Hey Rick,
First I just want to say thanks for the candid and provocative OP. I gave you frubals but for some reason the message I wrote was "Reverend Rick"... not sure why I wrote that! Also, I'm sorry this is a very long post, but I hope you'll read it, because I put a lot of thought into it.
OK folks, this is not an attack thread. Some of my favorite RF members are Atheists. Actually, most are. That said, I want to address the Atheist mindset.
Most Atheists I know came from religious families. They could be looked upon as religious pioneers if you will. Not being an Atheist myself, I guess I am wondering about the emotion one would have to experience when you first decide there is no God.
For me personally, it was primarily a cerebral experience, not an emotional experience. I had made the decision that I wanted first to know the truth, even if it was a horrible truth. (As it happens, I no longer believe atheism is a horrible truth.) I never jumped directly from belief in God to atheism. What happened was, once I allowed myself to question everything I became very skeptical of the idea that God has human attributes; it seemed clear to me that humans were simply projecting their own characteristics (jealousy, love, a mind) onto God. We always hear things like "God is mysterious". Well, what if God is REALLY mysterious? What if God's "mind" is so incomprehensibly different from ours, that it's not really accurate to compare it to a human mind at all? I asked these kinds of questions.
Eventually I realized that my ever-more impersonal idea of God was no different than believing in a big, mysterious, powerful Universe. So I never lost the idea and the accompanying feelings that there exists "something" big and mysterious and powerful "out there" greater than myself. I never lost the feeling of awe and humility, and thankfulness, for the privilege of being created by some majestic creator that my human mind cannot fully understand. I never had to jump the gorge of having those feelings of comfort towards God, and then all at once letting go. Instead I just direct many of those feelings towards a different "God" -- the real one, if you like, instead of the mistaken one speculated by our ancestors with their limited knowledge and descriptive powers. There are similarities between my attitude towards the Universe today, and my attitude towards God years ago. Neither the universe nor God has ever allowed an exception to the laws of Nature on behalf of a mere Earthling; neither has ever spoken to me (or anyone) in words which are clearly distinguishable from the voices and intuitions which can originate in our own heads; and both the God of the Bible and the Universe are equally good listeners.
Reverend Rick said:
Is it like realizing there is no Santa Claus? I doubt it. When we have that realization we still get gifts and celebrate Christmas.
But, as an atheist I still get gifts and celebrate Christmas! So there is a similarity.
Reverend Rick said:
Are there true Atheists out there, or are some Atheists just closet Christians who want to look trendy and cool but would pray if their plane was crashing?
There are true atheists and there are atheists who would resort to prayer if their plane was crashing. There are also theists who would reject the existence of God and lose all faith if they lived through the Holocaust or the Black Death of the middle ages. This doesn't really tell us whether God objectively exists or not, but it does tell us interesting things about the nature of belief and why people believe things with/without evidence.
Reverend Rick said:
The Atheists who would not pray in this instance, these are the folks I want to have a dialog with. The true Atheist if you will. What did it feel like when you realized there was no god? As you are aging, how does it feel to believe that when you die, it is all over? Does that make you sad?
I'm a true atheist by your definition, so I'll answer.
The problem is that "Atheism" lacks substance. I don't find answers to life's questions in "atheism". I do find fulfilling answers, or at least speculations, in reading the philosophy and literature of brilliant minds like Shakespeare, Epicurus, Thomas Paine, David Hume, and so on. When I listen to Carl Sagan talk about how we are all made of "star stuff" and how we are only specks in the cosmos, I feel grateful for this one, precious life I have been given. Mark Twain reiterated what Epicurus argued thousands of years ago: there is no point in worrying about death, because you were already dead for billions of years before you were born! That wasn't so bad, was it? In one of Shakespeare's plays Julius Caesar says (paraphrasing): "Cowards die a thousand deaths; the brave taste death but once!" I take courage in such words. If my mortality is unchangeable, then at least I want to live without debilitating fear and when the time comes, die with dignity and a stiff chin.
Whether something makes you sad or not really depends a lot on how you choose to look at it. For example, the idea that billions of innocent souls will burn in hell FOREVER is arguably a MUCH sadder thought than the idea that death is a painless slumber. And yet, people rarely ask Christians and Muslims if they are chronically depressed due to their "sad belief". The reason is because believers choose not to allow the sad parts of their religion to make them sad.
Instead, believers use the same coping strategies that everyone, including atheists, use: (1) realize there is no point in being chronically upset over the things you cannot change; (2) focus on the good things that make you happy, and the things you can change. For an atheist like me, I focus on being grateful for the one life I have, and living it as best I can, instead of being jealous over the loss of the additional lives religion falsely promised me.
So believers know how to cope with sad facts, they are just unused to the particular "sad fact" of a mortal life. Believers begin with an unrealistic frame of reference; they have been promised everything in the next life, and the prospect of coming down from that "high" to the "low" of mortality can frighten them. But if we did not indoctrinate children with these unrealistic expectations of eternal bliss, they would never have to fall from these false heights. Instead, children could be raised up to realistic happiness, starting from a humble understanding of our insignificance in the cosmos, and ending with the realization that there is hope we can carve out happy, though brief, lives for ourselves and the rest of our species.
In other words, instead of "coming down" from belief in an afterlife to belief in mortality, you could "go up" from the fact of an indifferent universe to the realization that it is possible to achieve happiness in this life for ourselves and our children. Whether an idea makes you sad, or happy, really depends a lot on what your starting reference frame is, and which direction you are going.
My strategy has always been to question everything and try to discern which facts are undeniable; I hope this will help me discover the cold, hard truth, whatever it may be. After I discover the "horrible truth" I choose to look on the bright side.
These two things, for me, converge not simply on atheism but on
humanism. But I would use this strategy whether I was Christian or communist or whatever.
In your next thread I think you should consider a critique of humanism, which has substance, instead of picking on atheism, which can't even defend itself.
