The prospect of gods existing or not existing has no effect on my sense of meaning. I'm more concerned with experiencing and engaging the passing moments, and that is a wholly internal process. I can no more get meaning from a god than I can get it from a random person in a random town in a random country -- it's all on me.

(May 8, 2018 at 12:48 am)Quick Wrote: I think if I were to not believe in a God, for me, since I know myself, that my purpose would be lost. I am not in the minds of others so I cannot say the same for them.

Then perhaps it;s more important than you currently imagine that the foundations of that purpose as a god belief be a bit more robust than anything you've expressed so far?

(May 8, 2018 at 1:00 am)Khemikal Wrote:

(May 8, 2018 at 12:48 am)Quick Wrote: I think if I were to not believe in a God, for me, since I know myself, that my purpose would be lost. I am not in the minds of others so I cannot say the same for them.

Then perhaps it;s more important than you currently imagine that the foundations of that purpose as a god belief be a bit more robust than anything you've expressed so far?

Why is that? Because I mentioned I had some doubt about it? The two are not mutually exclusive.

Not because you have doubts, lol..but because I;ve heard your non-reasons. One of them was that your silly beliefs give you purpose in life. That strongly implies that it does matter whether or not those silly beliefs are accurate...and particularly so if you think you'd lose your sense of purpose in life if you stopped believing in silliness by non reasons.

Quick Wrote:I find this forum to be much of a dance (Re: christians being here [haven't run into any muslims yet])... I find whatever one's beliefs, one must learn the steps, and in that there is an inherent flaw: people are not thinking for themselves.

My opinion is this: You have been taught the steps, what more is your belief than that? I don't believe many people thought up the idea there is no God on their own since historically speaking, humans have believed a God exists. So I don't think they came to the conclusion themselves, but that this is something that is taught (or worse, they are simply believing in an antithesis). The point here is that people are not thinking for themselves. I will say I am not a hypocrite in this manner considering I came to the only reasonable conclusion I could make, which is that in the debate of whether God is real or not, I find the only reasonable explanation is that I don't know, which leads me to thinking that because there is a debate about God in the first place that someone somewhere must be on to something a long time ago, which leads me to believing everything is miraculous and everything is God.

Why do people who don't know much about atheists so often tell us where our position comes from instead of asking us?

And to paraphrase The Incredibles, if everything is miraculous, nothing is.

(May 7, 2018 at 9:41 pm)Quick Wrote: Fair enough. Not sure why you say Atheism isn't a world view however, that confuses the shit out of me honestly.

Because atheism is the position on only one claim.

Theists claim a god or gods exist, atheists disbelieve that claim. FULL STOP.

How can a worldview come from that?

I do have other worldviews that are compatible with atheism. I am a secular humanist. I am a Skeptic. Those are 2 of my worldviews.

Quote:Thanks for clearing that up. But now I am really confused because you said atheism is a position on belief/disbelief which IMO are both basically the same thing.

Theists believe in at least one god. Atheists lack that belief.

Quote:My justification for believing what I do is that it gives a sense of purpose that I otherwise wouldn't have. Knowing I fit into something larger and significant gives me direction and motivation to be at peace. But my belief isn't an organized belief system like you see in christianity, islam, hinduism, rastafari (had fun with that one), or any other organized religion. It's simply the belief that there is something bigger than myself that is out there and that in knowing this, it gives me purpose. If I know I was meant to be here, even if it isn't necessarily true, this gives me enough justification for believing what I do.

That way of thinking is completely foreign to me.

I want to believe things that are true, and disbelieve things that are untrue. Believing something because it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy is intellectual dishonesty, and gullibility.

I can't even begin to get myself into the headspace of basing my beliefs in what I want to be true, instead of what is actually true.

As far as wanting to be part of something that is greater than me, I am a part of the human race. My existence is a series of random events, that lead to the fertilization of one egg, by one of millions of sperm. I feel truly privileged to exist in this time.

I create my own purpose. Funny, but if someone dictated your career choices, the college you attended, the woman you must marry, your hobbies, the art you like, the music you listen to, etc, you'd probably rebel. But you are fine with getting your purpose from an outside source.

(May 8, 2018 at 9:12 am)Khemikal Wrote: Not because you have doubts, lol..but because I;ve heard your non-reasons. One of them was that your silly beliefs give you purpose in life. That strongly implies that it does matter whether or not those silly beliefs are accurate...and particularly so if you think you'd lose your sense of purpose in life if you stopped believing in silliness by non reasons.

That would be true if I was immune to bias and I had a good understanding of reality, but I don't and neither do you. People are not robots and they don't actually think all that rationally. Because of this, what people believe and the reasons for them go a hell of a lot deeper than what someone can rationalize. It's a pretty self evident thing, it's just that I admit it is happening when a lot of people do not.

