No matter how open-minded...

[Unesh52]

Atheism is a religion.

...

Religion is about having faith.

Atheists have faith in science, technology, human ingenuity, and human creativity.
Thus atheism is a religion.

You are conflating faith and inductive/abductive reasoning. Furthermore, the idea that what people believe doesn't matter is destructive in the highest degree. I'm not saying that religious belief is destructive, I'm just trying to make the point that there is some category of beliefs that are degenerative to personal growth and social cohesion. Things like believing that the president is infallible or that aliens control the white house or that your pet rock has emotions and therefore your son's lack of care with him deserves serious reprimand - there are things that people should not believe.

Atheist 'belief' is backed by scientific studies, experimentation and rational thought. Religions are based largely on pure theory with nothing to back it up.
Atheism acknowledges the possible existence of things not yet proved by science. Religion just asserts 'truth' without even acknowledging the gargantuan room for error or other more likely explanations.

I will continue to respect your right to believe whatever you wish, but I do reserve the right to point out when it doesn't mesh even remotely with established facts. Does this make me a dick? An asshole if you will? Perhaps, but I don't see it, really. Well... not anymore of an asshole than the faith healer who convince AIDS patients to quit take their medication because 'faith will heal them', then condemn them for not having had enough faith when they inevitably die as a result. Or the people who say 'God wills it!' as the primary motivation for whatever atrocity they are committing. Or of course, the guy who believes he and those of his faith is favored by God/Jahve/Allah or the Great Donkey on the Moon over those who do not believe.

You, on the other hand, are conflating theism and religion. Buddhists are religious atheists. You're also conflating atheism and empiricism. And logical positivism (the doctrine that statements don't have meaning unless they can be verified), for that matter. Atheists are as diverse in their beliefs and epistemology as theists. Also, those guys you're talking about are dicks, so when you say you're about as much of a dick as they are, you are admitting you are a dick. I think you mean to say that you're not a dick, because you're pointing out the flaws in their beliefs and arguing that they should change because of the harm those beliefs cause. Also also, you argue you are justified in decrying irrational beliefs because they have negative consequences, but you only mention a small minority of religious groups as justification for that (note: indirect) claim. Religion is a very broad term encompassing a wide variety of ideals, and plenty of those are healthy, constructive ideals, even if they are irrational.

 

[SonicWaffle]

And while he may have created all of this, I believe mankind is slowly discovering how he did it. Every new discovery about the world is just uncovering more and more of God's design. It was already there, we are just discovering more pages of God's "How to Build a Universe" book. And not only does that reconcile the ideas of religion and science, it makes me excited for the pursuit of knowledge and science.

To quote Frankie Boyle;

Scientists have just built the world's biggest supercollider, and they're doing experiments to see what makes up protons. I hope that if the experiment's successful, the whole of our reality will dissolve, and a big sign will up come that says: Level Two.

 

[Tjoubou]

People hating on Call of Duty and similar video games, you don't actually have to play them or discuss them or in anyway expose yourself to them. And no, i'm not a Call of Duty fanboy myself. I've never bought a Call of Duty game myself, but that said, i've still never had a problem with any of them.
Everything would be so much easier if gamers could just stop hating everything because they feel like it...

 

[Grey_Focks]

Wow. After reading a lot of these posts, I think I can safely explain A LOT of the things you guys are confused about, to a healthy degree at least, but good god that's just too much. That, and a lot of you, no offense, just come off as terribly young people with poorly developed senses of right and wrong. Suffice it to say, the world isn't black and white.

Well, as for me, I can't wrap my head around people who still like Jeff Dunham. Sure, he was kinda funny at first, but now he's just milking it terribly, and it feels like the more puppets he adds the less funny he becomes.

 

[Jonluw]

A wise man once said: "A suicide isn't painless, if you leave everyone in pain."

NOFX, eh?

As an offshoot of suicide, I'll say that self-harming is definitely another thing that I cannot grasp. I genuinely find it hard to take pity on people who hurt themselves as a way of dealing with their problems. There's enough people trying to hurt us in this world without successfully doing it ourselves....

As someone who's... well, *tried* to harm himself, I could try to shed some light on it. I suspect the experience is highly subjective though.
Self harm isn't an attempt to deal with problems. At least in my case, it offered short-term relief. When you're in pain, your mind focuses only on that.
It's like entering a meditative state.
Before I cut, my mind was just buzzing with thousands of thoughts, all sad, depressing or painful. It's a very stressful situation to be in, and when so cut all those thoughts are blown away for a moment and in your mind there is only an acute awareness of the cut.
It brings calm, in a very weird, sort of disturbing way.
In a way, it just feels right when you do it.

Keep in mind that I'm not recommending self-harm. I'm just trying to explain the concept somewhat rationally.

I know many people who have self-harmed (even my girlfriend has done it in the past) and I've had extensive conversations with people with self-harming experience. They've all explained exactly what you said but...well...I still can't understand how people think it can help. I get that it's a way to forget everything else for a brief moment but...nope...still can't understand why people do it.

Well, it's pleasant to hear that other people experience it roughly the same way at least.

It likely doesn't help that - despite being a cynical person - I'm one of the most positive people I know. I'm a paradox lol.

Heh. I've got a bit of that attitude. Or rather, after a while of being depressed I decided "fuck this, I need to stop caring so much" and just tried not to think so deeply about stuff. Tried to live more in the moment and such. Enjoy things even if they were just superficial and try not to look toward tomorrow.
I guess I'll go down quite a politically socially (I don't know. Is that the right term?) uncorrect road and say this as well: I feel alcohol really helped me. I'm not very socially active, and am absolutely horrible at talking to people. I'm really bad at looking people in the eye, and I hate being touched (well, unless it's a girl I'm interested in). I wasn't exactly the life of the party, and being alone and sober at parties didn't exactly help my mental state.
Reaching drinking age really helped with that. Drunk, I am quite sociable, don't mind physical contact, and I'm generally just happy.

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

Transexuals.
I don't understand why it's a mental disorder to feel like your arm isn't part of you but to feel like your body is of the wrong gender is a-okay.

First off, it's transsexual, with two S's.

And are you implying that transsexuality is a mental disorder? It's actually a result of hormonally altered structures in the brain, it's actually more of a mutation than a mental condition.

If you actually want to learn more, feel free to PM me, I shall spare the other posters my rants.

Seriously? You fellt like you needed to correct my spelling? Did it make you feel better to do so? I made another typo, just for you

I'm not implying anything. I am not a docto so saying it's a mental disorder when it is not classified as one would just be stupid. I am saying it doesn't make sense to me.

This is why I can never get an answer or have this make sense. As soon as I say that it doesn't make sense to me I get this huge backlash like I'm a monster who should have perfect knowledge and understanding of everything. You know. Like GOD.

I think the reason you never get a reply is that when someone offers to tell you about it you act like a victim. Might want to do a bit of research sometimes.

Good for you. Did you actually want to come up with something constructive or is this one of those things people do when they have nothing better to say?

Yes, I have something constructive. Don't understand something? Learn about it. It might just help you.

You have got to be kidding me.

Transsexuals are chemically the opposite gender. That is how they are, and is a scientific fact. That is why it is not a mental disorder. You said yourself that you do not understand why "it's a mental disorder to feel like your arm isn't part of you but to feel like your body is of the wrong gender is a-okay." You do not understand the subject, and reacted negatively to someone offering to explain it.

 

[TheDooD]

Deliberate acts of unbridled rage, fury, or anger with the intent to harm others. I honestly don't understand why it's so difficult to like other people, and for no gain other than a cheeky laugh or two. I also don't really understand greed, or money in general. I can understand that in order to live long and healthy lives, one needs to have a decent amount of money. But what I don't understand is why people want to horde it. Why do people want money? It's already been scientifically proven that money does not increase overall happiness, and the nice things that we can buy with money we eventually become habituated (used) to. And the only thing greed ever accomplishes is giving the miser a negative impression.

