---EDDIT---

I made another thread to apologise to DM but it dissapeared!

*cue x-files music*

The Sphinx wrote: Nobody.

Well actually DM is the only real atheist I have run into on here. Everyone else is like me a pseudo worshipper of something.

Like me, I fall under Christianity, I think, BUT unlike most Christians I......

- Don't believe jesus was white

- believe Jesus was the son of god but not God

- believe the bible may have once contained the word of God but man inserted 2 million of his own words.

- don't believe that worshipping the almighty requires as many rules as people make up to be as the requirement of having a middle man (minister)


And yet I almost always branded a worshipper of satan and needing Jesus LOL

Theres no such thing as anathiest....most arelost belivers choosing to abstain in choice.

@Shinx

You see people know I don't believe in any religion or spirituality whatsoever. Nothing. Nada.

This always leads them to question me. It bores me intensly but by copying this from my blog and pasting it here I'm finishing with it from now on.

Now here is the thing... If I answer you in detail and explain my position I get accused of ranting and preaching; and people say atheists (meaning me) are more hardline in ramming home their way of thought than religious people. Obviously this vexes me.

If I say nothing on the other hand, you are free to insult me and carry on with the misconceptions of what you think I believe. Plain sillyness most of it.

Now I'll admit... when I first started thinking the way I do I did attack everybody elses postition. Not out of spite or nastiness. But out of a natural need to affirm my own position. Seeking out the contradictions and flaws in my own arguments by testing them against others. I also had a childish desire to make people see the world how I did as if that would somehow validate what I thought. So I suppose I brought posts like yours on myself by being annoying in the past.

Think of it like those brothers who went inside and came out muslims, or the born again christians you know. New Jehovahs witnesses knocking at your door. All trying to convert you now with much vigour and zeal.

Once they (and I) get to a certain point of certainty within themselves and are assured of their own belief system they tend to stop this and settle down.

Everybody is on their own journey to make sense of the world. It's a personal thing. Most people are born with one set of beliefs and never challenge it. Some do. Some pick up religion and some discard it.

For both types in the latter group there is a transition period. Like new afrocentrics who start wearing dashikis, growing their hair and wearing african clothes all of a sudden... it's cute but tiring lol. I apologise now to all those I might have annoyed back in the day by engaging them in debate all the time wether they liked it or not.

So I'm not writing this merely to go over about being an atheist and what it means to me. That's not the point. I'm just putting here so I can reference it each time people either insult me or ask me innocent question I can't be bothered going over again and again.

Atheism is not a belief! It means nothing. Nothing whatsoever. This is the thing that religious people don't get when they mistake my position for merely being a different religion. It's not. It's the complete absence of any religious or spiritual yearnings at all.

How I got there is another discussion altogether. I was raised religiously as a Catholic (yeah I know) and went to Sunday school and all that jazz. Was kinda into it. Went to Catholic school and so on. Then I lost faith with the book and stagnation so I experimented with the baptist church, the methodist, pentecostal and even Islam briefly. Never finding anything more in those beliefs than I did where I started and I realised that was the problem. It wasn't the rules or the dogma or the books that didn't sit with me. It was the idea of a God in the first place. I just didn't buy it. It didn't make sense to me.

That is the personal bit which is different to each individual. What makes sense to you. What you know of the world in terms of facts and knowledge and how you put it together in your own mind in terms of organisation of ideas. For some God makes perfect sense, the only sense. For me it made none. I couldn't buy it that the easter bunny and santa were myths and false and odin and thor were simply stories... but god was supposedly real.

I learned about religions history, the different kinds and the similarities and it's place and role in the world. I learned about the role it played in the history of black people and other peoples all over the worldand how it changed. I considered it's earliest meanings and purposes and how far it had diverged. The borrowing and stealing of ideas and flexibility to fashions of man in political circumstances through the ages. I learned that some beliefs were "primitive" and "pagan" while others were apparently normal despite all being as fanciful as each other.

