I am just curious about what people that believe in God think about people that practice other religions that don't believe in God or people that are atheists in general.

I believe in more than one god (but I was raised Christian).
I see nothing wrong with believing in any other god or not believing in any god.
Morals can be instilled in people without instilling the belief in deity. Example: most people, including atheists, believe murder is a big no-no, as is raping children, and stealing (minus stealing food because you're starving).

But that's just me. *shrugs*

Hi - read your previous thread and this one now.

Not believing in Jesus is a big one for staunch Christians and personally for me it's a big issue. Though condemning someone to Hell is a right I don't think even a Christian has. They probably tried to convert you by scaring you - which is stupid because it has the opposite effect.

I treat Christians and the rest of the world exactly the same. I look at how they live there lives - if you live a relatively moral life - Christian or not, I have no fight with you. Peace loving muslims, jews, buddists and athiests alike. Though when I do befriend an atheist, I ask them why they don't believe - I find the answers interesting and sometimes sad.

Every man/woman who practice bacic humanism is good person to me regardless their religious or world view.

It doesn't matter to me if the person in front of me is a Muslim, Christian, Jew, Atheist, Buddhist, or any other religion. As long as he doesn't try to force me into some stuff of his religion or anything.


Extreme Coder

I don't "really" believe in God (as the concept of God is normally defined today) and I "almost" don't believe that humans have a free will (I say "almost" as I haven't finished thinking about this yet).

I do, however, believe that we humans are a highly instinct-driven race. One of our strongest instincts is a fear of people who are distinctly different (race, religion, nationality).
It is of interest to note here that the latin word "hostis" originally meant "stranger" and over time came to mean "enemy".
Apparently, whatever of our genes that promote this suspicion of people from different "tribes" proved useful as we evolved as it seems that those without these genes got slaughtered by people they should have been suspicious of.
Therefore, I believe that our natural instincts will urge us to be wary of those of a different religious persuasion (the Crusades in the 11th-14th centuries are good examples of this).

Now, another of our natural instincts is to promote ourselves as admirable and distinctly better-than-average people. As tolerance of others is promoted as a desirable quality in the international community today, it is likely that many respondents will adopt this stance in their replies to this topic.
As this conflicts with the other human instinct I mentioned above, I therefore feel that a valid and trustworthy outcome from the original question is unlikely.
It is not abnormal to detect a conflict between how we like to think of ourselves and how we really are.

i personally know it affects some people, but im of the opinion if something as shallow and intolerant as that causes people to dislike me then they probably arent the kind of person id want as friends anyway, in my fairly large circle of friends im the only atheist, theres one other agnostic, 1 muslim and the rest christian of some denomination or other, ive known them all for most of my adult life, but only one changed his opinion of me when it came up in conversation that i was atheist he merely got scared for me (hell and all that), hes a fairly fundamental christian by british standards.

My personal opinion - I'll have to steal a quote on religion from a friend: "I stopped believing in fairy tales and made up idols a long time ago"

I didn't grow up in a religious family, but I'm sure if I did my opinion on this would be a little different. I've noticed that people that grow up this way tend to be brainwashed into feeling overwhelming guilt if they aren't observant. Depends on the person I guess.

Why do you sometimes find the answers interesting and then sometimes sad?

I don't believe that it is possible not to believe in God. It is possible to believe that the Christians, Jews, Muslims or Hindus are wrong in their beliefs about God, but not that God does not exist. God does not have to be a supernatural creature. It can be, for example, the universe itself, the rules of physics, the space-time continuum, etc. Whatever you believe to be the basic "root cause" of things existing rather than not existing is God.

To deny the existence of God would be to deny the existence of anything at all, including your own mind.

I couldn't care less what what other people believe unless their beliefs lead to actions that effect me somehow.

Non sequitur. A long, rolling non sequitur.

Welcome to the forums, BTW.

I have to agree with utabintarbo on this.

Depends on your definition of God, obviously, but from my definition it very certainly follows. For me (and for many philosophers) God is not an answer, but a question. I define God as the cause, and act of existence. What is the cause? That we do not know. But knowing that there is a result indicates that something causes it, and that something we call God.

Obviously, if you are talking about God as a deity, then no philosophical arguments of this nature apply. The only way to prove that there is a bearded man sitting on a cloud, casting lighting bolts and sculpting little people out of mud is to observe such a man or traces of his actions. I obviously don't believe in any deities.

Anyway, if you believe that the word God has too many connotations and cannot, to you, represent something as abstract as 'existence' or 'substance', then you are free to use a different word. However, when I think about your beliefs, I think about the ideas, and not the words. Just because our names for this thing differ does not mean that the ideas do.

PS: If you then proceed to argue that I am the only that uses this definition of God, you are empirically wrong. Many religions have at their root the belief that God (Brahman, YHVW, Tao) is a concept so large and complex that we cannot even come close to understanding a fraction of it. Certainly, they are not talking about a deity. As for philosophers... I am particularly fond of Spinoza, and this is exactly the God he describes.

There is already a word for existence. It is existence. Why drop mysticism into the mix? It is unnecessary.

I'm not. I know there are lots of people with sketchy philosophical bases for the definition of god. So what?

I drop no mysticism into the mix, as I see nothing mystical about God.

There is a word for the human brain, and yet we also often use the word 'mind', and some even use 'soul'.

In Yoga, we talk about the Shakras. I am certain that you could describe them biologically, but for the purpose of achieving inner peace and mind-body balance it is convenient to think about them differently.

In computer science, we talk about integers and characters, whereas in subassembly we talk about 8-bit blocks of binary.

Read some poetry... You will find very strange uses for words indeed.

Why do we use the word 'love'? Wouldn't it be easier to talk about the biology of attachment?

Why do we do this? I would say it's because people sometimes find it easier to understand certain aspects of a thing by viewing it differently. I know for certain that many people have great difficulty understanding existence but are capable of understanding God, to an extent.

So nothing. You are free do disagree with my definition, but I believe I have showed that God, as defined by many, necessarily exists and that was my only goal. I do think that it somewhat arrogant of you to say that individuals who devote their entire lives to thinking about an idea have 'sketchy' views about it. It's somewhat analogous to a creationalist telling scientists that their science is sketchy.

I think this is one reason that religion exists. In the old days, I think perhaps people did not have morals, and since they saw death all around them (from disease and violence), they did not place a high value on human life. Religion possibly developed in order to inculcate in people a sense of right and wrong. Remember that 2000 + years ago, most people were illiterate. The people who could write were the priests and scribes.

Poor lost souls. They have chosen the false path. I feel sorry of them.

I agree. What they think about God is (or should be) relevant only to themselves.

If someone wants to base government policy on their own religious beliefs, or to be more precise, on the position of a church, then I have a problem with that. I heard a candidate for political office say that he was against abortion and I would have respected that if he had thought about the issue and then made up his own mind, but he justified his opposition by saying he is against it because he is Catholic and the church opposes abortion. What I think he was saying is that he allows someone else to do his thinking for him.

This is a ridiculous statement, unless you have actual proof or evidence that your religion is correct.