RE: Christians take on the more nihilistic atheists
December 29, 2015 at 11:48 am
(This post was last modified: December 29, 2015 at 11:50 am by Jehanne.)
In my opinion, atheism is a bottom-up philosophy as opposed to a top-down one. The fact that where I am sitting on the Earth right now, spending my days & nights going around in a circle at approximately 750 mph is not something that was intuitively obvious to people for millennia on end. After all, who would have thought of something like that? And, yet, you can fit into a typical high school gym the number of individuals who would vehemently deny such a proposition and who would be willing to make a public stand for their ideas. Ditto for consciousness, free will, "something from nothing," etc., not being "top down" conclusions but "button up" ones, having been formulated by decades of scientific evidence and thought. I have spent my whole life of nearly 50 years open to the existence of god, and yet, god does not speak to me at all, and yet, theists would have me believe that I will encounter him/her/it once I am dead, as if death is an "experience" which, finally, brings one into a direct encounter with the divine. However, with the range of "after death" possibilities (with annihilation being the most likely one), I don't see why I should favor one alternative (say, heaven/hell) over another (say, reincarnation) over yet another, ad infinitum.
Life has meaning and purpose because we choose to give it meaning and purpose, and, why not? The alternatives are utter chaos; if I see a human or non-human animal suffering, I do whatever I can to help that individual. I don't like to suffer and I don't like seeing others suffer as well, which is why we, as an organized society, mandate that 911 operators be prepared to work nights, weekends and holidays. I don't see any reason to appeal to some sort of "high power" to justify my dislike of suffering; on the other hand, there are folks who like suffering, either themselves or watching it being inflicted on others or even inflicting such suffering themselves; we refer to such individuals as being psychos.
Life has meaning and purpose because we choose to give it meaning and purpose, and, why not? The alternatives are utter chaos; if I see a human or non-human animal suffering, I do whatever I can to help that individual. I don't like to suffer and I don't like seeing others suffer as well, which is why we, as an organized society, mandate that 911 operators be prepared to work nights, weekends and holidays. I don't see any reason to appeal to some sort of "high power" to justify my dislike of suffering; on the other hand, there are folks who like suffering, either themselves or watching it being inflicted on others or even inflicting such suffering themselves; we refer to such individuals as being psychos.
