I'm not Agnostic

[_GoodK]

I am not agnostic. I am an atheist. I don't think there is no god. I know there is no god. I know there is no god the same way I know a lot of other laws in our universe. I know there is no god. I know that most of the world knows that as well, they just won't admit because they also know something else. They will die. It freaks them out.

So, most people don't have the courage to admit there is no god and that they know it. They feel it -- they try and suppress it, and if you bring it up they get upset.

Life is filled with tragedy, and what's worse than tragedy is the unknown. It's filled with the unknown. Every time you get in a car or on a plane you could die. Every time Heath Ledger takes a nap there is a chance he won't wake up -- and when you see that happen to 28 year old young men who seem to be healthy, you think to yourself well that could be me, or my son, or my daughter, so -- we must make sense of it. We must create something.
Religious people, tell me this: If a few thousand years ago I came up with a religion or a god that said, "Hey everybody. Yeah... everything is good, love your neighbors, do unto others, stay out of trouble, and when you die that's about it. You just turn into dirt."
Tell me if that concept would have taken off. If it would have been embraced. Tell me if that would have went anywhere. No. Of course not, because we need this fairy tale. We are freaked out. We are the only animals on this planet that are aware of the fact that we are going to die. It's not only that, we've got it down to pretty much a science. It's not like the average person lives from 45 to 285 years old. No. When you go visit your 94 year old grandma in the nursing home, you don't know what she's got left but you know it isn't much. She knows it too. That's the way it works, and we are freaked out. It is the only thing we know. We have no reference point for "zero".
We can deal with anything, but zero.
Lose your legs, your hearing, your job, we can deal with that. We can put that into context. But zero, can't deal with that.
And that is what we are being asked to deal with from about the age of 8 on. Go ahead and live the next 80 years on this planet knowing that at the end of the journey there is a big fat zero and you can't wrap your brain around it.
Well, I'll tell you how people wrap their brain around it.

They lie to themselves.

They create a god and then they go through life and then a loved one dies and then tragedy strikes and whatever happens is all "his doing." And guys like me get yelled at for telling the truth. Please. I don't believe in god anymore than I believe in anything else that doesn't exist. So shoot me. And they quite possibly could, because they are that freaked out about their fairy tale and protecting their lie.

The other part is, people want to know where I get my evidence. What made me an atheist?
Nothing makes you an atheist. Not having a weird religious dogma funneled up your ass makes you an atheist. Nothing makes you an atheist.
Having a brain. Using deductive reason. Thinking rationally. That's what makes you an atheist. Nothing happened to me that made me an atheist.

It just doesn't make sense to smart people. It's the same reason why I don't like Poi. People that grew up eating Poi - a nasty salty tasteless root - they all love it. If you grow up eating it, you love Poi. If you've never had it, or didn't grow up loving Poi, then you don't love Poi. Religion doesn't make sense to people who didn't get it shoved into them early or who didn't kill someone and are trying to deal with it on death row.
The other thing is, people do that thing where they say, "Well, let the little people believe. It keeps them in line." Really? Does religion really keep people in line? How many people in jail are atheists? How many wars have been fought by atheists? And then, I don't like that message. I don't like the fact that someone says, "Well, guess what? We've installed a Styrofoam surveillance camera up in your room. That way your dad won't beat you anymore, because I put a fake camera up there so he thinks I can see what he's doing."

Do you really want that? You really want this sort of false eye in the sky keeping people in line? And by the way, does it really keep people in line? Of course not.

I want people who can think for themselves. I want people who won't steal because it's wrong, not because there is a fake Styrofoam camera in the sky wearing a robe and sandals hovering over them. I don't want you to kill because it is wrong. I don't want you to steal because it is wrong. And don't give me that, "Well who is to say what is wrong" nonsense. Who is to say what is up and what is down then, you idiot. If you want to de-construct the world until we are down to a bunch of cells running around, you can do that, but it's a ridiculous argument. There is obviously a logical right and wrong. There just is. That is why I am willing to pass judgements on other cultures. I can say that female genital mutilation is wrong. I don't care if it's your culture. I don't care if I understand it. I don't need God to come down and explain it to me. I know that it is wrong. I have brain cells. That's it.

There are two types of religious people - there's I'm just dumb and my parents are Catholic, so I am a Catholic. It's like, I'm from Wisconsin so I'm a Packers fan.

That's probably 90% of religion. My dad was a cheesehead, who do you want me to root for? That's exactly how it works.
So first off, wherever you were born, that's your team. That's about 90% of it. Then there is another small percentage of those with a mental disorder. I killed someone just out of high school and can't wrap my mind around it so I'm going to become a born-again this or that...

Then there are the super religious zealot people. To me, that is also a mental disorder. You have a problem.
By the way, you want to talk about child abuse, if I had a kid and didn't strap him into his car seat ten ways to Sunday on the way down to 7-11, Child Protective Services could come and take him away.

You have your kid wear the prayer shawl, put on the crappy hat, not use electricity on Saturdays, face Mecca, and kneel and pray 5 times a day, pollute their brain with ridiculous nonsense, essentially brainwashing them in a cult - yes all religions are a ridiculous cult - and that's perfectly fine. That's tradition. That's great.

If it were up to me, I would rather have a dad who hit the sauce every now and then and my face with the back of his hand every once in a while then these parents I see dressing their seven year old up like a mortician on Sunday and leading them into some building with no windows to talk to an imaginary character.

