(September 17, 2012 at 10:44 am)FallentoReason Wrote: Why? Why is it a possible answer to life? As a former Christian I used to believe this concept of 'god' was everything, but now that I have some intellectual freedom I don't really see why atheists spend so much time pondering about it.
What you have to understand about me is that I'm very black and white most of the time. This is because of my engineering background which has taught me to be very 'square' in thinking. So when this mentality is applied to religion this is what comes out:
Religion X makes claim Y which is backed up by irrefutable point Z. Because of Z it then follows (according to said religion) that Y is the truth. In between Z and Y there are many smaller arguments and bits of evidence (Z1, Z2, Z3....Zn) that eventually lead one to accept Y logically (in theory). So in my mind this is all laid out as a chain of thoughts or proofs that logically make sense and one is able to accept Y:
Z--Z1--Z2--Z3--....--Y
Now, to make more sense of it all, let's use good ol' Christianity as an example. In this case, the irrefutable point would be Jesus (Z). All the smaller arguments etc. would be things like eyewitnesses that left behind their memoirs. Put all of this together and then we can confidently believe in Y i.e. the Christian god. The problem is, though, that if we bring in the reasons for why Jesus (i.e. Z) is flawed, then your entire string of smaller arguments fall all around you and Y can no longer be put forth as being true (because Z1 is based on something erroneous which then means Z2 is as well, and so on and so forth). The chain is based on a baseless assertion and therefore in my mind the Christian god cannot be a possibility, or the answer to the cosmos.
I don't know if you're still with me at this stage, but basically we can apply this to any religion that has ever existed and come out with the result that no evidence exists for their god(s). Well then(!), let's apply this reasoning to the very idea of GOD. Can't it be said that that will also come crashing down around us? Therefore, why even begin to think that there could be some sort of being out there waiting for us to die? Through this exercise, can't we reasonably justify (and conclude) that god(s) are a figment of the imagination?
How has the topic escalated to such a degree that a man-made construct takes up so much of our intellectual time? Why begin to think it's a possibility if all the evidence shows otherwise, because the matter of the fact is that the idea has been proposed by religion which does not have the evidence to support its claim?
I'm not sure exactly what questions you are asking, so I'll address them as I understand them.
1. First of all, I don't think that atheist spend much of their intellectual time and energy on the question of god once they have answered the question for themselves - that is, in the process of becoming atheists. For example, there are hundreds of religions I have no knowledge about and I don't feel the need to examine and reject each and every one personally, because I happen to know that almost all of them start from the same premises. When confronted with a new religion or the idea of god, we go into discussing it - sometimes - but that is nothing more than intellectual exercise. I usually do it because it's fun - something akin to something akin to learning a concept and figuring out all the different applications of it. Since you are from an engineering background, you should understand the unique sort pleasure you get when you find that while the form of the question might be new and never seen before, but the concepts you have learned are still applicable and you can answer it with ease.
2. The things that atheists (or atleast I) spend a lot of time on are assertions which are based (or apparently based) on religion. Take morality, for example. It is usually asserted as the consequence of religion - but that doesn't mean that it is dismissed once the religion is dismissed.
3. The only time I see the idea of god becoming a big issue is when there are theists passionately defending it. It is part of our nature to correct something we perceive as mistakes and when we are confronted with such arguments, we respond. That doesn't that we spend a lot of our intellectual time correcting them, since the responses are pretty much well-established already. For example, look at any thread on the idea of god where a theist has not piped in. They all devolve into pithy one-liners and funny comments pretty quickly.
