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Nope. Nor does the rest of the planet.
It's certainly possible.
Is a religion essential to one's happiness?
Only if burning in the fires of hell if you break an arbitrary rule turns you on.
God is made up. Certainly there could be a god. Or many gods. However the
God described by most religions is a complete fabrication of men to explain things beyond their comprehension.
How do you know he, or it, or however many 'gods' there are real?
You don't. "God" is a metaphysical concept, and we live in the physical world. Humans will never receive proof of a god's existence, and would be unable to comprehend it if they did receive said proof. For the same reason, there can never be proof that god doesn't exist. Therein lies the fallacy of atheism.
One other question... If you were born in a different country with a different major religion, do you think you would believe in that God(s)?
If I was a religious person, probably. Religion is like a language, you learn the religion embraced by your family and/or culture.
Everyone believes in / needs religion to some extent.
I don't need a 1700 year old book to tell me that killing people is wrong (yes, that's right, 1700 years old, Jesus did not write the bible, nor did said bible exist in his day.)
You can say you are atheistic as you want going by all the countless theories their are out there that work to disprove God, but if somebody locked you in a cell, beat the **** out of you, tortured you, then said in a week you will be killed it's virtually guaranteed that you would end up praying to something one way or another. It's just human nature to look for an out in a tough time, religon gives us that.
First of all, you don't need to be an atheist to realize the stupidity of religion.
Faith is quite different from
Religion (Dogma). Whether or not there is a higher power is up for discussion. Whether Moses parted a sea and talked to a burning bush is not.
Secondly, you have noted that humans need religion during times of trouble. I maintain that only the weak need religion for this purpose, and this is a key way that any church collects its following. Religion is a way for humans to cope with the fear of the unknown.... i.e. death. Oh, and if you were tortured in a cell for an extended period of time you would be delirious, starved, dehydrated, weakened, and ready to believe anything that anyone told you. Not a great analogy when torture puts you in an irrational state.
"Their are no atheists in a fox hole" as that one quote goes, I think. You get the ****ing point.
"There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes. (i.e. war)
Oh, and since we are all here something had to make everything. I guess you would just call that thing God. I would at least. I personally don't think it gives a **** about us but that's just me. It seems strange for an all powerful creature to really care this much about humans in general when it is everything, including ourselves and countless other things we can't grasp / see / experience / whatever.
We were made from an enormous source of pure energy, which caused the Big Bang. This was either concentrated energy from the implosion of a previous universe, or possibly divine creation. It's worth nothing that the fourth dimension, time, started at the moment the universe was created. This means that no matter how advanced our science or math gets, we will never be able to prove, or do anything other than guess at anything that happened before the creation of the universe, nor what will happen after it is destroyed. Since we can assume God was around before our universe was created, we will never be able to discover one way or the other.
And I guarantee you that if there is a higher power, Earth is not its only concern. This myth was brought about by the church, which believed that the entire universe was created as a backdrop for us to live in. People in ancient times believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth, and had no idea what stars actually were. Now that we can grasp the enormity of the universe, it seems clear that it was not just created for some pretty sky lights.
Additionally some people like to use literal interpretations for the idea that God or religion is wildly unreasonable and impossible, when the Roman Catholic church has stated that most of the Old Testament (where people like to draw criticism) is mostly a non-literal grouping of stories, and not to be read as fact and the Catholic church has officially stated that scientific theories such as evolution vary much exist, etc.
The bible is very much a collection of stories to teach us morals, and to give comfort to the people who could not understand their world through science as we can today.
As for the Catholic church, denying evolution would merely make them look like a backward group of people who refuse to change their ways. I do agree that literal fundamentalism is the main problem with religion, though. If everyone merely used religion for some moral values and a sense of community, there would be no problem whatsoever with the institution of religion. It's the "I'm right, you're wrong"/"My God is better than your god" mentality that causes problems in society.
And if we want some serious replies, this should be moved to the Arcane Sanctuary.
Religion doesn't cost money.
Collection plate anyone?
