Life without religion is 1000 times harder

honestly the fact that we care what other people belive is the problem. You can have any beleif that you want but once you start thinking what other people belive in is wrong thats when the problems start. I personally just believe that there is a higher power that has influence over everything,thats it nothing else. But if you come and start saying "you dont belive in (insert ideal here) you will go to hell, you need to convert/be killed, because you are ignorant/the infidel." thats what starts the wars, thats the root of all evil, bigotry and hatred. the fact that we actually care about what other people think and feel that we all need to conform is the problem, we all need to stop caring about race, skin color, religion, etc and start judging people based on their character.

well that can go both ways too. the atheists who care that other people belive in a god shouldnt care. who cares what other people think. worry about your own beliefs and dont push them on other people ya know?

haven and hell exist on earth, but what is hell to one person maybe haven to another

Well Mr. thread-maker... I'm assuming you, like me, have been raised in a religion and have just recently started thinking for yourself about it.  Up until now you've just taken everything they tell you, assumed it was the truth because you've never known different.  Then there came a point where your mind started to question, and at first this questioning scared you, you wouldn't let it happen for fear of loosing faith, but that's a useless battle.  Your mind will run free and think for itself.  So now that you've realized that it's ridiculous to believe in the bullshit they pump you full of, you have a giant void.  You have nothing to fall back on, you have nothing concrete, nothing to guide your actions, you have no belief. 


So what do you do?  Well instead of clinging to your bible, cling to yourself.  Use that brain of yours for developing a system of morals or beliefs or guidelines that you wanna live your life by.  It's your life, be who you want to be, be your very best (you don't have religion holding you back anymore), BE YOURSELF.  You'll need to do some soul searching, and when I say some of mean alot. It'll never really end even.  You need to figure out whats important to you, what you need in your life, what are your PRIORITIES?

While I was trying to figure thigns out for myself I came up with 3 questions that could get my mind thinking in the way it should be

1.  What do you want in life?

2.  Where does that come from?

3.  How do you achieve it?



I hope that can help you.  Feel free to PM me if you wanna talk about shit, I might be able to help

either that was witty sarcasm or you deserve to be shot for being so fucking stupid.

I




Dont




Give




A




Fuck


about religion.

why post then/.?

cuz +1 duh.

Has anyone read the book " the stuff white people like" - or something like that?  One of the things was "religion that their parents dont belong to"  this thread has confirmed it for me. so true

how?
except me everyone is either christian, catholic or atheist?

explain yourself.

I have a horrible vile taste in my mouth left by religion and everything that goes with it. I was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia, you guys most likely have no clue where that is. Basically in 1992 a massive war broke out and it turned quite ugly because of religion. Sarajevo, my hometown, was hit the worst of all, the Serbs laid siege to it for 4 years straight. The things that happened that made me hate religion happened everywhere though, the Serbs and Croats started doing large scale ethnic cleansing throughout my country. There were three main ethnic groups, Serbs are Russian Orthodox, Croats are Roman Catholic, and Bosnian's are Muslim. The Serbs did the most genoicde though, just in the town of Srebrernica they killed 8,000 Bosnians in 3 days, they still dig up mass graves to this day. I don't care how hard ones life can be without religon, I doubt the lack of relgion causes as much pain as I pointed out. Life without religon and God is a more peaceful one, believe me.

i like this thread some good things being said

i think in many many years religion will eventually fade away and it'll be one big step in the evolutionary process. we'll look back upon it like we did with the greeks and romans believing in Gods thousands of years ago. which i dont really understand why religious people think is so different from believing in just one God than 10 different Gods with different personalities.

but if you think about it in turns of science it makes sense. when an animal and mind develops itself so much and becomes so complicated, the fact that we question who are we, and how we got here is one big step in evolution. do you think your dog even knows or cares where he's going after he dies? or even thinks why am i here?

i am 3/4th croatian so i can tell you that is is 100% truth\
but please allow me to point something out
the bible says that if you "believe with your mouth and confess with your heart" then you are "saved"

that is all there is too it.
"religion" is what men have added to god.
look at the catholic church (absolutely NO hate intended)
you don't have to go through 10 different "sacraments' to "decrease your time in purgatory"
you just have to believe and confess.

the wars over RELIGION
haven't been over God
just religion
which is completely human
and humanity's fault.

........
put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The whole concept is so loopy. Think about it...all these religions that don't get along...if there was a God he created these religions that didn't get along and he created violence and hate; yet people still worship him for doing that....so in theory...they're worshipping a god that created violence and hate and war!

