There you go Stewaat. I knew you'd live up to your word.

I don't agree with you, but we all have our opinions.

And that's what the blogs are for.

*Why can't we edit our comments! ARGH!*

Yea we should definitely be able to edit comments. I'm a complete Atheist who went to the most prestigious Catholic University in the country.

I'm going to just love my life...

Let me quote my favorite music group: Atmsophere

"Individually wrapped, place in neat little rows,
Becoming a piece, of everything that grows.
Some numbers, a name, to indicated you played the game,
Came empty-handed and left the same.
A soul is a soul, a shell is a shell,
The border in between is full of everything you felt.
Some cling to a cross cuz they're tired and lost,
They leave it up to the weather, to measure the cost."

So deep and hits home like none other to me.

I am not going to knock your religious belief. You would get along very well with a good frined of mind. His views on religion are very much in line with yours.

Regardless of whether you believe in God or not you have to live each day to the fullest. Tomorrow is promised to no one.

I'll share my views in here too.

I'm religious. I'm a Lutheran and I truly believe that there is a god. The bible confuses the heck out of me because it's not too descriptive and I'm not sure what to believe there but if anything else I believe that there is a God and that Jesus Christ is my saviour. If you look at the human body and how it works and how there is A LOT of things that can go wrong and somehow things usually don't. That's how you know that there is a god. I'm not trying to knock on athiests or evolution or sound like the preacher trying to sway everyone to my side but IMO there is no way that humans could've come from primates. Just not possible. Again I'm not trying to cause an arguement or knock on anyone elses beliefs or anything. Just voicing my opinion.

fellow atheist here representin

I don't mean this as an insult but that is a very narrow-minded perception of the universe. And a very human way at looking at things.

In the universe, the fundamental pieces of what every living thing on this planet is made out of are naturally occurring. Everything that is alive on the planet today is the result of solar radiation causing a cascade of chemical reactions as it interacted with the various chemicals and elements that were on Earth.

Why must it be some sort of supreme being that functions in a relatable way to humans that simply creates and permits all of this to happen? I know that for millenia humans have had a strong sense of self-importance, but we truly are just one insignificant part of an infinite universe. In an entity like the universe that is infinite, anything can and will happen so the odds are definite that life like us will exist in a span of infinite possibility.

As for the human body, it's really not that complicated in relation to what is beyond the existence of life on our own planet. We are mostly bags of water made of proteins and governed by a big lump of fat tissue in our skulls, and electricity makes us work. We're just a big conductor for electrochemical reactions. The brain is able to interpret stimulus and the resultant electrical responses allow us to perceive and do all manner of amazing things.

We are sustained by acquiring more energy from the sun (in the form of eating plants, or eating things that eat plants, etc...), just like all living things. I know that there are a ton of complicated finite processes of the body that take place to make it work, but in comparison with what takes place in the universe its entirely unremarkable that the human body can exist without spontaneously destructing, especially if you consider the fact that there were probably millions or billions of chemical reactions here on earth that never became anything before one laid the foundation for life.

It's always a good discussion and I certainly don't mean to disrespect anyone who worships a deity and lives in accordance with a religion. My main point is just that there is so much wonder and so much to appreciate about the scientific understanding of what we are and how we've come to be. Stewaat, I think that you did a great job highlighting to precepts for a religion existing and I share the same outlook for life as you do. I suppose the one thing that makes me upset is when people who are “atheist” (or whatever you want to call it) are characterized of lacking morality and sensibility. That there is a notion people cannot possess those traits without the guidance of some religious edicts.

I can see what you are saying. I am Catholic and I have found contradictions in the bible. The main problem with religion is that its selective in the information they have given you through the years. The current bible was decided upon by a group of bishops. There is so much text thats been omitted. Anyway, read the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail its a good read and it goes into detail what has bee omitted.

Anyway, you can't create something from nothing, so who created the something?

I have no issue with other people's beliefs but I have found atheists to be rather smug. Not you, just some others I have come accross. They tend to think that they are "intellectuals" and above religion. Which I find rather comical because they are having "faith" that science can prove something was created from nothing. Which they will never explain.

