Is it better to be an Atheist or Theist?

@zonavar68 As a child?

Wow, I know people that have a positive worldvieuw, but you are pretty extreme.

@Kwek00 many die hard religious people try to indoctrinate their children very early on so it feels 'natural' to be blindly faith based.

@zonavar68 This isn't only a religious thing. Parenting / raising children, always has an elemen of indoctrination. The household is not a democracy, and children aren't in a position to argue effectively against their parents. And what is good and what is evil, is largely spooned in by parents, education and the entire enviorement people grow up in. Escaping this, or being resistant too it... seems impossible. Because actively pushing back against ideas, means that you know and understand the antithesis of the idea you need to push back too.

There is scene in "the eye 3" (not a great movie, you don't have to look it up) where 2 scientists fall in love and she gets pregnant. And she announces it to her lover by saying something: "I'm pregnant, are you ready to indoctrinate our child with me.". Which always stuck with me as being a good line. 😅

And children, because they still have to develop their identities in diffrent phases of their life, are extremely malleable during these moments where they get into identity crisissis. Like puberty, where a lot of young people try to gain independence, and find groups that they can associate and grow in. It's this group that can be influenced and even radicalised verry easily.

@Kwek00 Like I said, what can be empirically debated is much easier and is a great place to start.

But you can't debate abortion, euthanasia and gay rights empirically. You can certainly offer up some empirical evidence to support your claims but that in no way whatsoever encapsulates the whole subject. Irrespective if you're religious or not.

Like I said I agree with you on the dangers of religion, and I do see it as a major hurdle to our development as a civilization but I don't think it is either the sole obstacle or that some anti-theists don't offer up some similar obstacles as well.

@EuphoricTurtle That middle part of your last post, obfuscates the nature of the dogma that we are talking too.

I agree with you, that at the core root of pretty much every ideology that is concerned about morality that there is a dogmatic premise. A starting block of which a thinker builds his/her narrative to create system of ideas that can guide an individual or a group to make consistence descisions on good and evil. Even in the englightenment and by extension liberalism and it's progressions, there are dogmatic premises that are prevalent. Which is actually the core of a lot anti-liberal criticism from conservative movements, it's the paradox that allows for some pretty intresting debates. And even in the large broad movement of liberal thought, the core concepts of liberalism are ambiguous, the conceptualisation of the abstracts into liberal-type ideologies (or progressions therefore) become a battleground of debate that at their core have a conflict of premisses that are hold in a dogmatic vieuw. The issue with these types of arguments, is that they are not based on something that can be proven to be wrong, they are more like decrees that the adopter lives by. For instance the line taken from Locke which was put into the constitution:

[quote]"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."[/quote]

This is a decree, there can't be anny debate about this. For people that are in the liberal sphere, this line is pretty much the foundation on which they build their societal vieuw. Annyone that wants to live in this society, at the bare minimum needs to accept that there is:

- An form of [b]equality[/b] amongst men
- That they have unalienable rights which are: [b]life[/b], [b]liberty[/b] and the [b]pursuit of happiness[/b]

And Locke, religious but liberal, adds that this is granted by "the creator" or "nature". It's a "natural right". And everything marked in bolt is ambiguous. As long as you have some concept of this, you are working inside the liberal sphere of ideas. Within this sphere you can debate and argue and see what works and sharpen your vieuws amongst these ideas. But you can't go outside of it because according to the dogmatic principle that is sneaked in there, these principles are "self evident".

And because of that, liberalism that sets out to destroy dogmatic ideas adopted one at it's verry core. And next to that, you have the other important idea that has dominated modern western thought. Namely: What is the nature of man. With his most extreme negative vieuw comming from writers like Hobbes that believe human beings are pretty bad for eachother, and that we need a strong hyrarchical structure to defend the individual and it's rights, to the most extreme positive idea from Rousseau that says that people are born free but where ever they are they live in chains. Or the idylic vieuw that a human being in nature isn't corrupt at all, and that it's society that corrupts... which leads to a romantic notion of going back to nature where we can all be happy ever after. Annyway, what ever position someone takes, they can argue WHY they take it, but this idea will never be resolved. Because emperically, we won't figure out what a human being looks like in it's natural state. Testing this would not only lead to questions of moralty to the test subjects, it would also be difficult because measuring this as a test would already corrupt the experiment.

