Hey guys ive been asked to work on a paper on atheism and ive really been getting interested in this topic. I hope you can bear with me for a few minutes of your time to gain a perspective of atheism and religion.
If you were to ask the next person you see if they believe in god, chances are, they do. Now if you asked them why they believe in such a thing, they will almost certainly be unable to provide a logical response. There is absolutely no reason to believe in a supernatural creator or any religion and they in fact negatively affect us in society on a daily basis. Briefly, religion is divisive, dangerous, and it discourages independent thought. However it is never too late to change, for atheism is the brilliant alternative. It is a way of thought that encourages the belief in evidential truth, use of logic, and can take us one step further to world peace.
. In ancient times, humans were certain that everything had a creator and kept the world in order. They believed that the creators watched everyone throughout their lives and they would be punished for their "sins". These generalized beliefs created law and order in primitive civilization and gave a moral reference to people by dictating what is right and wrong. Logic and independent thought were therefore suppressed causing religion to live until to this day without being questioned. This implicit purpose of religion is acknowledged through popular media such as the movie "The Book of Eli". The movie portrayed an earth destroyed by natural disasters causing the death of the majority of humans and marking the end of civilized behaviour. However, a man, who experienced the past before the disasters, tries to rebuild his own civilization through a book known in the past as the bible. This is a manifestation of why religion was necessary in ancient times. Logic could not rebuild the foundation of moral society when the majority of people are as unintelligent as barbarians; therefore religion was necessary in that situation. There is no room for religion in modern society, because there exists an understanding of the universe, a legal system, and we have critical reasoning. We cannot rely on beliefs that were created thousands of years ago. Conditions are completely different now and most of the people in the world know what is right and what is wrong, and the ones who don't, are under legal systems made by intelligent people using logic and reasoning. Atheism encourages us to be skeptical to popular belief and use logic to make life decisions.
As humans, it is part of our nature to search for the truth, and years of scientific research has provided an overwhelming amount of evidence that is all pointing at the same thing; that there is no creator, thus the ideology of atheism. Evidential truth is therefore a critical part of atheism. It is a part that many countries in the world are realizing that it is the correct way for thought. In countries like France, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, less than a third of their entire population believe in a god. This is significant because it wasn't so long ago that almost the entire population of the earth believed in a supernatural creator. However, the people of those countries are in fact very right to be opposed to an otherwise popular belief. Through scientific evidence we have come to believe in evolution of organisms through natural selection, making vestigial the belief in a supernatural creator. Scientists have proved the universe is thirteen billion years old and was created through a period of mass-expansion known as "The Big Bang". Through the nuclear furnaces of stars, which turn simple elements into more complex ones, the particles of matter travel endlessly reacting with their environment through time until they reach the complexity of organic compounds. Thereafter, the formation of life becomes probable in suitable conditions such as the ones on earth. However, religion somehow disregards factual evidence through a state of thought known to be "faith". Faith is a belief that is based on something other than evidence, something that has a spiritual truth about it. The holy books of different religions promote the belief of intelligent design through no factual evidence other than stories written by progressive moralists. However elegant and believable the stories may be, there is no reason to believe that they are true. Therefore, it is irrational to allow your life to be governed by something other than evidential truth which is provided through atheism. It is then clear that the way of thinking of atheism is superior to the theist counterpart for the search for truth.
The presence of religion in modern society causes unnecessary tension in the world. The crusades, Iraqi civil war, the Israel vs. Palestine conflict, and the terrorism crisis are just a few examples of religious conflicts at extreme measures. This is because the only way a religion can set itself apart from others is to have different beliefs which may contradict other religions. Through this contradiction in history, acquiring followers was similar to imperialism. The way they kept followers was to generate dislike towards other religions by telling followers to kill non-believers. Like the quote from the Islamic equivalent of the bible, the Quran in its Surah 9:5, "When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them." Although this verse has a more historical meaning, it does not rid of the fact that there is a very high probability for some people to take it literally. As we have seen from the attacks of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, many are vulnerable to manipulation by religion. This is not to say that religion has not had any positive influence, because it had, as seen in the movements such as Martin Luther King's. However, the disadvantages largely outweigh the advantages and so religion is clearly not welcome in the world anymore. On the other hand, no real issue has ever risen in the name of atheism. In fact the atheistic way of thinking is what inspired great minds such as Charles Darwin and Leonardo Davinci (although he was only confirmed as an agnostic). The thought process of atheism, which includes logic, critical thinking and reasoning, disallows decisions that may harm one's self. Wars and unnecessary conflicts have negative impacts for people and countries in terms of economics, law, and well-being. The rise of atheism therefore can be said as the rise of world peace.
In modern society, we shouldn't all just be atheists, but we should be "antitheists" who help rid the world of religion which would bring us closer to a more utopian world. We can spend more time on acquiring knowledge about the origin of the universe, and less wasted at the local church.
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