Post by JediKaren on Nov 16, 2007 15:12:46 GMT -5
I personally do not believe God exists and consider myself to an atheist. Before I go into my reasons why, I would like to give a little background in my religious upbringings, or lack there of.
My father is a Protestants, although some of his views are more catholic. My mom is atheist, why I am not sure, I have never asked her. My sister was atheist before she left home and is now pagan. My extended family is split between Protestant and Catholic, but religion has been a fairly big part of my extended family and their past. For example, my great grandfather was a priest and my grandfather and grandmother always went to church every Sunday. My father was in the choir and was expected to be a priest when he grew up, but that didn’t work out. My nuclear family has never been to church due to my mother, though I have visited plenty of churches across the nation and in Mexico last summer, so I am no stranger to the building. Yet, I have never sat through Sunday at a church, listening to the word of Jesus and I don’t miss it.
During my teens my father took a bit of an interest in telling me a bit about religion, but the effort was too late. My mind had been made up and I grew to feel offended if anyone started talking about religion. I was also offended by the idea that anything other than Christianity is considered barbaric and just plain wrong. I developed my views on life, the world, and the after life and God did not play a part. Through school, I was forced to study religion from a historical and social view and took a world’s religion class last year in college. I have talked to plenty of people from all sorts of religions and still hold true to my beliefs: God does not exist.
During my teens my father took a bit of an interest in telling me a bit about religion, but the effort was too late. My mind had been made up and I grew to feel offended if anyone started talking about religion. I developed my views on life, the world, and the after life and God did not play a part. Through school, I was forced to study religion from a historical and social view and took a world’s religion class last year in college. I have talked to plenty of people from all sorts of religions and still hold true to my beliefs: God does not exist.
The way I like to explain my views is to explain history. First I like to start with the cave men. Through drawings, sculptures, dolls, and buildings, historians believes Paleolithic humans believed in spirits, a type of gods that came from nature such as thunder and rain gods. They believed in the after life by burying their dead with gifts. We call their religion barbaric because they did not understand what caused rain or thunder or the sun to rise each day. We do not believe in their gods because most of the world can not accept the idea of having more than one god or accept their rituals to honor their gods. Then we must look at the more modern form of human in the Neolithic Age, or the stone age. Now religion has gotten slightly more organized with the Egyptians with their Nile and Sumerians in the Mesopotamian valley.
The two groups were different many ones, one of them was their religion. They had different gods with different personalities and stories to go along with the gods. They had different ways of worshiping their gods. Yet, today’s society refuses to believe in either religion, saying the religions are invalid for the same reasons as why the earlier gods were.
Now shift your attention to the Greeks, Persians, and the Romans in the because era. The Greeks and the Persians had different gods with different stories, like the Egyptians. While society still does not directly believe in these gods, the Greek religion has a strong impact on the rest of history and even today. I have noticed that some of the Greek ideas about religion have filtered into Catholic beliefs, such as having so many saints and isn’t Mary ever so much like Aphrodite or Venus (the Roman version)? Let us also remember that Roman gods are pretty much a copy of Greek gods. It looks like when Christianity started gaining power, that the religion met some resistant. In order to win over believers, it looks although some of the Greek ideas were intertwined to help people convert to a strange religion with only one god. Some of the later versions of Christianity are very close to Greek practices. Some religions in India were similar to Greek beliefs as well. Wicca and Paganism borrows a lot of gods from Greek.
Now let us look at the early German gods. We are looking at Thro, the thunder god and their strong love of tree spirits. The Christmas tree is a tradition coming from the Germany practice to put a tree in the house and worship the tree spirit. But, most people do not know this and think admiring a decorated tree for a month is a fun. Notice that half the Christmas carols are about the German saint Nicolas and the reindeer have German names. Strange how the German religious traditions got mixed into Christianity, yet we believe in only one God and say all the rest are false.
Look at Great Britain with the Celtic gods and religious practices. Much of their ideas, art work, and holidays like the May pole have filtered into our main stream religion, yet we scorn their “barbaric” gods and ideas about the world.
There is one major part of the world that I am leaving out that is Asia. According to the different religions there, there was no one “god” and in many countries there were only spirits. Taoism doesn’t even believe in god, but just reality and perspective. Are these people barbaric because they don’t believe in any god? Are their beliefs considered a religion? I personally believe yes.
