that 9/11 Truthers and Holocaust deniers are today. A wacky fringe.
Well, there being many more means to me that at most just small details were incorporated in Jesus life. It looks like the only great resemblances about his life are Dionysus (in Greek mythology) and Buddha.
I honestly think that it has more to do with the general culture of religion that is much more ingrained in US/Canadian society than other places than any actual causal correlation between religion and charity.
I’d disagree. There is a clear correlation, and if it was cultural then it would apply to seculars as well, as they still embrace many cultural if not religious traits.
Atheism is a loose term, in my opinion.
Religion in general on that note. No one person has the same view of it…
personally I believe in some sort of governing force behind any occurrence, be it ‘fate’ or some form of intelligence that religious people would deem a god.
Some things always seem to happen for a reason, as if preplanned. That is what fascinates me the most about this subject. For example, a person missing a flight, only to find out that a terrible accident happened and him being too late for the departure had saved his life. It’s happened so many times, and that is just one of many unexplainable things.
Atheism actually is a very strict and concise term. “Lack of belief in deities.” Atheists, however, have a whole laundry list of beliefs. Some may even say that they “believe there’s no gods” or flat out say “God does not exist”…but that’s a subject distinct from “atheism”.
So, instead of saying “atheism says believe in” or “atheism’s code of conduct is…” or whatever, say that some atheists believe that to be so.
As for your question about the person missing their flight that ends up crashing? I have a question: What about the other people on that flight? The passengers? The flight attendants? The pilots? What about them? For what “reason” are they dead? So that guy could live? Hell of a “plan”.
In a middle-east country, a bomb rocks an apartment building to rubble. After days of searching, they find a baby alive and healthy. A miracle, right? But what about those 28 dead bodies that they found before they came across the baby? Is that, too, a miracle?
I don’t feel that there’s a “plan”, “fate” or otherwise. I’d like to hear your input as to why you do.
Of course, I find differing opinions to be very interesting.
Well I guess most of mine comes from my parents, they share the same idea. Why should one person die while the others die a senseless death… a difficult question. But then again, why did the plane have to crash, why did the earthquake have to be that strong etc etc, it’s a difficult thing to discuss.
Why should one person have so much ‘luck’ - that’s another way of seeing it. I don’t know, but it seems too strange to not be for a reason.
Why did Hitler get turned down at the art college he wanted to study at and then become a megalomaniac who sent millions of young men to their deaths and slaughtered others for absolutely no reason… small things that can change the entire face of the world.
@hellblazer
‘Amazing coincidences’ happen all the time.
Literally everything that happens has an exceedingly small chance of happening because it requires a very specific series of events to precede it.
The only reason we sometimes interpret them as having happened for a reason is the value we personally assign to the events.
edit:
There is no reason for anything that happens. The only reason anything has is the reason humans make of it.
Example: there is no reason the sun burns. It doesn’t burn so we may have light and energy. It burns because of the events that preceded it to induce the physical and chemical processes that created it and sustain it.
Why did the plane crash? There are many reasons. Pilot error, a malfunction in the plane’s mechanisms, terrorism, a meteorological occurrence… Why was the earthquake so strong? We live on a planet that has continental plates sitting on a liquid center. The Earth is spinning (for a similar reason tornadoes and hurricanes form, it comes from how the Earth formed in from the accretion disk), the plates move and shift over the liquid core. This causes the plates to rub together, collide into one another. Friction builds up at the fault lines and depending on conditions, a small earthquake might happen or a super major one.
I also HIGHLY doubt that being turned down for art college made Hitler kill millions of people. That’s just silly.
EDIT: Burb is right. Even going to the bathroom, a very common occurrence for everyone, the probability of it happening just that way, taking just that long, and at that exact moment is so exceedingly small that there are less atoms in the universe than that. How about meeting a cashier at a grocery store at that exact moment, with that many skin cells on your body, that amount of bacteria in your system…and meshing that with the number of skin cells on the cashier’s body, the amount of bacteria in the cashier’s system. Why, the probability of that happening so perfectly must be ASTRONOMICAL.
But it happened. And that why you can’t pin a “probability” on these kinds of things. It’s just completely inane.
I was not implying that actually, but if he had instead become an artist like he dreamed of it may (lots of theoretical stuff there, it’s not something you could prove in any way) have changed things to a great degree.
I never said my opinion was something that one could prove or that otherwise makes sense, it’s just my personal opinion. Strange and antiquated as it may be.
And I’m still a young person, I’ve had little experiences to shape it any differently.
I think that he would’ve just become an excellent artist that killed millions. “Mein Fuhrer, we found a bunch of Jews and homos in this town we went into. What shall we do with them?” “Dachau.” “Very good, sir. And that is an excellent rendition of the Auschwitz showers.” “Thank you.”
Is it really unexplainable? Every single flight have people that get too late for the departure or give up taking the flight. Suddenly, one person misses the flight for whatever reason, the plane crashes and everyone thinks that some supernatural event made that person give up that flight.
Here in Brazil, there was one day dedicated to Japanese immigrants (I don’t know why). One unfortunate Japanese truck driver bastard “decided” to die on that day in an accident, and everyone was shocked. Then I just said: what the hell? Japanese guys die every day, hundreds (or thousands or whatever) of people die in car accidents everyday. Why one single poor Japanese man dying in a car accident on that day means so much? If it was one day before or after, no one would have cared, and they shouldn’t.
Another example: electric energy oscillates very often and that makes lights to blink slightly. Then, one day, a bunch of paranoid guys go to some house, make a reunion to summon spirits, see a lamp blink slightly and start screaming because there must be some spirit among them. They also hear some noise, and that noise could be nothing else than a spirit making it.
Yes, sometimes we are lucky and don’t die. Sometimes life gives us opportunities that other people simply don’t have. Whether that happened to you or not, just enjoy your life instead of trying to find a meaning for that. Why not finding a meaning? Because any meaning will make sense, there will be literally millions of meanings, and that is a low estimative.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
