Atheist; wish I could believe

[Thief]

What are the sharks and crocodiles testimony to?

LONG standing heritage of the dinosaur life.

 

[dust1n]

LONG standing heritage of the dinosaur life.

EDIT: Actually never mind. I've digressed the entire thread. To the EvC thread I'll be.

 

[sun rise]

Why do you think that Eastern thought better explains a more complex understanding of the universe instead of say, the Abrahamic religions?

You did not ask me but I'm going to "put my oar in" on this question. Forgive me if you already know all about this but when discussing this topic, the story of the blind men and the elephant is something I try to keep in mind.

There are many interesting perspectives on Eastern thought but here's one: From my main perspective a key question that I asked and many ask is "if there is a loving God, why is there suffering in the world and why doesn't God do something about it". For me, the ideas of reincarnation and karma are essential to answer those questions about God.

There are many different questions and answers around this area but here's one partial point: if someone kills another person they might be killed by that person in a future life. Or maybe they have to save the life of that person in a future life to balance the karma. A less drastic example - before I was married people would tell my wife and I that we fought like an old married couple so we should get married so the fights would be "legal". I'm sure we picked up where we left off in an earlier life and now after many years, we're best friends. But the interim had some rough years.

It's interesting to me that the Bible has a poetic statement about karma "As ye sow, so shall ye reap".

 

[Curious George]

EDIT: Actually never mind. I've digressed the entire thread. To the EvC thread I'll be.

Yes, always a bad tangent to go on...best to steer clear.

 

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

I would gladly swap my sadly unwavering belief in science and rationality and Russell's teapot for the warm comfort of believing in some kind of higher power permeating all matter visible and invisible

The key to believing is understanding how subjectivity works. You should look to the structure in common discourse to find out what you already know how it works. What is the logic you use when you say "the painting is beautiful"?

The logic is choosing between "ugly" and "beautiful", choosing "beautiful", in expression of emotion with your free will.

The word beautiful refers to a love for the way the painting looks.

This love is what chose the word "beautiful" in expression of emotion.

Therefore.... the existence of this love is a matter of opinion as well.

Which means, the conclusion the love is real is just as valid as the conclusion the love is not real. Just as the conclusion the painting is "ugly" is just as valid as the conclusion that the painting is "beautiful".

So love chooses the word beautiful, and the existence of this love is a matter of opinion.

How subjectivity works then is to choose about what it is that chooses.

Which means there is a spritual domain, all of what is in it chooses which way the material domain turns out, and what is in it is a matter of opinion.

What is in the material domain is a matter of fact, and all in this domain is chosen. A fact is a model of something. The facts about the moon are a model of the moon. A book about the moon contains the facts about it in the form of words, pictures and mathematics. Mindlessly copy, copy, copy, that is how objectivity works.

Then you can venture to believe in God the holy spirit, if in expression of emotion about what is in the spiritual domain, you feel that is right.

 

[Erebus]

Thank you for your thoughts. This part here reminded me of an encounter I had some years ago. Middle of Sicily, sun-scorched town, pop. 680, in the middle of a stretch of Mediterranean arid flatland. In the town square around noon I meet this very old man relaxing outside a bar, only person aroud apart from the bar man inside. Me and my father got to talking with the guy and at some point the church bell tolled. We listened in silence until it stopped and then he said "I don't believe in that." Then he pointed at the sun, "That's what I believe in." And he wasn't talking figuratively; he really did, he did actually believe that the only God worth worshipping was the Sun because the Sun and its rays were everywhere, sustaining life and making it thrive and those were God's characteristics and roles, as far as he was concerned. It was pretty interesting to hear this old man in the middle of ultra-Catholic nowhere expousing his own personal and peculiar theology.

My pleasure

I like that story and reckon the old man is definitely on to something. In my opinion people get far too wrapped up in the minutiae of theism sometimes. Better to go back to basics and find something you're thankful for or that you find awe inspiring.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Hello! First post here. I am a woman, early twenties, atheist. It's been some time now, a couple of years maybe, that I've found myself in a weird situation that looks like it's shared by a number of people.

I was raised culturally Catholic by a vaguely observant mother and a non-observant, completely disinterested
father. I remember being bored and skeptic during religion class in elementary school already (also cracking
blasphemous jokes about The Jesus, which landed me in trouble in various occasions) and when I was about 11 I just declared I didn't believe in any of that stuff and that I was an atheist. My parents basically shrugged. I spent the following few years being the obnoxious atheist kid trying to 'convert' people to the brave new godless world I had discovered for myself. When I got to about 17 I had gotten all of the militant attitude out of my system and I just kept quiet about my lack of belief. It also became dramatically easier when everybody around me declared their atheism too. I'm not lying when I say that about eighty percent of people in my social circles are atheists or pretty hard agnostics (although ours is a historically deeply Catholic European country).

