A Manual For Creating Atheists

The main problem is the lack of DESIRE to be liberated from the existing paradigm/programming of enforced extremes, the inability to end the running around in circles and chasing each others' tails (if you'll excuse the trite language). Why should mere BELIEFS always overrule objective truths? That's just insanity, nothing else. Those with enough honesty will never claim to KNOW any of the bigger truths; it's all about having the DESIRE to know. Apparently nothing will change unless or until enough people are able to identify, therefore properly criticize and attack, the heart of the matter, the root of the insanity-dysfunction: secrecy-BASED government(s) in general, across the board, no exceptions, period, case closed. From what I've seen, very VERY few people who post on "alternative" discussion sites as this one are able to make that most obvious mental-emotional connection.

Now please carry on with the same old robotic routine...

Why must I have a label-atheist-because I don't believe in a god? There is no proof of a god, only ancient texts that claim he spoke to selected characters in badly written books at a time when people couldn't explain natural occurrences. God is a fear-based construct of the human mind. It is the fear of the dark, of the finality of existence. Why would a society willfully choose an an unseen judge, one that has great power, yet is the definition of impotence? Why would god let a typhoon kill 10,000 people in the Philippines, which is 97% Catholic? Why bother wasting time with this supernatural character that has had ample opportunities to actually DO something?

I think we know why.

You want a nativity scene, go right ahead and set one up on your front lawn. You want a government run by religious people, but uses drones to kill in foreign excursions. The sheer hypocrisy of religious people, who behave poorly behind closed doors just like non-religious people.

You want respect for your thoughts (beliefs)? Forget it. We can respect each other as people, but not for what we are thinking. It's this labeling of thought, beliefs/faith, that is truly insane. Why choose a public label because you believe in a god? Go believe in one, but leave me out of it. I don't believe in a god, and I don't care if you do. God is irrelevant.

I was a vocal Christian for 22 years (deconverted for the last 10). Over that period of time I was involved in the pro-life movement, and spent a lot of time visiting and speaking in a wide variety of churches. In my experience, Christians aren't nearly as "happy" as they'd like you to think they are.

For many, if not most, it's happy faces at church, and doubt, frustration, anger and spiritual isolation at home and at work. I'd go so far as to say that there are millions of professing believers for whom Christianity just doesn't "work," but they have no idea where to turn. Certainly not to their pastors or elders or other professing Christians, whose answer to everything is MORE faith.

Former Christians are better at "counseling" or "deconverting" the converted than lifelong atheists, who have neither the heart nor the insight needed to effectively relate to the converted's struggles. So I can understand why lifelong atheists might be dismissive of the concept of "assisted deconversions." However, I believe that there's a legitimate "need" for such a process, and any tool that makes it easier for the converted to regain their critical thinking skills and come back to reality has to be a good thing.

Stormdancer777
reply to post by Eryiedes

 

oooooooH, damaged, so now it has indeed come full circle the atheist are now the savior?

I'm sorry it upsets you but the medical facts on this don't lie.
I have explained it before but it appears I will have to explain it again for you since you think I am just being inflamatory.













The biological facts of belief is such that you have to understand the brain before you can challenge someones belief structure.
When you confront a belief that someone "opposes", the amgydela of the human brain shuts down.
This process destroys higher reasoning by making them "fearful".
The reasoning centres of the human brain shut down and trigger the "fight or flight reflex".
It has connections to the higher brain regions...the r-complex is the example I am using but there are others.
They cease to act on reason and react instead on instinct...evasion, avoidance, disassociation, anger or contempt.

This is medical fact.

Core beliefs when challenged produce the identical effects.
This is why we always see the unusually spurious and blatantly ignorant responces from the believers of religion when this core belief is challenged.
If you remind them of their mortality (i.e. God does not exist) they defend their world view more strongly and reject those who challenge it.
The medical/psychological term for this is called "priming".
This links biology and ideology and obviously also relates to political views as well as spiritual ones.

"Flinch first and ask questions later."

Trauma is inflicted during childhood.
That mental trauma causes brain damage.
That brain damage forms the foundation of an individual's ideology.
And finally...that ideology cripples an individuals ability to objectively process reason and evidence.



"When atheism increases...what happens to morality?"

The statistics clearly show that the truth is completely opposite to what diehard christians, muslims and hebrews would espouse. Superstition and fear is waining on a global scale with respect to challenging the decrees of the demogogues and the quality of life is improving as a result of it.
Religious people are almost atheists and they just refuse to see it. They disbelieve the in 9999 OTHER gods that mankind has imagined to comfort themselves with that came before the one they chose to believe in.
(Thor, Tiamat, Shiva, Bast or what have you...)
If they could only stop believing in god number 10000...we'd ALL be on the same page as a species.

