Atheism

[Mellowthrasher]

[LoneWolf325]

That seems pretty typical. Where Atheists always claim they can't see God working anywhere, by the age of 15 or 16, Christians generally say either they've seen God at work, or that they see God everywhere.

Me? I see God everywhere, except within mankind. I should be dead a dozen times over.

Nothing makes you fearless quite like the ultimate cosmic authority demonstrating he won't let you die.
_________________
The pen is mightier than the sword
But the sword is so much harder to silence than the pen.

[Mellowthrasher]

[nbefort]

[ultimasome]

[Mellowthrasher]

[du5k]

[nbefort]

[LoneWolf325]

[ultimasome]

[KaRei]

During several last months I concentrated on observing the Atheists around me, watching their reactions on religious things, etc.
Results of this little private research were quite interesting.

Atheists are strange group of people, that evolved in their society and thinking, but kept their speech from the beginning of their evolution. They began as a smart group of people that was thinking on a philosophical basis about the possibility and impossibility of existence of the God. Their answers were based on their real thinking, in the end they were the ones that thought out the idea that God doesn't exist. Meet some clever thinking atheist might be quite interesting, however, meet such person in these days is hard, if not impossible, although as Atheists is called not unimportant part of world's population.
During the time the philosophical way called Atheism evolved into an equal brother of other religions. Not meant in the importance of the way, or in the number of its followers, but in blind faith in something in which they were raised by their parents. Atheism has for a long time already this syndrom, that is from atheistic side one of the most criticized aspects of other religions. The atheism as a philosophical way has been build on opening ones mind and accepting the arguments, and thinking about them. As long as atheism stayed like this, it had a very powerful argument in its hands against most of believers - "You're not thinking about the God. You're just accepting what has been told to you when you was a child. You blindly believe in something written in some book and you don't think about whether it is true or not."
In their time these words were true for a lot of people. Its a common syndrome of a religion. A child raised in some environment adapts to the surrounding. Child that is only forming its personality for the future is accepting the behavior of its parents and their ideas with very limited options to think about them. When the child grow to the age when it is possible of "smart" thinking, many of the ideas from his parents have roots already deep inside to come to them objectively.
Atheism has bet built for generations and as the ideas was passing from parents to their children, each new generation was embodying the religious syndrome more than the previous ones. In these days the syndrome is so strong within atheists, that Atheism nowadays can be called religion rather than a philosophy. Atheistic parents are passing to their children their ideas about non-existence of the God. And the children do what children do - take their ideas as their own without thinking.
The appearance of Atheism however was like a slap for other religions, that woke them up from their sleep and a lot of people began to search for the truth. Questions of the first Atheists-philosophers, that had to lead to recognition of the truth, had forced a lot of believers to begin think about their own religion and confronting it with the atheistic questions.
But against the expectation that they'll abandon their religion, their open-minded thinking led them even closer. Atheism came to a critical stage. It had to be a philosophical way that in smart way criticize the blind believe in God, however it turned into a very rich source of newcomers for other religions. Some Atheists are again opening their mind and are confronting their traditions with their own ideas. This leads them to the abandonment of Atheism and accepting one or another older religion.
Atheism lost its most powerful argument about the blind believe. This argument now strikes the atheists as well. Believers came to a turn point and they are nowadays the ones holding the arguments, thanks their begin to search the truth after being confronted with atheistic argument of blind believe.

When you say to an atheist of nowadays, that there is a God, he will from the place he stands immediately answer you: "The God doesn't exist. It's something created by humans. You can't see him, everything is just luck and coincidence."
Immediate answer of somebody means he takes it already as a fact. There is no space for thinking between your sentence about God and his answer about his non-existence.
Such answer of atheist make the believer however to think: "What if he's true?" and he begin to confront his religion with the reality. Such confrontation however make him even more firm in his believe, but instead of just parent-passed ideas of him, his believe is based more on his own results of the confrontation, where deep connections between everything and everytime appears to him.
Atheist after such meeting on the other side say: "Oh man, another blind-believer." By this the whole case is closed for him. No more bothering with confrontation, no more thinking. The "fact" is stronger, mind is more closed.

This is the most common reaction of believers and atheists in nowadays. When you meet an atheist that is open-minded, he is unable to answer you. When you tell him arguments about your religion, he will keep silent or will ask you more on it. He will be collecting informations so he can process them and make a statement based on thinking, and not of a tradition. This doesn't pay just for open-minded atheists, but for every open-minded person. They don't tell you their statements, because they have no statement at the time you meet them. They will have a lot of questions, and you can be almost sure that after speaking with you, they'll search for more, reading books and searching for other materials.
Every argument is for him valuable. Each word is for him a possible source of informations.
A person with closed mind is leaving the discussion certain in his point of view. Nothing can get him of the track, since his point of view has for him a status of fact.
An open-minded person leaves the discussion uncertain and thinking about the possibility "what if that person is true?". He isn't firm on the track and can be easily got in a phase of uncertainty. This uncertainty gives him hunger for informations and gives him a space for thinking about the problem also from other point of view than the tradition.

I would say, that more open-minded are these days the believers. They speak about things and they are coming to open-minded conclusions.
Atheists stay on their point, repeating their "fact" to you until you say to yourself: "Is that person thinking at all, or just repeating what he heard somewhere?"
The believers now hold the arguments, and the atheists are those that blindly follow their traditions.
But without atheists, the believers would hardly come to their open-minded questions.

[LoneWolf325]

KaRei, that was an impressive and very important analysis on atheism, religion, faith, and psychology. Anybody who skipped it, please go back and read the whole thing. It's not just an impenetrable block of text, it's a carefully thought out observation of the people around him.

KaRei, I would like your permission to take your previous post and clean it up a bit for later use. I'll be sure to credit you and include the date and time of the original post any time I use it, because that's a pretty solid essay right there.
_________________
The pen is mightier than the sword
But the sword is so much harder to silence than the pen.

[KaRei]

LoneWolf >> Permission granted. You can use it as you wish. And thanks for your compliment
_________________

[du5k]

[KaRei]