Espescially the last idea, has been a root cause for political distinctions and moral debates. And annyone engaging in it, should at least have the valliancy on accepting that we can't outrun dogmatism here, because of ignorance. And thus, you are totally right.

BUT when we are talking about religion we run into a diffrent problem. First there is the concept of God, like people can say that "God excists" and honestly... no one can proof or disprove that this abstract concept is out there. Because we can't prove a negative and we don't find evidence that there is one unless you fall for this idea that because we excist there has to be a God. Which is an argument that turns into absurdity really quickly. But the next claim a religion makes, is that not only is there a God, we can all know what God is thinking and what God wants from us and we can even unravel a huge part of his plan because of scripture. And now we have something that can be researched. We can look at where this scripture comes from, we can look at claims this scripture makes, we can compare documents and see if there is plaegeriasm, etc etc etc etc. These are things tha can be resolved, and can be looked into because we can gather empirical data. And when we start looking at emperical data it doesn't favor anny claim religions make on ther validity of their documents. So since we can disprove all these claims, we can also say that their religion isn't worht having a seat at the table. It can't enter, because the dogmatic idea that supports all of the arguments can be disproven.

And from this claim that can be disproven, other claims follow. Like:

- Being gay is unnatural.

Why? Because according to judeo-christian believes God says that it is and God is the person that decrees what nature is.

Even if we can argue that the source that puts forth this idea is not to be trusted, we can now look at nature. Like actual nature. And what do we find? That in most species homosexual relationships just happen. That sex isn't just something that is done for reproduction. If god decreed that this is "unnatural" then there are a lot of "unnatural" things happening in nature. Which kinda defeats the argument all by itself. They can still retort too loopholes that say that only human beings are in the position to understand what is good and what is evil... but then the question is not if something is "unnatural" but if something in nature is good or bad when it comes to all the other species.

Thats why religious people, should not have a place at the table when things like this are discussed, because their basic assumption, doesn't allow emperical data at the table AND their knowledge comes from a source that can be emperically scrutinised. That's the big diffrence in the sort of dogmatism that is at the core of certain systems of morality (like liberal interpretations for it) and a religious claim that believes it knows the will of God and thus nature

@Kwek00 You are preaching to the choir. I never meant in any way to imply that religion is in any way a force for good in the world, in fact I believe it's quite the opposite, it is a fiercely destructive force. For me the world would be a far better place without religion.

For instance even though Portugal is a secular state, the Catholic church is still a major informal player in subject such as abortion, gay rights and euthanasia. It's absurd.

What I replied to in my initial comment was as to whether it's better to be an atheist or a theist, and by that I meant that a belief or non-belief in a deity does not make someone better or worse in my eyes. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear from the get go

@Alison Well that's right!!! All the fun people'll be there. I mean if anybody ACTUALLY make it into heaven, they'd have to be pretty bloody dull and there'd only be about 12 of them and I doubt any of them would be women.

@Allelse I wanna party dammit *laughs* .

@Alison Yeah!!! Though personally, I'm gonna find a nice cold little cave never the bottom layer and sleep eternity away.

@zonavar68 The hell is a lert?

@Allelse A very well known play on words. ;-) Just like 'A Gnostic' vs 'Agnostic', etc. I like to be A Lert. Confuciouses the hell out of the evangelical set.

@DDonde hmm have you considered Naturalistic Pantheist meetups? They're atheistic, but just with a reverence for nature and they have communities.

@basilfawlty89 No.