Being an atheist sucks honestly

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I think this Richard Stallman quote sums up my thoughts on this subject: "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone."

Well hey, it also implies that God, in all his omnipotence, is letting all this happen and not doing a damn thing.

This comment does not make sense. Hitler will not go to Hell because Hell does not exist... unless you think that Hell only exists for Catholics?

If, as many Christians do, you accept that faith is sufficient for salvation, then it is quite possible Hitler is in heaven whilst Hindu Gandhi has not been saved.

It's the Discworld theology: everybody gets the afterlife he believed in while alive. Atheists get nothing, Christians get heaven/ hell/ purgatory, Hindus and Shirley MacLaine get reincarnated, and so on.

Don't let bad people do bad things to you. You have no obligation over others, other than the obligations you apply to yourself; help them if you care enough.

Sucks for the people that think it can't happen to them and they freeze, but the jungle isn't fair or unfair, it's just dangerous. There's no good or bad here, nor gray, it's...meaningless (other than the will to survive for species survival).

So, do the things that make you happy day to day, and if bad men/women come, prepare for that.

Sure thing Rambo!

Rambo is fiction, and the bad people are clearly defined and out in the open.

Rarely do we see the bad people until it's too late. They're hidden in plain sight.

(Naturally, I'm using "bad" to describe people who'd harm others without just reason.)

Bad people train themselves, prepare themselves. Are they Rambo? No.

As I said, you do the things that make you happy, otherwise dwelling on the "bad" of this world will eat away at you. That doesn't mean you can't have a shotgun/rifle in your cupboard that you know how to use for the bad times if it's forced onto you; that's just survival, and it's not making it easy for the bad times.

Well, that's how I live as an atheist, or rather, someone without belief.

If you accept that faith is sufficient for salvation, only God knows who is in heaven and who is not.

It only means that it doesn't matter how evil you are, there is ALWAYS hope for salvation. Gandhi was a great person, but if he lacked faith in Christ, then he's not in heaven. Christians hate to think that of people, but salvation isn't ever about how good you are since it is impossible to ever be good enough.

Hitler by his actions doesn't seem to have ever really had that kind of faith. If he had any faith at all, it was probably more out of convenience rather than a genuine belief. There are a lot of self-proclaimed Christians out there who aren't really believers at all. And they're super-nice Ghandi-esque folks, but sadly in their hearts they have more in common with Hitler than with Christ.

Of course, even Hitler was "nice guy." He just happened to be a "nice guy" who had millions of people killed to make life a little easier for Germans...

But how can the God of Abraham expect people who are raised in a very different religion and culture to have faith in Christ? Ghandi would have known about Christianity since there are records of him interacting with Christians, but what of people who lived in remote Hindu villages at the time? They may never have heard of Christ.
And Hitler was a Roman Catholic, what they believe is somewhat different from what Protestants believe about salvation.

Science to the rescue:

As biotech companies pour billions into life extension technologies, some have suggested that our cruelest criminals could be kept alive indefinitely, to serve sentences spanning millennia or longer. Even without life extension, private prison firms could one day develop drugs that make time pass more slowly, so that an inmate's 10-year sentence feels like an eternity. One way or another, humans could soon be in a position to create an artificial hell.

http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together ... criminals/

The problem with arguments like this is they are appeal to theists not to atheists, it shows you don't get what being an atheist is about. It is a mindset different from those that believe, the very act of believing, means you expect those thing to come true, but if you don't it says nothing about your moral compass at all.

As a theist, have you considered that a creator might not want to be worshiped? Have you considered that ritual has no real significance to such a creator, especially as ritual may be preoccupied in human interests? Have you considered why would a creator actually care either way if you believed in them? Have you considered that having a creator doesn't mean you are going to meet him/her/it in the/an after life?

To me religion ties together various unrelated concepts and presents them as if they were related:

The creator and morality
The creator and heaven and hell.
The creator and dominion over us.
The creator and the need for belief/faith.
The creator and need to ritual and servitude.
The creator and natural/supernatural justice.
The creator and success or failure.
The creator and determinism.

The list goes on and on. Just like being a theist doesn't make your moral or immoral in its own right, being an atheist likewise.

Ewl. Humans have already done things to create artificial hell for criminals, it is called torture. Cruel and unusual punishment. The people who suggest this are barbarians and we should not listen to them.

I'm a big fan of progress, but indefinite longevity does not appeal to me one bit. I don't get the point of keeping criminal alive, preventing them from dieing naturally. Pointless.

We breed extremely well, despite declining birthrates in some countries (they tend to have long life expectancy). So those that want to live forever, and have kids, well sometimes people can be pretty stupid.

The concept of "Belief in [X]" as a necessary (only the faithful are saved) and sufficient (all you need is faith) condition for salvation appears to me to be a major driving force behind much of the nastiness carried out in the name of religion.

It also happens to be a widespread and recurring concept within the two largest extant religions in the world: Christianity and Islam. And in the scriptures of both religions, faith is considered to be a paramount concern above and beyond everything else a person thinks and does. See Mark 3:28-29 and Matthew 12:31-32 in Christianity and Sura 3:85 and 3:131 in Islam.

First of all, it may serve as a dehumanising concept, which relegates non-believers of [X] to a category of damnation. History is replete with examples of such views and the atrocities carried out on this basis. And right now, tens of thousands of people are starving on a mountain in Iraq because they just so happen to lack "Belief in [X]".

Second of all, it encourages extremism (as a twisted combination of Pascal's Wager and Robert Nozick's Utility Monster).

A person could justify even the most unspeakable crimes if this would mean the difference between salvation and damnation for him (or someone else). After all, what could possibly be worse than an eternity in Hell?

Example: Some might recall an "unfortunate" endorsement by Michele Bachmann (never fails to deliver when it comes to complete batshit) of the evangelical pastor J. Steven Wilkins, who justified slavery with the following:

Salvation > freedom... right?

Another example: I'm sure the following verse provided a great deal of consolation for a group of young men in the skies above New York one fateful September morning in 2001.


Salvation > 2,996 lives (including the hijackers, of course... because they are now in Heaven) ... right?

Woa!! ! That's nuts! I'd totally invest in a machine like that. Most effective time outs EVER!! mwahahaha