Spocko:
You’re a challenging one, you know that? But it’s a good thing.  :-D I’m curious to find out where you get your biblical references, if you’re the one who has to comb through the big fat book and do all the looking yourself or if you know of someone who’s done it for you. Either way that’s an impressive list you got there. Side note: you call it “God’s Hit List”, when in actual fact, it seems like most of the time the Hebrew Scriptures pass on any type of metaphysical commentary when discribing circumstances. So like, when David goes and gets the thousands of foreskins from the philistines (hopefully killing them before he does so, cuz I’d hate to get circumsized while I was still alive if you know what I mean...), there’s no pause for a commentary from heaven that says “I’m God and I approve this message.” No. In fact, many not so happy occurrences in Scripture happen without reference to God. Some of them do, sure, but not all. So who cares, right? Isn’t God still one big serial murderer? Well, I think if you look at Scripture, it’s good to see it as a whole. And since I learn from elsewhere in the Bible that God takes no joy in the destruction of people and that he’d rather see them turn from their ways and be restored to him, I might argue that I wasn’t there and so I don’t know all the stuff that was going on, but I trust God’s character enough to believe that he did what he had to do. Does that sound like weak sauce to you guys? Eh, probably. But I’m ok with that.  :-p It’s just that when you say “I want nothing to do with this maniac”, you make it sound like God’s trigger-happy or something, like he’s on a power trip. I really don’t get that impression from my reading of the Hebrew Scriptures.

On a different note, thanks guys for your comments. I feel like some headway was made. Maybe just in my own head, but whatever, it’s cool when the discussion kind of moves forward. 

Nowiser, I tend to agree with you, but I can’t do so completely. You say that atheism provides NO answers… I disagree. I would argue that atheism provides answers of a different type than perhaps any other religion, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t provide answers. I’m not going to try to argue that Atheism is a religion, because clearly, it’s not. However, I do think that it commits you to a certain type of worldview, just like any religion. And just like a religious worldview makes you answer some of life’s questions a certain way, so also Atheism makes you answer life’s questions in one way and not another. What am I getting at? Simply that I think you may have overemphasized the ‘chasm’ that lies between Atheism and all other religions. There are some disanalogies, sure, but they are all belief systems that you have to buy in to, to a certain extent.
But then, I’ll go a head and steal a line from you - that’s just my opinion and I could be wrong as well. 

I’m glad you believe in the existence of healthy Christians. 

As for why I mentionned Foucault, you’re probably trying to get me to say something about how he was gay so that you can blast me on that front. Thankfully I’m not stupid (yes, let me indulge in the wonders of my own non-stupidity :-p). If I threw Sartre and Foucault out there, honestly, it wasn’t because there’s irrefutible evidence that they were psycho (so I might have better used someone like Nietszche, who actually was crazy - oh wait no, that was a disease), but because I wanted a quick and dirty example. From what I’ve read (yes, this does make it highly subjective), it seems as though Sartre had few healthy relationships. Also, from what I’ve read, it seems like Foucault’s wild life out in San Fransisco was very uncautious - to that extent I would argue that he was unhealthy. I’m not going to pick on someone because they’re gay—I think we’d all agree that that would be utterly and totally stupid (can I get an amen?), but hey Foucault (again, from what I’ve heard) was sexually promiscuous beyond all horniness - and wasn’t cautious about his habits in the least. That’s why he came to mind. For all I know he was healthy. However, my personal intuition was that something wasn’t perfectly right with him on an emotional (or maybe psychological) level (not that I’m miles above him or anything). All this to say - he was a quick and dirty example. I’m sorry if that offended anyone - it wasn’t meant as the crux of my argument.

This is fun. Let me know your thoughts.

-Peace-

Mother Theresa wrote in her private letters that she felt abandoned by God and was trying to get back into his good graces.  Apparently she had a vision on a train and was pretty elated for a few months, then as she began her work for the poor, lost the sense of connection.  There’s also evidence that at one point she underwent an exorcism. 

Not to denigrate her work but she may not have been all that psychologically healthy.  A person might do very admirable things out of a sense of compulsion.

Captcha: higher

I, for one, am an atheist with a crutch.  Or perhaps atheist is a wrong term; I have faith in there being no god.

