# Atheists - What drives you? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 29, 2013, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030 "2013-04-29T18:09:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/81 "2013-04-30T10:14:55Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > One part of my overall life-motivation is wanting to see if the late 21st century will be a relatively golden age where religion gets dustbinned. Hahah. At least part of my drive comes from wanting to see how the world will turn out 50 years hence. And now that you’ve brought it up, yeah the hope that religion would have been “dustbinned” by then is there. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/82 "2013-04-30T10:23:43Z")
[Brief hijack] > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > You can be a Hindu, believing in the concept of Atman, i.e. the true, unchanging self, and a Buddhist, following the doctrine of Anatman, i.e. the non-existence of a true, unchanging self, only if you don’t really know anything about either. You seem to be postulating a far wider philosophical gap between Hinduism and Buddhism than I think exists. For instance, the ‘atman’ aspect of Hinduism exists to reconcile with the ‘Brahman’. Which is to say your true unchanging self is the same as everything else(which to me really says it doesn’t exist). And there are strains of Buddhist thought that also talk about ‘atman’. On the (very slightly) broader question of whether you can be both Hindu and Buddhist at the same time…I don’t know, but I think it’s quite possible. [/Brief hijack] ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/83 "2013-04-30T11:02:41Z")
> [@AnthonyElite](#): > > Atheists, the title question essentially asks it all, but I will summarize, what drives you? Existentialism, love, aesthetics, scientific curiosity and political activism > [@](#): > > To atheists; does this not happen with you? I’ve found my existentialism quite adequate at staving off all non-clinical _Angst_, _Sehnsucht_ and _Weltschmerz_ and imparting meaning to my life. For everything else, there’s SNRIs… > [@](#): > > Or would you, after some consideration, align yourself more with agnosticism? Nope, I’m very much with **DT** on this one - agnostics are theism’s _idiots utiles_. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/84 "2013-04-30T11:07:40Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > [Brief hijack] > You seem to be postulating a far wider philosophical gap between Hinduism and Buddhism than I think exists. For instance, the ‘atman’ aspect of Hinduism exists to reconcile with the ‘Brahman’. Which is to say your true unchanging self is the same as everything else(which to me really says it doesn’t exist). And there are strains of Buddhist thought that also talk about ‘atman’. On the (very slightly) broader question of whether you can be both Hindu and Buddhist at the same time…I don’t know, but I think it’s quite possible. > [/Brief hijack] Yes, any such proposition is bound to be disputable. But nevertheless, I think that you can really only hold to ‘every religion says more or less the same’ if you ignore most of what most practitioners of any given religion will believe in actuality, ending up with the watered-down concepts of modern day ‘private’ spirituality, believing that ‘there must be something’ without actually attributing anything to that something… And if that’s all there’s to your religion, well, it just seems to me that nothing really is lost getting rid of this vestige, as well. It’s just trying to have your cake and eat it, too: you get the supposed comfort of believing in some higher principle without any of the discomforts of having to confront whatever you believe in with reality—as there’s really no discernible claim made about this object of belief, it can’t be in conflict with the world as we experience it. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/85 "2013-04-30T11:10:40Z")
The weekend’s coming up. That’s all I need, drive wise. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/86 "2013-04-30T11:29:19Z")
To be honest, I don’t think about it that much. I try to live my life here and now. I would think the idea that you get some kind of mystical do-over would detract from the life you are living now. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/87 "2013-04-30T11:29:27Z")
> [@sWozzAres](#): > > I think that science tells you “how” and religion tells you “why”. You need both for a complete picture. No. Religion has nothing to offer, it’s all fantasy. Religion doesn’t tell you “why”; it just makes up answers. Science on the other hand is perfectly capable of telling us “why” for many questions; it’s just that most of the time the answer is “that’s just the way things worked out” which isn’t what many people want to hear. People I’ve noticed often denigrate science because it _supposedly_ can’t answer some _supposedly_ profound question, when in reality science can answer the question just fine, but the answer is in the negative, or that the question itself is meaningless or wrong. And people don’t want to hear that, so they claim science “can’t answer the question”. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/88 "2013-04-30T11:31:39Z")
Most of the time I drive myself. Sometimes my friends drive me, especially if I’ve had a bit to drink. When I was a kid my parents drove me, but I wasn’t an atheist then. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/89 "2013-04-30T11:31:49Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Yes, any such proposition is bound to be disputable. But nevertheless, I think that you can really only hold to ‘every religion says more or less the same’ if you ignore most of what most practitioners of any given religion will believe in actuality, ending up with the watered-down concepts of modern day ‘private’ spirituality, believing that ‘there must be something’ without actually attributing anything to that something… And if that’s all there’s to your religion, well, it just seems to me that nothing really is lost getting rid of this vestige, as well. > > It’s just trying to have your cake and eat it, too: you get the supposed comfort of believing in some higher principle without any of the discomforts of having to confront whatever you believe in with reality—as there’s really no discernible claim made about this object of belief, it can’t be in conflict with the world as we experience it. Vagueism, or Church of Fuzzy. ---