I've always been deeply interested about religion. At first in a combative, know-your-enemy way when I was twelve or thirteen, and later on from philosophical, historical, anthropological standpoints. It's been a couple of years now that I've found myself living the reluctant atheist paradox.

I believe that atheism has been wildly over-rated, as far as human happiness goes. I would gladly swap my sadly unwavering belief in science and rationality and Russell's teapot for the warm comfort of believing in some kind of higher power permeating all matter visible and invisible. I wish there was a Creator, and that I could believe in it, and pay tribute to it; but what I feel is also not about a personal God per se, if that makes any sense. I could be content, I think, even believing in a Spinozian God, the pantheist type. I feel actual longing for the ritualistic aspect of religion, the act of elevating every day to the divine through rites, and coming together with other people, sharing a community, a deeply felt idea, instead of just counting 'paper-thin' days down till the end, as a lone atom without any bonds to a higher, older, holier kind of community that predates my birth and will exist after me. I guess it's not even about the afterlife. I'm not afraid of death, the nothingness (although I do feel a bitter pang when I consider the annihilation without chance of return or reunion of everyone I love). I guess I just dearly wish there was more to this physical realm: sense, truth, some kind of reason for it all, or purpose, something under, between, the matter, a coherent principle; that I could believe in the existance of this principle, and that I could truthfully and joyfully pay my tributes to it.

There is also another level to my longing, in the sense that religion is just so damn fascinating and bizarre and beautiful. I can't help but be fascinated by the religious (and observant) mindset and envious, in some ways, of the richness, depths and beauty of its best manifestations (although that doesn't stop me from being annoyed and horrified by the horrors and backwardness inflicted on the rest of humankind by the fundamentalists).

The funny thing is that I think the turning point for me was watching a pretty popular movie, The Believer, the one with Ryan Gosling as a Nazi self-hating Jew. There's that part towards the end where Gosling's girlfriend, who is like the daughter of bonafide fascists, and who is sliding into Judaism for no logical reason other than an unexplicable urge, says something like 'What if surrendering to God is the best feeling we could ever have'. What if it is?

Every time I pass in front of the local synagogue [to be clear: there is no link between the movie's subject and my interest in Judaism] I get this nonsensical desire to just go inside and try with all my might to believe, to feel it, to lose myself into it. Or just go to a service and bask in the atmosphere. And then I remember I am an atheist, and feel like a weirdo and a fraud.

I am aware this is completely bizarre but some long Google searches have told me it's not really unheard of, so... I guess the questions are:

- am I, and the people who think like me, total loonies?
- does this make any sense to any of you? I guess this one is a question especially for the atheists who may be reading
- any thoughts from the theist side of the barricade?
- is this all a cry from a lost soul in the liquid world described by Zygmunt Bauman?

If and when you feel that you've got it all figured out, that's when you need to worry. Being confused is generally a sign that you're still thinking.

 

[Underhill]

Why do you think it's not quite the same? I believe that humans have a psychological need for ritual/ceremony and of course community, but when I think about humanistic or atheist groups I feel like something is fundamentally amiss or wrong. Like, I get naming ceremonies instead of christenings or baptisms, but I just don't know what to think about 'atheist congregations' meeting regularly and kind of aping the real religious stuff.

I think the difference is that fundamental belief that bonds people. The church I grew up in always fostered the notion (real or imagined) that we were poor souls wandering the path of sinners, beaten about the heads by those all around us looking to persecute us. Ironically the atheist group doesn't have that same feel even though I would bet the persecution is much more real.

 

[Muffled]

OP: "am I, and the people who think like me, total loonies?
- does this make any sense to any of you? I guess this one is a question especially for the atheists who may be reading
- any thoughts from the theist side of the barricade?"

I believe if a person must take a scientific approach then one can as long as one does not come with an a priori view. I believe a rational approach is psychologically and socially acceptable.

I believe it does but I can't relate because I believed in God the moment I started reading the Bible.

I believe God has to be experienced in order to fully believe in Him. Since He is a spirit that can't be seen our normal physical functions do not help. I believe that the mind can experience God because it is the recipient of spirits. However there is an observation that could be helpful. Jesus said spirit is like wind. One can't see it but one can see what it does for instance blow leaves on a tree. My suggestion is to find a pentacostal church where it is most likely one can see the results of the Holy Spirit passing through a congregation.

