Plato correctly stated several thousand years ago that religion is a function of the state. This is not a mystery. However to assume that there is no creator because of the machinations of mass religion would indicate that you are missing a very large part of your existence. I have no problem with agnostics, but atheists do have a "religion" all their own that requires it's own brand of "faith", since they have no evidence that a creator does not exist any more we have proof that one does.
>>Satan use Bush & Sharon to do his dirty work allahu-akbar! jihad!<< I think this guy Mohammedakram is serious. freealways
"I have no problem with agnostics, but atheists do have a "religion" all their own that requires it's own brand of "faith", since they have no evidence that a creator does not exist any more we have proof that one does." this is exactly how I feel about it. atheism requires faith, which really makes it the worship of human control. They believe there is no being or force stronger than the will of humans. its no wonder that communists and atheists tend to hang out together.
When you assume, you make an ass of u and me. You are making assumptions about what atheists assume. We do not read Plato's or Marx's statements about the political function of religion and then extract from that that there must be no god. It is from disbelief in the whole notion of god that the notion of religion appears to be a ridiculous pursuit. Marketsurfer already stated in one of the other dozen god/no-god threads heading the Chit Chat threads the difference between (western) religion and science: religion accepts without proof, science rejects without proof. The atheist viewpoint is by that definition not a religion, but a science. Anyhow, why are we missing a large part of our existence by not believing in a creator? Do things need to believe in their creators to fulfill their nature? If I create, let's say, a table, does that table need to know or care that I created it? No! Is it any less a table, or any less a tribute to my work for lacking belief in my existence? Your creator created not just humans, but all things, living and non-living. All of them go about their existence without fretting over who, what, created them, and why. Except for non-atheist humans. Personally, I think people who worry about believing in a creator are missing part of their existence: every moment they waste worrying about these questions is a moment they could have been spending going about living their lives. In fact, if I created a table, wouldn't I be disappointed in my creation if it wasted its time fussing about who or what created it, and arguing about this with other tables, rather than just forgetting about all that and simply performing its function as a table?
It is a difficult subject. On the one hand it is easy to see how large a variety of creations (plants, animals etc) exists in nature and the way one is assembled. For example start looking at the way our body operates. No matter how much time one allows to put together, to create by chance such a process, it is absolutely impossible to imagine that all of that could have 'just happened' . The air we breath and how the oxygen is seperated and thence transported through our body and distributed to the different parts and in what manner it is distributed. The way our food intake is chemically broken down and the different contents distributed to the different parts of our body. Anyone who observes this process and fails to be awed isn't the full quid. On the other hand we are in a worse position to God than a molecule, which is being a part of our complicated and magnificent physical body, is in relation to our body. How could such a molecule possibly have an inkling of what the larger entity (our body) is all about. Can one possibly imagine that there will ever be a time that the small (i.e. a molecule) will understand the larger (i.e. our body) ? Of course not. At least, I cannot. So what makes us humans assume that we ever will be able to be in a position to understand what God is all about ? freealways