Atheism

@spendius,

I don't care if the USA is not all Atheists. I don't need others to believe as I do. A secular culture is the key, not an atheistic one.

They are not the same thing.
K
O

1 Reply

@Diest TKO,

Quote:

If existence is a rental, I'm cool with that.

Well put, TeeKay.

0 Replies

@Seed,

In an earlier post, Seed wrote:

I think I hang on to the fact of a God and an afterlife because when I finally die, i don't want it to be the end. I would like to know there is something more after death. Fear of the unknown is a powerful thing.

Pressing his point, Seed then wrote:

So my question to atheist is this: Do you not care what happens after you die? Any thoughts on what happens? Just dirt, dust and worms?

As it happens, I don't care what, if anything, happens after I die. By definition, I won't be around to experience it. The only reason I care about dying is that it usually comes with a great deal of pain and suffering. But all of that happens before I die, not before.

But there's a much more important point to make here: Wishing something can't be decisive in believing that it's true. Nothing and nobody owes you a reality that fulfills your wishes and makes you feel comfortable. So what if it's all dirt dust and worms after you die? So what if this scenario brings out your anxieties and you'd hate for it to be true? Tough titties! Such considerations are irrelevant to whether something is credible enough to deserve believing.

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@George,

Quote:

What if you substitute awe for horror?

This is what my born again friends use to justify their belief in God.

2 Replies

@panzade,

panzade wrote:

Quote:
What if you substitute awe for horror?

This is what my born again friends use to justify their belief in God.

Interesting. I think both awe and horror are both dramatic reactions, why I'd want to trade one dramatic reaction for another seems like a non-dilemma. I would not describe my thoughts on death or gods as being "horror." If anything, perhaps I feel unimpressed or underwhelmed on both.

I know that with those who've wanted me to convert, I observe what might be a certain frustration that I accept mortality.

T
K
O

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

...people who seek to convert everyone to atheism without any reference to what it entails.

This is so untrue. If there's one thing that atheists seldom do, it's try to convert. Show me someone who has in this thread.

1 Reply

@panzade,

Quote:

This is what my born again friends use to justify their belief in God.

Awe is an appropriate response to the immensity of the universe with or
without belief in God. There are many aspects of existence that evoke one
response for someone disposed to believe and another for someone who is
not. The same could be said for horror. I'd see awe as a more positive
response, horror as a more negative response.

1 Reply

@Diest TKO,

Quote:

I think both awe and horror are both dramatic reactions

They are , but they're quite different too.
Horror has a negative connotation while awe has a positive one.
It seems organized religion had to replace horror with awe in order to keep its constituents.

edit...oops....my brother George, we think so much alike

1 Reply

@panzade,

You're starting to scare me, Panz.

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@Diest TKO,

Quote:

I don't care if the USA is not all Atheists. I don't need others to believe as I do. A secular culture is the key, not an atheistic one.

They are not the same thing.

How would you distinguish between the two TK?

With reference to your previous post I consider it pointless to get introspective upon insupportable suppositions and unknowable conjectures. It seems highly solipsistic to me.

It is a founding principle of our Christian Faustian worldview to have a care for future generations. To not care about the future after we are gone is, at a simple level, belied by the fact that we are required to pay taxes to invest in infrastructure which we cannot benefit from. What is the point of the global warming debate and the investment into it for those above a certain age?

Will future generations be well served by atheism or secularisation?

It is very difficult for people brought up in a Christian society to imagine an atheist one in which I think the sexes would need to be separated and reproduction managed scientifically. I cannot see how private property can be maintained except for suchlike things as utensils just as communist societies insisted.

It is, of course, easy to promote atheism in a society which rejects it and does not function with it. The Christian institutions are taken for granted as if they had grown on trees and a self-indulgent assumption is made that they will continue in the brave new world. Which they not only won't but can't.

No one can help being an atheist but they can help promoting it.

3 Replies

@panzade,

Quote:

This is so untrue. If there's one thing that atheists seldom do, it's try to convert. Show me someone who has in this thread.

I think that is naive.

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I can dig it Pan, George. I get that one has a positive and the other a negative connotation. I guess I just reject that I must have either.

For instance, with atheism, I don't think that the concept of gods needs to warrant any more emotional reaction than the concept of a unicorn. I need neither fear nor awe in the thoughts of a magical horse with a horn.

T
K
O

1 Reply

@Diest TKO,

Quote:

I guess I just reject that I must have either.

I embrace the awe...It just doesn't lead me to believe in an omnipotent creator....the crucial leap of faith that my born again friends have made.

1 Reply

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

How would you distinguish between the two TK?

Well for starters, You can have a secular nation that has ZERO atheists.

Let's say their are no Atheists in the USA, just Christians and Muslims of different denominations (for simplicity sake I pick two religions) . In this USA there is still a need to be mindful and courteous. In this USA, the importance of separation of church and state still exist even without atheists. In this USA, secular government would be a protection for ALL citizens.

T
K
O

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

To not care about the future after we are gone

Not caring about our own mortality and not caring about the welfare of future generations do not coincide. I'm afraid you've mistaken the two POV's

1 Reply

@panzade,

But the universe is not a unicorn. It's right there. Many people -- though I
guess not all -- find its immensity quite moving (awe, horror, whatever).

What I'm saying is, two people my be equally moved by it with entirely
different results.

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@spendius,

I don't believe that I will live (in any form) after my death. I do believe that my daughter will live after my death. And her generation, and her child(ren), and so on.

I don't have to think that I'll be hovering somewhere, keeping watch, to want to make the world a better place for those who come after me.

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@Diest TKO,

Your generalizations are too much for me to take on TK. I bow to your assertions.

2 Replies

@George,

Quote:

The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.

Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do.

For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire “intelligent” population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which tree they are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on the meaning of life, the futility of death and the importance of birth control, fight a few extremely minor wars, and eventually die strapped to the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches.

In fact the only Oglaroonians who ever leave their tree are those who are hurled out of it for the heinous crime of wondering whether any of the other trees might be capable of supporting life at all, or indeed whether the other trees are anything other than illusions brought on by eating too many Oglanuts.

Exotic though this behaviour may seem, there is no life form in the Galaxy which is not in some way guilty of the same thing, which is why the Total Perspective Vortex is as horrific as it is.

For when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says “You are here.”

...

And into one end, he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other, he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.

To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain, but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

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