If someone could explain the importance of greed to me, I'd happily listen.

From greed you can fill voids in your life yet it's mainly a pleasure thing not a happiness thing. They horde money because without it when they want said pleasure that can get it instantly with all their wealth. Also people that horde money have a serious fear of death and not being remembered. With all that money you can do anything you can make an impact you have a feeling of power. Yet when you take that all away they're pretty much useless.

With your first point emotions and free will are the main reason people can't get along. Hell it even goes into the Greed subject that somebody has more then others and aren't willing to share yet they are willing to show it off. It creates Envy which in turn into Rage and Anger. The Rich person isn't willing to share the money he/she's hording so we'll just raise up and take it. Then after that's all said and done the "heroes" start fighting each other because Greed took over their hearts and they want more and more of that power.

Overall the only way to really get rid of both is either Everybody has a money pit upon which they can call pull an infinite amount of "money" from. Or the entire concept of money has to be completely and udderly removed.

 

[cgaWolf]

German grammar...
IT MAKES NO SENSE!!

Natürlich macht deutsche Grammatik Sinn!
Deutsche Grammatik hat klare Regeln, wenige Ausnahmen, ein robustes Halbsatzsystem und zusammengesetzte Hauptwörter \o/



All that said, i can't wrap my head around people who refuse the clear logic of the scientific method, as well as their oftentimes companions, the people who think something loses the magic of beauty for no other reason than being understood and explained.

I never understood how people stop being fascinated or inspired simply because they know.

 

[Cousin_IT]

I don't get the internet. I just don't get it.

 

[Mallefunction]

I will never understand people who blame the opposite sex for their relationship failures.

Note to women: Not all guys are sex-hungry players who have no feeling or emotion and only care about T&A.
Note to men: Not all women are money-grubbing liars who only want 'bad boys' while using Nice Guys as man-slaves

Just because your heart has taken a few beatings in the past does not mean you get to blame half of our species for your own problems (some of which, probably stem from yourself to a certain degree. Remember, two to tango and all that)

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

The main thing I can't wrap my head around is people who say they would never steal or lie and people who try and do things that have NO personal gain. I feel like Eric Cartman sometimes.
"BUT YOU AREN'T GONNA GET IN TROUBLE!!!".

Religion is the other one. Not spirituality, that I get, I mean organized religion. I just don't understand how anyone can say are a Christian or Catholic and believe most if not all of the tenants.

 

[regalphantom]

There are a lot of things I can't wrap my head around. Dump-trucks, lamp-posts, tables, buildings, toaster ovens. Plus why would you want to wrap your head around something anyways? It seems like doing so would be rather painful.

My above over-literalness aside, honestly there isn't much I can't wrap my head around. Part of it is because I am an extremely empathetic person, but a much bigger reason is that after much study and reflection (of both myself and others) I've come to understand that ultimately, the root cause of every human action is desire and how one plans to achieve their desires. You can strip down EVERY SINGLE HUMAN ACTION to a simple motivation, you do X because you want Y. It's that simple. Admittedly some of the expressions of why we do X for Y can get somewhat convoluted, but in a world as complex as our own it is fair to assume that complex chains of doing X to achieve Y can exist, at least in the human mind if not in practice.

 

[JaceArveduin]

I don't understand people who do things 'out of the goodness of their heart'. There's no profit for the doer, unless the doer has the ideas of favours in mind, it just seems illogical to me.

That about sums it up for me. I don't know why a stranger would want to help me for no reward. I generally* don't help other strangers unless I'm in a fickle mood, so why are they helping me?

*My helping other's is generally limited a little bit of help in games.

