@Eorl,
Quote:The most solid core of my atheism stems from the realization in childhood, that, in the complete absence of gods and afterlife, that humanity would, thanks to imagination and empathy, invent them in exactly the way they appear.
That's teleological Eorl. You start with the appearance and then imagine plausible causes and then assume those are the actual cause and that there are no others. You see a ship loaded with containers and say its cause is to transfer goods. But the cause is to make profit for the ship owner. It has nothing to do with transporting goods. That is just the strategy for the fulfillment of the first cause. And the ship owner wanting profit has a cause too. His profit seeking could just as easily be satisfied by owning cinemas.
And your imagination and empathy have causes.
You look at a clock mechanism and it is easy to see the explanation of its appearance in the world in the form it is. That is a mechanical explanation which has nothing to say about the cause of a wish to know the time. And mechanical explanations become very complex when dealing with social phenomena and particularly with life forms.
Your explanation also says nothing about appearances in the past.
You see something, jump to a mechanical conclusion as to its cause and then assume that the conclusion you jumped to is correct. If you then broadcast the conclusion your pride becomes involved in insisting it is correct and you can soon get to the point that you can't back down from it. Then you become a bigot. Such explanations are more tempting to people who live in urban areas because most of what they see does have simple mechanical causes when thought of superficially. There are city children who believe that milk comes from shops. That is how it appears to them. Grass is always short and neat like carpet pile.
Of course, your statement begs the whole question. From where, and how, does your imagination and empathy arrive. House design and dress fashions vary in different modes of their appearances around the world and in other times. A cathedral and a mosque are derived from obviously different imaginations. Compare the ornamentation styles of different cultures and even sub-cultures.
You are in danger of only considering appearances you witness.
And you are also assuming that the absence of God is the same category of thing as the effect on social appearances of the belief in the absence of God. The absence or presence of God is not given to us to determine. We can only deal with the effects of them. An atheist in a Christian country is looking at appearances which would not exist if it was an atheist country.
Quote:The wishful thinking part only adds to the improbability as it's the ultimate wish, for death (of oneself and others) NOT to be.
There could be no evolution without death. Freud even claimed that we have a death instinct. And death is a dramatic "appearance". So you've ended up saying that our imaginations and empathies are the cause of death and suffering rather than on the will of a God. Shouldn't we be doing something about our imaginations and empathies? Which is exactly what atheists with power do do.
Depends. 
