Atheism and universal loneliness

[Neverfly]

I wonder what a theist would say if a crazed bath salt loving zombie was beating down their door and the the 911 operator said, "oh dear, let me pray for you. Don't worry, God is listening"

Believers tend to claim that God "uses" people and will send a human to help them. This is how they explain a lack of presence all the time...
One may say, "God 'used' my Uncle to get me off alcohol."

Why God seems so concerned about appearing to be non-existent that he can't interact directly like he did in the O.T. and has to 'use' other people so it appears he's not involved is a mystery. Perhaps he's "testing faith."

 

[seagypsy]

Believers tend to claim that God "uses" people and will send a human to help them. This is how they explain a lack of presence all the time...
One may say, "God 'used' my Uncle to get me off alcohol."

Why God seems so concerned about appearing to be non-existent that he can't interact directly like he did in the O.T. and has to 'use' other people so it appears he's not involved is a mystery. Perhaps he's "testing faith."

The concept of using people conflicts with the biblical assertion that we have free will.

 

[kx000]

Believers tend to claim that God "uses" people and will send a human to help them. This is how they explain a lack of presence all the time...
One may say, "God 'used' my Uncle to get me off alcohol."

Why God seems so concerned about appearing to be non-existent that he can't interact directly like he did in the O.T. and has to 'use' other people so it appears he's not involved is a mystery. Perhaps he's "testing faith."

I think God left it up to us to solve, and we get what we ask for. Life that is. I don't think God is trying to be anything. I think he made a disposition not to tell us anything we don't know.

 

[Neverfly]

I think God left it up to us to solve, and we get what we ask for. Life that is. I don't think God is trying to be anything. I think he made a disposition not to tell us anything we don't know.

All this does is assert his lack of participation. Why bother?
It's an honest question...

The concept of using people conflicts with the biblical assertion that we have free will.

Never thought of that- excellent point.

 

[wynn]

Up to the point you say "...are also related with ideas and expressions of ...", at which point you move into projection.

We do, because that is how we see it... the same way as an ocean is blind with regard its erosion of coastlines.

One cannot use a concept like "evolution is a blind process" without thereby invoking a contradistinction with a well-known religious doctrine of intelligent design.
IOW, atheists such as yourself still rely on reference to theism to get your meanings across.

Viable for who? It's viable for me. It's up to others to decide what is viable for themselves. All anyone else can do is point out what they consider to be flaws in their thinking.
Then looking in a religion forum of a predominantly science-based website is probably not the best place to look.

Solipsism and relativism rule, yes.

In either case I am working with either an objective definition or objective behaviors.

Riiight. You do not exist in all this process of cogitation the results of which you've typed.

Atheism already does allow for that. You can find worth in whatever you want

Just ask any seasoned drug addict and he or she will confirm that the above is not the case.

No, one cannot find worth in whatever one wants, even if the desired thing is not a fantasy.

 

[wynn]

wynn, you seem attached to the notion that we MUST have a purpose. Not just from a personal point of view, but a purpose beyond the needs of the individual.

Why is this?

It's a matter of logical consistency.
One person can have a purpose in life only if there is an objective purpose to the world that the person lives in.

If a large meteor were to hit the earth and wipe out a portion of earth's human population, certainly some people of faith would take it as a sign from "God".

If a large meteor hits some other planet, one without human life on it, and wipes out a percentage of its living species. No human on Earth would consider the event to have any significant spiritual meaning. Even if we were fully aware that it happened.

??
Where did that come from?

Why does it seem the idea of higher purpose can only apply to human lifeforms?

Strawman. Where did I argue that it does?

And why MUST it be that we have a higher purpose. What makes us so much more spiritually significant than all the other lifeforms on our planet? Or any lifeforms that may exist on other planets?

Again, strawman. I am not going to defend things I never asserted.

Surely a large meteor that can wipe out a significant number of our species would at the same time wipe out many "lesser" lifeforms.Do they just not matter to "God"? If they don't matter, why bother creating them?

Why is it NECESSARY for humans to be superior to other life?

Same as above.

And why is it NECESSARY to have a higher purpose?

Try living like a robot and see how satisfactory that is ...

 

[wynn]

You had to start a thread on this when we were already discussing it in another thread?

Atheism is born out of feeling happy and comfortable with the truth. It is born out of being content with one's life. Not the other way around. Atheists don't need a "in the Grand Scheme of Things". As I pointed out to you in the other thread. We matter and are relevant to our loved ones and those we are close to. No one else. When we die, life goes on for everyone else but us (the one's who die).

