I think atheists are extremely ignorant.

[TheSpiritualBunny]

So I saw a lot of posts on the r/atheism of people bashing religion and religious people, so I felt like I had to make a post where I explained why I religious people are religious, and that we have to be more compassionate to them instead of insulting them, because it just turns them off and makes them hate atheism.

I got A LOT of hate for this posts, it has about 9% upvotes right now and moderators removed the post. I think it's pretty ironic because atheists often say they unlike religious people they wanna have constructive conversations, and then when I start one about religion they are just hateful and remove my post while saying that religious people are just stupid and we have to keep telling them that. 

This makes me kinda sad, I'm not religious nor an atheist, just like Leo I came to spirituality from atheism. However, I think atheism is extremely useful and it would be great if we get more religious people to get into atheism, but atheists just alianate them with this behavious. I feel like most of them have no interest in getting religious people interested in atheism and and just wanna show off how much "smarter and superior" they are compared to atheists.

 

[Rilles]

Of course. 

Atheism is supposed to be a secular/rational stepping stone you can use to get into real Spirituality, for example without empiricism its hard to understand what direct experience means.

Unfortunetaly some people get stuck in their Atheist phase thinking its the end of the road, there is so much more. 

[Leo Gura]

And water is wet.

[Epikur]

Dudes directing their lifes after an invisble entity are often hard to deal with I guess. 

[TheSpiritualBunny]

2 hours ago, Rilles said:

Of course. 

Atheism is supposed to be a secular/rational stepping stone you can use to get into real Spirituality, for example without empiricism its hard to understand what direct experience means.

Unfortunetaly some people get stuck in their Atheist phase thinking its the end of the road, there is so much more. 

Yeah it's kinda sad.

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

And water is wet.

I was an atheist my whole life, in fact I'm really into chemistry. I think I saw your videos about god and oneness not even two years ago when I still was an atheist, and I just thought "hmm, that makes so much more sense then what science says" and I had absolutely no direct experience of it at that time. I just assumed that many other people, especially atheists are like me. You also came there from atheism.

16 minutes ago, Epikur said:

Dudes directing their lifes after an invisble entity are often hard to deal with I guess. 

For me when I heard about god and spirituality, it answered almost all questions science and atheism never answered, so it was easy for me.

9 minutes ago, datamonster said:

LOL they really think Atheism is not a religion

Exactly, but they think almost exactly like religious people.

[Epikur]

@datamonster

Atheists may be that guy asked what is behind the door and he replies with I don't know and believes others don't know it too.

 

[Epikur]

@TheSpiritualBunny

Because it has answered your questions it doesn't have to be right. The guy who thinks he is Napoleon got a lot of answers too.

Edited March 20, 2021 by Epikur

[TheSpiritualBunny]

7 minutes ago, Epikur said:

@TheSpiritualBunny

Because it has answered your questions it doesn't have to be right. The guy who thinks he is Napoleon got a lot of answers too.

Of course, I didn't just believe it when I heard it, I just thought it was worth looking into.

[DocWatts]

You're trying to have a discussion with people who treat thier Atheism as an an Ideology, and have built an Identity around it.

So no surprise that they get defensive whenever their ideas are challenged; might as well go on to a Vegan forum and try to argue that it's okay to eat Meat, or try posting Leo's Conspiracy Theory video on an Alex Jones forum.

Out in the "real world" there's more of a spectrum between 'Soft' atheism (think someone like Einstein) and 'Hard' atheism (someone like Richard Dawkins). Though I would definitely place myself at the 'soft' end of the spectrum, I'm always more interested in discussing metaphysical questions with people who aren't dogmatic in thier beliefs, regardless of whether or not they believe in God.

For my part, I'm naturally going to be suspicious of anyone who doesn't have a degree of humility when discussing fundamental truths about the nature of reality. "How fortunate it is that I met you good sir/ma'am, who's so confident in your answers to questions that have eluded philosophers and mystics for thousands of years."

[Boethius]

I feel a lot of atheists are like this guy

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheraminTrees/videos

who has been making anti-religious youtube videos for the past 12 years. So it's like you didn't appreciate your (fundamentalist) religious upbringing, so much so that you declared yourself an atheist and have made it your mission to "debunk" religion altogether, and yet don't you realize how absurd and lacking in self-awareness it is to keep hammering on about it year after year after year? I'm just waiting for the day when TheraminTrees declares that he has started attending an Eastern Orthodox church. Because that does seem to be the path for a lot of the atheists who just can't let religion go.

[Epikur]

31 minutes ago, Boethius said:

I feel a lot of atheists are like this guy

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheraminTrees/videos

who has been making anti-religious youtube videos for the past 12 years. So it's like you didn't appreciate your (fundamentalist) religious upbringing, so much so that you declared yourself an atheist and have made it your mission to "debunk" religion altogether, and yet don't you realize how absurd and lacking in self-awareness it is to keep hammering on about it year after year after year? I'm just waiting for the day when TheraminTrees declares that he has started attending an Eastern Orthodox church. Because that does seem to be the path for a lot of the atheists who just can't let religion go.