**Author:** ![sWozzAres](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/51bf81/32.png) [@sWozzAres](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sWozzAres)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/90 "2013-04-30T11:33:41Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Yes, any such proposition is bound to be disputable. But nevertheless, I think that you can really only hold to ‘every religion says more or less the same’ if you ignore most of what most practitioners of any given religion will believe in actuality, ending up with the watered-down concepts of modern day ‘private’ spirituality, believing that ‘there must be something’ without actually attributing anything to that something… And if that’s all there’s to your religion, well, it just seems to me that nothing really is lost getting rid of this vestige, as well. > > It’s just trying to have your cake and eat it, too: you get the supposed comfort of believing in some higher principle without any of the discomforts of having to confront whatever you believe in with reality—as there’s really no discernible claim made about this object of belief, it can’t be in conflict with the world as we experience it. Ah! Well that something is the Unified Field of Physics - Hindus call it Brahman, Taoists call it Tao and Christians call it God. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/91 "2013-04-30T11:38:53Z")
> [@sWozzAres](#): > > Ah! Well that something is the Unified Field of Physics - Hindus call it Brahman, Taoists call it Tao and Christians call it God. Yep-except for the thousands of differences, there are all exactly the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/92 "2013-04-30T11:48:26Z")
> [@sWozzAres](#): > > Ah! Well that something is the Unified Field of Physics - Hindus call it Brahman, Taoists call it Tao and Christians call it God. Well then, they’ve done a spectacularly bad job of describing what they believe in—I mean, I’ve never even heard a preacher talking about the quantization of god! And what’s his divine gauge group? Is he conformally invariant, and if so, does that mean that there exists an Anti-de Sitter dual to god? What is the multiplett stucture of the Higgs that breaks his divine symmetry? ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/93 "2013-04-30T12:06:48Z")
> [@sWozzAres](#): > > Ah! Well that something is the Unified Field of Physics - Hindus call it Brahman, Taoists call it Tao and Christians call it God. No…they are absolutely nothing alike.:rolleyes: Really I find it profoundly offensive when anyone equates science and religion. The whole point of science is to build a comprehensive body of knowledge on how the world works based on empirical observation. For something to be considered “science” it has to be measureable and repeatable. If prior science is contradicted by new observations, the theory must be modified to incorporate that new knowledge or discarded. Religion is about prescribing to people how the world works based on some doctrine established by the church. Anything the contradicts established doctrine is viewed as heresy and actively repressed. Just ask Galileo. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/94 "2013-04-30T12:12:29Z")
Overheard on the Larry King radio program many years ago: “I don’t know why the Jews , Muslims, Hindu and Christians can’t just get along-they all worship Jesus their own way!” ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/95 "2013-04-30T12:16:17Z")
1. No, I am not depressed and despondent at the thought of there being no afterlife and no higher power. 2. The same things drive me as drive anybody else, from the banal to the sublime. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/96 "2013-04-30T12:29:56Z")
**sWozzAres** , welcome to the Straight Dope! > [@](#): > > **Inner Stickler** : There is no god to lift me up when I am down but there is no satan to fuck me over, either. I don’t have as much peace, though. I am a theist who doesn’t believe in Satan. I don’t believe that Hitler, Stalin, or other tyrants will be in a hell. But the after-life that I do think may be quite possible is different from the “streets of gold and Pearly Gates” concept. It is an awareness of total bliss. It’s kind of hard to get tired of bliss. There are ways to be at peace without believing in God. Those waterfalls _are_ a source of peace. So is living in the moment. > [@](#): > > **Shiftless** : Can religious people not see any reason to get up in the morning without the threat of an angry God or the promise of eternal bliss? I think that I would still follow the teachings of the Christ and the wisdom of other faiths even if I didn’t believe in life after death. I have _never_ believed in an angry God. None of the Christians that I know believe in an angry God. I am aware that some **fundamentalists** do. So far, fundamentalists do not make up the majority of Christians. > [@](#): > > **Critical 1** : Show me a religion that does not have a negative effect on progress, on human rights, or on morality. And there are many times when religions do have positive effects on progress, on human rights, and on morality. > [@](#): > > **AnthonyElite** : I guess my line of theism is far less obtrusive than any institutional theism in that it does not impede or undermine the scientific process. I’m fairly sure there are probably Christians in my church who do not believe in natural selection or evolution. I just haven’t met them. I’ve considered these theories to be amazing since I was a child. There was not squabbling about it in my rural, Southern, small-town school biology class either in the Fifties. > [@](#): > > **Der Trihs** : I regard agnosticism as sucking up to religion. No one is “agnostic” about goblins and fairies and Santa Claus - they’re “agnostic” about religion, because religion is popular, powerful **and the great majority of its adherents filled with insane hatred towards anyone who dares deny their fantasy.