Question for an Atheist

[youkrst]

this thread is EPIC !!

my favourite BT thread (so far)

big thanks to ALL

[Dexter]

I don't believe you need religion in your life to experience illusory meaning, like Dexter experiences.
That's what it is, right?

OK, so please explain how your nonspecific belief that something is out there provides you with meaning in your life that atheists can't experience. You can't do it, can you?

[tbarron]

"We can't understand it. Stop asking questions. Just accept that it's beyond you and don't be curious."

This is a totally uniformed and vacant comment.
Religion and men of religion have played a significant role in science throughout the ages.

Yes, and some of them have been accused of witchcraft and worse. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in part for his claim that the sun is just another star. Galileo was imprisoned and forced to recant his scientific discoveries. Copernicus waited until he was on his deathbed to publish his work so he wouldn't be persecuted for it. Those are some examples of how religion has not been supportive of science through the ages.

Would you like to offer some examples of how "Religion and men of religion have played a significant role in science throughout the ages."?

Do some research before you make such sweeping generalizations. Read about men of science that did not "stop asking questions" but were and have been continually motivated to a greater degree BECAUSE of scientific discovery.

It wasn't a generalization. I was talking about my personal experience of religion. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household. What I described is essentially the response I have received from my parents and all my religious teachers throughout my life, that God is a mystery and beyond us and not for us to question or judge or attempt to understand. When you hint at there being more to reality than can be understood through logic or science, it comes across to me as having a similar bottom line. My impression is that you're saying there's more than can be understood by the means at our disposal so we might as well admit that logic and science have no value and give up. Maybe that's not your intention, I don't know. Just telling you how it lands for me.

Um, what's your point in your second sentence there? I agree that men of science don't stop asking questions and are increasing motivated by scientific discovery, but that doesn't have anything to do with religion. Did you mean to say that men of religion don't stop asking questions but are increasingly motivated by scientific discovery? Would you care to offer some examples?

I've seen the atheists of of booktalk go so far as bombastically speak for our greatest scientific minds of the past saying, "Oh, if they knew now what we know today, they would no longer be believers."

How utterly arrogant is that?

Get real, atheists. Come up with something that can be taken serious. Men/Women of science and faith do not stop wondering and exploring the nature of life because they know there's some white-bearded man up in the sky sitting on some throne

Ya'll need to stop your war against the old testament. This is ridiculous!

What strikes me as arrogant is the way you seem to assume that you know all about me based on a few posts on a bulletin board.

[ant]

I don't believe you need religion in your life to experience illusory meaning, like Dexter experiences.
That's what it is, right?

OK, so please explain how your nonspecific belief that something is out there provides you with meaning in your life that atheists can't experience. You can't do it, can you?

Since you love answering questions with your own questions, ill answer your question with one of my own:

So what if someone who believes in a a god has deeper meaning in their life than your Primordial Soup with a side of Caveman special? Would you feel less significant?
Obviously not, right?
Your selfish genes bring you enough meaning without having to concern yourself with anything else.
Why protest the possibility of a god?

[tbarron]

...
Exactly. And because at the core of atheism is reduction to the basest level of existence, said atheist, who is totally committed to a belief in an illusory, meaningless existence, there can be no substantive pondering of a meaningful existence.

At the core of atheism, as I understand it, is a judgement that the evidence for the existence of a deity is inadequate to support the claim. I think what you're talking about would more properly be called nihilism.

Sure you love your children: but anything beyond the simple desire to see them survive you to continue your seed is an illusion.
Sure you fell in love with your wife: but it was really a lustful desire to plant your seed.
Sure your wife loves you: not really; you're just the best hunter/gatherer she could find.

I don't have any children of my own. When I got married, I made the determination not to have children. My wife already had two children from a previous marriage. So the fact that I got married and I'm still married to the same woman almost 29 years later has nothing to do with reproduction from my point of view. I love and care about my two step-sons, not because they're carriers of my genetic material -- they're not, but because they were little kids who needed love and care and I had it to give. Now they're adults making their own way in the world. I love and care about my wife because of the time we've spent bonding and building a life together. Yes those experiences of love and care are based on my evolutionary programming, they are real and meaningful in my experience, and they have nothing to do with whether or not I hold a belief in god.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" Golden Rule from Matthew, right?
This would be too "religious" of a rule for a secularist living in a secular society to abide by.
How about the more advantageous rule "Do unto others as you like, before they do it to you"..,or..,

"Suck up to those above you, and abuse those below"

or..,

"Give precedence in all things to close relatives, and do as you like to others"

Those have a more secular, capitalistic ring to them.

