In an other thread, elsewhere in GD, a poster made the following point:
This was in response to what do atheists replace God with in their lives.
I trust that I do not misrepresent the author’s intention here. But it seems that generally, atheists appear to argue that they are quite happy without God as this quote would seem to suggest.
I appreciate the need for happiness in all of us to some degree or extent. But is happiness our greatest need? Where does forgiveness figure in the lives of atheists? Is not forgiveness a greater need than happiness?
(Also, how do atheists deal with their need for forgiveness given that they do not have Jesus to turn to, as do Christians for example.)
I am interested in the atheistic perspective on this and seek genuinely to understand.
We turn to each other and communicate directly. Rather than relying upon a third party to absolve us of sins, we tend to address our transgressions head on so that we can attain resolution right here and right now.
What sort of transgressions can be forgiven or absolved only by your deity that cannot be addressed by your fellow humans?
If I have hurt someone I attempt reparations and ask for their forgiveness. If they do not forgive me, well, I will just have to deal with it. If I have not hurt anyone, I have no need for forgiveness. I personally find it a bit of a copout that you can ask God for forgiveness, rather than having to make it up to the actual human you hurt. “Sure, I’ve murdered fifteen people, but I’ve found Jesus now so all my sins are forgiven. I am now perfectly innocent.” My “sins” are my own, and not for any deity to take from me–if I kill fifteen people, I will consider myself fully responsible and guilty of that for the rest of my life. I can’t erase it just by asking some God to make it go away.
Depends on how much you neeed forgiving, I guess. Religions often say forgiveness is required when I don’t think it’s truly neccesary; I don’t think forgiveness is needed for having sex with people of the same sex, or eating a cheeseburger, or swearing, so long as no one was hurt. So it tends to be the religious who think they need forgiveness the most, not the atheists.
Interesting questions, walor. But like the other folks who’ve responded, I’m going to turn it around on you a bit.
You ask,
And you later mention the “need for forgiveness.”
So why is there a need for forgiveness inherent in the human condition? Why is forgiveness so important to you? And is it something you feel can only come from God?
Imagine you are in a boat with a group of people that don’t know how to swim.
More than that, they’ve never even heard of the concept of swimming. Utterly unknown to them. Now, it’s a hot day, the waters are calm and inviting, so you dive in for a lazy backstroke.
The people on the boat freak out, and start hurling life preserver after life preserver at you. “I’m fine! I’m just swimming!” you try to explain, but they keep hurling more–in their own heads, they’re very profoundly worried, almost panicked, about your well-being. You’re in the water, where people drown without something floatable to cling to.
The whole deal with sin and forgiveness is a similar state of affairs. Life is not a treacherous sea of sin that will automatically drag down anyone not on the Good Ship Jesus. Life is just life.
To me, and to many other atheists, Christianity is a religion. Not the religion. So when someone says, “how do you manage without Jesus?” it’s a moot point. You may as well say how do manage without flying monkeys? It doesn’t enter into the picture.
I’m not sure you should be asking the question, because the answer is inherrently opposite to your beliefs. You’re questions presumes that Christianity is “the answer” and that we atheists choose to ignore it. That isn’t the case. We do not follow the same religion that you do.
We disagree from the get-go but you’re trying to get us to tell you why we’ve chosen to deviate from your way of thinking. You can’t deviate from something if you were never there to begin with.
Happiness is not a need. It is a state reached by meeting needs. At least IMHO it is.
I find it is much easier to be forgiven by actual people than by imaginary friends.
I wish I could help you understand but I’m not sure how. I’m going to try though. I am not trying to insult you here, but surely there are times when you simply aren’t thinking about Jesus or God, right? I mean, if you’re paying bills or watching a movie or playing with your kids (if you have any) or whatever, isn’t there some moment when God just isn’t apparant? Not that he’s not there, from your point of view, just that his presence is taken for granted and you simply don’t think about it. Now, take those times when the idea of God doesn’t even enter your mind, and stretch that out to fill your entire life.
In other words, an atheist’s life is just like yours, only without the God bits.
“How do you get eggs at Easter if you don’t believe in the Easter bunny?”
Well, not celebrating Easter, I don’t feel an overwhelming need for colored eggs in the Spring, but if I did, I’d go buy some dye, a dozen eggs, boil the eggs, and color them.