** (Bold type added.} **Der Trihs** , have I personally treated you or your atheism with “insane hatred”? The Christians that I know and the atheists that I know are not filled with this hatred that you speak of. Do you attack religions with hatred? > [@](#): > > The universe is what it is, not what we fantasize. Yes, but sometimes fantasizing can lead to what is. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity began with his daydreaming about that it would be like riding a beam of light at the speed of light. And sometimes reality can be not at all what we expect. > [@](#): > > **Der Trihs** : Because they won’t leave everyone else alone, they constantly hurt themselves and others in the name of their self delusion. Religion isn’t a harmless self self indulgence, it’s a mental disease that has caused and continues to cause immense harm to humanity. My charities are for the hungry, the cold and poor, the arts, political movements, the environment. I think I would still do this whether I was a Christian or not. But it was through the church that I learned about the poorest county in the country. It’s on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The unemployment rate there is 70% and per capita income is $4,000 annually. The church can be a means of service: My Sunday School Class made American Indian burial cloths for those who have not been given an appropriate burial. Some of the graves are being moved. I will be glad to be more specific about any of these charities. I have no doubt that many atheists do similar things. I asked you once what any Christian had done to you personally. You said “nothing.” Anger can eat you up alive. And unfounded anger is such a waste. And, of course, religion is not a mental disease. You won’t find that in a desk reference on any psychiatrist’s desk. Please don’t exaggerate in your posts. It ruins your arguments. > [@](#): > > **Little Nemo** : To me, the obvious question is why do you believe in one religion when you don’t believe in any of the other religions? There are things about other faiths that I do believe: Buddhism especially. And the Baha’is. I would like to study more about the Tao. I am a Protestant, and I have attended other Protestant churchs, Unity (member), Unitarian, Anglican (menber), and the Baha’is. I meditate, try to understand Buddhist teachings – all in an effort to grow in my understanding. I think that many of the great religions have much in common. What drives me? It differs each day. Nature, my husband, curiosity, the wicker swing on my front porch, scents, my memories, friendships, recovering from lung cancer, a new hat, the need there is for me to help. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/97 "2013-04-30T12:32:47Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > One part of my overall life-motivation is wanting to see if the late 21st century will be a relatively golden age where religion gets dustbinned. +1 ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/98 "2013-04-30T12:37:12Z")
> [@AnthonyElite](#): > > What drives you in your life? I feel you still haven’t answered that question for me. Why do you need to be driven in life? Just live. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/99 "2013-04-30T12:40:19Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Yes, any such proposition is bound to be disputable. But nevertheless, I think that you can really only hold to ‘every religion says more or less the same’ if you ignore most of what most practitioners of any given religion will believe in actuality, ending up with the watered-down concepts of modern day ‘private’ spirituality, believing that ‘there must be something’ without actually attributing anything to that something… And if that’s all there’s to your religion, well, it just seems to me that nothing really is lost getting rid of this vestige, as well. > > It’s just trying to have your cake and eat it, too: you get the supposed comfort of believing in some higher principle without any of the discomforts of having to confront whatever you believe in with reality—as there’s really no discernible claim made about this object of belief, it can’t be in conflict with the world as we experience it. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > Vagueism, or Church of Fuzzy. The en-vogue “Spiritual but not religious”, which claims [30% of those surveyed by Gallup](http://www.gallup.com/poll/7759/americans-spiritual-searches-turn-inward.aspx) in the U.S. I simply think of it as religion for the lazy and undisciplined, it demands no thought and contains no strictures. ---
**Author:** ![sWozzAres](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/51bf81/32.png) [@sWozzAres](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sWozzAres)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/100 "2013-04-30T12:42:58Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > No…they are absolutely nothing alike.:rolleyes: > > Really I find it profoundly offensive when anyone equates science and religion. The whole point of science is to build a comprehensive body of knowledge on how the world works based on empirical observation. For something to be considered “science” it has to be measureable and repeatable. If prior science is contradicted by new observations, the theory must be modified to incorporate that new knowledge or discarded. > > Religion is about prescribing to people how the world works based on some doctrine established by the church. Anything the contradicts established doctrine is viewed as heresy and actively repressed. Just ask Galileo. Religion is much more than that! Empirical observation no longer holds the same position that it once did. Neuroscience demonstrates how you see things that aren’t there, Quantum Theory has the measurement problem putting limits on what you can really know and Superstring theory (most think) is unprovable. You seem more concerned with how religion tells you to behave. To see the similarities you have to shed all that baggage and focus on the fundamental aspects of what they tell “is out there”. That is where science meets religion. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030.md?page=6)