Atheist, Agnostic, Believer ?

[Boojum]

Please, please, please, please, please, please, PLEASE don't turn this into a religious flame war, cos I'll just kill the thread.

But I've been mulling over the idea of belief (or rather where I lay on the spectrum of belief) and I confess to being a wee bit confused at the moment.

I used to proclaim to anyone who'd listen (and many who wouldn't) that I was an athiest. I was so sure in my rejection of what I saw as the idiocy of belief. But then I realised that atheism is merely another form of faith, as dogmatic and closed to ideas as any belief. It is, in fact, merely another form of belief - it may be a belief in nothing, but that's still a belief, it's still saying "I am right and you are wrong." So now I guess I'm an agnostic, in the sense that I simply don't know, and on some level I don't think I will ever know, because if there is sucha thing as the divine it is so far beyond me that I can never truly even hope to fathom or understand it. But agnosticism is such a wishy-washy way of doing things, it's ummmm, I'm not sure. It's the indecisive stance, and so on some level it's a cowardly way of going about it, it's not having the confidence to make a decision. I think that religion is really only valid as a personal thing (I despise organised religion of any sort, I cannot abide some fucker trying to tell me what to think, never have been able to, never will be able to). I think that's my main stumbling block, it seems like you HAVE to subscribe to some other fuckers worldview and follow their rules, or subscribe to nothing. Being mentally the way I am doesn't help either, when I'm depressed I'm a soulless existentialist - we are all alone in a cold and uncaring universe, destined to die in pain and meet with the relief of sweet oblivion. When I'm manic everything is filled with the spiritual wonder of a greater reality than I can comprehend, a simple flower holds in it the wonder of the universe.

Often I envy the 'believers' of this world - they have a comfort in their life greater than I can ever imagine. But I can't help but feel it's a false comfort, it's the comfort of putting your fingers in your ears and shouting "Everything's great." until you believe it. I'm a romantic and a cynic, I have moments of almost visionary power and moments of brutal clarity. It's little wonder I find myself trapped somewhere between believer and atheist, that peculiar middle ground where anything is possible but nothing is probable.

Sorry, self indulgent again, perhaps should've put it in my blog. Just a train of thought that won't pull into the station at the moment. I don't want to deny all and close my mind, but I don't want to believe in shit that I think is patently absurd either

Edited to add I'd be interested to hear if anyone else is in the same boat.

Edited May 3, 2007 by Boojum

[santagrow]

Definitely! I don't know what to believe, there's so many theories including a few of my own. On one hand I can't just dismiss the anecdotal evidence of ghosts etc as not all people are liars. I myself have seen a couple of apparitions a few years ago that I can't explain, on the other hand, could it be that these occurrences are due to some sort of 'film' being played over and over again. Who knows? I'd like to believe that we all live in paradise when we die as this, like you say booj is a very comforting thought, but my intellectual view point says that when you die that's it, game over, and I believe NDE's are most probably down to chemical changes in the brain when you do die.

[Scribb|e]

Wasn't Jimmy Saville awarded an OOBE?

[fatfreddy]

I've been mulling over the idea of belief (or rather where I lay on the spectrum of belief) and I confess to being a wee bit confused at the moment.

I used to proclaim to anyone who'd listen (and many who wouldn't) that I was an athiest.

Edited to add I'd be interested to hear if anyone else is in the same boat.

I used to be atheist. Having now lived a few years, read a few books and talked to a few people I'm now most definitly anti-theist.

Most (if not all) organised religions are dangerous, pernicious tools of control by an elite over everyone else.

I regard educated people who continue to believe in the essential 'hocus pocus' of all major religions ie - a supernatural omnipresent creator, despite the scientific evidence to the contrary since Charles Darwin, to be soft in the head.

Don't be confused Boojum. It's simple. We (life on Earth) are a biological accident which would happen anywhere given the right conditions. By chance it happened here on Earth - many millions of years ago.

When we (as individuals) die, that's it. End of story. No more. No pearly gates, no prodding tridents, no sitting arround for millenia in damp waiting rooms waiting for a verdict, no answering for all our sins. Just dead, decomposing - matter - reversion to constituent component chemicals.

