Ricky Gervais on Atheism

You must not have been reading the right stuff then. There are only about three decently respectable philosophers left that still accept the possibility of a god. Just thought I'd give you a heads up. I'll get to the rest of what you said after I finish the essay I'm working on.
 
Please enlighten me. Which other majorly influential groups (other than the KKK) are against gay marriage? Sure there may be some small groups of atheists that are against gay marriage, but there are such things as exceptions.

As long as churches are not taxed, they (including their morals) should not have anything to do with politics. Such morals interfere with the progress of the state to enact laws that are equal to all groups.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"

- The Declaration of Independence

Now how can you say that these Christian "morals" are not infringing upon the Government? It is obvious to me at least that legislation against gay marriage is fueled by religious beliefs. Our country is not a theocracy, and therefore laws enacted should not be influenced by religious beliefs.
 
So you agree with brainwashing? Woah.. And you're calling me ignorant.. It doesn't matter if those schools are private or not you see; the kids aren't the ones deciding if they want to go there or not, its their parents who do :)

Are you against letting people who were raped get abortions as well?

FYI, this is coming from a baptized and confirmed protestant.
 
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“pascal's

wager only works if there are two sets of beliefs. one religion's god

versus no god. but there are many religions and many options. the

wager is too simple and really doesn't make sense in light of

that. “

you started out alright

“I also don't

think we get to blame god for the awful things done in god's name. I

think we're just gonna walk all over each other for whatever reasons

are available. if we can say god wants us to take over more

territory, or to force native people off their land, it doesn't make

it true. assume for a moment that god exists. knowing that a person

cannot be good without free will (the option to do bad), then we know

that god must allow bad things to be done, which also means that bad

things must be able to affect good people. blow that up to a world

scale and unfortunately you get things like the crusades and the

holocaust. but without free will and the ability to do bad things,

"good" is a meaningless term. (by analogy, imagine i have a

girlfriend, but she only loves me because i slipped her some kind of

love potion that gives her no choice in the matter. does that really

mean anything to me? is that deeply fulfilling or meaningful in any

way? love and coercion can't coexist in my world) “

Religious

texts can be blamed for the crimes people commit. But you don't seem

to be into those. I'm going to assume you believe your god created

the universe. If so, then he absolutely can be held responsible for

everything that happens as it would not be possible had he not

created everything. If you don't believe he was responsible for

creation then let me know what you think he has done and i'll do my

best to dismantle that too.



“so to get back to

religion, the fact that religion did some terrible things in god's

name does not refute god, it just demonstrates the fallibility of

human endeavors. it just goes to show you that if we're truly free,

we're able to do ghastly things in god's name, and he won't do

anything about it. he can't. if he did, we wouldn't actually be free,

and the whole thing would fall apart. again, that's assuming god's

existence, but hopefully that gives you some insight into why it's

stupid to blame god for religion's fuckups. a bunch of humans leading

humans can turn evil, even with the best intentions. we're fallible

beings. “

Aside from your god being responsible for

everything he created, i'll agree with you that terrible things done

in his name don't refute his existence. Nobody claims that. What they

do claim is that religious belief can be held responsible for those

peoples' actions. I also agree that we would not be free if evil acts

could not be committed. However, it's impossible to deny that

religious belief doesn't make one more prone to irrational behavior.

Does evil have to exist for free will to also exist? Yes. Need it be

promoted by religion? Hell fucking no. You need to realize that if

you claim your god is responsible for bringing everything into

existence, he is responsible for it. If you believe he directly

inspired religion by taking a hands-on approach (prophets, Jesus,

etc.) then he only had more blood on his hands.

“also, i

don't know what you mean by "groundless". If you want to

say "not grounded in sensory experience," then yeah, you're

right. but that's a little too basic for me. the way i see it, we

live in a world where there is evidence all around us of things

outside our five senses. Radio waves, magnetism, etc., which is

enough to demonstrate to me that I can't trust my senses alone. We

know this is true because of the use of measuring devices that

respond to forces we can't see. While we don't have any instruments

that measure anything spiritual yet, I see the facts I just mentioned

as enough to at least do away with the argument that everything

"real" in this world is immediately apparent to the

senses. “

The stupidity in this is astounding. Some

amateur, wanna-be philosopher “if I close my eyes, the world does

not exist” bullshit. This is a complete non-argument. “I don't

see it, therefore it could be there”, giving your god as much

credibility as a sparkly pink unicorn (which would actually be more

likely than an omnipotent, omniscient being).