Now that you all have an idea of some of the more famous and world wide religions, I will explain you my reasons for believe God does not exist.
I believe that religion is an answer to life and to the world. The human mind carves for the answer to why. Why does it rain? Why are babies born? Why do we die? Why do we suffer? Why do we exist? Why do we love and hate at the same time? Why are some people better off than others? Each society has spent thousands upon thousands of years trying to come up with an answer than answers those questions in a way people are willing to accept. Each society, each group of people comes up with a different answer.
It seems to me that religion is a way of controlling people by answering their questions. Religion is an answer to justice anything. With religion a person can declare themselves king to gain power over others. With religion, that king can convince people to kill other people. With religion, a person can love another person and make love without anyone mad at them. With religion rules are created and rules are broken. Religion is a tool.
It seems strange that there are so many religions with so many gods and ways of worshiping gods. Which one is correct or is any one correct. If God existed, created the world as Christianity and other religions believe, then why would this god allow other societies to believe in different gods? If God existed, then why does he allow so many sects of Christianity? Why does he allow so much hatred in the world because of these different religions?
I believe that religion was an answer that holds no true evidence in reality. We have shown that what we thought was the work of a god was proven to happen in other means. Rain falls because of water building up in the sky and then falling by the force of gravity. People get sick and die because of germs. Love is the effect a chemical reaction happening in the body. If God existed, then why would he allow us to believe in our false believes in the middle ages?
If you believe that Christianity is the sole and only true religion, then you indirectly believe in several other religions as well. No religion today is a pure one. All religions, due to globalization and the trading of ideas have been mixed with other believes. Also, how can I go to hell for not believing in the Christian god when other religions say I will go to a different heaven for leading a good life or no matter what I do, I will go to a different hell and suffer there because I am a woman or because all humans are evil? What about the religious were the after life does not exist at all?
So with all this being said, I can not accept the idea that I must pick one religion and spent my life believing in it. There is just too much evidence that shows religion was a desperate answer to answer the questions we still wonder about today. I, myself, to not know all the questions, but if there are so many answers, it seems to me that none of them are correct and the correct one has yet to be found.
My Religious Background
My father is a Protestants, although some of his views are more catholic. My mom is atheist, why I am not sure, I have never asked her. My sister was atheist before she left home and is now pagan. My extended family is split between Protestant and Catholic, but religion has been a fairly big part of my extended family and their past. For example, my great grandfather was a priest and my grandfather and grandmother always went to church every Sunday. My father was in the choir and was expected to be a priest when he grew up, but that didn’t work out. My nuclear family has never been to church due to my mother, though I have visited plenty of churches across the nation and in Mexico last summer, so I am no stranger to the building. Yet, I have never sat through Sunday at a church, listening to the word of Jesus and I don’t miss it.
During my teens my father took a bit of an interest in telling me a bit about religion, but the effort was too late. My mind had been made up and I grew to feel offended if anyone started talking about religion. I was also offended by the idea that anything other than Christianity is considered barbaric and just plain wrong. I developed my views on life, the world, and the after life and God did not play a part. Through school, I was forced to study religion from a historical and social view and took a world’s religion class last year in college. I have talked to plenty of people from all sorts of religions and still hold true to my beliefs: God does not exist.
During my teens my father took a bit of an interest in telling me a bit about religion, but the effort was too late. My mind had been made up and I grew to feel offended if anyone started talking about religion. I developed my views on life, the world, and the after life and God did not play a part. Through school, I was forced to study religion from a historical and social view and took a world’s religion class last year in college. I have talked to plenty of people from all sorts of religions and still hold true to my beliefs: God does not exist.
The History of Religion
The way I like to explain my views is to explain history. First I like to start with the cave men. Through drawings, sculptures, dolls, and buildings, historians believes Paleolithic humans believed in spirits, a type of gods that came from nature such as thunder and rain gods. They believed in the after life by burying their dead with gifts. We call their religion barbaric because they did not understand what caused rain or thunder or the sun to rise each day. We do not believe in their gods because most of the world can not accept the idea of having more than one god or accept their rituals to honor their gods. Then we must look at the more modern form of human in the Neolithic Age, or the stone age. Now religion has gotten slightly more organized with the Egyptians with their Nile and Sumerians in the Mesopotamian valley.