I believe morality is something of a crutch. It's the stick you are beaten with when the church (or state) wants you to do something you wouldn't normally do. The true origin of morality should explain this dichotomy quite well.



As far as morality is concerned, there is only one guarenteed way to ensure whether a moral ideal one adheres to is true or false.
This is not revealed in how the moral ideal is presented or anything that it might be based upon but instead, to whom it does NOT apply. Who is NOT bound by that moral rule. This is why they exist.
Why else are people who try to universally apply "universal moral rules" considered lunatics?
This form of morality is just another form of control.

For example:

Thou shall not kill. Sounds good...yeah, we get that one. But when the state does it, it's called "war". When some religion does it, it's called "jihad" or "crusade".

Thou shall not steal. No hang ups there, I think we all get that. But when the state does it, it's called "taxation". When the church does it, it's called a "tithe".

We are told that violence is wrong. Well, sure...of course it is. But when the state does it, it's called "law". When the church does it, it's called "decree". When it's done by your parents, it's called "spanking".

The core of morality (as it is used by authority, be it political or religious) is essentially Orwellian "double think". The arguement from morality is one of the churches "big guns" but it's actually a big fraud.

"We adhere to the teaching of Christ because we are moral."

No, you're not.
Most (if not all) fall into one of two categories.
They follow the teachings of the bible because they either don't want to goto hell or they want to goto heaven.
If it's hell they are trying to avoid, then the mechanism at work here is called "coersion".

(I.E. Do what the lord commands or you go down to lakes of fire and blood to suffer torment for eternity as satan's lapdog.)

Not exactly moral is it?
If it's heaven they are trying to get to, then the mechanism at work is called "bribery".

(I.E. If you are good to your fellow believers of the same faith, you get to sit up on a cloud with "The Big Guy", shoot the breeze with John Lennon and eat all the cake & ice cream you want.)

Once more, not exactly what I would call a decision based on morality, is it?
It appeals to vanity or fear.

So I have now established with medical facts that the religious mind is an abused one.
(Say what you will but the science on this is rock solid.)
This isn't conjecture.
This is just the facts speaking:

Religion functions devoid of morality and as it is declining, the quality of life is improving globally.
It's a result of childhood or adult trauma.
It's control is solely based on fear.
It rewards it supporters much like a drug fix makes a junkie feel a rush. Denile is actually rewarded by the brain.
If you are religious...you are a victem.
Ideology, whether political or religious is a drug and it effects the human brain identically.
Those who hold up religious or political ideologies are simply junkie's looking for their next fix.

This will upset quite a few of you but the science on this does not lie.
I know some of you will be tempted to post proof of your own but let's get something outta the way first...

Quoting scripture or parables is NOT evidence.
It's as effective as quoting an Archie comic book to prove Jughead is a real person so just don't do it.
We're only interested in the facts here...not feelings or hunches.
Problem with a faith-based belief system is you don't have any credible facts, so that might limit the scope of the conversation.
I am not going after you and I am not picking on you.
I am simply against the ignorance you hold up as self-evident dogmatic truth.

-Peace-

reply to post by eggman90

You want respect for your thoughts (beliefs)? Forget it. We can respect each other as people, but not for what we are thinking. It's this labeling of thought, beliefs/faith, that is truly insane. Why choose a public label because you believe in a god? Go believe in one, but leave me out of it. I don't believe in a god, and I don't care if you do. God is irrelevant.

If religion were treated more like the way you wipe your bum, we'd all get along a lot easier.

reply to post by NewAgeMan

Everything is made in just the right way, even the latest science has shown that the Higgs Boson while it upholds the standard model of physics, demonstrates a selection bias in favor of life or fine tuning, in the extreme, a "problem" for which the strong anthropic principal or the multiverse cannot offer any "consolation" (to a bias opposed to God), for reasons that I don't have the time to go into right now.

Can we have links for this? I want to be sure you're not just taking interpretive liberties here.

When I look at the "reasoning" of the atheist - all I see are assumptions, if not a high degree of snarky rudeness even willful ignorance.

Hello Pot, I'm Kettle, have we met?

They presume to KNOW something, but on what basis do they claim their knowledge that there is not an infinitely intelligent Supreme Being?

Oh Pot, I do believe we have met!

I don't get it - why is it again that they think they are so smart?

NAM, you know better than to employ these tactics. But I suppose in the absence of actual evidence....

