What Happens When We Stop Believing in God

There is an incredible amount of rationalization in this thread over a fairly simple concept. You go ahead and call yourself whatever made up term you like.

 

TOTALLY false. I'm an atheist. I do not have "absolute certainty about the existence of god". I see zero factual evidence of god. PERIOD.

Your confusion is revealed when you characterize "absolute certainty" as "belief". Need a real-world example of atheism so you can finally be clear? Imagine seeing a strongbox on a park bench all by itself. As you go by you think it may contain money. That is speculation. Johnny goes by and concludes based on the number of other people in the park, their activity, their apparent frame of mind, that the box contains money. That is belief. Then Billy goes by, sees the box, and ignores it. That is atheism.

 

I am sure you can point out to me the "incredible amount of rationalization" because I'm not seeing it. What are your beliefs? Surely no rationalizations are involved.

 

As analogies go, that's a pretty dumb one. I hope your argument doesn't rest on that.

 

Well that's interesting. I don't usually see you in threads unless there is some sort of juicy racial angle involved. Branching out into other spheres? But no, I'm human and rationalizations are the human stock and trade. I'm just concerned if my rationalizations match the real world or not.

 

We know you actually don't care what the analogy might be; you're going to declare it "dumb" in any case without any solid reasoning. But no matter; it illustrates the point quite well, even for dense fopdoodles.

 

I've been insulted quite a bit during my time here on PF, but I don't think I've been called a fopdoodle before. Get me my smelling salts!

 

Show me where I called you a "fopdoodle".

 

considering the violent history of western civilization (warfare) we would be a lot better off if all our "chistians in name" only actually practiced their religion

 

A Lil Dodger.

 

That beats fopdoodle.

 

OR ..... we could become clear on the underlying cause of war, like capitalist imperialism and denial of the principle of international non-interference.

 

It’s pretty difficult to pin the genocides within communists societies down to just one thing so to say atheism caused genocide is over-simplifying.

However, the low level of disregard a government has for its populace is certainly demonstrated by outlawing the beliefs and practices of a religious community. If a government lacks any need to show concern for what it’s people want then genocide probably isn’t off the table. Look at Canada. Since Indigenous people lacked any political authority in early Canadian history their needs and culture were ignored. Canada implemented a policy of assimilation that is today widely regarded as genocide. Those indigenous people worked to increase their political influence and now the Canadian government does very little without considering its affect on First Nations people, or at least paying lip service to them.

The world has seen genocides and atrocities from both religious and non-religious groups alike indicating that the problem of tyranny is a human lroblem, not just a religious problem or an atheist problem.