You realize that you are all nuts, right? Let me ask you this- What are the chances that you are all right? What are the chances that you lucked out and picked the lucky religion?
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[_antishock8]

That was a frickin' awesome post. I'm sorry I don't take 500 words to tell you that in a scholarly manner. I probably should so some people think this board is worthy of their time and attention, but whatev. Those people are the kind of people you described, and frankly I feel the same way you do about them. So puck 'em. Good on you for feeling and thinking the way you do.

[_LifeOnaPlate]

It seems you don't believe in God as conceptualized by most religions, then. But still, do you have any ultimate concern in life? Any feeling for an ultimate meaning? I'm not using these questions as an argument in behalf of the God I believe in, only as questions about your personal take on the purpose of life; it's greatest concerns, etc.

[_GoodK]

It seems you don't believe in God as conceptualized by most religions, then.

I don't believe in god at all, even a pantheistic "god is everywhere and everything" version.

But still, do you have any ultimate concern in life?

Of course. Happiness. Being happy is my ultimate concern.

Any feeling for an ultimate meaning?

Everything that I do to make myself happy - from being a good human being and showing compassion to others to ordering steak and eggs from room service in the Hilton - gives my life meaning.

When I came to terms with how fragile and short life is, life in general became a whole lot more meaningful.

[_Ray A]

I appreciate you sharing your ideas, GoodK. I can't say I'm atheist, but I do have infrequent agnostic moments, especially when I see death and suffering. As I get older, by the way, I fear death less and less, and in fact enjoy life more than I did in my 30s and 40s. It's not God who makes it this way, because an objective person might say I've had a s*** of a life, given all I've been through. I have become more skeptical with age, especially towards religion, but I'm not inclined to wipe the idea that there might still be something much, much greater than I am in this tiny speck in the Milky Way. So I leave options open there, purely based on reasoning, not some emotional rush of desire to survive death. That's the weird thing, I feared death more in my teens, 20s, 30s and 40s, than I do now.

I mentioned Phillip Adams before, one of Australia's most prominent and well-known atheists and debunkers of religion (he says he's been atheist since the age of five, he just couldn't get the "God-idea" in his head, though his father was a minister of religion). I think you might be interested in some correspondence he engaged with with Kevin Solway, who is, apparently the president of the Atheist Society of Australia. Solway questioned his "fitness" to remain a member of the Athiest Society, and Phillip replied:

From: Phillip Adams
To: Kevin Solway

10 August 1993

Dear Kevin,

Given your growing concern about my credentials as an atheist, I hereby resign as a patron of your Atheist Society. God forbid that I should hang around when I'm not wanted.

I've spent a life-time attacking religious beliefs and have not wavered from a view of the universe that many would regard as bleak. Namely, that it is a meaningless place devoid of deity.

However I'm unwilling simply to repeat the old arguments of the past when, in fact, God is a moving target and is taking all sorts of new shapes and forms. The arguments used against the long bow are not particularly useful when debating nuclear weapons, and the simple arguments against the old model gods are not sufficient when dealing with the likes of Davies et al.

For example, the notion that God didn't exist, doesn't exist but may come into existence through the spread of consciousness throughout the universe is too clever to be pooh-poohed along Bertrand Russel lines. And if I had the time I could give you half a dozen other scientific theologies that will need snappier footwork from the atheist of the future.

Birch is, in my view, a pretentious fart whose philosophies are opportunistic and unconvincing. If people can't see that, that's their problem. In the context of a hydra-headed SBS interview, one hopes that he hoists himself on his own petard.

Incidentally, if there's one thing more infuriating than a silly theologian it's an arid, doctrinaire atheist. I've had dealings with plenty of them over the years, including a famous monster from the US. To profess atheism is not to prove anything, let alone intellectual merit. Some of the narrowest, most dogmatic and silly people I've known have been atheists - or have loudly professed themselves Humanists or Rationalists.

Let the last contribution of your erstwhile patron be to warn you against intellectual arrogance. I've never believed, for a moment, that atheists have all the answers. Just that they pose better questions.

Cheers,

Phillip Adams

I'm not out to attack you, and see no reason why anyone should. In fact, perhaps weirdly, I sometimes admire people like you and Phillip, because it was really my "God delusion" that got me into so much trouble in life. I've tried to rationalise that "God wanted it that way", but now I realise that everything that went wrong in my life wasn't "God will", it was, as marg previously pointed out about me, just awfully bad choices.

[_antishock8]

Look into existentialist nihilism. It kicks ass.

[_LifeOnaPlate]

Look into existentialist nihilism. It kicks ass.

Way to advocate suicide.

[_Gadianton]

Look into existentialist nihilism. It kicks ass.

Way to advocate suicide.

Why would that necessarily be advocating suicide? If you want a good reason to die, check out negative utilitarianism.

[_antishock8]

Look into existentialist nihilism. It kicks ass.

Way to advocate suicide.

Holy shiz. I thought you stupid before, but now you've removed all doubt. You're like the anti-Einsten. You've created the Theory of Irrelativity in one fell swoop. Congrats.

[_John Larsen]

Look into existentialist nihilism. It kicks ass.

Way to advocate suicide.

Why would a nihilist commit suicide? If life is utterly without meaning, ending it would have no more or less value than living it. And since ending takes effort, the act wouldn't be justified.

However, there are no such things nihilists. Now there are plenty of religious people who think that other peoples lives are utterly without meaning.