…From your mouth to God’s ears!.. 
<slaps wrists> Bad dog QS! Bad dog! </slaps wrist>
I’d like to clear up one other point as far as “rejecting God/Christianity” …
I didn’t “become” an atheist. I wasn’t born with an inate sense of Christian dogma. It was taught to me (half-heartedly, I admit). It was through sitting through church and listening to Sunday school stories that I could make absolutely no sense out of, and moving to an area where my denomination was ridiculed (it kills me that “we are all Christians, but Catholics hate Protestants” - doesn’t seem very “Christian” to me), that made me realize that it was all alot of hooey.
I decided to go back to where I started. Just being a human being and trying my best to get along with the rest of the pack (read- moral code).
Thanks for your posts.
When I said that God answered a lot of questions for those who believe in Him, I meant that the age-old questions that men have noodled with since the beginning are answered by their religious belief system. Religion, thus, serves an important purpose whether or not you agree with the tenets of that faith.
Now, given that, if you reject God and your religious belief system, there is a void left. The philosophical questions I listed as examples have been asked by the wisest men from all civilizations. Plato, Socrates, Sartre, Nietzsche, were all trying to answer those questions that humans want answered but that physical science cannot solve. These questions are still being asked today.
I am not looking for an argument against the belief in God. I know them all. I’m not trying to argue that believing in God will satisfy those questions for you. But those who believe in God are satisfied with the provided answers, otherwise we wouldn’t have martyrs. If you ask these people (and even those not so commited) to reject God, what are you offering to fill in the void that is left for these people.
Nothing.
We offer nothing. Why should we? We’re not selling anything! If God doesn’t exist, then It doesn’t exist. No amount of hand-wringing over voids is going to change that one iota.
pan
Jack Batty argues a strong case for being anti-religion. Funnily enough, Jesus despised religion too.
We mustn’t confuse religion and Christianity though… they’re not the same thing. I reject religion but I’m a Christian.
Well, I am an atheist who was raised Catholic, and I do see the point of the OP: religion gives people a set of rules for living their lives, that they can refer to when confronted with a moral dilemma. Atheists don’t have that guidebook, so how do they cope? (If I’m misinterpreting, apologies).
The answer, as others as pointed out, is that they develop their own rules. You can do this from scratch yourself using your powers of reasoning, or you can read works of moral philosophy, including religious texts as well as, say, Kant, Hobbes, Aristotle, Boethius (or you can cheat and read something like Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy which has the good bits neatly laid out), in order for a demonstration in how to think about moral problems and to get some suggestions you may or may not want to follow/expand on.
However, my experience tends to be that this sort of thing is post facto: people’s response to real life moral issues tends to be more instinctive, which is why some people read the Bible and say “Peace, love, my fellow man” and others read it and say “God hates fags”. Those ethics don’t come from the Bible, or any other book, but from the person. So, despite claims about having chosen the best morality, or following the path of God, most people go with the morality they have inside them, and find support/justification for it where they can. So how atheists cope without God is not necessarily the dilemma it appears to be.
That said, I think there’s more benefit to be had in thinking about how to define right and wrong rather than accepting a definition from another source.
It’s hard to sell anything to martyrs–they’re dead, after all.
Nothing is offered–conversion really isn’t the atheism gig. “I don’t know” is only a void if you narrate it as such.
I would say most atheists consider christanity to offer less than nothing. Therefore nothing is an improvement. Most are not agonistic because they have seen the bad side of religion.
walor, could you please define precisely what you mean by “belief system?”
See, I accept that gravity will continue to work from moment to moment. Is that a part of my “belief system?”
I accept that fact that newborn infant humans cannot speak or read. Is that part of my “belief system?”
I accept that fact that there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of ghosts, dragons, the Loch Ness Monster, or good Adam Sandler movies. Is that part of my “belief system?”
I do not believe Jesus Christ was the Son of God. Is a lack of belief part of a “belief system?”
I was raised Christian… and yes I turned away from the religion. What I believe in now is this… there is no way that us humans are the most supreme being in this world. There has to be something bigger, (along the line of Descartes (I hope it was him) I think therefore I am spiel) I just have no clue what it is… I haven’t had my calling from Jesus, God, Buddha, Mohammed, or anyone else. So I live life day to day, doing what good I can, enjoying life. That way IF there is an afterlife, sure I didn’t worship whatever powerful being, but I lived well and will get in on merits. If there isn’t an afterlife, then I lived each day as best as I could while I was here. I don’t know what that makes me but I have heard the word Agnostic used to describe it.
Since I’m late coming to this party, I’ll keep this (relatively) short.
First, I’m an atheist who is not a disgruntled Jew/Christian/Muslem/whatever. My mother is the only religious person in my family; she’s into traditional Chinese ancestor worship, which for me boiled down to observing assorted rites and rituals at certain times of the year. I did not learn of Christianity until I was around six years old, but even then I was very skeptical of it all. “So God supposedly exists because it says so in the Bible? How do I know the Bible is accurate? How do I know the writer didn’t get high on drugs and just wrote the book on a lark?” Yeah, my technical details weren’t entirely accurate at the time, but even after all these years, that sense of skepticism has withstood the test of time.
Secondly, as others have pointed out, I think the OP makes a lot of assumptions. It assumes that atheists must “replace” God with something, that one must have “the answers” to the big questions of life, and that there’s an innate “spirituality void” that has to be filled. I find myself mildly disappointed that Mambo has been able to go through life without ever questioning these assumptions, that the idea of someone who is happy and content without those tenents is unthinkable to him. I can only conclude that Sunday School indoctrination is much more effective than I previously thought.
No third item for Opal, sorry. 
AINAA either, unless you aren’t either, in which case you may feel that I am.