Why do you need us to matter "In the Grand Scheme of Things"? You still aren't able to answer that question. Why should we matter? Saying the universe is relevant and then saying that we are a part of the universe and thus we are relevant as part of the whole is not really an answer. Why does there have to be a "Grand Scheme of Things"? Karma as you pointed out in the other thread? If so, it would make humans even more selfish and egotistical, who only do good deeds to avoid bad karma and possibly to avoid hell and who only do good to benefit themselves in the afterlife.. after all, this is what "In the Grand Scheme of Things" tends to entail. Selfishness..

These grand displays of humility are quite a source of contentment, aren't they?
Some self-castigation - and voila, one immediately feels reinvigorated!

 

[wynn]

Wynn..
take this for what it is worth..

If you are truly seeking answers..

try attending different churches, look for the non-mainstream ones, the smaller churches, you do not have to commit to anything to check them out..
the bigger churches tend to have their focus on things other than God..(pass the plate,being more popular,being politically correct..etc..)
the smaller churches do not have those distractions as much,(they can have others)
but the smaller churches tend to me more focused on God..(still not saying they are perfect)

get a feel for if they are trying to teach "do as your told" or "think for yourself".
"think for your self" churches are few and far between, so don't be discouraged if you do not find one right away..
think for your self churches tend to focus on studying the bible with a historical context, the better ones will have done the research and have documentation to back up their claims about history..

Question the pastor on EVERYTHING, leave the ones that the pastor gets frustrated with your questioning..(this is THE best advice i can give as it quickly exposes the pastors motivations)

do this and you will get the answers you are looking for, and you can decide for yourself what you want to believe.

Years of dicussion with you down the drain ...

asking here is an effort in futility, as the theist here aren't able to fully answer your questions without the wrath of the anti-theist..

No, this forum environment is probably the only kind of place where such questions have some chance of being addressed.

 

[wynn]

If you need to feel you "matter" in order to be happy, then more power to you. But your desire does not make it a reality.

Atheism is born out of the recognition of what reality is (albeit according to them), not out of what they want reality to be.

You want to be a king. You decide that you are a king.
I want to be a king. I acknowledge that that does not make me a king.

(This is a very loose analogy, not meant to be taken literally or personally, simply pointing out the atheist philosophy that wanting something - even really badly - does not make it so.)

So whom are you arguing against??

happines comes from having full stomach and a roof over your head,
not some Imaginary diety

Perhaps you've just been hungry and homeless a lot ...

I do assume that there is no reliable evidence for God. It's also not my responsibility to define what that evidence could be.

You do have such responsibility, if you are to be consistent.

And what is Wynn miserable and disappointed about?

Having to think that I am nothing but liquids, solids and gasses.

Granted, there is a measure of comfort in nihilism. All those elevated topics that one doesn't have to concern oneself with.

 

[wynn]

Absolutely! And this is, IMO, what wynn is missing. Loneliness has nothing to do with someone's spiritual beliefs.

I think that the experience of aloneness has everything to do with a person's outlook on "life, the Universe and everything."

It is simply human nature to feel lonely at times. That is why Theists and Atheists alike are equally susceptible to bouts of depression, loneliness and despair. Just like they are equally likely to feel joy and contentment.

And they do so for different reasons.

Faith offers to theists what science gives to atheists.... comfort in perceived knowledge. Edit: wanted to strike out "perceived knowledge" and change it to something more accurate but I cant think of a better term to describe what I mean.

I feel ya..

Many people cannot digest there being a right without there being a wrong, a good without an evil, a heaven without a hell, or a creation without a creator. Too many people exist in a black and white reality.

We find comfort in definitions. We find comfort in that which we find familiar. Knowing how to define the world offers familiarity with it. But we don't all choose the same dictionary. Allowing someone else's definition to be right puts us in a position of questioning our own definition. Not knowing if our definition is right causes us to feel discomfort in what may be an unfamiliar place again. So to protect ourselves from scarey consequences of questioning, it is human nature to reject the other definition in favor of what is familiar. I'm starting to creep myself out, digging into parts of my brain I don't usually use, so I will stop there.

That's almost like saying that people can't get by in life without lying to themselves, to a psychotic extent. (Note that denial is listed as a psychotic psychological defense mechanism.)

But in terms of the original post, we aren't determining right or wrong to the individual. We are looking at how one particular theist justifies calling atheists wrong and her twisted distortion of why she believes atheists see her convictions to be wrong.

Where do you get this idea that I am a theist?

You must have really low standards for theism if you consider someone like me to be a theist.

 

[Neverfly]

That's almost like saying that people can't get by in life without lying to themselves, to a psychotic extent. (Note that denial is listed as a psychotic psychological defense mechanism.)

Yes, but atheists choose not to.

 

[seagypsy]

It's a matter of logical consistency.
One person can have a purpose in life only if there is an objective purpose to the world that the person lives in.