“I studied

philosophy for four years. for a while, I was obsessed with proving

that God didn't exist, that the world was strictly material. I read

anything I could get my hands on, and I believed, and would get

pretty offensive on this point, that nothing that could not be

directly observed with the senses or logically proven wasn't worth

talking about. I thought that reason was the only tool I needed. I

blamed religion for the suffering in the world without taking into

account the comfort many people found in the community and in their

spiritual beliefs. i blasted people for their own religious

convictions, thinking blind faith was stupid. i still think blind

faith is stupid, but i don't think nearly as much faith is as blind

as i once did. “

Already explained the current

philosophy regarding the existence of a god. See my other posts to

learn more about the evils of religion. Faith is always blind. If

there was evidence it wouldn't be faith.

“i ended up at the

conclusion that I don't know everything, that I can't use reason to

justify every one of my beliefs. some of them, simple as they may be,

are based outside of reason. love, for example. i can't measure it, i

can't rationally explain why i love certain people in my life, but

i'm as convinced of that as i am of the solidity of the desk i'm

writing this on. i realized i already held some non-rational beliefs,

and for me they made life worth living. if our greater purpose is

really just to eat, shit, fuck, and die, i'd rather not be a human

being at all. that's all reason could really get me to and I wasn't

happy with it. the fact that i even wanted more was a sign that i

couldn't stop at reason. i needed more. “



I didn't

think i'd need to explain how emotions work to someone out of middle

school. Love and all other emotions are products of chemical and

electrical processes in the brain brought on by certain stimuli. I

could explain why you love certain people if you want to tell me your

history with them. It's often not hard at all if you have a basic

understanding of psychology. I'm glad you feel it's as real as your

desk. It is and it's just as measurable. If you already held

irrational beliefs it's not surprising you welcomed one more. Do

humans have some cosmic purpose? No. Our purpose was determined by

our evolution. While it can vary from person to person in specifics,

the purpose of human lives is to achieve happiness.

“ I

had a series of life experiences that prompted me to start asking

harder questions of my own spiritual convictions, about how sure i

was that there was no god in the traditional sense, and i started to

come to believe that something bigger than me was out there, above

and beyond my everyday experience. i wasn't sure it was a thinking

thing at all, perhaps just a force of some kind, but i began to see

that there's something beyond experience that connects all of us.

gradually i started to talk to it. not because i thought it would

listen, that it would do any good at all, but simply because i wanted

to acknowledge its existence. so i began to say "thank you"

every night before bed, irrational as it sounds. gradually that

changed to "thank you, i want to get to know you better"

and ultimately to "thank you, i want to see the world from your

point of view". This might not make a ton of sense, but the main

idea i want to get across is that i didn't jump on the "god is a

big bearded man in the sky judging all we do" bandwagon right

away, i just acknowledged that there's more to the world and our

connections than meets the eye. i took great comfort in that fact. i

didn't suddenly think that there was an unseen man who wanted me to

kill in his name, i just saw that if we're all connected, the deeper

the connection runs, the better i should treat the people around me

and the world i live in. the more thought i gave to that idea, the

happier i was, and the easier it was to do hard things like forgive

people who had harmed me, and ask forgiveness from people i had

harmed. “

It's not uncommon for emotional trauma to

lead to that kind of thought. The sense of there being “something”

out there is another well-known psychological effect that can be attributed

to evolutionary adaptations. We ARE all connected. We inhabit the

same universe in the same reality. No supernatural forces needed.

That's great that you started trying to treat people better and

forgive those who had wronged you. I try to live like that every day

and I don't attribute it to a god.