ATHIEST4LYF3

Searching for answers in religion will not do you any good. Religion pretty much help you block out the truth for you to be able to live an ignorant way of life. Their motto is:"ignorance is bliss".

So this is my advice, gather information of what is going on in your life. Like you didnt give us any specifics, ill be broad: sit back and relaxes, things will resolve itself. It always does. Act on logic, not emotions and finally there are trained people that can help you if the situation gets out of hand.

good answer. but the problem is that a lot of people are motivated by the wrong priorities. that's why you get stalins, hitlers and maos in the world. so in a way god is pretty practical because he sets an absolute moral law. i'm an agnostic but im sick of people being so open-minded and relative about moral stuff. before answering any of those questions you should probably read a lot and examine everything. only after you've done that can you start to lay down your beliefs.

actually I read a book that primarily talks about that.

chris hedges--war is a force that gives us meaning

its a horribly depressing book written by a war correspondent who covered every major conflict since 1980.  this guy has been shot at countless times, beaten, and tortured.  in bosnia he crouched under concrete knee deep in entrails as serb gunners laid waste to everything around him in sarajevo.

wars are not about religion.  they are about land/power acquisition, and unequal distribution of wealth/power.  religion/ethnicity/nationalism is used to dupe young men into fighting.

read this book.  you'll realize that war is truly horrible and almost always has impure motives.  also, most wars that don't involve first-world powers involve paramilitary forces massacring civilians.

You're right, it wasn't religion until a few months into the war. In the beginning it was power, and politics, and nationalism, it did not get terribly personal. Then after a while Karadzic and Milosevic decided it was a good idea to wipe Bosnian's off the face of the earth. The nationalism that seperated us stemmed from religon, if there was not any sort of religon in the Balkans we would of never had a problem to begin with. There are videos from Srbrenica that shows Russian Orthadox preists blessing Serbs before they go to massacure the entire town. Believe me, religon played a massive role and the churchs at the time were fully aware fo what people were doing. For example, the Russians gave Serbia a lot of their weapons during the Ex-Yugoslav embargo because the Serbians and Russians are the same religon. To this day I can't freely go to certain parts of Bosnia and Serbia, if they know where I am from and who I am I would be slaughtered.



Let me also explain, there were no serb paramilitary forces, why do you think goverment leaders like Karadzic and Milosovic are in jail? Because they controled the military and knew what they did to us

Let me give you a little historical perspective so you can understand why I think religion caused all this. Tito was the leader of Yugoslavia when we were in our golden years. Our economy was booming, we all got along, we even held the winter olympics in my city. The reason this was the most peaceful sucessful time of the balkans was because of Tito's way of dealing with us. He put heavy restrictions on religon mixing with goverment and on nationalism as a whole. Without religon destroying the country and with no nationalism seperating us, we lived happily together. Once he died though, religon crept it's way back into daily life, and as with it, so did nationalism.  Instigators like Milosovic and Karadzic gained power by playing up the nationalism, soon after our country exploded.

Probably the most intelligent statement in this thread.  The argument that "religion causes all wars" is as ignorant and logically baseless as it is cliche.

It seems to me that religion is simply used as an excuse, and an idea of hope for peopl who truly can't cope with the concept of Death.
It is a way to accept the death of friends, family, and eventually yourself.

On another note -
Our soul can be considered a form of energy.
The law of conservation of energy says that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only changed.
Now i'm not saying that i believe in heaven. But nothing ever just disappears altogether...

That's just my beliefs anyways, thoughts?

You're making a scientific argument including the idea that we have a soul?  That doesn't work.

here is what i belive... there is an almighty creator, but the world and the universe is not probablility as some see it to be, but this creator is watching over us and most likely has no idea what is going to happen for the rest of eternity as some religions belive (if you knew what was going to happen for the rest of forever, why create a universe in the first place?). i belive this greater power planned and set certain rules of mathematics and physics for its new universe and reality and then just pressed the "on button" or so to speak, and then watched its universe prosper for billions of years. in my vision, we determine our own fate, and we are able to use the rules set in place by physics, and mathematics to build and use the universe to our advantage. I also belive there is no heaven or hell... why would any all knowing creator want to make everything perfect after death, or torture his own beings for eternity? i belive after death our spirits live on in this universe, not in a reincarnation, or going to a perfect place called "heaven", but to see and enjoy everything we couldnt in our life  and also see all the imperfectuons of the universe that we were never able to see fully and above all understand our universe and become truely enlightened by seeing all aspects of life, death, and creation.

PLEASE WATCH THE FIRST PART OF THIS MOVIE. IT WILL CHANGE YOUR VIEW OF RELIGION

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/>