(October 20, 2013 at 10:40 am)leodeo Wrote: so as an atheist waht should i believe about as far as "why im here" and "purpose in life"? do any of you people have clinical depression? what do u tell urself? my life feels meaningless, pointless and boring...i had a suicide attempt which rendered me the worst pain i ever felt so im too scared to try again, so idk what to do each day feels like hell and i wanted to before die and go to heaven but now i just wanna die and stop existing.Are you working with a doctor to help treat your clinical depression? I don't think that you can really treat it by running towards or away from god or religious belief; you need the help of a medical professional who can offer therapy and medicine if needed. If your depression has been severe enough in the past that you have attempted suicide, then it is that much more important that you seek help from a professional and not try to resolve it on your own.
My mother has suffered bouts of depression in the past, and she is a devout Christian who believes that god will fix everything and usher her into a paradise on Earth at some point in the future. "Knowing" that god will fix everything is not a cure for clinical depression. Finding a purpose in life without god is not a cure for clinical depression.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
