Isn’t 3 years a common law marriage a lot of places?
Personally I believe in God and such. However I hate that mentality that if you dont go to church you are evil, and will burn in hell. Many people might go to church, but some are the most awful people you will ever meet.
Also I feel the church during the middle ages was one of the most evil things in the history of mankind. The pope was considered the leader of christian Europe. The church of old had a lot of blood on its hands, between the crusades, and inquisitions and so on. The idea behind religion should be to inspire morals, not fear.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
What makes you think the people you’re comparing yourself to “have true happiness?”[/quote]
I’m not the one making the comparison, they are. According to fundamentalists, unless you believe as they do, you can’t possibly be as happy as they say they are.
[quote]Da Vinci wrote:
You can’t group agnostics with atheists…they’re two completely separate groups of people with completely separate beliefs.[/quote]
Again, it’s the fundamentalists doing the grouping, not me. They insist that both agnostics and atheists are doomed to misery.
[quote]makkun wrote:
I think the question is not so much if you can be ‘happy’ as an agnostic/atheist, or whether the agnosticism/atheism has contributed to the person’s happyness and general positive outlook on life.
I for myself remember the day (after years of thinking on the topic) when I came to my personal conclusion that a) life has no deeper meaning and b) there is no god. I felt a profound sense of happiness and closure on spiritual questions that day, and have - even when confronted with personal misery - never looked back (in about 15 years now). Also, it helped me to focus the need to act ethically on my personal responsibility and relationships with others, not the authority of an external ‘higher’ authority.
I realise that the above conclusions will not make everyone happy, but for me it worked to get a lot of questions out of the way that seem to bother many other people.
Makkun[/quote]
This is a very rational point of view. Unless a person has direct experience, they often will simply dismiss an idea, and that’s a good thing.
Now, the fact is that God initiated the creation of billions of beings in order to have a better shot at producing desireable beings, much like an animal breeder does, to pick out the best seed stock. Just like slaveowners in the pre-Civil War era bred black people for a speciific goal, God picks and chooses. If God never picks someone, it simply means that that person didn’t ‘make the cut’ so to speak.
What qualities those are, only God knows. Since God has spoken to me, I’d suppose that being kind of crazy was something He looks for.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
saw this in the book store, thought it was an interesting premise.
Can atheists create for themselves the same benefits supplied to believers by religion? Are spirituality and god independent?[/quote]
I guess it depends on how you define spirituality. I prefer to think of it in terms of philosophy and morality, neither of which requires belief in the supernatural.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
The question of whether or not there is a god and an afterlife is the biggest issue in my life. Always has been.
The fact that I’m not sure directly contributes to the amount I drink.
Is it possible to be happy? Sure, for some people. For me, no. [/quote]
Why should our happiness depend on believing that there is a god and an afterlife?
Once I thought about it, living forever would be the ultimate hell. Once you’ve tried all the ice cream flavors, maxed out all the equipment in the gym, and had countless conversations with your friends, what else is there to enjoy? I mean, forever is a damn long, long, long…long time.
Not that I would snub my nose at a few hundred extra years. But forever? No thanks.
[quote]Fergy wrote:
Personally I find the question so ludicrous as to not need any sort of legitimate answer.[/quote]
Agreed, but many people are scared to death to question their faith, because they’ve been brainwashed to believe that they can’t possibly be happy without it.
Happiness is a state of mind.
Some of the happiest people I’ve ever met have been the people who never asked themselves if they were happy.
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
I think this is a complex issue, or at least it has been for me. To give a simple answer to your question, I would say “yes”, you can be happy. Now for some other thoughts and qualifications.
There is certainly a strong sense of emotional security that comes from faith in some religion, especially one like Christianity. It’s a very “safe” religion, your faith gives you a straightforward black and white way to look at the word, a way to interpret your place in it, and a lot of hope for the future.
I think this strong sense of emotional security is lost when you leave the fold. You are now, emotionally, left to yourself. There is no ready-made worldview to wrap yourself in, no paradigm in which to understand your place, no great promise of hope. In these respects you definitely loose something being an atheist or agnostic.
