Atheism

Hmm, not exactly.

Since I was raised atheist/ agnostic I had a period in my teens when I wanted to explore everything to be sure I wasn't atheist/ agnostic just because of inertia. I was also just curious in an anthropologist sort of way.

I went to a lot of different churches with a lot of different friends. I minored in mythology in college, which amounts to "study of other peoples' [minor] religions" in many ways. I read the Bible.

I never really struggled with meaning of life issues per se, though -- before all of that exploration, and afterwards, I had the same basic sense that there is no specific meaning, that the universe is mostly random. That didn't really bother me though, any more than walking through the woods and not knowing where each tree is bothers me. (Just kind of a given.)

I do think there is some sort of karma (sometimes small scale, sometimes large), but it's not something I depend on (though I find it satisfying when it happens). But mostly I just try to do what I think is the right thing.

Did that feeling of emptiness bother you?

I presume Setanta means everybody. Hitler. Pol Pot. Stalin. Saddam. Jack the Ripper. etc etc etc etc (See last hundred years of newspaper reports).

Interesting. Your natural curiosity took over and you studied religions. M's naturally curious too, but she needs things to make sense. That's why she let go of religion to begin with -- it didn't make sense. Now, nothing makes sense and, to her, it's supposed to.

Mr B said that his college philosophy course messed up his head too. She's reading Plato. I'm thinking it's probably a natural period of questioning, particularly at a time when she's off on her own for the first time. Set's observation that many college kids struggled with similar issues rings true to me too.

I've experienced that a lot of times. My utter insignificance. Even a busy street can bring it on. Even a fairground in full swing. I quite like the feeling. Absurdity is the only source of a good laugh.

Oh, yeah, I definitely had some "EVERYTHING I KNOW IS WRONG" freakout moments when I was taking college philosophy classes. That was about more than just religion, though. It passed.

no i found it rather comforting, the sudden feeling that you don't have to live up to some ideal of eternity is quite liberating

Your previous post and this one remind of an incident when i was about 21 or 22 years old. Some friends of mine and i were smoking some reefer, and leaning up against my friend's '69 "Goat," with the 427 engine and all the accoutrements of a muscle car. Although we were all well-educated, we were all still small town country boys and greasers.

We were watching the sun set, and as we looked to west, although we could not possibly have seen the city, the haze from St. Louis made the sun a red, red orb, and we could look directly at it. Normally, the sun (at which one cannot stare ordinarily) appears as a disc on a flat background. But on this occasion, it had a true three dimensional appearance. Venus didn't look like a star, it looked like what it is, a planet--much closer to the sun than are we, but still very far from its home star.

I looked up at the sky overhead, which was darkening, and i saw a few stars. As the other guys watched the sun, i watched the stars come out overhead. I then got a perspective of looking off into the infinite. I saw myself as an infinitessimally small part of a vast and majestic whole. I didn't have a sense of emptiness, but i saw what i took to be a great emptiness, which was yet decorated with so many objects greater than myself. I thought then of something Einstein said he felt when he conceived of his special theory of relativity. He said that his vision of the cosmos "beckoned like a liberation." And that is where and when i saw my concept of the cosmos as being one of liberation.

@JPB

I was raised Methodist. In college I started off studying psychology. I couldn't get enough. But, as with philosophy that others have mentioned, the concepts started messing with my head. If science could explain human behavior... If we have proof of fossils... universal human behavior independent of religious belief... Jane Goodall's work (Wow!) ...

I stopped taking psych classes for a year and concentrated on my education classes while I tried to wrap my head around it. The idea that there may not be a god scared the heck out of me. It went against everything I'd been raised to believe. But, here I was being confronted with the possibility through exposure to a wider world.

I had three really good girlfriends that consisted of two Christians and a Jew. They also made me think. We would all pray over our food at mealtime. One day W asked if we could refrain from ending with "In Jesus name we pray" so that it would be a more universally applied thanks for the meal. We did. We all understood and respected each other. But, it also made me further question religion because I certainly didn't want to think of W going to hell because she hadn't accepted Jesus!!

In college, one is also (hopefully) exposed to every kind of person imaginable. I was in a co-ed private dorm. We had gays, Iranians, Jordanians, Mexicans, whites, blacks, orientals, the football team, the geeks, etc. I really enjoyed the personalities of a couple of the gay guys. They were a hoot! I didn't want to think about them going to hell!! I couldn't figure out why they would since they were good people.

There was a huge amount of mental anguish over all this and the resulting questioning of the meaning of life during college. My own personal experience, as well as being aware of this angst in numerous other people during this time makes me think it is fairly normal. I also tend to think it is healthy now, although at the time I was in deep despair over it. Just be aware of it, talk to her a lot, and remain in touch with her mental level.

