one could reverse the question: why do dead people have to go somewhere? the response for me is obvious: because the pain is too high to those who survive. So it’s kind of healthy to have some psychological balance that helps overcome the pain. That’s one of the point where religions have a natural advantage. For an Atheist there need be other compensation mechanisms which are not obvious and are more complicated to manage.
you need strong shoes to be an atheist: you’ve got hope without afterlife!
Can anyone tell me why some of my christian friends gets mad when I mix up christianity and catholocism? Didn’t christianity/prodestant(sp?) come about because of King Henry V or something?
Christianity is the whole Jesus-believing crowd.
It is split up into alot of groups, like catholics, protestants, anglicans, orthodox etc. which are all different branches of christianity.
Protestantism was started in 1521 by Martin Luther and anglicanism was started by King Henry VIII.
If you understand and believe in Buddhist or Muslim practices, there really is no reason you shouldn’t be able to base your life around those beliefs…religion shouldn’t have anything to do with where you live, it’s about who you are, and who you want to be.
I don’t know, but Mormons tend to get mad when you say that they’re not Christians…just thought I’d add that ( :
Because in the USA, Catholics have been targeted by Christian terrorist groups like the KKK (and their British equivalent in Northern Ireland), and when the Italian and Irish Catholics arrived in the USA in the late 1800s, the Protestants/Christians put signs in their window saying things like “No Irish.” They taught in the NYC Public Schools that Catholics were inferior, carried disease (typhoid/typhus ass’d with poverty, sewage) and had many children, so the Bishop pulled them all out of the NYC Pub Schools and formed the Catholic School system. And Irish Catholics came to the USA because the British Protestants was allowing them to starve to death, while importing food from Ireland.
All USA presidents have been Protestant except JFK, and there is not likely to be another one, given the anti-Catholic sentiment in the USA.
Catholics haven’t exactly been welcomed into the Christian fold.
It’s not quite a simple as that.
These two wiki articles will at least give you a good overview.
You can find sources and research further if you want to.
History of christianity.
History of anglicanism.
As for why they get upset, I’m afraid you’ll have to ask them.
(And while I’m linking…)
Mark,
Just for the record, that’s not really what I was saying. I was trying to enumerate some reasons why atheists get so upset. Not why they became atheists. I think they are two separate issues [edit: see below] – being an atheist and (optionally) being upset with or against religion (more to the point, religion’s effects on the world).
By the way, this is the nicest discussion – because we are talking about people. About us. About each other. Not arguing (although I’m sure that will come later:)). I really regret not calling this thread Let’s Talk About Religion. Oh, well.
Edit: What you said is starting to sink in now. Some people choose to become atheists for the wrong reasons, not through logic and critical thinking. I tend to overlook that, because it wasn’t the case for me.
I agree that organized religion is a product of humanity, and so is science. So how can anyone invoke science as something greater than religion without being dogmatic? Is this any different than the religious fundamentalists that are dogmatic about believing what they think their holy book says.
That’s ironic. I’m a theist because I don’t have enough faith in science to answer every question about reality and not because I’m ignorant of science. I have great respect for science, but I also believe it has limits. And that is where other fields of inquiry begin, not to fill in the gaps that science hasn’t yet explained but to fill in the gaps that I believe science will never understand.
Further, I think there can be multiple valid accounts about reality. For example, it is unnecessary to insist that a scientific explanation is better than a theological explanation or vice versa. Both can be considered equally valid and equally important.
No, it’s more complex than that because religion is a product of human culture and thus is greatly dependent on the culture that developed it. Eastern and Western cultures/languages/mindsets are still very different. If I studied Buddhism, everthing I read would be shaded by my Western mindset. I would inevitably miss a lot of the meaning. To really grasp what Buddhism means, I believe I should at least physically relocate to be part of a predominantly Buddhist culture.
People forgot all the oppression and death performed by atheists, esp. commmnists (who by ideology are atheists), in China, USSR, and elsewhere. For a relatively unpopular religion, atheists may have caused more of that stuff you dislike, person per person.
I don’t think you can blame religion or aethism for stuff that people did. They may have done it in the name of some religion or other but it’s man’s inhumanity to man that is to blame, people’s fear, pain and ignorance.
I don’t object to organised religion and infact feel that if it helps you to get by, then have religion. Whatever helps.
I personally ‘believe’ in people (which may seem strange after the first point above). And I like to think that i will live on in other people’s memories and the way that I have helped them in life. It makes the total nothingness to come seem more barable.
Cathy
You worship people!!?? Come on over to my place!
Unfortunately, you still haven’t found the blame for man’s inhumanity to man. You’ve simply created a phrase that captures what they wish to understand.
Ofcoures I don’t ‘worship’ people. I don’t go regularly to buildings dedicated to singing thier praises. or have a huge book about them. Oh well, actually, perhaps I do…
Anyway, trying to find out what was to blame for man’s inhumanity to man is what got me interested in psychology in the first place. Six years later I’m not much nearer the answer only that there isn’t one thing to blame. The reasons for cruelty are as varied as the individuals involved. And the desire isn’t always to hurt other people so much as to protect themselves. Perhaps it’s more like man’s humanity to man but because of the way we’re made we just can’t help hurting other people sometimes. I don’t know. What I do know is that something that can see absolutely aweful when you hear about it in an abstract way is sometimes almost understandable if you really gain an understanding of what was going on.
Cathy
That is what the Christian creation story is about. It’s not a scientific text. The meaning is simple. Humanity has fallen victim to its sinful nature.
I have to disagree here…I “know” that it’s on the money, but I pretty much never think about it, the Pledge of Allegience is just a series of words that I have to say every day at school, with ‘Under God’ being jsut two more of them, and I never consider the religious implicaitons of saying “bless you” when someone sneezes…it’s just common courtesy for me.
As for the historical atrocities, just because things are done ‘in the name of something’ doesn’t mean it’s that something’s fault…
This example is slightly off, but do we blame the cars or the drivers for the accident? True, if there were no cars, then there would be no accident, but at the same time, it’s the driver’s fault. One thing I can’t stand about the 9/11 thing is when people take it out on Islam…Islam doesn’t call on people to slaughter in it’s name…it calls for many of the same things as Christianity
I got a little off topic, but my point is, you can’t place the blame for the atrocities on the religion, but only the people who committed them.
Sorry if that was a little hard to follow…:o
Well a lot of my values may be ‘christian’, I just don’t believe in god.
Cathy
Therefore we should look towards the astronauts.
Debating religion with a theist is like banging your head against a wall
Haha, yes, the astronauts are the true prophets.
But no, what I mean is, while in this life, we cannot know the “Truth,” whatever it may be. Even though I believe there must be something more to everything than we can know right now, I still think it is impossible to know what that is.
Enlightenment comes in many, many ways.
For me, it came through books. My first exposure to spirituality came through reading the Bible and attending a Christian church. Hated it. In college I was exposed to other philosophies… I read some of the Bhagavad-Gita and some essays on Buddhism and Taoism, and then my perception of the world began to change.
It doesn’t matter if you’re in the East or the West to become enlightened. All it takes is an open mind.
From my understanding of things, one does not become or be a Buddhist… a Buddhist simply is.