No, never.
Oooo, who’s a cute little demonic entity? Yes you are! Yes you are!
No. That’s not really how it works: even if I’m going through a bad time, that doesn’t mean the idea of a god starts to make sense.
I have a masters in religious history, and I revisit religious topics often. It’s not uncommon to find myself in a certain awe of the remarkable structures of faith that believers in the divine have built for themselves. The music, the architecture, the reasoning of theologians like Kant, the great structures of philanthropy: all these invite a real sympathy with a theist viewpoint and the great communal devotion that goes with it.
Pity they have to rely on God to get off their asses. It’s so much easier to do it because it’s a good thing to do.
Once again I am reminded of how apparently unlike other atheists I am. Yes, periodically I entertain the existence of God. I don’t really think we can know anything for certain. A part of me hopes there is a god, and that it loves me… but I see very little evidence that any supreme being loves humanity.
Also, not to get too mushy, but I sometimes find my luck at finding my husband to be strikingly, well, miraculous. We fit together so well it seems almost intentional on fate’s part.
I don’t see how that ‘crisis’ works.
There is no evidence of any God, therefore I’m an atheist.
I don’t need to worry about that position until some evidence appears.
If you’re religious, then you rely entirely on faith - and that can waver.
In the worst moments of my life making something up to make me feel better wouldn’t have worked.
Religion has brought about some beautiful art and architecture and stories and music, etc. (It’s also brought about some horrible stuff, but that’s not really my point so I’m not going to dwell on it).
I can recognize the beauty in it, and understand that that brings comfort to some people. After all, it’s a nice story and a comforting thought.
But, no, I have never believed any of it was actually true and I doubt I ever will.
I had a professor who argued the same things at Oxford. But he also noted that within the last 50 or so years all of those Christian things had ceased to become great. Think of what “Christian music” means for the most part today: either insipid synthesized Graham Kendrick-style mush, or fourth-class rock with “Jesus” substituted for “baby”. You’re not thinking of Handel’s Messiah or African-American gospel blues anymore. Now to some extent those things you talk about have held (I talk in my fundraising course about how church philanthropy of the earth 20th century inspired Carnegie and early “lay philanthropists”), but in many ways the adjective “Christian” as applied to works of art has become a synonym for “mediocre”. IMHO it’s pulled a lot more young people away from the church than we realize: there is simply little to inspire about Christianity any more other than the promise of community interaction, which young people can find in other avenues. (Keep in mind here I’m not just talking about the US, but Europe and other traditionally Christian nations. But, still, church attendance amongst young people is significantly down in the US.) But I digress.
To me I don’t entertain theism so much as I entertain the idea that there must be more than birth, school, work, death. I’d give anything to be able to spend one more day with my mom, who passed away four years ago. But I can’t. Not that a god could, but science can’t either. Staring into that abyss and seeing no answers frustrates me as a human being. Even if I could get over the question of “Why did my mom, who never hurt a fly and lived a healthy and kind life, have to die of cancer at age 60?”–and that question has to have an answer akin to “cancer is a mean, hateful bastard, and the laws of probability just weren’t kind”–I’m never going to get over the fact that I wasn’t there for her final hours. I can’t tell her I was sorry. The chance is gone. I’m never going to be able to ask her advice again or get some words of encouragement from her or even just hear what she has to say.
So I suppose my crisis of nonfaith is that although I had no answers from theism, I have no answers from atheism either. The thought that my mom is, as we all will be, in a cold black emptiness from which there is no return is not a heartening thought.
If it didn’t occur to me to pray watching my daughter spend the in the ICU, I’m quite sure it never will.
I occasionally wish there were an afterlife or that there were some kind of cosmic justice at work in the universe. I don’t know if wishing counts, though, as I haven’t been able to convince myself to believe it.
I’ve had events in my life far less traumatic than the death of a child that have made me feel like this, where I was so depressed that I thought about people I’d known who found comfort in religion, and I tried to be religious. It was such a mummer’s farce for me, though, that I couldn’t keep it up for more than a couple of hours, and it’s been many, many years since I’ve tried.
Also, I’m gonna hijack, since this site is all about fighting ignorance, and I’m totally ignorant here. Chessic Sense, how the hell do you throw 316 yards on a 100-yard field, and why is that exact number significant?
Do you mean Existential angst, the anxiety of the possibly meaninglessness of existence?
Yes, all the time at first, once I accepted reality. This the the sucky thing about not believing in an afterlife or a supernatural being who will make it all nice one day. Its not like I can stick my head in the sand and pretend such a being does exist.
It would be really cool if God would take me up when I die and give me 77 virgins (or is it 83? or 101? No, that’s Dalmatians) and a house for the rest of time. But then I get a little angsty about the prospect of doing the same thing, over and over, for all of eternity. That would be hell. There’s no pleasing me.
He’s saying he threw for 316 yards over the course of an entire game. I assume that is supposed to look significant because John 3:16 is a famous Bible verse. Then again, there are lots of 3:16s in the Bible, aren’t there? I just looked up Isaiah 3:16 and it says “The women of Zion are haughty, walking along with outstretched necks, flirting with their eyes, tripping along with mincing steps, with ornaments jingling on their ankles.” So… yeah. 316 yards is a good passing day but it’s not like it’s so high it hardly ever happens. This season two quarterbacks averaged more than 316 passing yards per game and and a third averaged 315 per game. Over a full season, that’s remarkable- but for a single game, it isn’t.
I hope your second post was to correct the perception that atheism requires faith.
As a Christian I openly admit my faith crises. Why can’t non-believers on the Dope make a corresponding admission? Is it so horrible to show weakness or admit imperfection?
Why are you assuming there is something to admit?
I’d like to believe there is a higher power in charge of the world that’s looking out for my well-being. And I’d like to believe there’s something waiting for me beyond death. I read a lot of religious works and I sometimes have come close to religious belief when I’m immersed in it. But I’ve never been able to sustain any religious belief in the face of normal existence.
After my father passed away a few years ago, I distinctly remember wishing that I had a belief in god to help make the pain of his passing easier to take. It would have been nice to believe that I would see him again in the afterlife.
However, I wouldn’t call it a crisis of non-faith. More of a wish that I could delude myself into deistic belief to take the pain away.
Because you are not a Nietzschean superman. You’re human, like me.
Why is it such a problem for the religious to understand that atheism requires no faith?
To label an atheist weak or imperfect for “wavering” (or not) speaks more to your beliefs and psychology than any atheist’s.