I had many discussions in the past with theists and atheists off all kinds. My world view is likely similar to something that Atheists call “The God Virus”
Who doesn’t know about the theory, watch this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdIccvW2zl0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdIccvW2zl0)
I had a similar belief years before I had contact to the idea via the atheists, but I came not to the same conclusion. I am still convinced, that theism and worshiping gods, following a religion is much better, than not doing it. Because gods are not only parasites, they can also be symbionts and make you strong and give your people advantages over atheists and other religions/gods. Why atheists view gods as something bad? They are wonderful and protect you from sexual transmittable diseases, make you have a large family and keep you away from alcohol and drugs(If you choose the right deity). You can become a god or goddess yourself, live a long time as a parasite/symbiont in the human world, like Mohammed, Odin or Gotama Buddha.
My concept is also much more enhanced than the simple atheist one:
They exist in the material world, they are not only concepts.
The bones of the gods are the churches, temples, holy buildings, material manifestations of the gods.
The flesh of the gods are the human believers and their eyes, mouth, hands and feet. If a deity fights or kills someone, he/she fights or kills through a human. If a deity does good things, he/she is doing it through a human being.
The thoughts of the gods are the Embassies/revelations through the believers. Like we, they don’t always are without contradictions. This is also rooted in the fact, that deities are like plants, they branch in different directions and not all branches survive. They can also split into many gods after time, or they can unite with another god. Because of this, there are different religious texts, apocrypha and other contradictory things about deities.
The ancestry of the gods are the holy book sand scriptures, songs and oral teachings. This also includes all archaeological findings we can find to research the evolution of gods and religions.
The beauty of the gods, their idols, pictures to attract the humans and let them worship them. They are wonderful tools to create emotions in humans.
Deities are social over-minds, hive organisms, that are in co-evolution with humans. Without the deities, no higher hominid societies had been possible. The deities evolved out of tribal founding fathers and mothers, out of the holy animals, out of ancestral spirits and nature phenomenons. Some human leaders also became deities.
Everybody can become or create a deity, but if it will succeed and will live very long, is another thing. They can live for thousands of years, as long as they are remembered. They are a super-form of an ancestral spirit, a way to secure the stability of human societies over centuries, a single person could not do this, but by becoming a deity, morals and values can be kept for a long long time.
So I don’t understand, you Atheists. Why do you reject this wonderful gift? Why this spiritual veganism?
None of this really makes any sense to me. I wouldn’t say I’m rejecting it, I’m just confused by it lol.
>Everybody can become or create a deity
That’s the cogent line in what I can only describe as a somewhat confused post. Fair enough you are not talking about an Abrahamic style omni deity but I’m not sure this personified Jungian ‘collective unconscious’ combined with the wilder speculation of James George Frazer is much better.
You seem to be really close to proposing that some ‘evolutionary’ leap is possible, that will propel us into the realms of power beyond our current human understanding, a sort of “Any sufficiently advanced soft or psychic technology is indistinguishable from magic/religion”. You might be right, but as far as we know it has never happened, and only loosely fits into the category of religion.
While historically the likes of Julius Caesar may have become gods, it was usually after death and very much a liturgical process, more akin to sainthood in traditional Christianity, they didn’t have any actual powers. We have no reliable reports of anyone being more than human, and we don’t have any mechanisms by which that might happen.
Sadly, outside of comic books ordinary people seem to stay resolutely ordinary in life and profoundly dead in death.
>So I don’t understand, you Atheists. Why do you reject this wonderful gift?
I’m an atheist, that just means I don’t believe your theistic claims represent the truth of reality. I haven’t rejected any gifts, and nobody’s even offered a gift to reject.
> Because gods are not only parasites, they can also be symbionts and make you strong and give your people advantages over atheists and other religions/gods.
Well, no they can’t, gods aren’t real, they’re not anything more than fantasy.
>Why atheists view gods as something bad?
