I spirituality/religion a useless insanity?

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I'm pretty sure that there will be a point in time where science can explain the usual questions that many spiritualities and religions try to answer, which are the following:

1. "Where do I come from?"

2. "Why am I here?"

3. "How was the world/universe created?" (This was answered by science as of today. *cough* the big bang theory, astrophysics and geology *cough*)

4. "Where does life come from?" (Again, this one has already been answered by science, more specifically by the theory of evolution and Darwinism. You can see how Christianity's answer to this question is becoming irrelevant because of the sheer amount of stupidity that comes from the creationist themselves)

5. "What happens after we die?" (To be honest, a lot of these spiritualities and religions encourage people to NOT embrace death as it really is. The idea of the afterlife is just a form of euphemism for death itself. Why not just embrace death for its brutal, gruesome, horrifying, tragic and sad nature? Why can't most of us have the spine to do this?)

6."What's the purpose of life?" (To expeirence the universe, duh!)

While science patiently and carefully tries to answer these compex questions, religion and spirituality desperately answers these questions with their own formal insanities!

I want to ask you this: what will become of all spirituality and religion once science anwers all of these complex questions? What then? Why they would be nothing more than just nonsense; insanities worthy of the asylum!

I say we judge the believers of these spiritualities and religions for what they really are: schizophrenic freaks!

Schizophrenia is a mental disease where an individual human being is deluded by these voices inside their heads, telling them to do things for the sake of their "safety". Needless to say that those "things" the voices of said individuals come in the form of hurting, harassing, bullying and killing other human beings who, in reality, are innocent by nature.

It's pretty clear that the abovementioned behavior of these poor, mentally ill souls are no different than the behavior of those within the Christian and Muslim faith, as evidenced by their countless ocations of unjust harassment, murder and segregation. They have these voices inside their heads, to which they claim, with absolutely no evidence, that it belongs to an anonymous being from the sky who is adressed as either "Allah" or "God", telling them to harass or kill homosexuals for the sake of humanity's "safety" when time and time again science has proven that these strange individuals are no threat to humanity's reproduction rate or survival. And if it's not homosexuality they are targeting, it's those who believe in something other than what they beileive in, when time and time again, this kind of bigoted behavoir has been proven to bring nothing but chaos and misery!

Are you noticing a pattern here? I sure do.

And yet, these Muslims and Christians have the audacity to claim that they are a people of peace? Nonsense! They are schizophrenic freaks I tell you! the only reason they are aren't inside mental asylums is because science hasn't answered these complex, aforementioned questions that they desperately answered eons ago!

All of this makes me even question of there is truly any use or place for spirituality and religion in the world. I sure think not, for I believe it is nothing more than pure insanity.

And, in hopes of further expanding my knowledge and understanding, I challenge you to prove me wrong!

Until you understand that Atheism is a belief and a choice just like Deism or Theism, not the "default position of a sane mind" you cannot progress in knowledge and understanding.

I don't, personally, feel that most of the cosmological items will be explained----ever.

In order for this to happen, as far as I am concerned, we have to be able to travel the full extent of the Universe.

I'm resigned to the possibility that science won't take us that far, but you're obviously entitled to your beliefs.



The big bang does not describe how the universe was created, rather how it likely 'evolved' from the initial event. The gap is to be found in our lack of a decent hypothesis as to what caused this event in the first place.



"Darwinism" does not explain where life comes from. You're probably thinking of abiogenesis.



Why does life require a purpose beyond continuation of self through propagation?



The curiosity about our environment which led to belief in higher beings is the result of the same fundamental aspect of human nature which led to scientific enquiry. Dismissing it as "insane" is somewhat crass.



How would a scientist answer?



"Whoever is without sin among you..."



Categorising all believers as mentally ill goes quite a bit beyond crass.



Well I've already pointed out a couple of gaps in your knowledge. As for proving you wrong, I think that an unsupported claim that 84% of human beings suffer from schizophrenia can be summarily dismissed without evidence.



Atheism is defined as the absence of a belief. What you're describing is strident or gnostic atheism. You are, however, quite correct regarding The_Blonde_Alien's proposition.



Though I don't agree that such understanding would require we fully traverse the it, the notion that we'll ever have complete knowledge of our Universe, let alone what lies beyond it, seems highly unlikely without a vast chain of major scientific breakthroughs.

Incorrectly I fear, it is a belief in absence, to live as though the universe is just random chaos from which we sprang. Strip all your knowledge of religion away -keep the science if you wish, it makes no difference- and ponder the nature of the universe : how or why it came to be and what lies beyond it. The only honest answer is "I don't know", agnosticism, a profoundly unsatisfactory position. To believe after that "there probably is no God" or "there probably is a God" is a decision made with no testable evidence either way, an unfounded belief.

Except if there is no evidence of a teapot between Earth and Mars then there probably is no teapot, unless you absolutely need to have the 'warmth' from an imaginary teapot in one's 'heart'.

Science is not objective fact. It is not absolute at all, and all the time new discoveries are made that prove or disprove a theory or hypothesis.

I see a lot of pro-Science types try to push the idea that science is fact, and that you can not agree or disagree with it.

"Whether you agree with it or not doesn't matter, because it's true!".

This is incorrect on many levels as, like I said, all the time Science and fact is ever-changing.

Look at our scientific and medical knowledge and beliefs of just 100 years ago, and you'll see we were the equivalent of monkeys poking sticks at something to see its response.

