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RE: Some Benefits of Being An Atheist
Living as though there is no afterlife can be a risky proposition... If you are right great... you had some fun... but what if you are wrong?
Living as though there is no afterlife can be a risky proposition... If you are right great... you had some fun... but what if you are wrong?
The problem with your question is, that there is literally no way to be "right". Do you know how many religions there are right now? Not to mention the thousands of cults which ruled the world in the past, but have now become all but forgotten? Every single one of them claimed to be the only "right" one. Every single one preached a different truth, different rules and different punishments.
If I would like to make sure I have a good afterlife, should I be peaceful and timid, to appease the christian god, or should I drink blood out of the skulls of my enemies, so Odin will favor me at his table in Valhalla?
No religion has ever had a better claim to the "truth" than any other one. If you follow a religion, then you most likely do so, because your parents introduced you into it. This is how the fast majority of people start their religious journey. In other words, pure coincidence. If you are born in India, you come to believe in Shiva. If you are born in Denmark today, you will most likely become a christian. Had you been born in the same place a few hundred years ago, you would believe in Odin and Thor.
The only logical conclusion is, to be an atheist and live a life guided by personal morals. I try my best to be a good person. When I die and it turns out that there actually is an afterlife, a good god will honor this. Any god who would punish me for simply not knowing, which of the thousands of options is the right one to follow (and not making himself known in a way, which would eliminate such confusion), is evil. I will gladly suffer from eternal hell in that case, going down unbent and spitting in his/her/its eye.
I understand what you are saying, however, this part is not accurate at all..."No religion has ever had a better claim to the "truth" than any other one." The christian bible carries with it more evidence than almost any other... there are numerous sites you can go to proving as much. Also, it is one of the few religions that claims their central figure is actually God. Buddha never claimed to be god, Joseph Smith, etc... Christianity sets its sets itself apart in that aspect.
You thinking a 'good god' would not punish you for being "good" is just not the way things work. For the reason I stated above in previous posts... what makes someone "good"? There has to be an absolute standard that everyone can be measured against. What is 'good' for you may not be 'good' to someone else. The christian bible gives an absolute standard of "good", but because no human being can live up to that standard the only way people can experience heaven is to believe that Jesus was the son of God, that he died on the cross for everyone's sins, and that he rose again on the 3rd day... it states it very specifically in the book that has existed longer than any other while still being the closest to it's original writing thousands of years ago than any other that was written at that time.
You can live by your personal moral standards all you want, but that doesn't jive with what the christian bible teaches, and if you are ok with that, that is your absolutely your choice. God designed it that way.
The bible does not contain any evidence superior to, lets say, the Vedas, which in parts are almost 2000 years older than the bible. I could have picked any other religious text and the situation would be the same. I have acutally been to the "holy land" and seen all the sites you claim as proof. Not a single one of them actually prooves anything.
Comparing the Bible to the Vedas is a joke... "The Vedas present a multitude of gods, most of them related to natural forces such as storms, fire, and wind. As part of its mythology, Vedic texts contain multiple creation stories, most of them inconsistent with each other. Sometimes the Vedas refer to a particular god as the greatest god of all, and later another god will be regarded as the greatest god of all."
And that is just one snipit...
"The Bible is unlike any other religious book. Despite forty authors writing from three continents over nearly two thousand years, it maintains a perfect consistency of message. Its words point unerringly to Christ, whose work on the cross was ordained by God—the true author of the Bible—before the world began.
Among all the books ever written, the Bible is absolutely unique. Actually, it is not just a book—it’s 66 books. And one of its most remarkable qualities is the complete unity of the overall message despite having so many different authors writing over many centuries on hundreds of controversial subjects. Natural explanations fail to account for the supernatural character and origin of Scripture.
The Bible was written over a period of roughly 2,000 years by 40 different authors from three continents, who wrote in three different languages. These facts alone make the Bible one of a kind, but there are many more amazing details that defy natural explanation."
If you really want to compare the Bible to other religious books then you really need to study the Bible a lot more than you currently have... it truly is unlike any of the others
@jrcornel, have you actually ever read the bible? Probably not, otherwise you should know about the massive, direct contradictions within it. Here are just a few examples: http://infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html
BTW, which version of the bible are you talking about? Do you recognize there is even dissent among christians about what actually is the "word of god"? That catholics, anglicans etc. have different bibles? That our family bible from the 1500´s differs vastly from anything you can buy in the book shop today? Not to mention the formerly completely unknown and totally contradicting gospels archeologists found in egyptian graves...
Let me guess, you are from the US and the only education you ever got, was from other bible thumpers. You were probably made to believe the garbled nonsense of so called "scientists" who happily make up "evidence" and ignore hundreds of years of research, just to justify their childish ideas of creation. Sad. Very very sad. You have been thoroughly brainwashed.
I prefer Stephen Fry's answer to this which can be found here: