So, just what are we talking about?

[Quark]

(Some back-info on my reaction is available in Albion Child's thread from a year ago. Occhi himself had posted on my reaction there ;) )

Mainly the chip comes from a life of people telling me I'm flat out wrong without ever listening to mine (or their own) reasoning. Anyway, his post can be split into three false assumptions:

All humans have religiousity (or spirituality).

Nope, sorry. My life has been devoid of this since I was a little kid who didn't know any better. At one point my viewpoints towards religion were formed out of anger towards religion/diety/whatever. Don't be upset with me, I was a young teenager ;) Anyway, as I grew older I slowly developed logical reasoning for everything that I currently believe. Quite frankly, it's a lack of belief. I don't believe in a diety, I don't believe in any special type of spiritual connection, and I don't believe that anything we have/do comes from more than the natural laws. I may be wrong about all this, mind you. But even if I'm wrong, spirituality and religion have no part in my life.

It's essential; a natural way to overcome the fear of death. You can't get rid of it.

First off, this could be misstated. There's three fears of death that are completely seperate. First, there's the fear of what happens in the afterlife. I don't believe there is an afterlife. So when I die, that's it. I cease to be. I don't particularly find that scary. If I don't exist, how could I possibly be sad/hurt/etc? Second, there's the fear of dying. Most of the ways you can die are painful. So I'm naturally scared of them, there's nothing I can do about that. It's the pain that scares me, and nothing religion says can compensate for that. Third, there's the fear of life ending. I don't want my life to end; I'm having too much fun for me to want that. So this again is a fear for me. But, once more, since I think there'll be nothing afterwards, spirituality does not account for this. Religion and Spirituality only give you compensation for 1 of the three fears of death -> and that is the one that I am not afraid of.

Even if one doesn't believe in a deity, one always hope that it exists.

:blink: I'm not sure I can respond to this. It's so preposterous from my perspective that I just don't know what to say. I don't hope that a deity exists; I personally wouldn't care either way (other than the fact that I'd rather be right than wrong). The best reaction I can give to this is that since whereagles is implying what I hope, the burden of proof is completely on him and not me.


As more background into my nature, two years ago my professor for my Common Intellectual Experience class (which I called philosophy-lite if you want an Idea of what it is) was a devout Catholic. More than that, out of all the openly religious people I have met, she seemed to be the most tolerant of my views. A year after I had her as a professor, we were talking randomly and she said "Are you still an atheist? I pray every day for you." It wasn't until she saw the blank expression on my face that she said, "[Quark], I'm just kidding" and watched the relief flow into my face. Take that how you will, but I've been programmed to expect the worst from the devout even if I should know better.

*Edit* Board rant: this is the worst winky i've ever seen.