I am from a country that is predominantly Lutheran.  And I found Lutheran teachings, at least as they were explained to me, to be utterly intolerable.  So I had to pick a better belief system.

The most logical choice would probably been “I can’t know whether there is a God or not, but it’s bloody unlikely.”.  But that would still leave room for a nagging doubt that christians are right.

So I picked up my crutch.  “THERE IS NO GOD.” It’s a comfortable illusion that doesn’t interfere with my life.  It’s even likely to be the correct one.  Whether it is or not, it doesn’t matter; I have faith.  I’m not very good atheist, it seems.

Side note:
Anyone have any idea why I can’t highlight previous posts, so that I can quote them?  Is it browser related, maybe?  I’m using Firefox.

StrangerMK,
In brief, I don’t think I’m overstating the chasm.  Primarily because I don’t believe that atheism compels one to adhere to a distinct worldview.  I think that -most- atheists tend to have a pretty similar worldview, but there’s nothing about atheism, per se., that forces one to commit to a particular political perspective, or even insists that you accept science or objectivism, or materialism, or (insert epistemology here)

As for the Foucault question, I wasn’t fishing for an anti-gay remark, so that I could bash.  I was wondering how much Foucault you had read, and trying to figure out if there were aspects of his -thought- that you considered unhealthy.  I don’t have an opinion on his lifestyle, one way or the other.  I would agree that careless promiscuity -is- unhealthy.  Not as unhealthy as chewing tobacco, for example, but still not a wise choice.

But people often find Foucault’s -thought- disturbing, as well.  I consider him to be a pretty radical skeptic, and I don’t agree with many of his conclusions, but his -approach-, his way of seeing things in terms of linguistic power relations, can be adopted as a useful, and often liberating, tool.

Of course, I’ve been indoctrinated by the leftist academic elites, so I -would- believe that.

capcha “evil” (Ok, that makes me a bit nervous!)

StrangerMK - I want to make sure I keep your remarks in context here because I believe you are still missing the point.

However, I do think that it commits you to a certain type of worldview, just like any religion. And just like a religious worldview makes you answer some of life’s questions a certain way, so also Atheism makes you answer life’s questions in one way and not another. What am I getting at? Simply that I think you may have overemphasized the ‘chasm’ that lies between Atheism and all other religions. There are some disanalogies, sure, but they are all belief systems that you have to buy in to, to a certain extent.

One cannot ‘over emphasize’ the chasm that lies between atheism and Christianity.  They do not exist side-by-side, as belief systems go, but on different planes.  Atheism is an absence of belief while agnosticism is a lack of belief.

A religious belief system forces you to answer some of life’s questions in a certain way.  This I agree with.  Atheism allows you to answer the same life questions anyway you see fit.  Atheism is not a co-dependent set of ideals.

TMP - Glad to see your post.  Many of us have gone through that period.

I’ve been meaning to speak up on this thread, but by the time I first noticed it several folks had already said what I was going to say anyway. Still, I’d like to address some of the question StrangerMK put to me earlier.

The supposed psychological comfort of Atheism that I was trying to get at was precisely that one becomes self-reliant. I think a case can be made that self-reliance can be pushed to unhealthy extremes. Maybe Mr. Self-Reliant Atheist is incapable of healthy give-and-take love relationships, maybe he is distrustful of everyone (including his friends), or maybe he just feels it’s ok to mistreat others ("I don’t need other people, I’m self-reliant!")… In any of those (granted, hypothetical) cases, I think it’s safe to say that Mr. Atheist is to a certain extent unhealthy. Moreover, his ‘self-reliance’ is crutch-like in that it is a ‘risk-free bubble’ of sorts. If you don’t depend on others, you can control your life. But, as that dorky Finding Nemo pointed out, people who are afraid to take risks are just plain insecure and need to loosen up. What am I getting at? Simply that self-reliance can become a crutch as well.

