What have atheism and religion got in common?

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This is only my opinion, so don't kill me:

They both require a certain degree of blind faith and inflexible thinking.

Religion needs a huge amount of blind faith. I personally believe that both Christianity and the Muslim faith were started so political despots could retain power. They gave a local prophet the PR treatment, said that they had the only way to God and if you didn't follow you were eternally doomed. Add buckets of guilt and shame and Hey Presto! Control of the uneducated masses. Nice result if you are a power crazed dictator. Personally, I couldn't possibly ever summon up enough blind faith to follow a religion.

Now here is the controversial part: I think that to be a hard core "committed" atheist also requires blind faith. I have met several atheists who are mightily offended if you would even consider anything other than the all encompassing fact that current science can and will explain everything. There is nothing else, they cry. I understand that not everyone who is an atheist is like that.

Why does atheism need blind faith? Well I agree that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming and the theory of the big bang is based on scientific observation. OK, so what happened before the big bang? Where did all the mass come from in the original singularity? No one really knows, there is no conclusive opinion. So many unanswered questions. So many views and theories. Parallel universes, string theory, biocentrism. Therefore saying that there is nothing beyond our understanding of this physical realm requires blind faith.

I personally think that although science is very much more advanced than it has ever been, it is still very much in it's infancy. Who knows what will be discovered years into the future? There will certainly be so much discovered in years and millenia to come. Probably things we can't conceive of at present. At the quantam level, most of the laws that govern our physical universe no longer apply. No one really understands the nature of consciousness, although people refuse to believe that it can originate anywhere other than the brain, the complete functions of consciousness are very much an enigma. Many, many people have near death experiences. Yes, it is possible that these can be explained by brain functioning, but then again, is it wise to invalidate millions of people's personal experiences so lightly?

I think the question of atheism vs religion should be replaced with:
atheism v the possibility of there being more to existence than this physical universe.

I'll almost certainly never know the answer to this until I die.

Apologies if I've offended anyone.

Whether atheism requires blind faith requires on the type of atheist. Weak atheism is simply lack of belief in gods, not asserting their non-existance. I agree that a strong atheist that is absolutely certain there are no gods has taken a leap of faith.

I consider myself a weak atheist and agnostic. I just never believed in gods, just as I haven't believed in elves and dragons. That does not mean I can disprove the existance of any of those.

And you don't need science to be an atheist. Science has not disproven the existance fo gods, but it has for example made a literal reading of Genesis impossible. I think most Christians believe in evolution.

I personally don't believe gods exist and if they were somehow proven to exist I wouldn't follow them. I believe religion is at worst a tool used to control people and at best something people use for comfort and socializing. I'm not interested in it.

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What is a God anyway? Asking someone if they believe something that exists that is hard to define is a weird question.

Now the universe is a big place so you could ask a person if they believe Alien life exists out there somewhere. A common sensible reply the odds are really good for something similar to Earth could be out there somewhere.

Ask me if God(s) exist and I'll need to be more specific. Which God is this and what the heck is a God anyway? Are we talking a super advanced Alien who's technology would seem like magic to us?

Maybe somewhere out there is the equivelent of THOR from Marvel comics. Asgard and the whole bit. Ancients called them Gods but he is basically an alien about as much as Superman is. Is that the kind of God that Atheists should consider as possibly existing?

What have atheism and religion got in common?

They're both centuries-old ideas that people often argue about deep into the night, in futile efforts, to change their counterparts' minds.

In a word, zealots.