Ask an atheist

[PeteAtoms]

Hey man, I figure if I take away my nihilism, my value goes from 0 to .0001. So while .0001 times 7 billion = 7 million (I think...), which is a lot, .0001 (my life) times 1 = .0001, which ain't a lot. Of course, I can try to improve the value of my life to others by having an effect on this world, but to me it is always .0001. So how I feel is irrelevant, how I act - not necessarily.

At this point, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know what kind of math you're pulling here, but it looks like you're throwing around some fairly arbitrary numbers in an arbitrary way.

 

[Maniacal]

What would you, as an atheist, say to the fact that humans are (seemingly) the only creatures capable of finding something boring? That we have a drive that nothing else does?

We're not, plenty of other animals experience boredom.

How does atheism explain this?

"Atheism" doesn't explain anything. It's not a philosophy or ideology or explanation.

 

[Linkman226]

Wait what? Wouldn't there be more to life than RELIGIOUS people believe considering the speciesism of MOST religious texts?

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

I dunno if other creatures find something boring. Does it matter?

AFAIK, caged parrots will sometimes pluck out their own feathers if they have nothing else to do.

 

[Linkman226]

But I wonder if that's boredom in the human sense. Probably definitions of boredom vary.

 

[NiRv4n4]

At this point, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know what kind of math you're pulling here, but it looks like you're throwing around some fairly arbitrary numbers in an arbitrary way.

They are arbitrary - the exact amount doesn't matter, what I am trying to say is that I am just another brick in the wall, but I can decide if I want to be an old, lame, crumbling brick that is useless to society and a defect, or a strong, well maintained, well mortared fellow who is important and has meaning in being there - is an asset. I think this metaphor makes more sense than my other one. But the thing is, I will always be just one brick, and how I feel doesn't matter so long as I continue to perform my function. ..........

But I wonder if that's boredom in the human sense. Probably definitions of boredom vary.

Yeah, are they just bored physically/restless, or do they angst and ponder like man? Because I doubt any other creature is remotely able to question it's existence the way humans can, even if we can't get into a dolphin/gorilla's mind.

 

[Orka]

But the thing is, I will always be just one brick, and how I feel doesn't matter so long as I continue to perform my function. ..........

Wait, how does God make this any better? I really confused. What is this supposed to argue?
Personally, I wouldn't get all tied up in this 'only being one brick' business. Focus on your immediate surroundings and yourself, if that helps.

 

[NiRv4n4]

Wait, how does God make this any better? I really confused. What is this supposed to argue?
Personally, I wouldn't get all tied up in this 'only being one brick' business. Focus on your immediate surroundings, make the world smaller and yourself more meaningful, if that helps.

If you are a Catholic, there is incentive to help other bricks out?... It is supposed to explain my lack of desire to be happy, I guess? To point out a new metaphor for what I was trying to say last page.

As for your last part, I would if I could. But I can't really try to enjoy my life when I know what is happening halfway across the world - and I don't really understand how others, religious or not, can do the same.

From this comes my next question; do any of the atheists here feel any compulsion to help others at their own expense, like some religions teach (though not necessarily practice)? And when you do it, do you do it because it makes you feel better about yourself, or because you feel a genuine connection with a fell human?

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

You have the same incentive as a secular humanist.

 

[Traitorfish]

I guess that makes sense - it really is the way everyone lives their lives, regardless of their beliefs - they live because living matters. The thing is, why does it matter? Why do our brains say "this matters!" when there wouldn't seem to be that much of an evolutionary utility to do so? How does atheism explain this?

There isn't? I would've thought that there was every evolutionary utility to do so. Human beings are fundamentally social creatures, after all, a characteristic which is particularly strongly expressed in the small, tightly-knit bands of hunter-gatherer societies, so it makes perfect sense to me that value systems based around intersubjective experiences would be developed. The capital-I Individual of the modern era is not a figure that we find appearing in human culture before the Late Medieval period, and there growing up alongside the experience of economic individualisation on the part of merchants and artisans, an unprecedented stage of human social development. You only need to look at those religious practices which seem to have originated in this period of human development, such as pantheism, animism and ancestor worship, to see the overwhelming importance than humans seemed inclined to attribute to the mutual experiences of sentient (or percievedly sentient) beings.

