Is Atheism depressing?

[GreatSpirit]

I don't think anyone of you are true Atheists, but I'm sure most of you know of one. But what really is an Atheist anyway? Traditionally of course, an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in God...they say "there is no God". Ok, but what God though? What "God" are you referring to? I guess Western Atheists are referring to Jehovah, Indian Atheists may refer to the Hindu gods, etc. I don't believe anyone of those gods is "God", so does that make me an Atheist?

But what really disturbs me about Atheistic philosophy is that "you just begin and end". Obviously for the vast majority of the human race, life is lived and thus ends. Fair enough lol. Anyone who has seen a dead body in a casket knows the body is dead and it isn't coming back to life. To the Atheist, the body and the person are one and the same with no distinction. This I must disagree with, no matter how "unscientific" it is. The Atheist demands proof for everything, which is again understandable. It's understandable to think there is no God or purpose in life. I mean hell, just look around you...war, death, disease, a-hole people, etc.

However, I personally find their philosophy depressing. To me, it's a philosophy of "something came from nothing, and this something will go back into nothingness". Its a meaningless existence only to the extent where only you give your life meaning....again which is understandable. But to just pop up out of nowhere, and allegedly have consciousness cease forever when you die is just way too depressing for me to even fathom. I have no idea how these people cope with a reality like that.

The Atheist thus puts his "faith/belief" (ironic!!) in science just as the religious person puts their faith in their God/religious book.

[anagogy]

Interestingly enough, if I probe atheists I find they often actually, and surprisingly, disfavor the idea of eternal existence.  Sort of almost like they fear that, in the same way that someone inclined to believe otherwise would fear nonexistence. I find it rather strange to be honest.

[ada]

Before I woke up I considered myself an atheist, although I doubt any will be here on the forum.
Reason being is because the "god" we are being taught since childhood and through the bible/tora/quran is obviously not there. However most of the atheists I have met still believed in a higher creator form.
So in another sense atheism is what driven me to find the real answers in life rather to look in a book or history.

The term "atheism" originated from the Greek ἄθεος (atheos), meaning "without god(s)", used as a pejorative term applied to those thought to reject the gods worshiped by the larger society.[12]

[APeacefulWarrior]

Interestingly enough, if I probe atheists I find they often actually, and surprisingly, disfavor the idea of eternal existence.  Sort of almost like they fear that, in the same way that someone inclined to believe otherwise would fear nonexistence.  I find it rather strange to be honest.

This reminds me of something I found interesting in "Particle Fever," which is a very good documentary about the creation of the Large Hadron Collider and the possible finding of the Higgs Boson. At one point, they're discussing the (mathematical) ramifications for the universe, depending on the weight of the Higgs. This was thought to likely be one of two potential weights. One possible value would help cement the idea that space is finite, with a discrete number of dimensions interacting in predictable ways. Or, the heavier weight implies the "infinite omniverse" scenario that's common in scifi and is closer to the cosmos Ra describes.

And the funny thing was, it was clear that many of the scientists weren't just against but seemed outright scared by the idea of an infinite omniverse. One even phrased it specifically in terms of order and chaos, that a heavy Higgs would mean a universe ruled by chaos that could never be mapped or understood.

I thought it was interesting at the time, seeing some of the smartest and most rationalist people on the planet being reduced to pure philosophy in the face of what they were researching. But it's also interesting that these presumably atheist scientists would be so disturbed by the idea of a universe that's truly beyond complete human comprehension. Isn't it kinda ethnocentric to assume otherwise to start with? Like the atheists you talked to, the idea of infinity really seemed to bother them.

(Oh, and the big punchline here: The possible Higgs they detected had a weight at the exact midpoint between the two proposals.)

[Minyatur]

In my view atheism simply seeks not to know.

I mean it's nice to analyze the fishbowl we're in, but this never will answer questions like why is there a fishbowl? why are we in the fishbowl? why are we aware of being in the fishbowl?

Mankind wants to see what it creates as intelligence, yet mainly seeks to view the world outside itself as non-intelligent. The world outside ourselves is infinitely more glorious and complex than anything made by humans and that's a fact. If you can look at pictures of galaxies, picture countless stars and planets and yet not see them as creations, well you've got some road to walk in your mind before becoming interesting to talk with.