Anyway long story short, in the fire of youth I had to read a lot and ask a lot of different people and go through years of making things make sense and exploring others ideas before settling down on what I imagine now.

Perhaps I'll change mymind, who knows? Life is ongoing and you always learn new things. I'm not old enough to knowall but wise enough to know younever can and should never be rigidly CERTAIN of anything so tenous...









FAQ

May I ask Mr DrunkMoney... To whom do you cry when you stub your toe? When you hit your head?

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Do you shout,

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''Oh! The creator! Who ever he or she or it might be!''

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Or do you stillshout,''JEEZE!'' Orsimply ''Jesus!''

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Hmmmmmm?.... ....

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Still say, ''Oh My God!''???

Can you get on with religious people?

Most of my family are strongly religious but then some are Catholic, Some methodist, some muslim and some who nominally say they are something by identity but don't really take it serious. Blood is thicker than whatever religions they all want to believe in. Obviously I love them all having grown up with them.

Nearly 99f people I know are religious so asking if I can get along with religious people is silly really.

Why do are you still alive? Why do you care about living if you don't think there is anything else after life?

I like living. It's all I know! I have sensations and experiences and I like them. I am here to learn and enjoy mytime on earth or find some meaning for myself by doing something. Perhaps I want to be remembered, which is a foolish whim but there it is. There are always new experiences I want to have and so much for me to do in this finite time of existance.

How can you know love if you don't believe in God?

Because love is a human condition and human sensation. You can define it in terms of a deity if you wish to but it exists without such beliefs.

What compels you to have morals if you don't believe in God?

Because "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" does not need a God to make it make sense. That's a good rule in anybodys book and more or less covers everything. Besides, I take no perverse pleasure in causing anybody pain. Quite the opposite.

Like all social animals humans have a need to be liked and accepted by their peer group and I'm no different. Solitude is not something which appeals to me as I like the company of other people. Therefore it's logical for me not to go killing them or robbing them or whatever. That would make me an outcast.

My whole philosophy comes from myself. I don't need a fear of an imaginary angry sky man to make me realise I shouldn't kill people. I know that by myself. In fact, I think if the only thing stopping you killing me is your fear of a angry sky man then that is quite scary!

Could you marry a religious woman?

No. I wouldn't want my children indoctrinated with any religions. From my own obervations and memories they teach values I'm not comfortable with like the suppression of the questioning instinct in a child. "Because God/the book said so" is not how I want them to think.

If my kids were adults and turned to religion by themselves then that would be cool because it would be an informed choice made by an adult and clearly what they made sense of for them.

If my wife believed in a God but was not overly religious then it wouldn't be an issue. But those strict ones? No no no no.

A strictly religous person would be convinced that I was damned orfoolish... either of which is not the basis for a good relationship

Atheism is just another religion

LOL Yeah right. There is no temple, no rites, no creed of beliefs to swear to, no rules or dogma, no higher power to be in awe of, nothing up there to thank for my own deeds or plead to or take comfort in.

If I win a race. I did it. I trained, I ate right, I prepared and I ran and mentally beat the others. Perhaps I had the right genes to thanks to my parents. Either way it was ME. I don't have to thank God cause I did it.

At dinner time it was me who worked for money to buy food and me who cooked and prepared so I'm not thanking some spook in the sky for my own endeavours. It's me.

Similarly If I mess up God didn't abandon me. I messed up. It's on me. I must take responsibility. I can't appeal for forgiveness and take solitude in Gods love. I have to go and sort it out my damn self and learn not to mess up again. It's on me.

There is only your own thoughts and processes. Self journey and reliance.

What I'd like to ask you since you have made up your mind is how do you believe yourself (meaning humans in general) came to be ?

