Who here actually believes in God/an afterlife?

100% atheist here

however, I have an inkling that when we die, we just disappear. I believe that when we die our souls are freed up and we can travel through space and evolve in another planet and repeat life. Probably sounds farfetched but you never know. I don't believe in a higher being but I believe in the soul aspect. I don't think life ever ends for anyone.

Or another way to think of it is if you believe what death is like then death will be just like that if you believe it enough. If you keep thinking you're going to hell, you're probably going to hell, and if you think you're going to heaven then you're probably going there, etc.
 
I'm with you on that one. I am also Catholic and I do believe in some higher being(GOD), yet I oppose the Church because I believe its taking the wrong direction. Theres a distinct difference between God and the human run church. I for one believe that you shouldnt have a set way of believing or worshiping God, which is why i oppose most organised religion. You should be able to "worship" in your own way.
 
ok, so by 100% atheist you mean no actually atheist at all. "our souls are freed up and we can travel through space and evolve in another planet and repeat life"? If you were 100% atheist you would believe that after you die you rot. the end. sounds like you're 100% confused.
 
i was baptized and confirmed a lutheran, I do believe in god but im a wee bit skeptical about jesus. As for the bible i veiw it as a big book of metaphors, not to be taken literally but the main ideas and morals should be taken from it. Heaven and hell: all people go to heaven, for every sin you commit there is a penalty and either u serve it during your life through guilt, making it right, think the list from my name is earl, that being said i do belive in karma. so when you commit a sin you either repent, feel guilt, or make it right...now if u dont before you die you serve time in hell, like prison. Now if you were a serial rapist/murderer plan on spending lots of time/eternity in there. Now after your time is served you go to heaven. once there you can either a) stay in heaven and do whatever you damn well please...or b) you can take another go at life

now with that being said i guess im part pagan cause ive been known to pray to the snow gods on ocasion
 
when you die, you become the same gradually decaying matter that everything else does. when youre dead, youre dead. period.
 
false. atheism is a lack of belief in a deity or a higher being:
Atheism, as an explicit position, either affirms the nonexistence of gods[1] or rejects theism.[2] When defined more broadly, atheism is the absence of belief in deities,[3] alternatively called nontheism.[4] Although atheism is often equated with irreligion, some religious philosophies, such as Jainism, secular theology and some varieties of Buddhism such as Theravada do not include belief in a personal god as a tenet of the religion.Many self-described atheists are skeptical of all supernatural beings and cite a lack of empirical evidence for the existence of deities. Others argue for atheism on philosophical, social or historical grounds. Although many self-described atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism[5] andnaturalism,[6] there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere.[7]
 
i was raised jewish but always thought religion was dumb. i dont really believe in a god. my personal take on religion is that it is there for people to put all their hopes into because they need something to rely on and to try to explain things that happen. but if there really was a god then why could people thousands of years ago who wrote the bible talk to it but all of a sudden you cant. doesnt make sense to me so ill just believe in whats physical instead
 
I dont really believe in god or anything, but my dad is a pastor and my mom is a catholic school teacher so i end up going to church 3-4 days a week probably. My parents take away a lot of my money, and force it to go to the church. When they found out that i didn't believe in god, they quit letting me hang out with friends and threatened to kick me out of the house (I was 14). I dont know how something like religion and god can be good if it produces ideas and people like that.
 
i had a priest come in for religion this is what he said

a person who was born catholic and rejects god but is a very good person (we used the example that he distributed medication and food in war torn africa) is going to hell. while someone can be an asshole all their lives, not believe in god, but then get baptized a month before they die, and go straight to heaven.
 
werddd.

i'm catholic, but my personal beliefs aren't strict catholicism. i go to a protestant youthgroup so what i believe is basically a combo of catholicism and protestantism, with a little bit of my own ideas thrown in.
 
Get a copy of the Jefferson Bible and read it. It is most likely the most accurate narrative of jesuses life. Thomas Jefferson took a bible and cut out the verses he liked then pasted it to blank paper and mailed it to John Adams to explain his views on christianity. There are no divine references in the Jefferson bible, only Jesuses moral teachings. I believe that Jesus was just a nice guy and that an over zealous fan had to deify him with the science fiction novel we now call the bible. Another example of biblical exaggeration is we have proof of a man who loaded up a barge with animals, his family and other stuff to endure a flood. It was a king(forget his name) he never claimed to talk to god, he just built a barge for the annual river flood but cultures around the region took this story and made it into a tall tale.
 
Dont stop believing!

Religions are cool because everybody has one.

My religion is that of The Flaming Lips Wayne Coyne "Be nice to each other!"
 
word. religion is kept alive by fear of the unknown, and the threats made in religion (i.e. hell) are used with this fear as leverage. i think its phony, as hard as that may be for people to accept or understand. when you die, you're gone and all conscience and emotion is terminated.
 
I would say that I believe in Christianity, the majority of it. I think that it's really just something you have to feel before you can believe it. People that are crazy about God are people that feel the Holy Spirit living in them. I've felt it, and I believe it's real.
 
Some say that God can be eliminated by occams razor but from what I understand about the universe and the big bang is that the "singularity" of the universe before the big bang was actually an always existing thing but just extremely small and dense. As some point around 13.7 billion years ago this small dense piece of matter began to expand at an astounding rate. I wonder why exactly it decided to expand. Why does the universe bother to exist? I think it could be a higher power but I am not 100% sure. I do not believe in a personal God or miracles. I hope for an afterlife but I don't expect one. I don't believe in a God who had anything to do with the origin of life on this planet. The life forming molecules are out there in space and the universe is so vast with so many planets that it would be more amazing for there not to be life in the universe. I consider my views Deistic and I am currently reading Thomas Paines "the age of reason".

