Why I am not an atheist

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I'm sure this can be shot down instantly, but what the heck - who wants to live forever? I just want to know if it makes any sense to anybody. It's not intended as gospel.

The atheist has to represent in his own person the human values in which he believes. This inevitably results in one of four outcomes: (1) inflation, because of all the human values which he rightly feels called upon to contain;(2) explosion, under the pressure of all the human values which he cannot contain; (3) denial, and effectively destruction, of some or all vital human values; or (4) the only sane option, but an irrational one, which is the expulsion from his own person (and into the persons of others, whether they consent to the projection or not) of all those necessary human values which his own person cannot contain.

The theist, meanwhile, allows human values to permeate him, moving in and out, as and when they are needed. His mental skin is permeable; he knows better than to try to contain the whole human spirit. To vary the metaphor: he bends, therefore he need not break.

The theist who sees God in anthropoid form, however, is no better than the atheist; indeed, he is much worse. He takes all the defects of the atheist, multiplies them together, and projects the product into the sky. He deserves all the mud that Richard Dawkins et al. can throw at him.

And on the other hand, atheist option (4) can probably be eloquently spoken for. Something like 'the human spirit' can probably be put in place of 'God', and often with advantage. But is it any easier to believe in? In any form in which it can be believed in, does it differ detectably from 'God'?

It seems to me that if one human ego cannot contain all that needs to be contained, then neither can seven billion human egos.

It's not obvious what can contain all that needs to be contained. But then, 'God' was always more of a question than an answer.

Motto: don't strain your brain; let God take the strain.

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@Twirlip,

Twirlip;170877 wrote:

I'm sure this can be shot down instantly, but what the heck - who wants to live forever? I just want to know if it makes any sense to anybody. It's not intended as gospel.

The atheist has to represent in his own person the human values in which he believes. This inevitably results in one of four outcomes: (1) inflation, because of all the human values which he rightly feels called upon to contain;(2) explosion, under the pressure of all the human values which he cannot contain; (3) denial, and effectively destruction, of some or all vital human values; or (4) the only sane option, but an irrational one, which is the expulsion from his own person (and into the persons of others, whether they consent to the projection or not) of all those necessary human values which his own person cannot contain.

The theist, meanwhile, allows human values to permeate him, moving in and out, as and when they are needed. His mental skin is permeable; he knows better than to try to contain the whole human spirit. To vary the metaphor: he bends, therefore he need not break.

The theist who sees God in anthropoid form, however, is no better than the atheist; indeed, he is much worse. He takes all the defects of the atheist, multiplies them together, and projects the product into the sky. He deserves all the mud that Richard Dawkins et al. can throw at him.

And on the other hand, atheist option (4) can probably be eloquently spoken for. Something like 'the human spirit' can probably be put in place of 'God', and often with advantage. But is it any easier to believe in? In any form in which it can be believed in, does it differ detectably from 'God'?

It seems to me that if one human ego cannot contain all that needs to be contained, then neither can seven billion human egos.

It's not obvious what can contain all that needs to be contained. But then, 'God' was always more of a question than an answer.

Motto: don't strain your brain; let God take the strain.

You have presented a list of options as if they were exhaustive but they are not. Some of us have no problem accommodating all the values we hold. Anyways, it's not even clear how believing in God solves anything. It's presented as a non sequitur.

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@Twirlip,

Twirlip;170877 wrote:

Something like 'the human spirit' can probably be put in place of 'God'

What place is that? God has never been part of my life, so, as far as I can tell, doesn't occupy any place.

Twirlip;170877 wrote:

don't strain your brain; let God take the strain

I dont think psychological reasoning is sufficient for realism.

0 Replies

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper;170878 wrote:

You have presented a list of options as if they were exhaustive but they are not. Some of us have no problem accommodating all the values we hold. Anyways, it's not even clear how believing in God solves anything. It's presented as a non sequitur.