Forgiveness isn’t very high on my list of virtues. There are people in my life who have wronged me and I have forgiven them. I forgave them because they apologized, I thought they meant it, and I thought they deserved another chance. On the other hands there are others who have hurt me in ways that I will never forgive.
Possibly a poor choice of words.
I just meant that a Christian follows Christianity. I, or we as the case may be, do not.
I cannot describe to you what it is I do follow, as it is a personalize set of beliefs, but whatever it is, and you can called a religion if you want to, it’s no sweat of my balls - it ain’t Christianity.
Well, the quote was mine, so I migt as well try to answer your questions.
Actually, while I am quite happy without God, the quote specifically referenced teh certainty provided by faith. It had no implications for happiness
Not for me.
I seek forgiveness where I have offered offense. I cannot give imagine a standard by which I would assign relative values to happiness and forgiveness in the abstract.
To teh best of my knowledge, I have never offered offense to Jesus. Thus, Jesus is irrelevant to any issues of forgiveness that I might have.
I really don’t see “need for forgiveness” as a universal trait. In addition to athiests, there are a number of religions that do not ask for forgiveness from (insert diety of choice here). We deal with transgressions or errors in the same way Gaudere described - by dealing with the individuals affected by our actions. For myself, if I did something that harmed a friend, I would be far more concerned about making things for them than about my own spiritual well-being. It seems self-centered to me to behave in any other way.
Why should it be any different for a moral athiest, or for anyone, regardless of religion?
I’m a Christian now, but since I was an atheist for a few years I thought I’d offer my perspective.
Honestly, forgiveness was one of the most difficult Christian doctrines for me to accept. My years in Lincoln-Douglas debate instilled in me the definition of justice as “to each his due.” Thus, if I was guilty of sins that merited eternal damnation (not that I completely understood how finite transgresions could merit infinite punishment), then justice dictated that I should suffer for my sins. How is transferring punishment to one who is blameless justice? Thus, it seemed to me that we should try to make amends with people we’ve hurt, to repair relationships and mitgate damages. But for God to wipe the slate clean, to spare one from a supposedly deserved eternal punishment and give instead eternal reward seemed absurd. How could a system like that make any sense?
NOTE: The views expressed above are not my views now. It’s rather difficult to explain how I’ve reconciled divine forgiveness and divine justice. I don’t mean to be tearing up my own religion, only explaining one way in which the “need for forgiveness” may not influence a person toward Christianity/theism.
JadedNaive, I don’t know, but it seems to me that your comments support an atheist position better than a Christian one. Those absurdities always bothered me as well.
About the OP, this whole “Christians are forgiven” thing has always been one reason that I trust atheists far more readily than I trust Christians. It’s one of the reasons that I think I’m a more ethically responsible person now than when I was trying to be a Christian. I don’t recall ever asking forgiveness in advance of committing a sin, but I wouldn’t doubt that there are Christians who might quickly cross themselves before doing something that they know they shouldn’t be doing. As an atheist, I don’t do things that I know I shouldn’t be doing. Or if I do, I expect to pay for it. I don’t expect forgiveness from on high, so I have to be careful about what I do.
General forgiveness, or forgiveness for just being born, or for living, is something I don’t need. I was not born a sinner. I was born an innocent baby. Although I’m no longer an innocent baby, I do not hurt people on purpose, and I take considerable pains to see that I don’t hurt people accidentally. If I do hurt someone accidentally, it is that person from whom I must seek forgiveness, as others here have said.
I don’t mean to imply that Christians are all bad people. I know some good ones and some bad ones. But in general, I think that believing that forgiveness can be had in exchange for a simple prayer makes it easier to ignore one’s conscience.
K, so I’m more of a flaming agnostic than an atheist, but here’s my take on things:
Need? No. Driving force behind the actions I take? Sure.
Well, not being angst-ridden over things such as Original Sin and the like, forgiveness only figures in my life when it needs to. If I’ve made a transgression, I make reparations then and there. Since I’m not holding myself up to Christian standards, I have a whole helluva lot more to be happy about than I need to be forgiven for. [sub]Ok, so after reading that line a few times, it becomes evident that I can’t find a better turn of phrase for what I mean.[/sub]
