people shouldnt need faith to be good, and they shouldnt need to be comforted by faith. a person that requires the threat of going to hell to be a good person is a jerkass. i dont buy the argument that if religion didnt exist then there would be just as much war, just for different reasons. there is a reason we dont fight wars with canada or ireland. modern secular democracies dont fight each other. i know you are a fan of thomas friedman. remember his golden arches theory of conflict? no countries that both have mcdonald's will fight against each other. modern secular capitalist nations dont really fight. the countries causing trouble now are backward religious countries, fighting over crap they have fought over for generations and generations. i am not saying that there are not other reasons for fighting, but there would be far fewr reasons for fighing without religion. for example, the existence of islam and judaism are means that there will be virtually eternal conflict in the middle east because both sides are convinced god gave them places there and they must have them. the whole conundrum we are in right now is because we have sided with israel/jews. that caused 9/11 and indirectly iraq and afghanistan.
Your egocentricity and self-righteousness is sometimes astonishing to me. I believe it blinds you. You project your personal needs, biases, and convictions onto others without any consideration that what you perceive to be correct and good is not shared universally. Now you are venturing into geopolitics and making statements that I have no issue with.
reason is universal and true. it is better to believe in truth than lies. of course. i should have been more clear about what i meant specifically. the long term solution to these global problems is rationalism as opposed o mysticism. and the first step is for people to start being honest about how stupid religious faith is. for too long it has been off-limits to mock someone's personal beliefs. people should be ashamed of their religions, just like anything else that is pathetic and stupid.
But surely you realize by now that not all people conduct their lives based on reason alone. Very few, actually, mostly Vulcans, Aristotle, and philosophy nerds.
yes, i myself am impossibly irrational. love it. but there are some forms of irrationality that are so out there, so absurd and so detrimental, that we should make a bit of an effort to marginalize them. communism, for instance. to communism is irrational, it is a system that cannot succeed. and we should always mock morons that favor communism. same with religion. it should be something we forget and leave behind.
It is abundantly clear that you should describe yourself as Agnostic philosophically and to the public. Your obsessiveness over these and similar issues makes it obvious that deep down your mind is not at peace with this subject. You subconsciouly long for a scintilla of scientific proof that your/our life was not meaningless. A true Athiest has really little interest or emotions in how 'believers' label him.
i dont believe in god. that makes me an atheist. please try to pay attention. it seems to me alomst as if i have mentioned this before. i can play amateur psychologist better than you can. religious folks are the ones who are using comforting fantasies to find peace. while it would nice if there were a wizard to comfort me, i can manage without inventing one. you are projecting, because deep down you realize you only believe because it would hurt you to not believe. an atheist is a person that is without faith. he may or may not care about how others label him/her. that is totally irrelevant. i happen to be explaining to you folks how i think some things are misunderstood.
