since thats cleared up...

now we have a standard definition of atheism. moving on, fokker asked "why"

i think there may be a human instinct to question and find truth.  Perhaps Atheism as a whole, may be the result of humans rejecting belief in which there is no answers. i'm not saying that theists' aren't using a natural human insticts.  after all, finding faith may also be a human instinct aswell.  So, "why we dont believe?" is simple...
We are the human animal, we are strong, proud and creative. Artistic and intelectual, we have needs.  These needs include a deep inner impulse to find meanings(in everything!) in life. A result of this was Religion, a organized beliefs system to answer most life questions and guide people away from their destructive super-ego. there were many stories, mostly based on astronimical observations. As cultures clashed, so did their belief systems. just like evolution, the strogest survived and the weakest died off, our species then experienced, over a few thousand year, a series of "rise and fall" of cultures. ultamately bringing us to the current cultural systems we have today.  Religions are the humanistic coping mechanism our brains require for proliferation and order. an Atheist simiply rejects God because the idea of his existence is believed to be the result of human disire for happy endings.

this is why.

hey death, i thought you were gonna pay me a visit, due to my death post... lmao

"humans have finally matured enough to be able to handle the knowlege that we just die"

a species maturity is related to average IQ and intelligence.  so now, we are back where we started! IN YO FACE AVO!!!

GO FOKKER! lol

thats the fun part! because everyone is doing it! lol

So you think Atheism is gaining popularity because humans have finally matured enough to be able to handle the knowlege that we just die* and the imaginary power that comes from knowing that we are ultimately only accountable to ourselves?

Oh? So what was wrong with the Third Reich? It was too hard to get membership?

Before I get started, I just want to outline my belief structure a little bit.  I'm an agnostic, but I find religions and beliefs to be very good conversation, so long as both parties keep it mature.  I have several friends that have strong religious beliefs and I love widdleing away the hours talking to them about such things.  The LAST thing I ever want to do is convince someone that their faith is misplaced.  I don't want someone that will cave and say "You're right, I've wasted my life" ... I don't want you to convince me that your religion is right for me, I've made my choice, I want you to convince yourself that its right for you.

I think the question that Ehawk raised about why people believe is far more fascinating than why people don't believe.  If I can for just one moment step into the shoes of one of those pompous douche bags that ask and then answer their own questions, I have a question that I will ask and then answer ...

For those Catholics out there, as this thread seems to be dealing with them more than other religions, Why Catholicism?  Why not Judaism?  Or Buddhism, or Muslim, or any of the other religions on this planet?  Do not the other religions offer the same eternal bliss?  Do not the other religions have similar rules and restrictions on how that eternal bliss is achieved? 

Some people come to God on their own terms, their own tragedies and failures looking for guidence, those are not the people I will be addressing. 

The answer that is most commonly given to this question is "My parents raised me to be a Catholic, so I'm a Catholic".  Ok, so that means these people are Catholics because of the social implications involved.  If they don't believe this, then they may be disowned, ridiculed, and so on ...  This then begs the question, Why did your parents choose Catholicism?  Then again with the answer of that's how they were raised and this cycle repeats until we down to the real answer.  The reason that people who were raised as Catholics are Catholics is because of where their ancestors were born.  They are letting something as arbitrary as the birthplace of someone hundreds, if not thousand of years dead decide the final resting place of their soul.  Some people will take this as "I'm trying to remain close to my ancestors with strong family traditions".  Well, some of those ansestors were forced to religion as the social implications then were far more dangerous then the ones we face now.  And there is lies the question; Why do you Believe?  What makes your religion work for you? 

I don't want an answer to this question for my own sake, I just want people to look at the decisions they've made and be happy with them, they are in fact your decisions.  If there is a God, he gave us free will for a reason.  The free will to choose to love God.  When you die and you go to that eternal bliss that I hope you achieve and you are before whatever God you believe in, if he asks you "Why do YOU love me?", "Because my Mom told me too" seems like a pretty incomplete answer.

> Levitas wrote:

>
The answer that is most commonly given to this question is "My parents raised me to be a Catholic, so I'm a Catholic".  Ok, so that means these people are Catholics because of the social implications involved.  If they don't believe this, then they may be disowned, ridiculed, and so on ...  This then begs the question, Why did your parents choose Catholicism?  Then again with the answer of that's how they were raised and this cycle repeats until we down to the real answer.  The reason that people who were raised as Catholics are Catholics is because of where their ancestors were born.  They are letting something as arbitrary as the birthplace of someone hundreds, if not thousand of years dead decide the final resting place of their soul.  Some people will take this as "I'm trying to remain close to my ancestors with strong family traditions".  Well, some of those ansestors were forced to religion as the social implications then were far more dangerous then the ones we face now.  And there is lies the question; Why do you Believe?  What makes your religion work for you? 

I don't want an answer to this question for my own sake, I just want people to look at the decisions they've made and be happy with them, they are in fact your decisions.  If there is a God, he gave us free will for a reason.  The free will to choose to love God.  When you die and you go to that eternal bliss that I hope you achieve and you are before whatever God you believe in, if he asks you "Why do YOU love me?", "Because my Mom told me too" seems like a pretty incomplete answer.

you said yourself, there isnt much difference between most of the modern religions, why does it matter why they chose that particular religion. you could take that same line of reasoning for science. everything you or i believe is because of society. the difference between us and cavemen is whats been passed down from our ancestors..

Science

1. Bases its theories on empirical evidence
2. Assumes that evidence correlates with reality or what is true

#2 can not be justified. We have no independent access to reality to observe that it does.

i didnt claim that science and religion are the same thing ehawk... science is a product of information being passed down from our ancestor's just like religion though..

avo wrote:
"science is a product of information being passed down from our ancestor's just like religion though.."

true, but science is allowed to change, religion has traditions that would jeopardise the its religion if changed...

avo wrote:
"it cannot be for the simple reason that you think you know of multiple people confirming something by your single point of view..."

no, i didn't mean it like that.  i asked justinian because what he meant was that the concept of reality is not certain because human sense are not valid instruments for truth... we recieve messages from our senses and then our brain interprets the messages, this can be considered not a viable source of reality.

i was wondering in the multiple peoples' perspective can be considered enough to be reality...

if one person has a piont of view, this is their belief based on their interpretation of reality.  My question is: When millions of people generally accept a specific point of view, does this constitute as a valueable perspective on reality?

note: yes, i should have mentioned this question was based on "millions" of people, not just one other person agreeing with another...

> Ehawk wrote:

> do you think that the combine point of view from many people coordinating and confirmations is good enough to justify partial access to reality observations? just wondering...>

Nope. Actually, I give up on truth all together. But I think human reason has some ability to theorize and predict outcomes in what is phenomenal, but whether what is phenomenon is an illusion or has some partial correlation to reality is presently impossible to know.