Religion and Fear
 

I was walking home on the freeway one dark night; as an atheist, with cars coming pretty close to me, my mind began to wonder about organised religion and the after-life. I actually got scared that if at this point in my life I was going to die, and indeed Christianity was true after all, that I would face eternal suffering.

After coming home and not facing eternal bliss, I realised how many people must live their entire lives in fear like this, and I started to think how much religion is kept afloat by this very emotion - fear through uncertainty. So many people would be swept into this religion not through love, despite their desire of superficial appearance, but through fear.

What right do Christians have to go into foreign countries and spread their beliefs to those predating in age to theirs five, even ten-fold?

Of course the typical response here is for a Christian to write the token reply of, 'why target Christianity over all others?' Well it is in my mind that is it not without good reasoning on my behalf: when I look around it's the Christians and their fundamentalism inhibiting my society from furthering, not Islam or Buddhism.

My perspective on morals and ethics is that as long as I am not doing anything that harms anyone in anyway, directly or indirectly, why should it not be allowed? And indeed most of the people living within society I live possess this value. People are allowed to have their perspectives, but if it interferes with this lifestyle of others against their will of medical, personal or scientific furthering, it should in itself be prohibited. Having an invisible sky-daddy and a very disjointed, outdated book from a society so different to our own, then having the nerve to judge and condemn subjects of the status quo based on interpretive merit falls nothing short of stupid.

From stem cell research to pro-choice and same-sex marriage, it appears that it is indeed trying its hardest to outstrip personal choice and technological advancement in the name of 'morals'.

But that's just it, morals are only relative to their geographic counterpart and in essence are supposedly justified as they have been derived from obscure bible interpretation; and that's the problem right there. God's supposed "word" changes from time-to-time to accommodate with what's socially acceptable at the time of 'interpretation'.

I won't go into largely subjective rants as tempted as I am explaining why religion, at least this one, is absolutely full of shit, but I will say this. Why would anyone with a logical frame of mind believe in something so young (relatively speaking) as Christianity? Does the scale of the Earth's existence or even the history of man, when compared to the age of this religion not in itself render it silly? Even when compared to other organised religions, its youth and ambitiousness is astounding.

2009 (guesstimation of how many years have passed the prophet's birth) / 15,000,000,000 (scientific estimation through many different kinds of dating) to me = the very ignorance and arrogance that Christianity and its followers relish in. Even the four million years of man's evolution shows how ridiculous it is, not only that but the correlation between cognition of self (in terms of mind) and invention of organised religion.

Jesus was not important, special or unique. He just was. And what he was is a random genetic mutation child derivative of Mary and some guy she slept with, indifferent to any other, but nonetheless romanticised. Sure, he might have been nice but nice guys, maybe even nicer than him, have passed and will indeed continue to pass through history. In this digital age of recording facts and figures, could they stand the test of time and gain similar status through misinterpretation, exaggeration and infatuation? No. Fucking. Way.

Re: Religion and Fear
 

Jesus was not "special"--no one is more so than any other. He was unique however--we all are.

And to say he was not important simply flies in the face of history.

Christianity IS a religion of fear and denial, as are the other Abrahamic religions, which is why they are becomng increasingly irrelevant. In case you hadn't noticed, the Muslim jihad is now not so much Muslim vs Christian as Sunni vs Shiite.

Some Christians say they are "God-fearing," yet they say "God is love." They fear love?

However, it would be a grave error to write off everything Jesus said, especially "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven; all else will be added unto thee." This simply means that if you pay attention to the spiritual side of things (after all, the kingdom of God is within you), the material things will take care of themselves.

Re: Religion and Fear
 

For an alternative view of Jesus try John Spong's books. There's a recent one called I think "Jesus for the non-religious". As AM said the historical significance of Christianity can not be ignored, perhaps if you could look at it as part of evolution. The evolution of ideas, of archetypes, of morals and ethics, an evolution that continues to this moment. Churchianity is stuck in the past, if you look only at that, all you will see is the past. What is more important, that or where we are now, and where we humans are headed?