If it is logical. Then one should be able to explain in detail the logic behind it. So please humor me and explain.

You have not explained why it is necessary to have a purpose. You only explained under what circumstances you feel purpose can exist.

??
Where did that come from?

It is called an analogy, a way of somewhat simplifying an idea. Giving it some means of being comprehended by someone who is demonstrating an inability to understand as it was previously explained.

Strawman. Where did I argue that it does?
Again, strawman. I am not going to defend things I never asserted.
Same as above.

Perhaps your OP challenged things that none of us asserted... I can't speak for others but I am sure it is a possibility, and if that is the case should we defend that which we do not assert? Or should we just ignore you. I'm for the latter.

These were all ideas presented by the Abrahamic faiths. Not you specifically. But it really would be nice if you would argue one side of the issue rather than bouncing back and forth. Otherwise I will be forced to assume that you don't even know where you stand or what you think and therefore will have to put you on ignore permanently due to your inability to focus and reach a viable conclusion. Bouncing back and forth serves no purpose except to, and I hate to say it because it is the easiest criticism to toss out there but I must, troll.

It's sad really. because previously, you did demonstrate the ability to listen and consider another point of view. maybe that was just a short lived burst of abnormality from your normal method of behavior. It's too bad you cannot make that a consistency.

Try living like a robot and see how satisfactory that is ...

I have and it was quite productive. I like productivity. And more often than not I have found emotions can nothing more than an barrier to making wise decisions. They can be fun at times. But like all things, there is a time and place for everything. I would greatly prefer emotions to be kept at a minimum so that TRUE logic can be obtained. Not some faulty logic that is rationalized by how it makes us feel.

 

[seagypsy]

Nevermind, wynn, don't bother responding to me. I have you on ignore now. You simply are not worth my time.

 

[Rav]

The concept of using people conflicts with the biblical assertion that we have free will.

That's not true. Just as Satan can tempt without interfering with free will, God can encourage without interfering with free will. I guess it's kind of like a benevolent sort of entrapment. Faced with divinely-engineered circumstance X, you will likely do Y, and if you don't, God will try again.

But you could say the same thing about a transcendent benevolent invisible pink unicorn too, and it's evil and almost as influential archenemy.

 

[Yazata]

Inserting "blind" and "merely" into those phrases makes them into circular, self-confirming prophecies.

It does, yes. And I see this as one of the core problems of atheism.

"Blind" and "merely" look like evaluative words to me. I prefer words like 'non-anthropomorphic' or 'non-teleological'.

The circularity consists in initially framing the situation in terms of something important being lacking, then seeming to draw the conclusion that something important is lacking.

No. I am using atheist terminology.

Atheists do say that the process of evolution is "blind" and such.

It is the atheist discourse itself that is so suggestive of theistic meanings even as it opposes theism.

Maybe. Sometimes people who no longer believe in God do continue to think in distinctively theistic ways. (I've commented elsewhere on the atheist fundies who insist on Biblical literalism and inerrancy.)

But is that really what this thread is about?

You seem to be insisting that people like myself lack something. You insist that we feel existential angst, misery, "universal loneliness", or whatever you want to call it, BECAUSE we don't believe in God, because we don't imagine that the universe has some grand purpose in which we play a vital and central role, and because we don't imagine that the ruler of the universe is a parent-surrogate who takes a conscious interest in insuring our personal welfare.

As others have already pointed out, I think that you are projecting your own theistic feelings and worldview onto us. You are imagining how it would feel for a theist to lack faith, and then projecting that feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness onto us.

The flaw in that reasoning is that our happiness, our fulfillment and our sense of meaning isn't dependent on our having faith in some theistic myth. Our happiness may or may not be based on something just as flimsy and ephemeral, but it isn't based on that.

In other words, imagining how it would feel for you to lack faith in God doesn't describe how it feels for us to lack faith in God. That's because the concept of God plays a very different role in many of our psychologies than it seemingly plays in the mind of a theist.

Happy people don't put themselves into a psychological place where they can't feel happiness and can't find peace, unless they imagine that the whole universe revolves around them and is focused precisely on them.

Is that a realistic expectation? Why do so many people feel so strongly that it needs to be so?

But you're working with a false dichotomy - "Either the Universe revolves around me, or it's all for naught."

I think that you are the one who is proposing that false dichotomy.

You're the one who is suggesting that if we don't believe in your universal cosmic purpose (God), then we must as a result of that failure to believe also feel hollow and empty inside, as if nothing in our lives has any meaning.

My reply is that your conclusion doesn't follow, precisely for the reason you gave, because we invest no end of local things in our lives with purpose and meaning. We perceive purposes and intentions all around us all the time. Our lives are filled with intentions and purposes.

