Why do Atheists Hate Religion?

[Alphi]

What if someone is running a VR simulation on my body? I could be trapped in a simulator similar to Sims just more sophisticated and bigger. Don't tell me that it isn't possible, because it is. I do like to think about these things sometimes when I let my mind loose. Even though I sometimes deeply think about it, I never let the thoughts get to me else I'd become deluded as well.

Well some religious groups do believe that this is just a simulation and the real life happens after you die while others believe that we are continually reborn into new lives until we reach the final level.

I happen to like my life so I'm not willing to lose a life just to find out if I have more than one..  

I prefer rogue-likes.. they are much more fun than the sims where you can simply reload after your avatar dies.
you'd have to wonder how bad must someone's life actually be for them to want it to end without any guarantee that they will be given another chance at it...

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[Falconer]

I'm a religion person
Sometimes I was amazed to Atheists
Usually religion people do good deeds to get heaven
But atheists do that just for humanity and morality because they don't care about god, heaven, hell, etc

[jaysabi]

The universe didn't exist for anyone before they were born. Therefore the universe doesn't exist except for the lifetime of people. The suggestion that the universe exists more than your lifetime is all a made up story that you might have heard about before you were born, but that you have apparently forgotten about since.

 

Well I glad we cleanly sorted that one out.

WTF am I reading? It doesn't even make any sense. Just some random words bashed together.

Shockingly, I understood this, but it's still inaccurate.  Of course he doesn't realize it, but this is close to an Occam's Razor-type inference based upon all available, pragmatic evidence acquired throughout our life.  It's a perfectly valid conclusion that we can't possibly know whether the Universe does or does not exist in the absence of our experience of it, or some aspect of it.

His mistake is making a definitive conclusion.  He is claiming he knows the Universe doesn't exist in the absence of our experience of it, rather than claiming we can't know, which would be empirically correct.  There is no theoretical way to empirically validate or invalidate the existence of the Universe in the absence of our experience of it.

Way over my head.
One question. If the universe didn't exist before I was born, how did my parents exist to create me?

Evidence suggests that your parents existed to create you, because you see that other children are created from their parents.  If you are a father, you would have witnessed this first hand with the birth of your child(ren).

Here's an analogy I've used previously:

Imagine I bop you on the head and you're knocked unconscious.  While you are in that unconscious state, does the Universe continue to exist?

Suppose you become conscious again, and you seek to answer that very question.  How would you arrive at a conclusion?  One thing you might try is to ask me, the person who bopped you on the head.  I could tell you, "Sure, the Universe continued to exist, because I bopped you on the head, saw you fall unconscious, and was with you the whole time until you woke up."  Sounds pretty legit, but, how do you know I'm telling the truth?  You must now introduce an assumption that I am truthful.

Suppose you tried a different approach.  Suppose you had set up a video camera that was recording you at the time I bopped you on the head, and it was set to record continuously until you woke up.  After waking up, you then check the recording and you see the entire sequence unfold on tape -- i.e. the recording shows me bopping you on the head, shows you falling unconscious, and shows you to be continually unconscious until you wake up.  This, too, sounds pretty legit, but how do you know the recording you're watching isn't the result of some kind of video trickery?  Here, too, you must introduce an assumption that no alterations were made to the recording after you woke up.

Occam's Razor only works with empirical data.  It advises that the best conclusion is that which accounts for all of the data but introduces the fewest assumptions.  Because defining the state of the Universe in the absence of our experience requires introducing assumptions about it, we can simply remove these assumptions and come up with a more sound answer, i.e. we simply don't know what the state of the Universe is like when we don't experience it.  It may not be a practical way to think in all cases, but I believe its hard to argue with the fact that in 100% of cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist, experience of the Universe was present. And, there have been exactly 0 cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist in the absence of the experience of it.

I understand what you're saying, and yet the thought experiment has almost zero utility outside philosophy. Maybe thousands of people suffering and dying every day is just a really realistic simulation to fool me into believing reality is real. Or maybe philosophers have too much luxury to wonder if others' suffering is just a deception.

The philosophical practice of denying things we know to be true doesn't strike me as having a high utility. Logically necessary, but in academia only?

