The absurdity of atheism

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987mk said:
I’m a former Roman Catholic and now Atheist.

My life has value. It’s valuable to my kids, my neighbours, my employer, my friends. Heck it’s even valuable to the grass on my front lawn, as I tackle the weeds, so as to allow the grass to grow.

Lots of things have value, with or without a human interacting with it.
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Of course your life has value. But Tony had said the atheist view is that ULTIMATELY nothing has value. That is to say, all things die and pass into ultimate nothingness without a purpose assigned to them beyond the value they held at the time of their existence.

You’re O.K. with that as a more rational view that the Catholic one?

What actual proof leads you to conclude the rationality of that view? :confused:
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Is this absurdly hateful or what? Just asking.

home.suddenlink.net/news/read/category/News/hashtag/News/article/the_associated_press-atheist_display_will_force_removal_of_nativity_sce-ap
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Looking at the information source quoted by the article it doesn’t seem to me that either of the above is applicable based on the information available so far.
The Lincoln Atheists’ table will feature scale models of a church, a wall and federal government buildings to demonstrate the separation of church and state, said Brian Aden, the group’s president. Another group will present a “reason tree,” he said.
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The area surrounding the Capitol information desk is regularly used for political and educational displays.
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Smith said reservations are usually made in week-long blocks, but there’s no written policy for how early groups can begin booking the space or how much they can use at the same time.
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This year, the atheist groups requested the spots in August, about a month before the Thomas More Society, she said.
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**Aden [the group’s president] said he doesn’t oppose the Nativity scene, and to his knowledge, no one from the Thomas More Society had asked the atheist coalition to relinquish one of its spots.
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If they did, he said, “We would talk to them about it.”**
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He said he doesn’t know whether the displays will return next year.
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“We want to see what kind of response we get.”
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Source
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Of course your life has value. But Tony had said the atheist view is that ULTIMATELY nothing has value. That is to say, all things die and pass into ultimate nothingness without a purpose assigned to them beyond the value they held at the time of their existence…
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I would now go even further than that, Charlie, and say everything would be not only ultimately valueless but valueless from start to finish if there were no reason why anything exists. Values would exist solely in our minds and be no more than fictions we have invented. It amounts to wishful thinking to believe that in the context of absurdity something makes sense! In fact we know beyond all doubt some things do make sense - which means they are valuable - and so they are valuable regardless of what we believe or disbelieve. But then how could objective values exist in a Godless universe?

They would have no rational foundation, no *raison d’être - *which takes us back to the absurdity of atheism. The problem is that the more absurd a hypothesis is the more difficult it is to disprove. Where does one start? With the fact that if we abandon reason we have no right to make any assertions at all about anything. We are committing intellectual suicide! It follows that reality must be fundamentally rational and intelligible - which is very close to belief in a Supreme Mind…
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Of course your life has value. But Tony had said the atheist view is that ULTIMATELY nothing has value. That is to say, all things die and pass into ultimate nothingness without a purpose assigned to them beyond the value they held at the time of their existence.

You’re O.K. with that as a more rational view that the Catholic one?

What actual proof leads you to conclude the rationality of that view? :confused:
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Put another way, I don’t need a supernatural God in order to find value in my life.

In the grand scheme of things, I suppose nothing has value, as everything will decay and the universe itself will one day cease to exist.

Good thing that isn’t today, so I’ll enjoy the time I have.

The religious view is dependent upon blind faith. I know there’s nothing after death, you hope there’s something.

I’m at peace with there being nothing.

Nothing terrifies a lot of believers. They want to live forever.
 
987mk said:
It’s not hateful.

It’s fair use of public space.
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I looked at several articles on this and I think the frequent use of the word “force” and the connotations/denotation that it carries could communicate to some a false sense of what has occurred. Force can denote compelling someone to do something against their will or coercion. But this is akin to trying to reserve a room for a few weeks and finding that a few days during the requested stay there are no rooms available. When this has happened to me I didn’t said that the next occupant of the room **forced ** me out.

It seems that 4 months ago two groups submitted their requests request to make use of the space of the 4 corners of the rotunda a week apart from each other and the court house considered and approved the first request they received allowing the other group to have the other space that was available.

Is there something considered unfair about this? If so what changes would make it more fair? Would an evaluation of the situation be different if the positions of the two groups were reversed?

Pardon my mistakes. Sent from a mobile device.
 
987mk said:
The religious view is dependent upon blind faith. I know there’s nothing after death, you hope there’s something.

I’m at peace with there being nothing.
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The atheist view is dependent on blind faith there is no God.

You are content with an ultimately meaningless universe?

“I am not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but does not know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds mysteriously grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.” Albert Einstein
 
ThinkingSapien said:
I looked at several articles on this and I think the frequent use of the word “force” and the connotations/denotation that it carries could communicate to some a false sense of what has occurred. Force can denote compelling someone to do something against their will or coercion. But this is akin to trying to reserve a room for a few weeks and finding that a few days during the requested stay there are no rooms available. When this has happened to me I didn’t said that the next occupant of the room **forced ** me out.

It seems that 4 months ago two groups submitted their requests request to make use of the space of the 4 corners of the rotunda a week apart from each other and the court house considered and approved the first request they received allowing the other group to have the other space that was available.

Is there something considered unfair about this? If so what changes would make it more fair? Would an evaluation of the situation be different if the positions of the two groups were reversed?

Pardon my mistakes. Sent from a mobile device.
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Obviously the atheists know about December 25. I hope. a little respect.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
The atheist view is dependent on blind faith there is no God.

You are content with an ultimately meaningless universe?

“I am not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but does not know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds mysteriously grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.” Albert Einstein
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You have the best quotes!
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
they put up their display at Christmas??? don’t make me laugh ha ha.
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Why don’t they just declare a universal day for celebration of the birth of their Nogod?

They could make it December 25, and Nogod could share the manger with God. 😉
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
Obviously the atheists know about December 25. I hope. a little respect.
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Yes, I understand and acknowledge your evaluation of this situation of the 4 corners being reserved for that week.

The group is not sure that they are going to do a display next year. From what I can find the More Thomas group had only done a nativity set last year (not prior years) so it wasn’t even an established pattern for this capital building; not that this has any impact on applications being processed in the order that they were received.
 
HerCrazierHalf said:
Does the universe need to have a meaning? What is so bad about the possibility?
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It is not a possibility because the universe does have meaning.
The meaning is love which you must know because you are happy when she is happy.
Love is not just a bunch of chemicals reacting in the limbic centre of your brain.
It has to do with a relationship between persons and the Source of that capacity.
What would be so bad if there were no love in your life? No happiness.
If you are interested in understanding how it works, I would suggest the Catechism.
 
HerCrazierHalf said:
Does the universe need to have a meaning? What is so bad about the possibility?
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How can meaning be derived from that which is meaningless? Only by self-deception at every moment of one’s life. We can fool ourselves but we can’t fool reality. if life had no meaning it wouldn’t be long before we found out the truth…
 
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