Keep the Wonder, Lose the Faith

[CharmingLordSausage]

The Constellation of Orion in Winter is, for me, one of the most astounding sights. Look closely below Orion's belt and you can see the whisper of the Orion nebulae. Here, protoplanetary discs or proplyds are slowly forming. New Suns born out of gravitational instability in a molecular cloud. There can be no more starker sign of the utter insignificance of man and his realm than the sight of new born Suns which will one day warm turbulent oceans and bring forth new life. Man is replaceable.

[KieranD212]

Atheists concentrate far to much on Christianity rather than religion as a whole.

I dont worship anything, i respect and congratulate individuals but never worship.

To me God is just an ideal or a cause its been in many forms from pagan Gods to the Abrahamic religions.

I just live my life out because that is all there is. When i die that's when i find out if there is more to life.

Atheists should concentrate on doing your own thing rather than what everyone else is.

[MartinJWillett]

@KieranD212 When the religious stop spreading their irrationality and keep it to themselves atheists will stop "having a go at them".

Most atheists do just get on with their lives, only a minority treat atheism as a political cause.

If some atheists concentrate upon Christianity too much that is usually because they are surrounded and threatened by Christians. Religion which keeps to itself is no threat, it's just sad and amusing in a non-PC way that you can't enjoy laughing at., like freaks.

[zulfitareen]

i totally agree with the message of this video.

thank you for uploading it.

i enjoyed it and learned from it.

[cyot75]

Man can, does, and will destroy anything in the universe that is beautiful, unless he looks on it with love. What else is god? Saying that god doesn't exist is just another way of saying "i have no love and am dead inside". And humans do recognize this.

[MartinJWillett]

Utter crap. What gives you the right to defame my species like this? If that was said of a particular race you'd be in danger of being sent to prison for it.

[cyot75]

Yea Nazi Germany! It's a very heavy, dark , miserable, and childish state of mind that thinks it has to make threats, control, and attack when people don't cosign your bull. And I can't defame OUR species in my wildest nightmares as well as it has defamed itself over and over again and still continues. Here are two sayings you'll find to be true as you mature. "Pride before the fall", and "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools"

[MartinJWillett]

Again you are defaming my species. I don't care if you are also pissing down your own leg you are pissing on me and my children and I take that personally. When you get to my age maybe you'll understand, but I doubt it.

[cyot75]

First of all it's not YOUR species, it's OUR species cause we're both part of it, unless you're saying that you're not human. Second, age has nothing to do with maturity. Third, OUR species needs to be purged, or DEFAMED of its self righteous,proud,selfishness,an­d arrogance if there is to be anything left for our CHILDREN you narrow minded halfwit! One would think you would want at least a hopeful idea in a hopeless world for the next ones but you would steel even that. look around!!!

[MartinJWillett]

It's MY species. If you are a traitor to it you don't get a free pass to libel it, you are responsible for libelling me and my children and you can't wriggle out of it by sharing one seven billionth of the guilt just as you can't wriggle out of the guilt of murder by killing yourself in the process as well. Don't you religious people ever grasp this point? It is still libel despite your own hypocritical self-scourging. You don't have the right to defame me and my family to ease your guilt.

[AlRasuwl]

1: There is no evidence of God.

2: I have LOTS of love.

3: I am alive, ALIVE!

Finally, when you do not believe all existence was created with ease suddenly the universe becomes MORE wonderful, and when you stop believing a body is merely a container for the important stuff suddenly life becomes immeasurably valuable.

You have no idea what atheists are like, only what you have been told they are like - which is wrong.

[cyot75]

Some of my friends whom I love are atheists, and I grew up agnostic. I can assure you that they have that same feeling of a hole in there chest and a boulder in there gut as so called Christians do. When I read the new testament myself it wasn't full of the guilt trips that other peoples interpretations are. I think you're describing that liberating feeling of innocence.

[TurboDally]

"Man can, does, and will destroy anything in the universe that is beautiful"

Hmm isn't that the same with the god of the bible? Hmm.

"he looks on it with love. What else is god?"

Why call it god then? Call it love and stick to calling it love. Did I make "god" last night with my girlfriend?

"Saying that god doesn't exist is just another way of saying"

Another way of saying I don't believe in deities, and love has nothing to do with my disbelief.