Like the ending of your last post: "there have been exactly 0 cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist in the absence of the experience of it." I understand it to be logically true, but what is the utility of asserting this? Since all knowledge only exists in the universe, which can't be indpendently verified outside of itself, the assertion seems to have no meaning.

Is the point we can't know what we can't know? Because that's a truism with no utility. This is where philosophy loses me.

[temroa]

reason may be the rules,orders of god and idea that "belief and ritual makes human stupid"

[Lauda]

I'm a religion person
Sometimes I was amazed to Atheists
Usually religion people do good deeds to get heaven
But atheists do that just for humanity and morality because they don't care about god, heaven, hell, etc

This proves that the usual religious person is actually a bad one. They're helping others for the wrong reasons, for their own salvation. This is selfish.
The majority of atheists who do help don't do it because of such reasons.

Well some religious groups do believe that this is just a simulation and the real life happens after you die while others believe that we are continually reborn into new lives until we reach the final level.

I happen to like my life so I'm not willing to lose a life just to find out if I have more than one..  

I prefer rogue-likes.. they are much more fun than the sims where you can simply reload after your avatar dies.
you'd have to wonder how bad must someone's life actually be for them to want it to end without any guarantee that they will be given another chance at it...

If you really think about it, it is possible. Why would it not be? The real question is how would one crash a simulation from within to prove this theory wrong (aside from suicide, which is the easy way out and the wrong one).?
Could you elaborate on the 'rouge-likes'? I wonder though, i there is really nothing, how do we cease to exist once we die? It's kind of hard to imagine losing my consciousness. This is certainly an interesting subject.
One of the main reasons that I do not believe in man made gods is this. I don't believe that we get to live in some fairy tale if we are "good". To me that just seems like an attempt to manipulate a good part of the population.

reason may be the rules,orders of god and idea that "belief and ritual makes human stupid"

[the joint]

The universe didn't exist for anyone before they were born. Therefore the universe doesn't exist except for the lifetime of people. The suggestion that the universe exists more than your lifetime is all a made up story that you might have heard about before you were born, but that you have apparently forgotten about since.

 

Well I glad we cleanly sorted that one out.

WTF am I reading? It doesn't even make any sense. Just some random words bashed together.

Shockingly, I understood this, but it's still inaccurate.  Of course he doesn't realize it, but this is close to an Occam's Razor-type inference based upon all available, pragmatic evidence acquired throughout our life.  It's a perfectly valid conclusion that we can't possibly know whether the Universe does or does not exist in the absence of our experience of it, or some aspect of it.

His mistake is making a definitive conclusion.  He is claiming he knows the Universe doesn't exist in the absence of our experience of it, rather than claiming we can't know, which would be empirically correct.  There is no theoretical way to empirically validate or invalidate the existence of the Universe in the absence of our experience of it.

Way over my head.
One question. If the universe didn't exist before I was born, how did my parents exist to create me?

Evidence suggests that your parents existed to create you, because you see that other children are created from their parents.  If you are a father, you would have witnessed this first hand with the birth of your child(ren).

Here's an analogy I've used previously:

Imagine I bop you on the head and you're knocked unconscious.  While you are in that unconscious state, does the Universe continue to exist?

Suppose you become conscious again, and you seek to answer that very question.  How would you arrive at a conclusion?  One thing you might try is to ask me, the person who bopped you on the head.  I could tell you, "Sure, the Universe continued to exist, because I bopped you on the head, saw you fall unconscious, and was with you the whole time until you woke up."  Sounds pretty legit, but, how do you know I'm telling the truth?  You must now introduce an assumption that I am truthful.

Suppose you tried a different approach.  Suppose you had set up a video camera that was recording you at the time I bopped you on the head, and it was set to record continuously until you woke up.  After waking up, you then check the recording and you see the entire sequence unfold on tape -- i.e. the recording shows me bopping you on the head, shows you falling unconscious, and shows you to be continually unconscious until you wake up.  This, too, sounds pretty legit, but how do you know the recording you're watching isn't the result of some kind of video trickery?  Here, too, you must introduce an assumption that no alterations were made to the recording after you woke up.

