The thing is, religion is losing its importance by the day.

If you've heard of Pascal, he says that religion is the only place to turn to once humankind thinks how small it is in this irrational and uncaring world. Religion is merely a distraction, a way to cope with the sadness that humans feel when knowing that they are just a tiny part of the ever-expanding universe. And to me it makes perfect sense, there is logic to this thinking and I agree with it.

But that was when people needed to know that everything was better in the face of terror inflicted by wars and famines, nowadays people don't know or encounter that kind of terror, they don't need to turn to God to "save" them, they are already distracted by this growing consumerist culture, where the next new gadget will happily kill their time. Right now there are tons of ways to cope with life, just distractions galore, billions of youtube videos, an ocean of memes, TV show factories, gaming and religion should be obsolete, but it isn't, though it is losing its importance. 

Few questions to the religious on this site, I don't know what God is supposed to be? Is He supposed to save us, judge us?

Is God earth exclusive? If He made the universe then what makes humans think that THEY are worth saving (if they at all need to be saved)?

People pray for wealth, success, etc... but these notions are all man-made, why would God want to give someone money? Success in a job? It wouldn't make sense to God... how would God know all this?

I may sound stupid but the notion of this being that is omnipotent, all knowing, miracle making being is something I can never grasp.

I don't know how God functions, "good" and "bad" are relative.
Man prays to god to fulfill their selfish desires, isn't that in itself "bad"?

As for the question, religion is important, it is the pillar of societal ethics and morals that is embedded in each human's mind, without it, like it or not the world would plunge into chaos, the whole notion of humanity's version "good" and "bad" is dictated by religion and it did at least to my understanding make humans less barbaric and unhinged consequently making the world less chaotic. 

I can understand why you are saying something like that. It's because you still don't understand atheism. And your post clearly shows it. If you do the same by debating or arguing with other atheists, then don't act surprised, that they don't take your position serious, because you simply lack the understanding and knowing of what atheism is and what atheists are.
It's stuff like that: "my last point was simply that beyond the unverified idea that there are no gods, atheism as a belief system has no other merit besides in my opinion unjustified arrogance... "
You lost the debate before it even started by misrepresenting the opposing position.

You see, because supernatural is defined in a dictionary, doesn't mean it also exists / is true. If there is a supernatural world, then it is out of our reach and mostly not interacting with our natural world. If it would interact with our natural world, we could observe its effect on it and it would be natural. Dark matter is called dark matter because we don't know shit about it. Doesn't mean it falls in the realm of supernatural, because it clearly has an effect on our world. 

"do you honestly believe that our scientific instrumentation and our senses are able to pick up all of the phenomena in existence?... dark matter all by itself disproves that idea if you do hold it"

I wouldn't be surprised if something like that has been said 100 years ago and look where we are now and what we have found. In order to pick up all of the phenomena in existence, you have to know which do exist. If those are interacting with this world, we surely be able to locate them and probably also explain. If there are phenomena that exist, but don't interact with this world, then surely it will be the same as they don't exist in the first place. So why bother? And as I said above, you got a wrong idea about what we think about dark matter. Nevertheless, where do you place your God in all of this?

Oh and.. our senses? No. But that's why we use "scientific instrumentation" in the first place.

There is one particular thing I don't like about certain theists. And that's reverse engineering. You got and idea and a concept of God and try to work in order to proof that concept. That's the opposite what science is doing. That's also why Intelligent Design is not considered science.   

You didn't addressed the "god of the gaps" argumentation, because you do the same fallacy again. You can't just place God in all the gaps where science still has no answer at how things work. Not just that, but you also have to explain which of the 50,000 known gods it is and why. And that's an understatement of how high the number of gods could be. 

The other thing I am bothered with is "interpretation". Thanks to that one we have several hundreds of branches for Christianity alone. God really did pulled a well understanding and not misinterpreting piece of work out there. Not that it informs us about some almighty powerful being creating this universe (in the wrong order), but what truly is missing is the little details that's been left out like bacteria and viruses. Or even on what the world is build on like quarks, forces and energy. I mean, it's not a science book, but at least, for an almighty being, it could add something that certainly wasn't already known during that time.

You are welcome. I am an ex-Christian. I became an atheist by trying to understand what God is. In order to do so, I had to reset all what I was told and begin from scratch.

The question I am still bugged with is... does God know what it is? Why it is? Why it exists? You must try to imagine that you are the first being ever made. The first things that come into your mind should be your own identity. And eventually and understanding of how to use your power. Not just that, the most terrifying thing is loneliness. There is no one besides you who can answer those questions. And hey... maybe God created this world just for that. And not just that, he did so, so he could live in it by forgetting his knowledge of being God. It's probably the only way to forget the pain of not knowing. Maybe he wants to see other beings like humans on how they approach this question.  In all that is, this could be just a simulation. 

