Honestly Tynan, I loved this post. I don't think it was alienating or anything like that. If your readers are truly interested in what you have to say then they will read ALL you have to say, not just pick and choose what they want to hear. At least that's how I feel about it.

I agree, religion is ridiculous. I grew up being southern Baptist and I've gone to church pretty much all my life up until I graduated high school. I didn't go to church when I moved away because I was slowly realizing how political it was, especially the church I went to.

Yes, church provides a place for communities to come together but it is also a huge place for people to show off and engage in status war. My old church was a hot bed for this status crap. It wasn't about religion or god or any of that. It was about who had what and who had this new house and how much are we overpaying the pastor this year. I hated it. I think the best thing that happened to that church was that it burned down (was is just an old electrical fire or did the Pastor commit arson?) But the church disolved after it burned down which was proof of how these people weren't here for god. They were only there for their own selfish purposes.

This is one of the main reasons why I'm in limbo with regards to religion now. Also because I took a Rise of Christianity class at UT this last semester which really opened my eyes to a lot of things. It really negated the Bible as a holy book for me. Revelation, for instance, isn't about the end of the world and Armageddon and all that crap. It was about the 1st revolt against Rome. All the 7 horsemen and 7 trumpets sounding and all that have concrete, real life, connections to Isreal's first revolt against Rome. Read the book "From Jesus to Christianity" by Michael White if you wanna know more. It was a very interesting class.

I commend you Tynan for writing this post. I'm sure it got a lot of people to think about their views. You may have lost some readers, but I think they were prolly just fair weather fans anyways.

--Allison

P.S. Fix the archive page! There are some old posts I've got to read again!

You sir, or correct. It seems like more and more people are finally noticing how stupid religion is.

Hopefully we can keep making progress in that direction.

Thank god I'm an atheist.

Tynan,

There is a big flaw in your thinking here. Every people group in the history of the world has had a huge line of thinking that revolved around magic, supernatural events, religion, etc. You're assuming that most of the world is stupid and crazy. If you don't come up with a good explanation for all of these events (and psychosis is not a good explanation due to the vastness of the experience) than you're just being a bad scientist.

I believe in a higher power because I've had a myriad of experiences in my life that can't be chalked up to any conceivable simple and natural explanation. Why not all people have experiences like this I don't understand, but you're basically saying that about a fifth of the population are nuts. Not so.

However, the main problem with casting such simple minded explanation on complex realities like you do here is that people (and I mean no-one) don't understand how the vast majority of energy, power, and matter operates in the universe. For example, of the energy that is in our immediate environment for perception, that we know exists, between our 5 senses we only directly perceive less than 1% of what's there.

In addition to having vastly limited perceptual capabilities, of the information that we take in through the senses, we distort the information through the frame of our beliefs, attitudes, and predispositions. To say that it is not possible for a god to exist is to deny our fundamental misunderstanding of reality and to assume that our internal representations match what is actually there, which is, of course - a psychological misnomer.

You should know that if you are really a good pickup artist. I imagine you've studied NLP.

"the map is not the territory"

Anyways, the same goes for any religious group trying to say they have 'proof' that they have some sort of corner on truth. I just personally get tired of people assuming they're scientists and teaching truth when they understand as much about the nature of the universe as a cat understands about baking a cake.

dave

p.s. a clarification, my view of the world isn't better or more true than yours, either, just to say that yours is superior to anyone's is a leap of logic that comes from unbridled ignorance.

hey, i love your post.
but i just have to ask, you honestly believe we came from rocks and gas colliding in space which then became monkeys and are now us. If there is no point to life, why live at all. And if we came from animals, how do we know what is right and what is wrong and where do we get our conscience from?
I just have to say, if i believe in god, and heaven, and a judgement day but there is none, i lose nothing, i just live a pure life, but if you believe there is no god, no heaven no judgement day, and there is, you lose everything.

Excellent post Tynan.

I agree 100%.

If you have a solid understanding of evolution and science, you cannot possibly believe that there is a Christian god or any sort of traditional god figure.

And if you don't understand evolution these days...yes, you are dumb.

Tynan, religion exists for a reason. If you wish to live a "godless" and vegetarian life, good for you. Let me know how that works out for you, doing things you were not designed to do.

I can't stand religious people, except me! It's not really religion, but spirit-soul dualism. I believe God hates me so I don't need him, however I'm an ontologist and royalist, but I see where this is going, I already chose a single path and stuck to it: I serve King William and his wife Queen Adelaide, and I enjoy being ostentatious in an opulent fancy delicate way. Despite the philosophies of rationalists and atheists, I ignore their reasons and arguments, we don't need them, it's not nice, it's ugly, so fuck you, atheists, get a life and have some fun!

Ridiculous means 'laughable'...ie humorous. I fail to discern anything funny about religion because it is taken so seriously. If it were NOT so serious, it would be funny! Semantics....but I get your drift, and you're RIGHT. Religion flies in the face of common sense...

live life love y dose every have to hate all of the thing that things that they do not agree with. the universe is to big infinity and a atom is to infinity small to for everything to b to be defined by the a human word .