It is not surprising. It is like you were in a dictatorship where you got brainwashed for decades. Obviously you got traumatized so it is not easy to let go. Specially if it still effects society.

[Boethius]

@Epikur That's a very fair point.

My own spiritual upbringing was quite fragmented and my mother was basically a new age hippie. When I was 11 we left the Presbyterian church of my childhood and went with neighbors to what I remember as a more conservative evangelical church for over a year. My mom then revealed to our neighbor that my mom was thinking of dating women (after having just divorced my dad, she thought she would given women a try instead of men) and my mom was told that she needed to receive an exorcism to remove the demon of homosexuality as a condition of continuing attendance. Thankfully, we never went back. Though my mom did after that invite the LDS elders to her house to tell her about Mormonism! Then we ended up bouncing around between Spiritualism and Unitarian Universalism until I left for college.

Had my only experience of religion been the conservative evangelical church, I would probably have an extremely different view of religion today.

[Epikur]

Think about it in muslim countries the muezzin is shouting his Allahu Akbar as early as 5 o'clock in the morning and waking you up. Talking about irritating. Then there is a list of annoying things that is done in the name of religion.

[Carl-Richard]

I used to be like that. I cringe every time I run into my old YouTube comments.

[Rilles]

4 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I used to be like that. I cringe every time I run into my old YouTube comments.

I cringe when I run into my old Actualized forum comments. 

Edited March 20, 2021 by Rilles

[Carl-Richard]

17 minutes ago, Rilles said:

I cringe when I run into my old Actualized forum comments. 

LOL. Fortunately, I didn't start posting here regularly since last year. Infact, today it's been exactly one year since I made my first topic 

EDIT: That means I've been posting 8.2 posts a day. Damn ?

Edited March 20, 2021 by Carl-Richard

[TheSpiritualBunny]

4 hours ago, DocWatts said:

You're trying to have a discussion with people who treat thier Atheism as an an Ideology, and have built an Identity around it.

So no surprise that they get defensive whenever their ideas are challenged; might as well go on to a Vegan forum and try to argue that it's okay to eat Meat, or try posting Leo's Conspiracy Theory video on an Alex Jones forum.

Out in the "real world" there's more of a spectrum between 'Soft' atheism (think someone like Einstein) and 'Hard' atheism (someone like Richard Dawkins). Though I would definitely place myself at the 'soft' end of the spectrum, I'm always more interested in discussing metaphysical questions with people who aren't dogmatic in thier beliefs, regardless of whether or not they believe in God.

For my part, I'm naturally going to be suspicious of anyone who doesn't have a degree of humility when discussing fundamental truths about the nature of reality. "How fortunate it is that I met you good sir/ma'am, who's so confident in your answers to questions that have eluded philosophers and mystics for thousands of years."

I'm actually vegetarian and agree with most of what vegetarians and vegans say, but I cringe at these agressive vegetarians and vegans, they just put people off and thereby ironically keep many people from becoming vegetarian or vegan, I would never judge someone for eating meat, I think it's okay in many circumstances and I also did it for 17 years of my life. These are typical strage green people and I see they are important in the developement of our society.

Same with atheists, they are mostly typical strage orange people and an important step in the developement of society, Atheism is very useful and an definitely more developed then religious people, so I don't judge them.

21 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I used to be like that. I cringe every time I run into my old YouTube comments.

Same, I always cringe at my older comments, I probably will even cringe at the comments I'm making right now in a year, but that's a sign of developement. I just hope that many of these atheists will do the same, but maybe that's just wishful thinking.

 

 

 

[Rilles]

31 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

LOL. Fortunately, I didn't start posting here regularly since last year. Infact, today it's been exactly one year since I made my first topic 

EDIT: That means I've been posting 8.2 posts a day. Damn ?

Aha... a greenhorn ey.  Congrats.

[AtheisticNonduality]

Yeah, but feeling superior and smug as an atheist might make religious people become atheists?

[DocWatts]

34 minutes ago, TheSpiritualBunny said:

I'm actually vegetarian and agree with most of what vegetarians and vegans say, but I cringe at these agressive vegetarians and vegans, they just put people off and thereby ironically keep many people from becoming vegetarian or vegan, I would never judge someone for eating meat, I think it's okay in many circumstances and I also did it for 17 years of my life. These are typical strage green people and I see they are important in the developement of our society.

Same with atheists, they are mostly typical strage orange people and an important step in the developement of society, Atheism is very useful and an definitely more developed then religious people, so I don't judge them.

I've been transitioning to a plant based diet myself, and agree with the aims of Vegetarianism, even if I'm not %100 Vegetarian yet at this point in my life. Being overly moralistic about it is counter productive; the aim should be to shift people's thinking towards more sustainable and more ethical diets, rather than an all or nothing affair.

I kind of look at Atheism the same way; the aim should be to help nudge people towards healthier forms of belief, and away from problematic manifestations that are maladapted to coexisting within a secular, pluralistic society.

The idea that everyone in the world should be an Atheist is so counter productive and unrealistic that I have to laugh at the naivety of even attempting such a concept.

Edited March 20, 2021 by DocWatts