We are still this today. Always have, probably always will be, as our scientific and medical knowledge isn't even at its infancy - it is a fetus in the life of discovery.

A few centuries ago, putting leeches all over the body was considered a viable medical procedure for a variety of illnesses.

I bet 100 years in the future, future doctors will laugh at the embarrassing things we thought would cure Cancer once the real cure is found.

And Mootoo, just because something has not yet been proven, does not mean it does not exist.

I guess gravity 'never existed' before Isaac Newton discovered it? Nor did electricity?

Who knows - there's a lot of rubbish and junk in space surrounding Earth, more than some might realize, perhaps there's a coffee mug or a teapot or two that the astronauts in the International Space Station dropped out of the window.

This is just an example.

Religion and spirituality are not insanity.

They are human nature.

We are an imaginative and creative species, and religion and spirituality can be compared to the arts and culture.

Religion and spirituality exist to explain the unexplained or unexplainable, to create a sense of meaning and purpose in one's life, to give a sense of pride and community to people, to guide one's path in life for the better, and to just plain feel good about one's self.

You may notice this is exactly what The Arts and Culture are supposed to do as well.

To those that devote their life to Science or Medicine, it does the same thing.

The only 'insane' thing is using whatever B.S. rationale you can to justify violence and misanthropy.

Most wars, aside from recourse or power driven ones, are not justifiable, so people find ways to justify what they're doing is right.

Religious wars exist because people who have no reason to be doing it say it's for the good of their religion or God.

Correctly. The fault is to be found in the way that agnostic and atheist are being deployed by people who are ignorant of their correct meanings. Agnostic and atheist are not mutually exclusive descriptors as they describe the absence of knowledge and belief, respectively.

For clarity:

Gnostic theist - claims to know that a god or gods exist.
Agnostic theist - believes that a god or gods exist.
Agnostic atheist - does not believe in a god or gods.
Gnostic atheist - claims to know that there is no god.

There is a worrying trend towards the latter of those four options among certain atheist communities (especially online), and they definitely have the loudest voices, but they do not speak on behalf of all atheists - after all, it's hardly an exclusive club. All too often, such "atheists" are actually practitioners of Scientism under a false flag - usually unwittingly; they know not what they do.

Incidentally, your personal satisfaction is irrelevant when it comes to the nature of what is, nor does it define where inquiry ends. "I don't know" may be the only honest answer to the question, but it usually leads to "let's find out" in the mind of a curious ape.



Those would be the "practitioners of Scientism" I mentioned. Sadly the collective term for them is Scientists, with a capital 'S', which is far from ideal. I propose 'Scientismists' as a functional alternative.

Yeah that's what I meant by unsatisfying.



All very interesting, but it does not address what I was saying, that absence of belief in something that we have no evidence for is in fact a belief and a choice made from a position just as ignorant as the theist. Until the late 90s most scientists did not believe in rogue waves. There was no evidence that met their standards and their existence did not fit their Gaussian model, all they had was the old stories of monster waves handed down by generations of sailors which they dismissed as the fairytales of salt-addled deluded minds. "There is no such thing as rogue waves" and "There is probably no such thing as rogue waves" were beliefs (that later turned out to be incorrect) stemmed from ignorance.

Subjectively. Many people are clearly satisfied without the need for further inquiry. Incurious apes, if you will.



No it isn't. It's the answer "no" to the question "do you believe in my god?". You're arguing against gnosticism, not atheism - and I agree. Gnostic atheism is an unsupported statement of belief. That doesn't make make me a theist which, unlike agnostic, is the opposite of atheist. It is not possible to both believe in something and not believe in it without serious cognitive dissonance.



"There is probably no such thing as rogue waves" is a reasonable position to take sans measurable evidence for rogue waves. "There is probably no such thing as rogue waves" still allows for the possibility of rogue waves. "There is probably no such thing as rogue waves" is not the same as "There is no such thing as rogue waves". It's a "best guess", not a claim of knowledge. This is where agnostic atheism differs from gnostic atheism.

Atheism is a sceptical position. Genuine sceptics will be disinclined to believe positive assertions without supporting evidence from any camp, theist or otherwise. There is currently no satisfactory evidence of a god or gods. Should that change, a sceptical atheist will revise their opinion accordingly.

Thank you guys for your interesting and diversive resposes.

Like I've said before, I've made this thread with the purpose of putting my perspective of religion and spirituality to the test. Needless to say that the likes of Mikah have indeed proved several of my points wrong.

Also, apologies sorry the misspelled title, as well as my aforementioned crass-filled attitude, as mentioned by adifferentname.

Oh, I couldn't possibly comment on your attitude. I was referring to your opinions - after all, that's where my interest lies.

Alright, let's not turn this into semantic warfare, I still think "agnostic atheist" is an oxymoron though, masquerading as a reasoned position, as is my own position "agnostic deist" bordering on "agnostic Christian" though I feel no need for masquerade on my part.

What created the big bang though?

Science can't explain everything. If acknowledging that means I'm crazy, then I don't wanna be sane.

But I was already sharpening my knives!

Seriously though, speaking as someone who does not believe in any gods yet is open to any possibilities regarding the unknown beyond our universe, I can assure you that it is no oxymoron.

Well that's the agnostic part covered.



Would it be better to say you do not believe in any of the versions of God(s) put forward by humans up to this point in time? To me Atheism always meant rejecting the very notion of a god-like being, which is not quite the same thing.