Faith by definition is a complete trust or reliance in something we know isn't true (can't prove)

Interesting what we grasp onto....
God tells man not to eat an apple, but a talking snake tells men to eat it, so.. man listens to the talking snake.... God is upset, so he immaculately rapes a woman and she gives birth to him/his son so he can suffer and die for us because we sinned when we listened to the talking snake and ate an apple..
what a strange story...

a retired Episcopalian Bishop said it well "religion is about comfort and not about the truth"

"Man is the only animal that has the true religion--several if them" Mark Twain

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason" Benjamin Franklin

"It is said that men may not be the dreams of the Gods, but rather that the Gods are the dreams of men" Carl Sagen

"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him" Arthur C. Clarke

this is a very good link ... :)
http://godisimaginary.com/index.htm


Mankind would be so much better off if we would take responsibility for our own actions and
not use religion as a crutch for our weaknesses and shortcomings......
just take responsibility for yourself and your actions :)

How true your words are. Thanks for the great post

Works for me...

Great post.

A safe place to place my self.
I take full responsibility for my actions
and blame no one.
It's in my self I find faith to no longer be a fool.

your argument is good. but i think you are being cynics here.... you based all your argument on a very narrow definition of faith. broad base your argument and it will serve you well

This is a terrible argument. I'm an atheist, but your defintion of faith is way off. Just because you can't prove something doesn't mean we're trusting something "we know isn't true". It means that we're believing in something not knowing if it's true or not. Do you really think all religious people that base their whole life around God know it's not true? No, of course not. In fact, many claim they know God is true and I believe that many of them actually think there is a god. We go too often with assuming someone isn't telling the truth just because we find their statement ridculous. Sam Harris brings this up all the time and I'm with him 100%. He says that radical islamics that do suicide bombings really believe they are going to meet with 72 virgins or whatever the number is. As mooon005 put it, you guys are being cynics. Here's my favorite definition from dictionary.com: belief that is not based on proof. Nowhere in that definition does it say belief in something we KNOW IS NOT TRUE. There's a big difference.

I am an atheist, but have several close friends who come from various religions. If find it interesting that many of them are actually more intelligent than myself.

In fact, a few of them have responded to the argument that god is manmade, and that religion is a crutch by agreeing as such. They use their religion for comfort, not for education or brainwashing, as is commonplace in the USA right now.

Just thought I would pop in and give my two cents' worth.

awesome post!!!!! its exactly what i think but couldnt put into words! KUDOS MY MAN!

Welcome to mingle2 Ptibull!!!

I'm betting mr. "two posts in january" doesn't come back to read about your appreciation of his words, though I do hope i'm wrong.

I was beginning to think that I was the only one who picked up on this. People like the TS are just as bad as Bible thumpers because they open the door for them by doing stupid things like incorrectly defining things that can be googled in 5 seconds.

Welcome to mingle2, ohshizabear! Lets get some arguments/discussions going in the atheist section! (Sadly, I agree with your above post, which doesn't make for much of a debate.)

Great post! And I fully agree, you cannot hold a higher power responsible for yours or anyone else's actions. Do animals hold a higher power responsible for killing another animal? What about when a dog attacks a human, do they go and prey to their "god" - I don't think so. We are human and we choose to do what it is we want to do. Plain and simple as that.

Thanks for sharing those quotes interesting as well!

2smile, you couldn't have said it any better. Great post. OH AND EVERYONE ON HERE SHOULD READ/LISTEN TO RICHARD DAWKINS: THE GOD DELUSION! It's an incredible book!!!!

Religion should be classified as a Psychosis....
an entire imaginary, delusional belief system
We can call it Religious Belief Syndrome… an acronym could be… Religious B S 

It may be delusional, but it isn't imaginary. I've seen it. I've talked to people who believe in it. Although, I cannot understand why anyone believes in it.

It seems that most of the people who have posted comments on this thread agree in concept, we are just splitting thin hairs.
I would still classify Religion as imaginary (existing only in the imagination, in our minds, made up)...but the trappings are real: Pope, bible (just another book), church buildings, etc....

How can a person who has a "personal relationship with Jesus" not be imagining this ???

The following is a well written list of 50 reasons why god is imaginary.

http://godisimaginary.com/index.htm


People are waking up !!!!
Evangelicals constitute not 25 percent of the U.S. population – as they have claimed – but at most 7 percent, and their numbers are falling, not rising. All these numbers come from the churches themselves. (Wicker, p. 67)
From 1980 to 2005 in the Southern Baptist Church, baptisms of people between eighteen and thirty four – in other words, their next generation of leaders – fell 40 percent, from 100,000 in 1980 to 60,000 in 2005.[3]
But the U.S. population grew by 27% during those 25 years, so the Baptists would have had to baptize 127,000 in 2005 just to stay even; they really fell by 52%.[4] In 2006, the Southern Baptists – who claim almost six times more members than any other white evangelical church – made a concerted effort to baptize one million people. Not only did they fall over two-thirds short, they actually baptized even fewer than they had the year before.[5]
You might think that some faith group must have grown during the last thirty years, and you’d be right: atheists and nonbelievers more than doubled in the eleven years between 1990 and 2001, from 14 million to 29 million: from 8% of the country to 14%. There are more than twice as many atheists and nonbelievers as there are evangelical Christians.[6] And since it’s hard to believe that all atheists/nonbelievers would be willing to confess that to pollsters, the number is probably much higher. From 2000 to 2005, church attendance fell in all fifty states.[7]

Some people are waking up. I suspect that a whole bunch o' people are just too lazy and selfish to maintain the trappings of a religion, though. How many kids do you still see going out and playing in the dirt? How many adults go for a walk even once in while? Let's face it. Getting up early and going to church is not nearly as fun as sleeping late and firing up the PS3.

to me "faith" is believing/trusting something because someone else tells you to. said person may be telling the truth or may be lying. you dont know. but faith says you believe it anyways.

the best example i have is this

do you have faith that the chair you are sitting in will hold you? yes? why? because someone told you it will hold you or because you can see PHYSICALLY how its built and you know from previous experience that the materials are capable of holding you.

however if you already know what its made of and that its capable of holding your weight then it becomes knowledge and "faith" is no longer possible. therefore you can only have "faith" in something that hasnt been proven.

now if i sit in the same chair and it breaks then "faith" let you down. "Knowledge" would explain that the crack in the leg caused the chair to be weak. but until knowledge is brought to your attention you cannot complete the equation to know what will happen.