Death is not so much an unknown place as a null place. We think of death as not being alive after having been alive. But we were all not alive before we were born. Horrible wasn't it? Don't remember? Me neither. Don't get me wrong, I like being alive, but the idea of not being isn't really frightening, though the transition is. Not is not, is not.

Most religions try to turn not into good place, bad place. That's fraught with uncertainty. Did I choose the right god? Did I do the right things? The idea inspires terror in some. Depictions of hell are. . . hellatious. Not is just not.

As for god guiding or helping you during life, at least you don't have to ask if your pain is because god is against you. The responsibility for bad decisions is your own. Admit you aren't in control of everything. People born to poverty in the third world, or born with dehabilitating health problems are unlucky not bad. Luck is not a virtue.

Well, I was a muslim one and a half years ago. I believed in Allah, Adam and Eve, everything in the Qur'an pretty much, I even believed that Allah protected me. Anyway, my life, I went to school, had fun then I went home, played video games, hung out with friends, listened to music. 

Now I'm an atheist. And today I went to school, had fun then I went home, played video games, hung out with friends, listened to music. The main difference is now, I spend my time reading science and learning good stuff instead of saying "goddidit"

Realising that there isn't some magical creature protecting you is probably best done at the earliest opportunity to, so that you don't get yourself killed through complacency.

(August 25, 2016 at 3:35 pm)RozKek Wrote: Well, I was a muslim one and a half years ago. I believed in Allah, Adam and Eve, everything in the Qur'an pretty much, I even believed that Allah protected me. Anyway, my life, I went to school, had fun then I went home, played video games, hung out with friends, listened to music. 

Now I'm an atheist. And today I went to school, had fun then I went home, played video games, hung out with friends, listened to music. The main difference is now, I spend my time reading science and learning good stuff instead of saying "goddidit"

Some people say "Goddidit" and stop there on the surface.

Others (like myself) want to know exactly how God did it and pour through the sciences and religions both ancient and modern to collect the proper amount of data to apply to such a vast question and depth of process.

Some take what others tell them about God and believe or disbelieve, some wrestle with God for themselves.

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(August 25, 2016 at 3:37 pm)robvalue Wrote: Realising that there isn't some magical creature protecting you is probably best done at the earliest opportunity to, so that you don't get yourself killed through complacency.

Complacency doesn't usually get someone killed unless they stop eating, or stop in front of a moving vehicle...

False confidence and self righteousness are the usual suicidal tendencies of the "believer"

(August 25, 2016 at 3:41 pm)Arkilogue Wrote:

(August 25, 2016 at 3:35 pm)RozKek Wrote: Well, I was a muslim one and a half years ago. I believed in Allah, Adam and Eve, everything in the Qur'an pretty much, I even believed that Allah protected me. Anyway, my life, I went to school, had fun then I went home, played video games, hung out with friends, listened to music. 

Now I'm an atheist. And today I went to school, had fun then I went home, played video games, hung out with friends, listened to music. The main difference is now, I spend my time reading science and learning good stuff instead of saying "goddidit"

Some people say "Goddidit" and stop there on the surface.

Others (like myself) want to know exactly how God did it and pour through the sciences and religions both ancient and modern to collect the proper amount of data to apply to such a vast question and depth of process.

Some take what others tell them about God and believe or disbelieve, some wrestle with God for themselves.

I'm going to take you seriously when you show me your Nobel Prize.

(August 25, 2016 at 2:50 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Existential angst romanticizes the lonely and ultimately futile struggle against complete annihilation. At the same time, it places the burden of finding significance on the individual existent. It is both a liberating and terrifying place to live, each day saying “yes” to a world grinding inevitably toward an eternal “no”.

At least that’s how I felt when for many years following that day on the train, the day when I admitted to myself that I no longer believed in God, I traded away the false hopes of simplistic Christian faith for the wistfully pleasant contemplation of my alienation from an indifferent universe.

Like you, I trust the scientific method to reveal truths about the natural world and dispel superstition. Like you do now, I once found prayer an empty gesture to an absent god. I saw organized religion as a sham and theological speculations ungrounded. In contrast to the previous posts let me at least give you my perspective as former atheist.

