Hi, I am a retired natural product research Chemist, 5K runner, and road race photographer.  Most of my family ranges from devout to evangelical - and I no longer interact with them.  My wife is an atheist molecular biologist.  Her family is Catholic and we do not discuss religion when we are around them.  We believe that Man created God in his own image – and that the image is one of an egotistical, homicidal, psychopath. 

  Belief in Gods may have been beneficial in the past; but, today belief in fantasies may actually be a threat to the survival of our Civilization!  I recognize that many religious groups do considerable good in the community, but in the long run, religion becomes a dangerous, contagious disease.

  My interest in religion was stimulated after 9/11 when I expected that people would begin to realize what religion can do to a person’s mind.  Instead, I found Bush calling Islam a “Religion of Peace”.  I might expect idiotic thoughts from Bush – but then I found that this idea was echoed by many people.  Evidently, the thinking goes something like:  “Religion itself can never ever be a problem.  If you believe in supernatural fantasies – that is – if you are a spiritual person – then you must be a good person.  Religious people who do harm to others are just misguided”.  I suspect that there may be a bit of cognitive dissonance going on here.

  I have had discussion with several very intelligent theists – and – after much wasted time – the most logical arguments could be destroyed by those four little words that mean so very much: “You must have Faith”.  I see no point (at this time) in discussions with believers.  This is because I consider the New Testament to be a work of fiction and believers consider the New Testament to be a Historical Document and the word God.  So what good is logic – when it is confounded by Faith?

  My mission now is to try to understand why people believe what they believe – and then attempt to construct some logical arguments that can break through the mighty fortress that religion sets up around the mind of the believer.

As a long retired polymer chemist, I can sympathize with you, but I assure you from my experience, there are no logical arguments that can break through their brainwashing.  My response to “You must have faith” has always been, “Exactly.  I agree with you completely, and I have extremely strong faith in the non-existence of any supernatural being.” 

However, go through the various older threads here and you should find a great many really good (but always ineffective with true believers) arguments against the existence of any god creature.

Welcome, Ted.

Oh, I was born in South Attleboro 81 years ago.  Mass. turns out quality people.

Occam

Welcome to the CFI Forum, Ted, glad you were able to find us (and get through the signup process finally)!

With your interests and convictions, I’m sure you’ll have some interesting discussions ahead of you here.

Cheers,

Hi Ted

Glad you could finally make it onto the forum!

Did you ever figure out what the problem was with not being able to receive those emails.

At the bottom of the screen there is “PM” and this is private mail in case you want to answer outside the forum without knowing the other person’s email.

Nice first post too!

Hi Ted, I’m glad you made it. Did you ever settle on a reading list for breaking the psychological hold of religion?