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I Am Not Religious

Spirituality... Spiritual usually has something to do with the immaterial.I personally think that you can have a spiritual connection with nature and experiencing it's beauty. People get so caught up in their busy lives in their dirty desensitizing cities. I truly feel at peace just sitting at the shoreline of Lake Ontario. Understanding nature is more important then understanding the creator. If the creator is sentient, perhaps understanding it's creation will help understand this thing itself if it exists. I strongly admire the Lakota and other native Americans for their amazing connection with nature. I am atheist in the sense of a particular definition of god. that would be the Semitic Idea of god, a hateful, jealous, judgemental psychopath who claims to be love, but then requires bloodshed for forgiveness (yes, yet again I'm emphasizing the bloodshed - forgiveness issue) I have a huge problem with it. Love should not require blood, its illogical. and to make it even worse, this god plays this sick game of letting you get tempted by the evil one, and punishes you for disbelief of one of many many religions - its the more refine form of pascals wager. he seems to have left out the fact that other religions exist.you don't receive spirituality from corrupted men, you get it from understanding and experience. and to an extent you are right, out right nothingness! I don't know how to explain except as a deep connection with your natural surroundings, its a deep emotion like love.The Bible was written by man, which for me is already enough to invalidate it. man's corruption is littered all over it. The Bible and other books are static, they do not progress or benefit with new and improved societies, and they definitely do not improve bad ones True love does not mean the requirement of animal or human blood sacrifice as a condition for forgiveness. Endless torture is not a proper punishment for not accepting love. I like using this moral idea I heard awhile ago, If you were the last person on earth, is there anything wrong you could do? if you said no, then you can only conclude that morality is dependent on the social situation. there is no such think as a set solid rule for what is right or wrong.I definitely consider Buddhists to be atheists in the sense that they reject a personified god.

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rkitkitavi

You can do no wrong when you are alone, but can wrong the other if there are two of you?

dinosaurcavemandude · 31-35, M

I am quite convinced that morality is a social thing like language, not divine and created by some deity. I only emphasize that because I used to believe in a god. now I look at the idea of morality being divine the same way I do when someone says we are visited by aliens - like its just something they pulled out of no-where, or an idea which has been introduced by a society, but has no validity or evidence.

rkitkitavi

You seem to be saying that 'good' is whatever is good for you... That people make it up along the way. But I would say that people who make up their own morality won't last and that people who accept moral laws from something beyond human 'wisdom', maybe even the Source of Wisdom, are those people who will prevail and last throughout the centuries. Aren't you glad of the social mores of those poor obstinate people at the crossroads of the world, who kept getting run over by empire after empire on their way to their next conquest? Me, I think it was through them that we got this far.

I should reword my previous reply to "can you wrong another or s/he wrong you when there are now two of you in the world?" Because all of morality can be distilled to the relationship of those two people left in the world. The other 'wrongs' you when s/he hurts you. When you help the other, you do 'right'. You do each other wrong, you won't last. You do each other right...

dinosaurcavemandude · 31-35, M

No, I was not implying that I believe morality is whatever is right for you, It seems you are describing what I meant by morality being a human social thing. what is beneficial to self and what is beneficial to society.

Another example I like to use is a situation where you have two tribes. the tribe which cooperates will obviously be prosperous and populate, whereas a tribe which does not cooperate just falls apart.

it backs up what is beneficial to self and what is beneficial to society. if you benefit your society, you in turn benefit yourself.

MrMorality

Divine? You dismissed and denied divine to me only 30 mins ago?

dinosaurcavemandude · 31-35, M

I wrote this almost two years ago.

MrMorality

oh alright then :) still contradicts everything you say

dinosaurcavemandude · 31-35, M

everything I say now contradicts everything I said four years ago when I was a young earth creationist. :)

dinosaurcavemandude · 31-35, M

Maybe in another four years, I will be the opposite of what I am now. you never know.