It's definitely not an argument. Or rather, it is nothing like a complete argument, nor does it pretend to be one. Perhaps it is something more like a sketch of an argument to be filled in, or a skeleton of an argument to be fleshed out. Is that a bad thing? If it does not yet make complete sense, does that mean that it makes no sense?

Do I sound defensive? I hope not.

It is quite possible that all I am describing is a psychological problem of my own, perhaps a residue of infantile narcissism. Perhaps indeed the rest of humanity has, as you put it, "no problem accommodating all the values we hold". But I am not sure that we are understanding one another well enough yet to be able to say, either way.

---------- Post added 05-30-2010 at 06:27 PM ----------

ughaibu;170881 wrote:

What place is that? God has never been part of my life, so, as far as I can tell, doesn't occupy any place.I dont think psychological reasoning is sufficient for realism.

Indeed it is not. But I think my intention is to try to smoke out the "psychological reasoning" of the atheist, by exposing my own.

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@Twirlip,

Twirlip;170877 wrote:

The atheist has to represent in his own person the human values in which he believes.

Or see them in others - hence no problem.

1 Reply

@Dave Allen,

Dave Allen;170901 wrote:

Or see them in others - hence no problem.

And the values are located in the other, but not in the self?

1 Reply

@Twirlip,

twirlip I think you made things far too complicated. You make it sound as if the human condition can not be fully explainable so it leads to psychological problems and societal instabilities if you are an atheist.

I am an atheist, and my outlook on humanity is very simple. It goes a little like this.

Everyone wants to be content, there is not a single person who does not want to have contentment. The only thing that differs is our method of acquiring it. Some will use harsh means which causes others distress while others will use methods that only cause themselves distress. Then there will be some others that will neither cause anyone including themselves distress.

No one knows the best way to obtain contentment without causing problems for others. Most just try to use the quickest method because they don't want to have to wait for results. This sometimes results in abuse of some habit ( I am not just referring to chemical use, such as cigarettes, caffeine, alcohol or other drugs, but including anything that has addictive aspects, including career, money, ect.)

Some will try to claim that religion is either the only or the best method to obtain contentment but that simply is not true. Rarely does religion ever result in contentment. I would even go as far as to say that religion causes less contentment in the individual.

Might I add that religion rarely ever does not cause distress. In fact it seems to be a catalyst for more distress placed onto society. By forcing morality onto others who do not adopt a religious belief opens the door on distress. It does not solve the problem at all and instead creates new problems that are far worse.

In conclusion. This pursuit of contentment is considered a kind of "curse". Because if we were content then we wouldn't be chasing after it anymore causing problems either for others or ourselves. Since I know that everyone has this "curse" I can easily forgive them for their actions because at the core of their motivation is this curse. I know that if they had been content they wouldn't be causing problems onto the world. I can empathize with their position. There are no bad people in the world, only bad methods of trying to acquire contentment.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple;170915 wrote:

Some will try to claim that religion is either the only or the best method to obtain contentment but that simply is not true. Rarely does religion ever result in contentment. I would even go as far as to say that religion causes less contentment in the individual.

Might I add that religion rarely ever does not cause distress. In fact it seems to be a catalyst for more distress placed onto society. By forcing morality onto others who do not adopt a religious belief opens the door on distress. It does not solve the problem at all and instead creates new problems that are far worse.

I believe that there is, indeed, good empirical evidence for this part, at least, of what you say:

1 Reply

@Twirlip,

What if all vital human values are reducible to something that is easy to understand? Something along the lines of "From love, all good things follow"?

3 Replies

@Huxley,

Huxley;170934 wrote:

What if all vital human values are reducible to something that is easy to understand? Something along the lines of "From love, all good things follow"?

That's a good question, and it requires me to work out what I mean by "human values".

In this context I think of them vaguely as points in a space, with each individual being a region of that space, or alternatively a field of varying intensity distributed over the space. However, this is a very simplistic analogy, allowing no 'space' for creativity, which is of the essence.

