I'm not really sure where I got that either, but most Atheists I know in real life say that there's no point in religion if god(s) and such don't exist. The general sense that I get from my friends is that "religion is false, so why bother with it at all?". And control has no question at all, but you can control people with almost anything. Religion in that case isn't really religion at all though.
Well I can understand your friends saying that. If you can answer the question then that should be enough for you, as long as you don't blindly follow and you question that should be enough for your friends.
Out of interest; you said you believed in reincarnation but do you believe that to be chronological or not? So each life has to follow the others in some way, or that each could be at any point in a timeline? Slightly off topic I realise but of interest to me.
Oh boy, reincarnation, kind of central to my beliefs. Yes, I believe in a chronological order, I'm not even sure how that would work if it wasn't. Chronological order is rather necessary as well. Sort of like Buddhism, I believe that you "learn your lesson" with time, except without the whole Nirvana concept. Once you manage to learn all there is to know, you're just booted out of the cycle and become a free wandering spirit or something I guess, or maybe you just keep going. It's not really important to me, the point is, reincarnation lets you learn. Plus, there's kind of a reason why it's called a PAST life, can't really have a "past" life in the future, now can you? Time itself is kind of a strange concept anyway. How exactly is time defined between universes (if there are any)? I don't pretend to know the answer to that one. Actually, would time even matter between universes? I don't think it would, because as long as you stay within chronological order in a specific universe, it shouldn't matter.
I'm not even sure that there are multiple universes, but science seems to say that there are, so that's what I'm going with. I tend to go with science for a lot of things, actually. I believe that the universe was created, somehow, and that life was started, and just let go. Whether that was through something like the Big Bang or not, I don't know, it's unimportant to my beliefs.
This thread has been an opportunity to learn!
I believe the entire POINT of religion is to learn, so yeah, I kind of expected that
I still say it isn't the same. Gay people are gay by nature, atheists are atheists by choice.
For my beliefs, that's not entirely true... I didn't exactly "choose" to believe what I believe, heh.