Get over it - outside human beings no one loves us. What a shame we spend so much time smashing each other to bits.

Enjoy it while it lasts - it ain't long - don't forget that others (including your kids) want to have a go when we've gone so we really shouldn't smash it up so.

Edited May 3, 2007 by fatfreddy

[Boojum]

That's what I used to think. But where does love come into the equation ? (yeah, I know it's chemicals, but is it just chemicals ?). Where does art come into the equation - what is the biological reason for a painting or a poem or a song being able to reduce a grown man to tears ? Where does creativity come from ? What is the point of the appreciation of beauty outside a biological imperative to find food or reproduce ?

Dunno, I can no more deal with the purely reductionist view than I can the organised religious view (that's why I differentiate between individual belief and organised religion, as I said I despise organised religion as I despise any form of mind control). The spokesmen of the reductionist view, people like Richard Dawkins, are just as blinkered, just as reliant on their own belief, just as closed minded and blind to a wider reality as any pope. I think there's a middle ground, I'm just not entirely sure what it is. I guess I'm sceptical of anyone who believes they know the truth, whichever side of the debate they fall on.

[Hughie Green]

Welcome to the Church of Cosmic uncertainty Booj

Cynic says chance combinations of panspermic amino acids in primeval soup

Romantic says created by omnipotent divine being of uncertain origin

given the random quirky nature of life, I'll have the soup please.

[Hughie Green]

I have one question...............why is this in competitions?

[Boojum]

lol I must be a lot drunker than I though. Coulda sworn I put it in free4all Boojum creates yet another job for the mods

Edited to add or maybe the member who holds the answer to life, the universe and everything (and not Doulas Adams' answer) gets a free pack of seeds and eternal salvation

Edited May 3, 2007 by Boojum

[dikki]

It's simple. We (life on Earth) are a biological accident which would happen anywhere given the right conditions. By chance it happened here on Earth - many millions of years ago.

When we (as individuals) die, that's it. End of story. No more. No pearly gates, no prodding tridents, no sitting arround for millenia in damp waiting rooms waiting for a verdict, no answering for all our sins. Just dead, decomposing - matter - reversion to constituent component chemicals.

Get over it - outside human beings no one loves us. What a shame we spend so much time smashing each other to bits.

Enjoy it while it lasts - it ain't long - don't forget that others (including your kids) want to have a go when we've gone so we really shouldn't smash it up so.

have to agree

shame humans make it such a shithole

now we just wait to die

[fatfreddy]

. . . But where does love come into the equation ? . . . . Where does art come into the equation - what is the biological reason for a painting or a poem or a song being able to reduce a grown man to tears ? Where does creativity come from ? What is the point of the appreciation of beauty outside a biological imperative to find food or reproduce ?

. . I think there's a middle ground, I'm just not entirely sure what it is. I guess I'm sceptical of anyone who believes they know the truth, whichever side of the debate they fall on.

Very good questions. 'Love' encompasses many emotions (lust thru to respect) I think a lot of 'love' can be explained in biological/chemical terms. Art is different and I think is the most important activity humans have ever indulged in. Art (both the creation of art and the appriciation of art) is the result of self-reflectivness Without art we are lost. When we destroy or ignore art we destroy and ignore our own history and humanity. Creativity comes from human (individual) intelligence and an awareness of the frailty of the 'human condition'. I believe most 'real' art (be it painting, music, poetry or prose) are unanswered questions - from the Greek tradegies through to paintings of Francis Bacon. Most of the 'questions' can be understood only within the terms of the artist's own frame of reference. The ability to ask a question and not expect an answer - to question the 'staus quo' of society is the sign of creative artistic intelligence. Only people with dull or closed minds insist on an answer and behave agressively when their beliefs are undermined. There are many, many things to which we don't know the answer - we just have to accept it rather than insist that the answer is explained by the presence of a supernatural 'God'.

Why does there have to be a point to creation or appreciation of art?