Still, it helps to think of individuals as being (or occupying) overlapping regions of inner 'space', rather than as being (or occupying) distinct points or disjoint regions (as bodies are in physical space), because that is an even more simplistic model of individual separateness.

There should also be some concept of an individual 'moving around' in inner space, if I am to make any real sense of the metaphor or image underlying the speculations of my OP.

There is a need to be able to 'forget yourself', having faith that some part of yourself that you are leaving behind still exists, so that you don't have to retain it in your own person, or check that anybody else is holding onto it - it's just there, and you can come back to it.

(Perhaps Freud would interpret this last image in anal terms?! If so, that would seem to result from a scientistic confusion between the inner and outer worlds, between mind and body. However, there does seem to be a connection with the famed rigidity of the so-called 'anal' character.)

Whether you call this inner space 'God' or not is to some extent a matter of taste.

I have a longer rant in preparation, which might make some of this a little clearer, if only by analogy; but I'm not sure if this is the place for it.

I also have a short series of further questions directed to anyone who wants to defend the more 'normal' way of looking at things (along the lines of atheist option (4) in my OP), as Dave Allen was doing.

As I said, I only wanted to know if what I wrote made sense to anybody; and if it didn't, there is no point in me adding even more to it, not even in a probably futile effort to clarify it!

There is a risk of making it all seem too odd, as if it could have no conceivable relevance to anybody but myself; and perhaps that has already happened. Oh, well.

1 Reply

@Huxley,

Huxley;170934 wrote:

What if all vital human values are reducible to something that is easy to understand? Something along the lines of "From love, all good things follow"?

Well call me negative but I honestly don't believe that "from love, all good things follow." Some people do crazy things along side their feelings of love. Jealousy can arrise, and cruel behavior can be a result. Not to mention that if the love ever fades or changes the result can potentially be something incredibly bad. It is a little naive to think that love is something that can be permanent or always present. I have never seen it be such and quite honestly nothing ever is.

2 Replies

@Twirlip,

Twirlip wrote:

The atheist has to represent in his own person the human values in which he believes.

What does this mean?

Quote:

(1) inflation, because of all the human values which he rightly feels called upon to contain;(2) explosion, under the pressure of all the human values which he cannot contain; (3) denial, and effectively destruction, of some or all vital human values; or (4) the only sane option, but an irrational one, which is the expulsion from his own person (and into the persons of others, whether they consent to the projection or not) of all those necessary human values which his own person cannot contain.

I am an atheist, and I can't say I identify with any of these. But maybe that is because I don't really even understand what it is you mean by most of them. Contain human values? Destruction of human values? Expulsion from his own person? What does any of this stuff mean? I'm assuming this is some sort of figurative language, but I've never seen these particular combinations of words before.

Quote:

Motto: don't strain your brain; let God take the strain.

You're kidding me, right? What in the world are you doing on a philosophy forum if this is what you believe? I don't mean that offensively. If you don't want to strain your brain (think), then why are you here?

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple;170963 wrote:

Well call me negative but I honestly don't believe that "from love, all good things follow." Some people do crazy things along side their feelings of love. Jealousy can arrise, and cruel behavior can be a result. Not to mention that if the love ever fades or changes the result can potentially be something incredibly bad. It is a little naive to think that love is something that can be permanent or always present. I have never seen it be such and quite honestly nothing ever is.

I don't think that's negative, per se. I agree that one shouldn't optimize just for love and love alone. I don't think adding a few other values would make the value-set of all vital human values incomprehensible to the point that a God is necessitated to explain their existence is more what I'm getting at.

Just fyi to the OP, I also am an atheist, so I'm sort of struggling with the 4 contingencies as being exhaustive, or even as relevant. I think there may a metaphysical gap I'm just not comprehending.

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@Zetherin,

Zetherin;170968 wrote:

I'm assuming this is some sort of figurative language

Yes, pretty much. There is an underlying intuition, image, or metaphor. How does one communicate such things?

Zetherin;170968 wrote:

You're kidding me, right? What in the world are you doing on a philosophy forum if this is what you believe? I don't mean that offensively. If you don't want to strain your brain (think), then why are you here?

