How do you know that you are right?
Helping by teaching critical thinking and a logical mindset allows much better thought patterns and furthermore shows the error in their ways - not the "truth" in ours.
If we're wrong, then we just made TONNES of progress.
If we're right, then we built up through progress to reach that.
In either case, we gain understanding.
As an atheist, if you convert them, you might just be condemning them along with yourself. Ever heard of Pascal's Wager?
Your principles of being a logical / reasonable being rules over the threat of eternal suffering from the hands of someone who is imperfect enough as to give us sufficient reason to believe he / she / it is real.
If someone is happier believing in God, then who are you to burst their bubble?
Someone who is right? Or to be more accurate, not wrong.
If someone has different or contradictory beliefs to my own, I will debate / argue to influence the others opinion with logic and reason. The value of the truth goes beyond the unreasonable happiness of someone.
Especially when you consider that happiness can be obtained through a simply happy personality, something I've managed to do over the course of 8 years.
Self development is significantly more important than being seeded with semi-decent morality, because it's individuality and furthermore no code to go by as you make it.
ou may think that the truth is the most important thing in the universe, but you can't intrude on the happiness of others because you assume they believe the same thing.
I can intrude on someones belief if they're wrong. The allowance of being wrong I think is needless to say a dull one, it hinders progress in any positive direction, the inability to logically work things out, and much more.
If someone is sadder being an atheist than they were being a Christian or Muslim or whatever they were, then you haven't helped them at all.
It gives them the oppurtunity to develop themselves, and not be reliant in what they believed was right which wasn't. From there the pride of the fact that they are not only confident in their resolve but of their own individuality is something achieveable by any standards.
I'm 14, and that took me 8 years. Think of a much more mentally matured person who was almost certainly not in the same position as me, he would hit the nail exceptionally easy.
And furthermore, the happiness gained in that you are furthering yourself as a person - it's the thing I drove on.
On top of the fact that I felt this moral complexity was a necessity to be a good human being.
If anyone really wanted the truth, they would be able to find it themselves.
The thing is people are mislead to believe that what they think is the truth. Religion is everything handed out to you in a book, and "that's the way it is".
That's the fault of the people who are committing those injustices, not the fault of the religion itself. It's like destroying the Earth because of ecoterrorists who firebomb medical centers in its name, or destroying the United States because there are a few soldiers who killed Iraqi civilians. We need to address the people behind such things, not the beliefs they put in front of them. Because there are millions of people who follow their religion and are just fine, or even better off for it.
God certainly went such a way to state that the Crusades were something he did not want... didn't he?
Religion shifts according to ones agenda, condemning it is more than acceptable because it does not speak for itself, but the people who believe in it do.
Considering it SHOULD have the capability of speaking for itself (wise omnipotent one), that is what clarifies this as an act of Religious deals.
Even including the Crusades despite the fact I said it was politically motivated. Why? Because God done jack to say that it wasn't what he wanted, if indeed he is real.
I actually think that problem is pretty simple. If you want to learn about God, go to a religious school. If you don't want to learn about God, buy a book and homeschool yourself or have your parents do it.
People who teach God to their kids don't teach much else, including being skeptical, being a self-developed person and etc. Because all of that is handed in a less refined form. The decisions of religious school or homeschooling (etc) are not your own.
Did I choose to go to Michaelston? Hell no.
School should not be sticking its nose in the religious debate, because there are atheists, Christians, and everyone in between paying taxes to fund the schools.
What is right is not defined by what is fueling it. Teach evolution, teach proper-self-development (which is something I feel a lot of schools fail at) and teach Religion, but highlight the FACTS first, not the beliefs.
Happiness is happiness, and that's the only real goal in life.
And who are you to impose your belief on everyone else?
You, good sir, are quite hypocritical. It's not your decision to define what the meaning of life is, and being as I don't have one defined by anyone else (including a deity), I make one for myself. And that is the same thing I encourage to everyone else - and that is in a way, one of my goals in life.
If someone is happier doing something and it doesn't hurt anybody else, then why would you want to stop them from doing it?
Because even if it isn't a bad thing, it isn't a good thing is it? Advancement at every level (moral, intelligence, physical, philosophical, etc) I think should be there for everyone, and as such telling someone the truth is important in that.
- H