Being incapable of a healthy give-and-take relationship is not an example of extreme self-reliance; nor is paranoia or excessive self-centeredness. Those are all certainly unhealthy behaviors, but not a symptom of being overly self-reliant. Is it possible to be too self-reliant? Absolutely and this will often manifest itself in rejecting the help of others with a task that you are obviously not capable of accomplishing on your own. Is that unhealthy? Could be if the task is physically or mentally dangerous. I don’t see how you could consider this to be crutch-like, though, as the examples you’re giving would be more akin to someone who has a valid reason to use a crutch and refuses to do so. People who have the problems you describe above rarely draw any kind of psychological comfort from those problems—if anything those problems are a source of stress and discomfort in their lives—and there’s also the fact that being an atheist has no bearing on how self-reliant a person may actually be. I can think of plenty of examples of atheists I personally know who are anything other than self-reliant despite the fact that it’s a form of self-reliant viewpoint. They just transfer their dependency to someone (or something) other than belief in God(s).

Hold on a second… aren’t Christians the ones who need to loosen up? Yeah sure, lots of ‘em. I don’t deny that. But consider this: some Christians believe in a God who makes demands on their life, and they give things up for him, take crap for him, etc, etc. Consider also that most Christians don’t have mushy-gushy feelings about God most of the time. Which means, far from being comforting, it might be argued that the Christian life is very UNcomfortable. I mean yeah, dying for your beliefs? reaaaaal comfy. Oh yeah.

I know and am friends with plenty of religious people, many of whom are Christian, who don’t need to loosen up as far as I’m concerned. Even with their belief in a God(s) these folks don’t turn those beliefs or their religion into the “crutch” that I’ve made mention of previously. Sure, I still see those beliefs as being silly and unnecessary, but as long as their beliefs aren’t causing them problems and they feel they derive some benefit from them then I’m not one to complain about it. My daughter is about to turn 14 and she’s at that point between being a child and young adult where one moment she can offer up an amazing insight into the nature of reality and then turn around and confess that she still believes that somewhere “out there” Elves really do exist. As long as she’s not planning to run off in search of them in hopes of marrying Legolas or something then that belief is largely harmless wishful thinking.

I don’t really care what most people want to believe until they allow it to become a problem in their lives or, even worse, try to make problems in mine because of those beliefs. I’m very libertarian in that I honestly feel that as long as you’re not harming the person or property of another you should largely be allowed to do what you want with your life. If that involves going to a Church every Sunday and singing praises to an invisible superfriend who expects you to do certain things to earn his favor then by all means go right ahead and do that if it makes you feel better.

IMPORTANT NOTE: my argument is not that all Atheists use their Atheism as a crutch. I don’t believe that. I’m simply trying to point out that Atheism CAN be used as a crutch. Christianity can be used as a crutch as well, but it doesn’t HAVE TO be one. In fact, I’ve known people from every faction - Christians, Atheists, crutched and un-crutched alike.

I still fail to see how atheism can be used as a crutch. Again, I agree that atheists are just as capable of having mental crutches of their own, but atheism as a crutch is a ludicrous idea. I also agree that Christianity doesn’t have to be a crutch, but then I never said it had to be in the first place. I have said that too many Christians use it as a crutch.

So what’s my point? Simply this: if you wanna take jabs at people, take jabs at concrete people who are unhealthy (if you must - the ideal of course would be to show them the error of their ways), and not the group they claim to belong to. Just because the crusaders murdered a bunch of people in the name of Christ doesn’t mean we should bash Christians anymore than we should bash Muslims for 9/11 because some freaky terrorists claim to worship Allah. Does that make sense?

I take jabs at concrete people who are unhealthy quite often on this website and I often include the things that I feel make them unhealthy, of which Christianity is often a part of. I would love to show these people the error of their ways, but one of the aspects of this particular form of unhealthy behavior is that these people tend generally can’t be shown the error of their ways. Like a lot of people with unhealthy problems they have to come to that realization on their own and that can be difficult to do when you have others with the same unhealthy problems telling you that you’re perfectly OK.

There were considerably more people involved in, and killed by, the Crusades than by the 9/11 hijackers, and the Crusades were a matter of policy at the highest levels of the Church at the time as opposed to the actions of a minority faction of a religious group. Trying to equate these two events is disingenuous at best. The Oklahoma City bombing would be a comparable Christian equivalent in terms of being carried out by a small number of religiously motivated extremists who had the vocal support of a minority faction of Christianity. Christianity deserves quite a bit of bashing over the Crusades as far as I’m concerned, but not necessarily for Oklahoma City.