 

[Grunt_Man11]

Snip

Sorry to burst your little bubble but... wait, no I'm not sorry. I'm amused. That's the word.

The thing is, atheism is not a religion. While it's certainly a 'belief' in scientifically backed facts and so on, it quite fundamentally differs from religions in a few key ways:

Atheist 'belief' is backed by scientific studies, experimentation and rational thought. Religions are based largely on pure theory with nothing to back it up.
Atheism acknowledges the possible existence of things not yet proved by science. Religion just asserts 'truth' without even acknowledging the gargantuan room for error or other more likely explanations.

It's not 'faith' if it's proven. Then it becomes fact. That is the base of atheism. Unless it can be proven, it can't be considered unvarnished truth. 'Faith' which is the cornerstone of religion is fundamentally different from this, which in turn shows rather eloquently that atheism =//= religion.

I will continue to respect your right to believe whatever you wish, but I do reserve the right to point out when it doesn't mesh even remotely with established facts. Does this make me a dick? An asshole if you will? Perhaps, but I don't see it, really. Well... not anymore of an asshole than the faith healer who convince AIDS patients to quit take their medication because 'faith will heal them', then condemn them for not having had enough faith when they inevitably die as a result. Or the people who say 'God wills it!' as the primary motivation for whatever atrocity they are committing. Or of course, the guy who believes he and those of his faith is favored by God/Jahve/Allah or the Great Donkey on the Moon over those who do not believe.

Or perhaps the parents who denied the blood transfusion that would save their kid's life, forcing the system to go through a long papermill to over-rule their decision... which in turn came along too late and caused the death of that child.

You'll excuse me if I don't find the minds capable of putting more stock in that kind of thing to be rational or something I can grasp myself. Being religious should not be a legally recognized shield from reason, logic and scientifically backed and supported treatment. I'm of course biased in this... but I've yet to see someone bring forth an actual logical argument that holds water in opposition of this.

Not sorry to burst your bubble here, but you've failed to argue that atheism is not a religion.

Here's why:
In order for something to be seen as fact by people, they need to have faith in it. Do you honestly think a scientist would come up with a scientific theory if he didn't have faith in it?

How many scientist believe that Hawkins theory about Black Holes is 100% fact despite there being no way it can be proven it. (Keep in mind that Hawkins himself lost faith in his own theory.)

I know what you're going to say. "It can't be proven, yet." And I say, "exactly." The other religions can make that same argument with the same result.
There's no logical way to prove a deity or all powerful entity exists, and no logical way to prove they don't exist either.

I've watched a number of atheist videos on YouTube, and none of them succeed in disproving the existence of theoretical deities or entities. All they succeed at is being a blatant attempt to justify intolerance towards, and bulling of, those who do believe in such things.

I mean why did you become an atheist?

I bet it was because you didn't have faith in the other religions, and needed something else to have faith in. You wanted something else to believe in. Thus you turned to atheism. You put your faith in atheism.

Faith = religion. Belief system = religion.

1+1=2 is only a fact because people have faith that it is a fact.

If mankind as a whole were to decide that the order the numbers 0-9 are to be changed say 0, 1, 3, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 instead of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
Then suddenly 1+1=2 stops being a fact.

Facts aren't always concrete. If you really think about it, many are quite fragile and only exist because we allow them to.

 

[Crazy]

The problem is if you open your mind enough, your brain will fall over the floor.

 

[omega 616]

Reading books. I can't get into it no matter how much the book fits my interests.

Ok, I'll throw another idea in that's not quite as poignant as my previous one. I cannot comprehend why people would not like to read books.

It hurts my neck looking down all the time, then I put the book so I have to look straight ahead and it hurts my arms ... I cannot win with books or handheld consoles!

I don't get the internet. I just don't get it.

Doode! You totally have it! Apparently you have had it since 2008!

On topic. How girls don't play with there boobs all day!

