(June 3, 2018 at 8:27 pm)Alexmahone Wrote: Atheists know there's no invisible being who will take care of them when they slip up. Rather, they know they have to look after themselves. Atheists also know that the universe wasn't created for them, and that they are just insignificant specks in the grand scheme of things. Atheists are know that life is short, and that there isn't an eternity to do the things they want. So, I contend that atheists are emotionally stronger than theists.
Thoughts?
I contest that this is spurious reasoning. I mean, just because atheists realize there's no god, doesn't follow that we atheists somehow gain/lose emotional constitution because of that realization; I might just as well spur with the same thought pattern that because life has no end goal we are more depressed and nihilistic because of that. See how that works out?
What I mean, generally, is that it's difficult to determine emotional strength out from any set of criteria.
Although it is correct that atheists might infer that no one looks after them and have to look after themselves, that might just as well be cause for emotional strife instead of strength, because people react differently on the same emotional stimuli. Someone might revel in the fact there's no sky-daddy looking out for them and take up personal responsibility as a result, someone else might cower and think it useless and pointless to continue living. What I'm getting at is that we react differently.
I don't think the universe at large and how we perceive it has much bearing on atheism or theism. I would contend, though, that atheists have a more realistic outlook, but by and large we all experience the same reality and face the same conundrums of existence and how to live; theists just do it with an extra baggage. So no, I don't think atheists have any special advantage over theists - in the end of the day, theists also realize they have a set amount of days to live, it's just they have (most of them anyways) an extra layer of thinking there's an afterlife after this existence.
Only thing I explicitly agree with is that there's no grand design. Theists hammer home way too often how everything was designed with humans in mind. That's something most atheists reject, but not because they're atheists, but because it's an afterthought after realizing that we are not special, evolutionarily speaking.
