I think I can confirm it for now, though I have known it for a very long time now
..I am an atheist.
There is some doubt as to the very name "atheist". Oxford dictionary says its someone who doesn't believe in the existence of God. But if I don't believe in something in the first place- which is to say, that there is absolutely no logic in my mind that can lead me to believe in a thing, then where is the question of disbelieving in the existence of it?
I guess we could also say...isn't Oxford dictionary assuming that a god exists anyway? It's very convenient for someone like God (if he did exist) to be watching us argue on his/her/its existence.
None of us starts from the fence on the question of god. we start by either calling ourselves believers or non-believers. why don't we start, say, along the lines of Bill Maher, who groups his beliefs under the word Doubt. This post is not named after his beliefs...although doubt is a way of starting off on the fence.
since we all like to appear scientific (many of us actually BEING so) in their approach to answer questions, lets conduct an experiment to find out which side of the fence we classify ourselves in.
lets base the experiment on the premise that both believing and not-believing provide some purpose or give something in return.
So....first exp.
Religion/God---> Prayers offered by people. In return, we get (if u believe in the whole divine plan/god's will etc. jazz) floods, earthquakes, not to mention exciting apostles of evil like George Bush, Dick Cheney, Adolf Hitler, Stalin. where is the proof that God told Bush to invade iraq or hitler to kill all the Jews? how fast an internet connection does the white house have?
lets add some election defeats to this (i read in a newspaper report about how it was "god's will" that a certain party had lost the recent general elections)
I wonder how all our priests have never dragged their overly-obese bodies onto the streets and shouted up to the skies "What the fuck God?"...Noooo. the obese bodies stay comfortably inside the temple, and tell everyone else "it's God's will...That's all Folks!" (tell me u didn't just picture Porky pig in Hindu garb!)
Non-believers---> Realism, i.e. Nature and Nature alone has the kind of power over us, that we can and should put any kind of faith - if u will - on. We fight disease with medicines yes, but think about it...if humans didn't pollute everything in sight, a multitude of preventable diseases would actually be prevented. I hate it when i see ads for water filtration machines on TV.
people! Industries pollute the water. Then another industry comes along to sell you that crappy filter and soon, two fat industry tycoons are joking at a party about how one of them saved millions by dumping all factory waste into the local river...and how one of them made millions by selling the crappy filter.
Have you ever noticed that when politicians talk about nuclear wars or global warming..they do so as if the planet would blow up or something.
"boo hoo! think about the earth and what all our nuclear weapons are doing to it"
"global warming...climate change ..waaah! Lets hold a G1000 summit, so we can express our grief about how no one is doing anything...which the population also does anyways, just that we do it on a more expensive and glamorous level"
Bullshit!
all that our govts probably fear is that our human race will be annhilated in all the nuclear shit etc. people...the Earth has a lot more capacity than you think. The planet's like the intelligent mother who lets her kid get dirty in the shit he's been playing in...then tells him that its socially unacceptable to go around in public like that.
whatever we manage to do to ourselves by shooting bombs, Nature will take over. You think we're more powerful than the dinosaurs? they lived for millions of years buddy! we've been around - at least the dumb-as-shit part of humanity- for no more than 3000 years tops.
Here's my solution to save the
PLANET . kill the whole human race...
before that..have a look at "Life after People" (google it)