 

[Muffled]

Hah, I can definitely see your point. Guess I'm trying to unconsciously counteract my own crippling misanthropy?

Bonus points for Debord quotation in the signature

I believe what comes to mind is the phrase "methinks thou protest too much." The idea that one protests because one senses that there is more reality to it than one wishes to admit. I think the usual teenage rebellion against what one is taught but does not yet understand was also in play.

 

[Muffled]

I think the difference is that fundamental belief that bonds people. The church I grew up in always fostered the notion (real or imagined) that we were poor souls wandering the path of sinners, beaten about the heads by those all around us looking to persecute us. Ironically the atheist group doesn't have that same feel even though I would bet the persecution is much more real.

I don't believe in persecuting atheists. I do persuade and sometimes it works as with my granddaughter who claimed to be an atheist but after persuasion claims to be an agnostic.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Hello! First post here. I am a woman, early twenties, atheist. It's been some time now, a couple of years maybe, that I've found myself in a weird situation that looks like it's shared by a number of people.

I was raised culturally Catholic by a vaguely observant mother and a non-observant, completely disinterested
father. I remember being bored and skeptic during religion class in elementary school already (also cracking
blasphemous jokes about The Jesus, which landed me in trouble in various occasions) and when I was about 11 I just declared I didn't believe in any of that stuff and that I was an atheist. My parents basically shrugged. I spent the following few years being the obnoxious atheist kid trying to 'convert' people to the brave new godless world I had discovered for myself. When I got to about 17 I had gotten all of the militant attitude out of my system and I just kept quiet about my lack of belief. It also became dramatically easier when everybody around me declared their atheism too. I'm not lying when I say that about eighty percent of people in my social circles are atheists or pretty hard agnostics (although ours is a historically deeply Catholic European country).

I've always been deeply interested about religion. At first in a combative, know-your-enemy way when I was twelve or thirteen, and later on from philosophical, historical, anthropological standpoints. It's been a couple of years now that I've found myself living the reluctant atheist paradox.

I believe that atheism has been wildly over-rated, as far as human happiness goes. I would gladly swap my sadly unwavering belief in science and rationality and Russell's teapot for the warm comfort of believing in some kind of higher power permeating all matter visible and invisible. I wish there was a Creator, and that I could believe in it, and pay tribute to it; but what I feel is also not about a personal God per se, if that makes any sense. I could be content, I think, even believing in a Spinozian God, the pantheist type. I feel actual longing for the ritualistic aspect of religion, the act of elevating every day to the divine through rites, and coming together with other people, sharing a community, a deeply felt idea, instead of just counting 'paper-thin' days down till the end, as a lone atom without any bonds to a higher, older, holier kind of community that predates my birth and will exist after me. I guess it's not even about the afterlife. I'm not afraid of death, the nothingness (although I do feel a bitter pang when I consider the annihilation without chance of return or reunion of everyone I love). I guess I just dearly wish there was more to this physical realm: sense, truth, some kind of reason for it all, or purpose, something under, between, the matter, a coherent principle; that I could believe in the existance of this principle, and that I could truthfully and joyfully pay my tributes to it.

There is also another level to my longing, in the sense that religion is just so damn fascinating and bizarre and beautiful. I can't help but be fascinated by the religious (and observant) mindset and envious, in some ways, of the richness, depths and beauty of its best manifestations (although that doesn't stop me from being annoyed and horrified by the horrors and backwardness inflicted on the rest of humankind by the fundamentalists).

The funny thing is that I think the turning point for me was watching a pretty popular movie, The Believer, the one with Ryan Gosling as a Nazi self-hating Jew. There's that part towards the end where Gosling's girlfriend, who is like the daughter of bonafide fascists, and who is sliding into Judaism for no logical reason other than an unexplicable urge, says something like 'What if surrendering to God is the best feeling we could ever have'. What if it is?

Every time I pass in front of the local synagogue [to be clear: there is no link between the movie's subject and my interest in Judaism] I get this nonsensical desire to just go inside and try with all my might to believe, to feel it, to lose myself into it. Or just go to a service and bask in the atmosphere. And then I remember I am an atheist, and feel like a weirdo and a fraud.

I am aware this is completely bizarre but some long Google searches have told me it's not really unheard of, so... I guess the questions are:

- am I, and the people who think like me, total loonies?
- does this make any sense to any of you? I guess this one is a question especially for the atheists who may be reading
- any thoughts from the theist side of the barricade?
- is this all a cry from a lost soul in the liquid world described by Zygmunt Bauman?