I don't get some fetishes, I kind of get the feet thing (man feet are sweaty hairy things but womens feet are more elegant) ... the ones I am talking about are two girls one cup kinda thing. People get get there kicks how they like (unless it causes unwanted distress to somebody) but getting a horn when you go for a dump is way out of my comprehension!

Another one I don't get is people who marry things, like a woman married a wall and cheated on it with a fence ....

Spoiler

http://www.geekologie.com/2008/12/woman_leaves_berlin_wall_for_g.php

She was married to the wall for 29 years, then leaves it for a fence ... did the wall not put out enough? Was the fence a better listener?

 

[Tips_of_Fingers]

Heh. I've got a bit of that attitude. Or rather, after a while of being depressed I decided "fuck this, I need to stop caring so much" and just tried not to think so deeply about stuff. Tried to live more in the moment and such. Enjoy things even if they were just superficial and try not to look toward tomorrow.
I guess I'll go down quite a politically socially (I don't know. Is that the right term?) uncorrect road and say this as well: I feel alcohol really helped me. I'm not very socially active, and am absolutely horrible at talking to people. I'm really bad at looking people in the eye, and I hate being touched (well, unless it's a girl I'm interested in). I wasn't exactly the life of the party, and being alone and sober at parties didn't exactly help my mental state.
Reaching drinking age really helped with that. Drunk, I am quite sociable, don't mind physical contact, and I'm generally just happy.

Ha, I'm not a fan of - what I deem to be - unnecessary touching (even from my girlfriend, at times) and I will sometimes have trouble meeting people's eyes, something my dad has pointed out to me on multiple occasions. It's weird though because I'm not socially awkward or a particularly introverted person. I'm highly confident and quite a good public speaker (especially when expressing my own opinions).

In terms of the "not caring so much attitude"...I've had that for as long as I can remember. According to so many people in my family, I'm so laid-back that I'm practically horizontal lol...

Human psychology is weird eh?

 

[Chelsea O'shea]

people that use the phrase "hater" or add "ista" on the end of any English word such as "fashion-ista"

these things appear in no reputable dictionary,why do so many use them so frequently as if they count as part of the language?

 

[Unesh52]

Ok it's more like taking a character you like and then that artish tarnish everuthing about that character. Ok yes this can be apply to many things like rule 34 or drawing that person out of character but changing the phyiscal apperances of that character to something unappealing I cannot stand.
Yes that would be somewhat hypercritic of me since I'm a Brony but the things is or at least from my stand point is that the whole fat and muscular is seen as a fetish and yes even there is pony fetish out there but I am no where near into that at all.
Beside yes the pony show is consider to be weird but last time I check, fat or muscular fanart is no where accepted by the masses in the most posistive light at all (most of it).

Scarim, I'm tempted to give you leniency because I feel like you're an active member in the pony group here, but I can't help but point out your philosophical inattentiveness(and your misspellings - it's hypocritical, not hypercritic). You seem to acknowledge that it's ok to like things not accepted by the masses, but you make an exception so you can condemn people with an obesity fetish. That's not fair. Unless you can come up with a relevant difference between that and you being a brony (and no, it being gross to you is not a relevant difference), then your argument is wrong. Simple as that.

 

[Grunt_Man11]

Atheism is a religion.

...

Religion is about having faith.

Atheists have faith in science, technology, human ingenuity, and human creativity.
Thus atheism is a religion.

You are conflating faith and inductive/abductive reasoning. Furthermore, the idea that what people believe doesn't matter is destructive in the highest degree. I'm not saying that religious belief is destructive, I'm just trying to make the point that there is some category of beliefs that are degenerative to personal growth and social cohesion. Things like believing that the president is infallible or that aliens control the white house or that your pet rock has emotions and therefore your son's lack of care with him deserves serious reprimand - there are things that people should not believe.

Yeah, I see what you're saying here. Having faith is okay as long as it not detrimental to the well being of others, or yourself.

I also know that the only way to measure the well being of people is through physical, and emotional, evidence.