Now, must one equate this strong sense of emotional security with happiness and does losing it mean you can never regain happiness? Of course not. In one sense when someone says something like “you’ll never be truly happy without God”, they are correct. You probably won’t have the sort of emotional security I’ve described. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t be “truly happy” or happy without that emotional security. There are of course other things in life that can make one happy–a loving family, good friends, material positions, etc. I won’t get into these other things and argue how they stack up against the sort of emotional security one gets from Christianity, but overall I think the dichotomy Christians present that you can either live your life for God or spend your life is empty hedonism is a false one. However one judges happiness and the worth of certain sources of joy, I think there are many other sources of substantial joy and happiness one can have that don’t involve faith in God.
To conclude, I think there’s something one gains from leaving the fold as well: honestly with ones self. If you simply do not believe, or you have reasonable doubts and cannot believe, then living a life to please your family and friends or trying to force yourself to believe just to keep that emotional security can only end badly. What good is emotional security if you have to force it upon yourself or believe something you can’t possibly see as true to get it? [/quote]
Good post. I agree that a type of happiness is possible from believing in the supernatural. I took a lot of comfort in the belief that god was watching over my life, and that I would live forever with my loved ones.
At the same time, my beliefs precluded the happiness that comes from integrity, tolerance, and the passion for life that can only be attained through a sense of one’s mortality.
I traded the happiness of a 5 year-old for the happiness of an adult. Security, simplicity, and comfort for autonomy, maturity, and strength.
James Fowler has an excellent book called “Stages of Faith” which documents his research on the different stages of morality that people progress through during their lives. He found that morality begins as a very black and white, childlike belief system and matures beyond that, with fewer and fewer people moving to each succeeding stage. Some stay in the childlike state for their entire lives.
“Jonathan Livingston Seagull” is an allegorical book along the same lines.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Quick - Forlife needs someone to validate his worldview.[/quote]
Every one of my posts is clearly a cry for help 
[quote]makkun wrote:
Also, it helped me to focus the need to act ethically on my personal responsibility and relationships with others, not the authority of an external ‘higher’ authority.
[/quote]
I see this as one of the biggest pluses of stepping away from the comfort of the supernatural. Taking responsibility for your own actions, and recognizing the inherent worth of the values that you hold, is what it means to act as an adult. It is more admirable to love people for their own sake, than to love them because you think your god will bless you, or because not doing so will send you to hell.
[quote]forlife wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
saw this in the book store, thought it was an interesting premise.
Can atheists create for themselves the same benefits supplied to believers by religion? Are spirituality and god independent?
I guess it depends on how you define spirituality. I prefer to think of it in terms of philosophy and morality, neither of which requires belief in the supernatural.[/quote]
I disagree, I label philosophy and morality as supernatural endeavors. They attempt to answer the same questions religion does. I even consider religions branches of moral philosophy. Things like the Christian philosophy ring any bells?
Morals are not things of the scientific world. Believing in morals is believing in something not of the ordinary world, or if you will, something supernatural. You have faith in something with no scientific factual base, outside of the tangible world, that can only be investigated by thought, as an ultimate guiding force for human behavior. Sounds pretty supernatural to me. Now all you need is a group of followers and some codified beliefs. Then youâ??d have a religion. =0)
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
forlife wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
saw this in the book store, thought it was an interesting premise.
Can atheists create for themselves the same benefits supplied to believers by religion? Are spirituality and god independent?
I guess it depends on how you define spirituality. I prefer to think of it in terms of philosophy and morality, neither of which requires belief in the supernatural.
I disagree, I label philosophy and morality as supernatural endeavors. They attempt to answer the same questions religion does. I even consider religions branches of moral philosophy. Things like the Christian philosophy ring any bells?
