Here is the thing... there is no such thing as a real atheist. We all worship something or someone. Everyone has a god. And here is the problem for you who call yourselves atheists. Whatever you worship will, in the end, cause you heartache, pain, and ultimately will be the death of you.
Someone else said it much better than I did:
“[I]n the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you." David Foster Wallace, Commencement Address, Kenyon College, 2005
There are a number of ways to define worship(http://www.justworship.com/greekwords/greekwords.pdf)and I wouldn't say that all atheists practice every type of worship but generally each individual person does ackowledge innate worth in something, most often it is his own self.
ReplyDeleteStill I think this post is naive and oversimplifies the term 'atheist'. It might be more helpful to accept the identifiers of your opponent and try to SHOW how *true* atheism either grows from obstinacy or how *true* atheism ends in purposelessness.
WTF does worship have to do with atheism? People all over have given praise and worship to many a material object, from golden cow statues to the rising sun. Kings and emperors have been bowed before and worshiped by their people. Where does the lack of belief in a deity mutually exclude worship?
ReplyDeleteAlso, who doesn’t suffer heartache, pain, and death? Doesn’t that kind of go hand in hand with experiencing wellbeing, happiness, and life in general?
Tim do you care to qualify that further or do you think that just asserting something without qualification somehow makes it true ?
ReplyDeleteOh wait.....never mind. Of course you do. LOLZ
Just because you can't wrap your head around the fact that some people don't believe fairy stories about your magic invisible friend
that doesn't mean that those people are lying.
I mean just think of all the dumb bullshit that you do not believe in.
Take SMAD for example: You say you don't believe in SMAD. I say "groovy me neither" but, what if some bag of douche says "Everybody really believes in an SMAD of some kind
including people who say they don't".
Does that mean we really believe in an SMAD ?
No...not at all.
....but it might mean that that guy has some sort of problem related to his theory of mind.
Further If by worship you are just talking about some form of ritualized appreciation for something
no matter what that thing is,
well then you are going to have a hard time convincing me that there is such a thing as monotheism.
As humans our lives are fucking chocked full of ritualized appreciation for of all sorts of things some are stupid, some are ridiculous, and some are sublime but that doesn't imbue those things with the qualities necessary for them to be considered a god
unless of course your definition of a god is so loose that it is completely meaningless
and can be arbitrarily applied to anything.
@Rayzor.
ReplyDeletewhat you describe above is nothing more than a dumbed-down version of the philosophical/religious idea of dualism. there are more than a few religions that teach it, even some christianities. it varies depending on where you find it, but essentially the idea is that good only exists when in opposition to evil. traditionally, christians reject dualism. i find it somewhat inconsistent of atheists to cling to the philosophy, mainly because of its first premise that there are such things as good and evil. Amoralism is a more reasonable position for atheists; i think.
as far as what worship has to do with atheism, it depends upon what one means by the word worship. It has multiple meanings; see my previous post. i can't offer you more explanation than that. perhaps Tim would like to unpack the word a bit more, but my guess is that he doesn't, so maybe it's best to just move on, unless you want to discuss dualism some more or the reasonability of amoralism from an atheist's point of view.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God..
ReplyDelete