Not necessarily *bad*, but gods are not *real*, and sometimes this leads to people embracing false beliefs based on a fiction and those *beliefs* can be harmful such as….
>They are wonderful and protect you from sexual transmittable diseases
Yea, if you think the way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases is via a relationship with your fantasy deity, you might be holding harmful beliefs based on religion.
>make you have a large family and keep you away from alcohol and drugs(If you choose the right deity).
Mate, deities aren’t *real*, you can stick a feather in your cap and claim it keeps you away from alcohol and drugs.
The *ONLY* reason to become a theist is because you believe in the existence of a god or gods. You say such things are real, I don’t believe you, and that is the *only* reason I need to be an atheist.
Do you hold the same thing for other Hive Organisms?
Is the USA sapient? Amazon? The Mafia? If we are holding that religions are collective minds formed of humans and buildings and belief, then why not nations and corporations and so forth? They’re just as big, just as powerful, just as complex and just as real.
If yes, if any organised group is a mind, then this isn’t a case of Gods. Jesus isn’t a being under this, he’s still dead like everyone else from 2000 years ago. The *Catholic Church, say,* is a being under this, but so is Walmart. Religion isn’t special. We can promote those Hive Organisms we like and undermine those we don’t, but we do that anyway. This is admittedly a strange claim about the world, but it doesn’t seem a religious one.
If there’s something special about religion here- if we mean more then just “the catholic church acts in mind-like ways, and should be considered a mind” and instead mean “there’s some spiritual nature of the catholic church”, this seems a claim that gods exist in some mystical way (why else would religions be different from other collections of people?). And this falls into the lack of evidence- while we have evidence organisations exist, granted, and even some philosophical arguments to treat them as minds and agents, we certainly don’t have any reason to think they have a soul.
Basically, you either need to accept religions are just like any other group of people, or give us reason to think they’re not. As is, this is belief in emergent consciousness on a large scale not, by most standards, belief in gods.
6 reasons religion may do more harm than good (from [salon.com](https://salon.com))
1) Religion promotes tribalism. Infidel, heathen, heretic. Religion divides insiders from outsiders. Rather than assuming good intentions, adherents often are taught to treat outsiders with suspicion. “Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers,” says the Christian Bible. “They wish that you disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them,” says the Koran (Sura 4:91).
2) Religion anchors believers to the Iron Age. Concubines, magical incantations, chosen people, stonings . . . The Iron Age was a time of rampant superstition, ignorance, inequality, racism, misogyny, and violence. Slavery had God’s sanction. Women and children were literally possessions of men. Warlords practiced scorched earth warfare. Desperate people sacrificed animals, agricultural products, and enemy soldiers as burnt offerings intended to appease dangerous gods.
3) Religion makes a virtue out of faith. Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus. So sing children in Sunday schools across America. The Lord works in mysterious ways, pastors tell believers who have been shaken by horrors like brain cancer or a tsunami. Faith is a virtue.
4) Religion diverts generous impulses and good intentions. Feeling sad about Haiti? Give to our mega-church. Crass financial appeals during times of crisis thankfully are not the norm, but religion does routinely redirect generosity in order to perpetuate religion itself. Generous people are encouraged to give till it hurts to promote the church itself rather than the general welfare. Each year, thousands of missionaries throw themselves into the hard work of saving souls rather than saving lives or saving our planetary life support system. Their work, tax free, gobbles up financial and human capital.
5) Religion teaches helplessness. Que sera, sera—what will be will be. Let go and let God.We’ve all heard these phrases, but sometimes we don’t recognize the deep relationship between religiosity and resignation. In the most conservative sects of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, women are seen as more virtuous if they let God manage their family planning. Droughts, poverty and cancer get attributed to the will of God rather than bad decisions or bad systems; believers wait for God to solve problems they could solve themselves.
6) Religions seek power. Think corporate personhood. Religions are man-made institutions, just like for-profit corporations are. And like any corporation, to survive and grow a religion must find a way to build power and wealth and compete for market share. Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity—any large enduring religious institution is as expert at this as Coca-cola or Chevron. And just like for-profit behemoths, they are willing to wield their power and wealth in the service of self-perpetuation, even it harms society at large.
