Would you be an atheist without science?

Frank 013 · Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 2:47 pm Post subject:

I put that I would have broken from religion either way, but that is not totally accurate for me. I never believed in a god or gods. I was never indoctrinated into any religion so I never had to break away from religion.

I did have a good appreciation for science from an early age, I was lucky enough to have gone to a private school where our classes had the best available materials and I got to experience several disciplines scientific as well as others. Back in those early years (4th through 8th grade) I loved studying dinosaur fossils, geology and literature… subjects (minus geology) that I still enjoy. My parents often took me and my sister to the natural history museums all across the country where we got a much better view of the history of our planet than most kids our age.

To say that I replaced one belief with another would be false and to say I believed science had the same meaning for me that religion has for other people would also be false; unless you mean from a totally informational standpoint, which would be saying that religions were simply stories made up to explain natural phenomena.

I currently believe that science best explains the workings of the world we live in and it jives with my personal experiences. The god assumption never made any sense to me, and still doesn’t.

Later

Meme Wars · Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 8:55 pm Post subject:

Science and Atheism:

Count me in as a lover of science! I do believe this to be a common them among heathens, though some born to atheist parents may not have needed the assistance of science for their point of view.

Even without science, I would have drifted to non-belief for moral reasons. It is astounding to me how indifferent believers are to the statement "what you believe is an accident of where you were born." Not only is this a revealing eye opener, but if there is some kind of god, how immoral this is that those of good fortune to accidentally believe the right thing goes to heaven while the other 66 to 90 percent of this world wind up in hell! There's a hell of a lot of good people in those other lands who believe differently and I find the whole concept morally repugnant and incoherent.

In order to clarify my beliefs after getting out of the Air Force where I was subjected to many belief systems (and none), I spent the next 4 years reading two chapters of the Bible from cover to cover every day. The god commanded genocides, inconsistency in philosophical concepts, conflicting history and testimony left me cold and agnostic toward the whole enterprise. The book only made sense if I see it as a morally evolving civilization rather than a perfect god handing down text for the commoners to read and obey. I realized then that morality was indeed separate from religion, and that both religions and gods could be held to the standards of how they treat people and given a pass or fail grade.

So even without science, I would have eventually turned away from religion from both a philosophical and moral standpoint.

Monty Vonn

LanDroid · Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 11:11 pm Post subject:

Meme Wars reminded me of my earliest inclinations towards atheism. I was brought up in a somewhat religious household, then my dad got into a bit of fundamentalism. I remember in high school reading the Bible thinking it was the literal word of God. Then I came across a sentence in the New Testament "Women shall remain silent in the church". Un-oh, an error. How can the word of God contain errors? Ironically, reading the Bible was the beginning, not science. However, joining BookTalk and reading Sagan's Demon Haunted World re-ignited my interest in this subject. Cool

Chris OConnor · Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2007 9:10 pm Post subject:

Carl Sagan's Cosmos was extremely influential for me too. But just plain thinking was what I think led me towards atheism.

camsquirrel · Getting comfortable Joined: 18 Nov 2007 Posts: 8 Gender:

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 10:08 am Post subject:

[quote="camsquirre

By the way, has anyone else here read Contact?[/quote]

Never read it, but I want to. I saw the film.

Mr. P.


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