Our opinion of religion is all but identical. As a side note, I for one find your thought-out responses delightful and often read them even when the topic doesn't pertain to me. We agree on a lot.
I think the comfort aspect is what keeps religion alive. While a great deal of it is fire and brimstone, it nonetheless offers an escape from death. The religious are somewhat mentally ill but for very understandable reasons.
So as for evolution to function, it was vital that fear of death rank above all else. Humans are the result of that mechanism being honed for billions of years. As the planet's alpha species, there's even an argument that humans fear death more than any other species.
The unfortunate reality is that humans are also the only species currently sufficiently intelligent to understand that death is inevitable, at least at our current technological level. There are other animals that understand the concept of death, that ailments or especially predators might end their life, but humans uniquely understand that no matter how careful they are they are going to die in the end.
Humans suffer that curse uniquely. Humans suffer the anxiety of knowing the mission of their DNA, survive, fails no matter what. Nothing is more important as per our very biological programming yet there's a zero percent chance of success and we know that. That is mental illness-inducing if anything ever was.
The intelligent more easily bypass this but even some of them occasionally fail to. Look at guys like Hugh Ross; he's clearly extremely intelligent, something I can rarely say about the religious (just being honest), yet he jumps through hoops to make sense of talking snakes all while practical when discussing viruses and astrophysics. He is mentally ill. He doesn't want to die. Like all of us, he'd do almost anything to see his parents again as well.
Unlike many atheists, it's really hard for me to claim some alternative beauty in all of this; I think it pretty much sucks, but we've been dealt the hand we have so all we can do is make the most of it. I will never see my loved ones again and I will be dead as well soon enough. I just hope to do the best I can while I'm here. That's reality and me doing the best I can with it instead of losing my mind.
When I was a teenager I played in a band and ended up in a debate with my drummer about all of this. Unable to counter my reason, he eventually said, "My father died when I was 10! Do you have any idea how comforting it is to know he'll get to see me as a grown man?"
It was almost as if he knew, yet he didn't.
As for "gods", the only possibility is an extraterrestrial race having either programmed this universe as a simulation, manipulated the manner in which this universe budded from a mother multiverse, or seeded the planet with the ingredients for life upon realizing it was habitable. None of that is what religious folks are talking about as opposed to someone else popping up first and it's all highly unlikely either way.
[OP] "As a side note, I for one find your thought-out responses delightful and often read them even when the topic doesn't pertain to me. We agree on a lot." are you talking about my responses?
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Our opinion of religion is all but identical. As a side note, I for one find your thought-out responses delightful and often read them even when the topic doesn't pertain to me. We agree on a lot.
I think the comfort aspect is what keeps religion alive. While a great deal of it is fire and brimstone, it nonetheless offers an escape from death. The religious are somewhat mentally ill but for very understandable reasons.
So as for evolution to function, it was vital that fear of death rank above all else. Humans are the result of that mechanism being honed for billions of years. As the planet's alpha species, there's even an argument that humans fear death more than any other species.
The unfortunate reality is that humans are also the only species currently sufficiently intelligent to understand that death is inevitable, at least at our current technological level. There are other animals that understand the concept of death, that ailments or especially predators might end their life, but humans uniquely understand that no matter how careful they are they are going to die in the end.
Humans suffer that curse uniquely. Humans suffer the anxiety of knowing the mission of their DNA, survive, fails no matter what. Nothing is more important as per our very biological programming yet there's a zero percent chance of success and we know that. That is mental illness-inducing if anything ever was.
The intelligent more easily bypass this but even some of them occasionally fail to. Look at guys like Hugh Ross; he's clearly extremely intelligent, something I can rarely say about the religious (just being honest), yet he jumps through hoops to make sense of talking snakes all while practical when discussing viruses and astrophysics. He is mentally ill. He doesn't want to die. Like all of us, he'd do almost anything to see his parents again as well.
Unlike many atheists, it's really hard for me to claim some alternative beauty in all of this; I think it pretty much sucks, but we've been dealt the hand we have so all we can do is make the most of it. I will never see my loved ones again and I will be dead as well soon enough. I just hope to do the best I can while I'm here. That's reality and me doing the best I can with it instead of losing my mind.
When I was a teenager I played in a band and ended up in a debate with my drummer about all of this. Unable to counter my reason, he eventually said, "My father died when I was 10! Do you have any idea how comforting it is to know he'll get to see me as a grown man?"
It was almost as if he knew, yet he didn't.
As for "gods", the only possibility is an extraterrestrial race having either programmed this universe as a simulation, manipulated the manner in which this universe budded from a mother multiverse, or seeded the planet with the ingredients for life upon realizing it was habitable. None of that is what religious folks are talking about as opposed to someone else popping up first and it's all highly unlikely either way.
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[OP] Also, I do agree with your answer from what I got from it.
[OP] "As a side note, I for one find your thought-out responses delightful and often read them even when the topic doesn't pertain to me. We agree on a lot." are you talking about my responses?