As a life long atheist I'll do my best to answer your questions.
Firstly if your faith determines what you do in life then why have so many
catholics I know had anal *** and I have not? Take it on faith that I am
***ually attractive and would appreciate such activity as much as I'm sure
they have. My point is this. I have never broken the law and many
religious
people have. I havent thrown my genitals all over the place so much as
they
have. I think faith is only a guide in your life if you make it one. My
morality is my guide to being moral.I've never had faith. Some faithful
folks just happen to be faithful but let their stomach, wallet, and
biological urges do the thinking. If faith insures morality, it insures is
about as effectively as hurricane insurance from a company which just
filed
bankruptcy. It only gave insurance in theory, not in practice. If having
morals without religion is not possible than I am all the proof of
miracles
you should ever need.
How you feel before you die? If religion is a mechanism for dealing with a
fear of death it is a poor one in any form except for Islam. Muslims who
detonate their belt-bombs are very confident of their afterlife. I have
seen
christians who in thier last moments on earth were supremely failed by
thier
mechanism for dealing with death and cried and screamed until they
expired.
They didnt see death as a new beginning like they were supposed to. I
realized on a helicopter in Afghanistan that when it landed I would be
someplace where i might die. I took faith in my training and my fellow
soldiers and accepted that if they werent enough I could die and that
would
be it. I freed myself from my fear of death when I was 20. If I scream
when
I'm dying it will be because I have soemthing left to say before I go.
Does atheism provide answers about love, death, hope etc? Well lets see
what
secular works deal with such contemplations. Shakespeare, Nietzche,
Aristotle, Leucippus, Democritus, and just go to your library and see the
rest for yourself. Alot of people have written ideas about moral
judegement
and general common life problems from a standpoint other than claiming to
be
the word of god. The bible is one book, the Koran another, there are many
hundreds of thousands of other texts which deal with life. The bible is
only
more popular because nobody ever formed a military for the purpose of
forcing everyone to accept Shakespeare. The Greek sophists were writing
about life many years before Jesus. Its not surprising that given todays
lack of interest in reading that someone might overlook this. Perhaps I
have
found a better reason than atheism for the decline of america. Illiteracy.
Now for my final point about the serial killers etc. I will take the
Virginia Tech shooter as an example. By the way I ran this past a sunday
school teacher and she said she'd have to trust my math but my conept of
forgiveness is correct.
The V-tech shooter kills 33 and also himself, but lets suppose instead he
is
caught and imprisoned for life or some odd decades before getting the
chair.
33 lives which were cut short by 50 years (god only knows but lets use it
as
an example) so he ends 1650 years of life.
He causes 5 years of anguish to the 5 closest survivores of each victim.
(5
years spread out over a lifetime of missing them)
33*5*5= 825 years.
So for 2,475 years of pain or death that he caused he goes to hell?? for
an
eternity?? Lets say an eternity is 1,000,000 years.
He would suffer in hell for 400 times the amount of suffering that he
caused. For those not mathematically inclined there are alot of millions
in
an eternity. In other words, you cannot cause unending amounts of pain in
a
mortal life which has an end. You can only have unending pain in the
afterlife. By being forgiven before you die you can get away with anything
mortal which you did because the mortal life has no fraction next to
eternity. Ten Thousand Years is the same as Twenty when you are comparing
them to eternity. So it is fair that anyone can be forgiven? Yes, its fair
that you should be forgiven for what you did in teh fleeting blink of an
eye
that is your mortal life.
So which makes you feel better about yourself? Which makes you feel more
justice? That Hitler is in the same unending Hell as a child born out of
wedlock? Or that its all just make beleive? Is it so appealing that Hitler
is in hell because he commited suicide instead of asking to be forgiven
and
dying from some other cause? and that some 14 year old kid with severe
depression kills himself having not first killed 6 million other people
and
goes to hell as well for his suicide?
Is it fair that anyone can be forgiven when a murderer can be forgiven
after
killing someone who didnt have the chance to be forgiven? the murderer
goes
to heaven and the victim to hell? Fair?
If you beleive that people are in hell forever for soem *** they had that
was considered cheating or because they didnt love their parents or they
stole something because they coveted it,, and because of these minor
offenses (made infinitely more minor with each passing second by the
infinitely and majorly unjust Hell) Then I maintain that you need to find
your way to atheism, Because compared to you, I am saved.
Never mistake someone's insistence on being irrational and superstitious
as
morality.
"Mariachi" <jpgarcia153@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:07df5f0d-7bc4-4d0d-a7ff-1f515ac67363@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Christopher, like all atheists, knows that there is no "pupose of
>> life" other than the purpose we create for ourselves. And you know
>> what? That works out just fine for us. We don't need some
>> nonexistent supernatural being to give our lives "meaning" or
>> "purpose."
>
> Everybody is responsible for their actions or beliefs whether they
> realize it or not. Your faith (whether it be atheism, Muslim,
> Christianity, Hinduism, etc...) determines what you do in life, and
> ultimately the way you feel before you die. Does atheism provide
> definite answers about moral judgment, the afterlife, death, passed
> away relatives, hope, and love? Do you really think that we will not
> be judged on how we live our life in this world?
>
> You are saying that all the corrupt politicians, Hitler, serial
> killers, and thieves will not be judged for their actions because you
> believe there is no ultimate judge, no God. Atheism provides very
> little answers concerning these topics.
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