Is it better to be an Atheist or Theist?

@EuphoricTurtleI 👍 I Agree with This. either is Fine just don't convert people into Christanity Or Convert People into Atheism

@JohnOinger It has nothing to do with conversion. And this idea that it's possible to confine religion to the household, is nice. But to do that, you need a really rational poppulation that constantly self evaluates if they bring God to the workplace or the voting booth so that it doesn't influence the lifes of other people.

And this level of self evaluation or rational... I don't see that in the overall majority of religious people. And that's perfectly explainable, because the religious basis forms the foundations of their arguments when it comes to morality. What is good and what is bad. And for them to remove God from the equation to think about what is good and what is bad for society as a whole, goes against the concept of being religious. It's like aborting an entire piece of your identity in favor of a secular model just because you need to be aware that other people don't share the same concept of God that determines what is good and what is bad.

So when a religious group gets too big, this will represent itself in a democracy as a block of voters that will always bring God to parliament when they are thinking about moral issues. Sometimes even cloaked like Ben Shapiro, who continuously tries to make an argument against abortion on the so called hard fact rational because he himself believes that you shouldn't bring God to parliament, but ends up making an emotional plea because God told him what is good and what is bad.

@Kwek00 I'm not so sure about that. Look at the Scandinavian countries, they're largely Lutheran, but with a huge separation of church and state and religion is typically only a home thing, it doesn't really affect politics.

@Kwek00 I get what you mean (and I'm not a fan at all of religion) but that behaviour isn't something exclusive to theism, it occurs in all [i]-ism's[/i]. Political, social. And though a lot of them find shelter and fuel in religious dogma that is not in any way their sole source.

Take for instance the cultural revolution in China as Mao attempted to purge traditional elements in China and impose Maoism.

@basilfawlty89 If that is true, then I really need some back up material from you. Because I highly doubt it.

I personally think, that the "christianity" people like to talk about when it comes to scandinavian countries is really comparible then the "christianity" that we are having over here. Where a part of the poppulation that has grown up in a religious atmosphere, are still influenced by that religion but on the other hand don't really practise it except for some weird, almost reduced to folklore, traditions.

Which gives some really nice examples of cognitive dissonance. Just last week, one of our top guys (bisshop) in the catholic church appologised to the Belgian members of the catholic church because the pope in the Vatican still sees homosexuality as a sin because of christian doctrine. Which for people like me, is incredibly funny because of the level of absurdity. On one side you have a group of people that just can't get over the fact that their religion doesn't say what they want it to say because it's religion, and on the other side they still perceive themselves as followers of that doctrine. This has more to do with how societies evolve, how demographics evolve and how eventually there will be new members to the church that understand that what they believe is so far from what it actually is that they have the option to ditch it in it's entirety or get reactionairy to strive to get more purity and brand themselves "true christians" because they understand that the water downed version is farce.

But religious people love to point to these examples, as if our catholic church members aer still devoted catholics. And considering what I know from swedish people and norwegians, my hypothesis is that it's largely the same attitude over there. Eventually, the tradition will be transformed from religious to folklore and over time might fade into obscurity. But untill that time comes, everyone that get baptised because of tradition in families, will be put on the list and will be perceived as a lutheran or what ever the fuck their label is. Just like I'm still registered as a roman catholic. And these absolute numbers without nuance, thats what religious people try to make their point with.

@EuphoricTurtle What you are talking about, is the same principle. There is such a thing a secularised religion or political religion. There are even philosophers that believe in the concept of political theology that go as far as saying that ALL political concepts are secularised concepts.

But I rather debate someone on the basis of empiracal evidence, then on someone that elevates stories about Jesus, Muhamed, Budha, ... The Founding Fathers, John Locke, Adam Smith, Mussolini, Hitler, Lennin or Marx to a religious dogma. Because that last group are just religious fanatics and you can't have conversations with them on the basis of empiracal data that doesn't agree with their dogmatic world vieuw.

@Kwek00 I know what you mean, debating something in which you can use empirical evidence makes it much easier to focus on objective truth. But the human experience isn't something that can be reduced to objective truth. A lot of the things that are sometimes more precious to us are incredibly subjective, take for instance love and its almost ethereal nature. If you are to approach it in an empirical way you will never understand half of it.

@EuphoricTurtle I agree that politics considers more then just ideas that can be empiracly checked. However, what can emperically be checked should always come first.

And what you see with dogmatists where emperical evidence rubs against the sacred believe system, is that they are unwilling to look at it or just push it away. That's what I'm talking about, and your "love"-idea doesn't change that.

The most known debates are things like:
- Abortion
- Euthanasia
- Gay rights

That all have a moral component which [i](after a process of thinking)[/i] needs to be decided on in a democracy. But if in the back of your head, there is a God that destroyed entire cities because people were allowed to be gay, well... how can anny person argue with that kind of authority which is perceived to be all knowing, all good and pretty much the natural arbitter of "good" and "evil". So no matter what people bring to the table, God will always say "no" and thus the believer will say "no". Unless they start making rationalisations or adopt a liberal stance. But in the process of making a descision, God will always be at the table, and these people will overwhelmingly take the conservative stance because they all want to get to be rewarded for their faith and get into heaven where they will enjoy eternal bliss on the right side of their maker. I can't argue against that, no one can, because we just don't have the authority in this perceived reality to do so. And therefore, huge voting blocks of religious people will always bring God to the table in some way and this will always influence every other person in that society that isn't religious unless a miracle happens and they reach this hyper rational level where they can put the entity that will eventually judge them towards eternal bliss or eternal damnation at the outside of the door of parliament. And that last bit, is highly unlikely because of the authority this entity has over their thinking. For a religious person, it's "irrational" to do so, just because of what they believe to be true.

@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