It's a "Dog-eat-dog" cosmos. Evolution by Natural selection clearly demonstrates this.

As an atheist you can lie to me, but please don't lie to yourself by stating an atheist can experience profound meaning in life. It contradicts belief in an animalistic, meandering, purposeless existence.

The New Testament is one place the ethic of reciprocity shows up. According to writers quoted in the Golden Rule article on wikipedia, the same concept is central to many religions and non-religious traditions. For example, Buddhism doesn't teach the existence of a deity, but it does have the ethic of reciprocity: "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful."

My own experience has been that reciprocity and cooperation gets me more of what I want than the other strategies you suggest. Just because I don't accept accept a claim that there are one or more deities because the evidence doesn't seem to me to warrant it, doesn't mean I don't have enough sense to figure out that cooperation and mutuality work better as life strategies in the modern world than competition and aggression.

[ant]

IPhone here so hard to post:

At "tbarron"

Bruno? Galileo??

Can you provide historical references that indicate these men, based on their discoveries
/ contributions, went on record that as a result of their findings, claimed no belief in a god or that others that did were foolish?

Please be careful not to add your own narrative to these individuals biographies.

When I asked for something similar in a discussion with someone here about the historical Jesus they went on to talk abou secret societies, cabals, and plots of planting scripture for profit.
And I was asked just to believe that I happened that way

Do you think this type of pursecution happens today?
Have you researched on your own the contributions religion has made in its involvement with science?
Or would you like me to do your googling for you?

[tbarron]

I wasn't claiming that Bruno or Galileo or Copernicus were atheists. I was responding to your statement that "Religion and men of religion have played a significant role in science throughout the ages." They are examples of religion failing to support scientific endeavor, that's all.

[Dexter]

[
Your selfish genes bring you enough meaning without having to concern yourself with anything else.
Why protest the possibility of a god?

I protest your nonspecific, generic God in the same way that both of us protest the thousands of Gods that have been created in human history. There is simply no reason to expect it to be true. If someone wants to believe it, then by all means do so. Do all those people believing in false claims (because they can't all be true) also lack meaning? Or can meaning be provided by false beliefs?

[ant]

I wasn't claiming that Bruno or Galileo or Copernicus were atheists. I was responding to your statement that "Religion and men of religion have played a significant role in science throughout the ages." They are examples of religion failing to support scientific endeavor, that's all.

Those are antiquated examples and tell only a small piece of the story of the growth of both science and religion
Quite frankly, using these men as props in a discussion about atheistic leanings is not a good move.

Thank you for sharing your background regarding your Christian fundamentalist upbringing
I am not a fundalmentlist.

I do believe in perhaps the existence of an intelligence that has created purpose in nature by means of creative, infinite, potential, or something like that. Maybe our lntellegence and language can not do it justice. Short of bringing a theory of god into a lab, along with string theory, multiverse theory, abiogenesis,
I can't prove the existence of a god. But I certainly will not rule it out like Dexter, Johnson, and other Materialists.

I don't believe we are nothing more than Meatheads that give our lives illusory meaning; ala Dexter and the like.

[ant]

[
Your selfish genes bring you enough meaning without having to concern yourself with anything else.
Why protest the possibility of a god?

I protest your nonspecific, generic God in the same way that both of us protest the thousands of Gods that have been created in human history. There is simply no reason to expect it to be true. If someone wants to believe it, then by all means do so. Do all those people believing in false claims (because they can't all be true) also lack meaning? Or can meaning be provided by false beliefs?

There is simply no reason to believe there is no god when we are, and perhaps always will be short on data, short on observational prowess, intelligence, and time. For you to conclude there is no god (or whatever) because he has yet to cook you a soufflé is because you choose to believe only what you are comfortable with or not prejudice against

There is no God of Thunder therefore there is no God!!
Yes, that makes sense.