The Unreasonableness of Atheism

[_ajax18]

This "boring atheist" is a concoction of Dart's imagination and based on his preconceptions.

I haven't met many atheist tackling existential questions either. For the most part all I see them do is tear down those who do.

Wow. Sartre might have been amused to hear that. I would suggest that Atheists or Agnostics that have tackled existentialism far beyond what most Religionists have ever attempted to do.

I admit, I haven't read Sartre. I was mainly referring to this board. It seems like most atheist say that we shouldn't concern ourselves with existential questions. Ironically I hear Church leaders do this as well once they have you where they want you.

Go ahead and shoot. Why are we here? Where are we going? What is the purpose of life? Maybe boring or indifference is what results from having less than satisfying answers to these questions.

[_EAllusion]

dup

Hey. You edited Voltaire in your list. You sneaky, sneaky man. Now my comment just seems weird.

ajax -

You are aware that saying there is no grand (teleological) purpose to life is an answer to an "existential" question just as any other, right? There's a difference between not grappling with these questions and not coming to answers you personally find satisfactory.

[_Ren]

Why are we here? Where are we going? What is the purpose of life? Maybe boring or indifference is what results from having less than satisfying answers to these questions.

I like the use of the word 'satisfying' here.

...not 'logically sound'.
...not 'consistent'.
...not 'matching to evidence'.

...just 'satisfying'.

It's 'satisfying' to see the 'good guys' win the day at the end of film. Which is why hollywood usually pushes for such an ending.
...myself, I call it 'boring'...

[_antishock8]

I admit, I haven't read Sartre. I was mainly referring to this board. It seems like most atheist say that we shouldn't concern ourselves with existential questions. Ironically I hear Church leaders do this as well once they have you where they want you.

Go ahead and shoot. Why are we here? Where are we going? What is the purpose of life? Maybe boring or indifference is what results from having less than satisfying answers to these questions.

Well, it's quite possible most of the Atheists here have worked these issues out, and just don't feel like re-hasing them. I see a few LDS posters here that remind me of my own process I went through that took about 10 years to work out.

That being said, I'll answer your questions:

Why are we here?

Well, we're here because our parents had sex. We're just like every other living thing that lives, replicates itself, and then dies. We're following a very natural pattern to Life: Replication.

Human beings, homo sapiens, are genetic variants of a lifeform that is a genetic variant of another lifeform. Adaptation to a given environment is another word for Natural Selection. Given enough Natural Selection (or Adaptation) you have Speciation.... Or eventually... Evolution.

Where are we going?

We're going to where everyone goes: Death. That's it. Everyone dies. Everything dies. Every species goes extinct. Every Sun burns out. Everything experiences entropy. And that's that. No amount of Wishful Thinking is going to change the reality we all face here on the ground. We're going to die.

What is the purpose of life?

There is no inherent purpose of life. Life is. Life replicates, adapts, and then dies. So you can either assign that reality as the "purpose" of life, or choose the former notion.

Maybe boring or indifference is what results from having less than satisfying answers to these questions.

No. These are great questions that should be asked and answered honestly. I would recommend you look into nihilism. That's my answer to existentialism.

[_beastie]

There is no inherent purpose of life. Life is. Life replicates, adapts, and then dies. So you can either assign that reality as the "purpose" of life, or choose the former notion.

[insert variation of whine: but I don't LIKE that answer!]

[_ajax18]

Fair enough, but what motivates you to keep living when life is not so good? Or do you believe that life is always better than death?

[_Moniker]

Ajax, I haven't fully formed my answers to those questions, yet it doesn't mean that I don't think about them, I just can't say I know, precisely, and truthfully, I may not want to know the answers -- I'd rather question.

Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man to exist; and, on the other hand, it is by pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is able to exist. Since man is thus self-surpassing, and can grasp objects only in relation to his self-surpassing, he is himself the heart and center of his transcendence. There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity. This relation of transcendence as constitutive of man (not in the sense that God is transcendent, but in the sense of self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in such a sense that man is not shut up in himself but forever present in a human universe) – it is this that we call existential humanism. This is humanism, because we remind man that there is no legislator but himself; that he himself, thus abandoned, must decide for himself; also because we show that it is not by turning back upon himself, but always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim which is one of liberation or of some particular realisation, that man can realize himself as truly human.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archi ... sartre.htm

[_Tarski]

dup

Hey. You edited Voltaire in your list. You sneaky, sneaky man. Now my comment just seems weird.

Tee hee. Actually, I probably have a couple more marginal deists or pantheists mixed in there. The thing is, one can read hundreds of pages of the philosophies of some of these guys and find no evidence that they are anything but atheists. They might espouse materialism, evolution, determinism, deny revelation, deny the church and the Bible, give a secular history of the rise of gods, devils and spirit as a consequence of primitive prescientific thinking and superstition, and then, later, declare themselves deists.
Go figure.

In any case, deists seem pretty close to atheists to me, especially when one considers that it often just amounts to the affirmation of some abstract impersonal first cause and even then it may just be, in some cases, just because the thinker predated Darwin.

[_Gadianton]

Ajax,

Life is not always better than death. Is there some virtue in living in horror just for the sake of living?

Maybe you could explain what you mean by "existential" questions?

[_ajax18]

There is no inherent purpose of life. Life is. Life replicates, adapts, and then dies. So you can either assign that reality as the "purpose" of life, or choose the former notion.

[insert variation of whine: but I don't LIKE that answer!]

I'm still trying to understand why anyone likes that answer, besides it being true. I've had a very good life compared to many fellow human beings who have passed on. Yet I still need religion to help me push through it. Otherwise it's just not worth it. I wonder how my ancestors walked into gunfire than with all their confederate money worthless, had to make a living with one leg. And yet he did, and left an inheritance as well.