that epileptic seizures have a purpose and a meaning in relation to something else?
No, sorry about that. I was referring to the unlikeliness of such happening, and one's tendency to ascribe meaning to it.
Ten reasons that I am an atheist
- Thread starter Alien Cockroach
- Start date
No, sorry about that. I was referring to the unlikeliness of such happening, and one's tendency to ascribe meaning to it.
So far, yes it is. Nothing non-physical has been shown to exist. Until then, the physical hypothesis is much, much more likely. Then afterwards, your brain tries to make sense of it in terms of your existing belief system.
yeah trust me, i couldn't have made this shit up in a million years ok? i just don't have that kind of imagination or intellect.
i think it's energy. maybe non-physical is the wrong way to describe it.
Energy is physical, energy and matter are essentially the same thing.
Yet for many people, creativity stems from the unconscious, or pre-conscious, "thinking"--you know, "the muse" analogy. Do your best ideas come to you necessarily when you are thinking about them?
Just to be clear, the seizure hypothesis is just speculation. It's just that what you described re: the automatic writing--the dilated pupils, the "leaden feet," etc.--is thoroughly consistent.
well then i think it's physical. the spirit seems to me to be energy. it's capable of doing things like communicating, and manipulating other forms of matter, and i've also experienced physical sensations and symptoms from it.
these weren't ideas...they were messages and happenings that had meaning.
I recorded the basic tracks for an entire album while presumably not fully conscious--I can't know for certain my state of consciousness at the time, because I have no memory of it. Yet I managed to execute all the logistical intricacies and produce a "meaningful" document all the same.
Mrs.Lucysnow
Valued Senior Member
This means nothing. Like I said the fact that if 'gives evidence' to those who experience it is like saying I should except the hallucination of schizophrenic because he believes what he sees at the time. You perceive, fine. You are the whole of your being, mind and body. They work as one. You say I have no idea of whether there is a part of human beings that does not die and yet you also have arbitrarily decided that there is. I say there is no evidence to suggest that there is anything that lives outside of the body once the body has died and so there is no reason for me to consider it at all.
wow, that's cool.
i love music. my brother's a musician. and an atheist. when i told him about the writing, and that i felt i was channeling something, he said that musicians often feel that way too.
anything i could listen too?
I don't know. I had a fraternity brother who was quite a skilled magician and hypnotist - he often entertained at parties placing post hypnotic suggestions, usually with no lasting ill effects and helped some brothers with language learning skills.
I have more than once seen him tell subject that he would not remember the suggestion that subject could not pick up handkerchief from the floor. Ten or 15 minutes after subject was awakened for the hypnotic state, his date dropped her handkerchief and we all laughed as a strapping big man struggled to pick it up. Self hypnosis is certainly possible.
well i've experienced things that you haven't. i don't expect you to believe the same things i do, or to understand what i've been through. it's just that when i say i've experienced _____________, i see no reason for you to choose to believe i was hallucinating, just because you haven't experienced ________________. you know what i mean?
so is channeling.
No one is doubting that you experienced what you state. Shirley McLane has experienced floating around the ceiling and seeing her body in the bed.
I just do not think paper folds up with no material agent as the cause or Shirley really had her body both on the bed and was seeing it from above. I do not think any such things have ever been documented , but agree they are real experiences of people.
I have strong memories of flying. I do have a good sense of 3D space and these experiences / dreams? / were so real that I actually later went and studied the roof structures. - I could not find any obvious flaws in what I saw from the ground and what I remembered seeing while flying over them.
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I doubt that as it is without any docummention - only reported exeriences, many of which failed to confirmed when tested.
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Mrs.Lucysnow
Valued Senior Member
Fair enough and understood.
To a very large extent, yes. This is one of the reasons that I personally am an atheist, so it would be perfectly accurate to accuse me of having an "emotional" investment in remaining an atheist. It is very much my comfort zone. If you were a Christian or affiliated with a different religion from Christianity, you would start convincing me to change my opinions by trying to interest me in venturing outside my comfort zone.
In a way, this list can function as an instruction manual for a religious person who wants to affect a change in my beliefs without the discussion resulting in hurt feelings or ill-will on either side. I do not not mind people who are interested in persuading me to convert to their religious beliefs. In fact, I find it flattering in a way. When I meet one of those Christians who really mean well for me, I may not change the way I believe, but I almost always feel good about my experience with that person. If that kind of person came back to me the next day and said, "hey, why don't you visit my church with me next morning?" I have to admit, based on many proofs of this theory, that I would be very tempted to go along. If there were more Christians in the world who made that kind of impression on me, we would not be having this conversation. I would probably be attending Church every Sunday, and I would have better things to do than muck around on these forums. The list isn't intended to persuade anybody. It's intended to represent ME.
If I started quoting philosophers and trying to concoct persuasive arguments, I would be lying to myself and about myself, and that goes strongly against my values.
Arguably, yes. The majority of atheists, in the United States of America, I suspect that most people who identify as "atheist" are effectively "aChristian." I do not interact with Hindus, for example, nearly often enough that I can say, in all due honesty, that I have unequivocally concluded that Hinduism is a false religion. It is not really to my credit that I do not know more about it.