I suppose it makes a sort of sense, but it's at least foreign to me.

I didn't pay all that much attention to religion until I met my ex, who was Catholic. I ended up going to church and reading the Bible not out of any deep yearning myself, but just to see if I could find some way to stop my wife from crying at the thought of me going to Hell.

I never really had any pull toward religion, but when we got married, I at least thought the Catholic Church was relatively benign. As I got deeper into it, though, I became more and more repelled by it. It probably didn't help that shortly after I got married, the anti-gay rhetoric from the local diocese really kicked into high gear in the lead-up to the legalization of same-sex marriage. One particularly hateful sermon on the subject was what made me decide to stop kneeling in mass: I wouldn't kneel to the altar until I stopped feeling that it was being used to promote hatred.

Whenever I went to mass, I'd leave either depressed or angry. When I realized that going to mass and reading the Bible was actually pushing me further away from the Church, I stopped going.

So... I've never felt a pull toward God or religion. I've only ever ranged from apathy to revulsion.

 

[Underhill]

I don't believe in persecuting atheists. I do persuade and sometimes it works as with my granddaughter who claimed to be an atheist but after persuasion claims to be an agnostic.

An agnostic is just an atheist confronted. All atheist I know will acknowledge that there is an absurdly small chance a god of some kind exist. Most of them just don't think the chance worth acknowledging. I tend to agree with them. But this being a forum for debate I take the higher road...

 

[Muffled]

An agnostic is just an atheist confronted. All atheist I know will acknowledge that there is an absurdly small chance a god of some kind exist. Most of them just don't think the chance worth acknowledging. I tend to agree with them. But this being a forum for debate I take the higher road...

I believe that is because they are fantasizing about it instead of listening to the evidence. That was not my granddaughter's problem. School taught her that evoltion was a fact (when it is only a theory) and that seemed at odds to her bible school teaching that God created everything. I conviced her that the theory had not been proven and could not negate the fact that God created everything.

 

[Underhill]

I believe that is because they are fantasizing about it instead of listening to the evidence. That was not my granddaughter's problem. School taught her that evoltion was a fact (when it is only a theory) and that seemed at odds to her bible school teaching that God created everything. I conviced her that the theory had not been proven and could not negate the fact that God created everything.

We aren't going to agree on this. But evolution is much more than 'only a theory'. By most measures it is law. The only thing holding it back are those who disagree for non scientific reasons. Every evidence I have ever heard of supports it and there is no evidence that it is not factual after many decades of intense investigation.

And while I may not be able to negate the fact that some god may have created everything (disproving something so vague is a fools game), I can make a very good case that the god of the bible didn't do it. Just the fact that we can see stars millions of light years away disproves the bibles creation story.

 

[Muffled]

We aren't going to agree on this. But evolution is much more than 'only a theory'. By most measures it is law. The only thing holding it back are those who disagree for non scientific reasons. Every evidence I have ever heard of supports it and there is no evidence that it is not factual after many decades of intense investigation.

And while I may not be able to negate the fact that some god may have created everything (disproving something so vague is a fools game), I can make a very good case that the god of the bible didn't do it. Just the fact that we can see stars millions of light years away disproves the bibles creation story.

I believe there is evidence of change. Proving that those changes are evoltion is a different story.

I believe many are mistaken because there are two creation stories. The first is the creation of everything and the second the (re) creation of Adam and Eve. There is no timeline on the first creation and the second creation takes place while there are thousands of people on earth.

 

[Underhill]

I believe there is evidence of change. Proving that those changes are evoltion is a different story.

I believe many are mistaken because there are two creation stories. The first is the creation of everything and the second the (re) creation of Adam and Eve. There is no timeline on the first creation and the second creation takes place while there are thousands of people on earth.

Of course there is a timeline for the first creation. You have to edit the bible pretty heavily to believe otherwise. So the first creation is demonstratively false and the second is nowhere in the bible. But that is a popular story now among believers.

 

[Muffled]

Of course there is a timeline for the first creation. You have to edit the bible pretty heavily to believe otherwise. So the first creation is demonstratively false and the second is nowhere in the bible. But that is a popular story now among believers.

I believe you should show me where it says so but I don't believe it is there other than an ambiguous "in the beginning."

 

[Underhill]

I believe you should show me where it says so but I don't believe it is there other than an ambiguous "in the beginning."

I know what you are trying to say. You are trying to change the interpretation that has been taught for the last 600 years or so. Instead of 6 days, you want to claim it is 6 time periods or some other nonsense.