The two groups were different many ones, one of them was their religion. They had different gods with different personalities and stories to go along with the gods. They had different ways of worshiping their gods. Yet, today’s society refuses to believe in either religion, saying the religions are invalid for the same reasons as why the earlier gods were.
Now shift your attention to the Greeks, Persians, and the Romans in the because era. The Greeks and the Persians had different gods with different stories, like the Egyptians. While society still does not directly believe in these gods, the Greek religion has a strong impact on the rest of history and even today. I have noticed that some of the Greek ideas about religion have filtered into Catholic beliefs, such as having so many saints and isn’t Mary ever so much like Aphrodite or Venus (the Roman version)? Let us also remember that Roman gods are pretty much a copy of Greek gods. It looks like when Christianity started gaining power, that the religion met some resistant. In order to win over believers, it looks although some of the Greek ideas were intertwined to help people convert to a strange religion with only one god. Some of the later versions of Christianity are very close to Greek practices. Some religions in India were similar to Greek beliefs as well. Wicca and Paganism borrows a lot of gods from Greek.
Now let us look at the early German gods. We are looking at Thro, the thunder god and their strong love of tree spirits. The Christmas tree is a tradition coming from the Germany practice to put a tree in the house and worship the tree spirit. But, most people do not know this and think admiring a decorated tree for a month is a fun. Notice that half the Christmas carols are about the German saint Nicolas and the reindeer have German names. Strange how the German religious traditions got mixed into Christianity, yet we believe in only one God and say all the rest are false.
Look at Great Britain with the Celtic gods and religious practices. Much of their ideas, art work, and holidays like the May pole have filtered into our main stream religion, yet we scorn their “barbaric” gods and ideas about the world.
There is one major part of the world that I am leaving out that is Asia. According to the different religions there, there was no one “god” and in many countries there were only spirits. Taoism doesn’t even believe in god, but just reality and perspective. Are these people barbaric because they don’t believe in any god? Are their beliefs considered a religion? I personally believe yes.
My Beliefs
Now that you all have an idea of some of the more famous and world wide religions, I will explain you my reasons for believe God does not exist.
I believe that religion is an answer to life and to the world. The human mind carves for the answer to why. Why does it rain? Why are babies born? Why do we die? Why do we suffer? Why do we exist? Why do we love and hate at the same time? Why are some people better off than others? Each society has spent thousands upon thousands of years trying to come up with an answer than answers those questions in a way people are willing to accept. Each society, each group of people comes up with a different answer.
It seems to me that religion is a way of controlling people by answering their questions. Religion is an answer to justice anything. With religion a person can declare themselves king to gain power over others. With religion, that king can convince people to kill other people. With religion, a person can love another person and make love without anyone mad at them. With religion rules are created and rules are broken. Religion is a tool.
It seems strange that there are so many religions with so many gods and ways of worshiping gods. Which one is correct or is any one correct. If God existed, created the world as Christianity and other religions believe, then why would this god allow other societies to believe in different gods? If God existed, then why does he allow so many sects of Christianity? Why does he allow so much hatred in the world because of these different religions?
I believe that religion was an answer that holds no true evidence in reality. We have shown that what we thought was the work of a god was proven to happen in other means. Rain falls because of water building up in the sky and then falling by the force of gravity. People get sick and die because of germs. Love is the effect a chemical reaction happening in the body. If God existed, then why would he allow us to believe in our false believes in the middle ages?
If you believe that Christianity is the sole and only true religion, then you indirectly believe in several other religions as well. No religion today is a pure one. All religions, due to globalization and the trading of ideas have been mixed with other believes. Also, how can I go to hell for not believing in the Christian god when other religions say I will go to a different heaven for leading a good life or no matter what I do, I will go to a different hell and suffer there because I am a woman or because all humans are evil? What about the religious were the after life does not exist at all?
So with all this being said, I can not accept the idea that I must pick one religion and spent my life believing in it. There is just too much evidence that shows religion was a desperate answer to answer the questions we still wonder about today. I, myself, to not know all the questions, but if there are so many answers, it seems to me that none of them are correct and the correct one has yet to be found.
