Lies and the Lying Evangelicals Who Lie About Them

[elfs]

I'm not sure why this guy claims "No atheist can honestly answer some of these!" I'd really want to know which ones he believe I'd lie about:

How Did You Become an Atheist?

*Shrug* I was never very convinced about the stories they told me in Sunday school. None of it made much sense, and I never felt much connection to the idea of a god. I just kinda drifted into it.

What happens when we die?

Ever spend hours and hours with no awareness of what was happening? Sure you have, that's called sleep. That's what happens. The greatest disappointment about death is that you have nothing to look forward to.

What if you’re wrong? And there is a Heaven? And there is a HELL!

If I'm wrong and the Christian God is awaiting me there, I'll go down proud to have been on the side of liberty and justice, rather than kowtowing to the rampaging beast of the Old Testament who drowned men, women and children by the millions in a fit of pique, who sent wild animals to slaughter children who do what children did, and who revels in "the dashing of your little one's heads upon the rocks."

And if it's some other god, like Bacchus, well... that will be awkward, won't it?

Without God, where do you get your morality from?

From my culture. Like everyone else, including you. You got it from your parents, who got it from theirs. The message doesn't get to everyone, which is why we create governments and police forces.

If there is no God, can we do what we want? Are we free to murder and rape? While good deeds are unrewarded?

Buddhists don't believe in a god, and they clearly have the same answer; they do what is *right* because that's what living together is about.

If there is no god, how does your life have any meaning?

False premise: who says it "does." What do you mean by "meaning?" This is one of those questions that *sounds* deep, but actually has no content behind it.

Where did the universe come from?

I don't know. Which is a *much* better answer than any one that you might give me, since any answer you might have will be contradicted by the evidence we actually have.

What about miracles? What all the people who claim to have a connection with Jesus? What about those who claim to have seen saints or angels?

Schizophrenia. The number of people who have claimed to see angels, who suddenly "get better" when given the proper medication, is astonishing. If one can hold angels at bay with one sad little molecule, that doesn't say much about their divine power now, does it?

What’s your view of Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris?

I'm unimpressed. None of them have said much that the Greek atheists weren't saying two thousand years ago. The biggest problem is that you all haven't brought us anything new. After two thousand years, you're still relying on the same tired stories, fables, and deceits you always have

If there is no God, then why does every society have a religion?

False premise. Not every one does. Buddhists have no god. Highly primitive human societies generally don't have much in the way a god or gods.

Comments

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[tagryn]

I think the question has more to do with facing one's mortality than "meaning" per se. Nothing we do will be either remembered or have made a notable difference in the world 100 years (or 1,000/10,000/etc.) from now, and that's a hard existential truth for most people to face: that all our individual actions and strivings are ultimately futile in the long run, if we're judging by how the world as we perceive it is shaped by our acting on it. No one person matters, and even if one did, it is ultimately pointless since our sensory perception of the world ends when our brains/senses/bodies die.

That realization brings a tremendous freedom - if all of our actions are without ultimate consequence or outcome, then we are free to do anything - but it also makes having any sense of purpose an exercise in maintaining the illusion that our efforts are worthwhile in any way. Otherwise, why do them? As rational* creatures, we act upon the world in anticipation of outcome, and if there is no outcome to be had, acting becomes irrational.

There is a viewpoint that there is no purpose to life, other than to maximize sensory pleasure/fun and minimize discomfort/pain, i.e. hedonism or Epicureanism. It posits that we're nothing more than thinking animals, of no more significance or consequence than an ant or amoeba, so pleasure/pain is as deep as life goes, and trying to make life out be more than that is just silly or stupid. Whether that's a sufficient answer will be highly dependent on the individual (YMMV) - for many people, that's not an answer they can live with, hence the seeking for some kind of higher purpose or meaning in life.

* - it bears pointing out that many existentialist thinkers see rationality as nothing more than our minds trying to impose structure on an external world that is essentially random and irrational, and therefore is doomed to failure. Again, YMMV.

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