Most people do not believe in afterlife. They think they die and become "worm food" in the words of Ricky Gervais' character from Extras.
Being reckless as humans tend to be they think the situation holds while they're alive. And when it's time for "coming around" it'll be someone else on the receiving end.
Good for you. What are you worried about then? What does it matter if anyone lives or not? If there's earth or universe or anything at all? When you're gone, you're gone. For you nothing existed before you were born, and nothing will after you're gone. Same for everybody else according to you. The believers are mistaken, they're delusional. For them nothing is out there either.
Jeez, maybe because we atheists realise that we only have one life, this is it, let's make the best of it while we can.
If some idiot with a holy book does something good, great, but they're also likely to do something really horrible and evil and either think that it's ok because of their religion or that they'll be forgiven by their invisible friend.
An atheist's moral is based on what's best for the most of us. A religious person's moral is based on weird rules in (usually) a really old book that in the end is all about scoring points in 'heaven'.
An idiot with a holy book hiding behind some religion is just that - an idiot. No one can claim they heard something from heaven, or on the radio for that matter, and justify their actions by it. No one can use belief as a cover, by definition. When you hear such claims you know it's a fraud before you, or just a fool.
Just like when you hear atheists are better humans due to their "one life" realization. They are not. Plenty of horrible actions from this "enlightened" kind as well.
Well, some people are simply psychopaths/sociopaths, and given that many societies/cultures are construed in a way that help them climb, some of them will be atheists. I just personally think that a human being needs either a mental disorder or religion to do evil. I won't say out loud whether I think believing in invisible friends IS a mental disorder... but I believe (that word almost feels tainted) that most horrible actions on a huge scale are religious. Even Hitler was Christian.
Lie esteemed atheists, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, as opposed to those dreadful idiotic believers, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King. Yeah, I get your point.
That, in my opinion, is a very narrow minded perspective, (to think that we are nothing more than worm food.)
But somehow, I don't think we're going to have to wait all the way until the afterlife for this one to come back to bite us.
Nevertheless, if we were to stop for a moment and consider the degree of our complicity in all this, repentance would most definitely be in order, first of all, and then perhaps, civil disobedience.
Believing in any mythical construct is pure idiocy. All of it can be traced back to old dead men making up an instrumental lie so that people would serve them.
Religion can be considered just one of such constructs. There are many that atheists believe in and serve the same purpose if one chooses to reduce it this way.
You can't really blame the atheists. They've been led down the garden path for so long into nihilism. There's no place for religious beliefs to land in them anymore.
In my experience, there's only one effective way to deal with atheism:
Gods are just artifacts of value judgment. They aren't necessary, even if they did exist. All religion is best dismissed as a generated defense of slavery.
You're right. What have I been thinking all these years?
Looked at from that perspective all this makes perfect sense!
We live in an ultra-Darwinian world of Eat or be Eaten! Survival of the fittest!
We are nothing but animals ourselves without a soul with nothing to look forward to.
We don't expect ethics or morals from a Wildebeest? Do we? Of course not! Why should we expect them from ourselves or each other?
All of that craziness I've believed all these years about Telepathy and Mind over Matter and about stepping off from this world into another kind of reality where whatever we Intend comes into being instantaneously and we are no longer bound by the limits of Time/Space and the Laws of Physics? Madness!
Religion is just the opiate of the masses! A means of trying to force them into being something they can never be - Human Beings.
Oh my God! Where do I sign up to be one of the Global Elite? They've had the right idea all along. It's a dog eat dog world where you are either the boot or the face that it's grinding into the pavement.
I've been on the wrong side all along.
Thanks Societies Stinky Parts. You have opened my eyes for me!
Oh you sweet summer child. The heroic impulse generates elitism and aristocracy. If you want to flatten that down you have to reject the *love of* narrative.
That's a pure misunderstanding as I understand it. The God (or the notion, if one prefers) is there not to do stuff for one, but help one do the right thing. If one is seeking such help. But no one is obligated to.
Many cults - especially the proselytizing type - simplify (bastardize) things to just get people in.
Yes. But, 'What goes around, comes around' and I'm sure that all of this will catch up with us sooner or later.
Most people do not believe in afterlife. They think they die and become "worm food" in the words of Ricky Gervais' character from Extras.
Being reckless as humans tend to be they think the situation holds while they're alive. And when it's time for "coming around" it'll be someone else on the receiving end.
I don't believe in an afterlife. I am an atheist. Religion is superstition, nothing more.
Good for you. What are you worried about then? What does it matter if anyone lives or not? If there's earth or universe or anything at all? When you're gone, you're gone. For you nothing existed before you were born, and nothing will after you're gone. Same for everybody else according to you. The believers are mistaken, they're delusional. For them nothing is out there either.
