Ruminations Regarding Religions

Well said.

 

Even that in itself could be considered religious - Religion of self/self-importance.
But yes, religion, like faith as a concept, need no gods or spirituality. Only commitment to an idea, or way of life.

 

To say that atheism is a religion is like saying abstinence is a sex position and to me makes no sense. Of course we all have beliefs (without them we wouldn't be human) whether they are in the existence of a god or gods but for me it's in the enlightenment and the progress of mankind through science and knowledge.
Although Galileo, Copernicus and Bruno were catholics and believers they had the courage to question the age old belief that the earth was the center of the universe and proclaimed that the earth orbited the sun and not vice versa as preached by the church. Of course they suffered for that belief and both Copernicus and Bruno were executed and Galileo was tried for his heresy and spent the last few years of his life under house arrest but the seeds had been sewn and others took up the baton of truth. One of the most significant of these was Isaac Newton, who in 1665 went into self imposed quarantine to avoid the plague that was ravaging the pious people of England and when he emerged back into the world two years later he had set in place the foundations of universal gravitation and motion, integrated and differential calculus and the science of optics. With these and other great minds the enlightenment took off and in the centuries since then both religious secularists and non-believers took us to new understandings of our world and the cosmos and also took us to new discoveries including steam power, the Industrial Revolution, evolution and today quantum mechanics and a greater knowledge of the universe and our place in it. The enlightenment is still with us and tens of thousands of scientists, thinkers and philosophers are now carrying it forward into the current and future centuries.
Perhaps I'm an optimist but I truly believe that this is where the future of mankind lies so long as it not used by madmen or some religious sect to try to control us.
So I admit I do have my own beliefs and am not ashamed of them but these do not include an all seeing, all knowing invisible being who wishes mankind to worship him unconditionally.

PEACE AND LOVE TO YOU ALL

 

Yes, I was going to mention that science could qualify as well.

 

Kind of. Perhaps the term "spiritual" would be more appropriate. A religion doesn't require a god. And God doesn't require a religion. Religion is a man-made thing (as so many posters like to say about God). It is a way of following the teachings and practices of a faith. A person that has no spirituality is truly lost. They are the ones who believe in no rules/laws/code of conduct and become self-absorbed. In my experiences in life, people who belong to no religion and don't believe in God, but are spiritual, are almost always chill. It's the ones who rage against anything they don't believe in that are the problem, whether they are 'religious' or not. Those are the people who don't have a spark of the S(s)pirit in them.

 

As an Atheist, the whole 'deity' concept is foreign to me. I'm a pretty spiritual person (as is Richard Dawkins), but you don't need a "god-crutch" to explain your existence or the universe.