Peh,

I will try to answer your questions/comments the best I can, there were quite a few, and some mixed in to your posts but I will try to address them all. Just a note, I have quite the imagination but not always the abiility to convey it. I will do my best.

"Are you familiar with the "god of the gaps" argument?"

I am, but I had never heard it actually labeled with a name. It is natural, expecially for primitive human's to try and explain something they don't understand with God. Many still do it. It doesn't bother me (sometimes the REALLY fundamentalist religious folks bother me though, you know, flat earthers, world is only 5000 years old or whatever) when people claim God did this, or God did that. Why is that? Because I believe in God too. The Old Testament/New Testament God that is. I however make sense of things in a scientific way, but I don't let that get in the way of my belief in God. To me, God ultimately is the reason everything is. I believe that, even though I see the world scientifically. This is because I have faith. I don't have to justify or explain faith, it just is what it is, and I have it.

"That's what I don't like about apologists. You just take your God and place it somewhere where he cannot possible be found in order to say, "He exists there, prove me wrong". "

I didn't know what an apologist was until you brought it up. I guess you could call me one but please read on first. I came upon my idea of God possibly being a multidimentional being all on my own. I already had faith, but while I was watching some physicists talk on a YouTube video and explain the concept of higher dimensions, it just made me think of God. I could now marry God and science, I never thought that could happen for me. I thought faith would be all I had to understand Him, but my rational mind can understand the concept of multiple dimensions outside our own and I thought to myself, if we live in 3 dimensions, why can't there be beings in higher dimensions? Now this idea is still at odds with my faith based God, as this now suggests that God might not be unique, there might be many, just as there are people. I then realized, that doesn't really matter does it?? God is still God, my faith in His promises is still there, and the hope I have for something beyond this life hasn't changed.

"Do you know where they put God in the beginning of writing the scripts? They place him in the sky. Why? Because no human being was able to get there to confirm that he is actually there. While we were able to go past that and even further, god was placed further and further away. Just to be sure that no one can disprove his existence."

This sounds to me like you feel all religious people conspire to falsly convince everyone of something they know to not be true. I will just reiterate that faith is what makes me believe, and is what makes all who believe, believe. As I said, I merely made a connection, I did not read anyone's blog or whatever and adopt it. I sought out articles after I thought of it to see if I was the only one. To get back to the placing God further and further away, I don't think that is really quite true. If for instance, we believe God is a multidimensional being, then God is everywhere. He is in the sky, the ground, the air, the stars, everywhere. So saying God dwells in the sky is true if you believe him to be multidimensional.

"This seems to go in the direction of agnosticism. Higher dimension have not been proved nor is there any trace of them actually existing. They are just concepts as of now."

You are right, but they seem very possible. I find it incredibly fun to think about. Yes they aren't proven, and therefore anyone can say that God doesn't exist because such and such can't be proven etc, but it is extremely fascinating to think about, thats all I can say. I assumed many athiests are very science minded, I would think the possibility of multiple dimensions, would give more credibility to God possibly existing. Lets say we somehow prove that multiple dimensions exist, doesn't that warrant a great possiblity for God also existing?

I am not agnostic just as an fyi. I believe in the God of the Old/New testament, but I don't deny that my faith might not contain the "big picture", and that there could be details about God (or gods???) that are not disclosed in any text we have.

"The question I am still bugged with is... does God know what it is? Why it is? Why it exists? You must try to imagine that you are the first being ever made."

I don't have an answer for that, but its fun to think about isn't it? Perhaps God just became, or perhaps he is one of many just like we are one of many. Perhaps he is just a kid in his dimension, and we are just tadpoles in his pond lol. I really don't know for sure. My faith however, is in the God of the Bible. I feel that was God speaking to us in His own way. Much like a father or mother raises their creation (their child), God raises us through the Bible and through faith. I can't explain that very well, I just feel it.

I can't help but feel you are quite angry or hellbent on debunking religion. While I will not try to make you believe, I will suggest you keep your mind open to all viewpoints in this world. Don't jump to conclusions about people's intelligence, don't let emotion dictate your viewpoints. Try to be understanding, and "feel" your way to the truth rather than always try to "think" your way to it.

I feel if you look for God, you will find him, if you push Him away or continue to find ways to debunk Him, you will succeed. I personally found more happiness, worth, hope, and meaning by looking for God, but to each their own.

