A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I’m An Atheist

[MeyerII]

Finally! A global warming thread.

I'm not trying to start contentious fight, but I do find it interesting not what we believe but why we believe it. I think that it's not redundant to compare global warming a belief in God. Chris, I'm sorry if I've taken your thread in a direction that you do not want to go, but I think that the comparison is relevant as they both based on faith or a lack thereof.

Let's talk about death. We don't know what happens after life so we have faith to help us feel better. I don't know why I'm afraid of death, I can't control it. If folks of faith are comfortable about the concept of death because they believe they deserve some Heavenly Reward and atheists are comfortable about the concept of death because death just is, then what the fuck? Which perspective seems more plausible to you: the easy way/feel good angels strumming harps on floating clouds or maggots? The article talks about liberating honesty and that's what worries me, getting comfortable with the maggots.

To the first paragraph: it ain't redundant, its just an extremely bad comparison that should have never been made in the first place.

To the second, I see a recurrent theme of fear - which seems to be a common trait among ... well, your kind.

Let it go. The arrow will find the target all by itself if you are properly centered. If you have to think about it, you aren't thinking.

And yes, I realize I just went and wasted twenty otherwise perfectly good seconds typing this. The nice thing about this is that unlike people who can't seem to modify their behavior, I seem to be able to do it at the drop of a Stetson. You want to get beyond all this, you have to do it on your own. Posting bullshit on unrelated internet forums is a zero-sum game, unless, of course, its funny. And guess what?

GNU PAIGE, BISHES!


 

[Amskeptic]

Faith is not just some wan pathetic hopefulness. It is the only path to get to the Miracle.
Colin

Huh? Is this not a typo? Your argument goes on to say (if I understand it correctly) that, even without faith, you're free to enjoy the wonder of it all.

Faith is NOT the only path to get to the Miracle. Open-mindedness works, too.

Receptivity to every blasted miracle you can perceive, even the little ones that amuse the heck out of me, like a fly (oh my God, and it FLIES and it SELF-REPLICATES and it LEARNS, it is ALIVE ????), may give you a rich appreciation, so please, Go Forth and Appreciate, but open-mindedness does not necessarily lead you to "God".

Ricky stomps around in what is truly, at the end of the day, a private relationship between people and their consciousness of the wonder, telling us our failures of logic when he is the guy who fails to see the distinction that sentient beings can actually have a relationship with the phenomena, the Miracle, of which they are an intrinsic part. That is Faith.
Colin