What do you get from being atheist?

[soulsurvivor]

You're projecting your sense of inferiority onto others as a sense of their superiority. Yes, atheistic humanism has been a superior worldview to Christianity, which I left as a young man, but in my estimation, it's superior to every other worldview? Does that make somebody like me feel superior for realizing this? In a sense, yes, but only in the sense that I feel fortunate to have escaped theism and religion. I also escaped a life of smoking by quitting young, which is analogous. Does having done that make me superior to a smoker? It's certainly a superior way to live, and probably inferior to having never smoked.

Yes, I take pride in being an atheist, a humanist, and a critical thinker. Why shouldn't I be? None of those just happens to people, and many if not most never achieve any of them. Religion is easy. Atheism takes some thought. It's not for everybody. It's easier to believe in a god than not. Being an atheist means that there is no devil to blame, no expectation of reuniting with deceased loved ones, no personal protection from the cosmos, only one life to live, personal responsibility for one's choices, nobody watching over you or answering your prayers, marginalization in a theistic society, and no easy explanations for our existence.

To the theist I say, try standing up like the bipedal ape you were born to be, and look out into the universe, which may be almost empty, and which may contain no gods at all. And then face and accept the very real possibility that we may be all there is for light years, that you may be vulnerable and not watched over. Accept the likelihood of your own mortality and finitude, of consciousness ending with death, of maybe not seeing the departed again.

Accept the reality of your likely insignificance everywhere but earth, and that you might be unloved except by those who know you - people, and maybe a few animals. Because as far as we know, that's how it is. And you will live a more authentic and comfortable life for having done so. Atheists don't worry about sin or hell or pleasing gods, don't believe false and unfalsifiable things by faith, and aren't asked to support religious bigotries, shun the world, praise anti-intellectualism, lust for an apocalypse, or hope for the eternal punishment of those who don't believe like they do.

Sounds like you agree with me. thanks!

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Sounds like you agree with me. thanks!

What I said was that living without a god need and outside of religion has been good for me, that I consider it a successful transition that improved my life in the ways given going from theist to atheistic humanist, and advised others to follow a similar path if they can. I doubt that you agree with me. I wouldn't expect us to agree on much beyond the mundane, like the weather or the time - the areas where we both use the evidence of our senses to decide what is true about the world. Where we part ways is where you believe things by faith that the skeptic wouldn't.

 

[Trailblazer]

That is just a thing people say as a goad against non believers.

I think what @soulsurvivor said is true of some atheists who are intellectually haughty but I don't think that is why most atheists are atheists.

Atheists simply see no evidence for the existence of God or gods so they have no reason to believe in God or gods....

I believe in God because I see evidence for God, but I understand that what I consider evidence for God is not evidence for atheists.
In other words, I can put myself in the shoes of atheists and understand why what is see as evidence is not evidence for atheists.

 

[Trailblazer]

What I said was that living without a god need and outside of religion has been good for me, that I consider it a successful transition that improved my life in the ways given going from theist to atheistic humanist, and advised others to follow a similar path if they can. I doubt that you agree with me. I wouldn't expect us to agree on much beyond the mundane, like the weather or the time - the areas where we both use the evidence of our senses to decide what is true about the world. Where we part ways is where you believe things by faith that the skeptic wouldn't.

I agree with you and other atheists on lots of things which are more than mundane. The main point of disagreement is the existence of God, but since nobody can ever prove that God exists, one view is as good as the other.

My dad was an atheist. He fell away from Christianity as soon as he became a thinking adult. His sister was also an atheist who had three PhD degrees in scientific subjects, and she got those back in the days when women rarely even went to college. It was my father and my aunt who taught me to value education. Atheists are generally more educated than theists, one reason I gravitate towards them. That is not to say that Baha'is are uneducated, as many have advanced degrees in various subjects. After all, Baha'u'llah wrote that man is a mine rich in gems of inestimable value and that education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.