Edit: Read through my post just now, I apologize if some of my statements sound accusational (is that a word? Lol). I just speak my mind and don't always pay attention to how it might come off to someone else. 

"beyond the unverified idea that there are no gods, atheism as a belief system has no other merit besides in my opinion unjustified arrogance... "

You lost the debate before it even started by misrepresenting the opposing position. "

well if you move on to saying its the lack of belief in gods the point i was making still holds, but regardless if that is your point, what then differentiates you from an agnostic person? since we can also make the argument that a lack of belief in gods is what defines an agnostic person in this context

"I wouldn't be surprised if something like that has been said 100 years ago and look where we are now and what we have found. In order to pick up all of the phenomena in existence"

yes, that was my point exactly, 100 years or so ago we did not understand radio waves and the electromagnetic spectrum and we would have considered a person using a cell phone to be a wizard presumably and now here we are in the present day taking these things for granted

" If those are interacting with this world, we surely be able to locate them and probably also explain."

why would you assume that? this is why i asked you if you believe our instruments are able to detect all phenomena that exist... and example that this is not the case is dark matter and black holes

your argument here is based on the assumption that right now we have reached the pinnacle of our understanding of the universe and don't have anything else to discover and its just not true

" If there are phenomena that exist, but don't interact with this world, then surely it will be the same as they don't exist in the first place."

the point i'm making is that phenomena exist that interact with our world that we have difficulty measuring and deciphering properly and apparently in some cases miss entirely

"Oh and.. our senses? No. But that's why we use "scientific instrumentation" in the first place."

we interpret the data instruments produce with our senses yes, and both instruments and our senses are fallible and we are even now in a constant process of refining and improving our instruments and scientific methodology and as we continue to do so we uncover more information about our environment

to give an example, the scientific community  recently discovered gravity waves during some type of experiment... before hand they didn't have concrete evidence for the existence of the waves as far as i remember, but that changed with this test.... which demonstrates that there was was a phenomenon that was undetectable but over time with better instrumentation and methodology it was revealed

"There is one particular thing I don't like about certain theists. And that's reverse engineering. You got and idea and a concept of God and try to work in order to proof that concept. That's the opposite what science is doing."

actually that's exactly how the scientific method works, a hypothesis is proposed and tests are conducted to prove or disprove that hypothesis

i'll concede though that god is not testable, well at least not in any objective way i can think of

lastly i'm not a theist

Societal cohesion certainly helped religion to become extremely popular. It also helped countries to maintain a strong control over their people. The Arabian Empire for instance, mangaded to become one of the most powerful empires in the world in only a few decades, simply because they forced their ideology on the conquered people. Another example: the Pope gathered an army of thousands of people to fight in the Holy Land, just with a few simple promises.
But how has that helped humanity? That societal cohesion may have helped some countries to become powerful, but it was always at the cost of other countries and the freedom of the people.

And I still don't know why you keep referring to anarcho-communists. Only a minority of the current Western society is Marxistic or communistic. And out of these few communists, only a minority is anarchistic.

The benefits of atheism are the problems with religion.

Because it's too difficult to get rid off. Same thing with alcohol.

If it may assume the existence of spiritual beings, then, yes, it is.

"But how has that helped humanity? "

civilisation is impossible if there is no common thread binding people together, the problem is that it must be balanced with giving people enough freedom to express themselves properly, innovate, come up with new ideas etc etc etc

something else that i've noticed people don't tend to realise is that if you wiped all of the older traditional religions off the planet completely you'd still have the subconscious drive that leads to people adopting those belief systems to begin with and i've demonstrated that in this thread already

for example there are many atheist that have completely rejected religion but what are their goals? for some such as the anarcho communists i've mentioned before, its to establish utopia (heaven) on earth under the state (god)

there's this unbelievably incorrect tendency to think that certain behavioral and thought patterns spawn only from religious people when they really are spawned continuously from all people

its why whenever i hear an atheist claim that once religion is destroyed completely everyone will be more rational, then they go on to say in the same breath that they want full equality for men and women, even though men and women are equal before the law and have been for decades

"Only a minority of the current Western society is Marxistic"

to continue my point above, lets say you walk down the street and ask 100 people if they think feminism is necessary because we still have not achieved equality between men and women, what percentage would you wager would say yes? i'd wager at least 50%

as i have already mentioned men and women do have equal rights and have for some time now.... so what are they talking about?

they are talking about equality of outcomes and that is inherently marxist... marxism is a lot more common than you appear to believe but then again i suppose we are in an era where linguistic games are being played to mask these things constantly

"And out of these few communists, only a minority is anarchistic."

can you explain rationally for me how anarchy is compatible with communism?

