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Is it bad to NOT be religious?

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Mr.Pipin

Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 4:20 pm Post subject: Is it bad to NOT be religious?

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Joined: 08 Aug 2006
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Is it bad to not be a religious person in todays world?

I dont believe or disbelieve in creationism, yet I dont consider myself an atheist because there is no proof to discount creationism, in my opinion.

Yet, Im looked down upon, ridiculed for having an 'extreme' lack of faith, even when most people who criticize me are not exactly avid church-goers themselves.

So my question is, in our current society what seems to be the general perspective on religious beliefs?

Obviously

Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 4:32 pm Post subject: Re: Is it bad to NOT be religious?

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Mr.Pipin wrote:

You will always be ridiculed for not believing what other people believe. There's nothing wrong with being yourself, but I'd advice to stay away from creationism. They misrepresent what they're fighting against and ignore the fact that they've been proven wrong on every account. Evolution is a fact, and creationism doesn't make any sense whatsoever as a viable theory of the variety of species you see to this day.
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“After Darwin, God's role changes from being the designer of all creatures, great and small, to being the designer of the laws of nature, from which natural selection can unfold, to being just perhaps the chooser of the laws.”

~ Daniel C. Dennett

manadude2

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 2:54 am Post subject:

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Location: At a computer on Earth in the Milky Way Galaxy... chocolate bar.

Do you WANT to rot in hell? Only Joking. Its not bad at all. Its your life after all.
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Pendragon

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 3:12 am Post subject: Re: Is it bad to NOT be religious?

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Mr.Pipin wrote:

Yet, Im looked down upon, ridiculed for having an 'extreme' lack of faith, even when most people who criticize me are not exactly avid church-goers themselves.

In these situations it's good to realize that there's a whole world beyond your class, school, community etc. Especially if you live in a small community people will always try to make you think that their opinions are the only things that matter, that it's important to conform to the standard of that specific community. Within this community you may seem 'different', but in the country as a whole this community may itself be strange.
It's a good weapon against bullies in general: they may be king of the hill in a class or neighbourhood, but in the wider world they are nothing.

qwertyman

Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 10:49 am Post subject:

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Joined: 28 Mar 2008
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Location: England

you are not in the wrong, the people trying to force their beleafs onto you are in the wrong.
everyone has the right to beleave in whatever they want, weather it be theism, atheism or whatever
(allthough my signiture may not say the same Very Happy

)
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'if one man beleaves in fairies its called madness
if one million men beleave in faries its called religion'- Richard Dawkings
(but i think he was quoting someone when he said it...but who cares)

mitchellmckain

Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 5:37 pm Post subject: Re: Is it bad to NOT be religious?

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Mr.Pipin wrote:

Sounds to me that you are talking about the kind of religiousity that has more in common with nationalism than a relationship with God. As such it is more about believing what you are told to believe and doing what you are told to do, than about any kind of effort to find the truth. This sounds a great deal like the attitudes that created Nazi Germany, in which case the answer to your question of whether it is bad to indulge in such religiousity becomes rather obvious don't you think?

Jesus was certainly not about caving in to the opinions of the religious majority now was He? Indeed the example of Jesus and the early Christians is that we should stand up for what we believe in no matter how the oppressors abuse us. By their ignorant and hypocritical behavior they make it rather clear what they really are. If we want to preserve religious freedom in an area dominated by an ignorant majority whether seriously or pretentiously religious, we have to fight for it. You have on your side all the greatest people in history including the ones these "religious" people pay lip service to.
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kingla

Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 3:49 am Post subject:

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(Q)

Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 6:30 am Post subject: Re: Is it bad to NOT be religious?

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mitchellmckain wrote:

Jesus was certainly not about caving in to the opinions of the religious majority now was He? Indeed the example of Jesus and the early Christians is that we should stand up for what we believe in no matter how the oppressors abuse us. By their ignorant and hypocritical behavior they make it rather clear what they really are. If we want to preserve religious freedom in an area dominated by an ignorant majority whether seriously or pretentiously religious, we have to fight for it. You have on your side all the greatest people in history including the ones these "religious" people pay lip service to.

Usually, your arguments are quite good, fallacious, but good.

This one is one of the worst, and one of the funniest, Mitch.

It would be interesting if the people who paid the lip service think as you do with science as you do with religion.