Oh, and I didn't totally toss out religion or figure out the meaning of life for another 20 years.

about 6 years after said incident douglas adams sort of summed it up in this creation

Total Perspective Vortex

The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. Since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation – every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.

The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.

Trin Tragula – for that was his name – was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. She would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.

“Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.

And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex, just to show her. Into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she haw 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 the one thing it cannot have is a sense of proportion.

i would love to give it a spin

There is nothing particularly instructive to others in my thinking. My world has mostly been a little self contained ball, up until when in my older age I began to peel back the cover on it a bit. Then, I became a friend and companion of people in ways I had not known before. I could finally reach out and know some would respond in kind. My ruminations as a child were solitary. For a time, I sought religion, because it had been told somewhere that Christians were happy and fulfilled. I realized while still in my youth that the Christians could not help me. I saw later on that Zen had a few good notions, but that meditation and 'nothingness' were concepts that held no attraction either. When I accepted my atheism, my two questions were: 1. Can I deal with death/no afterlife? 2. Since 'God' cannot be the source of morality, what is? Purpose did not occur to me and still is not important to me. I figure we go as long as we can and pass it on to the next generations. As for the two questions I listed: I can accept my death (after a terrific struggle to stave it off). When I repeatedly pondered the one re morality, something like a voice uttered the word: "Inside." I accepted that to mean the sort of morality of which the preacher speaks is innate. That, plus our life experience and intellect are all we need. So: A flower in the field; a bug on the window screen; my life and times - I accept it all and revere it, til death we part.

With each of your posts, or maybe just some, you demonstrate how you turned into a wonderful person we all love.

BBB

With each of your posts, or maybe just some, you demonstrate how you turned into the wonderful person we all love.

BBB

To JPB and the others on introspection. I went to catholic church until I was 5 (or 6 or 7...?). Then my whole family dropped out. My older siblings had gone through Sunday school and confirmation. So, to me church was rambling sermons (which I likely never listened to) and colorful stained glass. I went to church for fun with friends' families rarely after then.

I don't remember any true aha! moments where everything crystallized. Religion continued to not come up until I stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance in high school. I had been feeling uncomfortable with both the propagandist feeling of it (this was during the end of the cold war) and the line about god. But I still hadn't really considered my beliefs deeply. When I was sent to the office by an irate teacher, I told the vice principal why I didn't recite and he let me off the hook. That was the closest I got to aha!

Religion continued to not be discussed in my life. I took psychology, demography and a world lit class in high school and they all probably confirmed my leaning, but I wasn't really introspective about it.

I don't struggle with the big questions so much as they pass through my brain and sit for a little while every few years.

I definitely wandered into being without god. At some point, sufficiently unmemorable that i can't recall it at all, somebody said to me, snidely, "So i suppose you're an atheist, huh?" To which i replied something like "good supposition." Religion and "god" had simply ceased to be any part of my life, and many years before i gave any consideration to what label i would be wearing.

Thanks, squinney. We're doing that (or trying to) but she's doing her best interpretation of, "I'm a big girl now, so bug off." We're taking our cues from her but that doesn't mean we aren't concerned about her well being.



I disagree - I think your thoughts are very instructive.



That sounds very healthy. I ended up somewhat similarly, but there was a time when they weighed heavily on me.

I don't recall ever having a theistic faith. Even in those teenage days when I thought it would be easier and wished for one. It just wasn't a cloak that ever fit me.

When the big questions do stop by, I am less concerned for the questions themselves than I am about my apparent lack of concern for the questions. Does that make sense? I wonder about future scenarios. Will I be bed-ridden in illness or pending death and have regrets? I wonder this not only about my atheism, but also about not having children of my own, of never marrying (I suppose those factors could change).

I was shoehorned into Catholicism. We were served by an Irish missionary order, the Brothers and Sistes of Charity (my achin' ass! them boys and girls didn't have an ounce of charity in their bleak, blackened hearts). When i was five, Charlie and i were screwing around in the back of the catechism class, and the nun came along and grabbed me and demaned to know: "Why did God make you?" I told her i didn't know, and she wacked me with this ruler and all but screamed at me: "To know Him and love Him in heaven!" Charlie grabbed me, because he knew i was gonna go for her for wacking me with that goddamned ruler.

So, at the age of five, i hated nuns, priests and "brothers," and it was a short step to hating god. Nothing that happened subsequently ameliorated my attitude, and it was only eight years later that i made a deal--i'd go through that confirmation bullshit without making trouble, but thereafter, i would not attend the mass, go to confession, go to catechism or the CYC (Catholic Youth Club). The deal was closed to avoid public embarrassment for the adults, and i drifted off into a god-free life. It ceased to matter to me so completely, and so quickly, that i couldn't possibly say when i stopped believing all that god bullshit.

Yeah, it makes sense. I imagine you're going to be just fine with where you end up, but I get the mental exercise.