Do you sometimes feel you NEED to believe in something else out there in spite of being an atheist intellectually? (mission, moral)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Okay, but in your previous post it was a specific reference to you wanting to get back the feeling of your old religion, not to romantic choices.
The heart may work fine if your only goal is pleasing your emotions, it does not work so well when the question is cosmic truth.
Below are my posts pre-conversation with you, on this thread. I think I implied in them that I do not think my old religion was true.
While I did not specifically say I do not think the heart is a good path to truth...I don't think I implied it was a good path to truth anywhere either.
End with the potato-gun shots. Bring on the bazooka. Get many of your complaints mentioned early. I don't want to be bickering about this like an old married couple weeks from now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clintone
Oh...I have not been real impressed by the transition from my old religion to atheism. Atheism seems basically like my old religion, but slightly less motivating
Stupid reality
The problem is that my old religion was a personal construct and therefore cannot be transferred to others without being corrupted. I can try...but then half the converts will think: You mean there's someone in the sky in control of reality? THAT MONSTER GIVES PEOPLE CANCER!!!!
A personal type of religion I think can be a good thing. The problem is, it's difficult to tell who it will be a good thing for, and if we try to spread our personal religion to others...it becomes absolutely nothing like our original personal religion.
So, I'm stuck as an atheist, and there's no way to convert anyone else to a good variety of religion without it becoming corrupted and probably turning into some variant of terrifying sky-beast megalomaniac
Ah well...
I don't think constructing your own personal religion is out of the question insofar as potentially good ideas go.
It has always been part of the power of humanity to be able to construct our purpose for the universe. Religious beliefs may seem more real...but through atheism we are more fully in control. I build gods, and design them to make this universe more interesting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clintone
This seems wise. My old religion was pretty much exactly like Rider's Pantheon's religion...with his idea of "Creating and absorbing the deity". I'm glad he practices it, and someone else has found it. I'm trying to find my way back to it somehow...while combining it with my newfound knowledge of the universe.
Thinking with the head is not always the most useful path...I think. The heart works fine for many things.
While I did not specifically say I do not think the heart is a good path to truth...I don't think I implied it was a good path to truth anywhere either.
.
Well, I could take that clarification at face value and that would be the end of the discussion...or....for no constructive purpose whatsoever, I could insist that since it is possible to extract that implication from what you wrote, you are stuck with that position forever, and through an extended series of pointless off topic posts, I demand that you defend it.
Ultimately, everything is a "cognitive trick". One can choose to find a particular activity compelling regardless of whether doing so is objectively justifiable or whether it matches some particular cost / benefit formula. It is just as much a contrived perspective to decide that everything is meaningless and pointless, as to decide that some things are meaningful and worthwhile. There is no objective basis to make either determination, really.
Since we are feeling beings it just comes down to deciding to do things that feel good. It felt good to clean my desk yesterday -- despite the fact that already the next morning it's accumulating fresh dust, and I and my wife are likely the only two sentient beings in the universe who care a whit whether or not it's clean, or even exists, and we're all going to die anyway. Those considerations are irrelevant to my objective, which is to have an environment I find comfortable and orderly while I AM alive and functional, to meet my objective to be respectful and caring towards my wife's sensibilities, and to feel a small sense of accomplishment in finishing a task.
Look, if we are insignificant, mortal beings then we should have insignificant, mortal goals. It is the little things that end up making a big difference. You can't enjoy the little things until you accept your actual rather than imagined place in what passes for the great scheme of things. You have correctly discerned that life isn't about you (or about anything) and that you won't be here long. That can either be something you deny by rendering everything else sterile because you don't like the way things are -- or it can be something you accept and let go of your personal immortality projects and just be as you are for whatever time is left to you.
The problem you define about atheist denial is not in itself wrong; there are plenty of atheists who deny the existential reality of the human condition. But there are also plenty of atheists who accept and embrace it. In both classes of atheist you have the same seemingly reality-denying behaviors (join a club, find your passion, smell the roses, yadda-yadda) but with very different motivations. The denialist is trying to distract from something they don't want to face; the one who has found acceptance is simply doing what I call "living within one's true scope".
What you see as "denial", is actually (in people who accept the fact of their mortality) a rational response to acceptance of What Is. And what you see as an overarching Cloud of Doom upon your life is ultimately a rejection of What Is. For me, at least, the key was to let go of the last vestiges of my insistence that I am something that I am not: an immortal being with some kind of rightful destiny -- and you don't really believe that until you stop torturing yourself with goals that are beyond you.
It is possible to train your mind to give attention to, and stay with, small pleasures, and experience them fully, so that your mind is constantly fed with positives it can actually embrace and enjoy instead of always being famished for things just beyond its grasp and/or contingent upon things just (and sometimes far) beyond its control or even influence.