I went to sunday school, attended private christian schools and went on to bible college. My parents are missionaries. So I have a pretty good idea what the bible says and how it has been taught.

But yes. If you choose to change the interpretation to fit the facts then of course you can sort of make it work. But, like it or not, the bible is clear. 7 days, and then it offers a handy genealogy going from adam to jesus. (According to my grandmother, who was a genealogist, she could trace our family back to Adam.)

But on both ends it makes no sense from a factual perspective. There is no way the world was made in 7 days, but even ignoring that, there is no way there is only 10,000 years (give or take) between the first man and my grandmother. The first you might write off as interpretation. But the genealogy is about as clear cut as they come.

 

[BenTheBeliever]

Hello! First post here. I am a woman, early twenties, atheist. It's been some time now, a couple of years maybe, that I've found myself in a weird situation that looks like it's shared by a number of people.

I was raised culturally Catholic by a vaguely observant mother and a non-observant, completely disinterested
father. I remember being bored and skeptic during religion class in elementary school already (also cracking
blasphemous jokes about The Jesus, which landed me in trouble in various occasions) and when I was about 11 I just declared I didn't believe in any of that stuff and that I was an atheist. My parents basically shrugged. I spent the following few years being the obnoxious atheist kid trying to 'convert' people to the brave new godless world I had discovered for myself. When I got to about 17 I had gotten all of the militant attitude out of my system and I just kept quiet about my lack of belief. It also became dramatically easier when everybody around me declared their atheism too. I'm not lying when I say that about eighty percent of people in my social circles are atheists or pretty hard agnostics (although ours is a historically deeply Catholic European country).

I've always been deeply interested about religion. At first in a combative, know-your-enemy way when I was twelve or thirteen, and later on from philosophical, historical, anthropological standpoints. It's been a couple of years now that I've found myself living the reluctant atheist paradox.

I believe that atheism has been wildly over-rated, as far as human happiness goes. I would gladly swap my sadly unwavering belief in science and rationality and Russell's teapot for the warm comfort of believing in some kind of higher power permeating all matter visible and invisible. I wish there was a Creator, and that I could believe in it, and pay tribute to it; but what I feel is also not about a personal God per se, if that makes any sense. I could be content, I think, even believing in a Spinozian God, the pantheist type. I feel actual longing for the ritualistic aspect of religion, the act of elevating every day to the divine through rites, and coming together with other people, sharing a community, a deeply felt idea, instead of just counting 'paper-thin' days down till the end, as a lone atom without any bonds to a higher, older, holier kind of community that predates my birth and will exist after me. I guess it's not even about the afterlife. I'm not afraid of death, the nothingness (although I do feel a bitter pang when I consider the annihilation without chance of return or reunion of everyone I love). I guess I just dearly wish there was more to this physical realm: sense, truth, some kind of reason for it all, or purpose, something under, between, the matter, a coherent principle; that I could believe in the existance of this principle, and that I could truthfully and joyfully pay my tributes to it.

There is also another level to my longing, in the sense that religion is just so damn fascinating and bizarre and beautiful. I can't help but be fascinated by the religious (and observant) mindset and envious, in some ways, of the richness, depths and beauty of its best manifestations (although that doesn't stop me from being annoyed and horrified by the horrors and backwardness inflicted on the rest of humankind by the fundamentalists).

The funny thing is that I think the turning point for me was watching a pretty popular movie, The Believer, the one with Ryan Gosling as a Nazi self-hating Jew. There's that part towards the end where Gosling's girlfriend, who is like the daughter of bonafide fascists, and who is sliding into Judaism for no logical reason other than an unexplicable urge, says something like 'What if surrendering to God is the best feeling we could ever have'. What if it is?

Every time I pass in front of the local synagogue [to be clear: there is no link between the movie's subject and my interest in Judaism] I get this nonsensical desire to just go inside and try with all my might to believe, to feel it, to lose myself into it. Or just go to a service and bask in the atmosphere. And then I remember I am an atheist, and feel like a weirdo and a fraud.

I am aware this is completely bizarre but some long Google searches have told me it's not really unheard of, so... I guess the questions are:

- am I, and the people who think like me, total loonies?
- does this make any sense to any of you? I guess this one is a question especially for the atheists who may be reading
- any thoughts from the theist side of the barricade?
- is this all a cry from a lost soul in the liquid world described by Zygmunt Bauman?

It kind of sounds like you hunger for a one on one personally relationship with God. I believe there is emptyness in us that truly only God can fill. As a born again I know the feeling of emptyness and the feeling you get when you find God. It changes your life. I hope and pray you find him. Just know that if you seek you shall find