“my belief in god came

out of experimentation. i tried a life rooted in absolutely nothing

but myself, and it sucked. i did some really shitty things and wasn't

"living" in the conventional sense for a long time. It

wasn't out of fear of death that i came to that conclusion, it was

out of fear of myself, of living in a shitty, selfish pit until my

blood stopped pumping and this endless chain of thoughts stopped

rattling away in my brain. i thought there was a better way to live,

to see the world, and to treat the people in it, and i was determined

to find it. i believed that there was something more to this world

and the lives we lead, and i used things like prayer and meditation

to seek (and find) answers to my deeper questions. if you want to do

that without using the g word, you can. i think you'll end up there

anyway, if you're really open and honest about the endeavor though.

that's pretty much how it happened to me.”

Life without a

god is not an empty life. You were an empty person. The world

however, is not empty. Honestly, it sounds like you were just a

shitty person living an unfulfilling life. But instead of accepting

that the fault was yours, you decided to offload that guilt onto a

delusion so that you could make the changes you needed to make

without taking any blame. I'm sorry it took backwards somersaults

through logic to help you get over yourself, but I really am happy

you were able to change. Now if only you could combine your new

morals with your old rationality.

 
^ what irrational behavior are you referring to?! I understand the crusades, I understand that the KKK is a "christian" organization (just a cover), and I understand many of the things that the catholic church has done, however I dont understand how a normal everyday protestant american is more inclined to be irrational simply because they are christian?!
 
I had trouble reading it considering everything was blue and run together, however one thing that I got a huge amount of was playing the pity card. I highly doubt there is anyone really coming after you for your atheist beliefs. Has a christian ever yelled at you for being an atheist?! And if so I feel like that coincides with all the atheists who curse christians simply for them believing in something different from their opinion. I dont understand why atheists always play the pity card, at least in my upbringing i never felt like i was in the majority for being a christian. Its the whole silent majority card.. Ive been living in salt lake for the past year (one of the most "religious"/"radically religious" places in the country) and never once have I had a random person come to me and ask me or my friends what our religious views were. you would never know looking at me that i was a christian, so why is it that I have never been pestered by christians like you make it out to be?! Alright, maybe there is a sign or two on the highway showing the ten commandments or saying "do you know where you will be for eternity" (I dont agree with these signs btw), but there are also many atheist signs which are purposefully rude/hateful towards christians. Yes christians may do good things for the community and afterwards may say "were doing it for Christ", but is that really that hard for you to deal with. If someone came to my house and raked my leaves in the fall followed by "atheists are good people too and God isnt real!" I wouldnt cry myself to sleep and feel I was being forced into a belief. Its hard to look into your arguments when there is always a tone of "I AM THE VICTIM" throughout your posts, especially when it isnt true. Most christians are the silent majority, the only time the will even mention their faith is when they truly know someone and want to bring it up as a conversation piece, so please stop playing the victim
 
Maybe you should actually read the book you are defending. Jesus was god, the whole holy trinity thing...

You are a slut.
 
Religious people tend to do that. I'm still waiting for an answer to whether or not he agrees with not letting rape-victims get abortions.
 
Here's my thought for the day -

Eternity... ok - that's what all christians are after right - to live forever, eternity in heavan.

My thought on that is that there is no way I'd like to live for eternity... I am PERFECTLY comfortable with the knowledge that I have a finite time on this planet, and when my time is up, i die... that's it, eyes close, heart stops, gone... cease to exist - bye bye everyone, it's been a blast. Eternity would get kinda boring after what, 300-500-1000 yrs being the same person... the suicide rate in "eternity life" must be fucking high... reincarnitation however, that sounds kinda cool to me... another shot, being someone completley different with different talents, opportunities or even challenges.... good or bad. Anyway....

Because I am on a level with that, and ACCEPT it wholly - I am way more free then anyone who believes in a god or a religion, or any greater purpose... why does there need to be one? can someone answer that? It makes me try and make the most of everyday... not because im being judged, but because i only have a finite amount of time, and I wanna have as much fun and do as much cool stuff as possible - as well as try not to be a total C U Next Tuesday.... :-)

You stand on a spider and it ceases to exist... why are we any different?
 
Great insights!
One of my favorite quotes...
"When I compare what scientific knowledge has done for me, and what religion tried to do to me. I literally sometimes shiver. Religions tell children they might go to Hell and they must believe. While science tells children they came from the stars, and presents reasoning they can believe. " -Philhellenes
 
Even though you're trolling, I hope what I said could have helped to enlighten others. Though, you didn't go full troll until you ran into people with more intelligence than you. It's a classic Christian tactic; respond to intellect with bullshit. Well done.
 
sorry didnt see your post.. and either way in my opinion it is a human life that you are destroying.. now i understand why you would want to abort a baby in a rape case (which there are a very small amount of pregnancies by rape btw) however I would still feel like it would be best to have the baby then have an immediate adoption situation.. its a sticky subject obviously and there really isnt a good answer to any of it but thats the best i can think of
 
God doesnt want to prevent evil from happening, thats why we have always had a choice. It was our choice to sin in the first place and this is why there is evil now.. not sure if this answers the question?!
 
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?

Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?

Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?

Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?

Then why call him God?”

-Epicurus
 
Didn't eating from the tree of knowledge give us the concept of good and evil? Surely, before we ate from the tree, we didn't know that it was bad?

Also, lets make the rest of humanity pay for the mistake of some dumb cunt who listened to a talking snake. Good idea.
 
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“brilliant”



thank

you

“ "alright," which is still not a

word”

picker of nits

You say god created a

faulty universe because bad things happen, but once again, bad things

are necessary for free will. If you try to create a perfectly

mechanistic, rational world, you don't get to assign meaning. If you

want to test that, make me an argument (…)

Admittedly,

philosophy isn't my strong suit. Though I stand by my belief that if

a god created everything in existence he can and must be held

responsible for what occurs in his creation.

“”Nobody

claims that." Sure they do. All the time. And you keep

saying god is responsible for everything he created without

explaining what you mean by that. responsible in the sense one is

responsible in a court of law? responsible in a causal sense? and

what conclusion are you trying to make here? “

You sure

did get all the nits out. “nobody claims that” should have read

“only an idiot would claim that” or something along those lines.

Yes in that he was the cause. Conclusion= if a god caused it, he is

responsible for whatever happened in his creation.

"I

also agree that we would not be free if evil acts could not be

committed. However, it's impossible to deny that religious belief

doesn't make one more prone to irrational behavior." “Once

again, irrational behavior means...? You have to add a value

judgment, or at least show why irrational behavior is

undesirable.”

To give an example of irrational behavior,

i'll quote you: “"Bombing abortion clinics (...) for what are

thought to be pious reasons. “ I won't insult your

intelligence by explaining how that kind of behavior is

undesirable.”

“Last year I volunteered as a crisis

counselor at a homeless youth shelter. At the time I was agnostic at

best, if that's relevant to you. Was that behavior rationally

motivated? Not really. I just think we should take care of each

other, i can give you a rational proof if you like, but ultimately

it's going to be built on that, and I can't prove to you why we ought

to care about some fucked up kids living on the streets to begin

with. If you took a strictly darwinist point of view, it doesn't aid

my own survival in any way, nor the survival of my genes.”

Volunteer work is absolutely rationally motivated. I'm going

to make an assumption here which l hesitate to do after some of the

assumptions I made in my last post, but I would assume that you felt

like what you were doing added worth to your life. There is rational

motivation right there. I''m not accusing you of being an empty

worthless person again, dont worry. The want of happiness,

self-worth, and satisfaction in life are most definitely products of

evolution. Maybe you felt you yourself were getting nothing out of

it. Even so, I wouldnt even call it an assumption to say you

thought/hoped you were helping the kids. Survival of the individual

is not the only behavior brought about by evolution. Survival of the

species is also ingrained in us. There was nothing irrational about

what you did. You were adding value to your life and furthering the

survival of our species.

“So again, you're making the

assumption that anything that's irrational is bad. Now if you said

religious belief makes people more prone to violence, or hatred, we'd

at least be speaking in terms of value and be able to get somewhere.