Why worry then?
Jeez, maybe because we atheists realise that we only have one life, this is it, let's make the best of it while we can.
If some idiot with a holy book does something good, great, but they're also likely to do something really horrible and evil and either think that it's ok because of their religion or that they'll be forgiven by their invisible friend.
An atheist's moral is based on what's best for the most of us. A religious person's moral is based on weird rules in (usually) a really old book that in the end is all about scoring points in 'heaven'.
I could go on for hours...
I bet you could but there's no need.
An idiot with a holy book hiding behind some religion is just that - an idiot. No one can claim they heard something from heaven, or on the radio for that matter, and justify their actions by it. No one can use belief as a cover, by definition. When you hear such claims you know it's a fraud before you, or just a fool.
Just like when you hear atheists are better humans due to their "one life" realization. They are not. Plenty of horrible actions from this "enlightened" kind as well.
Well, some people are simply psychopaths/sociopaths, and given that many societies/cultures are construed in a way that help them climb, some of them will be atheists. I just personally think that a human being needs either a mental disorder or religion to do evil. I won't say out loud whether I think believing in invisible friends IS a mental disorder... but I believe (that word almost feels tainted) that most horrible actions on a huge scale are religious. Even Hitler was Christian.
Lie esteemed atheists, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, as opposed to those dreadful idiotic believers, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King. Yeah, I get your point.
That, in my opinion, is a very narrow minded perspective, (to think that we are nothing more than worm food.)
But somehow, I don't think we're going to have to wait all the way until the afterlife for this one to come back to bite us.
Nevertheless, if we were to stop for a moment and consider the degree of our complicity in all this, repentance would most definitely be in order, first of all, and then perhaps, civil disobedience.
"We" are not complicit unless we voted for the capitalist criminals. I did not vote for any of them. The ruling classes are responsible for all of it.
Whether or not there is an afterlife, imperialism comes home to roost and has been doing that for awhile.
Believing in any mythical construct is pure idiocy. All of it can be traced back to old dead men making up an instrumental lie so that people would serve them.
Religion can be considered just one of such constructs. There are many that atheists believe in and serve the same purpose if one chooses to reduce it this way.
You can't really blame the atheists. They've been led down the garden path for so long into nihilism. There's no place for religious beliefs to land in them anymore.
In my experience, there's only one effective way to deal with atheism:
https://youtu.be/YnNSnJbjdws?feature=shared
But what about the real thing?
How are we supposed to deal with that!
Gods are just artifacts of value judgment. They aren't necessary, even if they did exist. All religion is best dismissed as a generated defense of slavery.
You're right. What have I been thinking all these years?
Looked at from that perspective all this makes perfect sense!
We live in an ultra-Darwinian world of Eat or be Eaten! Survival of the fittest!
We are nothing but animals ourselves without a soul with nothing to look forward to.
We don't expect ethics or morals from a Wildebeest? Do we? Of course not! Why should we expect them from ourselves or each other?
All of that craziness I've believed all these years about Telepathy and Mind over Matter and about stepping off from this world into another kind of reality where whatever we Intend comes into being instantaneously and we are no longer bound by the limits of Time/Space and the Laws of Physics? Madness!
Religion is just the opiate of the masses! A means of trying to force them into being something they can never be - Human Beings.
Oh my God! Where do I sign up to be one of the Global Elite? They've had the right idea all along. It's a dog eat dog world where you are either the boot or the face that it's grinding into the pavement.
I've been on the wrong side all along.
Thanks Societies Stinky Parts. You have opened my eyes for me!
Oh you sweet summer child. The heroic impulse generates elitism and aristocracy. If you want to flatten that down you have to reject the *love of* narrative.
https://libcom.org/article/toward-anthropological-theory-value-false-coin-our-own-dreams-david-graeber
Most relevant is chapter 3, "Value as the importance of actions", broken out here:
https://davidgraeber.org/articles/value-as-the-importance-of-actions/
Ultimately, what you and other henologists are doing is projecting perfect values onto a perfect judge and trying to approach him.
He was most likely thinking about MORE TAXES!
as it turns out 'god' seems pretty irrelevant. "if there really was a god here, he would have raised a hand by now ...".
That's a pure misunderstanding as I understand it. The God (or the notion, if one prefers) is there not to do stuff for one, but help one do the right thing. If one is seeking such help. But no one is obligated to.
Many cults - especially the proselytizing type - simplify (bastardize) things to just get people in.
well, this 'helping believers to do the right thing' isn't really working, afaik.