atheism is not nihilistic but…
Atheism is not intrinsically nihilistic, but some atheists/agnostics can be.
One of the criticisms often levelled at atheists is that without a god hanging round, there’s no purpose to life. There are various responses to this, one is that we don’t need purpose in a pre-defined sense, another is that it leaves us free to find our own purpose. A third excellent reply, is that it doesn’t much matter whether or not it would be nicer for god to exist and for life to have intrinsic meaning, because that doesn’t alter reality. Which is that there’s no satisfactory evidence for god or gods.
Most atheists are happy to either self-define the meaning of their life, or live without it. But not all.
A friend of mine was telling me about her depression, and how difficult she finds her understanding of reality to be at her lowest moments. For her, as for me, there is no happy ending, no supernatural watching over us, just regular day to day life. She actually does find it depressing that there is no meaning to life.
Now, I guess that this is primarily a function of her depression, and that whatever world view she held wouldn’t provide enough comfort to lift her mood. Because I think that’s kind of how depression works.
There’s nothing I can really say to her. We all love her and she means a great deal to us. Despite her opinions to the contrary she is a vital, important, much needed and wanted person. And sometimes I tell her so (don’t know whether that’s a good idea or not).
The thing about being atheist is that it only means lacking belief in god(s). Nothing else. It’s not a religion, a set of beliefs, and doesn’t have any ethical position. I get the impression that most atheists are, like me, fundamentally happy with their non-belief. But we aren’t all the same - some of us find being an atheist challenging.
Sometimes it’s a pity that you can’t really do anything about belief, or lack of it.
Popularity: 8% [?]
I’m Back… with a Little Rant
So, I’m back after a long hiatus. Apologies to the 10 people that subscribe to the religious atheist - it really sucks when real life gets in the way of blogging.
Anyway, my friend Pinyo who is a personal finance blogger, wrote a post about the Iowa floods and how you should probably check that you have flood insurance. Obviously, that’s a natural target for a comment about how God must be punishing America for having gays. 
Curt thinks that it couldn’t be a coincidence that California legalised same sex marriage at about the same time as Iowa flooded. I’m not entirely sure what rationale he’s basing that reasoning on, but I’m fairly happy that it’s a load of nonsense.
What is it with people postulating that God is a mean and vengeful being, and that that’s ok? Who would want to bow down and worship someone who thought that two men or two women committing their lives to each other is a crime worse than torture, rape or murder? Or that as a result of some people doing something in a completely different place, random Iowans (as far as I know, not known for their immense liberalism) should be punished.
Of course, looking at it from the worldview that God is a figment of some/many people’s imaginations, it’s easy to see where they’ve gone wrong. And Curt, is clearly a bit odd - I’m sure there are plenty of theists who don’t think the way that he does.
As with many slightly deluded Christian types, he suggests that it’s nearly the end of the world. Giving me the opportunity to say “Come the rapture, can I have your car?” although I resisted, as it’s not really fair to Pinyo. Even better than that is his Curt’s follow up comment:
It’s not the gays that are causing natural disasters. The gays are not controlling the universe.
This is just so funny. It makes me wonder whether there are people who think that *the gays* are controlling the universe - and of course, that those people must never, ever gain power.
Random, off-topic, zealots making themselves look stupid without any help from anyone else. That kind of thing makes my day.
[Edited to make it clearer that Pinyo is not weird and it’s Curt that I’m laughing at]
Popularity: 16% [?]
Review: A History of God by Karen Armstrong
The name of this blog should give you a clue that I am interested in religion. Some of that is definitely a morbid attraction, but otherwise the experience of religious belief has affected history for centuries, and I find understanding the history of religion to be important (but not centrally so) in thinking about how we got here.
To that end, I recently bought and read Karen Armstrong’s book The History of God
It begins with a description of how monotheism came about, based mainly on a critical reading of the bible and how a middle eastern tribe moved from the belief that their god wanted no other gods before him to the belief that there were no other gods. Once this monotheism is set up, the action moves to the god of early Christianity, and then to the god of Muhammed and early Islam, before continuing to the present day comparing and contrasting beliefs about god in all three traditions.
The over-riding principle of Armstrong seems to be that there are essentially three main views that the Abrahamic religions have held about god - the personal god, the philosophers’ god and the mystics’ god. Towards the end of the book she argues that the reason that western Christianity has problems is that it has been too heavily focussed on the personal god, at the expense of the other views (she suggests that the problems existing in Islam and Judaism are linked to external causes rather than theological ones).
The personal god, Armstrong suggests, is the god that atheists reject (and with good reason) as contradictory. This is the sky daddy god, the god of the Simpsons, and I think the one that Dawkins attacks the most in The God Delusion. It’s the first conception of god that the Israelites had and it remains popular.
The philosophers view of god, is the argued, rational logical one. In Armstrong’s view this is the god of Newton and the enlightenment, Aristotle and the Greeks, Pascal’s wager and the Deists. Unfortunately for people who might think that proving that god exists using logic and reason is a good idea, the more thought that goes into this Armstrong contends, the more it becomes unworkable. The rational god is the one that Nietzsche proclaimed is dead.
Armstrong feels on stronger ground with the god of the mystics. This is the god that has been most commonly described or experienced in Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This is the god of Buddha, the Kabbalah, Sufi and Hasidic thought. Contemplation of the paradoxes in creation and hard spiritual work lead to glimpses of the divine. Armstrong is keen to stress that the mystical god is not the emotional outburst of the conversion experience, but requires study and brings calm and peace, saying:
A sense of peace, serenity and loving-kindness are the hallmarks of all true religious insight.
The implication in the book is that the god of the mystics may be the god that modern society creates for itself and that is certainly plausible. But this is clearly the god that Armstrong herself believes in, of course she thinks it’s right but it doesn’t make it any more real as far as I’m concerned - mystical experiences can be real without being supernatural.
A History of God is a good book if you are interested in religious thought. The beginning of the book is an excellent introduction to what modern scholars think is most likely to be the origin of the bible and Judaism. It also contains an introduction to Islam which is equally as fascinating. On the other hand, it is long and I often got the sense that these theists were all equally deluded but in their own unique ways, which was slightly frustrating.
Popularity: 65% [?]