“

and you made the assumption that what you did was

irrational. Irrational beliefs can lead to irrational actions,

whether good or bad. But nobody has blown up an abortion clinic based

on rational beliefs. Your second sentence there is also true.

“So

religion promotes evil? You're going to need to back these claims up,

we're obviously operating on two different sets of assumptions. Also,

we're back to talking about religion, and my post was almost

exclusively about god. In fact, you're bashing religion in response

to my paragraph about how god and religion should be separately

considered and that god cannot be held responsible for individual

actions that claim to ascribe to a certain religion. “

Are

Fred Phelps' beliefs based on scripture? Yes. Religion does promote

evil. The bible is full of it. We're barely more than 50 years past a

time when homosexuality was considered a crime punishable by

imprisonment and chemical castration in Western European countries.

We're not talking about eastern Turkey. Again, that was irrational,

religious based belief (homosexuality is evil) that led to real world

evils. A belief in god leads to religion leads to evil. There's the

connection I was trying to make. I actually agree with you though. I

don't believe a god is responsible. I don't believe one exists.



“get clear on what we mean by the word "love," since you

seem to consider it based solely in chemical reactions in the brain.

I'm talking about love as the source of irrational action, like

forgiving someone who harmed me, even when I know they may do it

again. I can't rationally explain to you why I value things that

aren't rational. I can break skiing down into endorphins and

adrenaline, but that doesn't fully capture what I want you to know

about my experience. Maybe you and I just differ in that respect.

Maybe that's all you want. “

Maybe I can exchange some

evolutionary biology and psychology books for some of

your philosophy books? This isn't meant as an insult, but I think if

you did learn a bit more about how the brain works and how humans

think (from an evolutionary perspective) you would see that what you

think is irrational is not at all.

You see how you

just attached value to "happiness" without a rational

basis? It's no different. Let's get clear on what you mean by

happiness in that sentence. Fulfillment in a teleological sense? Or

just food in my belly and a warm place to fall asleep at night? With

all your indignation about religion, it's starting to become clear

that you have an idea of what is good and bad in this world, but I'm

not sure where your moral system comes from. You obviously have

strong convictions that humanity would be better off without religion

or belief in god, but if human life originated out of nothing, means

nothing, and proceeds nowhere, i really don't see why you're

bothering to make that claim in the first place.

Food

and shelter for starters, but we're much more complex creatures than

that. It takes those basic needs combined with what an individual

determines for themselves. Morality is purely a product of our

evolution. As all humans are part of this same evolutionary route, it

can be argued that we share certain innate morals. An easy example

would be murder being an evil. Human life did not originate out of

nothing. I would hope you understand evolution so im going to assume

by that you meant that at one point the universe didn't exist and,

well, that's arguable. No one can say for certain that there hasn't

always been a universe/multiverse/etc. If you're looking for a

purpose on a grand, cosmic, supernatural scale, I can't help you

there. It's fun to think about those kinds of things but it's pretty

irrelevant in a human life. I find beauty and meaning in life in the

universe as a purely natural occurrence.

In the end what this comes down to is science(me) vs. philosophy(you). I will believe there is no god or supernatural Buddhist force until there is reason from empirical evidence to believe in one. For you, the fact that there could be a supernatural entity/force is enough. I hope this post came across as more civil.



 
Check this out. The story of original sin is a coming of age metaphor. At first, everything is provided to Adam and Eve. They are given a place to live and food. All under the eyes of their watchful parent. They are ignorant, like children, of the evils of the world. They eventually rebel against their father around the same time they gain knowledge. Then they reach a point where they have to leave their garden (home). Adam is cursed with labor and Eve is cursed with the pain of childbirth. Echoing the gender roles that upon growing up men and women have had to take on. Work and providing for the family for Adam and childbearing for Eve.
 
Don't get me wrong. I think there are some beautiful passages in the bible... and obviously i was being a bit fececious in my post as i don't think too many people (in this thread) take everything in the bible literally. However, in my opinion, you either have to take the bible to be the word of god through and through if you believe that.. well, if you believe its the word of god... if not, then its fine to view it all as a metaphor. The issue is that people either take it all literally, or take only the parts that suit their needs.

