Hi Jeanie

I don't have a problem with however it looks because I believe God uses natural law. However, I still don't think humans had to progress through the evolutionary process to become human and that kinds were made as is and then adapted accordingly as needed or as mutations dictated or whatever. It doesn't destroy my faith if that is what happened.
Fair enough Jeanie. What you are describing does not agree with the evidence, it is a faith position, but as I’ve said you are free to believe it if that is your wish.

I agree no one should be forcing their beliefs on others. That is the point of free agency. Belief in God AND his plan, to me, gives life meaning and hope. I imagine if you are in your forties you have experiences the loss of a loved one. During those times it would be nearly inconsolabe to me to think they did not still exist - but if you don't believe life goes on it would limit their importance at the same time IMO. I am idealistic and that is not an option for me but I don't cling to that belief because of that. It is because I have had experiences that verify to me that they are still around....and even watching over me.
Yes I’ve lost people very close to me and that is always hard. I wish I could expect to meet them again sometime but I don’t believe I will. I don’t think they are lessened by the fact that I don’t believe this, they are still the most important things in my life, the lives they lived still affected me deeply and I still miss them if anything more dramatically because I don’t expect ever to see them again, it’s not just a break, a holiday at the end of which we’ll be reunited, for me it’s forever when I lose someone. Like I said I prefer to know the truth even if it’s not what I would wish. All the evidence we have suggests that this view is the truth. I hope you’re right and I’m wrong but I don’t believe it is so.

There IS no way to prove that...
This is a hypothetical question Jeanie, you have to use your imagination and pretend that someone has just proven this to you. I know it’s hard, for most believers it’s almost unimaginable, I remember how hard it was for me when I first entertained these thoughts and I was losing my faith already at that time so I was closer to these thoughts than you are. It is hard but please try.

IF for some reason I did believe otherwise it would probably change how I lived, though. I know Mordred has brought up that point. I believe in self actualization on a much larger scale than society in general believes in. What you describe would cause a more cut throat, amoral and depressing situation where people would have no reason not to do whatever it takes to survive. You would still reap what you sowed....but it would be ok as long as you didn't get caught. We could also give in to our more base desires.... (Why not?)
That’s an interesting observation; atheists as a group are statistically less likely to act ‘immorally’ than theists. They commit less major crime and are less likely to get divorced for example. Your view seems to run counter to the evidence here.

As to why not it seems to me that we are intelligent enough to put ourselves into the other’s shoes. We can understand what it would feel like to be robed, raped, murdered etc and I for one would not like to live in a society where such things were OK. I would not do these things because it would devalue the society I want to live in even though I know that many others, statistically mostly believers, do do these things and I would not do them because I would not want to have them done to me. Empathy is a real guide to morality IMHO.

Perhaps you're a better person.
Are you putting yourself down now Jeanie? Are you really that bad a person?

But even love would be harder to develop with those beliefs.
Why? Are sunsets or rainbows less beautiful just because we understand light refraction? To me understanding just adds to the beauty and that includes love.

I can see why this belief system could wreak complete havoc with society and why Russ and CTD, etc. etc. fight so heavily against this belief system. (Religion.....)
Yet the evidence shows that those who do not hold this belief system are by far more moral than those who do hold it. How do you explain that Jeanie? They are underrepresented in federal prison by a massive amount, comprising between 8 and 16% of the American population they comprise well under 1% of the federal prison population. Their divorce rate is lower even than the Catholics and is many percent below the fundamentalist rate. In both of these statistics there is an inverse relationship between level of belief in god and morality at least by these measures. None of the evidence supports your beliefs on this.

To me it seems that those who believe that this world would be worse off morally without religion are selling human beings short. We are capable of being moral without god, lets face it if any one religion is true then the rest are false so the majority of people alive today don’t follow a true god anyway. The evidence suggests that the opposite of your view is probably the truth, certainly that’s where the limited evidence we have leads us.

All the best Jeanie

Russell