Do you ever doubt your atheism?

[Mudhammam]

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?

Chas suggested the concepts themselves to be damaging rather than the neglect of concrete experience at their expense. I don't support sacrificing this world of concrete experience that certainly exists for one that is purely hypothetical and largely uncertain, but if said en posse can enrich this life, I think it may be perfectly reasonable to encourage such beliefs.

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.

I wouldn't bet on it. The idea that human beings have no intrinsic or objective value, no sense of freedom that can't be reduced to stupid, mechanical, physical processes, that life has no worth outside of its utility in the wider scheme of human progress, that death is the permanent annihilation of the self, and eventually the planet, solar system, and Universe etc. etc.--while I wouldn't be so blithe so as to charge these ideas as an explicit consequence of atheism or materialism--they certainly can said be to follow as much as any extreme and unhealthy religious delusion does the general thesis of theism, especially without the additional insertion of a buffer that appeals to something other than what we have or conceivably can discover in the lab.

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.

I don't understand what this means, or what relevancy it has to the present conversation.

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Hmm. If someone believes that subjective experience is entirely different in kind from objective experience (dualist) but also believes that all subjective experience arises from and is dependent upon necessary objective conditions .. what does that make them? I think they could be called both materialist and dualist.

I agree with everything else you said but calling it "entirely different in kind" sounds to me like affirming a spiritual reality without calling it such.

[*Deidre*]

Atheism is more to me personally, than mere disbelief in a deity, etc. It is an opportunity to live free of having to follow anything at all, except let the day take me where it will. Atheism represents freedom to me, not a response or reaction to religion. I know the actual definition, but that's just how I see it, now. It has helped me live my life in a more positive way, free of judgments towards others. If there exists a god, I'm open to the idea. But, I no longer feel the need to find out if there is one or not.

So, I don't doubt my atheism...but rather embrace it as something that's enriched my life in ways I hadn't imagined.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Atheism is more to me personally, than mere disbelief in a deity, etc. It is an opportunity to live free of having to follow anything at all, except let the day take me where it will. Atheism represents freedom to me, not a response or reaction to religion. I know the actual definition, but that's just how I see it, now. It has helped me live my life in a more positive way, free of judgments towards others. If there exists a god, I'm open to the idea. But, I no longer feel the need to find out if there is one or not.

So, I don't doubt my atheism...but rather embrace it as something that's enriched my life in ways I hadn't imagined.

You sound more apatheist than atheist.

Not saying your view of atheism is wrong, at all, but myself, my atheism springs from my commitment to reason, coupled with evidence, as my mode of epistemology. If reason led me to god(s), I'd surely be a believer.

I like that you pronounce your atheism as non-reactionary; that's a point I feel, too. I guess we just get there from different directions.