*trigger warning* What if atheism's not all it seems?

[Sal]

But amidst all of my unwavering sense self-assurance and intellectualism, I now see in hindsight that I failed to ask myself one very important question - what makes me so sure of my beliefs?

Evidence, and in case of god belief, lack thereof. If someone is unable to demonstrate their god exists, I will default on that position: So long there's no evidence for your god, I will withhold judgement on its existence. Plus, if god wants to tell me of its existence, let it do it, not you.

I pose the above question to you today because I want you to consider this deeply. I now cringe at my past self, how arrogant and facetious I acted towards a topic which I, and every single one of you reading this post, have absolutely no certainty of. We are all clueless.

You might be, I take all the evidence I can access, form hypothesis that follows the evidence and come to conclusions thereof.

This brings me to my next point: whether you are willing to see this or not (and I too remember wincing years ago when people said this but I now see their reasoning) - atheism follows almost all of the characteristics of an organised religion. It provides you with a sense of certitude, like you have figured out the universe; it gives you a community to belong to; there are bishop-like figures, think Dawkins, Krauss, etc etc., you make statements which you don't know are true for sure. - and finally: non-believers should be ridiculed because their views are *obviously* wrong and yours are completely, unquestionably correct - right?

Wrong. I'm content with not knowing; apparently you are not, so you've decided there's a sky wizard. Good for you.

Finally, to wrap up this post, I want to make one more point: if you are to fully embrace the cold harshness of rationalism and scientific reasoning as a guide for your philosophical views, you must see that in doing this you also accept that in nature there are no concepts of good or bad - the only guide you can get from it is to take what you can get and maximise your own happiness. No justice, no reward for good, or judgement for bad. Just do as you please. This is what rationalism looks like in practice - not ideal for a cohesive society.

Typical theistic fear-mongering, "Oh you have no morals", or "without God, how do you know good from bad". It should be obvious to anyone that hasn't been (or escaped) theistic security blanket thumb-sucking childish thinking that we know good from bad from experience - from experiencing harm and what harm does, i.e. consequences of one's actions and how they impact others, like a fucking normal human being.