[Jade]

Before I woke up I considered myself an atheist, although I doubt any will be here on the forum.
Reason being is because the "god" we are being taught since childhood and through the bible/tora/quran is obviously not there. However most of the atheists I have met still believed in a higher creator form.
So in another sense atheism is what driven me to find the real answers in life rather to look in a book or history.

The term "atheism" originated from the Greek ἄθεος (atheos), meaning "without god(s)", used as a pejorative term applied to those thought to reject the gods worshiped by the larger society.[12]

You know, my husband refers to himself as an atheist from time to time, but I'm pretty sure it's this definition that he means and has always meant.

[ada]

In my view atheism simply seeks not to know.

I mean it's nice to analyze the fishbowl we're in, but this never will answer questions like why is there a fishbowl? why are we in the fishbowl? why are we aware of being in the fishbowl?

Mankind wants to see what it creates as intelligence, yet mainly seeks to view the world outside itself as non-intelligent. The world outside ourselves is infinitely more glorious and complex than anything made by humans and that's a fact. If you can look at pictures of galaxies, picture countless stars and planets and yet not see them as creations, well you've got some road to walk in your mind before becoming interesting to talk with.

And religion is doing any better how? In history of early middle ages or the "dark ages" religion did everything to stop/slow down the advancement of science.
I see atheism as another religion no different from the others. It slows our advancement as a species.

[Minyatur]

In my view atheism simply seeks not to know.

I mean it's nice to analyze the fishbowl we're in, but this never will answer questions like why is there a fishbowl? why are we in the fishbowl? why are we aware of being in the fishbowl?

Mankind wants to see what it creates as intelligence, yet mainly seeks to view the world outside itself as non-intelligent. The world outside ourselves is infinitely more glorious and complex than anything made by humans and that's a fact. If you can look at pictures of galaxies, picture countless stars and planets and yet not see them as creations, well you've got some road to walk in your mind before becoming interesting to talk with.

And religion is doing any better how? In history of early middle ages or the "dark ages" religion did everything to stop/slow down the advancement of science.
I see atheism as another religion no different from the others. It slows our advancement as a species.

I also see no distinction between atheism and religions, except that each thing has it's own focus upon truths and delusions.

Atheism is a cult based upon belief systems that seem to usually be outdated in science. It is also strongly indoctrinated and people are led to believe it is dumb to think otherwise.

[Jade]

I think what it shows is that humans have a very strong desire to label and group ourselves based on our compatibility of thought. People who call themselves atheists all have something in common. People who call themselves creationists all have something in common. I think it's just a misunderstood desire of our species, and it's been driven further/exploited by our gullibility for authority.

Also, I think cognitive dissonance is extremely common in groups that are labeled by their belief systems, ironically by the fact that when in a group, others will sacrifice their autonomy for the greater good of the whole.

[rva_jeremy]

I'm posting this excerpt from a commencement address David Foster Wallace gave a few years back, as I believe it penetrates to the heart of the matter.

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some intangible 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 own 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 plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already - it's been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

I highly recommend listening to the whole speech as it does one of the best jobs ever of tying the secular humanism of academia to the spiritual path.

[native]

The idea of having no consciousness after this is possibly the most bleak thing I can think of, yet the idea of infinite unity ain't no picnic when you really think about it. Am I really to believe that there is a part of me experiencing torture and all the other horrible things that go on, and will experience these things for all eternity? We can envision philosophies where duality and the resulting horrors are a part of our nature, but I still come back to the question of why it has to be so.


This leads me to lean more towards the idea that we're living in an illusion..some kind of artificial program where those things aren't real.

Robert Anton Wilson tells a joke about atheism and blowjobs

[Reaper]

I think most Atheists are just fed up with religious bull crap. I've known quite a few of them and they all seem to carry a certain bitterness. When I first got out of the church I told myself I was an Atheist, because I wanted absolutely nothing to do with the harmful ideology I'd been raised on. It was a knee-jerk response that gradually faded as I became introduced to other, less-restrictive perspectives of the larger forces that exist beyond physical reality. I think looking to science in order to prove one's lack of belief in higher powers is pretty ironic, considering that scientific processes are more and more coming to prove that those powers exist.

[outerheaven]

I was an Atheist until I learned of the term Agnostic at age 12 ... and felt a great relief, for that hat fit much better than the last one.

I found other Atheists to be as bad as the religious fundamentalists that they railed so hard against. All I was interested in spiritually was an admission of ignorance coupled with an open-mindedness -- anything but dogmatic belief.

Anyhow, I don't feel much 'depression' from Atheists as I sense anger, bitterness and a serious case of projection w/r/t questions of the 'unknown' and how we process those emotions, etc.

[Night Owl]

When I realised that a great number of atheist are unhappy and sad about their life, I realised even though religion seemed like BS to me, atheism wasn't going to solve anything either. Ask any atheists if there was a god would they want to know about it? Those who aren't really atheist will probably change their perspective about it. They are more than likely agnostics. Those who do not want to know probably don't want to know about science, spirituality or quantum mecanics either or they are living in the fear of god based on the image they have of god.

The idea of seeing anything as non-intelligent or that everything hasn't been created by something intelligent seems awkward to me. I admit a large part of our universe seems chaotic, but to deny that so much order and intelligent constructions appear within this chaos can only blind to the real essence of life. When you see that every creation is the result of a conscious desire to create this creation in this particular way, life reveals so much more about it's fundamental nature.

[isis]

Interestingly enough, if I probe atheists I find they often actually, and surprisingly, disfavor the idea of eternal existence.  Sort of almost like they fear that, in the same way that someone inclined to believe otherwise would fear nonexistence.  I find it rather strange to be honest.

I've noticed the exact same thing. & I find it strange, too, but I have a theory about why.

I suspect, in many cases, they've thought &/or done some thing(s) they're very deeply ashamed of, that they can't forgive themselves for, & that they really want to just go away forever & never matter. I think they want the past to remain comfortably tucked away in the past, never to resurface, & they fear a power that may be able to bring everything to light.

[Aion]

I think you guys are talking moreso about Nihilism, not necessarily Atheism.

[Night Owl]

They have much in common. Many people are both atheists and nihilists. Atheism is a doorway to nihilism in a certain way.

[Aion]

It can be but I have atheist friends who are just as or moreso positively oriented than theist friends so I'd say it's not directly relevant to service. Actually, I don't think many of the atheists I know are nihilists at all. I've only met a couple genuine nihilists. Most are more cynical than nihilistic.

[Minyatur]

Any kind of generalization can only take you so far.

[Night Owl]

An atheist cynical nihilist makes up for funny conversations. One guy at my job is like that. Everyone thinks he's just depressed but I find him to be really funny because I can easily follow his train of thoughts and make it shift in different directions and he seems surprised about his own positive toughts. There are no better jokes than a cynical sarcasm covered in a 3 level layers of other sarcasms. When I can see the light through I laugh pretty hard.

[Bring4th_Austin]

I'm a bit of a pedantic nitpick when it comes to discussing atheism, as I think the word itself does not accurately describe the type of mentality that most people ascribe to it. The lack of belief in any god doesn't necessarily automatically imply belief in a finite consciousness or lack of purpose for our existence. It is true that most atheists believe these things, but that belief doesn't really fall under that term. Nihilist doesn't necessarily fit either, because one doesn't need to believe in an objective purpose for existence in order to apply a subjective purpose to their own existence, while still believing that the universe is simply a random accident.

Beyond that, how do we define the God in which one would not believe being an atheist? Depending on who I am talking to, I would define myself as an atheist. I do not feel about the Creator spoken about in the Ra material (or other mystic texts) the same way a religious person would feel about their god. The term "god" seems to imply an entity, a sort of benevolent overseer of the universe that created everything and can influence anything with its incredible power. That's just not how I conceive of the Creator that I believe in. I can't place it in the category "entity," and certainly not some sort of overseer. 

So I would think that, if I were trying to be accurate, I'd say I am an atheist that believes in a creative principle behind the universe, an implied purpose to life and experience, and that we are not here simply by some simple quantum fluctuation or whatever the popular scientific notion is these days.

Those that believe in a lack of any meaning to our existence, and believe that we exist purely because of a random accident, I would call "material objectivists" rather than atheists. All material objectivists would be atheists, but not all atheists are material objectivists. I think I got the term from Ken Wilber. A materialist would be someone who believes that our conscious experience is a result of interacting matter. Consciousness is not primal to the universe, but is simply a random result of some dead matter coming together into some specific configuration. An objectivist would be someone who believes that truth can only be found through objective confirmation rather that subjective experience - meaning hard science is the only route to truth. Subjective interpretation and experience must be as removed as possible from any conclusion. 