Morals are not things of the scientific world. Believing in morals is believing in something not of the ordinary world, or if you will, something supernatural. You have faith in something with no scientific factual base, outside of the tangible world, that can only be investigated by thought, as an ultimate guiding force for human behavior. Sounds pretty supernatural to me. Now all you need is a group of followers and some codified beliefs. Then youâ??d have a religion. =0)
[/quote]
But that just isn’t what “supernatural” means. The world refers to things that violate the laws of nature, not things that just don’t relate to them.
[quote]ironmaniac508 wrote:
Personally I believe in God and such. However I hate that mentality that if you dont go to church you are evil, and will burn in hell. Many people might go to church, but some are the most awful people you will ever meet.
Also I feel the church during the middle ages was one of the most evil things in the history of mankind. The pope was considered the leader of christian Europe. The church of old had a lot of blood on its hands, between the crusades, and inquisitions and so on. The idea behind religion should be to inspire morals, not fear.[/quote]
Your post, and Vegita’s, makes me wonder if there might be a negative correlation between fundamentalism and happiness. I’ve known many religious people who are more like you, “live and let live”, and they seem pretty happy, non-judgmental, and at peace in their lives. Fundmentalists are kinda like hamsters on a wheel, constantly chasing happiness, and judging others who aren’t seeking happiness in exactly the same way. They’re modern day Pharisees that strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.
That in itself is an overgeneralization, though. I’m sure there are many fundamentalists that have true happiness in their lives. Unfortunately, they just won’t admit that others may also have true happiness.
It reminds me of the joke:
So you die and go to heaven. Saint Peter meets you at the gate, and escorts you through streets paved with gold. On your right side is a high wall, and as you pass it, Peter says, “Shhhhh. On the other side of the wall are the fundamentalist Christians…they think they’re the only ones here.”
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
makkun wrote:
I think the question is not so much if you can be ‘happy’ as an agnostic/atheist, or whether the agnosticism/atheism has contributed to the person’s happyness and general positive outlook on life.
I for myself remember the day (after years of thinking on the topic) when I came to my personal conclusion that a) life has no deeper meaning and b) there is no god. I felt a profound sense of happiness and closure on spiritual questions that day, and have - even when confronted with personal misery - never looked back (in about 15 years now). Also, it helped me to focus the need to act ethically on my personal responsibility and relationships with others, not the authority of an external ‘higher’ authority.
I realise that the above conclusions will not make everyone happy, but for me it worked to get a lot of questions out of the way that seem to bother many other people.
Makkun
This is a very rational point of view. Unless a person has direct experience, they often will simply dismiss an idea, and that’s a good thing.
Now, the fact is that God initiated the creation of billions of beings in order to have a better shot at producing desireable beings, much like an animal breeder does, to pick out the best seed stock. Just like slaveowners in the pre-Civil War era bred black people for a speciific goal, God picks and chooses. If God never picks someone, it simply means that that person didn’t ‘make the cut’ so to speak.
What qualities those are, only God knows. Since God has spoken to me, I’d suppose that being kind of crazy was something He looks for.
[/quote]
That strikes me as slightly odd. Why would you want a God that was so capricious and fickle?
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Since God has spoken to me, I’d suppose that being kind of crazy was something He looks for.
[/quote]
Have you considered the possibility that it might act in the reverse direction? 
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
I disagree, I label philosophy and morality as supernatural endeavors. They attempt to answer the same questions religion does. I even consider religions branches of moral philosophy. Things like the Christian philosophy ring any bells?
Morals are not things of the scientific world. Believing in morals is believing in something not of the ordinary world, or if you will, something supernatural. You have faith in something with no scientific factual base, outside of the tangible world, that can only be investigated by thought, as an ultimate guiding force for human behavior. Sounds pretty supernatural to me. Now all you need is a group of followers and some codified beliefs. Then youâ??d have a religion. =0)
[/quote]
Usually, the term supernatural refers to non-mundane explanations for events in the material world. Ethics, morality, and philosophy are ideas rather than material quantities. Which is why they are outside the domain of science.
My point was that you can have morals without believing in supernatural intervention in the material world.