Where did we come from? We are a subprocess of the universe, which is better understood as the current state of the single event known as the Big Bang, which is a vacuum fluctuation not caused by anything at all. All of which is another way of saying that the universe in its entirety is here for no external reason. Nothing caused it. It is because it can be. Or perhaps because it wanted to be.
What is morality and where does it come from? Well, the murky volumes of moral codes normally called “morality” came from human attempts to understand what God wanted from us, which, translated into Atheist Modern equates to “what a comprehension of the laws of nature as they apply to us would seem to dictate if we wish to survive”. So the morality itself “comes from” the same origins as gravity and the principles of thermodynamics, i.e., they are characteristics of the principles governing the processes of the universe. See prior paragraph regarding “universe”.
Why do men do evil? Failure to comprehend morality. “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Darkness is not a presence, as any physicist will tell you. People do evil out of ignorance.
Why is there evil? See above paragraph.
That’s part of the question, yes, but I’m looking for an explanation on the broader scale.
When God is accepted the believer believes:
- God created the universe,
- God governs the physical and spiritual universe,
- God has set a moral guideline (through the Bible, but other books for other believers) that humans are to follow,
- God is the ultimate authority on everything.
God, for the believer, is the cohesive bond for the all-inclusive universe. Rejecting Him means, to the believer, that they must abandon what they believe to be true–God holds the universe together.
Atheism asks someone to reject God and the idea that goes along with God that something organizes the universe. What is left, then, is chaos. Do atheists believe that something (this can be anything) holds the universe together in its current balance, and if so what? If you do not believe that there is a cohesive power in our universe, what is your defense for that position? Is there a third option that I am missing?
The universe is self-organized. It contains its own principles which result in the spectacular order you see before you.
But your guilt is missing the point if you are looking at it from the same place I am. (First let me say: I live life mostly the way everyone does, bad things are bad and good things are good in my feelings and reactions. We are discussing metaphysics and spirituality.) Guilt isn’t necessary because the bad things aren’t truly bad, merely different. And more importantly, bad things and good things alike are chosen,
As I said in the original post, this is pretty complicated stuff to try and explain in quick posts to a message board.
Note that I was talking about the “play”. Try this on: our personalities are like roles we take on before we do the show, the show being life on Earth. Do you think the bad guy in the play is truly bad? Of course not, he exists to make the play more interesting. And the actor who takes that role doesn’t do so because he is at heart evil, only because that role is interesting to play.
Think of it too that we take on these roles as lessons for our spirits. Certain things, most things I’ll venture, can only be learned within the physical realm. Sufferingis definitely one of them.
As you might have guessed by now, most of this also seems to require a belief in reincarnation in order for it to play out. Which is something I definitely believe some days.
But even if there is no beyond-death reality at all, I know I believe this absolutely: we are all creating our reality every day, through our actions, certainly, but also through our beliefs and our fears and what we focus on. I know there is a real connection between all of us that allows us to communicate with each other sufficiently to help us co-create our realities, and the more conscious of that communication and creation we become, the more quickly and profoundly it is played out in our world.
And that’s the best I can do at 10:30 am when I have to get back to work.
stoid
Sterra sed:
Well, I’m pretty agonized about some things . . . 
Mambo:
Quibble: Atheism asks nothing.
The universe itself. I can get you some great books and journal articles on self-organizing systems, if you’d like.
Er, because there doesn’t have to be a single magical force of cohesion?
Howsabout this:
When it is accepted that there is no evidence of God nor a need for a supernatural force to explain nature, the non-theist believes:
- That no single entity necessarily created the Universe.
- The physical universe governs itself–and there either is no “spiritual” universe or at least no need for one.
- Morals are a human construct.
- There is no ultimate authority to absolve us of responsibility for our own lives.
Believing in God does not solve these problems, it only shifts them. Namely, where did God come from? Who organized him?
The laws of physics describe the current state of the universe quite well.
If someone does not believe in God, they are, by definition, an atheist. If someone does not believe in God, but believes there is some force that organizes the universe, they are still an atheist.
So you believe that if there is not one organizing principle, the only other option is that there is none? And you also believe that if there is one over-arching organizing principle, is has to be God? I think these assumptions should be carefully examined.
Some atheists probably do, and some atheists probably don’t.
You’re making a pretty unsubstantiated assumption right there, buddy. I was raised in a Christian family, true, but the faith was never pushed on me. I came to God on my own and I had serious doubts and serious reservations that I had to answer for myself. My parents and their families have scientific backgrounds and are college professors. I did not blindly follow what was given to me. I had all the same doubts and I heard all the same things you did but I came to a different conclusion.
The assumptions I made were to streamline the thread. Since most of the Dopers are from the western world and Christianity dominates the western world I stated that most atheist Dopers would probably have rejected Christianity. I know others rejected other religions and some, like you, were not raised believing in God. But those who were once part of the monotheistic religions are the ones who had to abandon a set of beliefs and they are the ones I was mainly addressing.
You’re making a pretty unsubstantiated assumption right there, buddy. I was raised in a Christian family, true, but the faith was never pushed on me. I came to God on my own and I had serious doubts and serious reservations that I had to answer for myself. My parents and their families have scientific backgrounds and are college professors. I did not blindly follow what was given to me. I had all the same doubts and I heard all the same things you did but I came to a different conclusion.
The assumptions I made were to streamline the thread. Since most of the Dopers are from the western world and Christianity dominates the western world I stated that most atheist Dopers would probably have rejected Christianity. I know others rejected other religions and some, like you, were not raised believing in God. But those who were once part of the monotheistic religions are the ones who had to abandon a set of beliefs and they are the ones I was mainly addressing. I’m interesting in hearing all viewpoints, though.