The Atheistic Explanation for the Mystery of Existence

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it’s a philosophical discussion, like the ancient greeks. you know, the ones who had a god for everything, including ‘the unknown god’.😃
 
GEddie said:
I don’t believe in a God who can be found only by entering into nothingness.

Methinks we are talking past each other.
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I consider meditation and contemplation to be basically interchangeable terms. Each has basically the same goal. And each has basically the same method.
Scholars have noted that “the term ‘meditation’ as it has entered contemporary usage” is parallel to the term “contemplation” in Christianity,[22]
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(source: Wikipedia: Meditation)
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In Christianity, contemplation refers to a content-free mind directed towards the awareness of God as a living reality. This corresponds, in some ways, to what in Eastern religion is called samadhi.[10][11]
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(source: Wikipedia: Contemplation)
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hangnail said:
That’s the atheistic experience.
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My point is: is there any one atheistic experience? Is there some phenomenology that corresponds to being an atheist? I don’t see why there would be. There are probably several, many of which are cognitively unattainable for you (likewise there are probability theistic experiences that are cognitively unattainable for you). For example, even if you could make yourself an atheist, it might be impossible to regard the question of God’s existence with visceral disdain. What I’m saying is that there does not seem to be much reason to think that there is a particular psychological experience of being an atheist.
hangnail said:
I believe God is the ultimate good. That is, the good everyone is ultimately seeking.
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So why seek out an experience which you know to be defective?
 
polytropos said:
What I’m saying is that there does not seem to be much reason to think that there is a particular psychological experience of being an atheist.
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I believe there is some kind of psychological experience.
polytropos said:
So why seek out an experience which you know to be defective?
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Because I want to experience it. I would like to know what it is like to live in a Godless world.
 
it’s not that difficult to imagine. until you get sick or are dying. then you realize that you are not god.
 
Rene` Descartes is quoted as saying, “I think therefore I am”. As a thinking person, it is because we can debate the existence of 'nothingness" or the “existence of GOD”, in lucid reasoning. I myself know of the existence of GOD through prayer while also knowing that GOD CREATED the cosmos through HIS pure thought. There was nothing before there was time, and we all know that time is subject to one’s personal relationship to time. When one thinks of nothingness one must remember that time cannot exist in a vacuum of nothingness. And since space is no longer described as empty and void, time can now exist outside of earth. However; before time, there existed the TRINITY and the HOLY Congregation. I am a creationist, I do not know how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden nor how many children Eve bore while in the Garden before the original sin of disobedience entered into their hearts. But once their expulsion from the Garden, time began as we know it with seconds, minutes hours and so on. Time is GOD.
 
polytropos said:
My point is:** is there any one** atheistic experience? Is there some phenomenology that corresponds to being an atheist? I don’t see why there would be. There are probably several, many of which are cognitively unattainable for you (likewise there are probability theistic experiences that are cognitively unattainable for you). For example, even if you could make yourself an atheist, it might be impossible to regard the question of God’s existence with visceral disdain. What I’m saying is that there does not seem to be much reason to think that there is a particular psychological experience of being an atheist.

So why seek out an experience which you know to be defective?
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That is the exact point that so many posters here seem to not get.
Carl Sagan, Ayn Rand, Joseph Stalin, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Sam Harris, and Friedrich Nietzsche were all technically atheists and yet they had extremely different world-views from each other.

Which suggests that there is no one ‘atheistic view’ for everything, if anything.
 
bisco said:
it’s not that difficult to imagine. until you get sick or are dying. then you realize that you are not god.
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What?
Are you implying atheism is belief that humans are gods?
 
hangnail said:
I consider meditation and contemplation to be basically interchangeable terms. Each has basically the same goal. And each has basically the same method.
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Really?

Earlier you posted:
I have experienced the state of “pure awareness.” If you practice meditation regularly, then you should experience the state of pure awareness regularly. This state is known as “samadhi.”
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Really? Congratz, dude! You must be proud.
Needless to say, this irritates me.
Maybe it’s the tension of Advent (This longing gets worse every year and I wasn’t even aware of it in my twenties).
It’s a lot of things, including the fact that I trapped myself into some argument with Charlie on another thread about the merits of Buddhism, and this, by possible association, makes me look bad.

You know when I experience “pure awareness”, when I experience nothingness - in my sleep.
I think there is something of merit behind what you are saying, but you have it wrong (There I said it.)
And, you are not even communicating with Catholics. How do you propose to connect with an atheist?

If meditation and contemplation were merely what you say they are they would not only be useless, but pathological in that they take us away from life.
We have a duty to do God’s work, to try to make of this world, His kingdom.
How does one do that fading into nothingness.
Coping by ignoring, by denial, by running away.

God is not nothingness, this world is not nothingness; sin is not nothing, nor is goodness.

It seems I got up on the wrong side of the bed.
Sorry for the way I am saying it. What I am saying is an honest expression of how I see things.
 
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