Pretty silly, huh?
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I may have no understanding of the current theory of evolution. But that's because science keeps changing it. A few weeks ago I read in the newspaper that it had once again been adjusted & just the other day I discovered a new book called "The New Theory of Evolution" ~~Steven Titchenell : W.V.B.I.G. President.

Dishmaster

Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 1:55 pm Post subject:

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Many people connect religion with basic beliefs, ideals or purpose. But this is not necessarily a logical connection. I for myself would rather describe me as "agnostic", i.e. I don't know and I cannot know, if there's a god or anything like that. And if it existed, it would not be relevant. So, if you find or even already found a different way to make any sense out of life, then good for you that you don't need that ballast. Cheer up! Turn it back on them!

SuperNatendo

Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 2:40 pm Post subject:

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Sometimes, a person who believes a religion is horrible morally. Look at extremists, cult leaders, terrorists, Hitler etc...

Sometimes religious people are "good" moral examples. Sometimes they aren't.

Sometimes Atheists are "good" Moral examples. Sometimes they aren't.

A lot of times I hear my atheist friends say "Religion is the cause of all the worlds war!" But they are wrong, Being atheist does not automatically put you in a group of enlightened people who never caused war or evil to humankind! examples: Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot etc...

It all has to do with the individual's choices.
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JaneBennet

Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 10:15 am Post subject:

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SuperNatendo wrote:

Sometimes religious people are "good" moral examples. Sometimes they aren't.

Sometimes Atheists are "good" Moral examples. Sometimes they aren't.

In a less roundabout way of putting it, there is no correlation between religiousness and moral uprightness. Very Happy

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daytonturner

Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 9:49 pm Post subject:

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Woof said:

Quote:

You will always be ridiculed for not believing what other people believe.

Based on this post, it is also obvious that one can be ridiculed for believing that which someone else does not believe.

Woof added:

Quote:

There's nothing wrong with being yourself, but I'd advice to stay away from creationism. They misrepresent what they're fighting against and ignore the fact that they've been proven wrong on every account.

That's a misrepresentation in itself. So far non-creationism has yet to provide any viable proof of abiogenesis which is an essential component of any non-creationist position. Non-creationism has yet to come up with any viable start of the Universe or, in the alternative, a causation of The Big Bang or whatever else they may label the initiation of the Universe. So creationists have not been "proven" wrong on any count. Actually, Woof, if you have such proof, it is worth millions.

Woof also said:

Quote:

Evolution is a fact, and creationism doesn't make any sense whatsoever as a viable theory of the variety of species you see to this day.

Evolution is a fact only to the extent of microevolution in the area of speciation within genera and variations within species. No mechanism provides for nor has any fossil evidence shown any macroevolution above those stages.

Nor does evolution seem to have an answer for the fact that the variety and number of species we see now are but a pittance when compared to the number and variety which have existed. Evolution, it would seem, should be produciing more species as well as new genera, familes, orders, classes and phyla -- not fewer. Also why should we be limited to five or six kingdoms in only two domains? And, as a matter of proven fact, if life started with one single living cell, was it plant or animal?

Maybe there isn't all the much proof of what you believe, either.
_________________
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. -- Albert Einstein

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mitchellmckain

Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 10:26 pm Post subject: Re: Is it bad to NOT be religious?

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Joined: 06 Oct 2005
Posts: 1524
Location: Salt Lake City, UTAH, USA

(Q) wrote:

mitchellmckain wrote:

Jesus was certainly not about caving in to the opinions of the religious majority now was He? Indeed the example of Jesus and the early Christians is that we should stand up for what we believe in no matter how the oppressors abuse us. By their ignorant and hypocritical behavior people make it rather clear what they really are. If we want to preserve religious freedom in an area dominated by an ignorant majority whether seriously or pretentiously religious, we have to fight for it. You have on your side all the greatest people in history including the ones these "religious" people pay lip service to.

You find my comments fallacious, funny and silly.

I find your comments unintelligible.

Others, shall be judges of this that are more impartial, I suppose...
_________________
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Obviously

Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 5:50 am Post subject:

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daytonturner wrote:

That's a misrepresentation in itself.