I want the things I believe to bring me money and sex.

(May 8, 2018 at 12:09 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

Quick Wrote:I find this forum to be much of a dance (Re: christians being here [haven't run into any muslims yet])... I find whatever one's beliefs, one must learn the steps, and in that there is an inherent flaw: people are not thinking for themselves.

My opinion is this: You have been taught the steps, what more is your belief than that? I don't believe many people thought up the idea there is no God on their own since historically speaking, humans have believed a God exists. So I don't think they came to the conclusion themselves, but that this is something that is taught (or worse, they are simply believing in an antithesis). The point here is that people are not thinking for themselves. I will say I am not a hypocrite in this manner considering I came to the only reasonable conclusion I could make, which is that in the debate of whether God is real or not, I find the only reasonable explanation is that I don't know, which leads me to thinking that because there is a debate about God in the first place that someone somewhere must be on to something a long time ago, which leads me to believing everything is miraculous and everything is God.

Why do people who don't know much about atheists so often tell us where our position comes from instead of asking us?

And to paraphrase The Incredibles, if everything is miraculous, nothing is.

People probably try and explain what motivates and atheist without asking them because people generally don't know/aren't honest about their motivations.

If everything is dark matter, nothing is.

(May 8, 2018 at 12:36 pm)Simon Moon Wrote:

(May 7, 2018 at 9:41 pm)Quick Wrote: Fair enough. Not sure why you say Atheism isn't a world view however, that confuses the shit out of me honestly.

Because atheism is the position on only one claim.

Theists claim a god or gods exist, atheists disbelieve that claim. FULL STOP.

How can a worldview come from that.

I do have other worldviews that are compatible with atheism. I am a secular humanist. I am a Skeptic. Those are 2 of my worldviews.

Well, it doesn't seem reasonably for there to be a thing called an atheist either like we talked about before, but the fact there is a big up and all about atheism means it does impact how people see the world. IME, what atheism leads to is thinking they can rationally change what they believe, and I don't think I believe that for a second.

(May 8, 2018 at 12:09 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

Quick Wrote:My justification for believing what I do is that it gives a sense of purpose that I otherwise wouldn't have. Knowing I fit into something larger and significant gives me direction and motivation to be at peace. But my belief isn't an organized belief system like you see in christianity, islam, hinduism, rastafari (had fun with that one), or any other organized religion. It's simply the belief that there is something bigger than myself that is out there and that in knowing this, it gives me purpose. If I know I was meant to be here, even if it isn't necessarily true, this gives me enough justification for believing what I do.

That way of thinking is completely foreign to me.

I want to believe things that are true, and disbelieve things that are untrue. Believing something because it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy is intellectual dishonesty, and gullibility.

I can't even begin to get myself into the headspace of basing my beliefs in what I want to be true, instead of what is actually true.

As far as wanting to be part of something that is greater than me, I am a part of the human race. My existence is a series of random events, that lead to the fertilization of one egg, by one of millions of sperm. I feel truly privileged to exist in this time.

I create my own purpose. Funny, but if someone dictated your career choices, the college you attended, the woman you must marry, your hobbies, the art you like, the music you listen to, etc, you'd probably rebel. But you are fine with getting your purpose from an outside source.

Like I said, I think a lot of people have it backwards and think that if they think rationally that this will influence their beliefs. I don't think people can think rationally to change their beliefs because I think belief goes way deeper than rationality. I mean, if you rationalize something enough, you will trick your brain into believing it, but that's not what either you or I am talking about rn.

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(May 8, 2018 at 12:42 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: I want the things I believe to bring me money and sex.

Here you are.

Quick Wrote:

Mister Agenda Wrote:Why do people who don't know much about atheists so often tell us where our position comes from instead of asking us?

And to paraphrase The Incredibles, if everything is miraculous, nothing is.

People probably try and explain what motivates and atheist without asking them because people generally don't know/aren't honest about their motivations.

I find that it's a good bet that someone who presumes ignorance and dishonesty in others is one or both of those themselves. And you wonder why people here react to you the way you complain about? You couldn't think of a reason that didn't make you sound like less of a dick?

Quick Wrote:If everything is dark matter, nothing is.

Not everything is dark matter, so there's that. Did that make some kind of sense in your head?

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Quick Wrote:Well, it doesn't seem reasonably for there to be a thing called an atheist either like we talked about before, but the fact there is a big up and all about atheism means it does impact how people see the world. IME, what atheism leads to is thinking they can rationally change what they believe, and I don't think I believe that for a second.

I was a devout Pentecostal, spoke in tongues, went to church three times a week, prayed a LOT, and read the Bible cover-to-cover twice. And now I'm a rational skeptic, a humanist, and I suppose an existentialist. The relevance of what you believe regarding how people can change to how they actually change is clearly zero.