Atheism

You are learning from many others but what is your primary purpose for doing so?

Death is certain and the time of death is uncertain so we need to make the most of the time we have...

I have a primary purpose which makes me selective about who I learn from and what I attempt to understand... do you?

igm wrote:

You are learning from many others but what is your primary purpose for doing so?

To learn the truth about reality the best of my ability.

I can not say that I have a purpose other than learning truth and trying to live a happy life.

… what do you think we all could do to make the most of the time we have?

What is your purpose and how do you determine who you learn from and what you attempt to understand?

Do you expect that learning the truth about reality will translate directly into a happier life?

You have been doing this for some time now, what are the top three things you have learned?

Pretty much the same as you but always based on the teachings of the Buddha or commentaries on those teachings: To give up mistaken ideas about the true nature of reality in order to minimise or remove suffering and uncover unconditioned happiness and experience it and to be able to show others who ask how to do the same but not by changing fundamentally what I was taught via my teachers who hold the lineages of the Buddha’s teachings and the commentaries on them.

I believe if you want to understand a subject you locate and expert on it and.. go as deep as you can with it… and always with a critical mind.

To mix it with other views and from others who are not trying to understand the true nature of reality or who are not qualified to teach on the subject is like digging many small holes in the ground…

This is one way of looking at it and another way is that these "others who are not trying to understand the true nature of reality or who are not qualified to teach on the subject" They too are a part of our reality and getting to know how they have come to spread false claims and reasons why they continue can help to reveal more of reality.

...who knows for sure?

Again though if one spends too much time refuting false claims then it may be regretted when death suddenly appears and we then wish we'd focused on other things... or maybe not... who knows for sure?

Exactly why I ended with those words

I am a generalist myself and specialize in no one subject other than reality that is experienced by myself and the experiences others share with me, I do study some of the works of many specialists but for me, "just to have a layman's understanding of many fields of study brings great pleasure to me.

If pleasure is your raison d'être for trying to understand reality, then those that get pleasure from blind faith religion must be equally successful.. no? Can they then be criticized.

Don't you damage their pleasure by doing so? You could just privately refute their beliefs and still gain pleasure. What if you destroy their beliefs and they can no longer find pleasure in life because you have publicly refuted their beliefs but failed to give them anything to replace that faith, as they just don't have that kind of personality or intellect?

damaging some innocent person's pleasure without replacing it with something else could harm those people...

Remember not all people have the capacity or need or inclination to reason but they 'all' want to be happy if possible.

I am not sure if I would call someone innocent who is denying the rights of others, based on the false information that they have been taught.

What makes you think that replacing their lies with truth would not give them something new to worship?

for some and the uninvited forcing of your understanding on others may work in some cases.. but there will always be the risk of damaging the happiness of others for the whole of their lives... dangerous stuff. I can't say I haven't done the same thing but I'm trying not to repeat it... it's hard... but I'll keep trying.