But I haven't found a person that doesn't believe in God that still believes in aliens

huh?

I think any person who can add will easily come to the conclusion that the chances for life in the universe literally endless.

But if by aliens you mean those funny stories on history channel then you are probably right.. atheist generally dont follow that kind of bandwagon.

As to me In general I am lacking of religious and spiritual experiences (sadly) i am working to much, and even if I am resting i do it dumb way. Now at 35 I am living mostly in human populated hell, I see how much harm and misery Is done to people (for example by simpletonic money making hellish lawyers and simpletonic money making hellish doctors), I got personally terrible health problems too and i am victim of hellish lawyers/administration and hellish medicine men (and women too).

So I got a lot of such kind experiences related to humanitarizm or something like that but this is al civil and not spiritual ' It sounds to me like I would be existentialist like camus or sartre here but maybe this is only a matter of bad mood probably. As to God it is hard to say, I was sent as a kid to catholic church and influenced me somewhat, some elements of this (related to righteousness and so) make much sense for me.

I am an agnostic but I often take the atheist stand because internet is full of people trying to project their religion unto others and this force needs to be negated by people that are able to and bother. If I encounter any religious propaganda on the part of internet I cover I will reply with equal force against it and there's no blaming me for the discussion that results in.

But I'd rather skip the theme entirely because it doesn't belong here or much elsewhere. People gather here to discuss game development and it makes sense strengthen the community spirit rather than to divide them on arbitrary basis such as religious views.

The definition of god itself as an entity who doesn't show itself anyway but is omnipotent doesn't make much sense to me. Even less sense makes that some consider it a virtue to believe in something that doesn't matter until supposedly after you die. Still even less sense makes to make other people suffer based on something someone else has deducted from some ancient text. And the latest is what I oppose the most in what religion still does today.

Religion hasn't done much harm to me but it has to a whole lot of people, even entire nations. As someone's signature said, scientists never killed priests but priests have killed scientists. (Or something along those lines.)

1. Why atheists spend so much time coming up with ideas to disprove the existence of God? That actually transform them into negative believers. If God exists or not there is no need for believers or anti-believers, we don't matter.

2. If God doesn't exist you must highly consider life to be automatically generated in the universe. The universe is homogenous, the same events repeat everywhere, so you should have life everywhere. But I haven't found a person that doesn't believe in God that still believes in aliens, instead most of the people that believe in God also believe in the contrary solution for life as well.

1. Because there are theists spreading their religion (and this obviously works), there must be atheists stopping the progress, otherwise bible would become the biggest authority and we'd regress back to the middle age level where people are slain for opposing it or fight world war III with Christianity vs Islam or something as meaningful.

2. No you mustn't. You can consider only one of this incredibly rare occurrences happens to be currently taking place in this time and space considering the relativity of them. If you haven't stumbled on a person who doesn't believe in god but believe in aliens (it's better to call it extraterrestrial life even though that term is still debatable as well) you can't have covered too much ground. Most of people in Christianity dominating countries who believe in extraterrestrial life don't believe in god because extraterrestrial life is incompatible with Christianity.

1. Why atheists spend so much time coming up with ideas to disprove the existence of God? That actually transform them into negative believers. If God exists or not there is no need for believers or anti-believers, we don't matter.

I suppose it gives them something to do, likely you will see arguments from both sides being something relayed by some famous atheist / theist, personally despite my bad experiences with religion I don't care what people believe, if it isn't religion it's conspiracy theorist spewing crap. If it affected me I would care and despite UK being a partially secular state, policy makers are subtly shutdown if they even attempt to argue for / against on the grounds purely on religion. This was something heavily witnessed during the gay marriage debates and I am glad the religious arguments were put aside, instead real concerns were discussed.

