parable of the atheist (64)

51 Name: Anonymous : 2007-10-09 07:09 ID:X4kK+2V2 [Del]

Continued.....

I even tried to reason about evolution since the bible speaks of creating the sea and air animals before the land animals which made me wonder. Did a fish, such as a flying fish-type fish, evolve into a bird over time? It would make more sense because for a fish to eat insects over water, it would have to evolve larger fins in some places to stay airborne longer where eating airborne insects was most primarily the main means of survival. Seems in some ways just as plausible as a fish thriving and surviving because it could somehow be able to jump or squirm to land for a food source and jump back in. What seems more plausible, a fish developing legs for on-land food, or a fish developing larger fins to catch insects and such flying above water? To go from a medium density material to a ligher density material and mechanical movement is pretty much the same so less has to evolve to adjust, or go to a lighter density material, air, but an entirely different means of bodily transport and mechanical movement. But in the end, I realized I could take more passages from the bible and fit science around it and some would make sense while others wouldn't. The same could apply to any other religion. I was wanting to believe so bad, whatever didn't make sense, I would just put aside. Or just pick out certain passages which sounded good and didn't make me sound like a hypocrite or that the bible was.

But I've lost a few good years in my life believing in bullshit and trying to make sense of it so I carry a certain degree of resentment about it and others who try to spread it. It just seems to complicate lives and tear apart known logic. Morality is relative, not static. It is also not black and white as what most religions try to do. If there is something which religion generally says is a bad thing and science agrees it has negative effects, we don't need to stray away from it because god/s said so, it's because it carries a negative impact with it or has the possibility to. It's the equivalent of teaching kids right and wrong but when you grow older, you discover far more variables in life which some simple book can't give advice.

People find all kinds of means to justify seeming wrong-doings in religious text that we better not to do these days. Religion tries to control, science tries to understand. I tell my nephew don't do something while telling him why in my best attempt and he understands and is more likely to obey. But if I just say, "because I said so", then he is left clueless as to why and has less motive to obey other than me spatting his hand or paddling him. Religion is that way. It tells you what to do and what not to do, and the consequences are often the rule-giver giving you punishment. As I said, finding your way out of that cesspit of simple religion is part of growing up. Things aren't black and white like religion generally tries to promote. Because you were born in a certain place, you are no worse or better than someone else who was born in, say, Israel, Iraq, England, etc. I think religion is, for the most part, an inhibitor to human advancement and civility. That's also why I feel such disdain for it. Becoming an atheist was perhaps the best period in my life. I won't say day, because it happened after lots of study of the bible and science and happened gradually. So there you go, I seem a dick in a way, but don't say I don't understand the religious side. I have been to church plenty and even baptized. Most of my church buddies were friendly, but there was plenty of misguided ignorance on the topic of muslims, buddhists, other religions, cultures, non-church-goers, etc. They usually don't concern themselves with understanding of other societies, cultures, and religions, rather, they usually want to focus on the outcomes of not being like them, such as damnation if they don't conform or helping them in the case of drug users sometimes.

That is what science has going for it. It doesn't turn a blind eye. It seeks to understand the universe and it's inhabitants. I'm pretty conservative and have a lot of moral values of a Christian as long as there is a logical explanation as to why an action is considered negative. Sex, for example. I believe in wearing proper attire which is not too risque so as not to bring about distracting impulse to another or disrespect another's living space if I were to appear under-dressed in someone's home. It's not really morality, it's just known courtesy and respect. Not because I fear a god sending me to hell, but because of respect for a fellow human. So you say, God punishes to get us to respect each other. That is not needed in an environment where if we disrespect another, we could be punished anyway. Man, by nature, wants to seek a mother or father figure or leader-type, and that is in essence, why god or gods are initially invoked in man. The tricky part is, because we are only small specks in the universe, or perhaps, infinitely small, we servants in a master universe and man tries to implement that into religion but manage to take more out of it then there really is. We are just a small part of something bigger, that's all. You can push that and say that something bigger is one entity and that speaks to us to tell us what is right, but that's pushing the edge of sanity (EOS, haha). And it really is the universe telling us things with reasonable, and observational studies. And you can push it more to see what man can fall for by saying it has a human messenger which came to us to tell us things but really, we are all better off at taking clues from our environment, which we could call science. It has told us more of "right" and "wrong" than any religious text.

But there you have it. That is my view and after asking many times, I would like other views instead of blindly bashing science.

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