For me, when an entire belief system is based off of one book, it better one pretty airtight book if i'm going to believe anything written in it.

Basically, im not really debating whether or not its a book worth reading for philosophical/metaphorical explanations for things, rather whether any of it is actually true.
 
my parents made me go to church till i was 18 when i was an adult and i could make my own decisions. i chose not to go to church because i find it hard no scratch that "irrational" to believe that theres this battle between the forces of good and evil. i think a lot of christians don't realize this and are passive on this belief. i was watching a documentary that said that 20 million americans believe were living in the end of times, and that is pretty fucking scary considering there are that many people that believe the Earth won't exist by the end of their lifetime.

not saying i'm in atheist. i'm more undecided leaning towards that there is a god but that god is our conciousness or our presence realizing itself. think about how amazing it is that we evolved from single celled organisms to animals only concerned for their survival to humans that are thinking about how this all came to be. i like to believe that theres this one energy we all stem from, except its not energy, its not some dude telling us what to do, it's no-thing.
 
Holy shitstorm.

Firstly, I'm Agnostic.

Does it really have to be this much of an argument?

I love the sense of cummunity that many religions create, but I personally despise organised religions in the political sense. In the past millions of people have died in religious controuversy, and that's what I mean by political.

Religion just gives individuals hope and a purpose in life. Some people need/want that, but others (people like me) don't.

It shouldn't change the way that you treat others or yourself. Whether you're religious or not we're all human and should be working to have an positive and honest impact on society.

I don't have a problem with anybody else's beliefs, we're all entitled to our own, I just hate it when they try to force others into adopting those same beliefs

Spoken in the true words of a fifteen year old Athiest.
 
i'm ignoring my better judgment after restraining myself from posting in the many other religion vs. atheism threads, so the points i've considered have multiplied over time and resulted in this sprawling mess. i don't care if you don't want to read it because i can't blame you, but i just want to get it off my chest.

being religious or not doesn't make you smarter or dumber or more or less educated unless you are following something blindly instead of coming to your own conclusions. Christopher Langan, the smartest man alive in terms of IQ is religious.

religion only becomes problematic when it shades decisions made on unrelated issues such as politics and morality. if god exists, he probably doesn't care who's a believer and who's not. if i lived in the sky i wouldn't expect people to believe in me, so i wouldn't send non-believers to purgatory or hell if they were good people. he also probably wouldn't care whether two men are married because if he created them with that genetic homosexual tendency to begin with so he'd totally understand where they're coming from.

i understand pascal's wager, but i feel that becoming religious to play the percentages would kind of be like lying on my heaven application. if god existed he would see right through that.

saying you can be a moral person without religion doesn't make you cocky or pretentious, it makes you confident, although i do think that Gervais approached the issue in a rather cocky way, despite the fact that he adamantly denied mocking religion. i believe karma exists on a purely social basis. if you are a good person, society will likely reward you for it at some point in your life.

as for belief in the afterlife or lack thereof, i feel confident that if i live a long wholesome life full of love and enjoyment, as i feel most people's end up being, by the time i die, i feel like i'll be ready to go. but as a healthy 19 year old american, i feel like death is not a very pressing issue for me so i'll cross that bridge when i come to it.

i am an atheist because i have found no overwhelming reason to believe in god. i was baptized and i took first communion, but my heart wasn't in it so i moved away from religion entirely. i'm just happy i live in a society where i can make decisions for myself about religion without being looked down on or chastised for it, and i wish everyone had that opportunity.
 
I don't think anyone is mature enough at 8 years old to determine their religious beliefs, this guy kinda seems like a prick to me.
 

You gotta watch this it will f*cking blow your mind.
rofl...but prob a repostThis is god??/static/images/flash_video_placeholder.png
Same thing w/ lightsaber!/static/images/flash_video_placeholder.png

 
I think a better simile is... Calling atheism a religion is like calling a bald guy a red head. There isn't anything to describe!
 
Atheism is a religion??

SURE!

Just like NOT collecting stamps is a 'hobby', NOT smoking is a 'habit', NOT playing soccer is a 'sport'.

 
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