Why would it ever happen? In tough times, do you ever wonder if the ancient Greeks had it right? It not weekness or imperfection to dismiss Zeus as quaint but obviously imaginary. Same with your god of choice.
How would you respond to a Muslim asking you why you refuse to admit Allah is real? My guess is that you don’t see your non-belief in Islam as an issue. You’re not actively rejecting Islam - you just don’t believe in it.
Most atheists do not consider themselves as people who aren’t Christians anymore than you consider yourself a person who isn’t a Muslim. It’s only Christians who divide the world up into Christians and non-Christians (and only Muslims who divide the world up into Muslims and non-Muslims).
No argument there. But the question in the OP (and your last comment) assumes that having faith and not having faith work the same way. For obvious reasons, they don’t.
It’s always a bragging answer. It’s always a sneer.
When I was a theist, I was a reluctant one. I was constantly having to curtail my thoughts in order to keep them in line. Once I realized that atheism made more sense to me, that difficulty just fell away. I don’t war with my own mind about it because it just fits my brain better.
I think it would be unlikely for me ever to have a crisis of nonfaith simply because now that I’m in the mental space I should have been in from the beginning, it just doesn’t lend itself to angst. It would be like having a crisis about something like whether I have a nose.
Theophane, are you my mother? She simply can’t get her head around the fact that I simply have no belief in any supernatural deity whatsoever. Even if I wanted to believe in a god I cannot, any more than I can convince myself Santa is real no matter how much I want a pony for Christmas.
So no, crisis of (non)faith does not happen. At no point since I realized I was by nature an atheist (35 years now) have I ever had a thought that maybe I was wrong and I really did believe, somewhere deep down. Sure there have been times when I thought it would be nice to have a deity of my own design who could ensure the sort of afterlife I think I might want, but that is a far cry from questioning whether I believe there reallyl is a god.
Do you remember your mom? Did her life touch yours and make it better? Are you and those around you better for having her?
If so, then she is hardly in a cold black emptiness.
If you think that is a sneer, you rally don’t understand, I rewrote it several times to remove all snark. Your post, on the other hand, was certainly offensive, but I doubt you see that either.
Because there’s no faith for me to have a crisis of. I don’t “believe” there is no god. There is no god, and belief has nothing to do with it. Wishing, hoping, or even deciding to pretend that it is otherwise won’t change that.
Even if I’m wrong, and there is a god, I still won’t have a “crisis of non-faith”, as I still won’t have faith in anything. Show me there’s a god, and fair enough, I’ll have been wrong. I still won’t “believe” in it, any more than I believe in quantum mechanics - I’ll know it.
That’s hardly a sneer. It’s a very profound statement of belief that invokes the ways of thinkers down through the ages.
The bumper stickers I see sporting the slogan “If you don’t believe in God, you’d better be right!” all adorned with hellfire–those are arrogant sneers.
No, not even when I thought I might die.
And yet you would question a believer who claims to have invincible unshakeable bulletproof faith. You would call him a liar and regard him with the utmost scorn.
People who believe in gods also don’t think their belief has anything to do with it. The point here is that a person’s faith in a god is usually challenged by something horrible or inexplicable happening because most people who believe in gods believe that those gods are just, loving, or have a plan. If you don’t believe in gods, you don’t think those gods exist and you usually don’t think there’s a plan, so good things (or terrible things) are probably not going to shake your views.
She would? Cite, please-I’d like to see an example of her doing just what you describe.
Not a liar. But perhaps some scorn.
They are warnings, and good ones! They poke fun at people who think they have it all figured out.
Are you saying that those who question religionists are calling them liars and treating them with scorn?
That’s a thick suit of intellectual armour you’re wearing!
No, she is there. I am here, but someday I’ll be there too. And even then, if there is no afterlife, everything I’ve been will just be…well, gone. It feels like an uncomfortable admission of nihilism.
If you stare too long into the void, the void stares into you. People who aren’t afraid of the void are already less than human, IMO. They’re hollow.