The origin of man has never been an obsession of mine, it's really unimportant to me. To answer you though, there is overwhelming evidence for evolution and that biological model of the universe. There are still unanswered questions but I prefer the model which says "we're still trying to figure this little detail out" to the one which says old men munching honey and locusts in deserts millenia ago knew all the answers from devine inspiration.

We've seen the development of societys and civillisations from the ancient to the modern, from the stone age to the Iron age. We've seen species emerge and species die out, we've tampered with the nature of species over time and shaped them to our needs (cows, sheep, donkeys, dogs, cats) over the ages. Nothing is as it was and earth isn't static.

Having studied much physics and biology in school and doing my own reading subsequent to that what makes sense to me is the standard official model. The facts fit. Earth is not 6000 years old, it's 4.5 billion. It's a moving, living planet. All instruments measure... yes MEASURE the universes expansion and hear the hiss of the big bang. Until I see such concrete hard evidence for another idea I'll stick to that one.

and how do you explain those incidents that are frequently accreditted to God...things that can't be explained scientifically like blind people suddenly being able to see after years of blindness, or people surving accidents against all the odds.

First of all I don't. Most of those things are hoaxes or manipulations of the truth. Think, if a blind man REALLY suddenly saw it would be headline news everywhere, not in an obscure copy of Christian news weekly. Secondly even we're I to accept it happened it would simply chance. You used the phrase "against the odds" yourself. 'Odds' s just chance. There are billions of people on earth and more billions who have ever lived. A one in a billion chance, loses it's relevance there you see? Very unlikely to happen does not mathmaticaly equal impossible. No matter how small the chance is that something will happen, in an infinite universe the very unlikely is bound to happen somewhere. That doesn't mean design was behind it.

There is a deeper question to answer too. If you believe it was design that a God benignly opened up this one blind persons eyes, then it was also conscious design that this God neglectled to open the eyes of countless others. If you attribute one persons miralcolous survival "against the odds" to a God then you accept that a God wilfully killed those who did not survive... A evil God? Or merely unperfect humans fully at the mercy of their own biology?

Atheists hate religion

I recognise that humanity has a spiritual need and yearning for a belief in something bigger than themselves that naturally manifests itself as religion. I recognise also that worship or faith collectively as an act with others gives people inner peace and nourishment of some sort. That goes back to ancient man imo. But organised religion I think is simply the exploitation of those feelings. The spirituality of man is a powerful and complex thing. In itself it can be a blessed wonderful thing but it is too prone to that exploitation. Once you formalise it and put it into rules, laws, books, doctrine with figures of authority to enforce these you go against the spirit of the basic need for spiritualism and you are now being religious for the sake of the religion. That formal structure now exists to serve itself and lead you where those figures of authority would. Usually into trouble as history shows.

I do hate organised religions full of dogma and people who tell other people what to do in the name of a silent God in the sky. It takes away the responsibility of individuals for their own actions. It's a weakness.

I can't hate that primal yearning for spirituality inherent in all men though. I make a clear distinction.

Prayer

Can help people focus their thoughts, sort of like meditation. Thinking about something in peace and quiet might settle the mind and make sense of the thoughts. I don't believe in praying to ask for something. It makes no sense. If their was a god then you're attempting to change the mind of an omniscient and omnipotent being. How likely is that?

@DrunkMonkey

Those have to be some of the most senisble replies I've ever heard.

There is nothing wrong with being an atheist or pagan or whatever else anybody likes, you know right from wrong and good from bad instinctively, the stigma only comes from the 3 semetic religions.

If you say you're an atheist to a Hindu or Buddhist they proberbly wouldn't bat an eye lid and care, in fact they might even ask why are you telling them?

Only the other day I was thinking about athieism....And maybe everybody might actually be better off this way. I hate that phrase because its just a label to make something out of nothing which needs no labels confused3 I not an atheist, was brought up roman catholic, haven't subscribed to the idea of God being a he/she or even heaven or hell since I was in my teens. But I do think there is something.

DrunkMonkey wrote: