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Old 11-20-2013, 02:14 PM
 
2,826 posts, read 2,356,587 times
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The Fray - You Found Me - YouTube

I can personally understand this sentiment. Guy is singing "where were you?" when his gf died. Look, every religion I know of comes from an emotional desire. For example:

Islam - Pride (Submission is seen as a solution to pride, but they also ironically have a problem with it, since the Quran is seen as the final word)
Christianity - Altruism (There's a powerful desire to save people, even people who don't wanna be saved)
Fundamentalism - Fear (You're going to hell unless you change your ways)
Jews - Duty (Logic as an emotional state. The world adds up because of the law given by God)

You get the idea, and it pretty much extends for every religion.

And at times, I've seriously considered becoming an atheist. But for me, no it isn't logical. It's emotional.

Atheism - Despair (At my worst feelings, I most seriously believe that God might not be out there. Why wouldn't someone like that stop bad stuff from happening to those I love? That sorta thing. But then I realize that it is precisely because God is out there, and cruel beyond measure that my loved ones die while I continue to live on and on despite almost dying of cold/exposure/food poison/almost crashing into stuff in my car/even trying to work myself to death isn't working)

But atheism because it "just seemed rational"? No, that sounds like an excuse.

Thoughts?

Last edited by bulmabriefs144; 11-20-2013 at 02:31 PM..
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Old 11-20-2013, 02:19 PM
 
Location: Victoria TX
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Is it Atheism, or Logic that you don't grasp?
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Old 11-20-2013, 02:19 PM
 
Location: NJ
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144 View Post

The reason I believe people believe in atheism, is ironically the same reason people turn to God. They encounter sadness. Instead of saying "I have hope some God will help them after life" they said "there's no hope! All is lost..."

Thoughts?
I think you are pretty clueless as to why people are atheists.
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Old 11-20-2013, 02:23 PM
 
Location: Victoria TX
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Logical Atheism stems from applying the principles of logic to question of theology. When a person is in a spiritual need for an emergency fix, logical analysis usually falls somewhere out side the available remedies.

So Logical Atheism arises when a person is in a lifeset where logic can be applied without having any direct or immediate effect on the person's spiritual needs. Something like applying mathematical principles to the roll of dice when you have no money on the table, which is far more likely to yield a valid result than when you have a stake in the game.
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Old 11-20-2013, 02:28 PM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,773 posts, read 13,311,795 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
Logical Atheism stems from applying the principles of logic to question of theology. When a person is in a spiritual need for an emergency fix, logical analysis usually falls somewhere out side the available remedies.

So Logical Atheism arises when a person is in a lifeset where logic can be applied without having any direct or immediate effect on the person's spiritual needs. Something like applying mathematical principles to the roll of dice when you have no money on the table, which is far more likely to yield a valid result than when you have a stake in the game.
I can't rep you at the moment but this is a great post, thanks.
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Old 11-20-2013, 02:28 PM
 
12,535 posts, read 15,158,141 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144 View Post
The reason I believe people believe in atheism, is ironically the same reason people turn to God. They encounter sadness. Instead of saying "I have hope some God will help them after life" they said "there's no hope! All is lost..."

Thoughts?
People don't "believe in" atheism. Atheism is not believing in a deity.

You either believe in a deity, you don't know if you believe in a deity, or you don't believe in a deity. Those are your three choices. Pick one and have a nice day.
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Old 11-20-2013, 02:47 PM
 
Location: Type 0.73 Kardashev
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The lack of belief in a deity is as rational as a lack of belief in leprechauns.

Your desperate need to be part of 'something bigger' has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with your preening self-absorption.

I'm alive.
Not only am I alive, I have had the good fortune to be born in a liberal democracy of the 20th century, amidst the security of a stable society, modern medicine, and a widespread protection of rights, education and employment and food and shelter almost for the taking.
Despair?
What pitiable nonsense.
The joys of simply living are manifest.
A fine meal, a walk in the woods.
Interacting with my children, making love to my wife.
Playing with one of my cats, watching the sunset, reading a good book, riding a bike.
Those things are sublime, all of them.

But for you, that's not enough. You demand more. You demand some cosmic plan of which you are an integral part, with a grand orchestrater who has an important part all for you to play. That's nothing more than raging narcissism.
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Old 11-20-2013, 03:39 PM
 
Location: Canada
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You say you decide things based on emotions, and that each of these belief systems stems from an emotion. I see where you're coming from here, but you must also realize that each of these religions is making claims about absolute reality, and thus a maximum of one of them can be factually correct about the real world. Thus, it doesn't matter if a person is prideful, dutiful, fearful etc, they all live in the same world where the same things happen in real life, and their emotional state has nothing to do with that reality. You can feel strongly prideful, but if for example Christianity describes the real, objective world the way it really is, it doesn't matter a lick because you'd still be wrong. Atheism mostly comes from people examining the physical world from a dispassionate scientific perspective. From deciding to believe things when there is hard evidence to back them up only, and to always be willing to reevaluate those beliefs in light of new evidence. It also comes from seeing why, in general, sometimes people believe that things are true that we have later established are not true. People learn to think about objective reality this way as something external to themselves which has nothing to do with whether it makes them personally happy or sad. It's bigger then us and our lives. This is why people say they looked at the world objectively, saw no necessity for God to exist or for there being any strong evidence for this unusual supernatural phenomenon, and that they dismissed the idea as a result. Because reality doesn't care about how we feel about it, it simply is.
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Old 11-20-2013, 03:42 PM
 
Location: Sitting beside Walden Pond
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What a great post, Unsettomati.

I agree with you. As I have gotten older, more and more about life seems to be sublime.
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Old 11-20-2013, 03:43 PM
 
Location: Flippin AR
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144 View Post
And at times, I've seriously considered becoming an atheist. But for me, no it isn't logical. It's emotional.

Atheism - Despair (At my worst feelings, I most seriously believe that God might not be out there. Why wouldn't someone like that stop bad stuff from happening to those I love? That sorta thing. But then I realize that it is precisely because God is out there, and cruel beyond measure that my loved ones die while I continue to live on and on despite almost dying of cold/exposure/food poison/almost crashing into stuff in my car/even trying to work myself to death isn't working)

But atheism because it "just seemed rational"? No, that sounds like an excuse. Nobody comes to this conclusion in a vacuum. They might come to weak faith, or religious indifference in a vacuum, but not an outright rejection.

The reason I believe people believe in atheism, is ironically the same reason people turn to God. They encounter sadness. Instead of saying "I have hope some God will help them after life" they said "there's no hope! All is lost..."

Thoughts?
From the wording of your post, you believe that God exists. You don't get to consciously make a choice of believing in religion or "becoming an atheist"--your mind makes the decision itself, on a subconscious level, based on your life experiences, what you have studied, how logical your mind is, and well you can avoid applying logic to your religious beliefs. Because you believe in a God, you think atheism is not logical--I don't believe in any God, and I cannot see how any logical/rational person can believe in one. All we're really saying that we believe as we do because that's what makes sense to us.

Atheism isn't about despair; it's not saying "There's no hope." It's saying that the world makes logical sense and is understandable. It's saying that THIS life is the valuable one, not a potential afterlife--you only live once, so don't waste your precious hours doing non-productive or unpleasant things (like praying, or offering up your suffering to God) because you think you're earning a better afterlife. It's saying that most humans are born with a conscience and those people will act appropriately in society because that gives them most personal satisfaction (and those born without a conscience act inappropriately even if they think they'll be punished in the afterlife).

Atheists are asking themselves: can I believe a hypothesis that there is absolutely no logical reason to believe and no evidence of; that is full of logical inconsistencies and contradictions; that historically developed because it served certain functions in society; simply because it would be "nice" if it were true? Atheists simply can't--no matter how much they wish it were true.

Psychologically, Atheism is about avoiding cognitive dissonance (the psychological stress that comes from trying to believe two things that are mutually exclusive). While it is true that religion has a way of psychologically "walling itself off" from logical analysis in the human mind (hence its continuing existence), very logical minds have such a huge problem with cognitive dissonance that the barriers eventually break. The less logical your mind, the less you will have a problem with cognitive dissonance--this is why the most brilliant engineers, scientists and intellectuals are much more likely to be atheists (though many won't admit it, to avoid societal censure). They can't understand human evolution and human history, and still think there is some supernatural entity out there with the power to change things (who for some reason stops give any verifiable indication that he exists once modern science explains how things actually work).

I grew up in a staunchly Roman Catholic family and never doubted the teachings of religion until I started studying evolution; I remember lying awake nights trying to reconcile the Genesis story with the human fossil record around the world. By the time I was through high school, all the evidence piling up on the side of science made me finally consider "What if there was no God--what if there was no supernatural entity to tweak things in answer to all those endless hours spent in prayer?" And the answer was obvious: reality was the same whether I prayed or not. Many years later, a decade-long scientific study involving over 1,800 hospital patients verified my conclusion (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/he...anted=all&_r=0).
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