Re: Religion and Fear
 

^Amen to that. To be more specific, the Abrahamic religions (Christianity; Judaism; Islam) are artifacts of the Piscean Age, which recently ended.

Re: Religion and Fear
 

If it were't that references to the Bible (Moses) are recorded in the Great Pyramid of Giza, then I might not be so sure that there is truth in the Bible. The Giza pyramid records so many things, you know, lengths, heights, circumference, radius, and pi, and everything under the sun. I believe God is a lot more complex than we can contemplate I don't follow a particular religious doctrine, I make my own interpretations and decisions. I am not afraid of God, but I am afraid to die.
I might go to hell, actually the grave is hell.

I don't care if aetheists don't believe, but I don't get is what they believe. Do they simply have no concept of spirit or soul or afterlife?

Re: Religion and Fear
 

I can answer this from my perspective even in light of what I would consider nihilist and atheistic.

I see souls as being little more than an idea invented by early human culture arising as a result of the organism's evolved ability to reason and desire to place consciousness to concept. And the concept in this case is the believers subscribed religion and their subsequent god/s of which span across all geographical lands and times, most of which more or less claim that their particular belief system is mutually exclusive to all others.

Souls to me stand for little more than genetic similarities to parents and what the child by-product will encounter throughout his/her life in terms of experience. For instance, if we could clone Einstein exactly genetically identical to his dead counterpart, he would be, (unless you could recreate ALL his emotional experiences in chronological order) COMPLETELY different to the theorist of relativity and even be a mere farmer his whole life.

Suffice to say, we inherit genes from our parents, maybe even diseases from cancers to mental disorders, gain a personality from our own individual experiences, both physical and mental, and that is about what a soul, to me, amounts to.

As for the afterlife, I don't see why, as mammals, we should be treated any differently to that of our animal kingdom counterpart. The only reasoning behind this I can fathom is the correlation between evolution of the brain and its chemistry (from serotonin to melatonin and dopamine) and the desperate desire of expectation, even in the face of delusion and fear, that this life cannot be all there is. Yes we are complex organisms in terms of relative consideration to all other species but does this in itself justify a higher purpose? I would say no.

So no, I do not believe that as a race we are anything special at all. We are all just part of Nature's little human experiment that was destined to fail from the get-go of approximately four million years ago.

Re: Religion and Fear
 

So, you believe we are a product of genetics and environment. Most everyone believes that, don't they?
Even religious people do. Of all the mammalia, why do think we are the only specimen that evolved to our level at the top of the phylum, genus, you know that thing. I hate to think that we are born to have emotions, language and intelligence such that the internet can be created, just to die with our soul meaning nothing. If that is so, why would we cry and feel grief, embarrassment, guilt and learn and grow and gamble, which is what I need to do right now.
cheers

Re: Religion and Fear
 

Yes. Entirely so.
Evolution through natural selection. But of course our senses are entirely comparable to the rest of the animal kingdom - bats have infinately better senses of hearing, dogs have far better sense of smell, eagles have much more advanced sight, and on it goes. We were given bigger brains/more brain capacity and so we have learnt ways to sheild ourselves from the environment and use other animals to our own advantage.
I don't believe anyone else, myself included, does either. The truth, at least the truth I believe, isn't always met with happiness.
There are so many explanations to these questions, the main reason I can think of is in nature. Elephants can still remember a carcass belonging to their relative many years later and express their own sadness. The numbness one feels after a loved one dies, for instance, is one such mechanism that deals with coping with the current situation.

Re: Religion and Fear
 

There is a carcass many years later? Anyway, I know what you mean, dogs stay by their dead for a time also, but I don't know that they grieve necessarily. Back to the point, do you feel many religions (or just christianity?) use fear in order to get people to buy into their doctrine. Many wars have been fought over religion. I don't know a lot about religions, but it is interesting that atheists believe in nature as the answer to life and death.

Re: Religion and Fear
 

I would say surely, at least for the Abrahamic religions--ask any recovering Catholic.

The Eastern religions, not so much if at all, with the possible exception of certain sects of Hinduism.