Organized Religion and Atheism

I'd just like to point out a single problem with atheism: it takes you to the supposed truth through doubt in God. Finally, you come to realization that there is no God and you are just left there. World has no meaning. Empty void. Blank nothingness. Is that really better than a 'life in a lie' of religion? Truth is, none of us knows s*it about God(s) (non)existence and I'd rather lie to myself than live in a world that atheism dooms me to live.

I'm not going to defend organized religion. It has it's flaws. It might be right. Or there is no God. We're just bags of meat, walking around, hoping there is some meaning to all that. But I want to see it through my life nonetheless.

Can somebody please bring out a spiritualistic atheist on the scene? It would help a lot.

I think both religion and athiesim are such definining things. There are answers and you can find them on your own without going to either one of these "extremes". Agnostic seems like a logical thing, to me, but claiming you know or don't know something you cannot truly know beyond a shadow of a doubt nor prove or disprove consistently, isn't something that makes much sense to me.

Every religion thinks its the right one, the only true one, and that anyone who isn't part of it is doomed one way or another. Atheism simply dooms us all. That's my own opinion of how I understand things. I believe in eternity and the eternal nature of the soul. That might explain a bit more where my thoughts stem from

Either way, I know very good people who are religious and very good people who are atheist. One of my very best friends is agnostic and I still have no idea how to define myself. I don't think I want to, either.

I apologize if I echoed something someone else said. I'll admit I didn't read through the thread before I posted :whistle:

Reliah wrote: I think both religion and athiesim are such definining things. There are answers and you can find them on your own without going to either one of these "extremes". Agnostic seems like a logical thing, to me, but claiming you know or don't know something you cannot truly know beyond a shadow of a doubt nor prove or disprove consistently, isn't something that makes much sense to me.

I don't have time to formalize what I think about this topic as a whole into a reply right now, but, in regards to Atheists (like religious people) claiming to know that there is no God, or no afterlife etc -- that's just not the standpoint that the Atheists I've encountered, including myself, operate from. In reality, Atheists are saying that the evidence is not strong enough to support the existence of a God or any one religious doctrine. If the presence of a God and the afterlife was shown "observable, testable, repeatable" in even the smallest of ways there would be many converts. But accepting an idea on faith instead of evidence is not acceptable to the scientific (and Atheist) frame of mind. Just think about hypothesis -- one "rejects" or "fails to reject" a hypothesis. Nothing is beyond questioning. Ergo, Atheists do not claim to know that there is no God, they just will not believe in one until proper deductive evidence is provided.

Kalkho, as to your comment that Atheism "takes you to the supposed truth through doubt in God," again, that is not the goal of Atheism, or at least the Atheism inside of me. I don't think many Atheists would dare to say that they have been taken to the "truth" (what do you mean by "truth" anyway? About the past, about the existence of God, about the afterlife?) except perhaps in a metaphorical sense for interpreting the world somewhat aware of one's biases, and the biases of others. For myself, the spirituality is in the science itself and the beauty of how we, as human beings, construct meaning in the world. (In regards to religion, if it were proven that a God gave it to us, it would be so much less beautiful). I also think there is a certain amount of personal responsibility that is very frightening to people, which causes knee-jerk reactions among non-Atheists. And that fear is very much along the line of "you are just left there, world has no meaning. Empty void."

The Atheist answers:

SELF RELIANCE

At the end of the day, the world is as you perceive it. Take charge of your life, construct your own meaning! Find your own sense of beauty. One of my favorite Atheist sayings (in regards to needing a God to force people to be moral) is "be good for goodness' sake!" If you value goodness, be good. If you value love, then love. For me, there is a reason that all cultures view human crimes like murder and injury as wrong* because there are some universal needs and values among humans. But spirituality can come through the reverence of secular values. And thus there can be such a thing as a "spiritual Atheist."

I would like to add that I am not at all suggesting that existing religions are evil or that it is wrong to believe in religion, if that is how a person chooses to construct meaning that leads them to their own truth, however they wish to define that word, or finds it moving etc. I know several very religious people for whom faith has given them a tremendous strength and serenity and I personally find that very beautiful. But "faith" is just one path. There are others. Life is what the living person makes of it!

