M
MindOverMatter
Guest
That depends on the Atheist and how mature they are in their reasoning. I was an Atheist; there are many people that were once Atheist. Not all of us are born Christians, and not all of us become attracted to belief just because of suffering and loneliness. Not all of us are Atheist because we want the truth.
Materialism is a popular world-view, and I think you will find that many people, just like some Christians, simply follow the crowd or whatever is the dominant view. A consciencious person ought to be stunned by their situation of existing. But most of us are not. We can easily assume any number of scenarios with out really thinking about it.
We live in a world of desires. A lot of people are driven by desire, and we can be driven away from belief simply because it opposes something that we personally want; and of course, it can work the other way to. The people, who mock belief as unreasonable, obviously feel that they have some kind of objective duty to be naturalists and promote naturalism. But it is not objective. We create are own purpose; are own fantasies. When we do away with God; we do not say “just deal with it”. Instead; we look for other Gods, which happen to be material. And then we decorate them in illusions of value and worth. When we do not achieve social acceptance we get depressed because humanity is now the measure of things. You are the car you drive, the cloths you wear, the belief you have. Only this time, unlike God, we know that our inventions of value and self worth are false. To me thats quite sad, and i will hold back the temptation to laugh, simply because i know that it is “wrong”. But Right and Wrong makes no sense in a world with out objective meaning. What are we talking about? But it seems that we prefere that illusion. Creating your own destiny has been a good bargain for some.
Anybody who looks at the issue seriously, rather then jumping to conclusions, will realize that the concept of God obviously has more “explanatory value” in terms of our “personal existence”, then the concept of Santa Claus. And as far as ridiculous goes, I think it is just as ridiculous to believe that the world exists for no reason, and that the ultimate reality of human consciousness is un-thinking meaningless purposeless Lepton and a Quark.
Why should I believe that objects can become self-aware with feelings, dreams and desires through the combination of various substances; which just happen to exist and operate according to logical principles? That’s a naturalistic belief; it is not one that is derived from the scientific evidence. If the world was completely irrational, and had no historical deductive roots which could be analyzed to such an extent that we could say “this is how things work”, this would give me more cause to disbelieve then anything that I am aware of in this present universe. As far as the possibility of existence coming out of nothing…well my mind can only accept that as an act of God. It is certainly not meaningful to me to believe that existence just occurred for no reason; and then suddenly, low-an-behold, you exist with no responsibility but to your self. Sounds like a fantasy to me, and one that I once indulged in as a socialist. The fact that you need a brain to think, or eyes to see and lungs to breath, gives me cause to believe that their is more to existence then space time and energy; since reality goes to such lengths as to be conditional in its principle of being.
Sure; if we take the world for granted, we can reduce it to a meaningless void. But I cannot take life for granted because it opposes my reason. The way in which life operates and strives toward well defined and meaningful ends, tells me that there is most probably a purpose behind things.
If the Atheist can only chant the mantra of chance creating the illusion of purpose, then I believe that I am well within my reason to believe in a divine intelligence. It’s up to the Atheist to prove that there is no purpose, since it seems clear to me that there is. It makes no sense to reduce my personal self to an atom, or to think that the ultimate reality of a thing is only the reality that we can see or measure. Pointing out that things arise through a natural mechanism does not explain the quality and meaningfulness of existence. This naturalistic line of thinking is shallow to me and is more worthy of ridicule then any religious belief that I know of.
