What an atheist is, for Splendour

[MaxWeiss]

Note: for some reason, when I preview the post, quotation marks are always changed to ". So just assume " means something's quoted.

Splendour keeps posting all this weird stuff, and it's clogging the forum IMHO, so I am going to try to answer him, since he stated in one of his posts that he is just trying to find out "what makes an atheist tick".

I can't speak for all of course, but I've found most vocal atheists who have jumped on the Dawkins/Harris/Hitchens bandwagon to be similar to myself.

I don't believe that there is a god, or any higher power, being, or whatever. That's because I see no evidence for this. "Feeling" he is there or "knowing" or wanting it to be true do not make it more likely. Although there are many things that I don't understand and/or things which do not yet have an explanation--or may never have an explanation (how the universe began, for example)-- those do not necessitate god. The "god of the gaps" has been closed throughout history and these are just larger gaps. I would find the notion --if it were published in a science magazine-- of our universe being the singularity of a black hole in a larger universe to be infinitely more likely than a creator, because (assuming it was published) there is some kind of physical researched data which that hypothesis might reasonably fit. Again though, even if we find no answers, that does not in any way invoke the necessity of a god.

I do not wish I could believe in god. I find such majesty in the universe as it is, and I also see the irrational and pointless harm faith (not just religion, but individual faith) does to the world. I get "hope" not through god, but through seeing people be decent to each other and teaming up to do good things--because they know the benefits of being kind and decent.

I would discard evolution in an instant if new fossils and data and analysis showed it to be incorrect. Those things have shown it to be true; thus, I believe it to be the best fitting explanation we have and am sure it will continue to perform well under further scrutiny.

Now then, on to the false dichotomy of reason and emotion. Logic and emotion are not mutually exclusive. I derive much pleasure from my ability to make better decisions in my everyday life, and I'm sure my life is better due to the decisions I have made. When I have emotional needs, they are factored into my thought process and weighted appropriately.

I am creative and find "divine" inspiration just like anybody else. My analytical abilities and my ability analyze various inspirations or creative thoughts in no way detracts from them or hinders my ability to have such thoughts--it simply allows me to view them from a logical view point. I play the saxophone very well and find that my thorough knowledge of various scales and techniques allows me to better express whatever ideas I have while soloing--the fact that I can analyze the chord structure after the fact does not negate its beauty or emotional impact.

I consider myself a moral person. I have sacrificed many things which would help me in order to help others. This in turn helps me for many reasons: the emotional gratification I get, the betterment of humanity, and of course it makes me a person who other people want to help. I rarely lie because the truth just makes life easier. All of this also goes hand in hand with the philosophy of not doing things which you would not want society at large to do. It's all about reciprocity and the mutual benefits. I would act the same if laws against rape, theft, murder, etc. were all repealed.

The fact that I will one day cease to exist does not bother me at all. It inspires me to do what I can while I'm here. I figure if a person can do the following three things, he has led a successful life: treat the people you care about with love, leave a lasting positive contribution to the world, and be happy. Those three things will give you a good life, give those you care about a good life, and give the chance at a good life to future humans. After survival, I believe general human happiness to be the only important goal, since in 10 billion years anything we do probably won't matter anyway. While we're here, we might as well enjoy it.

I hope I have cleared things up for you Splendour. The majesty of the cosmos and the beauty of the nature world far exceeds any emotional high I would receive from "knowing" the god who looks after one meaningless pale blue dot.

[MidGe]

Great post, college kid,

I understand where you come from. I would like however to add a bit to it and showing what differences exist within atheism.

My view is that there is no god worthy of worship, regardless of any awe that I may and do feel about the cosmos. Unfortunately that awe is totally undermined by the amount of suffering I see in sentient beings, people and animal alike. I cannot for one instant believe that the cause of this could be intelligent, benevolent and omnipotent. Given this, whether there is a final cause to things or not, with all my heart, humanity and intelligence, I have to reject it having those three qualities and thus worshiping it would be the equivalent of theists worshiping the devil. What is more is, that if the reward for worship of this entity is eternal life in contact with that monstrosity, give me hell or lack of eternal life any day, I could not withstand it!

[xSCWx]

You missed the tl;dr option! [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[Splendour]

Thank you for taking the time to make a well thought out answer College Kid instead of the cryptic, unintelligible,polemic and off the cuff answers I have mostly been getting the past few days...

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
would discard evolution in an instant if new fossils and data and analysis showed it to be incorrect. Those things have shown it to be true; thus, I believe it to be the best fitting explanation we have and am sure it will continue to perform well under further scrutiny.

[/ QUOTE ]

The general form of this thought is the toughest thing for a theist to grasp, actually perhaps not possible to grasp as a theist.
The concept of essentially not holding any beliefs as fixed and having the rest of reality conform. This provisional position approach, where views are taken as "assumed to be true, so far, by the evidence" and changing them when the evidence leads elsewhere. iow, 'true' is not 'TrVth' but simply a holding pattern.
For a theist, it'd be like being tossed around, lost on an unknown sea.
Descartes assumed too much.

luckyme

[Splendour]

I guess we are just apples and oranges luckyme...You appear to care a lot more about science than I do...I care more about God...To me God is what made science possible...

