Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. — Seneca
What’s a mob to a king? What’s a king to a god? What’s a god to an atheist?
What’s the atheist to the inquisition?
What’s the inquisition to- NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
Nonbeliever*
Nobody asked about religion.
Feel free to substitute “the existence of a God” for “religion” then.
Which one?
The spaghetti monster
Ramen to that!
Praise be Its Noodly Appendage
nah, religion seems like a scam that usually results in unhinged beliefs and abuse.
Not a fan generally speaking.
if you dig into any religions beliefs, it goes into some wild fairy tail stuff that just…doesnt happen.
Not to mention that folks tend to base their morals on religion, and religions have very flawed morals.
the difference between god and myself is that if I could, I would prevent a child from getting bone cancer.
Religion did have good morals in theory. Not in practice.
Also, unrelated to your points, religion didn’t evolve. It stayed about the same for thousands of years, despite new science.
Religion did have good morals in theory
Which one is that?
That jesus dude had some pretty liberal thoughts. Buddhism was a nice reaction to the caste system. The method of delivery may not be inherently moral, but it is possible to manipulate a population in a way overall beneficial to society.
That jesus dude had some pretty liberal thoughts
He personally, maybe. I didn’t know the guy. The religion that grew around him, though … not so much.
I’m not sure if it’s because of his father or he just had terrible editors for his posthumous book release. But some of the stuff in there is quite abhorrent.
It’s quite easy to find a lot of legitimately disgusting stuff in there, true. I’m on the antireligious apatheist side of things, so you don’t have to convince me on that. But I wouldn’t go as far as saying some religions’ fundamental pillars don’t have any good messages behind it. “Love one another” alone isn’t too bad at face value, isn’t it?
We a have so many other books now that contain all those good messages, even a lot more with more relevance to modern life, without all the terrible stuff and non-sense.
It just makes no sense to keep a 2000 old book around for a couple of good messages that are already thaught in many other, more modern stories and context.
The point was “do religions have any good in them”, not “are religious texts still relevant”.
i didnt say religion only had bad morals. broken clocks and such.
but christianity in specific has a lot of flawed morals that christians handwave. like Mary being 12 when she gave birth to Jesus, or pretty much everything old testament.
claims of a perfect and just omnipotent god while stuff like that flies is sloppy.
I’m an agnostic theist, I believe in the possibility of god(s) or god-like entities.
There is a quote I resonate with by Marcus Aurelius:
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.
Exactly! I haven’t seen any proof of a god(s) but I’m willing to keep an open mind. At the end of the day if I live life trying to do well, I should be good.
That quote resonates a lot with me as well.
Wow, I had no idea that there was a quote out there that aligns so well with my beliefs. I grew up in a semi religious household but was never forced to go to church. My parents encouraged me to go, not only to theirs but even go with friends that were different religions.
After going to various churches through some really vulnerable times I still don’t subscribe to any religion, but I also can’t bring myself to go full atheist.
Too bad that quote is way too long for a tattoo 🤣
It’s a bit wordier (well, most people are wordier than the stoics lol) but Socrates had the right idea too I think:
Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: - either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another.
Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this?
If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I, too, shall have a wonderful interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not.
What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they do not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.
No.
Imo the more you think about it the more you realize that “god” is just a very human way to cope with feeling lonely or powerless, and life having no ultimate direction or purpose. People imagine a friend or guardian who has a plan and will set things right, and some use this shared fantasy to make others do what they want.
From the things I’ve seen in my lifetime I can only assume there’s no God, and if there is a God then he’s not worth worshipping for letting the amount of suffering exists as there is in the world today.
Seconded.
If there is a god, it takes a special sadist to allow the amount of torment present on earth.
So I prefer to believe there’s no higher spirit ravelling in the suffering of all creatures rather than there being a malevolent creator watching with glee as we die a slow, painful death.
deleted by creator
The researcher observing the lion didn’t create the concept of suffering tho
deleted by creator
I love what-if scenarios :)
I think you could go one step further with this theory and say that humans are not that important at all. I mean, why would we think we are? Because god told us so? Maybe he just said that to account for some variable and left it at that. Hasn’t looked back at what we were up to since.
In some distant corner of the universe is a much nicer planet where everyone is living in harmony and peace. We’re just the control group :)deleted by creator
When I was religious (I’m not any more) that was something that never actually troubled me. I believed that god was benevolent but that suffering must be necessary in ways that we humans can’t conceive of. Who were we to question the grander plan?
basically believing in god is akin to believing that this is all just a game of sims some twisted being is playing
I don’t believe in any deities. Although, Greek mythology really would be cool if it was real.
Cool, and also terrifying.
Like The Fonz wielding a chain saw
I asked AI to draw that with interesting resultsI mean, it got the jacket sort of right 🤷
I had to ask it to tweak it several times hah
Here we go…
You must’ve been thinking of Reddit…
Yeah I thought for sure people would be duking it out in the comments section, but Lemmy seems to come to a (mostly) unanimous agreement here.
Welcome to Lemmy :)
But for real, if you go to the comment section on instagram or something comparable, its really toxic compared to Lemmy. But I’m also a bit worried as mastodon seems to become more toxic over the time, hopefully Lemmy stays the same
Do I believe in god? No.
Do I deny the existence of god? No.
I don’t have evidence either way
Since science is deductive it’s probably impossible to prove the negative there, but I think there’s enough evidence beyond reasonable doubt that you can confidently deny it (unless your god is non-falsifiable, in which case it’s not worth discussion).
No, not at all. I went to a christian high school and that experience removed pretty much any doubts I might have had.
I’m a happy atheist, don’t really care about all this religious stuff. I don’t mind that others believe, just as long as they don’t impose their views on others.I believe there is an all powerful being made of spaghetti and meatballs floating somewhere out there. May you all be touched by his noodley appendage!
R’amen
You can’t disprove God because you can keep changing the definition. If I define God as the culmination of everything in the universe, you can’t really disprove that.
If you disagree with me, then I can just keep changing the definition of God!
Surely the reason you can’t disprove God is because you can’t leave the universe. Since it isn’t possible for us to know what is outside of our universe we can’t prove or disprove a god’s existence.
The god argument can’t be contradicted because it’s not based on logic. People can just make up rules for their gods, and they usually don’t care if those conform to reality or logic as we know it.
E.g. I can just say that logically disproving my god is a proof of its godhood, because it defies and is beyond human understanding. That’s just not something you can argue about.
Assuming you are sarcastic - I agree wholeheartedly.
Look up The Invisible Dragon anecdote by Carl Sagan (in his Demon Haunted World book), or for more serious people - Falsifiability principle by Karl Popper, If you haven’t already.
No, and I have peace in my life because I do not have that abusive relationship.
Apatheist here. Whether there is or isn’t a god, I don’t give a shit. Just stop trying to shove your shit down my throat and leave me the fuck alone.