What we don't perceive are big-time cosmological purposes, meanings and teleological goals for the entire universe. But (this is the big point) our happiness and sense of completion isn't dependent on that.

Actually, just speaking of me, I'm an agnostic regarding the big questions. I don't have a clue what accounts for the universe, why it's here, or even if the word 'why' is meaningful. But I'm reasonably certain that whatever accounts for existence, it isn't a "person" modeled on ourselves, and it may well turn out to be something totally incomprehensible to humans. So whatever the ultimate anwer is, it's well beyond my human pay-grade and it doesn't play any signifcant role in my worldview or in my personal happiness.

Why not allow for a meaningful sense of personal worth and relevance that is between the two extremes?

That's precisely what we're doing. It's what your first post told us that we can't possibly do... because we aren't theists.

 

[spidergoat]

Having to think that I am nothing but liquids, solids and gasses.

Just like the Mona Lisa is nothing but a bunch of paint on a canvas? The Lord of the Rings is nothing but ink on paper?

Granted, there is a measure of comfort in nihilism. All those elevated topics that one doesn't have to concern oneself with.

Nihilism is the rejection of all meaning. Atheism doesn't reject all meaning and purpose, only the kind of universal purpose that would only be the result of a creator. Humanism isn't nihilism.

 

[wynn]

"Blind" and "merely" look like evaluative words to me. I prefer words like 'non-anthropomorphic' or 'non-teleological'.

And by using them, you still evoke the contradistinction with theism, and as such acknowledging your dependence on it.

Maybe. Sometimes people who no longer believe in God do continue to think in distinctively theistic ways.

Why on earth would they do that?
Clearly, if someone thinks in "distinctively theistic ways" - well, then they simply think in distinctively theistic ways, whatever else they otherwise claim about themselves.

You seem to be insisting that people like myself lack something. You insist that we feel existential angst, misery, "universal loneliness", or whatever you want to call it, BECAUSE we don't believe in God, because we don't imagine that the universe has some grand purpose in which we play a vital and central role, and because we don't imagine that the ruler of the universe is a parent-surrogate who takes a conscious interest in insuring our personal welfare.

If you don't feel that lack, if you don't actually feel and think in "distinctively theistic ways" - then why use a distinctively theistic discourse or one that has distinctively theistic references??


I am comparing the mainstream atheistic discourse with the Pali Canon.

How is it that the Pali Canon is in a strictly non-theistic discourse without theistic references?
And why is it that the Western atheists (who tend to presume themselves so advanced, so in line with "how things really are") do not produce a discourse like that? Why do Western atheists rely on a distinctively theistic discourse?

As others have already pointed out, I think that you are projecting your own theistic feelings and worldview onto us. You are imagining how it would feel for a theist to lack faith, and then projecting that feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness onto us.

The flaw in that reasoning is that our happiness, our fulfillment and our sense of meaning isn't dependent on our having faith in some theistic myth. Our happiness may or may not be based on something just as flimsy and ephemeral, but it isn't based on that.

If that is the case, then why use a distinctively theistic discourse, even as you are atheists?

In other words, imagining how it would feel for you to lack faith in God doesn't describe how it feels for us to lack faith in God. That's because the concept of God plays a very different role in many of our psychologies than it seemingly plays in the mind of a theist.

And please, I am not a theist.
Have you not read any of my posts here or what? ?

 

[DaveC426913]

Maybe. Sometimes people who no longer believe in God do continue to think in distinctively theistic ways.

Why on earth would they do that?

I think you know the answer to this.

I don't live with my parents anymore, but I still sometimes act like the kid I once was.

A fundamental break from a course of belief does not mean every action based on it instantly (or ever) disappears, to be replaced by something new.

Even die-hard non-theists often believe in luck at the card table - despite the fact that luck is inarguably a belief in supernaturally manipulated events.

 

[BWE1]

Atheism and universal loneliness



The threads on the FSM and "evolution is wack" got me thinking -


The ideas of the FSM, "evolution as a blind, non-intelligent process," "we are merely bio-mechanical systems" are also related with ideas and expressions of a sense of loneliness, abandoned-ness, a Weltschmerz, a resignation and apathy that follow rejection and disappointment.

Atheism is not born out of happiness. Atheism is not born out of being content with one's life.
Atheism is born out of disappointment, atheism is born out of misery.

Happy people don't say "In the Grand Scheme of Things, we don't matter, and we just have to suck it up."

If this has already been said then I apologize. Why does your ontological position have anything at all to do with your contentedness with existence?

 

[wynn]

Why does your ontological position have anything at all to do with your contentedness with existence?

How could it possibly not???

Do explain how one's ontological position and contededness with existence are not related!