This was not intended as an argument. It was intended to represent my reasons for being an atheist. Part of the reason that I am so adamant in being an atheist is due to my encounters with "theists," most of which have been remarkably unpleasant. I find them to be a highly revolting group of people, and I feel that these are people who are simply born morally defective. Their very existence is an argument for abortion because theists, my friend, have gone quite a long way in challenging my faith in humanity. Interacting with a self-described "theist" can even result in me suffering from thoughts of suicide. I honestly hate them, and my hatred for people who fit into this category is one of my motivations for being an atheist. Christianity and other religions are going to continue to shrink until these asinine people simply shut the fuck up.
Indeed. Many religious people report that religious observation results in a reduction in their stress levels, and many people worldwide value spirituality and their interactions with their faith community for controlling their day-to-day stress. Because my stress levels are naturally a lot lower than those of most people, this is not something that would motivate me to assume an interest in religion or spirituality.
And I am afraid that I have never had any such experiences, and I am not really sure how far to trust other people's interpretations of their own experiences.
Well, it's about time somebody recognized it! It's an answer to the so-called "Pascal's Wager" that most people don't actually think of. Most people don't really have the imagination to contemplate a hypothetical deity that considers atheists to be his Elect.
Precisely. When I state my incredulity when someone says, "I had a religious experience," I am not trying to deride that person's judgement or honesty. Not intentionally, anyway. I am simply familiar with a number of alternative explanations for them that fit more neatly into my simple, limited understanding of the world around me.
I know. I really just wanted to make it a round number, and it kind of flopped. However, I do tend to find it very suspicious when a religious person says, "Well, you have to take the leap of faith first, and then you'll get your proof." At that point, they sound a lot like a drug-pusher.
Well, if I don't feel like I'm dealing with pusher scum, I tend to find their concern for me to be very charming.
One of the reasons that I don't discuss my atheism much anymore is that, lately, I find myself getting along very well with religious people, and I tend to be a lot more sporting than I used to be.
Perhaps that sheds some light on one of the other things that motivate people to become atheists and remain atheists.
Many people turn to religion because they want something in the scope of their lives that offers an explanation of the ultimate purpose of their own existence. It is part of human nature to demand some sort of justification. Perhaps what they really want is something that makes their entire lives worth living, at the end of the day. They want to be able to home in on it and focus on it. They want "a purpose-driven life."
In that case, maybe there are some atheists out there who don't really demand this sort of justification. Perhaps they would rather have a world that is rich in possibilities and potential. In a way, maybe an atheist can be like a kid in a candy store: he knows he can't try everything, and he knows that he should settle on one final choice at the end of his visit. It's still satisfying to have so many wonderful possibilities at your fingertips. There just seems to be so much more to life, even though you can't have all of it. The sheer number of options is a kind of wealth in itself.
Therefore, perhaps atheists can be people who like to keep their options open and open up new doorways. Maybe they suffer from some sort of anxiety when you talk about the idea that something only has one use. It can feel a bit like a chain and collar around the neck. I guess this is part of what led me to becoming an atheist in the first place. There was such an immense wealth of ideas that I could contemplate that it seemed to be so pale and so limiting to think that the summation of my existence could be encapsulated in one little book. I came to the end of the Bible, and I thought, "Is that it? There are no other ideas that I can explore?"
When I was a young agnostic, I envisoned myself as a wanderer. I wanted to try on every hat in the book. I thought that pantheism was interesting, for example. It is philosophically a very aesthetically pleasing thing to believe. I couldn't restrict myself to it, though. I wanted to try all of them on. You might as well cut a queer loose at Abercrombie and Fitch. There was a breaking point where I realized that all of these beliefs were really just beautiful works of art. I guess that what built up in me this animosity I developed toward Christianity was the idea that the Christians wanted to take all of that away. This turned out not to be universally true at all, but I was young. I didn't know any better.
Well, let's take this and put it in a different perspective. Let's say that you are a Christian, and you have had a lot of bad luck at getting atheists to take an interest in Christianity. If you knew that a lot of atheists. my young self being one of them, had the perception that Christianity demands some kind of spiritual uniform, how could you use this information? How could you use this to make your apologetics more appealing and less offensive to the young atheist?
Unfortunately, I didn't realize until much later on how much variety there was to Christianity. It is an enourmously rich and interesting culture if you really take the time to study it, and there is a lot of beauty in it. The ideas and ideals that were created during the Protestant Reformation threw a great, big monkey wrench in the Catholic Church's idea of forcing some kind of uniform cult on the whole world. Well, maybe that is why American Protestantism has been so much more successful than European ideals of religion. You can't even begin to explore the richness and variety of Protestantism in your lifetime. You can even go beyond that: every single church in the entire world is special and unique, even if they are part of the same sect of Christianity. Why didn't anyone tell me about this? I would have been insatiable. I would have been like a kid in a candy store if I had just known that this vast world existed. I wouldn't have had time to become an atheist.
In any case, I guess that the purpose of the OP was to explore the different things that motivate me to be an atheist. I think that is a very interesting subject in itself, and I hoped that it could generate some very valuable discussion on what makes us tick. It was really all about insight.