Believer or Atheist?

[mbamike]

Believer.

We are too wonderfully made both inwardly and outwardly for the human race, the environment, and the universe to just happen by chance. There must be a master engineer somewhere.

 

[LoveIsNow]

Both. I identify as a Secular Humanist. That puts me squarely in the atheist camp but I'd rather be affirmative and identify myself by my belief rather than my disbelief.

 

[LoveIsNow]

Um, yeah it makes sense. At first we just wandered around like any animal, then after perhaps 90% or more of our million years on this planet we invented language allowing ourselves to pass on our observations and knowledge about the world to others and to make closer knit societies. About thirty thousand years ago we invented pictography (cave paintings, etc.) and by about 7,000 years ago we invented writing which allowed us to record our knowledge so even when we died, the next generation would have our knowledge and the literate classes of each generation could build upon that foundation of knowledge. Then came printing, meaning written knowledge could be more easily copied and distributed to more and more people. As the learned class grew, they realized that literacy and education was a great civilizing factor and pushed in the past two or three centuries to make sure literacy was as close to universal as it could be, meaning more and more creative people had the tools to utilize that creativity and could invent new things. Then we got photography, video and sound recording, telegraphy, telephony, radio, and later the internet, meaning now information is traveling faster than ever before. Most likely we will make the same progress in the next 20 or 30 years that we did in the last 100, and new ideas will begin circulating faster and faster.

It isn't the amount of time we've been here; it's the fact that, while our progress started out slowly it's coming exponentially faster.

 

[blackbeltninja]

You surprise me. I don't think the pen thing would be enough to convince me that a god exists, lol... I mean, moving a pen around my (or your) desk, however astonishing it might be, is a far cry from being the creator of anything... I'd probably pretend to believe though, just in case he turns out to be a bit volatile.

The idea was that it would be simple and unambiguous.

Nothing which gives me anything, like "put a million dollars into my bank account," and nothing which could be confused as to how it might have happened. Me, quiet room, watching pen on desk becomes me, quiet room, astounded at watching pen on desk become pen on floor with no obvious human intervention and no gust of wind blowing everything over or anything like that. Something dead simple and theoretically not a big ask for an omnipotent and omnipresent being.

I'm still waiting, of course.

-d-

 

[blackbeltninja]

^I hear you. But I don't want something flashy; just the pen.

Hell, just make it wiggle a bit - that'll do.

-d-

 

[Timber_8]

Atheist, It has nothing to do with justifying my lifestyle.

 

[ChickenGuy]

OK, I thought it would be interesting to collate the answers so far, including the OP's and mine:


Atheist - 15
Agnostic - 11
Believer - 9

Atheist-Agnostic - 3
Secular Humanist - 2
Others - 5

 

[Lube]

The problem I have with most religions is that, rather than encouraging people to think and solve problems on their own, they encourage people to point to a passage in some book written by some people a long long time ago and say, "that's the answer!".

How is that any way to live?

 

[DonQuixote]

Lube,
I'm playing "Remember the Question ~ Don't expand/reinterpret it" again.
The Question was "Do you believe in (a) God?"

It was NOT "What RELIGION are you/do you believe in?"

As I've mentioned before, these are VASTLY different things.

Religion is humanity's interpretation/politicization of "God".
Some do a better job of trying to stay "on topic" and "off politics", but they are still human constructs.

Belief in a GOD is a whole other endhilada, mi amigo. You do NOT have to "belong" to an "organized religion" to have a faith/belief in a God.

You are absolutely right, by the way -- most religious leaders have their own agenda, and cloak it as though it was God's mandate as spoken to them to enlighten the world. Please don't take that as condemnation of people of the cloth - many try their best to bring what they truly believe the True God of all of us is about -- they don't necessarily consciously try to push a personal agenda but, we are all human and subject to our foibles to some extent.

 

[Tbot91]

How exactly would evolution promote secularism? Religion is spread through social interactions, often through family. It's something that's communicated and (generally) a philosophy that has almost no affect on survivability. Thinking about the origins of religion, I would suppose that it is probably simply a manifestation of man's curiosity of the natural world, which we have because we have such big brains . People generally want explanations for things and religion probably just arose as one means of explanation.

Your argument about life on other planets can be dismantled using the same kind of reasoning that is often employed in favor of deities that goes something along of the lines of: "Since you can't disprove my deity, that means he doesn't necessarily fail to exist." So, although kind of semantic, shouldn't the same kind of reasoning follow that since you have not explored all of the billion billion galaxies (actually take the time to comprehend that number... it's so ridiculously huge) each with millions to billions of stars which may or may not have planets, you cannot say for certain that we are, in fact, the only life that exists in the Universe?

It's pretty obvious that our planet is very suitable for "our type of life" (of course it would have to be for our type to be there anyway (anthropic principle), but that doesn't necessarily mean that life has to be exactly like ours, perhaps there are radically different forms of life that we have yet to experience. Even so, it seems highly unlikely that in the billion billion galaxies each with millions to trillions of stars that we are only ONE in all those astronomical numbers.

