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Any Atheists here?

Ya know it's funny...

I tried being an atheist once, but then I realized that I do believe in god and these he/she/it is a big part of my life.....as weird as that sounds. I can't even explain it! I just feel like...god is with me. It sounds lame I know, but that's just how I feel...

Brilliantly expressed.

When the time is right God will find you, or more probably, you will find God. I have tried to rationalise the experience but I cant find the correct words so now I dont try. To me believing in atheism would be like living in a vacuum.
 
perhaps you view it like this because you think believers are afraid of death.
^no. it's not someone's fear of death at all.
it's much more the reliance felt and given to some invisible puppet-master watching over and pulling
the strings in our lives.
to me, that belief allows for a lack of responsibility of one's actions and choices which
i instinctively find abhorrent.
i don't dismiss the fact that i could absolutely be wrong, though..
and i've had faith before, albeit in another person. but i can at least understand the concept.
for myself, finding the ability to believe in someone other than myself is an amazing gift,
as i am innately an extremely untrusting person.
i'd much prefer to have faith that humans aren't as good or as intelligent as it gets.

i've lived in the bible belt for quite awhile now.
the uncompromising faith i've personally seen, and the peace some feel through exercising that faith is
enviable to me. it must be wonderful to go through life trusting in everything having a purpose,
and that there's a chance that our suffering will be rewarded in the end.
but logically, i'm unable to get there. honestly, i'd rather be wrong.


In that sense, fear of reincarnation, fear of the unknown, fear of facing a worse reality than the one you left certainly weighs in just as much as the fear of nothingness IMO. On that basis i could just as well say atheism is a cop out, a belief that is a result of a lack of strength, but i don't truly feel that way.
^point taken..and yes, that thought is scary as hell. ;)

Intuitively, i believe there is something more to this, that's all i have to go on. I think of why? why something rather than nothing?
Belief is dependent on experience.
^you use the word intuitively, which means your belief is based on feeling - not experience?

if a computer is turned on and then off, the computer is still there, it was there at a time in history, people may even remember that computer, the computer lives through ideas and memories or the concept of the computer itself. Its essence remains somewhere, it's inconceivable to me that it just disappears into nothingness, even if it's gone. The very matter it was made of hasn't disappeared, energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Everything in the universe, has always been here and will always remain, even when the universe expands so much that it dies.
^I tend to think of our existence more like a sandcastle..more organic..and once it's been knocked down..the organic materials are still there...and maybe something else can be built - but that castle's gone forever.
 
by intuitively i mean it's a feeling i have, can't tell whether it's based on experience or is innate, a priori vs a posteriori, i don't know. It's just how i feel. It's really a mixture of experience and what i naturally felt as a child around my first memories. I have always questioned the nature of reality, the idea of God, those are some of the first thoughts i recall in my life. So the feeling is based on experience i suppose but also feels innate, isn't that circular? lol

a sand castle is an appropriate analogy, it's the idea of entropy that i'm getting at but my idea is that since these experiences happened, they are like cast in stone, or held somewhere, like the idea of the akashak records or something. I think that's just strange or special. Matter evolves and will continue to evolve past humanity, long past whatever we can conceive. The castle may be gone forever, but it was a castle at one point, that's what i find special. The essence of that castle existed, it was. Even after i die, i was something, i existed, i lived, i experienced, that just seems so profound to me. It doesn't really mean anything but it suggest to me that it's the very reason there is something rather than nothing in the first place.

tokenname said:
it's much more the reliance felt and given to some invisible puppet-master watching over and pulling
the strings in our lives.
to me, that belief allows for a lack of responsibility of one's actions and choices which
i instinctively find abhorrent.

i don't like how people do that as well; it's a big cop out but i don't think God is a puppet master, if anything God would have zero control over the universe apart from the principles of physics on which it unfolded. Other than that, God is irrelevant, doesn't care about good or evil, is not anything other than the collection of energy/matter that is this universe and also possibly the culmination of all universes. God in my view is not a separate entity, we are God, I am you, you are me and we all are one. Even rocks, particles, water, stars, galaxies, everything that is, is one.
 