I’m sorry, am I alone here? Am I really that incoherent? I mean come on guys, can you grant me that not all atheists are healthy? Can you grant me that some Christians are healthy? That’s really all I’m saying. I didn’t think my thesis was incredibly controversial… Example of a couple unhealthy atheists: Sartre and Foucault to name a couple. Example of a couple healthy Christians: Plantinga and Mother Teresa. I mean yeah, Mother Teresa, totally unhealthy - giving helpful shit to other people in need, yeah God was such a crutch to her. She hid from the evil in the world. Riiiight…

There are many people who would argue about Mother Teresa with you in regards to how good of an example of a “healthy Christian” she might have been. Alvin Plantinga on the other hand seems reasonably healthy in spite of his beliefs.

Again I’ll point out that no one here claims that all Christians are unhealthy or that there aren’t any unhealthy Atheists, but now you’ve moved beyond your original argument that atheism can be considered a crutch into whether or not some atheists are unhealthy and that’s an entirely different issue.

My argument is simply this: Christianity isn’t unhealthy of necessity. My tentative argument is this: Christianity (properly executed by healthy persons) may actually be quite healthy. Is this really such a ludicrous claim?

Then your argument has changed from where you started. I’ll repeat again that no one claims that Christianity is inherently unhealthy or that it can’t be beneficial in many ways. You seem to be arguing against a claim that hasn’t been made.

So who cares, right? Isn’t God still one big serial murderer? Well, I think if you look at scripture, it’s good to see it as a whole. And since I learn from elsewhere in the Bible that God takes no joy in the destruction of people and that he’d rather see them turn from their ways and be restored to him, I might argue that I wasn’t there and so I don’t know all the stuff that was going on, but I trust God’s character enough to believe that he did what he had to do.

One would tend to think that a “God” wouldn’t “have” to do anything he didn’t “want” to do. He is God after all. God says killing is wrong yet God kills regularly in the Bible. In fact at one point he reduces the entire population of the earth down to a single family and a boatload of animals. So apparently killing is wrong unless God is the one doing the killing. Yet quite often God instructs others to do the killing for him in direct violation of one of his own commandments. So apparently this means killing is wrong unless God tells you to kill people because he’s too busy with other engagements of some sort. Yet we don’t accept “God told me to” as a valid defense in a murder trial today on the argument that “God would never have told someone to do that” when the Bible clearly shows that he has, in fact, done so many times in the past. You may be willing to put up with this obvious contradiction because you think God is such a swell guy that he must have had good reason for doing what he did, but that’s not a very convincing argument for the rest of us.

Does that sound like weak sauce to you guys? Eh, probably. But I’m ok with that.  :-p It’s just that when you say “I want nothing to do with this maniacâ€?, you make it sound like God’s trigger-happy or something, like he’s on a power trip. I really don’t get that impression from my reading of the Hebrew scriptures.

I can’t speak for the others, but your reassurance that God had his reasons doesn’t tend to sway my thinking on the issue. You’re just brushing off an obvious contradiction about the nature of God as depicted in the Bible as though it were unimportant. Your argument here seems to be along the lines of: “Yes, those body counts are in the Bible, but the Bible doesn’t say that all of those were done with God’s approval. In the cases where the Bible does say God gave his approval I can’t come up with a valid reason why God would do this so I’m just going to claim ignorance of the circumstances and try to take comfort in the idea that God is always good and he says that killing people doesn’t make him happy so whatever reasons he had must have been perfectly reasonable and justifiable even if I don’t know what they were.” That’s a pretty good ostrich impression, though.

Nowiser, I tend to agree with you, but I can’t do so completely. You say that atheism provides NO answers… I disagree. I would argue that atheism provides answers of a different type than perhaps any other religion, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t provide answers. I’m not going to try to argue that Atheism is a religion, because clearly, it’s not. However, I do think that it commits you to a certain type of worldview, just like any religion. And just like a religious worldview makes you answer some of life’s questions a certain way, so also Atheism makes you answer life’s questions in one way and not another. What am I getting at? Simply that I think you may have overemphasized the ‘chasm’ that lies between Atheism and all other religions. There are some disanalogies, sure, but they are all belief systems that you have to buy in to, to a certain extent.

OK, I’m game. What answers does atheism provide and from where do you derive these answers from? What type of world view does atheism commit you to? And finally, in what way does atheism make you answer some of life’s questions?

