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[10ebbor10]

Let's take god to be "any kind of supreme intelligence".  Doesn't have to be interventive.

Still no, I suppose. At least not on religious reasons. It's pretty well possible that we're being manipulated by "supreme" aliens. (how can you (dis)prove that) , but that has nothing to do with religion.

[GlyphGryph]

Actually, aren't some religions basically BASED around that concept? It may not have to do with religion in general, but there's not much that does, and the core components of any given religion are usually not the general qualities.

[10ebbor10]

There appear to be religions based around anything these days, even spaghetti. Wasn't scientology the big aliens did it religion?

[GlyphGryph]

Yeah, though I think there's a couple other smaller ones too.

[brainfreez]

i have been thinking a lot about what will happen after death because as an atheist i think that there will be nothing.

people might use religion as escape from reality to say that after death i will go to heaven .
thinking that there will be nothing after death drives me into depression , because why should i live and waste time having painful moments?

this is where i see a reason for religion , but why should i lie to myself when i know that i will never believe in gods.

[kaijyuu]

Though I don't believe in it, Deism has always struck me as rather nifty. Basically its only tenant is "God or something made the universe then never came back." Simple, logically consistent, fits with everything science can ever say about the universe. A-ok to me.

[brainfreez]

this brings up question - why did the god create the universe? he has infinite power , why not use it to create shit for yourself , instead of creating humans and then getting mad on them because they don't live by the rules .

and , yea the deism sounds cool .

[Sheb]

Also doesn't bring any of religion goodies (the feeling that someone is caring for you, "explanations" for good and ba devents in your life...) It's basically atheism with a god.

[alexandertnt]

Someone murdered someone else while wearing a party hat.

The is not representitive of my argument, since I am finding an example where religion was the cause, not just that someone doing the crime was religious (someome murdered someome because of the party hat, not just happened to be wearing it. If someome murdered directly due to wearing a party hat, then wearing a party hat would sometimes cause murder).

I am not trying to show that religion is bad overall, or even that there is a correlation between religion and bad things.

Besides,

Recent research on the rationale of suicide bombing has identified both religious and sociopolitical motivations. Those who cite religious factors as an important influence note that religion provides the framework because the bombers believe they are acting in the name of Islam and will be rewarded as martyrs.

I also can not find any information on Causation !=> Correlation on the internet (all the results are the other way around, unsuprisingly.). I would be literally interested in a link on an explanation, since with respect to Correlation !=> Causation (which we know is right, and is the only think I have to go on) (A !=> B) !=> (B !=> A).

Got a point there, I suppose. It's not good to base moral systems on the litteral, fundamentalist intrepretations of a text.

Hold your horses. Correlation doesn't justify causation.(Yeah, got it the other way around I believe) It might hint at Causation, but it doesn't always imply it. Hence my paper hat argument. I was wearing a hat when I killed somebody, but that doesn't imply that wearing hats cause people to murder each other.

Your version of the paper hat story says that Causation means Causation, which it does. The argument is most clear when used with statistics. (90% of all murders happens by people with paper hats on. Either paper hats causes murder, murder causes paper hats, an unknown thing causes murder and paper hats or both are completely unrelated)

Well if it is a bad idea to basse a moral system on a literal interpretation of a text, that just means that there now exists many different ways of interpreting the text. This would seem to mean that good morals extracted from the text are based on coincidence or self-interpretation, rather than actual teaching of the text. This seems like a risky way to derive morals.

I do not understand where I implied Correlation => Causation. I was expressing doubt that Causation !=> Correlation (Which is what you said in response to one of my point). Infact it would seem that it should, if X caused Y and X took place, than there would seem to have to be a non-zero correlation between X and Y. (I am not entirely sure if "Yeah, got it the other way around I believe" is you achnoweledging that you meant Correlation != > Causation instead, or that I somehow got them mixed). I have been giving examples of causation, and using them as counter exampls to "all x does not cause y" (all religion does not cause bad things). If this causation holds out, there would seem to have to be a correlation but there does not have to be for it to work as a valid counter example.

Your paper-hat example is just Correlation !=> Causation, which is not in doubt. (If paper hats do cause murder, it would seem to imply the existance of a correlation between wearing paper hats and murder. This would be an example of the paper hat argument modified for Causation => Correlation).