My point really is, you can be a believer of any mythology / conspiracy whether modern or ancient, it isn't really a problem as it is up to the individual on how they will live their life based on that belief. Once you start having mythology dictate your policies things go wrong simply because there is no room for reforming religious 'laws', fortunately we are seeing this less and less these days and more and more states are preferring the pragmatic approach to policy making than the "lets do this because this vague passage in a holy book might mean it".

2. If God doesn't exist you must highly consider life to be automatically generated in the universe. The universe is homogenous, the same events repeat everywhere, so you should have life everywhere. But I haven't found a person that doesn't believe in God that still believes in aliens, instead most of the people that believe in God also believe in the contrary solution for life as well.

Considering how large this universe is and how much we don't know about it, it wouldn't be wrong to say that there is other life, I am not sure who you are speaking to but I doubt many people who believe in God believe there is other life, historically for centuries people even believed the universe revolved around earth and due to the self-centred close minded nature of religion, the church didn't even question it. Not to mention the fact that for centuries people assumed the Earth was flat, you would think with all these magical miracles that have so called happened you would have just once some angel, demon, witch, wizard etc. show up and say "umm guys, I hate to break it to you but the Earth is not flat and the universe doesn't revolve around Earth".

Just look at how long it took people to understand gravity, electricity or thermodynamics, yet somehow religion still claims it is 'right' and should be followed. When it comes to religion, you just need history alone to prove how bad religion has been for us. Saying that if a person wishes to believe their religion as long as it doesn't affect me I don't care, I think in the west at least we are past the point where religion can do anymore harm

But I haven't found a person that doesn't believe in God that still believes in aliens

huh?

I think any person who can add will easily come to the conclusion that the chances for life in the universe literally endless.

But if by aliens you mean those funny stories on history channel then you are probably right.. atheist generally dont follow that kind of bandwagon.

I think a lot of the aliens on History Channel stuff can mostly be discounted as "crazy New-Age stuff..." (*1).

probably not many people (religious or otherwise) actually believe it.

they also have a bad habit of basically crapping on whatever they talk about, like interviewing people who are like "we will just pull crap on various subjects and throw it at the camera". yeah... seems credible...

*1: and, meanwhile new-age people have a bad habit of fouling up whatever they get their hands on, like take bits and pieces of science and bits and pieces of various religions and glue magic crystals and aliens and dolphins and whatever else onto it (because, you know, "quantum" means "magic", right?... it is like science, but bedazzled...).

then they make everyone else look bad in the off chance that their versions are mistaken to actually represent whatever topic they are going on about.

(not trying to make controversy here...).

Religions and anti-religions doesn't make or destroy God.

This is what everybody needs to understand. God has nothing to do with religions: Christianity, Catholicism, Islam, your own, or your next-door priest's. I always bring this up whenever I am in discussions with friends who are conflicted with their faith. It seems that their flawed logic starts from religions.

"Religions are bad because they divide and create war. Since Religions worship God, and that God should be all-loving, therefore, God does not exist because war is not loving"

I iterate so many times that religions are run by people, just like corporations and governments. Anything run by people are prone to corruption. The fact that religion X wages war all the time, or corrupt from the inside, tells nothing about God, or God's existence. You are talking about people who are taking advantage of the powerful things that are religions for their own benefits.

People will use anything to create separation, gain power, and hurt other people in the process. If there were no religions, they will use other excuses: skin-color, nationality, ideology, politics, their lands, their lambs, sexes, what color should they use for walls, C# vs C++, and all ridiculous things will create tensions and conflicts. It doesn't matter. That is the very nature of human beings: to be different, to question existing systems, and to rebel.

These natures, which may sound very damaging and why would God (if God exists and is responsible for why we were created this way) do this to us, may actually have some benefits. To allow us to rebel would prevent us from being under control of some oppresive forces (whether that's a corrupt government or demons). To allow us to be different creates diversities, and diversities is a good thing.