 

[DonQuixote]

It's something that's communicated and (generally) a philosophy that has almost no affect on survivability.

Tbot,
Just being a nit-picker, here - Religions have absolutely had an Effect on survivability -- Judaic law on keeping Kosher hails from an era where there was poor hygiene and sanitation. The pile upon pile of rules and what could/couldn't be eaten were developed to help insure that people didn't de Facto poison themselves and their families.

They used the veil of religion as the "stick" to enforce compliance.

Circumcision, similarly, was a health-related issue - think of where they lived - dry, SANDY, hot, arid desert - again, with poor hygiene, Leaving the foreskin intact "encouraged" sand to become embedded under the foreskin, aggravating the glans, which could result in an infection - and certainly discomfort at the least. Given that they didn't bathe all that often, they didn't often clean under the foreskin, either.

I'm reasonably sure that, if we looked "under the hood" at non-Judaic based religions, we might find similar rationale in Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.

 

[honooryuu]

<~~wiccan actually.

 

[Tbot91]

Not really sure how its "my job" to prove evolution, but instead of giving you trite little snippets, if you really need convincing, you should read something like The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution or something similar (there are a few others). There is an insurmountable evidence for evolution.


I'm not quite sure I understand your question and what you mean by a divergent path towards creation. Are you implying that if evolution is true, those species that evolve and have the capacity for consciousness would by default adopt beliefs that would be contrary to theism? The mere rise of consciousness doesn't necessarily favor theism or atheism. I'd really like to know more clearly what you mean.


We have briefly explored the other seven planets in our solar system and we haven't even fully explored our own planet (i.e. the depths of the oceans). The way you use explore seems to imply complete exploration, which is most certainly not the case. We have thus far, to the extent of our current capabilities, failed to found life within our solar system. We haven't even come close to exploring extrasolar planets.


I must admit that I am at fault here; I was rather ambiguous. What I mean to say is that life as we currently understand it requires liquid water. By "other types of life" I mean there may be forms of life that are completely unfamiliar to us, in that they may or may not utilize water, or have completely different chemistry that we're familiar with. Life as we know it highly revolves around carbon chemistry, perhaps there is life elsewhere that utilizes different forms of chemistry.

Going back to life on our solar system, the planet that most closely resembles earth is mars, but it really isn't even that close. It's atmosphere is 100 times thinner and it is far, far colder than our planet (its mean temperature is as cold or colder than our coldest arctic temperatures), and has no magnetosphere (which is why it has almost no atmosphere). If we want to be hopeful to find life that's similar to life on earth, our solar system isn't the best place to look (besides earth of course ).

Much of the search for life is hopes for finding planets similar to earth. Why we haven't found any yet is because planets are hard to find and are relatively recently being unveiled. The ones we can find are very large and very close to their stars, this is because when big planets are close to stars, they dim the star's light noticeably as it passes our line of sight. The planets we have found via this method so far are gas giants that are bigger than Jupiter, and their proximity to their star makes them very hot (thousands of degrees C). Also, the hot jupiters we have found so far are closer to their star than Mercury is to our sun. It is not within our current means to find planets that are near the size of earth because earth is quite small in comparison.

 

[hotdog1846]

I only quite Guy4Silver to make a point:

The conflict between evolution and a literalist interpretation of creation myths is a major sticking point for many people.

Evolution is, as scientific theories go, a better accepted and understood theory than theories about gravity.

Yet nobody disputes that gravity exists.

BTW, to answer the question ... I'll just claim to be a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It's easier than trying to explain how I find great meaning, depth, and transcendence in various religious schools of thought, but I don't consider myself a "believer".

 

[The_Reaper]

I classified myself as Atheist for the longest time, but I find I'm drifting more towards being more of an Agnostic.

I think for the most part, I've seen too many coincidences in my life to know there's no such thing as coincidence, which has led to me becoming a bit of a fatalist/determinist. And it's hard to believe in a concept of destiny, if there isn't at least something that frames our destiny outside of ourselves.

I do know that I reject the organized religions that current dot the landscape throughout the world; but I suppose I am more open now than I was back in the day to the possibility of there being something out there that may have had a hand in our creation as a species...

I just can't believe the stories organized religion tell about it...And I did try for quite some time in my youth, but I kept finding plotholes and problems...And unanswered prayers began to mount; so of course, that's how I got started on this path.

I'm rambling.

 

[bankside]

You can't ask that question unless you can answer these: If a being created the gases, where was that being before the bang? And where did the being come from?

There is no fathomable answer to my questions, nor to yours.

-d-

Oh, you mustn't say that. Apparently it is "arrogant."

 

[ansc1127]

I was talking to my mother and said I find it hard to believe that a god is less mature than some humans. There are humans that have total humility and kindness for all and are forgiving. God says love me or else. What? Really?Sounds like a petulant child to me. So i am not sure.