by intuitively i mean it's a feeling i have, can't tell whether it's based on experience or is innate, a priori vs a posteriori, i don't know. It's just how i feel. It's really a mixture of experience and what i naturally felt as a child around my first memories. I have always questioned the nature of reality, the idea of God, those are some of the first thoughts i recall in my life. So the feeling is based on experience i suppose but also feels innate, isn't that circular? lol

a sand castle is an appropriate analogy, it's the idea of entropy that i'm getting at but my idea is that since these experiences happened, they are like cast in stone, or held somewhere, like the idea of the akashak records or something. I think that's just strange or special. Matter evolves and will continue to evolve past humanity, long past whatever we can conceive. The castle may be gone forever, but it was a castle at one point, that's what i find special. The essence of that castle existed, it was. Even after i die, i was something, i existed, i lived, i experienced, that just seems so profound to me. It doesn't really mean anything but it suggest to me that it's the very reason there is something rather than nothing in the first place.



i don't like how people do that as well; it's a big cop out but i don't think God is a puppet master, if anything God would have zero control over the universe apart from the principles of physics on which it unfolded. Other than that, God is irrelevant, doesn't care about good or evil, is not anything other than the collection of energy/matter that is this universe and also possibly the culmination of all universes. God in my view is not a separate entity, we are God, I am you, you are me and we all are one. Even rocks, particles, water, stars, galaxies, everything that is, is one.

my definition of god or deity is: creator and ruler of the universe; source of moral authority.
unless I misunderstand, you believe in that which we're made of & also that we actually do exist,
but not in any kind of absolutist moral authority.
i'd say in that - we definitely lean in the same direction.
 
^The education system?

everything (like environment, family, advertising, entertainment, etc) one is exposed to programmes intuitive responses to all kinds of topics/scenarios.
 
The personal reflection that I have had with things that religions and other traditions have kept me on more the "There is God" side of the fence, if there can be a fence; My personal experiences and my natural interpretation lean toward belief and faith, and in what- can be called "God". I'd be considered crazy to say, but I understand the "created in his image" more than some might (in my own way, to claim absolutely anything here could be foolish for me). I don't doubt that I might have had some delusion, and that it all might be an illusion, aanyways... But I see it, and have found enough repetition to keep me here. Uhh. Might not be making the greatest sense/this is incomplete.

I have had some very empty feelings about God. I have felt like more or less an atheist at times... But I'm won over by the continuing experience, and certain reflection.

I don't know.

Mostly, if I have been "atheist" in a moment, I have felt hopeless, and meaningless, and sometimes its been more of a "fuck you God", which doesn't really work for being an atheist, I understood/understand.

Robotripping- What you say in bold "there is something, rather than nothing", that is a base in me.
 
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It's kind of funny how it all works. I started off religious, catholic to be exact (whatever that means), because that's how I was raised. Then I grew up, dabbled with a little marijuana and spirituality and gave up with the idea of a god or supreme authority. I wore my atheist label with pride and would bring it into every conversation regarding religion and life after death mumbo jumbo. Then maybe a year or two later I even gave up that belief and label of atheism. Now i'm more spiritual, which is another label sure, but it teaches me that the importance of life after death or an existence of god is rather pointless to think about. What are your thoughts going to tell you about something you've never seen or encountered aside from this present moment? Nada damn thang ya hear. So being spiritual can be a label, but it's not something I go around preaching everyone should become or this/that, or right/wrong. It's just the way it all is. If you wish to listen to my ways of living, then so be it, and i'll happily listen to yours, but please don't try and convert me because you feel sorry for me that one day i'll be heading to H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICKS, ya feel me?
 
i feel you, personally, id rather be attacked and beaten(or something) by an angry mob than be damned to H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICKS. folks like that, they could use hearing to be more careful about what they wish for others, and to put a puck in it.
 
my definition of god or deity is: creator and ruler of the universe; source of moral authority.
unless I misunderstand, you believe in that which we're made of & also that we actually do exist,
but not in any kind of absolutist moral authority.
i'd say in that - we definitely lean in the same direction.

indeed; i think as a mass of people we need to come up with a new concept of God or employ a different one, especially if we want to live in a secular world. If Atheists are simply rejecting organized religion that's one thing but to reject the possibility of the existence of something inconceivable, imperceptible or perhaps even unreasonable, i think is ultimately misguided.

I do believe we are made of matter/energy that has transformed/evolved and i exist in so far as i think, i mean my existence is self evident :) My beliefs were formed mostly by reading Kant and his idea of transcendental idealism - that we do not see objects in themselves but we perceive them, meaning there is an objective world, entirely separate from our subjective reality, though the two work together to form our collective reality. The rest of my ideas kind of stem from that and extensive use of psychedelics, especially DMT.

