scisyhp

what would there be besides a scientific or rational explanation?

Helo

Atheism just strikes me as a very cold, dead way to look at a world that, atleast to me, looks the exact opposite.

As far as age affecting perception, Im not sure I agree. I am young but I dont think that has an effect to such a degree on my perception of the world is different just because I havent been in it for atleast two decades. Ive always seen the world as an interesting place and I think if your getting bored with the world or it looks bleak, your looking in the wrong place.

Lycius

I went through this myself. But then I took a look at all the "higher powers" that people had thought up throughout the years, and wondered how anyone could believe any of them held any weight.

Basically, how I came to be an atheist was this...

Take a look at your beliefs in whatever god/gods you believe in.

Now, evaluate what others before you, who you think believed in the same god as you believed about this being.

Do these beliefs match your own? If yes, why? If no, why not?

Yes or no, look at the beliefs of those which came before theirs. Do *they* match your own or those whose beliefs came before yours?

If yes, why? if no, why not?

When I continued carrying them back, I found that all of these god beliefs were modified derivatives of previous beliefs. Modified to the point where all of them became so different over the years, that none of them could possibly be considered true to whatever god they'd originally based these beliefs off of.

Not only that, but the further back I went, the more deplorable the "morals" of these paragons of humanity became.

Then I compared these entities to the societies which believed in them, and found some corresponding traits.

After that, it wasn't long until I came to the realization that "gods" were the deification of a culture's predominant trends. That there was nothing supernatural about them.

Anyway, that's how I can be an atheist.

Crucifiction

Read my thread just below this one - it's a problem which I'm trying to generate conversation about to find the answer.

David B

Hello Helo

You might find this debate on whether science is killing the soul or not of some interest.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dawk...debate_p1.html

David B

Hawxhurst

Atheist for 43 years here.

Practice.

Dlx2

It's a matter of perspective.

You see the universe as a beautiful, highly-ordered thing, and you see atheists as creating or looking for disorder in the beauty.

I see existence as inherently chaotic, and I am able to see that we as perceiving entities can imagine and appreciate form and beauty within that chaos.

J-D

There are things that we don't understand or have explanations for. And there always will be. No matter how many explanations people come up with for things, they'll always raise more questions. This is the insight in the little child's question: 'If everything came from God, where did God come from?' Theistic attempts to respond to this kind of question look like evasions to me. A true freethinker would always be willing to pursue new inquiries into new mysteries. It's the religious believers who try to rule a line and say, 'No questioning permitted beyond this point'.

IRON MAN

Okay, lets leave the wonder of the Universe out of it for a second, (and it is a place of wonder - that is certain).

Most atheists have determined through study that the bible is a bunch of self-conflicting bullshit. That would make at least the God of Abraham a myth, and you can repeat the procedure for the Koran and anything else that comes along.

We do not have a bleak outlook, or an answer for you. All we are saying is that the answer is not to be found in any religion that we know of.

That leaves either a god who created the Universe and never intervened in it's operation, or told us anything about it or himself.

Or no god.

A god who doesn't intervene, can't specify any rules to live by, and so the effect of both these scenarios is the same.

We are not pessimistic, we are just honestly pointing out that the optimistic position of theists doesn't hold water. An optimist will always accuse anyone less optimistic than him of pessimism.

Pessimists have a skewed world view, just as much as optimists - atheists simply seek truth. We simply don't find it in any religion.

Just because I can't show you an good investment, doesn't mean I can't point out a bad one.

This is the problem, and a phenomenon that supports our position. Upon discovering the flaws of religion(s), where does that leave you?

In a Universe that doesn't care.

It's not our fault that's the way things seem to be. I wish it weren't so, but my personal wishes and yours regarding the nature of the Universe appear to be irrelevant to the Universe itself.


If this is the case ... that we are alone in the big bad Universe, then all we have is each other.

I was going to start a thread suggesting that atheists in fact make better friends because you do not have to agree with their view point, or be in their club to be seen as a person with value, or judged worthy of their friendship.

The same can not be said for many, (certainly not all), theists. Many people on this board have had experiences of rejection by theistic friends and family upon their deconversion.

I myself had experience with this when my own wife complained of my atheism. That is a joke considering she is a Jehovah's Witness, and although I, (and most people), believe the stuff they are fed is a steaming pile of shit, I never objected to her following her beliefs - even to the point of dying for them if she felt it necessary.

In this way, atheists do not have a bleak outlook at all. I find most atheists moral thoughtful people. Well we only have one life, so we seek to make it a good one. I am even more determined not to spend any of my finite life in gaol considering this fact, so I am even less inclined to be dishonest.

I want freedom, and true freedom must be for all, not just me. I feel a new compulsion to better the human race before I die, because if I don't who will, (apparently not God)?

I have a genuine, non-judgemental, truly altruistic love for my fellow man that would make even Jesus proud.

Oh except for Placebo Messiah, I still hate his guts. But who doesn't? :huh:

EricK

Everybody starts off life by dividing the world into two: "me" and "everything else". As they get older that will tend to change to "mankind" and "everything else", but the division still remains.

There are two fundamentally different ways to examine the universe in light of this division. The first is to say "Humans are as they are, now why is the rest of the universe the way it is?" eg Why does food taste so good? How can it be that I love someone else so much? Why do I find the view from my window so beautiful? It is very easy, almost inevitable, to slip from that sort of thinking to thinking that there must be some sort of higher power which has created all this universe for us. One can for instance imagine a universe where there is nothing beautiful - nothing, that is, which you exactly as you are now, would find beautiful.

The other way of looking it things is to ask "The universe is as it is, now why are we the way we are?". The questions are essentially the same but the sort of answer one gets is different. To me, evolution satisfactorally explains why I react the way I do to the rest of the universe. It becomes impossible, for instance, to imagine a universe without beauty. The appreciation of beauty is an evolved trait, and what we find beautiful is determined by our evolutionary heritage. If the universe were different, we would certainly be different too, and so what we found beautiful would be different; but there would still be beautiful things to appreciate in the universe.

I don't say that all atheists share my opinions, but that is how I, as an atheist, can look at the universe with the same amount of wonder as a theist without the need to invoke any sort of higher power.