Opeth fan demographics

and it surprises me how many of you refer to Dawkins :p ... good to see he made some sort of impact after all. yet again, i value his intentions and his way of thinking, but that is NOT my way of thinking, so please PLEASE stop acting as if all atheists have the exact same arguments and way of thinking! ... everytime i mention i'm an atheist somebody starts with these puny comments as if they already know exactly what i think because they heard some scientist say things once! atheists are a vast and diverse group, we don't follow doctrines ... therefore we can tell many different stories leading to similar conclusions. This gives us actually an extra strenght against religions which do follow the same doctrines, although modern religious people often try to avoid it by giving it some personal twists (invalid as they may be often).

This is the same case for satanists, everyone thinks they follow the doctrines of Anton Szandor LaVey and/or sacrifices virgins/animals to Satan ;P prejudice...
 
@HemeHaci:

I agree, disproving the existence of something that cannot be proved to exist is impossible.

Modern science can't explain everything we face, but that's only a matter of time before the non explainable phenomena will be revealed.

But there is another way of looking at it: Science never "explains" things. With Newton's laws of motion (which are a special case of quantum mechanics applied to low velocities) we know that f = m * a (in low velocities) and therefore we can predict where a cannonball will land when we launch it. BUT, we don't know "why" f = m * a, or whatever quantum dynamics formula spawned it, is correct. If some "formula" underlies those, we won't know what underlies that formula... and so on.

So according to this way of looking at the problem, science can merely evaluate what has happened before and based on that, can predict what is going to happen. But at the very core of those, it can't explain "why" that has to happen.

But, this is only a way of looking at it and there are hundreds of other ways. I'm not defending anything, I am just trying to bring the matter down to the core; the faith.

It all comes down a matter of faith in whether you believe "we must have a purpose, all those can't be in vain" or "there is no scientific reason to believe".

You might think "Science can explain everything, so there is no need for a God." or "Science can't really 'explain' the core of things, because in the core of things there is God - Allah - Odin etc."

god wont ever be disproved because he (apparantly) exists in a paranormal plane (heaven.) until science can effectively disprove all other planes, dimensions, parallel universes WHATEVER, god will not be disproved. that being said, there is also absolutely no evidence for a god whatsoever, so there is no point in believing and following a religion. but i do hope that there is a happy ending and an immortal being after death, i just dont think it exists
 
27, Opeth fan since 1995. I consider myself an atheist, although some might call me a satanist due to my beliefs being quite the same as the ones depicted in The Satanic Bible. I do, though, hate mass/group/social/flock religions and believe that one shouldn't be a member of any other religion than one's own, so I don't call myself a satanist. Anti-mass hypnosis maybe.
 
Not me anyway; my first favourite song that I can remember was Twisted Sister "I Wanna Rock", back when I was two or three years old. And then it all just went downhill...and I don't think I philosophized very much concerning religion until I was some years older than that.
 
I'm 18, a panthestic from Canada. In a year either going for a Audio Sound Production Major at the Metalworks Institute in Mississauga or going for a psychology degree in Waterloo.

oh and I've been a fan for around 5 years.. near the D's releases.
 
how many of you were atheists BEFORE you got into heavy metal music?

Me! I've been an Atheist my whole life. I'm very interested in Spirituality and visual/reality distortion kind of things though. Does that make me Agnostic? I'm from the US. I've been listening to Opeth for a year and a half. I got BWP then Damnation then Ghost Reveries - Roundhouse Tapes - Orchid - Morningrise - Still Life - Deliverance - MAYH - and finally Watershed (on the day it came out).
 
Hmmm...there's quite a lot in here. Black Session, try me with a philosophical argument against the existence of god, I did read quite a bit and philosophy of religion (+ metaphysics=identity, freedom) are my main interests.
It is true, the belief in god has nothing to do with science, you can show very compelling evidence of evolution to a believer and he/she will fit it somewhere within his/her beliefs that god made it happen. Faith in god goes beyond science, it is in a way, the will to believe (William James) that since there's no evidence for or against god, there is no reason for the atheist to claim that his/her points are more valid than the believer's. It's something like "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" thing (C. Sagan). Those who believe in god also do so "just in case" (see Pascal's wager) i.e., if you are not sure if god exists, you might as well believe just in case he/she does and not believing will send you to hell.
I personally don't know; I am an agnostic who wishes the existence of something more than this life but who has serious doubts as to how this would happen and what that life would be like…there are serious issues of our own identity, what makes us be ourselves and not other, what or who goes to heaven, etc. But if I imagine that there is a heaven, what does it look like? Will the murderer and the victim be holding hands and singing to the lord as the bible says? (I'm sticking to western religion here) If that is so, would we want to be a part of it? Would I? I am not sure I would. Dostoyevsky is very convincing in “The brothers Karamazov” putting our faces against the picture of this heaven...especially considering the argument from evil and how everything fits with human freedom. Atheism is also a belief of a sort, it is mostly rooted in the idea of who created god and the fact that the universe does not need an explanation; after all, it is a very human trait to see patterns and connections between things and form meaning where there isn't any...ever wondered what would our beloved Opeth sound to an alien...or even to our cat/dog? Utter rubbish and noise I'm sure! We hear meaning and attach it to emotions. We want meaning and search all our lives for it...I know I do very consciously and I know everyone tries to make sense of things, even in the most subconscious ways, otherwise we wouldn't have science or try to find pleasure from things.
But with the meaning of life it could be that the answer is 42...now what is the question? Who should we ask it to?
 
the very fact that the word 'atheist' exists is a true testament to the influence of religion on this world - a very sad, sad thing. with the amount of evidence (nothing) for religion its very odd that one must state that he doesnt believe in god rather than atheism being the norm for everyone unless otherwise stated (being religious)
 
That is because not believing in god is only possible if some people state they believe and thus he/she exists. It's argued that the belief in a superior being comes from superstition and superstition is associated to Variable Interval positive reinforcement, that's why pokey machines are so effective, it rewards you sometimes, not all the time and you never know when. If you pray and one day you get what you asked for you tend to think that god heard you and will reward you again...but you don't know when so you keep praying. The concept of karma is very similar, you do good things because you will be rewarded if you do, and you do get rewarded, ocassionally, so you believe it's the act of god when it is coincidence...but you are not sure, so you try again, etc.