This should be interesting.

Nowiser, no idea why you can’t highlight. I’m using Firefox and able to highlight just fine (obviously).

I became an atheist long before I realized (or would admit to myself) that I just couldn’t take that color pill anymore.  When I finally put it in words, I sure could have used a crutch because it felt like I’d amputated a leg.  Or both legs. 

That was years ago.  I’ve gotten back on my feet now, sans invisible friend.  If atheism offers crutch-functionality, I’m awfully late finding out about it.

Hot damn you guys post too fast!

Ok where do I start? Quick note to decrepitoldfool: you’re right that good works don’t necessitate good psychological health. Mother Teresa got thrown in the fray at the time when I started picking up on the disctinction you guys make between having a crutch and being unhealthy. So you’re right. I guess the way you guys have been using it, yeah I kinda mixed the two up (thanks for pointing that out Les). I guess I was equating people-who-use-crutches with people-who-aren’t-healthy. Clearly though that was an assumption I shouldn’t have made. Sorry for the confusion. In retrospect, if having a crutch means relying on someone (real or imaginary), then most Christians would have a crutch. I guess I’m just looking for more of a distinction between relying on someone or something, and that reliance being unhealthy. From an atheistic point of view, God is imaginary, therefore relying on him would be unhealthy, but that can’t serve as a valid argument against Christianity (I’m not saying any of you guys were making this claim mind you, I’m just talking) because it assumes atheism. If God were real, relying on him wouldn’t be unhealthy.

Thanks for your input tmp.

Nowiser - again your precision is admirable. Allow me to clarify. If I make claims, I guess I shouldn’t be making those claims against atheism itself. My issues are more with materialism than with atheism, and I acknowledge that the two are not the same (although I concede that I failed to make the distinction in earlier posts). The reason I tend to equate the two is that all of my atheist friends are materialists. I guess I should just make some buddhist friends ay?
I haven’t read much Foucault. What I have read I’ve enjoyed. Those French post-modern philosophers… very insightful. I enjoy Baudrillard and Sartre (as well as a little Levinas).

Deadscot - you make the same point as Les does a little later on, so read on for my attempt at a reply. 

Les, on the first point of being unhealthy vs. using x as a crutch, yeah pardon the confusion that’s my bad. I was equating the two. I like your libertarian approach. I’m right on board with you.
You’re right. Christianity deserves a lot of bashing for the Crusades, and I say that as a Christian (and American deserves a lot of bashing for Iraq, and I say that as an American).

As for the whole killing thing, I think God says that murder is wrong. To kill refers to biological processes, to murder refers to moral processes. I think an argument could be made that the Creator of a world has certain freedom within that world, and so while admitting that God has killed numerous people, I would deny that that makes him a murderer. Like you said: “He is God after all.”
Am I just brushing off a contradiction? I don’t think so. Allow me to explain myself. I think if you frame a lot of the wars that God was involved in (and those I think would be far fewer than Spocko’s 45 item list) in the larger context of his plan for Israel, and in the context of a spiritually war-torn world, I think it makes sense. The reason I didn’t go in depth is because I know my personal view won’t carry much weight. But basically, it seems as though physical wars in the Hebrew Scriptures mirror spiritual wars, and insofar as God is engaged in those spiritual wars, they have physical ramifications (the argument that Gregory A. Boyd makes in his ‘God at War’). Weak sauce to you guys? Yeah, and I know it. I just don’t think that it’s an ostrich impression to claim that I don’t understand God. I don’t want to shy away from the difficulties, but at the same time I don’t want to fall into the opposite trap of saying that if I can’t totally understand God then I should throw him away, know what I mean?