I wasn't recommending not thinking. You have read some other of my, what is it now, 395 posts, haven't you? Do I seem like some anti-intellectual religious fundamentalist to you?

I wasn't kidding, but I was indeed speaking figuratively, and I don't know why you have to be so literal about it.

Also, please note that the title of the thread is "Why I am not an atheist", not "Why you should not be an atheist"! I even posted a reference to what seems (I haven't read it yet) to be an excellent book giving lots of good reasons why less religious countries are better places to live. What more do you want? Smile

---------- Post added 05-30-2010 at 11:00 PM ----------

Huxley;170978 wrote:

Just fyi to the OP, I also am an atheist, so I'm sort of struggling with the 4 contingencies as being exhaustive, or even as relevant. I think there may a metaphysical gap I'm just not comprehending.

Don't sweat it! It's probably worth saying a third time, for emphasis, that all I wanted was to know if anyone, anyone at all, knew what I was getting at. Grasping the underlying metaphor (which of course I'm only struggling to grasp myself) probably depends on having some sort of similar personality structure to mine, and that's probably rare. This is not to say that the 'argument' I was trying to express could not be turned into a much more fully rational and explicit communication; but I would have liked to be able to communicate about the phenomena in question to someone at an intuitive level first. Oh, well.

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@Twirlip,

Twirlip wrote:

What more do you want?

Well, I would certainly enjoy some literal explanations paired with that figurative faux pas. I mean, don't you care if people understand what you mean by your posts? I would hope you do.

Quote:

I don't know why you have to be so literal about it.

Because I quite honestly don't understand what your post meant otherwise. That's why. And since it seems as though you're criticizing atheists on some level, I would like to understand what it is you are criticizing.

2 Replies

@Twirlip,

Twirlip;170877 wrote:

And on the other hand, atheist option (4) can probably be eloquently spoken for. Something like 'the human spirit' can probably be put in place of 'God', and often with advantage. But is it any easier to believe in? In any form in which it can be believed in, does it differ detectably from 'God'?

It seems to me that if one human ego cannot contain all that needs to be contained, then neither can seven billion human egos.

It's not obvious what can contain all that needs to be contained. But then, 'God' was always more of a question than an answer.

Motto: don't strain your brain; let God take the strain.

In my opinion, any mere concept is arguably a blockage, a detour. For me, religious traditions offer myths/metaphors that point at certain emotional experiences. And that's it. I agree with you on crude theism. Sophisticated theism and sophisticated atheism are quite close really. Because negative theology is an inch from atheism and an atheism with certain emotional experiences is going to see those emotions mirrored perhaps symbolically in religious myth/metaphor. "i am the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end." that's some rock n roll blather, and it's a poem that speaks to some of my finer moods. to take it literally, which i know you are not doing of course, is to view its beauty thru a glass darkly.

so yeah, i am piping up for option 4, the non-trans-un-theist what-not. positronic reverse theology ++ A fart at the funeral. A disco for mice on the tail of a tiger. :flowers:

1 Reply

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;170985 wrote:

Well, I would certainly enjoy some literal explanations paired with that figurative faux pas. I mean, don't you care if people understand what you mean by your posts? I would hope you do.

Of course I do. I thought it's obvious that I do. It's devastating when I go against my natural caution, expose some of my intuitive thinking, and nobody gets it, and I get hostile reactions - often vastly more hostile than anything in this thread, which I hasten to say has never been worse than merely critical and/or uncomprehending - as everybody has a perfect right to be if I have written something which seems meaningless. Abuse and scorn are commonplace. I have to try to be grateful for small mercies! Merely not being understood is very familiar, and just about bearable.

Obviously I could play safe. Obviously I know how to do so. And obviously in the future I shall be more likely to do so. I took a calculated risk, and I am observing the consequences, which I will take into account in any similar future risk calculations.