It tries to provide a system of morals, a way of life based on it's holy books, often with varying degrees of succes and useability depending on intrepretations.

It does try to do these things. It would seem that inflexable, thousands of years old teachings would not be a good base for moral and way-of-life teachings especially in modern life where things like homosexuality is no longer taboo.

Plus, without the existance of God(s)/Evil equivelant, or other supernatural assumptions of many texts the enforcement mechanism of many religions would seem to break down.

Some religions do have some moral, way of life teachings without much of the supernatural stuff, mind you. But most don't.

[EveryZig]

It tries to provide a system of morals, a way of life based on it's holy books, often with varying degrees of succes and useability depending on intrepretations.

Aside from issues you might raise with about the quality of religions morality, there is a fairly major question of how many people actually follow religion this way. In the U.S. at least, when you actually study people's religion-based views they are quite definitely influenced by religion's fact-claims.
My perception is probably exaggerating things, but it annoys me how sophisticated religions tend to withdraw into a shell of metaphor and vagueness when challenged but scuttle about making fact-claims the moment you turn your back.

[Ship of Freaks]

I do want you to show me evidence for the existence of God, especially evidence for the existence of an afterlife - because I sure as hell do not want to die. I fear death terribly because I feel right in my bones that when I die I am going to rot in the ground, switched off forever like a broken light bulb. I'm not a happy atheist, I'm actually very scared.

I find it interesting that you look at it in this way, as many atheist-types like to discredit the (supposed) merit of religion that it does, in fact, often contribute to people's feeling better, by telling how happy they are with their atheism, or even because of it. I know one man who said that he did not want to believe in an afterlife because that would make this life less meaningful to him; he wanted to feel that this was it, that this life was what he got and that after it all he would rot in the earth.
As for me, I fear that if I ever felt certain that, upon death, I would cease to exist, I might, on the contrary, be in danger of suicide. It's not that I'm religious; I don't believe in believe in Heaven or Hell. I just don't really feel that I know.

[kaijyuu]

If you want some confirmation of an afterlife, you'll probably want to find evidence for dualism. As certain as taxes, one day you're going to die and the meat in your head going to rot, so you'd want to make sure that "you" is separate from it in some fashion and can be preserved.

To my knowledge, dualism hasn't been confirmed or even suggested by empirical evidence, so... :|

[Micro102]

If people knew more about heaven, they might not think it so great. In the bible, heaven is described as you and everyone else, and 4 giant creatures with eyes covering both the inside and outside of their body, all praising God's glory for eternity without rest.

[Leafsnail]

If you want some confirmation of an afterlife, you'll probably want to find evidence for dualism. As certain as taxes, one day you're going to die and the meat in your head going to rot, so you'd want to make sure that "you" is separate from it in some fashion and can be preserved.

To my knowledge, dualism hasn't been confirmed or even suggested by empirical evidence, so... :|

I'm tempted to say it's somewhat contradicted by drugs and brain damaging accidents (unless you go down the "alcohol is a soul corrupting drink" route).  You can kindof fudge your way around it but it's still an issue.

[Ship of Freaks]

"Confirmation", huh? I wasn't really thinking in that sense. In case anyone misinterpreted what I said, it may be relevant to note that I am looking at this from a perspective not unrelated to oriental philosophy, what with enlightenment and such, which you may understand as a state of ultimate bliss, and indeed that is one way it is described (although any description must fall somewhere short of accurate, as this Ultimate Truth is supposed to be ineffable), but it is also described as an "extinguishing" (which is what nirvana literally means), the flame of the ego being put out. In this sense, this ultimate achievement of Being is actually Non-being. That is why it is said that one must escape the cycle of life and death, to go beyond mortality (i.e., achieve an "immortality" of a sort). But these things are all the words of others, they are with me as borrowed knowledge and not my own authentic knowledge; as such, I cannot say that I believe them. So if death is, in fact, more an end to life than sleep is to waking, then how is that different from the extinguishment otherwise sought? Is it not the same cessation of existence that will deliver me beyond suffering, beyond the question of living and dying? And yet I cannot say that I believe that either.
I was definitely not saying that I'd like to go to Heaven and would be done with it all if I knew I couldn't get there. The very idea of such an afterlife as described in the Bible or other places hardly feels credible.