Occam's Razor only works with empirical data.  It advises that the best conclusion is that which accounts for all of the data but introduces the fewest assumptions.  Because defining the state of the Universe in the absence of our experience requires introducing assumptions about it, we can simply remove these assumptions and come up with a more sound answer, i.e. we simply don't know what the state of the Universe is like when we don't experience it.  It may not be a practical way to think in all cases, but I believe its hard to argue with the fact that in 100% of cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist, experience of the Universe was present. And, there have been exactly 0 cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist in the absence of the experience of it.

I understand what you're saying, and yet the thought experiment has almost zero utility outside philosophy. Maybe thousands of people suffering and dying every day is just a really realistic simulation to fool me into believing reality is real. Or maybe philosophers have too much luxury to wonder if others' suffering is just a deception.

The philosophical practice of denying things we know to be true doesn't strike me as having a high utility. Logically necessary, but in academia only?

Like the ending of your last post: "there have been exactly 0 cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist in the absence of the experience of it." I understand it to be logically true, but what is the utility of asserting this? Since all knowledge only exists in the universe, which can't be indpendently verified outside of itself, the assertion seems to have no meaning.

Is the point we can't know what we can't know? Because that's a truism with no utility. This is where philosophy loses me.

Regarding the emboldened passage, I've been working for ~6-7 years on trying to change that.  During that time, I've been working on a theoretical model that lends itself to the development of a formula that may provide loads of practical utility.  Once complete, I intend to submit it for peer-review to the most capable audience I can possibly find.  The general idea is to arrive at a workable, practical formula without ever controlling for observer participation in the same way that classical formulas do.  Why has it been ~6-7 years?  Because it's fucking hard    The fact that the formula happens to graph very nicely gives me hope for its validity.

Other than that, you're right.  It's not an obviously practical way to live, but at a fundamental level, assuming such a perspective -- while at the same time dismissing it in favor of practical considerations as you suggest -- can have pragmatic effects.  I hold such a perspective, and I've derived a lot of personal meaning from it which has certainly shaped how I view the world and interact within it.

[jaysabi]

The universe didn't exist for anyone before they were born. Therefore the universe doesn't exist except for the lifetime of people. The suggestion that the universe exists more than your lifetime is all a made up story that you might have heard about before you were born, but that you have apparently forgotten about since.

 

Well I glad we cleanly sorted that one out.

WTF am I reading? It doesn't even make any sense. Just some random words bashed together.

Shockingly, I understood this, but it's still inaccurate.  Of course he doesn't realize it, but this is close to an Occam's Razor-type inference based upon all available, pragmatic evidence acquired throughout our life.  It's a perfectly valid conclusion that we can't possibly know whether the Universe does or does not exist in the absence of our experience of it, or some aspect of it.

His mistake is making a definitive conclusion.  He is claiming he knows the Universe doesn't exist in the absence of our experience of it, rather than claiming we can't know, which would be empirically correct.  There is no theoretical way to empirically validate or invalidate the existence of the Universe in the absence of our experience of it.

Way over my head.
One question. If the universe didn't exist before I was born, how did my parents exist to create me?

Evidence suggests that your parents existed to create you, because you see that other children are created from their parents.  If you are a father, you would have witnessed this first hand with the birth of your child(ren).

Here's an analogy I've used previously:

Imagine I bop you on the head and you're knocked unconscious.  While you are in that unconscious state, does the Universe continue to exist?

Suppose you become conscious again, and you seek to answer that very question.  How would you arrive at a conclusion?  One thing you might try is to ask me, the person who bopped you on the head.  I could tell you, "Sure, the Universe continued to exist, because I bopped you on the head, saw you fall unconscious, and was with you the whole time until you woke up."  Sounds pretty legit, but, how do you know I'm telling the truth?  You must now introduce an assumption that I am truthful.

Suppose you tried a different approach.  Suppose you had set up a video camera that was recording you at the time I bopped you on the head, and it was set to record continuously until you woke up.  After waking up, you then check the recording and you see the entire sequence unfold on tape -- i.e. the recording shows me bopping you on the head, shows you falling unconscious, and shows you to be continually unconscious until you wake up.  This, too, sounds pretty legit, but how do you know the recording you're watching isn't the result of some kind of video trickery?  Here, too, you must introduce an assumption that no alterations were made to the recording after you woke up.