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@Krumple,

Krumple;170963 wrote:

Well call me negative but I honestly don't believe that "from love, all good things follow." Some people do crazy things along side their feelings of love. Jealousy can arrise, and cruel behavior can be a result. Not to mention that if the love ever fades or changes the result can potentially be something incredibly bad. It is a little naive to think that love is something that can be permanent or always present. I have never seen it be such and quite honestly nothing ever is.

I'll agree with this all this. But shall we distinguish between possessive sexual love, for instance, and a love that can let be? I do think there is a love that comes and goes that does no harm. Makes no demands. But I agree it's not permanent.

0 Replies

@Twirlip,

Twirlip wrote:

I get hostile reactions

See, what worries me most about this forum, and this is not solely directed to you by any means, is that when I ask for further clarification, people consider me being hostile. People think I'm actually being aggressive towards them when I ask them to explain what they mean. That scares me.

Quote:

Merely not being understood is very familiar, and just about bearable.

If you're content with not being understood, that also scares me.

So, are you going to explain what it is you mean by your opening post?

3 Replies

@Zetherin,

Zetherin;170985 wrote:

And since it seems as though you're criticizing atheists on some level, I would like to understand what it is you are criticizing.

I don't know if this has just been added in editing, or if I unaccountably missed it when replying the first time. Either way, it's a fair point, and deserves to be answered.

In gradually moving away from a lifelong atheist position, I am, probably of necessity, implicitly formulating some sort of critique, certainly of my own former position, and probably also of atheism in general. So you're not mistaken in your impression.

However, as this is not an area where definitive proof is available, obviously I am not going to be mad enough to put forward what I insanely believe to be a 'proof' of anything. But someone quite nicely described what I had written as "psychological reasoning" (when they might instead have nastily described it as "psycho logical reasoning"!), and I accepted this description, and replied that I was probably hoping for some atheist(s) to offer some similar "psychological reasoning" in support of their atheism.

Without any such material to work on, without being met halfway, there is little hope of me being able to verify the vague impression I have of the construction of individual and collective psychology which many, possibly most, atheists seem to put in place of God, in a "God-shaped hole".

As a very poor second best, I could offer the following longer 'rant' which I prepared earlier. Does it seem any more coherent to you? I imagine not, but I don't have much else to offer at the moment.

Religions are inner disciplines. For a religion to claim dominion over the inner life of all mankind is as absurd as it would be for a scientific discipline to claim dominion over all of science, and even claim that everyone must be a scientist! On the other hand, to deny the existence of the inner world which all religions investigate is as absurd as it would be to deny the existence of the outer world which all sciences investigate. The
inner world is God.

Did religions not claim exclusive dominion, and contradict one another (as scientific disciplines don't tend to contradict one another), no-one would need (or even think) to be an atheist, and we would mostly be lay people in relation to the various religions, just as we are mostly lay people in relation to the various sciences. Nor would anybody feel a need or compulsion to declare an allegiance to Christianity or Buddhism, any more than anybody feels a need or compulsion to declare an allegiance to chemistry or physics!

Does this analogy hold up? Are religions, perhaps, not inner disciplines? Or does the inner world, perhaps, not exist? Or, if the inner world exists, does it not make sense to regard it as a Person? Is there some obvious reason not to think that each person is part of a Person, just as each body is part of the material cosmos? Is this not even an intelligible hypothesis? Or is it that our intimate experience of personal non-existence, of personal nothingness, of despair, causes us quite rationally to doubt that the totality of the inner world could be a Person? But is this not just as much a mistake as it would be were we to conclude that the outer world does not exist either, because we are at some epistemological remove from it?

Do we not simply need to develop concepts of inner reality, inner illusion, inner ignorance, and inner mistakes, just as we already have concepts of reality, illusion, ignorance and mistakes in relation to the outer world, in whose existence we do not doubt for a moment, even if we fail utterly to comprehend it?

Do we not need specialist disciplines of being, in the same way that we already have specialist disciplines of knowing? And do we fail to see this need, because we persistently mistake being for knowing?

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Why I am not an atheist

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