I do feel it is worth pointing out that if in fact there is no god, then atheism wouldn't require a manual. It would be a natural course regardless of whether there were instructions or guidelines for it.

Incidentally, I don't use a manual. It was somewhat more...natural for me. Like a bird learning to fly.

tsingtao

Stormdancer777

Jim Scott
reply to post by Stormdancer777

 

What would it take to convert you?

To what?

I have tried just about everything, lol, even close to becoming atheist at one point.

the closest i got to atheism, was hating God for my life's problems. deaths, etc.

never lost faith, just angry and a big why???!!!

Yes, the big why.

Jim Scott
reply to post by Stormdancer777

 

Where do you stand now?

I am a Christian, who tries to follow the teachings of Christ and fails miserable.
But I am alternative.

I think the old-timers in the Bible were seeking answers to why.
WE are all still seeking, whether it is through science or religion.

I cling to the hope that someday I will know this great mystery,For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

reply to post by Eryiedes



TY for setting me straight.

AfterInfinity
I do feel it is worth pointing out that if in fact there is no god, then atheism wouldn't require a manual. It would be a natural course regardless of whether there were instructions or guidelines for it.

Incidentally, I don't use a manual. It was somewhat more...natural for me. Like a bird learning to fly.

edit on 15-11-2013 by AfterInfinity because: (no reason given)

except what if it was all part of the evolutionary plan?

Evolutionary origin of religions

en.wikipedia.org...

Increased brain size

In this set of theories, the religious mind is one consequence of a brain that is large enough to formulate religious and philosophical ideas.[6] During human evolution, the hominid brain tripled in size, peaking 500,000 years ago. Much of the brain's expansion took place in the neocortex. This part of the brain is involved in processing higher order cognitive functions that are connected with human religiosity. The neocortex is associated with self-consciousness, language and emotion[citation needed]. According to Dunbar's theory, the relative neocortex size of any species correlates with the level of social complexity of the particular species. The neocortex size correlates with a number of social variables that include social group size and complexity of mating behaviors. In chimpanzees the neocortex occupies 50% of the brain, whereas in modern humans it occupies 80% of the brain.

Robin Dunbar argues that the critical event in the evolution of the neocortex took place at the speciation of archaic homo sapiens about 500,000 years ago. His study indicates that only after the speciation event is the neocortex large enough to process complex social phenomena such as language and religion. The study is based on a regression analysis of neocortex size plotted against a number of social behaviors of living and extinct hominids.[7]

Stephen Jay Gould suggests that religion may have grown out of evolutionary changes which favored larger brains as a means of cementing group coherence among savannah hunters, after that larger brain enabled reflection on the inevitability of personal mortality.[8]

Development of language
See also: Origin of language and Myth and religion

Religion requires a system of symbolic communication, such as language, to be transmitted from one individual to another. Philip Lieberman states "human religious thought and moral sense clearly rest on a cognitive-linguistic base".[13] From this premise science writer Nicholas Wade states:

"Like most behaviors that are found in societies throughout the world, religion must have been present in the ancestral human population before the dispersal from Africa 50,000 years ago. Although religious rituals usually involve dance and music, they are also very verbal, since the sacred truths have to be stated. If so, religion, at least in its modern form, cannot pre-date the emergence of language. It has been argued earlier that language attained its modern state shortly before the exodus from Africa. If religion had to await the evolution of modern, articulate language, then it too would have emerged shortly before 50,000 years ago."[14]

Another view distinguishes individual religious belief from collective religious belief. While the former does not require prior development of language, the latter does. The individual human brain has to explain a phenomenon in order to comprehend and relate to it. This activity predates by far the emergence of language and may have caused it. The theory is, belief in the supernatural emerges from hypotheses arbitrarily assumed by individuals to explain natural phenomena that cannot be explained otherwise. The resulting need to share individual hypotheses with others leads eventually to collective religious belief. A socially accepted hypothesis becomes dogmatic backed by social sanction.

your brains shrinking, HELLO?
discovermagazine.com...-Jn2a8

lol just kidding ya AI

Evolutionary psychology of religion
Main article: Evolutionary psychology of religion

There is general agreement among cognitive scientists that religion is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved early in human history. However, there is disagreement on the exact mechanisms that drove the evolution of the religious mind. The two main schools of thought hold that either religion evolved due to natural selection and has selective advantage, or that religion is an evolutionary byproduct of other mental adaptations.[20] Stephen Jay Gould, for example, believed that religion was an exaptation or a spandrel, in other words that religion evolved as byproduct of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other reasons.[21][22][23]

Such mechanisms may include the ability to infer the presence of organisms that might do harm (agent detection), the ability to come up with causal narratives for natural events (etiology), and the ability to recognize that other people have minds of their own with their own beliefs, desires and intentions (theory of mind). These three adaptations (among others) allow human beings to imagine purposeful agents behind many observations that could not readily be explained otherwise, e.g. thunder, lightning, movement of planets, complexity of life, etc.[24] The emergence of collective religious belief identified the agents as deities that standardized the explanation.

