I had a comparative religion phase in my youth. There were so many religious people in the world, surely they had to be on to something right?
I never found anything even remotely convincing or even compelling about any of them. People are rarely convinced to go from one religion to another, at least at the core. Christians go to other Christian sects, that sort of thing. You do get the odd atheist who finds god, but mostly it’s not atheists who thought about it, it’s people who were part of the non-believer default (we are born without belief) who find god via social pressure or as a reaction to extreme stress. It’s also basically unheard of for them to find a belief that isn’t one of the most common sets around them. You get someone who was raised in an all Shinto area, they find Shinto, not Jesus.
Yes, I believe we come from nothing and return to nothing. Before you are born you don’t exist, at least not as you. The matter and energy that makes you exists, but not in a pattern that you could pinpoint as a person.
You go to nothing. When you die the matter and energy that makes up you still exists but not in a pattern that you could pinpoint as a person.
I once had a religious person tell me that it was incredibly arrogant to look into a mirror and say “Yep, that’s it”. He was wrong. Religion is arrogant, atheism is humble. We are not claiming that the universe was made for us, or that there is a special place for us. We are just one of the things that exist, no more or less so than rocks or gas. The universe was not made for us, we are a byproduct of it, and while we are important to ourselves we don’t matter on a cosmic scale and our main impact on a planetary scale is arguably harmful.
The joke is just that, a joke. I don’t give any credence to Thor, certainly no more than I do to Jesus. Both may or may not have been based on specific historical people… although it’s far more likely that both are amalgam characters based on several individuals.
There is a piece that I have stayed away from but it’s very, very formative for me. If there is a God that is watching us that God is either uncaring or malicious. A random universe can allow for this:
and this:
but a loving God is not an option. No, the suffering in this life made up by an eternity of heaven (or if you actually read the book earth remade as paradise) is not even remotely compelling. That girl starved to death. As she did so a vulture followed her waiting for her to die. That child did not choose that in any way.
Religion was an early attempt at science that failed. It would be awesome if we let it start to fade away and dealt with the world we have instead of one promised in a book written in the bronze age and heavily edited many times since.
Sorry, I got ranty there. I promise that I have nothing against religious people if they allow me to believe what I believe and leave me in peace on the subject (even posting stuff about belief is cool, I’m good with a reasonably friendly discussion about whatever — I’ve been on the receiving end of some less tolerable things over the years).
Anyway, I appreciate your tone and your approach and I hope I have not offended.