[qwnu]

[ QUOTE ]
I guess we are just apples and oranges luckyme...You appear to care a lot more about science than I do...I care more about God...To me God is what made science possible...

[/ QUOTE ]
I think this is an interesting reply, since luckyme didn't mention "science" at all in his post.

I hesitate to speak for others, but I took his reply to be more generally about using an evidence-based approach to discover knowledge and truth. This is obviously an important aspect of "science" but it's certainly not exclusive to it.

Put another way, we all use this "scientific" approach a thousand times a day to make all kinds of decisions. This seems unrelated to "caring about God".

I think all sane people recognize that this evidence-based approach to knowledge is correct, but religious people consider it to be incomplete. Non-religious people do not understand why this is.

Religious people often see scientific thinking as dogmatic and constrained. One example from the link you posted in the other thread:

[ QUOTE ]
(believe it or not [formal logic] can come in other forms than what you were “trained” to encounter.) - and it certainly contains philosophy - (though it may be a bit foreign to your closed mind.)

[/ QUOTE ]
In other words, reliance on "formal logic" will only get you so far. Ironically, my reliance on "formal logic" is what causes me to reject this notion.

It reminds me a little of what's going on in Africa, where high-ranking health officials in at least a couple of countries are rejecting western medicine with respect to AIDS drugs and instead promoting herbal tonics and other traditional therapies. When asked whether it was wise to reject established scientific approaches, one person replied to the effect that the journalist asking the question was trapped in a Western mindset and that Africans were not constrained in that way.

This is sad, but to me it's no different than rejecting western medicine and praying to God to save you from sickness.

Also, to OP: the answer is "good post, but probably still a waste of time". [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[tame_deuces]

Well, I can throw in my two cents also. I think the idea of god was a simplified view of the universe that was actually a good idea once. Common knowledge can unite societies just like common ethics, common culture, common trade etc. can. I also happen to like many of the ethical and normative ideas that follow from christianity and other of the major religions.

Now my opinion is that the belief in god has run it's course. We need to leave that idea behind, as it is like an anchor around or foot in the development of mankind. We have advancements we need to make in philosophy, technology, biology for us to make it on this piece of rock, and I think most major religious beliefs hamper those developments and cause alot of unnecessary grief and harm.

As you might have guessed I don't buy into absolute truths, since I logically think our knowledge is lightyears away from the level it needs to be on to figure out any absolutes. Structured religion therefore seems like a completely illogical notion to me. If we haven't figured out yet what runs the universe, they didn't figure it out some millenias ago either.

I guess some would call me an agnostic since I don't believe in absolutes yet, and others a strong atheist since I deny the existence of the gods of the major religions. A paradox maybe? I don't really know nor care.

[Splendour]

tame_deuces you said:
Now my opinion is that the belief in god has run it's course. We need to leave that idea behind, as it is like an anchor around or foot in the development of mankind. We have advancements we need to make in philosophy, technology, biology for us to make it on this piece of rock, and I think most major religious beliefs hamper those developments and cause alot of unnecessary grief and harm.

What makes you think we have the moral values to handle these advances in science and technology? Every time we develop some new technology we seem to let the genie out of the bottle for abuse of the new technology...Did you ever wonder if technology is outstripping our ability to meet it? Evolution took million of years for changes to occur and people to adapt...don't you think maybe we are evolving technologies too quickly for people to adapt...I know old people that can't even handle cell phones today and refuse to use computers...

[tame_deuces]

The short and simplified version is that I don't.

We need advances in philosophy, culture and learning as well. Basically human knowledge is now changing so rapidly that one is talking about knowledge learnt to specialize in a profession might become obsolete only 10-20 years after. Scientific papers are being published at insane rates compared to only 20 years ago, and nothing seems to indicate that this incredible stream of information is going to slow down or stop accelerating anytime soon. New research show that it will not be unusual for people to hold 10-20 different jobs in just as many years.

We have learnt to integrate ourselves closer and closer with computers and other information technology to handle the pressure, but at some point we are going to need radical new thinking and philosophy as well.

People are going to have to learn how to learn in the most efficient and effective manners possible. Learning knowledge will become supbar to learning how to rationalize new information in the quickest and most efficient ways possible. Humans beings might very need to augment themselves and improve on our functions to manage these difficulties, and it is not really some scifi scenario. Our complete reliance of technology today is really complete integration also, just not of our bodies. Most people in the modern west today can't survive without post 1900-technology.

The furthering of integration with technology might become a necessesity for this to function properly. Especially when more and more of the world is going to join in on the fun and the information streams are going to be absolutely enormous. And we can't slow down, we really don't have the time to. We have some problems to solve and probably some new ones on the way.