Personally I think people can only support that seductive sense of the human condition in a godless universe for so long. Eventually the reductive view of Man prevails leaving atheists with the bleak conviction that human beings are electro-chemical reactions advanced by chance and necessity. We are only physical and purely physical things aren’t about anything; they just are. That perspective is literally dehumanizing because it dismisses as illusions the very things that make us human, such as rationality, signification, choice, and personal identity.

As I see it, hope is not about clinging to comforting illusions; but the choice to leave open the possibility that human beings are more than we think they are. It is about taking the existential stance that our capacity for reason reflects something fundamental about the universe (not a convenient instinct) and that experience can access facts about reality (a relation versus alienation). These are two ideas that lead me away from atheism although I did not realize so at first.

I suspect you are right about that.  I feel intuitively that what we are is not exclusively up to us.  But as creatures with the capacity for reason and accustomed to encoding understanding in symbolic language it can easily come to feel that way.  So I find I'm fairly immune to feelings of despair over the isolation inherent in the human condition.  No magic required.  Just an openness to the what more there is within without rushing to judgement.

(August 25, 2016 at 3:46 pm)RozKek Wrote:

(August 25, 2016 at 3:41 pm)Arkilogue Wrote: Some people say "Goddidit" and stop there on the surface.

Others (like myself) want to know exactly how God did it and pour through the sciences and religions both ancient and modern to collect the proper amount of data to apply to such a vast question and depth of process.

Some take what others tell them about God and believe or disbelieve, some wrestle with God for themselves.

I'm going to take you seriously when you show me your Nobel Prize.

So it takes a world wide appeal to consensus for you to consider anything new? Quite the handicap you have there.

(August 25, 2016 at 3:49 pm)Arkilogue Wrote:

(August 25, 2016 at 3:46 pm)RozKek Wrote: I'm going to take you seriously when you show me your Nobel Prize.

So it takes a world wide appeal to consensus for you to consider anything new? Quite the handicap you have there.

You were fucking traumatized when you drowned, the end.

(August 25, 2016 at 3:47 pm)Whateverist Wrote: I suspect you are right about that.  I feel intuitively that what we are is not exclusively up to us.  But as creatures with the capacity for reason and accustomed to encoding understanding in symbolic language it can easily come to feel that way.  So I find I'm fairly immune to feelings of despair over the isolation inherent in the human condition.  No magic required.  Just an openness to the what more there is within without rushing to judgement.

Just to be clear, I am not judging atheists as people, but rather atheism as an intellectual commitment. That said, I agree that individually people vary, mentally and physically, by accident or outside influences.

I see, in the capacity to use reason and discover about-ness, both of which you referenced, signs of something that transcends pure physicality - something common that binds us together as participants in a world richly endowed with meaning. If that is what you call magic, then I say we should embrace it.

(August 25, 2016 at 2:50 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:  Eventually the reductive view of Man prevails leaving atheists with the bleak conviction that human beings are electro-chemical reactions advanced by chance and necessity. We are only physical and purely physical things aren’t about anything; they just are. That perspective is literally dehumanizing because it dismisses as illusions the very things that make us human, such as rationality, signification, choice, and personal identity.

What would be dehumanizing about a recognition of precisely what we were, if that's what we were?  Do you suddenly stop loving Bach or something? Seems like a stretch. This is a common and amatuerish criticism of -any- increased specificity in understanding...that if things are not as magical as you believe them to be, they are somehow illusory. Rationality, signification, choice, personal identity...all of these things are as real to me sans magic as they are to you as components of magic. The only difference between us, in context........is that I'm not advocating for deepities masquerading as profundity. I'm not a common religious con with delusions of philosophical grandeur.

Quote:As I see it, hope is not about clinging to comforting illusions; but the choice to leave open the possibility that human beings are more than we think they are.

Um..............

Just tossing this out there....but maybe electro chemical reactions advanced by chance and necessity can love Bach? That would certainly -seem- to be the case...if that's what we are. Maybe you're giving electro chemical reactions a short shrift? What, about this, demands transcendence from anything? Confusingly...seeing as how this transcendence doesn't appear to have any referant -beyond- what are very clearly your own hopes and comforts........wtf are you going on about?

More bitingly, did you -need- to lead in with all that fiction about atheism and your atheist days, was there some compulsion, just to drone a common apologists argument- as if you were little more than an electro chemical reaction? Is there anything to you, anything at all, beyond the maintenance of these arguments? Do you love Bach, for example......