Religion is just an egotistical reflection of humanity. The bible claims God made man in his image but I believe that man made God in his own image because we think we are so special that the almighty would look like us and love us infinitely. The old testament of the bible reflects the nature of the men who wrote it. The new testament without all the miracles and revelations is actually a very good set of rules and morals for man to live by as I mentioned earlier talking about the jefferson bible.

I have no problem with people wanting to have "spirituality" as it is a cornerstone of a free society to have freedom of religion but unfortunately some who practice religion do not wish the same for their neighbors. Some religious people wish to dumb down our society by teaching their dogma as fact in public schools and stop the funding of scientific research. This truly pisses in the fountain of knowledge. The people who do this while having a right to their free speech should not be taken seriously by rational people, for christs sake Huckabee came close(kinda) to winning the GOP nomination. I don't really care what people want to believe but I wish they could leave their religion in their churches, homes, and personal morals intead of trying to bring it into our government and public schools.

I wish christians would follow this scripture a little more closely

""When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and

pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see

them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward."-Matthew 6:5

Basically Jesus is saying that people who go to church and worship are hypocrites.

This post covers several differnt topics since I don't focus well this time of night.
 
i definitely believe in some sort of heaven and hell. its the only thing that keeps me to try and always be a good person.
 
That's a little narcissistic, don't you think?

Why not be be a good person to others out of simple compassion for your fellow human?
 
yes its narcissistic, but work your whole life doing good for others and trying to be as compassionate as possible to just die and rot in the ground forever?
 
I love how when I was walking from my car to my apartment today a

Jehova's Witness stopped me and started telling me I should repent for

all of my sins.

I said, "Excuse me, you don't know me and the fact that you would

approach me without knowing anything about my background or personal

belief is enough for me to walk away from you right now."

As I was walking away he retorts, "See you in hell. No, actually I

won't, I will be with my heavenly father walking along the golden path

after I cease to be."

At this point, I smiled at him and told him, "You actually believe

that? You believe that, with no evidence other than a book that is

probably fictional and was written during the same time period that The

Diamond Sutra and the Mashari was written (Both fictional books written

before the year 0 a.d.), so much that you are willing to live by it and

preach everything that is written in it to complete strangers with

hopes that they will actually just give up everything they believe and

everything they have contrived in their understanding of the Universe

since their birth? You don't think there is any possible way that

someone found the Bible, brought it back to their village with no

evidence of it being factual, other than what is written in the book?"

I am not usually rude to strangers but this guy struck a chord with me.

He began to preach to me about religion and how God is all-knowing. I

asked him what he thought of the Big Bang Theory. He told me it was a

conspiracy formulated by the governments of the imperial nations to

allow them to manipulate their people.

To this I replied, "You sound like such a hypocrite. I want you think

about what you just said. Why, even with indisputable evidence that the

Big Bang Theory can and will be proven with supercolliders in the near

future, would he choose to believe a fairy tale that has NO proof of

validity other than a fictional book that his entire religion has based

itself upon. What other proof do you have, sir?"

He hesitated and his answer was as blasphemous as it was feeble, "I

have faith." I said, "Oh, so you have hope? Have a good day."

Any christians reading this thread, can you please show me INDISPUTABLE

evidence that your so-called deity exists in more than a book and blind

hope. (I refuse to use the word faith because it would imply that

"faith" has a possibility of truth behind it)

Tell me, how do we know there isn't a flying spaghetti monster in

another galaxy ruling over the entire Universe? I am more willing to

believe a terrestrial creature outside our realm is more of a god, than

your so-called hypocritical savior.

Honestly How many people here interpret the creation accounts in Genesis literally? My guess is not many.

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So explain where original sin came from, and why Jesus was sent to

suffer for it. According to the Bible, original sin originated with

Adam and Eve. Except nobody really takes that story literally, so I

would like an answer.

 
Based on your argument, whats the point of doing anything then if we all end up dead in the ground?

I am not going to be compassionate to some crooked asshole out of fear of being "condemned."
 
i havent made up my mind on if there is a god or not yet, i wasnt really forced into a religion but i dont think just because you dont believe in god you should go straight to hell, i mean ive been to my local church and there are some worse people there than people who dont go to church. to me it should all just be about being a good, well rounded person.
 
Your first statement is exactly my point. There would be no point to life if we all have the same fate as every other person in this world, good or bad, dead buried under ground for all eternity. There has to be some sort of "reward" so to speak for being a good person.

You make a good point in your second statement. Still, I believe that you should be compassionate to everyone, but not out of fear of being condemned, but out of the goodness of your heart.

Right or wrong, it's just what I believe.
 
its not right to believe for the reasons i do, but its why i do. because theres nothing to gain but everything to lose from not believing
 
you make a good point, although I believe the reward for being a good person happens in this life. If you are nice, people with be nice back (for the most part).
 
Oh and I'm agnostic. I think that having faith in any sort of spiritual hierarchy can be a righteous excercise of self-enlightenment.

The organized religions that turn their followers into puppets with wallets, I have absolutely no respect for. "Everybody turn to the left, now stand on one foot. Now donate large sums of money so that you get into heaven!"

It is organizations like these that bring a bad name to religion in its entirety.
 
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