What an ironic statement considering what you write in the rest of your post. Laughing

daytonturner wrote:

So far non-creationism has yet to provide any viable proof of abiogenesis which is an essential component of any non-creationist position. Non-creationism has yet to come up with any viable start of the Universe or, in the alternative, a causation of The Big Bang or whatever else they may label the initiation of the Universe. So creationists have not been "proven" wrong on any count. Actually, Woof, if you have such proof, it is worth millions.

What are you talking about? Non-creationism? You mean science? Based upon what I can gather from this video, there's no currently accepted theory of abiogenesis (I believe the RNA World Hypothesis is the best to date), but there are, however, several hypotheses about it:

Wiki wrote:

There is no truly "standard model" of the origin of life. But most currently accepted models build in one way or another upon a number of discoveries about the origin of molecular and cellular components for life, which are listed in a rough order of postulated emergence:

Plausible pre-biotic conditions result in the creation of certain basic small molecules (monomers) of life, such as amino acids. This was demonstrated in the Miller-Urey experiment by Stanley L. Miller and Harold C. Urey in 1953.
Phospholipids (of an appropriate length) can spontaneously form lipid bilayers, a basic component of the cell membrane.
The polymerization of nucleotides into random RNA molecules might have resulted in self-replicating ribozymes (RNA world hypothesis).
Selection pressures for catalytic efficiency and diversity result in ribozymes which catalyse peptidyl transfer (hence formation of small proteins), since oligopeptides complex with RNA to form better catalysts. Thus the first ribosome is born, and protein synthesis becomes more prevalent.
Proteins outcompete ribozymes in catalytic ability, and therefore become the dominant biopolymer. Nucleic acids are restricted to predominantly genomic use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Current_models

As we all know "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", and there is evidence and experiments showing life emerging from non-life to be possible. You can find more info on abiogenesis here.

The fact that creationist assert there to be an intelligent designer behind the origin of life does not help scientific research or the growth for knowledge any. Replacing one unknown (origin of life) with another unknown (an intelligent designer) is ludicrous. The same goes of course to the big bang theory. It doesn't matter if we can't explain the origin or causation of things yet, eventually we will after hard research.

daytonturner wrote:

You must be joking! Just typing in "observed instances of speciation" in google and clicking the first link you'll find many documented instances of speciation. The fossil record is also full of evidence supporting macro-evolution. We can take the genome of chimpanzees and compare it to humans and outward prove we have a common decent. Your ignorance doesn't prove evolution wrong, there is indisputable evidence for macro-evolution out there.

daytonturner wrote:

Nor does evolution seem to have an answer for the fact that the variety and number of species we see now are but a pittance when compared to the number and variety which have existed. Evolution, it would seem, should be produciing more species as well as new genera, familes, orders, classes and phyla -- not fewer. Also why should we be limited to five or six kingdoms in only two domains? And, as a matter of proven fact, if life started with one single living cell, was it plant or animal?

Maybe there isn't all the much proof of what you believe, either.

Senseless rambling is it? This is peculiar:

daytonturner wrote:

Evolution, it would seem, should be produciing more species as well as new genera, familes, orders, classes and phyla -- not fewer.

Competition, resources? Are these new words for you? By the way, speciation doesn't occur spontaneously and rapidly (well, you do have Punctuated Equilibrium, but let's not get into that)!

PS: I must admit that my knowledge is quite limited within, at least, the subject of abiogenesis. I shall do more study on this subject.
_________________
“After Darwin, God's role changes from being the designer of all creatures, great and small, to being the designer of the laws of nature, from which natural selection can unfold, to being just perhaps the chooser of the laws.”

~ Daniel C. Dennett

(Q)

Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 7:42 am Post subject: Re: Is it bad to NOT be religious?

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Joined: 12 May 2005
Posts: 989

mitchellmckain wrote:

You find my comments fallacious, funny and silly.

I find your comments unintelligible.

Others, shall be judges of this that are more impartial, I suppose...

Fight for your right to be delusional, Mitch. Fight for your right to believe in the invisible and undetectable. Fight for your right to propagate childhood indoctrination. Fight for your right to divide mankind. Fight for your right to kill in the name of your cruel and immoral gods.

Yes Mitch, THAT'S intelligent. Rolling Eyes

_________________
I may have no understanding of the current theory of evolution. But that's because science keeps changing it. A few weeks ago I read in the newspaper that it had once again been adjusted & just the other day I discovered a new book called "The New Theory of Evolution" ~~Steven Titchenell : W.V.B.I.G. President.

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