I Have Yet To See Any
Evidence To Support It
[unsigned]
From:
To: <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Dice
Date: Tuesday, April 11, 2000 4:40 PM
I have read several letters on your site from non-atheists who say that faith is better because if they are right, they will go to heaven; if they are wrong, then they just stop existing along with the rest of us.
I think that is a poor reason to follow religion. To live your life a certain way because you know that there is always the slim chance that you may be right.
Furthermore, I have heard claims from many christians who say that religion instills a sense of morality. I find this absurd. I am an atheist and maintain higher set of ethics than some of my christian friends. I find it strange to think that you should only help out mankind because you'll get something good in return (go to heaven). Isn't that, the selfishness, what is "destroying our country," to use the term of the non-atheist. MY ethical system does not work on a system of accountability. I do not do the good things I do to gain favor with God or anybody. I do it because it is RIGHT, because I think it is GOOD to help people and treat them well. Indeed, the idea of morality through religion is an inherently flawed one, one that is perpetuated by its blind followers (The "blind follower", one who will not question, is essential to all religions, for without them it cannot continue itself). It is inherently flawed because all it breeds is a sense of superiority, a sense that THEIR CODE IS THE ULTIMATE.
In times of prosperity, this sense manifests itself in the form of censorship. Censor the books, censor the movies, censor the videogames. In times of a stress on the populace (a stress which more than once has been applied by the leaders of religion), it manifests itself in violence. In the Crusades, in the murder of abortion doctors, in the Spanish Inquisition, in the rivalry between the Hindus and the Muslims of Pakistan and India... the list goes on and on. The Christians tell me that they have a higher moral code than I? Bah! I laugh at that.
Logic when applied to religion will destroy it. Logic is the ENEMY of the religion. Why? Because religion is not built upon logic. It is built around the nebulous idea of "faith". Faith, you see, is in general terms the most dangerous enemy to the survival of mankind. Faith is believing that there is something beyond. At this stage it is harmless and I am certain that it is in the heart of every one to ever walk the earth. Even the most logical of the scientists has faith, for it is hard for me to imagine someone who has seen EVERYTHING with their own eyes. I have not seen, with my own eyes, that beyond the sky is a field of space filled with balls of fusing hydrogen, but I believe it. That is faiths smallest and simultaneously greatest step.
But it is when it is taken beyond that that it becomes dangerous. Faith is also allowing the few to speak for the many. It is taking what has been written before and not even CONSIDERING to challenge it. Science is built upon the idea that any theory may be challenged at any time with logic. Faith abhors this. What the religious person calls faith, I call opression. I call it opression because it allows the few to hold dominion over the many, to tell them what to do and how and when to do it. WIthout reason. Without logic. Only for the perpetuation of the religion itself.
One may argue (using logic, of course) that religion is a sort of social form of life. Each religion is like a species... and the followers are like the members of that species. Certainly, it is able to reproduce (spread the Word to the children), and then die (even the clergy cannot escape death), on and on. Forever. Everything religion does it does for itself, just as life does. An interesting hypothesis. But quite off the topic.
What do I think happens when I die? I Honestly don't know. You see, it's not that I have disproved the existence of a god, that is quite impossible. But I have yet to see any evidence to support it. I think it's safe to say that all the evidence I've seen so far (if heaven existed then why, oh why do people resist death? Wouldn't god want us to come into heaven, and thus create us so we wouldn't fight it? Food for thought) has supported the idea that I will not go to heaven, or hell, or whatever. Thank you for your time, but now I am hungry and must consume my meal.
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