Some scholars have suggested that religion is genetically "hardwired" into the human condition. One controversial hypothesis, the God gene hypothesis, states that some variants of a specific gene, the VMAT2 gene, predispose to spirituality.[25]

Another view is based on the concept of the triune brain: the reptilian brain, the limbic system, and the neocortex, proposed by Paul D. MacLean. Collective religious belief draws upon the emotions of love, fear, and gregariousness and is deeply embedded in the limbic system through sociobiological conditioning and social sanction. Individual religious belief utilizes reason based in the neocortex and often varies from collective religion. The limbic system is much older in evolutionary terms than the neocortex and is, therefore, stronger than it much in the same way as the reptilian is stronger than both the limbic system and the neocortex. Reason is pre-empted by emotional drives. The religious feeling in a congregation is emotionally different from individual spirituality even though the congregation is composed of individuals. Belonging to a collective religion is culturally more important than individual spirituality though the two often go hand in hand. This is one of the reasons why religious debates are likely to be inconclusive.[citation needed]
en.wikipedia.org...
Yet another view is that the behaviour of people who participate in a religion makes them feel better and this improves their fitness, so that there is a genetic selection in favor of people who are willing to believe in religion. Specifically, rituals, beliefs, and the social contact typical of religious groups may serve to calm the mind (for example by reducing ambiguity and the uncertainty due to complexity) and allow it to function better when under stress.[26] This would allow religion to be used as a powerful survival mechanism, particularly in facilitating the evolution of hierarchies of warriors, which if true, may be why many modern religions tend to promote fertility and kinship.

Still another view is that human religion was a product of an increase in dopaminergic functions in the human brain and a general intellectual expansion beginning around 80 kya. [27][28] Dopamine promotes an emphasis on distant space and time, which is critical for the establishment of religious experience.[29] While the earliest shamanic cave paintings date back around 40 kya, the use of ochre for rock art predates this and there is clear evidence for abstract thinking along the coast of South Africa by 80 kya.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


It's worth mentioning that the earliest examples of any kind of spirituality happened about 500,000 years ago when Neanderthals started deliberately burying their people. Carved animal and red ochre also indicated some emotional significance attached to the process.

Thank you for posting that article, by the way. Fascinating stuff.

AfterInfinity
reply to post by Stormdancer777

 

It's worth mentioning that the earliest examples of any kind of spirituality happened about 500,000 years ago when Neanderthals started deliberately burying their people. Carved animal and red ochre also indicated some emotional significance attached to the process.

Thank you for posting that article, by the way. Fascinating stuff.

You are welcome I am all about, the tribe, tribal instincts and where we stand today.

You see atheist need to form their own group is natural, in that respect.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


The way forward has never been found by pushing everyone else back. It just may turn out that the man who tries to take the leap by himself, for himself, will be left with no one there to pull him back up when he falls.

AfterInfinity
reply to post by Stormdancer777

 

It's worth mentioning that the earliest examples of any kind of spirituality happened about 500,000 years ago when Neanderthals started deliberately burying their people.

It's just as likely that they figured out keeping corpses around attracted predators and bugs so they buried them to prevent that. You don't need a god for that.
I do believe the emergence of religion is tied to primiative man discovering psychadelics.
(This actually makes perfect sence to me since what else could you call a man who claimed: "A jewish zombie said you're all evil because a woman talked to a snake" other than stoned?)
In all honesty, a talking burning bush doesn't sound like divine inspiration to me...it sounds like an acid trip.

-Peace-

reply to post by Eryiedes


You know the truth regarding that matter just as well as I do.

...Which is to say, not at all.

AfterInfinity
reply to post by Stormdancer777

 

The way forward has never been found by pushing everyone else back. It just may turn out that the man who tries to take the leap by himself, for himself, will be left with no one there to pull him back up when he falls.

I don't understand.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


I'm not surprised. Perhaps you'll find this version easier to grasp.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

AfterInfinity
reply to post by Stormdancer777

 

I'm not surprised. Perhaps you'll find this version easier to grasp.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

I agree with that 100%, so perhaps we need each other to keep each other in check.