>I am still convinced, that theism and worshiping gods, following a religion is much better, than not doing it.
Evidence, please. Personal convictions don’t carry any weight.
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> Because gods are not only parasites, they can also be symbionts and make you strong and give your people advantages over atheists and other religions/gods.
As far as I know, nobody has ever blown themselves up in a busy street in the name of atheism. I’d call that a definite advantage for society.
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>Why atheists view gods as something bad?
Because:
* there is zero evidence for their existence
* the claims made by followers of different deities are incompatible with each other
* the claims made by followers of all deities are incompatible with the findings of science
* people are prepared to kill each other and their children over what denomination you belong to
* followers demand that their deities and prophets are exempt from any form of criticism, thus invading on the free speech of others
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>They are wonderful and protect you from sexual transmittable diseases
So do condoms. But at least condom manufacturers don’t lie to people claiming religion actually *causes* STDs, like the church is claiming about condoms in Africa, causing suffering on a catastrophical level.
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>make you have a large family
“Make you” being the operative words here. And one of the primary reasons we’ll have 8 billion humans on the planet by the end of this year, while Earth’s overshoot day for 2022 was July 28th.
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>and keep you away from alcohol and drugs
[Neuroscience studies have shown that religiosity acts exactly like a drug or sex on the reward circuits of the brain](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/314433). Alcoholics don’t go door to door spreading their “good news” message though.
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>If you choose the right deity
And by which mechanism of evaluation would you come to an objective conclusion regarding this? Every religion claims they have the “right” deities. Ultimately, this is just a group of humans telling other humans something they can’t possibly have any knowledge of.
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>They exist in the material world, they are not only concepts.
The bones of the gods are the churches, temples, holy buildings, material manifestations of the gods.
Each Cathedral in Europe is built on the deaths of thousands of workmen. Some estimates count as many deaths as the maximum occupancy of the structure.
Only one person died during the construction of the Large Hadron Collider, the greatest feat of engineering in the history of mankind – and that’s still regarded as one person too many: On 25 October 2005, José Pereira Lages, a technician, was killed in the LHC when a switchgear that was being transported fell on top of him.
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>So I don’t understand, you Atheists. Why do you reject this wonderful gift? Why this spiritual veganism?
As many theists do, you claim a monopoly on spirituality and claim atheism to be “spiritual veganism”. Nothing could be further from the truth. And that’s the operative word: I care about what is *true* regarding the nature of reality, not *what would be nice*.
The knowledge that the sun is not a deity, but a massive nuclear fission reactor, and that light takes a million years to reach its surface from the core, and then eight minutes though space to warm my skin doesn’t diminish the experience. In fact, it enriches the experience in a way that religion never could or can.
Atheist spirituality is a real thing. Your calling it “spiritual veganism” only illustrates you don’t (want to) know anything about it.
So one you redefine everything you mean? I mean where you aren’t just slapping a label onto something to pretend it exists because the other thing exists you are just making flat out false claims here. They aren’t overminds, or organisms of any kind. They literally have no minds, no lives, no bodies. They do not exists as entities on their own.
>Because gods are not only parasites, they can also be symbionts and make you strong and give your people advantages over atheists and other religions/gods. Why atheists view gods as something bad?
Because there is no good evidence for them, so to believe in a god you have to be willing to hold beliefs without proper evidence. Once you compromise your ability to discern truth from falsehood it opens you up to all sorts of harmful ideas.
Its all fun and dandy until you or a member of your family becomes an undesirable.
I do what I want. Literally that’s it, why would I fake believe in a god? If Jesus said something good, I’ll steal that, sprinkle a little Sikh for their lovely take on community building, and so on. And ignore everything they all say about gay people.
Atheism isn’t spiritual veganism – it means I’m at the damn buffet.