Occam's Razor only works with empirical data.  It advises that the best conclusion is that which accounts for all of the data but introduces the fewest assumptions.  Because defining the state of the Universe in the absence of our experience requires introducing assumptions about it, we can simply remove these assumptions and come up with a more sound answer, i.e. we simply don't know what the state of the Universe is like when we don't experience it.  It may not be a practical way to think in all cases, but I believe its hard to argue with the fact that in 100% of cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist, experience of the Universe was present. And, there have been exactly 0 cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist in the absence of the experience of it.

I understand what you're saying, and yet the thought experiment has almost zero utility outside philosophy. Maybe thousands of people suffering and dying every day is just a really realistic simulation to fool me into believing reality is real. Or maybe philosophers have too much luxury to wonder if others' suffering is just a deception.

The philosophical practice of denying things we know to be true doesn't strike me as having a high utility. Logically necessary, but in academia only?

Like the ending of your last post: "there have been exactly 0 cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist in the absence of the experience of it." I understand it to be logically true, but what is the utility of asserting this? Since all knowledge only exists in the universe, which can't be indpendently verified outside of itself, the assertion seems to have no meaning.

Is the point we can't know what we can't know? Because that's a truism with no utility. This is where philosophy loses me.

Regarding the emboldened passage, I've been working for ~6-7 years on trying to change that.  During that time, I've been working on a theoretical model that lends itself to the development of a formula that may provide loads of practical utility.  Once complete, I intend to submit it for peer-review to the most capable audience I can possibly find.  The general idea is to arrive at a workable, practical formula without ever controlling for observer participation in the same way that classical formulas do.  Why has it been ~6-7 years?  Because it's fucking hard    The fact that the formula happens to graph very nicely gives me hope for its validity.

Other than that, you're right.  It's not an obviously practical way to live, but at a fundamental level, assuming such a perspective -- while at the same time dismissing it in favor of practical considerations as you suggest -- can have pragmatic effects.  I hold such a perspective, and I've derived a lot of personal meaning from it which has certainly shaped how I view the world and interact within it.

Well good luck with your work, it sounds revolutionary if it pans out.

[Beliathon]

but i would like to ask to an atheist what happens after death?

Lots of things, but none of them will involve you. The universe keeps spinning totally indifferent to your existence, as if you never existed at all.

The universe won't care, and you won't care either. Only your loved ones will be affected.

what happens to YOU. not the universe because thats obvious

You cease to exist, and slowly rot away to dust. I know this comes as a shock for you, but that's obvious too.

Well, first off, nobody knows that there were billions of years...

You are aware that when you look into a telescope you are essentially looking back in time? The light from the stars takes tens or hundreds of thousands of years to reach us.

The Hubble Telescope allows us to look back in time an incredible distance. Check out what happens when the Hubble points its camera at a seemingly empty "black" area of space for four months straight. We can see 13 billion year old starlight.

In 2015 the age of the universe is not at all up for debate, it is a scientific fact that our universe is at minumum thirteen billion years old. Fun fact, when you look at the sun you are looking back in time about eleven minutes.

[popcorn1]

i was wondering why humans seek god or something spiritual
 because we humans love it for some reason

and i think i know why BECAUSE LIFE IS SO SHORT
but you dont need books to tell you how to be good you just need to care for other peoples emotions
 
move forward its the 21st century
 i am bringing a new religion out its called THE EARTH GOD pray to the earth
it created you so pray to it
 and how you pray to the earth is you hop on 1 leg while chanting humana humana hoohaaaaa
 
sounds stupid?
 just as stupid as all other religions
  your praying to something thats not there
THE EARTH IS ALIVE PRAY TO THAT
THE RULES
RULE 1 always recycle
rule 2 plant some trees
rule 3 pray on a monday night for 3 mins just thank the earth for putting you here
rule 4 always have feelings for your fellow man
rule 5 dont kill
rule 6 dont rob
rule 7 dont teach your kids to hate
rule 8 always respect each other and be kind
rule 9 always help the poor
rule 10 always try to enjoy yourself and be happy
rule 11 and the most 1 every human needs to do treat your children with love and compassion and then he or she will go on to treat every 1 with love and compassion
 
