Thanks to Niklassi who has provided a link to a latimes.com article and upon which I would like to elaborate, point by point by demonstrating that the differences of opinion between religion and atheism are primarily semantic.
On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness … well … meaningless.
תוקן על ידי שכליאל ב- 29/12/2006 0:53:29
נשלח ב-27/12/2006 20:32
Beyond the grave is unknown and meaningless. Even reports available from clinical deaths returnees, are not yet trustworthy enough in order to be weighed seriously on a scientific scale.
Religions tell us of a life after life and death. It portrays that life as one in which man is rewarded for his positive deeds and punished for his negative ones. Assuming such a life serves two purposes, namely: 1. It exempts existence as we see it from being considered injust by claiming that we are missing the part of the picture in which justice will be done; 2. It stimulates people who wouldn't do the right things and wouldn't be prevented to do the wrong things just because they are right and wrong, to behave rightfully for the sake of being rewarded and not punished.
The first purpose in itself is irrelevant. But it is relevant insofar as it supports the second purpose.
If we think about which of the two meanings, doing the right thing for the sake of being rewarded beyond the grave or because "the right thing to do" is meaningful in itself, is nobler, the latter is obvious. Thus, the reward stimuli is only good as an educational tool for whoever did not yet reach the point of doing that which is right for its own purpose. However once this point is reached, the stimuli is just diminishing the value of acting right.
Since we cannot know what the original founders of religion had in mind when telling us about afterlife, we therefore have to assume the least (as stated in Occam's razor) which means that the religions didn't reveal any unknown future as a sure fact, but as a necesseary assumption for education's sake. Such assumptions are also called "holy lies", meaning that they should not be known as untrue until the person is ready for it. Therefore the myth of reward and punishment should not be revealed until the person has been educated to be doing right just because it is right.
Hence, in the question whether life is meaningful or meaningless, atheism does not contradict religion. It only depicts the more mature meaning of life whereas religion concerns itself to educate those who assume the more immature meaning.
תוקן על ידי שכליאל ב- 14/02/2011 23:12:02
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 18:41
I2I Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history
People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
תוקן על ידי שכליאל ב- 29/12/2006 0:59:18
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 19:42
This is the point of religion, an educational tool for the weak mindedness in humans. It is therefore clear that had those despots been religious, the chance that they would commit less cruelties would of have been greater unless they could commit them in the name of religion. However this cannot be a claim against moral and reasonable atheism. Nevertheless there is a valid argument for not depriving of religion one who needs it for his education.
As reasonable as atheism may be it cannot replace religion as long as human understanding does not reach the level of recognizing universal absolutes. In the absence of such recognition, religion provides absolutes in the name of god which is a personification of Being which is THE absolute.
תוקן על ידי שכליאל ב- 14/02/2011 23:09:34
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 19:44
I3I Atheism is dogmatic
Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their ures are so prescient of humanity's needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn't have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 20:24
On one hand the godliness of the wonderful universe is obvious but a personified deity is in deed a necessary educational assumption for the sake of human ethics-morality which requires a basic recognition that human is subject to Being in adapting himself to Being and not trying to adapt Being to his narrow whims.
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 20:26
I4I Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance
No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the "beginning" or "creation" of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself.
The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, "The God Delusion," this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don't know precisely how the Earth's early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase "natural selection" by analogy to the "artificial selection" performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 20:32
The difference between "chance" and "natural selection" is one between orientation and disorientation. Atheism should have no problem with anyway the arousal of the universe ia identified. It is a fact that in general, orientation is identified in the universe, but that does not yet prove any personified (limited) god. It just presents us with the wonders of Being whether we are plain atheists or we choose to be religious in order to discipline ourselves to the ethical-moral guidelines of Being.
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 20:34
I5I Atheism has no connection to science
Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 20:40
A scientist is naturally inclined not to fool himself and therefore he has more difficulty to accept personal god. However if he recognizes his shortcomings and thus the necessity to take upon himself an absolute disciplining authority, his wisdom will lead him to realize that the absoluteness of religion with the personification of being as its basis is his only resort.
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 20:41
I6I Atheists are arrogant
When scientists don't know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn't know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn't arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 22:11
One who is an atheist out of wantonness and rejecting discipline is arrogant but a moral atheist basically has a god, that is his subjugation to morality.
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 22:13
I7I Atheists are closed to spiritual experience
There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don't tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.
There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate.
תוקן על ידי שכליאל ב- 28/12/2006 22:16:13
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 22:24
The statement about religion's influence upon human behavior; "It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind", is a very accurate deion of what religion is about. But in order for "certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct" to have the profoundest effect upon the human mind, it must have the power of a religious obligation which comes as an absolute.
נשלח ב-28/12/2006 22:26
I8I Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding
Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not. It is obvious that we do not fully understand the universe; but it is even more obvious that neither the Bible nor the Koran reflects our best understanding of it. We do not know whether there is complex life elsewhere in the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such beings could have developed an understanding of nature's laws that vastly exceeds our own. Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities. They also can admit that if brilliant extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the Bible and the Koran will be even less impressive to them than they are to human atheists.
From the atheist point of view, the world's religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. One doesn't have to accept anything on insufficient evidence to make such an observation.