Although the existance of 'love' or 'art' could be explained by the presence of a 'God' if one believed in a 'God', so too could the existance of 'nuts & bolts' or 'greed' or 'ice-cream' or 'anger'. The existance or not of a 'God' is NOT explained by the presence of 'Love' or 'art' (or ice-cream or nuts and bolts).

As far as a 'third way . . ' is concerned do you mean a 'half-god'?

Edited May 3, 2007 by fatfreddy

[dikki]

Edited to add or maybe the member who holds the answer to life, the universe and everything (and not Doulas Adams' answer) gets a free pack of seeds and eternal salvation

damn

i'm 42 now

[Boojum]

Very good questions. 'Love' encompasses many emotions (lust thru to respect) I think a lot of 'love' can be explained in biological/chemical terms. Art is different and I think is the most important activity humans have ever indulged in. Art (both the creation of art and the appriciation of art) is the result of self-reflectivness Without art we are lost. When we destroy or ignore art we destroy and ignore our own history and humanity. Creativity comes from human (individual) intelligence and an awareness of the frailty of the 'human condition'. I believe most 'real' art (be it painting, music, poetry or prose) are unanswered questions - from the Greek tradegies through to paintings of Francis Bacon. Most of the 'questions' can be understood only within the terms of the artist's own frame of reference. The ability to ask a question and not expect an answer - to question the 'staus quo' of society is the sign of creative artistic intelligence. Only people with dull or closed minds insist on an answer and behave agressively when their beliefs are undermined. There are many, many things to which we don't know the answer - we just have to accept it rather than insist that the answer is explained by the presence of a supernatural 'God'.

Why does there have to be a point to creation or appreciation of art?

Although the existance of 'love' or 'art' could be explained by the presence of a 'God' if one believed in a 'God', so too could the existance of 'nuts & bolts' or 'greed' or 'ice-cream' or 'anger'. The existance or not of a 'God' is NOT explained by the presence of 'Love' or 'art' (or ice-cream or nuts and bolts).

As far as a 'third way . . ' is concerned do you mean a 'half-god'?

Dunno what I mean. I guess that's my whole point. I just know that I don't believe in anything, but I also know that 'art', creativity, whatever, is far greater than me. It's something outside me. It doesn't fit into a reductionist worldview (least as far as I can see). That's what I'm saying - I used to be sure of my atheist (or even anti-theist) reductionist, purely mechanical view of existence. I'm not any more. I'll never be a subscriber to organised religion, but I don't think I can be a subscriber to a reductionist mechanical view of exitence either. I think the truth is somewhere in between the two. But then again I'm not sure I believe in the concept of truth either. Or reality. There's personal truth, subjective reality. I think ultimately we, as a species, have been cursed with a brain that simply looks too hard for meaning. Perhaps there is none. Perhaps there is, but it's simply too big for us ever to comprehend. Mostly it doesn't matter, unless you've been cursed with a mind that dwells on shit like this A lot of the time I wish I'd been born stupid, cos then I wouldn't have to think about shit like this. Ignorance is bliss. Sometimes I envy the ignorant. There is such a thing as thinking too much

[powerband]

Interesting thread Boojum, Aetheism..... I always proclaimed to be a firm follower.

Its only in my later years I started to question this?

If I was an aethiest, why did I pray when I was losing the people I loved? Why did I ask God to pull them through?

Maybe clutching at straws perhaps? He never helped me.... was this because I had denied him all my life? We'll never know..... and like you I am now stuck in the " middle zone! " Just not quite sure......

So I may follow in my partners footsteps and become a Jedi Knight.....a recognised religion now!

What is there too lose?

Ms Powerband

[Guest scarface]

i dont believe in none of that religious shit, you die then turn into worm food as far as im concerned, and tbh i aint heading to heaven anyway, so id rather not think about it

[Lizard]

all religious belief is born out of fear and ignorance , fear of death and ignorance of the world around us.

the fact that many people willingly endure hardship all their lives in the vain hope that they may have some sort of afterlife where they will be rewarded is just plain moronic.

live for now you only get one chance.

Edited May 3, 2007 by Lizard