Pickup_shonuff Wrote:Chas Wrote:You and I both know that your generalization as a statement of logic that extends to all who believe in these concepts is flat out false, and no more preposterous than the claim that the denial of the soul or self, or ultimate purpose in the Universe, leads to insecurity, nihilism, and all sorts of other personal crises or societal ills. Both sentiments are the essence of dogma.
To be fair, Chas didn't say that all believers act this way. But, a lot do, and a lot of them don't bother denying it, and really, what is the afterlife for but to convince people to ignore their needs and wants in this one? It's not, in any practical sense, the same as theists insisting that atheism leads to a pointless, joyless, amoral existence, in which people do crazy, dangerous or hateful things purely because they disbelieve in a god that can punish them for it in the afterlife, because I would bet that literally no atheist in history has ever acted on such a bizarre thought process, unless they had some kind of severe mental problems. Chas is merely observing a rather well-established fact about what some people do when they think that death isn't the end of the road. The believer's insistence that life is empty and pointless without their specific God is nothing more than cheerleading their own dumb insecurities about what happens to them if they're wrong.
