We need a bible of atheism. Or maybe a handbook. Oh yes, let's write a handbook.
Atheist with crisis of conscience. Please help.
by parakeet 70 Replies latest jw friends
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parakeet
Christopher Hitchens (as quoted by dgp):
"Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason.
"...what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake....
".....We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mistery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books....
".....We speculate that it is at least possible that, once people accepted the fact of their short and struggling lives, they might behave better toward each other and not worse.
...We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion.
"...Most important of all, perhaps, we infidels do not need any machinery of reinforcement.
"...We atheists do not require any priests, or hierarchy above them, to police our doctrine. Sacrifices and ceremonies are abhorrent to us, as are relics and the worship of any images or objects (even including objects in the form of one of man's most useful innovations: the bound book). To us no spot on earth is or could be "holier" than another..."
Thank you, dgp, for Hitchens' eloquent exposition of atheism as nonbelief, but not devoid of goodness and hope.
Still waiting to hear from you, Christians. I can't make up my mind until I've heard both sides of this issue.
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parakeet
dgp: Parakeet, you're falling prey to the idea that only religion can give you morals. That's just not true......You may be lost now. Hang on. Keep going.
dgp, my deepest apologies for causing you any distress. This thread was started tongue-in-cheek to spark a discussion (unsuccessfully so far) between atheists and believers about what constitutes atheism and to clarify, hopefully, the fact that atheism is indeed not a religion in any sense whatsoever.
I greatly appreciate your quotation from Hitchens. I had not read that before. It's going into my archives.
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shamus100
parakeet,
What? You were kidding?
Now I've injected this crack into my bloodstream, you awful bird. Bad birdie, bad!
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parakeet
shamus, that's what you get when you take what a parrot says at face value.
Don't worry too much about the crack. It'll pass out of your system like a kidney stone. Won't hurt a bit.
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shamus100
Oooooh!
No bother... I have plenty of horse tranquilizers.
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Chalam
zoiks: I think we're supposed to hate God, somehow. And talk about how much we hate Him, all the time.
But how can we hate God when we don't believe in his existence?
I'm so confused.
Agreed, Zoiks is a false prophet and a heretic ;)
SirNose586: We're supposed to be worshiping Charles Darwin, and his prophet, Richard Dawkins. Worship services are held in any house of ill-repute. Make sure you keep up your personal duty to be cross and contrarian to everyone you meet.
Now that's more like it, real doctrine spoken from a true prophet!
Maybe we could have a few words of scripture to dwell on?
"As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications." — Charles Darwin The Origin of Species (1859), Penguin edn, J. W. Burrow (ed.) (1968), 172.
Blessings, Stephen -
zoiks
I think someone should start teaching the controversy. TEACH IT!
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jaguarbass
My dilemma -- I don't know what the atheistic faith entails. What are its tenets of faith? What are its doctrines? In what manner is an atheist supposed to worship?
What the atheist faith entails is very simple.
You have to get a anatomy/ physiology book read it and see how the body works and then have
faith that it just came to be by itself with no design. Thru macro and micro evolution.
You have to fail to understand the intracacy of a human cell and think it just mindlessly came to
be on its own.
You have to belive that dna just organized itself by a fluke.
You have to have faith that the earth just happens to be the right distance from the sun and the right
tilt and angle to support life. And that there was no design in placing the earth where it is in relation
to the sun and earth.
If it was a little closer we would burn up. If it was a little further everything would be frozen.
To be an atheist you have to fail to see the evidence of a designer in all aspects of life.
You have to fail to understand that their is a very delicate balance of co2 levels
If the level was higher than it is now we would have a run away green house effect and we
would all burn up.
If the co2 levels were lower than they are plants would not be able to do efficient photo-
synthesis and we would all suffocate.
If you can fail to realize or observe some of the above you are well on your way
to being an atheist.
If you are an atheist then Charles Darwin would be your atheistic equivalent to Jesus
And Richard Dawkins would be like Peter the Rock that Darwin built on.
It would also help your atheism if you believe Al Gore invented the internet from a computer
he found that had mysteriously assembeled itself and mysteriously started comunicating with
other computers.
It would help your atheism if you belive your computer wasnt built or designed by someone
but it just happened to be in your possesion.
And now you are mysteriously interacting with it.
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parakeet
jaguarbass, your comments make me think of an illustration.
Imagine a large slab of solid rock. Over time, rain and wind erode a small crack in it. One day a seed is blown into the crack and there is just enough rock dust, water, and sunlight to allow it to sprout and grow, eventually growing into a great tree and splitting the rock.
Things happen without conscious design. Perhaps the earth wasn't chosen because of its unique and advantageous location for life. Maybe life happened because the earth, like the rock and the seed, just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Millions of years from now, maybe earth will be as barren as Mars is now, and Venus will be pulsing with life. Who knows for sure?
