The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes
Atheists: Come out, come out, wherever you are
slayers_creek_oth:
--- Quote from: DavidinHartford on May 26, 2006, 08:08:32 pm ---I'm agnostic. I don't want to be a full fledged athiest so I can make a short prayer everytime I buy a lottery ticket! Not that that is working either.... :-\
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:laugh:
Never serious....
delalluvia:
--- Quote ---As one atheist so humorously described himself, 'I'm nothing but a walking, talking bag of electrical meat.'
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--- Quote ---It's easy to confuse atheism with existentialism: all existentialists are atheists, but not all athesists are existentialists.
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Not quite sure how you got existentialism out of that quote. IMO, the poster was simply stating a fact. The biological sciences teach us that the human body is nothing more than an electro-chemical factory. Even thought is an electro-chemical reaction. Start shifting brain chemistry or electrical input and you - the person - undergo shifts in perception and/or personality. Mess with it enough and the whole body shuts down.
--- Quote ---I think the search for meaning is important, but one does not have to believe in gods for life to meaningful.
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I think many atheists would tell you that life has no meaning but what you give it. There's no point in 'searching' for it. It exists within you to have it.
--- Quote ---It's terrifying that fundamentalists, whether christians or muslims, have control of the button to launch nuclear weapons, or soon will. In their belief system, to launch a nuclear war is a rational act... they get to be harp-playing angels that much sooner! I'd much rather have an atheist in control of that button, wouldn't you?
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The only satisfaction one might have/get is that if they do do so, they will not escape the nuclear fallout, because retaliation in kind will most certainly follow.
ednbarby:
I was reading the "Voices" section of my National Geographic last night, and this response to a question asked of him from naturalist, zoologist, and biological evolutionist Edward O. Wilson really struck a chord:
Obviously you find a spiritual sense in nature, a sense of wonder. How do you find meaning in a world that came about through random mutations and natural selection?
Well, the human mind has evolved to search for meaning. The universe is so beautiful and complex and surprising, and life is too. You remember Darwin's line "Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved"? We see this far more than Darwin could. We see right down to the molecular level how truly extraordinary life is as a phenomenon. There you have more to summon spirituality than anything provided by the late Iron Age desert kingdom scribes who wrote the Holy Bible. They created an impressive piece of literature. But they really didn't understand the world around them or the stars above. They metaphorized them, put poetry into them - they did the best they could. But still and all, they fell far short of what humanity is capable of feeling in a sense of the sacred and of aesthetic beauty.
Impish:
--- Quote from: ednbarby on May 29, 2006, 07:43:22 am --- There you have more to summon spirituality than anything provided by the late Iron Age desert kingdom scribes who wrote the Holy Bible. They created an impressive piece of literature. But they really didn't understand the world around them or the stars above. They metaphorized them, put poetry into them - they did the best they could. But still and all, they fell far short of what humanity is capable of feeling in a sense of the sacred and of aesthetic beauty.
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Bravo!
nakymaton:
It really astounds me that so many people assume that a world without a deity would necessarily be meaningless. I think the universe is amazing -- stars, planets, gravity, quantum mechanics, evolution, plate tectonics... it's just so cool. And randomness... just calling all that "randomness" oversimplifies it.
I don't need to believe in some celestial busy-body in order to experience awe.
So, count me as a proud atheist, too. :)
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