I guess I was never enough of a serious believer to feel that I have to deal with anything because of my lack of belief now. I don't like the thought of being inexistent again at all, I think it's infuriating that I won't see and learn so many things. Yet, most of the time I worry about different things.

(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.

[...]

That's bottom-up causality. A scale error. Yeah, neurocognition involves electro-chemical processes, just as it does atomic processes and quantum processes, and possibly n-dimensional strings, or who knows what. It also involves high-level information processing causal processes in which configurations of neurons are isometric to configurations of the environment they represent, and have properties abducted from a high-level perception of the environment.

I worry about whether or not my kids cough is strep.  I worry about whether or not I'll have enough cash to cover whatever shortfall there might be between my daughters dreams and her financial situation.  I worry that I'll need to perform unscheduled maintenance on my car when I need it for a trip to the zoo.  I worry about whether I put too much or too little curry on the chicken.  I worry that snow will come before I split enough wood to avoid swinging an axe at ice.  I worry that my pig is pregnant at the wrong time of year.  I worry that I;m not attentive enough to my wife's emotional state or requirements.  

One of the things I don't worry about......ever....is whether or not this or that has meaning "apart from god".  It plainly and clearly does - if only to me, and that's enough..regardless of whether or not there is or isn;t a god.  It's not just a "wtf ?" kind of issue, it's a complete non-issue.  But, then, I've never been a member of a cult....sooooooooo...ymmv.

Death sucks, nobody likes it and nobody wants it, but why should it be something to fear? You don't fear the pre life you didn't have 5 million years ago do you? You don't fear the death of a cockroach or bacteria do you? It certainly is ok to fear death in a healthy sense, like looking both ways before crossing the street. It is also healthy to fear prolonged pain and missing loved ones. But since there is no afterlife to be punished or rewarded in it would be like fearing Yoda and Darth Vader, simply silly to be afraid of fictional things.

You will still have ups and downs before the final end, but all you really have is now. Just be you, enjoy your family and friends while they are alive and do your best not to harm others while alive. Outside that life to me isn't about chasing a title or paycheck or trying to live by others standards. You go to a movie knowing it will end, but you still go and enjoy it. You go to a music concert knowing it has a last song, but you still go. You go to a sporting event, one team wins, one team loses, and that game also ends, but you still go. You get a pet cat or dog, they live for a while, you enjoy them, but they die, you end up getting another one.

There were no religions or set boarders 200,000 years ago. Our 4 billion year old planet has had 5 mass extinction events and what you see left is only 1% of what has lived. Our sun is merely 1 of billions in the Milky Way galaxy alone. It is a galaxy so big it takes 1 ray of light 100,000 years at the speed of light to cross. That is in a universe containing 100s of billions of galaxies in a 13.8 billion year old universe.

There really is no one way to "deal" with life other than to be non violent, value common law. How you personally deal with ups and downs really is an individual thing. Having like minded people to talk to during the down times certainly does help. But death, for the reasons I said above, is absurd to stress out over when all other life dies like we do. We are important to ourselves as individuals while we are alive, but we are a mere finite blip in this universe.

I was never a believer in the first place.

(August 25, 2016 at 7:14 am)LadyForCamus Wrote: I have a very difficult time with this still.  I wish I had some advice for you.  In all honesty, the thought frequently keeps me awake at night.  I think maybe it just takes time to emotionally process the realization, and perhaps it takes longer for some than for others.

You and me both. I know some atheists don't seem to be troubled by it, but I can't seem to help it. The thought that gives me the most comfort is that other people will live after I'm gone. And possibly other universes will be born. 

Or...and I hate to admit it...the thought that maybe we're wrong. Maybe there is some kind of afterlife.

I know there's no evidence for it at all. It's just a thought. Like thinking that finding a time-forgotten valley full of dinosaurs in the Amazon would be cool. Ain't gonna happen, but...would be cool.

Meh, whatever it takes to get you through whatever your day is.  I see no problem, nothing to dislike. Evidence isn't even a valid metric for criticism on that count. Some people get through their days by rubbing their rabbits foot keychain. More power to them, and to you.

@Brian, I go a -slightly- different way with it. Death doesn't suck, death isn't something to rush towards...death simply is - no value judgement. Whatever happens after death, if anything happens, is irrelevant to me.....the last moment of our life is overwhelmingly more important than the first moment of our death. That last moment itself being a minor issue compared to all the moments that preceded it.

(August 25, 2016 at 4:44 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Just tossing this out there....but maybe electro chemical reactions advanced by chance and necessity can love Bach?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Or don't you believe that when it comes to your beliefs?

(August 25, 2016 at 4:44 pm)Rhythm Wrote: More bitingly, did you -need- to lead in with all that fiction about atheism and your atheist days...

To this day I can quote more Nietzsche from memory than bible verses. Kinda sad really.

(August 25, 2016 at 7:55 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:

(August 25, 2016 at 4:44 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Just tossing this out there....but maybe electro chemical reactions advanced by chance and necessity can love Bach?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Or don't you believe that when it comes to your beliefs?

Again--thinking of the total product of our conscious experience in the overly-simplified terms of a couple electro-chemically excitable cells that transmit signals via electro-chemical signaling is just wrong. You've got to include the influence of 99 billion other cells (and connections between them) in your analysis, and that's impossible.