[Torcika]

I know it's a defamation and a pessimistic view of the Human race,but I guess it's normal to ASSUME such a thing would happen in the future,because we know what we have done in the past.

And God is too an Invention of the Human Mind.A horrible invention if you take the God of the Quran,Bible,etc.

[cyot75]

No, not the bible. You're talking about the god of the old testament, not the new testament, cause you've been lied to by people that were lied to, and were to lazy to check for themselves. The god of the old testament is an insane description, by the perceptions of a large number of insane men. And Jesus simply puts the record straight in the new one. And it's not making love. It's called "someone letting you use her body to take your own pleasure". With some mixed emotions.

[MartinJWillett]

Jesus did nothing to distance himself from any actions of his father as described in the Old Testament. He did not apologize to any surviving Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. He did not overturn any laws, the Church did, but Jesus did not. Remember what he did in the temple? He threw out the capitalists (money changers) and left the superstitious idiots (animal sacrificing priests and Levites) to do what they will and carry on with their immoral earnings.

[cyot75]

You are rite. He did not distance himself from his father cause he knew that the old testament is full of inaccurate information about god, written by men that did not understand the nature of god. But he understood, and still does understand the nature of men,(that's YOU), and their mental dilemma, that they have murder in their hearts,(that's HATE), and will try to silence any thing that exposes the ugly truth about them. He Knew he walked and talked with his own murderers. He still does.

[MartinJWillett]

It is God who demanded mass murder - genocide before the term was coined, in the Old Testament. You really are a most obnoxious specimen of your kind, hating your own species. You get on with hating yourself and leave the rest of us out of your sense of inadequacy. We don't want or need your medication or therapy.

[cyot75]

I will leave you alone after this. If you had to throw one person overboard the life raft in order to save the other 9 people from drowning would you decide not to for fear of what the few ignorant ones would think of you? I don't think so. You would be a hero to the rest. It was fun arguing with you.

[MartinJWillett]

I've no idea what you think your little parable was meant to prove.

[xburningheavensx]

That is total bullshit. How dare you describe those of us who having examined the evidence, simply can't bring ourselves to believe in God? It was our intrinsic humanity that resulted in our disbelief, just as yours resulted in theism. Monsters who go on murderous rampages are "dead inside", not your average atheist. How dare you try to place us on a similar level to the absolute dregs of humankind? This is mendacious slander and calumny, only fascists engage in propaganda campaigns prick.

[xburningheavensx]

Also, you might ask your coreligionists to look upon the universe with love when they smile with glee at the prospect of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran. Is it a true Christian who encorages war simply to facilitate the end of the world and his arrival in heaven? That is base materialism. Remember, "blessed are the peacemakers", you hypocritical, serpentine bastard.

[AimbotCity]

The truth is staring us in the face, and we are staring right back at it. There it is. Whether we want to look at it or not.

The less we praise invisible gods, the more we will appreciate & take account for our own achievements and shortfalls.

[Gameinggames]

lol ok MartinJWillet I shall do as tho wishes me to do. I shall lose my faith and keeps the wonder oh great master of Atheism.

You sound just like a religous maniac...your religion is atheism.

[MartinJWillett]

A religion suggests fixed beliefs, faith, worship, ritual, praying, superstition, obeisance.

Why do the religious always feel obliged to bring atheists down to their level? If you know faith and religion are emabarrassing and shameful why indulge them?

[AlRasuwl]

You obviously have no idea what the word "Religion" means.

[saamohod]

If atheism is a religion, then health is a sort of illness.

[Otlidas]

I concur with your message Martin! Your thoughts always provide a refreshing perspective.

[pumkinpi2]

One night I watched the last of the last light on the moon, as the crescent disappeared. The faint, almost orange, disc of the moon shown in the sky afterward.

I look at man and am moved to pride. We ride the fire off this world, we tame the atom, and then paint such beauties as Monet's Water Lilies. We are bigger than our Gods, more just, and will out live them.

[MartinJWillett]

That's the optimistic view. There's also the possibility that belief in gods will kill us or enslave us all. At the moment it's too soon to be sure which way it will go.

[pumkinpi2]

We're harder to kill than cockroaches, and free men die hard. My money is on men of reason.

[MartinJWillett]

Whichever way you look at it there is no foregone conclusion as to whether religion will quietly wither away, will destroy our civilization or will just pootle on indefinitely in rural backwaters. Personally I expect religion to survive as long as our species survives.

So far rational man has never been more than a tiny minority among a throng of superstitious irrational barbarians. I don't see any reason to be blindly optimistic. We've got a struggle on our hands.

[pumkinpi2]

I suppose I've just a lusty heart, and a taste for conflict. Personally I like the odds just fine.

I ask myself, what would Harry Seldom do?

[MartinJWillett]

I don't even know what Harry would usually do.

[dawgsmycopilot]

Yaay! So glad you are back!

This one was so beautiful in a way, so hopeful and inspiring- I liked it very much.

[Misterb0z]

Really good stuff.

[mrfilanges]

Nice video. But the Judeo-christian God described in the bible created man as a sort of caretaker for earth, not as the whole point of creation. To say a school existed solely for the caretaker would be ridiculous.

And good point about the "man-created god". If there is a god he has to be much more ancient than any living carbon based organism, and certainly not created by us. Only the great stars themselves can begin to comprehend his age.

[MartinJWillett]

No. Ancient Hebrews invented a god just like dozens of other tribes invented gods. You do realize that other tribes invented gods, don't you? Right. Hebrews did the same, in the same way, based on ignorant and wrong guesses about the way the universe is. Why is this hard to grasp?

[mrfilanges]

Of course I realise other tribes had different beliefs about God, I don't need to be patronised. But surely the fact that all ancient people right up to the modern age have felt the universe can be best explained in terms of a supernatural higher intelligence must be rooted in something other than ignorance?.

Isn't it a supreme arrogance to assume that all those people in the past and in the present in other areas of the globe who believe in some kind of god were mistaken?

[MartinJWillett]

Other tribes did not have beliefs about God, they had beliefs about gods. It is scandalous for you to suggest that their ideas were about the god of the Hebrews. They had invented god concepts in exactly the same way, out of a lack of a better theory and a need to have an official explanation. People claiming political power like to be thought of as knowing the important stuff, but of course they had no way to do so except by calling a myth The Official Truth, so this is what they all did.

[mrfilanges]

I didn't suggest that they were about the god of the Hebrews, just that they thought there was some kind of god out there, same as the Hebrews and made assumptions about what he'd be like based on observations, what they were like and what they wanted him to be like. All any of us have done is said there is possily a god and tried to define what he is like based on observations of the universe.

What I object to is when those in power use those stories to keep the social status quo in place.

[MartinJWillett]

What makes the Hebrews different? I could accept the chosen people story if the other tribes believed that there must be a chosen people but they didn't know who it was. But only the Hebrews believed they were chosen until the might of the Roman Empire made other people believe it too. The story stinks like all such myths.

[mrfilanges]

I don't know what made the Hebrews different, why their belief in a god has rung true for so many millions of people throughout the ages, but the bible, the torah and the koran are all just imperfect attempts to understand the nature of the god who stands above all created things.

[MartinJWillett]

The Hebrews wrote the stuff down before most other people and Emperor Constantine declared that Christianity was Officially True, and he had a lot of well trained men who were good at killing people who argued. That had to help.

[mrfilanges]

But before Constantine, the widespread Roman belief was that the Caesar was the son of the gods and christians were killed for basically blasphemy. Why haven't the Roman gods prospered in the same way? Why did the early christians happily give up their lives for their beliefs?

[MartinJWillett]

Why haven't the Roman gods who were suppressed by turning their temples into churches, killing their priests and torturing their adherents prospered? Sorry, can you give me a bit longer to come up with an answer? Who said Christians gave up their lives happily? Point me to any Roman accounts that say Christians were smiling martyrs. Do Kamikaze pilots' commitment to the cause prove that Hirohito was a god? People kill themselves very easily for absurd beliefs. It proves only their humanity.

[mrfilanges]

I understand your position. As for me, I believe that God is love and my aim is to encourage love wherever I see it.

I understand that this exasperates you as you see no evidence for any god and you would rather I just called love love without any reference to God. I guess we'll just have to be happy to allow each other to believe something different.

[MartinJWillett]

As long as you don't call for people you disagree with to be silenced there isn't a problem.

[mrfilanges]

I promise I won't.

[ozmoroid]

Wonderful video Martin. Glad you're still here.

[VirgilFoxMusic]

Good

[MartinJWillett]

My public demanded that I stay. I can't resist an encore. ;-)

[gabiotta]

Excellent. Glad you decided to stick around.