Getting a solid grounding in how life can arise without, well, magic, shifted my thinking quite a bit. At a low level, life has no inherent meaning, so it's whatever we make of it. For many this is probably obvious, but if you grew up in a rather fundamentalist religious environment, it's quite the change!
I think most atheists would agree with that statement and would want a benevolent God to exist.
"[Religious belief] is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you - who must, indeed, subject you - to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life - I say, of your life - before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? I've been to North Korea. It has a dead man as its president, Kim Jong-Il is only head of the party and head of the army. He's not head of the state. That office belongs to his deceased father, Kim Il-Sung. It's a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. It's one short of a trinity I might add. The son is the reincarnation of the father. It is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved. But at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea!?"
I like to say “if a god made me, it made me unable to believe in it”, which is certainly an interesting thought exercise, but not exactly inspiring.
Did you invent this term just for the comment?
Yet sadly 90% of the population still misunderstand/poorly understand evolution by natural selection. They seem to think it's progressive, or some mysterious force of nature that produces "better" animals over time.
More commonly what I see is that people aren't 100% intellectually honest when they get into it. They don't apply the same rigor to their religious beliefs as they do others. Or they sort of re-interpret or cherry pick themselves around their scriptures to avoid awkward parts. Or they start stepping back and making less powerful claims than their religion traditionally did.
Sometimes they step all the way back into "well what if God is just the laws of physics?". At that point I don't think it's much of a technical discussion and more like, hey, if this comforts someone, and it's not making them make bad decisions (like hurting others based on this belief), well I'm not gonna waste my personal energy arguing.
I mean, so long they aren't arguing that the creator of all spacetime and beyond, of infinite knowledge and capability, cares how we dress or who we sleep with ... eh, fine whatever. Now, people selling water claiming it can cure cancer, that's another story ;).
Did God create Man or did he create the laws of natural selection that created Man?
I'm not making an argument in any way shape or form for a divine creation to the universe. I'm just trying to point out that you're making claims you can't possibly support with evidence and sounding as if you're certain of them in the way that people are certain about evidence backed claims. in other words, you're speaking from dogma not from knowledge.
It's a masterpiece.