Religious beliefs

Christians:0
Atheists:0
Putin: 1.4

I don't believe in god for that exact reason. We should concern ourselves more with the lives we have now then any potential life we could (and probably won't) have after we die.

I really wish I could be indoctrinated into religion as a youth. Life would be so much easier for me. Just to have faith and not worry about death a lot...

I want to reincarnate into a tree, tended by a girl who will one day hang herself from my branches.
Is that bad?

Lol, welcome to America guys.

No matter what people believe, you can always expect them to be an asshole about it. Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, theist or atheist.

.....how do you know this guy's from the U.S.?

face palm of the mortal flame!

no, religion is the excuse given to get people to fight. wars are started by greed.

I agree. Greed, and the lust for total, utter control of our mind body and soul. I believe there's been an agenda for a long time.

okay, what about the holocaust in nazi Germany, and the Great Purges and Ukraine starvation in Soviet Russia, Millions upon millions of people died, all in the name of 'The Mother Land' or some other form of this sentiment, Both believed their way was superior to all others, and both were explicitly atheist.

Wars are campaigns for power, they are never purely operations for moral reasons, the use of God to gain support of these wars is a total bastardization of what God stands for, but if it were not a successful tool for power, the orchestrators of war would simply find another.

tldr- God's name being used to support war ≠ God or belief in God causing war

-Vietnam was stopping communism, not about religion
-Korea was protecting the South from the North invasion, not about religion
-WWII was because of Germany's humiliation, not about religion
-Polish-Soviet War was to stop communist influence on Europe, not about religion
-WWI cause by assassination and nationalism, not religion
-Franco-Prussian war was about a united Germany, not religion
-Boer Wars, British wanted South Africa, not about religion
-Spanish American War, about manifest destiny, not religion
-US Civil War, about slavery, not religion
-War of 1812, US tired of Britain stealing our sailors
-Napoleonic Wars, about a stronger France, not about religion
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- 30 years war, this was about religion


Yep, all those wars were about religion.

the cool part is though, in every single war, leaders would use god to manipulate the people. "god is on our side"

then they would take the moral high ground which is essentially using religion cause in essence religion is just a set of morals... just conveyed in different ways. so when people are told that "x is/are bad and are immoral" they believe and are lead to believe that they do not hold the same correct values that they hold... usualy stemming from religion

i would say all sets of beliefs are a religion. mine remains strictly scientific; however, i would still call it a religion.

"god is on our side" is just a morality booster for one's side of the war
what your talking about pertains to terrorism in the middle east and maybe a few other scenarios

Eeeenope.

World War 1?

American Revolution

If it wasnt religion it would be something else......humanity is hopeless no matter what they believe in.

we need to go deeper

i love you

Why are you looking at 7 months old content??

I really dont know, but here. have this

Unless there is some factual basis for something, you need not "believe" that it doesn't exist. You simply assume it doesn't because there is no rational reason for it. For example you do not believe that dragons don't exist you simply know they don't because you came to a logical conclusion.

yeah that kinda makes sense... I guess I'm just thinking the whole word in a wrong way... (belief is much "stronger" word in english, than it is in finnish)

I guess I could try to make the generic counter argument by saying that we can't really prove that there is or that there isn't a god. we got no factual evidence for neither arguments.

The thing with comparing dragons to gods is that dragons would be like every other animal/lizard/dinosaur so its simpler to prove that there in fact haven't been dragons.
when talking about a concept as big as a god or deity or something, you can't prove that it doesn't exist just by proving that there aren't any signs of it, because the whole concept is incredibly massive.

Obviously it feels so much more rational to say
"Why would there be a god, when he have so many theories/facts to replace it with." but also as a rational human being you can't forget to think sometimes:
"Why wouldn't there be a god? Its not like the existence of god would change how science and the universe works."

The concept of god sounds crazy.it sounds impossible.
But that might just be because our concept of a god is much affected by religion and fairy tales, when god could be something much simpler.
God could be a being that lives in more than only 3 dimensions (not counting time because time exists in all D's, it isn't the 4th dimension) for example.

when talking about believing in god, people tend to get stuck in the subject of religion.
believing in god doesn't make you part of any religion.

although I think i'm more agnostic, than atheist...which is pretty much the "easy way out" with these things. I don't think about the existence of god (almost) at all. but I don't close out the possibility.

what point was I trying to make again?
oh yeah
no evidence for the existence of god. no evidence for god not existing
it's up to you, to believe in god or not, either way I'd count it as a belief

Well by that point of view everything you currently don't believe in and i do mean everything is a belief. Because there is no such thing as negative evidence

when it comes to the supernatural that is

well...isn't it?

its my belief that dragons haven't existed, although I have no evidence for either way

belief is something believed,
so if I believe that something isn't
I believe in the lack of something being,
so its a belief? right?

right?

Belief implies blind faith and my athiesm and lack of belief in dragons, is not founded on faith but on logic therefore it is a conclusion, not a belief. Follow?

hmmm I guess I didn't completely understand what belief meant....In finnish belief is more close to "to think" or even "to assume"

its just that every definition of belief I look up is along the lines of.

-Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something
-Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.
-a principle, proposition, idea, etc., accepted as true
-opinion; conviction

that kind of contradict your idea that belief is "blind faith"

now there is this one:
-religious faith, which is what I think you're referring to.

but atheism and/or thinking that god exists arent religious believes, but still believes none the less, right?

notice how in the definition it says nothing of evidence or logic and there is nothing about negative beliefs

-Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something
-Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.

you have accepted it as a fact/truth that god doesn't exist, right?

Accepted is not the right word, i don't "believe" anything. I simply formulate hypotheses based on logic that are subject to change should evidence present itself.

so you're not atheist

you're agnostic.

well this was a pointless argument then...

but atheism and/or thinking that god exists arent religious believes, but still believes none the less, right?

beliefs*

now this fucking wall of text could be "destroyed" by me probably misunderstanding the word "belief"

if that's the case then....

>Misusing a reaction picture
>"madmiketroll" as username

I sense a 12 year old.