Cooky
Veteran Member
Try reading it again, while acknowledging the "group" aspect. Atheism is not a team or a club or a race. It's the anti-belief of a particular individual.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Atheism: An Empty Shell of a Life
- Thread starter Cooky
- Start date
- Status
Try reading it again, while acknowledging the "group" aspect. Atheism is not a team or a club or a race. It's the anti-belief of a particular individual.
It still represents a group of people, a group who can be and are often unfairly maligned. Like when they're told that their lives must be "empty" because they don't believe in a deity.
Cooky
Veteran Member
Who are these particular Atheists you speak of? Do you really think you've caught me on something..? LOL.
Cooky
Veteran Member
Nonsense! There is no Atheist group.
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
Nope. I'd just like people to have their facts straight. Much the same with you and your religion, I am sure. It's just really strange, because the actual idea behind atheism is incredibly simple. Religion is not, for sure... but atheism is a piece of cake... yet so many people (you included here Landon) have such a problem with the concept. They equate it to all sorts of other things that it simply isn't.
On the other hand, "religion" usually is quite a lot of "things," and many times it is conflicting or changing, or breaking apart and branching off, etc. But atheism? What is there to even have change? "Atheists" are more vocal? That's the people who are atheist changing, or finding more of a platform, or more sympathetic ears - "atheism" itself has not changed with that. More people are atheist? That, again, is a change in people. "Atheism" itself cannot take credit for the change - it isn't a change to "atheism." If you find yourself having trouble understanding what I am talking about here, you are not alone, and a lack of understanding from you here would only prove my point.
Cooky
Veteran Member
I understand what you're saying. So it remains as I pointed out earlier, there are certain people who are more militantly Anti-religion, and they don't care about much more than taking on the religious, in the most militant fashion, regardless of what religion might mean to the varying groups. It's all one in the same to them... It's all the enemy.
...I'm here today to return fire. I'm sorry if you were caught in the crossfire.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
No, but making false claims isn't a form of critique, nor is telling others what their thoughts and feelings are a form of debate.
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
There are a bunch of people who consider themselves "atheist." They don't consider themselves some form of cohesive "group" - but they are bunch of people nonetheless. Just like there are a bunch of people who choose to mail in their bills as opposed pay them online. If someone who pays bills online were to come onto a forum where people who pay their bills in all sorts of ways congregated, and make a thread stating that all people who pay their bills through the mail must live empty, vapid lives - do you not think that that person just unnecessarily insulted a bunch of people he doesn't even know? I mean... what could a complete dolt like that be thinking?!
Cooky
Veteran Member
It sounds very similar to those who criticize "faith" regardless of which.
...I'm just here to level the playing field.
Now we can all be that much more aware of what's going on through personal experience.
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
Oh... I can take fire. Just don't expect me to do so without firing back. That's simply bound to happen. So here we are. Isn't this fun?
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
No... you're committing the same "wrong" you are denouncing. That makes you a hypocrite.
Cooky
Veteran Member
Cooky
Veteran Member
Yazata
Active Member
I'm a life-long agnostic and have never had any traditional-style religious faith to lose. Hence I feel no sense of loss. No sense of emptiness where my faith once resided.
Shouldn't you be asking whether atheists feel "empty and lacking" (I think that their answer will typically be 'no') rather than asking whether "anyone else sees that no connection to divinity feels empty and lacking"? Your question looks like a bit of circular reasoning to me, where the conclusion is implicit in how the question was framed.
Well in my own case, part of the reason why I consider myself an agnostic is that I've always felt surrounded by mysteries. Take any subject you like, however mundane, and ask "why?" Produce an answer and then take some aspect of your answer and once again ask "why?" You will find that it only takes a very few iterations to deliver you to the frontiers of human knowledge.
That's what's motivated my life-long interest in philosophy.
So what in your case you call "divinity" might be what in my case I call "mystery". It's certainly a sense of ever-present transcendence, the sense that a lot more is happening around us than we know about, even if I don't conceptualize the mysteries of reality as a 'person' and feel no impulse to worship it.
So maybe we aren't that far apart after all.
Last edited:
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
So... you think I didn't know "what it's like," is that it? And you're going to school me. Thanks so much, Landon. What a kind and generous thought. I mean... I didn't even realize it at first, but you were actually trying to HELP me by informing me that I lead an empty shell of a life. It's genius!
What might feel "lacking" to you, Landon, isn't necessarily the same for anyone else.
And more to the point, for those of us who do not (and cannot) believe in the existence of deities, it would feel false and dishonest to pretend we were having some sort of relationship with them. Surely can you see that that would be living an inauthentic life, and surely you don't see that as being a good thing.
You claimed my post made your point. I asked you how so.
Cooky
Veteran Member
Mostly, it's just my interpretation of what it would be like for me. Possibly for other religious people as well. Perhaps I was hasty for for not being more courteous, but I didn't see the need for it considering how militant many are toward the religious.
...It's a learning lesson for every individual. My goal is that we all have something we can take away from this.
Yes I agree. But not Raelians... they still believe in all the religions but that the gods/God(s) are Aliens.
Huh? You think because there's no Atheist High Command that they are not a group of people? You're talking about them as a group, here in this thread.
- Status