Ok, now the part Les is looking forward to. And deadscot. What answers does atheism provide? Well, first of all, it is a rejection of the divine, and insofar as that rejection of the divine is a rejection of the spiritual, it can easily tend towards materialism (and I believe that materialism provides answers of a certain brand if you will). On some of these points I’ll kind of merge the two, and you can beat me with a stick where I do this to the detriment of my argument. Unless you are a superstitious atheist, I think we should be ok.
- There is no ultimate purpose. If your cousin dies, it’s not God’s will, it’s not Satan’s will, it just happened. Why? Cuz. Deal with it. That seems like an answer to me.
- Death is the end. Granted you could be a buddhist, believe in kharma and reincarnation, so this point applies more to materialism than to atheism, but at least it’s what all my atheist friends would say. And it’s an answer.
- There is no universal point to life. You kinda hafta make your own reason.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is totally tentative guys. I’ll be upfront and say that three thousand qualifications are rushing through my brain as I type. I haven’t tried to make this boat of an argument float before, so if it’s not particularly waterproof, don’t hack me to pieces (too much). I’m curious though, does no one have the same intuition as me? Does it not seem like atheism (or at least materialism) provides some answers? I guess maybe my claims stem from my own conception of how I would do the whole atheism thing if I were an atheist. Maybe I shouldn’t be making such broad claims. Vast generalizations aren’t usually helpful are they? Oh well, I tried.

So yeah like I said, I’m not dead-set on the above ideas, but they’re intuitions that I have, and I thought I’d share them. Feel free to convince me otherwise.

Anyway, thanks for all the replies. Keep on truckin’.

-Peace-

Oops, I should have mentioned that I got that list from
Judith Hayes’ excellent book “IN GOD WE TRUST: But Which One?”

Take thee this holy relic that thou shalt not worrieth too much when shit doesth happen.

Aren’t I a stinker?

MK speaks…

What answers does atheism provide? Well, first of all, it is a rejection of the divine…

Not true - atheism means “without belief”. If there was any evidence of anything being divine I would consider it. There is none. Atheists don’t necessarily reject spirituality either. I feel that spirituality is just another (badly named) emotion.

...it can easily tend towards materialism…

Apples and oranges - atheism and materialism are in no way connected.

...superstitious atheist…

That is an oxymoron.

- There is no ultimate purpose. If your cousin dies, it’s not God’s will, it’s not Satan’s will, it just happened. Why? Cuz. Deal with it. That seems like an answer to me.
- Death is the end. Granted you could be a buddhist, believe in kharma and reincarnation, so this point applies more to materialism than to atheism, but at least it’s what all my atheist friends would say. And it’s an answer.
- There is no universal point to life. You kinda hafta make your own reason.

-Who says there has to be a purpose to life?
-Atheists, like everyone else, have no idea what happens when you die. There is no evidence that anything happens. I’m quite content to wait to see for myself rather than listen to ancient dudes crazy ideas.
-Who says there needs to be a point to life? I need no reason to carry-on other than to provide for my family and have a good time.

I’ll play nicely (for now) and only respond to those comments that were solicited by me.

Ok, now the part Les is looking forward to. And deadscot. What answers does atheism provide? Well, first of all, it is a rejection of the divine, and insofar as that rejection of the divine is a rejection of the spiritual, it can easily tend towards materialism (and I believe that materialism provides answers of a certain brand if you will).

Atheism is disbelief.  It is not a rejection.  Rejection is an action and requires an acknowledgment of something to reject.  Can atheism lead to materialism? Yes, but so can any number of things.

On some of these points I’ll kind of merge the two, and you can beat me with a stick where I do this to the detriment of my argument. Unless you are a superstitious atheist, I think we should be ok.
-There is no ultimate purpose. If your cousin dies, it’s not God’s will, it’s not Satan’s will, it just happened. Why? Cuz. Deal with it. That seems like an answer to me.

Not sure I see the logic in this.  Yes, it is an answer but atheism isn’t what provided it.  Science, logic, and understanding would lead one to such an answer but to credit atheism would be overreaching.  As a side note:  I know of many atheists who have felt that people have sacrificed their lives for greater causes than themselves and who would also argue that others have wasted their lives.  The only ‘will’ behind it was their own and atheism provides no answers in this regard.

- Death is the end. Granted you could be a buddhist, believe in kharma and reincarnation, so this point applies more to materialism than to atheism, but at least it’s what all my atheist friends would say. And it’s an answer.

Once again, it’s an answer but not one provided by atheism.  Atheism eliminates the belief in the supreme beings and thus one is left to focus on the reality at hand.  Science, as we know it today, pretty much states that death is the end of the road.

-There is no universal point to life. You kinda hafta make your own reason.

This really isn’t an answer per se.  You could draw this inference from just about anything in life.  One of the unique things about atheism is that it allows relief from the constraints of a religious belief system in order to determine what that ‘reason for being’ may be.

-There is no universal point to life. You kinda hafta make your own reason.

If you feel compelled to come up with a reason for your life then yeah, you kind of do have to make it up yourself. Or maybe realizing that any reason for your being here is unknowable you accept what is and stop trying to justify the rest.

I am. What else matters? I am a good person because I enjoy being good, not because of some threat of cosmic retribution if I am not. I donate blood, money, food, talent, and time to various causes that are set up to help my fellow man not to curry favor with a diety so I can score beachfront property in the afterlife but because sometimes I like humanity.

I don’t think that life has any point to it at all but I still try to do good when I can and I do it to help balance the misery of living in the now. When the sun burns out and the universe goes dark (or conversly when it contracts only to be reborn again) will anything any of us, from the greatest philanthropist to the most horrible genocidal maniac, have meant anything at all? As a logical being I have to view all of the evidence equally critically regardless of how upsetting it might be. As an atheist I can’t allow myself to cop out and throw god into the equasion to skew the result just because it would make me feel comfort.

But that’s just me.

...I think God says that murder is wrong… the Creator of a world has certain freedom within that world, and so while admitting that God has killed numerous people, I would deny that that makes him a murderer....
Am I just brushing off a contradiction?…

You bet your sweet bippy you’re brushing off a contradiction.  The victims of every god-driven religious war in history have gasped their last breaths at the hands of people who were certain god told them to do it.  Their survivors equally hated the killers because their gods told them to.  On it goes. 

This is god’s perfect plan?  Sure it “makes sense” in the context of god’s plan for Israel, or whatever - so what?  Every delusion has some internal consistency.  Doesn’t mean diddly to the mother of a little boy who just got his head blown off by a bomblet he picked up.

What answers does atheism provide? Well, first of all, it is a rejection of the divine, ... a rejection of the spiritual, it can easily tend towards materialism.

You can’t reject a god you don’t believe in.  You reject the idea that he/she/it exists.  This is not splitting hairs: I listened intently to the receiver, but after years of no signal, finally concluded there was no one on the other end of the line. 

I am a materialist: that is, I believe the material universe is all there is that could possibly matter to us. In this category I include not only bricks and stars but electromagnetic waves and quantum effects that are far beyond my understanding, but I do see that someone understands them on the basis of repeatable experiments and observations.  Or that they could in principle be understood that way.

(This is why it annoys me when someone says, “You have to have faith to be an atheist.” No more than the faith required to reject the idea of a universal purple unicorn - there’s no evidence for that, either.)

I don’t reject the spiritual, what theologians call “the sense of the numinous” because there’s a part of the brain that handles that emotion.  It can in principle be observed, and chemically reproduced at will.

don’t hack me to pieces (too much)

Well you’re not attacking us, you’re working with ideas as we are.  Same in reverse - you’re not under attack but your ideas might get hacked up somethin’ awful.  That’s how we (which includes you) sharpen our thinking:

Prov. 27:17 Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

DOF: Not to denigrate her work…

I’m not so quick to declare Mother Theresa a saint. The substance of her work seems largely unexamined and the few detractors willing to speak out raise serious issues that I’d like to have explained.

It may be a topic for the forums, though.

I feel that spirituality is just another (badly named) emotion.

Good point. What IS a more correct, more accurate name for it?  I struggle with this, because I’m an Atheist, but I feel I’m at least as, if not more, “spiritual” than I was when I identified myself as a member of one religion or another (interestingly enough, the further away from Christianity I ventured, the more “spiritual” I became).  I don’t believe in gods, but the closest description I can come up with for what I feel/believe is that there is something “divine” in every human.  It’s the power of intellect, and will, and the natural instinct to care for our fellow beings.  Nothing supernatural required, no posthumous reward/punishment to consider.  Just the here-and-now; the reality.

Ugh.  My current reality is that I’m going to be late for work if I don’t move my ass! Happy Monday, all!

("five")

How ‘bout “happyhappyjoyjoyality”?!

eh, maybe not

Hey maybe that pope dude knows something after all…

...people close to the pope claim that amid these concerns, the pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations…

Found on this site.

Hail to the Beelzebub!