@What_23: that thought occurred to me while tripping this year, like all revelations i have lol. I don't think we live in the best of all possible worlds but even so, this whole life thing is certainly profound beyond my ability to describe so, and that's gotta be better than nothing, to at least have experienced it if nothing else.

Why do you think God created mankind in his own image? That idea seems kind of silly and sexist to me. I mean is God really a male? and why us humans? what about the dinosaurs? God didn't think they were good enough? what about possible alien creatures far more advanced than us? what about the DMT elves????? If we have a monotheistic conception of God, it seems far more likely that humans attributed human traits to that God and wrote it down in a book that has historical context and can be placed during a certain time period. What if humans evolve in the next 200 billion years and no longer look at all like we do today? Does God change in appearance? that would assume that God exists in our universe and is not the universe itself, which is what gets those Atheists going. lol Not to mention that humans evolved since the beginning of life on Earth, if God created us in his image, then God is likely a very simple creature or better yet just pure energy/matter itself, which would actually fall in line with my beliefs.

If there is a God, it essentially left everything up to random chance after the big bang, and in doing so, we don't know whether human life was intentional, whether there are other life forms on other planets, or whether we are special. It would be so fucking strange if we were the only rational life forms in the entire universe! If we could truly prove that then i'd have to argue there must be a God because the odds of that are approaching 0, like a curve on a grave that never quite hits 0 but gets infinitely close. Unless we find that there are infinite many universes, which is of course a possibility, probably with better odds. Then who knows how it all works but it's so far beyond human understanding that it doesn't even matter at this point.

My best proof there is a God of some sort is that i feel there is. I feel that connection or unity and have experienced that singularity. It's hard to deny your own experience of something greater than yourself, but it could very well be a delusion as well. So i have to remain agnostic on the issue, hopeful there is something more to this but ultimately don't care either way. I'd be really pissed off if the Christian God ended up being legit and real though...lol that would be a big fucking cosmic joke wouldn't it.
 
random chance: I used to have a saying-- "No event is random if all events are the same event".

created in the image of God, I don't believe that it is just us that are created in this image, for God- if translated as "the process" of "everything", or something compatible or you know, everything... It just simply would not not be "in the image of", within the matrix of, yada yada... Found in reflection of.

Hard to put it to words. If within "everything" ("God"), everything "else" is, it (everything else) can be nothing but what began (everything/"God"-what is was will be always).

This goes along with why I consider computers a natural thing, even if man-made. There is no "artificial", really, unless everything follows that pattern. Sooner or later we might find it all, all patterns can be found together, in some way, like a puzzle to create one larger image (but the pieces must fall certainly, certain ways to see it). I feel like a child. I know, I must be scribbling, hey? Hey. Hmm. *jumps up and down, finds a ball*?????????????????

The "Image" is more prime, simple, than a human might be seen as, but there are common forms, and within this primal form, human form can be found. The human form is actually simple. It is an inevitable outcome. Sure, other life forms might exist built on the same basic patterns, and they are, and there might be some pretty exotic variations (for sure), but basically, we are all made in the same, with the same image. The same basic template, and it's pretty simply a-b-c, my intuition tells me (though I haven't grasped it how I'd like to in words or something/can't think).

That would be pretty crazy if "God" did end up being a "human". I have had the idea challenge me often. I have completely written the idea of God, and angels (and whatnot) off, but have since come back around to say, "wait a minute, it really could be". The human form is special, though. More so than a dog. Why? A dog can't build a universe. A human, with it's hands, can make more precise instruments. With it's brain, it can hone technologies to eventually reach a place where it can break everything, seemingly (unless there are safeguards in place for this, which could be true, in some sense), or make everything.

Have you ever seen Lunopolis? It's a rather interesting movie... Just some ideas in it.

No other animal on earth that we have witnessed has anywhere near our potential (well, so it would seem), right now. There might be something higher that we haven't seen, observing us, watching us, perhaps even making it all up... I don't know, but here in three dimensions and whatnot, we are awesome. Really, awesome. Still, there are a lot of dimensions that I can't account for, probably, and things.

"God" can be interpreted as one and many :).

Why would God be man? We can conceive of him/God. We can have the idea. We have no idea what dolphins think. On levels, things can change, as can my ideas.