Anyway, I don't judge people on what they believe in, but rather their actions so as long as people are respecting others and making every decison with good intentions, thats fine by me. We'll all find out soon enough about the afterlife one way or another.

Religion was created to control people; and it's still used to do these things to this day. Hell, it's still used to control the lives of people who don't even necessarily believe in it; just look at gay marriage. They can't get married because of other peoples religious beliefs, which is absolutely ridiculous (religion and politics should absolutely not intertwine, but they do).

I'm more agnostic than I am athiest - but I am anti-religion. Even if I did believe in a god (which would only ever happen if I met him/her myself), I still wouldn't follow religion or abide by its rules.

Bad what I'm essentially saying is that even if evolution and all that stuff did happen, that kind of stuff just doesn't happen by chance. SOMETHING had to be controlling it and in religion that something is a god.

Timmay, the whole center of religion is faith. It may start pointless at first with nothing happen but if you read the bible and you actually believe that there is a god the holy spirt will come to you as a sort of confirmation and also the bible basically says that by the time you meet god personally it will be too late to be saved as that time will be judgement day.

Once again razr I'm thinking you haven't been educated enough in the field of anthropology. Are you familiar with scientific classificaton? We're homo sapiens, which are descendants of several other species.

Also please keep in mind the earth has been around millions of years, and homo sapiens have only been here about 200,000 of those years. Take into account that we have been civilized for maybe 10,000 of those years and you can see we have been here a very small time frame in the big scheme of things.

In regards to your Bible verses, you can look at that two ways. #1 - your way. #2 - the way of truly looking at the motives for the people who wrote the Bible. I don't really trust people to look out for the greater good of everybody, but that's just me.

It's the idea of it having to happen for a reason, there needing to be some purpose behind to it that I don't get. The ideas of "something" and "nothing." Those are very human-centric ideas. There are far more complex and unfathomable things beyond humanity and life here on Earth. Maybe what predates this place where we exist can't be defined in terms of "something" and "nothing" as we understand in our ability to understand reality? It makes me feel like we would sell ourselves short with the kind of thinking that there should be a supernatural being with a design on our existence. Like I said, I believe we're one resultant cascade of chemical reactions in an infinite number of cascading chemical reactions in this exponential expanse that is our universe.

I should also say that just because I believe there is no divine intent or purpose behind our existing, that I don't find life any less remarkable or fulfilling. In my eyes, in this place that we exist, to end up as a person, a being capable of self-awareness, and wonder, and all the other Earthly and human things we do, is something to be cherished.

I don't have a problem with people believing whatever, in fact the discussion here has been really respectful, and everyone seems to have a lot of respect and good intent.

Also, someone mentioned the smug atheist thing and I couldn't agree more. I don't know why those people feel the need to act in strong opposition of other people. They aren't looking to have a discussion and be civil. I know they rationalize it that some religious people indoctrinate the impressionable, but it just leads to one of those two wrongs not making a right situation. Nobody is better than anyone because they don't believe in a god. It's always better to just try and get along, we can all relate in some way to each other.

Great blog. My views are very similar to yours which I wasn't expecting for some reason. Science has done a great job of recreating our major questions of how we came about but people still wont accept it which is fine. I think thats why I always enjoyed my Science classes today, it explains a topic in the best way it can without an agenda

Stewaat and bad it's not really that I wasn't really educated in anthropology it's more that I just don't buy into it. Everything else in religion aside even if I wasn't a specific religion I would still think that the chemical reactions and the transformation from apes stuff didn't just happen by chance. It's way too complex for that kind of stuff to happen.


And I too am happy that we can actually have a nice civil discussion with this. First one I've had in a long time without someone on both sides dropping bombs.

There is one thing that can't be disputed:

The existence of a god has not been provided and the non-existence of a god has not been provided.

It is irrational to say that you believe one thing 100% one way or the other. In my case I am stating I believe that all the scientific evidence that we have strongly points towards the lack of a god. In the language of Richard Dawkins, I am a de facto atheist. The problem is most people in today's world fall into the category where they are 100% sure there is a god! To me that is completely irrational and any person to believe this is foolish. I don't get how people can believe in something which has zero evidence supporting it.