 

[PeteAtoms]

If you are a Catholic, there is incentive to help other bricks out?... It is supposed to explain my lack of desire to be happy, I guess? To point out a new metaphor for what I was trying to say last page.

Most atheists agree that being good for goodness sake is better than being good because God told you to be good.

Altruism isn't a purely human trait either. Lots of godless animals without religion also exhibit that trait.

Believe it or not, the incentive to be good and help others exists whether God is around or not.

 

[Orka]

Well, there is incentive for atheists to help other bricks out, too. In Catholicism, you help others out to give them eventual happiness, I presume; here we are simply helping others to give them happiness in this life (the only one we are certain about).

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

I find "atheist" to be an insufficient label in this context. You can be an atheist and a nihilist, or an atheist and a humanist for example.

 

[NiRv4n4]

There isn't? I would've thought that there was every evolutionary utility to do so. Human beings are fundamentally social creatures, after all, a characteristic which is particularly strongly expressed in the small, tightly-knit bands of hunter-gatherer societies, so it makes perfect sense to me that we a value system based around intersubjective experiences would be developed. The capital-I Individual of the modern era is not a figure that we find appearing in human culture before the Late Medieval period, and there growing up alongside the experience of economic individualisation on the part of merchants and artisans, an unprecedented stage of human social development.

Do you ever think that the way that people are developing socially is contradicting the way they should be developing in a natural, evolutionary way? You can string any weird aspect of modern culture back to the hunter gatherer's society, but it gets to a point where it is so tedious to do so that it just ain't worth it.

I find "atheist" to be an insufficient label in this context. You can be an atheist and a nihilist, or an atheist and a humanist for example.

I assume most of you are secular humanists, though, correct?

 

[Linkman226]

I always found humankind's need to feel important or feel like they have a place in the universe positively hilarious.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

If you're talking about natural selection, we have pretty well outgrown the need for that as a species. I recall Richard Dawkins had a lecture (available on youtube) called "The Purpose of Purpose" which addresses the human psychological need for purpose in life from a naturalist point of view.

 

[Linkman226]

No, no, I'm talking about how people choose religion because it "gives them purpose" in life.

No, your ACTUALLY worthless on the grand scale of things. Get over it.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Sorry, that was an x-post.

 

[Traitorfish]

Do you ever think that the way that people are developing socially is contradicting the way they should be developing in a natural, evolutionary way? You can string any weird aspect of modern culture back to the hunter gatherer's society, but it gets to a point where it is so tedious to do so that it just ain't worth it.

I wasn't intending to suggest that this has roots in hunter-gatherer society as such, but that this sort of society offers a very clear example of the social character of human beings, and of the strength of their focus on intersubjective experience as an expression of this social experience. Our current social formation is obviously of a rather different sort, and has developed in accordance with its distinct character, but underlying cruciality of society in forming the individual experience of the universe is still present.

I always found humankind's need to feel important or feel like they have a place in the universe positively hilarious.

Well, I wouldn't say that it's as straight-forward as that; it strikes me as a product of the shift in emphasis from intersubjective to objective experience, rather than any intrinsic quality. To a hunter-gatherer society, the conceptual universe does not extend much farther than that part of the material universe experience by the society in question, so human beings are of central importance by definition. I imagine that this is also true of agrarian societies, for much of their history, and of the majority of the inhabitants of those societies until the modern era. It's only when humans begin to experience themselves as atomic individuals faced up against the entirety of the universe, when the conceptual universe mutates into the purely subjective experience of the individual set against the totality of the objective material universe, that we begin on this neurotic quest for objective meaning, which is about fruitless as any pursuit of an oxymoron is going to be.

 

[Maniacal]

I find "atheist" to be an insufficient label in this context. You can be an atheist and a nihilist, or an atheist and a humanist for example.

And you can be atheist and spiritual or even religious.