THEY ARE THE NEW RULES FROM THE EARTH GOD break them and you will die slowly
 just like all other religions say ..burn in hell and all that caper

av a nice day all and if you want to pray
pray for love  and compassion for your fellow man
 not to some entity in the sky

plus all that time wasted on reading bibles when your children can read books on maths science coding art music do some kind of sport
wasted children learn them fact not fiction

 fanatical religion is CRAZY little bit ov religion is ok but still wont help you in any way only you can help you
av a nice day all

[BADecker]

but i would like to ask to an atheist what happens after death?

Lots of things, but none of them will involve you. The universe keeps spinning totally indifferent to your existence, as if you never existed at all.

The universe won't care, and you won't care either. Only your loved ones will be affected.

what happens to YOU. not the universe because thats obvious

You cease to exist, and slowly rot away to dust. I know this comes as a shock for you, but that's obvious too.

Well, first off, nobody knows that there were billions of years...

You are aware that when you look into a telescope you are essentially looking back in time? The light from the stars takes tens or hundreds of thousands of years to reach us.

The Hubble Telescope allows us to look back in time an incredible distance. Check out what happens when the Hubble points its camera at a seemingly empty "black" area of space for four months straight. We can see 13 billion year old starlight.

In 2015 the age of the universe is not at all up for debate, it is a scientific fact that our universe is at minumum thirteen billion years old. Fun fact, when you look at the sun you are looking back in time about eleven minutes, or said another way you are viewing the light that left the sun eleven light minutes ago.

Wrong!

We know that the speed of light isn't a constant right now. We know that it is faster sometimes and slower at other times. We know that gravitation affects the speed of light. We also know that other constants aren't always quite the same. In addition, not all scientists believe that Planck's Constant is a constant. Google "variations in Planck's Constant." Keeping this in mind, nobody knows if any of the constants were anywhere near what they are now, say, in the time that we call 10,000 years ago.

Everyone has heard of absolute zero. Few people have heard of "absolute hot." Planck calculated absolute hot. Other scientists calculate figures for absolute hot that are extremely different than Planck's.

We don't really know for a fact that our guesses for the distance away of the far galaxies, or the age of the universe, are even close to reality. And this is common knowledge among scientists and astronomers, though they don't like to look at it or think about it.

Then we have you, proclaiming the guesses as fact.

[Vod]

Of course, neither you or anybody else can prove that there isn't consciousness without the brain. So where is your evidence that there isn't thinking without the brain?

400 years of dark ages because of idiots like this.  

[Alphi]

Could you elaborate on the 'rouge-likes'?

a rogue-like is a genre of game where if you die you lose everything.. your character does not re-spawn and you usually cannot reload from an earlier save... there is only one life. As a result the game is more intense and the player has a greater appreciation for life.

[Lauda]

a rogue-like is a genre of game where if you die you lose everything.. your character does not re-spawn and you usually cannot reload from an earlier save... there is only one life. As a result the game is more intense and the player has a greater appreciation for life.

That's not really the name of the genre is it? I know that you can enable hardcore version in some games that is the same thing.
You're right. Infinite re-spawns in real life wouldn't make sense, unless our memory was reset and we started fresh with a new character.

Atheist does not hate religion, they just extremely dislike authority of a certain unseen power/knowledge. they are more or less like scientists, "believe only what you see"

Then I ask myself why in the name of everything that exists does the religious folk here complain about Gavin and the other developers having authority in regards to Bitcoin?  
Quite a rational way of thinking.  


Update to post under: It's kind of interconnected, since we have expanded the subject a bit to include multiple things. It's much better than the nonsense that BADecker has posted about the existence of the universe.

[aysha985343]

Then I ask myself why in the name of everything that exists does the religious folk here complain about Gavin and the other developers having authority in regards to Bitcoin?  
Quite a rational way of thinking.  
[/quote]

i agree but that is off the topic.

we are talking about religion and no religion not gavin

[Falconer]

This proves that the usual religious person is actually a bad one. They're helping others for the wrong reasons, for their own salvation. This is selfish.
The majority of atheists who do help don't do it because of such reasons.