It is theoretically possible for human beings to coexists together under different beliefs and ideologies, unfortunately greed, jealousy, and lies come into play and wreak havoc in everything. This is what Christianity/Catholocism (even though it's not perfect itself) trying to teach to its members: to love one another, so that none of these would have happened.

unfortunately greed, jealousy, and lies come into play and wreak havoc in everything

I think a slight difference between the needs and interests of people are enough wreak havoc. Even if we take all the "bad" things from the human nature, individuals will get into conflicts even with the best intentions. That's why I think possession is a good thing, and that there won't be world piece without strong controlling power(s) with all its trade-offs (I'm talking about practical things, like a government, not God) or a much more sparse distribution of humans. Or some global heroine-like drug, or Matrix.

-Captain Obvious

It is theoretically possible for human beings to coexists together under different beliefs and ideologies, unfortunately greed, jealousy, and lies come into play and wreak havoc in everything. This is what Christianity/Catholocism (even though it's not perfect itself) trying to teach to its members: to love one another, so that none of these would have happened.

although, even then, there is also a fair amount of fragmentation in terms of beliefs as well.

like, people try to get along, despite there being a lot of disagreement over lots of different things, and what is a Christian to one person may be a very different thing to someone else, ...

but, from the view of the outside, most of the bad points of most of the groups are sort of rolled together into a generic media stereotype.


but, ultimately a lot of this is also a good reason why not to have any centralized authorities in these matters.

better is if pretty much everyone is free to disagree, and things can generally be kept civil.

but, ultimately, many people try to form central authorities, and this is where problems arise, and typically the bigger or more influential the authority, the worse its problems and abuses become (ex: state religions and cults).

1. Why atheists spend so much time coming up with ideas to disprove the existence of God? That actually transform them into negative believers. If God exists or not there is no need for believers or anti-believers, we don't matter.

If "god" (by whatever definition you want to apply to that) does exist, he has no meaningful interaction with our daily lives. His fan club, OTOH, do.

Some atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, et al) feel that the world would be a better place without religion and attack the root cause of religion, belief in god. The reasoning goes if you disprove god, then religion goes away and with it, fundamentalism, attacks on science, etc.

Personally, I'm not sure about this. People who are idiots (creationists) or people who have been oppressed and manipulated for political gain (jihadis) will simply find some other reason to do whatever it is they do.

That said, I am thankful that Dawkins and his ilk exist. They serve as an important counter-balance to the religious crazies. It's just unfortunate that religious fundamentalists tend to occupy positions of power (Ayatollahs, the Tea Party), while "rationalist fundamentalists" are marginalised and ignored.

Besides "is there a god" is a fundamentally interesting question. Religion, for good or evil, has had a massive influence on our society and culture. Even Dawkins advocates teaching the bible in schools, simply because you can't understand many great cultural works without it.

2. If God doesn't exist you must highly consider life to be automatically generated in the universe. The universe is homogenous, the same events repeat everywhere, so you should have life everywhere. But I haven't found a person that doesn't believe in God that still believes in aliens, instead most of the people that believe in God also believe in the contrary solution for life as well.

Well, it depends on what you mean by "aliens". If you mean "life on other planets", I think you'll find that most atheists would quite happily say that not only is it possible, it's highly likely.

OTOH, if you mean little grey men and government conspiracies, that seems less likely for several reasons:

1. If you work out the probabilities for intelligent life, the distances involved are vast, and the energy expenditure is immense.

2. If you did spend all that time and effort to come visit, why would you be subtle about it? Unless you were doing some kind of Star Trek Prime Directive cultural observation, in which case, if you wanted to stay hidden, your tech would allow you to do that.

Well, it depends on what you mean by "aliens". If you mean "life on other planets", I think you'll find that most atheists would quite happily say that not only is it possible, it's highly likely.
OTOH, if you mean little grey men and government conspiracies, that seems less likely for several reasons:

Also, I find it quite funny how many times these aliens look more human than the species closest to humans on earth. As if evolution universally converged on the same form.