But is God all conscious? I doubt it. I kind of think God would cancel out if it were all conscious. Kind of. I mean on levels it's all conscious, and so it would be wrong to say that God is not all-knowing, but that isn't really the entire picture. Then I keep on picturing this white speck (point) of light, very bright, pure white, that is God. Like the brightest light and it doesn't hurt your eyes. You feel like crying, but-and it's all good. I saw it on 4-AcO-DMT, and this is what I'm describing, sort of, but when I think of the all-knowing, all powerful God, it is that primal spark. The light. It's everywhere, but I argue. I don't know. I want to say, with confidence what I do, but I don't feel so confident always. This is a try. Maybe it just can't be properly said, or maybe that just gives me peace to say.

It's awesome. No matter how many times I curse God, she forgives me. He forgives me. The first time I cursed God, saying, to detail, "Fuck you God" and flipping the bird at the sky, and everything, was a day I was working, the summer after high school. I was driving for a job, and got angry because something caused my route to go longer, and I was picking up a friend- Mike, from the airport a distance away shortly. Everything was in a rush, and I was stressed. I forget how it boiled up exactly. I made it there, and picked him up, but was tired and probably high, so I wanted him to drive back- which he did. Then he hit a deer going 70 mph. My first car. Within hours of the first time I cursed God.

I cursed myself. To love "God", you love yourself, and what you plug into. Ahh.
 
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@What_23: About God being all knowing or even entirely conscious, it's kind of an interesting idea whichever way you look at it. If god is the collective consciousness of everything, and that collective consciousness evolves over time, then so does God. We become more aware, God becomes more aware. But it could just as very well be the case that God exists, was lonely as a singularity and decided to break apart everything and have unconscious beings become conscious and experience reality from infinitely many perspectives. That sounds like a silly idea but one that often comes from psychedelic users.

The human/bipedal (as well as any other living or non living thing) form, concepts like a circle, pyramid, polygon i feel are innate and are a priori, kind of platonic but it just makes intuitive sense that we grasp the underlying pattern or concept and apply it to our reality. Whether it actually exists physically somewhere, i doubt but that concept must have existed, the rules of physics which made our reality possible in the first place must precede the generation of our universe - that is the case or there are infinite many universes and it just came down to raw chance and probability that the right amount of everything eventually formed to create our universe. One idea supposes intelligent design, the other random chance. Perhaps there is a middle ground though.

I get the idea of God created man in his image in the sense that if God is pure energy and everything that exists is also pure energy with differing levels of entropy, then we're all the same thing. We are indeed made of the same thing but the arrangements of those particles separate us at least on a superficial level, there's something to that though. The particular arrangement of molecules that make up a human body, the brain and create consciousness, feels to me like something meaningful or something purposefully designed. Of course i can't base any solid theory based on my feelings but until we figure out if there are infinite many universes or just one or figure out what actually is beyond our universe if anything, that's the best i can do. The idea of anything being outside our universe transcends reason, my concept of God transcends reason and logic ATM anyway. Since logic is the underlying principle of our universe, logic, math, laws of physics and such, then logically, we should at some point be able to make a logical proof for the existence of God but i think science needs to progress quite a bit and our rules of logic/understanding of language need to progress as well first.
 
May I ask, why do a number of atheists commonly say "Oh My God" or "Jesus Christ" when startled, etc?
 
atheist here.

I'm not one of those 'zealous' atheists however. My atheism is just my belief, it isn't a belief system of it's own built around disproving a certain religion or de-proselytizing in general.
 
May I ask, why do a number of atheists commonly say "Oh My God" or "Jesus Christ" when startled, etc?

Because it's ingrained in our culture and language. It becomes as unconscious and meaningless as saying "Ow!" when you're hurt.
 
May I ask, why do a number of atheists commonly say "Oh My God" or "Jesus Christ" when startled, etc?

Because it happens. I could say "Jumping Poop Farts!" instead of "Oh my God!" and they essentially mean the same thing - just a meaningless interjection.
 
I've been known to scream JESUS FUCK! It has no particular meaning. I get upset when people assume I will at some point in my life "find God". The whole notion of God is so mired in metaphysical mind-fuckery that I've no patience left for wracking my brains trying to think of some halfway plausible theory that I can only ever find proof of if I'm stir-crazy or it's something that can actually be tested, which would really just mean stripping away the theological aspects and calling it physics.
 
I'd actually call myself an anti-theist.

Religion causes more harm than good in the way and i would personally like to see it wiped off the face of the planet.

(Mainly referring to organised religion - Christianity and Islam being the top 2)
 
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