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*individual cultural circumstances aside, obviously it is possible to come up with situations in which murder and injury are acceptable to one culture and not acceptable to another. But as a general rule this is not okay.

Kalkho wrote: I'd just like to point out a single problem with atheism: it takes you to the supposed truth through doubt in God. Finally, you come to realization that there is no God and you are just left there. World has no meaning. Empty void. Blank nothingness. Is that really better than a 'life in a lie' of religion? Truth is, none of us knows s*it about God(s) (non)existence and I'd rather lie to myself than live in a world that atheism dooms me to live.

I'm not going to defend organized religion. It has it's flaws. It might be right. Or there is no God. We're just bags of meat, walking around, hoping there is some meaning to all that. But I want to see it through my life nonetheless.

Can somebody please bring out a spiritualistic atheist on the scene? It would help a lot.

You know, I never saw it that way.

I find it freeing rather than depressing that there wasn't a god. I wasn't upset or angry. Did you know, for example, that scientists have been able to trace our atoms to stars? If religion is supposed to be what makes us feel connected to the universe, I think it fails, at least for me. Science, however, has lead me to a greater understanding and connectness to the universe.

Kalkho wrote: I'd just like to point out a single problem with atheism: it takes you to the supposed truth through doubt in God. Finally, you come to realization that there is no God and you are just left there. World has no meaning. Empty void. Blank nothingness. Is that really better than a 'life in a lie' of religion? Truth is, none of us knows s*it about God(s) (non)existence and I'd rather lie to myself than live in a world that atheism dooms me to live.

I'm not going to defend organized religion. It has it's flaws. It might be right. Or there is no God. We're just bags of meat, walking around, hoping there is some meaning to all that. But I want to see it through my life nonetheless.

Can somebody please bring out a spiritualistic atheist on the scene? It would help a lot.

I'm not atheist, so I can't truly speak from that perspective, but I don't think it's quite as black and white as you're painting it. Atheism does not doom you to live in a certain way or with despondency; you make that so.

My mother, particularly, would get on my case about why I left Mormonism and how life should have no meaning for me now because Mormonism is so obviously true and I'm rejecting it.

WE give life meaning. Religion can help with that...but so can atheism. Or any other "isms" if you need that boost.

I used to long for death and reaching the other side because then I would truly find my "heaven". With my abandonment of religion that taught me that heaven is always just around the corner, I began to truly live in the NOW, and try to live life with excitement and spontaneity!

Like I've said before, give me the truth in spades when it comes to religion and existence; I'll take that ANY day over a lie that is supposed to make me feel good. I'll take the EXPERIENCE of being alive and the pain and joys that come from it over the monotony of my former religion and their dogmatic rules.

The pain, the excitement, the joy, even the depressing sadness...that's living and going through the gamut of emotions that assures us we ARE alive and can live another day and make it what we want it to be. Or if we can't make it the way we want it to be, be at peace with the way things are and enjoy what's around us.

(Sorry, I'm not trying to take this out on you; this is just some angst I have built up.)

Thank you all for replying! It was a pleasure to get to know your thoughts on this (often contentious) subject.

I decided to post this thread because it's a subject that personally interests me, and also a subject that I think highlights the fact that in life things often aren't black-and-white. There are both good and bad things about religion, there are both good and bad things about confronting people about their beliefs.

I think a "lesser" part of me kind of wanted someone to convince me things aren't so black and white, that one choice was clearly superior to the other. My hypothesis is this is because I am still trying to be comfortable making choices from within/the Force, rather than from authority or what is mainstream. But I'm glad that didn't happen, because making one's own choices from within is, in the words of Joseph Campbell, following our bliss, and I cannot do that if I never learn to make choices from this source.

So again, many thanks for giving me your thoughts, MTFBWY all.

*Also, this isn't an attempt to close the thread, if you haven't yet added your thoughts and want to, obviously I want to read them :laugh: