RE: Opinions on my drive to be an atheist
May 14, 2015 at 10:08 am
(This post was last modified: May 14, 2015 at 10:16 am by Won2blv.)
(May 14, 2015 at 3:13 am)robvalue Wrote: What has being an atheist got to do with getting married young, or getting a divorce? Am I missing something?
I'm not sure what you mean by "absolute atheist". It sounds like a gnostic atheist, someone who claims to know there is no God. That's a minority even among atheists and I'm not sure why you'd be striving for that.
Being an atheist isn't a choice, it's a state of mind. If you no longer have an active belief that there is a god, you're an atheist. Whether you call yourself that, or admit it to yourself or others, is the choice.
It sounds like there are problems in your marriage, and I would suggest addressing them openly and honestly.
I don't know what an absolute atheist is either. But if there is a god and he happens to be the god of the bible then I believe that I am accountable to him. Me and my wife have been discussing our problems at length. But JW's can only get divorce if there is adultery. That is just not an option for me. I dearly love her, but I was too damn young when I got married.
(May 13, 2015 at 11:40 pm)Magilla Wrote:(May 13, 2015 at 11:09 pm)nicanica123 Wrote: Hey all. Quick question, I can honestly say that one reason why I don't want to be a god fearing person anymore is that I just want to live life how I want to live it. I am married. I love my wife, but we were way young when we got married. If I was an absolute atheist, whatever that means, I would definitely come clean to her and probably get a divorce. Is this a bad driving force?
But surely, the main reason anyone is an atheist is that they don't believe in any gods. As a fellow atheist, I would say that I don't strictly want to live life how I want to live it. In other words, I have a moral code, and so some things are 'verboten' and some 'obligatorisch', (forbidden versus obligatory). Theists often seem to say that people want to be atheists so that they can do whatever they want. The theists may make the dumb conclusion that without "God" we'd all go out do murder or theft etc. But we don't.
This philosophising can be tricky though, because those things verboten, and those things obligatorisch, are ones I have figured out for myself, as ought or ought not to be so. So those limits or requirements are what I have adopted in order to be able to consider myself a moral person. In the end, they are mine. So even a limited or prescriptive lifestyle, can be living life how I want to live it.
Coming clean with one's wife is what I would go for, as a positively moral thing to do. If one is married and living a life of deception with one's spouse,I would find that a wrong state of affairs. As for getting a divorce, that depends on the partners in the marriage. I can't speak for you, but it might be possible to remain happily married. Like I said, it depends - and all that's up to you two.
I guess to clarify, I just want to do more things in life that I haven't had a chance to engage in before. I am not thinking about being hedonistic. But I do want to smoke weed. I want to gamble occasionally. I want to volunteer for political stances that I hold. But I know that if I did come out as an atheist and did those things while married, would just crush my wife. That could be wrong. The problem for me right now is that I am figuring this stuff out on my own but on the outside to my wife we're trying to do the "spiritual" stuff to draw closer. I still don't absolutely know what I believe. But if by chance the god of the bible is the one true god then I owe to him to see this through. If he isn't then I want me and my wife to scrape together a life while we're still young