Yes, you are wrong. Your mind is made up of your experiences, but existence is not.
Another digression between most theists and most atheists: what humans are. To me, we are evolved, tool-using, self-aware simians, no more or less. There’s nothing divine or infinite or eternal about us, we’re just clever animals.
I will admit though, the title is rather intimidating.
I guess my feelings on the subject are that we cannot know either way, so why feel strongly or aggressively on the subject unless one side or the other is trying to force their view on you?
I’m not Christian, for example, but I love celebrating the holiday for the tradition, the excitement, the decoration, the simple humble virtues of giving and togetherness.
Now you have one of the driving factors in many atheists lives.
Show me a religion that does not have a negative effect on progress, on human rights, or on morality. Humans are deeply flawed creatures when it comes right down to it, we are poorly equipped to understand reality. The scientific method is a tool that breaks bias and fallacy in order to find the truth.
What drives me? Part of what drives me is the fact that the religious are endangering the entire human race, including my kids and yours.
What drives me? My wife. My kids. (Though they have left home and I’m enjoying the fruits of our having done a good job raising them.)
My work, which lets me do stuff I like, and my professional activities.
My writing.
Making enough money to be comfortable, which fortunately comes with a job I like.
And last but not least, learning more and more about more and more.
I’m an atheist because it became obvious to me, once I learned the true story of the Bible, that God was just as much of a myth as Zeus, Odin, and the version of George Washington who pitched a dollar across the Potomac.
Why are we here? Because the sperm with half our DNA won the race. No other reason. A different position, the phone ringing, the dog barking all would have meant that I wouldn’t be here today. Plus, for me, World War II, the United Nations, and lots of other stuff that affected my parents. Thinking there is some significant reason for us is the height of egotism. God is a concept left over from when people believed in a tiny universe - that a god would pay attention to our fly speck is also the height of egotism.
Believing in God would be intellectually dishonest and would not make my life even one tiny bit more satisfying.
Living after death might be cool (or it might not be.) But so would traveling to other planets on a starship, and that does not make me believe that the Enterprise is real.
This thread reminds me of a religious friend asking me how I can be an athiest…how can I continue to live when after death there is just non-existence.
To my surprise when I thought about it…I found the idea of non-existence…comforting.
Frankly, I just think I’ll live forever…or at least for another hundred or so years. My main hope is on technology, not an afterlife…and I think there is a good basis for that hope. Medical technology seems to be on the verge of truly remarkable feats…all I have to do is hold out for another 20 years or so and I think it’s possible I’ll live well into the hundreds at least. That’s my delusion anyway.
When you consider that the alternative is to go on forever and ever with no possible end for all of eternity, you aren’t such a weird duck. A few more years would be nice. All of time with no end in sight - no thank you. THAT is a depressing prospect.
Personally, I find theism really sad. You only get one shot at being alive and so many people waste it planning for an afterlife that never comes. I don’t know how theists stand it.
D’oh! I figured you’d know. Sorry, not trying to insult your dad, just making a nerd joke for the sake of nerd jokes. I’m sure your dad cuts a fine figure.
Not to derail it too much, but I guess I find it humorous that atheists find theists so stupid and naive for believing as they do.
Truly we do not know the answer, otherwise we would be the answer. So why cast judgement?
This works both ways of course, I don’t think atheists are any more, or less intelligent than their theist counterparts for their beliefs. On the average, however, I find atheists are more reasoned.
As in all things, it’s the loudest voices that dominate discussion. Both the theists and atheists who don’t cast judgment generally aren’t the ones you hear.
Insert some “somes” there and you’ll be fine. “Some” atheists find theists stupid and naive. “Some” theists can’t comprehend atheists.
Otherwise, you’re just guilty of stereotyping the very people you are presumably trying to understand, which seems counterproductive.
Either we can use a combination of evidence and reasoning to draw conclusions about the universe outside ourselves, or we cannot.
If we can, then we can reach a threshhold of doubt so low that we characterize it as “knowing the answer.” If someone asks me the capital of France, I know the answer to that question. Is it 100% certain? No: maybe I’m really badly confused, or maybe I’m insane, or maybe there’s just been a revolution there and I haven’t checked a news site recently. But I’m well beyond 99% certain I know the answer. And I’m almost that certain I know the answer to whether there’s a JudeoChristian god (or a Norse or Celtic or Navajo god–I specify only to be clear that someone might define God in such an idiosyncratic way that I’d end up agreeing it exists).
But maybe we cannot ever know anything to such a degree. If that’s the case, then among the things we cannot know to such a degree is whether anyone else can ever know things to such a degree.
In other words, any claim that other people can’t know whether there’s God is ultimately self-defeating, since the same reasoning ought to apply to whether you can know what other people know.
As an atheist, I find the incessant need to have meaning in life to be quite tiring. Nothing drives me beyond my needing to satisfy my daily desires. I couldn’t care less about the grander scheme of things. Why do I need a reason to live? Why can’t I simply enjoy doing what I do on a daily basis?
My main hope is on technology, not an afterlife…and I think there is a good basis for that hope. Medical technology seems to be on the verge of truly remarkable feats…all I have to do is hold out for another 20 years or so and I think it’s possible I’ll live well into the hundreds at least. That’s my delusion anyway.