"The benefits of atheism are the problems with religion."

and i'll assume you mean the tendency to base decisions on evidence more and a more rational mind... but its not the case, as i said before the failing that causes people to be irrational does not spawn from religious belief... it spawns as a consequence of being a human being

I seek answers all the time and I have a list of websites that I found to be interesting reads. Here is a good one. I think it might be a staged conversation but it attempts to answer a lot of questions. It is from a Catholic person that has a better grasp of the churches history than I and explains many misunderstood things. Now of course who do you believe? This guy could after all be spinning the truth his way, or he could be telling it like it really is. What he says might contradict what some of us where taught in school. Which is right? That is for us each to decide.


http://www.catholicbryan.org/blog/catholic-conversations-with-atheists/

Edit: here is another about "God of the gaps" argument that is interesting and I just read.

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-god-of-the-gaps

1. Sure you can keep your believe. I am not taking that away. I just don't like the position that science is trying the hardest to explain the world and reality around us and get stuck at a certain point and a theist comes to aid and says "We got all the answers you seek, my friend. God did it. But not any god. It was the one I believe in." And then there comes the next theist claiming the exact same thing, but it was his God and not the one from the other theist.

So, does this actually answer the question what science is trying to figure out or does a God raises even more questions? I mean, I can position myself and say that the almighty Neko created this universe. Proof me wrong. 

2. One think is to be aware of the concepts, the other is to try them out and see if you can destroy them. And multidimensions are just that, concepts. They don't get much further than traveling back in time does. 

3. Sorry, but that explanation leads to nowhere. As I said about the concept of God, God was created by humans to explain the unknown. It was later when they started to personify it and gave them sacrifices to have an easier life. God is also a great way to control the weak minded. And this is still being done by cults for example. But at the same time, it is also a good way to control aggressive people by threaten them with an eternal punishment. 

4. Only if the other dimension work differently than our dimension and doesn't destroy itself, because of the possibility of a god existing in it or rather creating the opportunity for one existing. Explaining this will make things only more complicated than they already are :/ So, I just stop at this statement. 

5. Yes, I can sound angry sometimes, because I bothered with these issues for way too long. I guess arguing with Flat Earthers was the thing that went way to far. But I also get bored and annoyed to explain the most basic things each and every time, just to see that those aren't understood, at all. When you have to tell that a scientific theory isn't the same as a theory for the hundreds of time, you just give up. If you see Flat Earthers don't believing in Gravity, because jumping would somehow disprove it you give up on humanity. And all these kind of behaviours are well explained. Sadly, there is no cure for these kind of people. 

Dunning-Kruger Effect is what this stuff is called. It's why conspiracy theories and idiots exist on this planet in the first place. When I see people spraying vinegar on contrails to make them disappear, I just want to drag them through the monitor and punch the stupidity out of them. 

If I see Ray Comfort making a movie called "The Atheist Delusion" in contrast to "The God Delusion" and fails throughout his whole movie by relying on the Watchmaker fallacy then I just can't take it anymore. This guy thought that the Banana was a proof of Intelligent Design, because it fits perfectly in our hand. Well, Intelligent Design it is, but we call it selective breeding. The form of the banana known today is thanks to humans cultivating it to get this shape. He calls it the "Atheist Nightmare". 

1. I just post the definition for agnosticism. 

"a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God."

Now compare it to Atheism

"Disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods."

Do you see the difference?

2. No, you got me wrong. I don't say we have found everything, otherwise we would stop looking. I say, that if we can observe it, we will find it. 

3. I am not denying this one. I am still aware of those stuff which are found in Quantum Mechanics. The problem which measurements with single particles is troublesome and difficult, because that measurement will change it's behavior and result. Take the "Double Slit Experiment" for example. One explanation I heard was that the observation annihilates the wave of the particle so it cannot interact with its own wave going through the other slit and changing it's course. But here you have the "Delayed choice quantum eraser". Still have to look into it.

4. That's an odd argument.

5. Yes, and what science can also do is do predictions. Take the Higgs Bosom for example. 

6. No, not exactly. You observe a phenomena and do a hypothesis about it. Now you experiment and test it by trying to falsify it. If it succeeds, you move on and do more tests. If you fail, your hypothesis is wrong and you need to come up with a new one. What theists do is they use God as the conclusion. Now you look for everything that speak in favor of God. Everything that denies God will be ignored. Hence Intelligent Design against Evolution. Same issue. Science is not starting with Evolution and looking for evidence. The look at the evidence and verify where it leads them.     

7. What theological positions applies to you?