But is religious people who did badness same with atheists? They have religion but don't care about heaven and hell so they did everything what they want. And I didn't say atheists is good and religious person is bad.

[Buffer Overflow]

Usually religion people do good deeds to get heaven

This proves that the usual religious person is actually a bad one. They're helping others for the wrong reasons, for their own salvation. This is selfish.
The majority of atheists who do help don't do it because of such reasons.

You know I've never thought of that before. They want to get into heaven, so they help others but the main reason for helping is to selfishly help themselves, which is bad, so they don't goto heaven after all.

I'm going to remember that one.

[Lauda]

But is religious people who did badness same with atheists? They have religion but don't care about heaven and hell so they did everything what they want. And I didn't say atheists is good and religious person is bad.

You're asking me if both religious people and atheists sins would be considered equal if they did the same ones? That's a yes.
The good deeds would decide who's better and who's worse.

You know I've never thought of that before. They want to get into heaven, so they help others but the main reason for helping is to selfishly help themselves, which is bad, so they don't goto heaven after all.

I'm going to remember that one.

My brain sometimes comes up with all possible outcomes. I'm not saying that everyone is doing this, but I'm pretty sure that quite a good portion of them are. If I recall correctly when you go to a priest to confess your sins (I have no idea how this is called?), he sometimes tells you to do a good deed to someone. This is where our man made religious have flaws. The person will do something good because if they don't do it their confession would be invalid. Selfish? I would say so.

[BADecker]

Usually religion people do good deeds to get heaven

This proves that the usual religious person is actually a bad one. They're helping others for the wrong reasons, for their own salvation. This is selfish.
The majority of atheists who do help don't do it because of such reasons.

You know I've never thought of that before. They want to get into heaven, so they help others but the main reason for helping is to selfishly help themselves, which is bad, so they don't goto heaven after all.

I'm going to remember that one.

This is reasonably true. Whenever anyone does anything, he does it for selfish reasons. The thing about religious people helping other people to get to Heaven is, God is selflessly working through the people so that they will get to Heaven, even though the people don't realize it.

Imagine that, Fluffer. God is working as hard as He can with you, just so you will go to Heaven.

[Falconer]

You're asking me if both religious people and atheists sins would be considered equal if they did the same ones? That's a yes.
The good deeds would decide who's better and who's worse.

It's okay. But me, as a religion man state that sometimes I was amazed to atheists. But why atheists hate religion people so much? Have atheists ever been disturbed by religions so that made a disputation between us?

[Alphi]

That's not really the name of the genre is it? I know that you can enable hardcore version in some games that is the same thing.
You're right. Infinite re-spawns in real life wouldn't make sense, unless our memory was reset and we started fresh with a new character.

Yes Rogue-Like is a sub genre of RPG.
some notable examples would be "Sword of the stars: The Pit" and "FTL" and I think "Survivor squad" counts as a roguelike too.
(all great games I might add)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

If life was a computer game then Athiests would be playing RogueLikes and happy religious people would be playing super mario or rainbow islands LOL

Atheist does not hate religion, they just extremely dislike authority of a certain unseen power/knowledge. they are more or less like scientists, "believe only what you see"

Then I ask myself why in the name of everything that exists does the religious folk here complain about Gavin and the other developers having authority in regards to Bitcoin?  
Quite a rational way of thinking.  

Update to post under: It's kind of interconnected, since we have expanded the subject a bit to include multiple things. It's much better than the nonsense that BADecker has posted about the existence of the universe.

I think Jesus would have liked Bitcoin.. after all he was the one who went into the temple and smashed up the tables of the money lenders.
If he was around today he would probably do the same thing to JP Morgan and Western union. I dont speak for Jesus, Muhammad or Gautama (buddha) but its very clear from their teachings and actions that all 3 of them did not like the practice of usury and exploiting people for profit.

I think in crypto currency there is plenty of room for Athiests, Revolutionaries, Libertarians, Leftists, Religious people and average Joe.
Satoshi was very specific about being completely neutral.

we can all be one big happy family in crypto-land..