I want to begin by saying I look forward to your posts and generally speaking I think you are an astute observer and your queries are honest and penetrative.
Thank you, as that is in fact my aim of how I have chosen to approach ideas, to make sure that they are treated with respect and honesty, but that you ought to question them as much as possible and to the best of ones ability, test them for whether they are true or false. Because if something is true, it should be capable of withstanding any reasonable form of testing.
And it seems to me, with my very limited knowledge of Baha'i that you seem to have a much more humane and reasonable approach to things compared to a lot of the other religions. But maybe that is just because we haven't talked about those topics yet
Off the top of my head I would say people have their bias for a host of reasons regardless of whether they are atheists or believe in a religion. I think atheists come off more reasonable than believers in the older religions for a host of reasons not the least of which there is so much disagreement within the ranks of the older religions. In that sense their disagreements seem to resemble those of politicians.
Everyone have biases so won't disagree with that, but I do think some are more healthier than others, so if those can be directed towards the better and more reasonable ones that would be a good start.
Whether atheists are more reasonable, I think is mostly because of the lack of constrains that comes with it. We don't have to make certain things fit into a religious view, so if something we experience or observe seems to be wrong or harmful, there is not really any argument for why an atheist would defend it, for what it is.
One observation I have made, is that religious people are not unreasonable or less unreasonable than atheists, except when you talk about their religion, then reason is just thrown out the window.
An example could be that there is no difference between atheists and religious people, when it comes to whether Santa Claus is true or not. Is it reasonable to believe that he is capable of delivering so many presents in such a short amount of time and we all reach the same conclusion on that.
But if you question whether virgin birth or people rising from the dead is reasonable to believe, that seems to be no problem at all for some religious people. But to atheists, this obviously makes no sense, because its just as unreasonable to believe, as Santa is.
So to me, this is where the huge difference is and also why there are loads of very good and talented religious scientists, simply because they are able to leave God outside the lab.
why that is the case is because of the assumption humans are basically corruptible in nature.
This could quickly turn into a huge topic in it self, when starting to talk about human nature. Because its very easy to confuse things we obverse as being part of human nature, even though when you think about it, doesn't necessarily mean that it is.
If we look at a common assumption about human nature as an example. So a person might say, its human nature to fight and make war. Which seems logic that this is true, as we have seen it happen countless times throughout history. But what about all the periods when we haven't fought each other and solved things through collaboration, peaceful agreements, trade agreements etc. So that would mean that its just as much human nature to seek peaceful solutions? But people tend to think, war and destruction is more likely to be an expression of it than peace is, which is kind of strange.
Also it have been suggested through studies, that babies for instance tend to prefer good behavior over bad behavior.
This is another test that were made with slightly older kids, which is actually quite interesting I think:
So maybe human nature is not that of selfishness and destruction, but rather something that is caused later on or imposed on us, due to how society teaches us to behave.
I want to thank you profusely for your review of history! Thank you so much. Insofar as German Nazi occupation of Denmark is concerned I marveled at their courage and resilient defiance as you portrayed it. I also marveled at the detail of your coverage. Thank you so much!
I want to point out that, not all Danish during the war were against the Germans, so as with everything else, you will always have people that are of other opinions and therefore chose to collaborate with the Germans. Also I didn't write the text, but just summarized it through copy/paste
I am not that familiar about unity within the ranks of atheists but I would consider as humans there are some differences in their behavior.
There are no unity as such between atheists, we reach the same conclusions in regards to the existences of God. But that is pretty much it. Some believe in ghosts and climate change as being true, while others don't. Also why its very confusing when religious people say that atheism is a religion, because it makes no sense. I can agree with another atheist on the topic of God, but strongly disagree with them on their view on morality.
I hope you don’t take this as a criticism but you come across to me as exhibiting a life that is quite spiritual! You are sincere, honest and want what is best for all peoples and the planet. In that regard you are in sync with the chief aims of the Baha’i Cause!
Don't worry, I don't get easily offended
It depends on what you think is spiritual, I care about animals and humans, since I do believe that we only have one life here on Earth. So to me the only reasonable or logic approach is to then aim at optimizing that time. And it worries me, when you see innocent people and animals forced to live lives, which are so far from what we potentially could achieve as humans if we were better at working together at solving things. If you look at the world in which we live, all the technology, medicine, knowledge about the world, our abilities to produce goods etc. And yet we are unable to make it work so it benefits all humans and nature. We have everything we need to do it, but no way to get there, because of human stupidity when it comes to these things.