Another personal example: last night I lay quietly with my head on my wife's lap, toying with her hair while we discussed how best to handle an uncomfortable situation with my adult daughter in a way that would maintain healthy boundaries for everyone. I could have focused on what a downer it is, at the end of the day when I am exhausted, to have to deal yet again with the self-absorbed, dysfunctional she-beast that I foolishly inflicted on an unsuspecting world, and regard my years of trying to be a good father to her as yet another waste of the mythical best years of my life. I could have focused on how much more, primally speaking, I'd rather be having steamy sex with my wife than discussing the decidedly un-sexy problem we were discussing. I could have focused on how I didn't get a couple of things done that I actually wanted to earlier in the day. Instead I enjoyed the intimacy that was actually present in that moment, the privilege of having someone else care enough about me to want to give me their perspective and (in)validation, and the companionable working out of common, shared goals. I actually went to bed with a smile on my face. The choice was entirely mine. Increasingly, I'm learning how to decide what to think about / dwell on / value so that I am less disappointed, frustrated, angry and avoidant.
I am not there, by a long shot ... and I still have my moments. But I feel I'm on the right track.
For what it's worth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by old_cold
Can't rep you right now but want to say this is an excellent post...one that goes beyond just the god or no god argument and practicing it would be beneficial to everyone.
As noted the OPs thread title is different to the question the OP asked in the first post. I will answer the thread title. I have felt no such need, and my failure to see a single reason ever to think there is a god, an after life, or that any of the religions are anything but tosh.... has not left any hole in my life mentally, physically or emotionally that I can discern.
That's it, absolutely. It's like asking whether I feel the need to believe that there is an advanced civilization on Mars - someone we can talk to and advise with our problems - use a bit of advanced technology to help - just so we know we are not alone.
Put like that, it could sound like a real need we all have (if only Deep Down inside) or there is something wrong with us if we don't. But in fact there is no shred of evidence there is any such thing so the generality of us don't fret about it.
It's like that with the 'Something Out There' aka 'God'.
I have to answer the OP's question.
Do I feel as if I HAVE to believe in something?
No. I don't.
I don't HAVE to believe in anything I truly don't want to.
I believe what I can taste, feel with my hands, see with my eyes
actually interact with.
I am waiting for the rest of the world and humanity to catch up.
Mabey human beings, (you note I say mabey), will stop bombing each
other quite so much, well, I can always hope anyway.
I guess if not for religion, the next thing will be strictly race instead.
Oh well, that's just the way it is.
Eh, the most enlightened know that any such attempt at trivial attachment is merely a cognitive trick one is attempting to play on oneself in order to get through the day/days/years/period of time until you inevitably die. Such knowledge has a way of undermining the enjoyment that one might derive from engagement in the activity in question (engagement which never or almost never reaches the status of "flow state", given ever-present back-of-the-mind awareness of one's true agenda in partaking in said activity).
But the more enlightened than even that will understand that you are the very judge of what is and isn't trivial to you, and of how much you care about immortality or how much you are willing to accept eventual death. Knowledge about the harms of drugs has a nagging way of undermining the enjoyment that one gets from them too, doesn't mean that knowledge is really a problem or that playing a sport is meaningless because you are partly doing it to get away from baser desires.
My pastors/instructors said the same. I always had a wild imagination and I entertained personalized visions of "heaven" with some significant enthusiasm. I never thought it would get boring because I imagined it in such a way that it would not be allowed to get boring.
Those ideations are incredibly likely to remain the most joyous thoughts I ever had.
I think I might have had an even wilder imagination. I just chose to appreciate things that aren't pure hedonism. There is often no value in something that lasts forever, it will always be there for you to go to it later.
Being in these Hedonist Heavens just seemed like the saddest thing to me, to forget the suffering of my kin and loves simply out of selfish and base desires to "feel good" regardless of reality. I began to imagine such heavens as being drug houses that made people unable to care about suffering or other wrong things that they could go out and fix.
Then I was exposed to the "you will worship and praise God for all eternity" idea and though "Church forever" didn't sound quite that nice, even if drugged to enjoy it. How could you even enjoy Hedonistic selfish pleasures while at the same time "worshiping and praising God," it didn't make sense, the idea was that hedonism in Earth didn't praise God but that in heaven, it would. I couldn't reconcile such logic. Hedonism is either bad or good, it can't be bad here but good there, then morals wouldn't be objective, but instead subjective and as such "made-up." It would all just be a synthetic pretension, instead of an emergent reality. I decided I preferred the beauty of an emergent reality, over an eternal and synthetic pretension.
The most joyous thought I ever had was finding Agnostic Truth. Perhaps we are simply different people, or simply in different frames of mind.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
