Hey Pecker and canada-man, why does religion bother you so much??! You dont see believers here starting thread after thread on atheism, do you?! So there's got to be something that really bugs you about religion.
Why not just let people live and believe what they wanna believe?! I dont see how this conflicts with your life in any way.
You wanna be an atheist, thats fine. Some people prefer to believe in a higher power, why dont you just accept that and leave it alone??
Hey Phil C. MacNasty.
I can't speak for every atheist, since each individual will have their own reasons for holding to a position, but I can offer my own thoughts.
I don't think anyone has any issue with what people choose to believe, assuming, of course, the respect goes both ways. What I mean to say is, don't force your ideology on me, either directly or by using it as a tool by which to shape society.
Unfortunately, it's my opinion that religion is not capable of the type of coexistence alluded to in the former. This is due both to teachings specific to certain brands of theism as well as the general concept of a personal God itself.
There are strains of Christianity that openly flaunt recruitment as a central tenet. This is anything but a "personal" belief system. Similar claims have been made about Islam.
The very concept of the soul, Heaven and Hell, and the ability to save lost souls from eternal damnation also poses a problem. If you believe there exists a Heaven and a Hell, and that how you act on earth determines your eternal destination, and more importantly, what you
believe determines this destination, then the idea of religion as a personal belief again flies out the window. It is not only your soul that is at stake, but the souls of your family, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers, and indeed your entire country. If you're raised to believe that a life lived off the path of righteousness leads to eternal damnation, then you have no choice but to view your religion not only as a personal guide to living, but as a message that must be spread, for the sake not of you, but of every one you have ever known.
There are other issues, of course.
For instance, any worldview that seeks to undermine reason and rationality by promoting dogma as unquestionable and faith as a virtue is, in my mind, a dangerous one. When you open the floor to ideas that are not supported by evidence, you leave yourself vulnerable any number of poisonous beliefs.
These can range is severity from the trifling (talking snakes, arks with two of every creature) to those dangerous in the extreme. (Fly a plane into a building in the name of your God and you will be rewarded in everlasting paradise with 72 virgins; it is better to die than to accept the blood of another human).
For example, while secular arguments against such procedures as stem-cell research and abortion do exist (at least I know they do in the case of the latter), you'll find that debates surrounding these issues are almost always divided along religious lines. I don't think that's a coincidence. Research and findings be damned - if the doctrine tells us that life begins at conception, then that's reason enough to deny women the right to authority over their own bodies.
This unquestioning faith in dogma also brings up issues of morality. Many religions present a skewed view of morality by pushing the idea that private matters somehow carry moral baggage, a claim I find shocking. Christianity refers to this as sin - an immoral act not against your fellow man (the secular definition of morality) but against God. Hence, masturbation is a sin. Sex before marriage is a sin. Not observing the sabbath is a sin. Homosexuality is a sin.
The result is the stigmatization of individuals and communities who have broken no reasonable moral law aside from those arbitrarily handed down from the pulpit. What reason would one have for hating homosexuals but because their God tells them it against the natural order? What reason would one have for aiming to repress female sexuality and expression than because their God tells them it is an affront to what is right. What reason would a society have to order a woman to death for the crime of "blasphemy," then because their God tells them it is a crime punishable by death? Why should we be saddled with the guilt of feeling natural urges and partaking in natural activities but because our God tells us we should?
When you forfeit your reason and pledge yourself to a celestial God whose word is not to be questioned, anything, no matter how backwards, is plausible. Tying this to my first few points, if you agree that the nature of religion is prone to outward expression and attempted indoctrination, then the potential follies outlined directly above become even more worrisome. Ask homosexuals in certain African countries, or women throughout the Muslim world, if religion is simply a private matter.
This is just a sampling. There's more, obviously, but I have no wish to engage in some drawn out debate here. I'm not trying to "convert" you. I just wanted to begin to answer your question, and hopefully help you see where many atheists are coming from.