I believe that this is the sort of mentality that people usually think of when they say "atheist." I just wanted to offer that distinction.

I went through a lot of my life under this philosophy, having rejected spirituality in general based on negative experiences with religious kids. I was quite sure that any spirituality was simply a sort of self-soothing lie to help people get through their lives with insecurities around purpose, life, and primarily death. In fact, I am very happy that I came to terms with mortality before my spiritual awakening, as otherwise I might still wonder whether I am tricking myself. The idea of my consciousness ceasing to exist does not bug me, and I thank my experiences with anti-spirituality for that. I am more secure in my beliefs and why I believe them because of that. 

So having "been there, done that," I will say that it doesn't have to be depressing or bleak. It was a very liberating and expansive experience facing the belief that my existence will one day end, and coming out the other side comfortable with that. But most material objectivists I know have not done so. I haven't experienced the same sort of thing that others are talking about in this thread, where the idea of eternal existence bothers them. I have seen a few, but much more common, I see the idea of a limited, pointless, and futile existence really bug them. They accept the fact that they believe it to be true, but then they avoid the idea completely. They don't like to talk about it or think about it, and would prefer to live a life of simple distraction rather than wrangle the beast of mortality. 

I think this insecurity gets projected out frequently, and I think the most common iteration nowadays is the scientific community's desire to colonize other planets because the continuation of the human race is (for some reason, despite the ultimate pointlessness and futility of all existence, despite all existence being limited) an incredibly important thing, and it must persist. I think that the idea of the human race persisting offers a soothing comfort to the material objectivist sense of futility. They have identified, in part, as a human, so if humans persist, they too will persist in some way. 

But if you dig too deep, you can use their own personal beliefs to dismantle this idea. In a nutshell, humans can't exist forever, and so attempting to colonize the stars is simply delaying the inevitable. Even more important, I think, is to look at what we've done to life on this planet already. If you wanted to get really objective, there's a strong argument to be made that life in the universe is probably better off without humans.

Anywho, I'm rambling at a material objectivist strawman. Just wanted to offer perspective of someone who once believed in true death of consciousness and wasn't depressed by it.

[anagogy]

In fact, I am very happy that I came to terms with mortality before my spiritual awakening, as otherwise I might still wonder whether I am tricking myself. The idea of my consciousness ceasing to exist does not bug me, and I thank my experiences with anti-spirituality for that. I am more secure in my beliefs and why I believe them because of that. 

I guess my question is: how can one legitimately value the self, and be okay with complete and utter annihilation of that self?  I'm genuinely curious how that is resolved psychologically in people who believe that.  Because it seems like a contradiction to me. How can a person that places any value whatsoever on consciousness not be bugged by its annihilation?

[Night Owl]

In the end, any word we can use to categorise a belief system will end up being a generalisation because beliefs are as flexible and changing as thoughts and therefore there exist as much different belief systems as there is people. Each perspective is unique.

[Jade]

In fact, I am very happy that I came to terms with mortality before my spiritual awakening, as otherwise I might still wonder whether I am tricking myself. The idea of my consciousness ceasing to exist does not bug me, and I thank my experiences with anti-spirituality for that. I am more secure in my beliefs and why I believe them because of that. 

I guess my question is: how can one legitimately value the self, and be okay with complete and utter annihilation of that self?  I'm genuinely curious how that is resolved psychologically in people who believe that.  Because it seems like a contradiction to me.  How can a person that places any value whatsoever on consciousness not be bugged by its annihilation?

This may be a chicken-egg thing. Is it the lack of value of the self that leads one to buy into annihilation, or is it the fear of annihilation that causes one to place such little value on their being? I guess both ways can be explained by a different chakral imbalance.

[APeacefulWarrior]

I think the "free will" question also comes into play here. It seems like a large number of devoted atheists I meet have an extremely mechanistic view of the body and accordingly believe that free will is an illusion. Ie, our consciousness is just a byproduct of electro-chemical reactions, justifying "decisions" that have already been made by the body. If one legitimate!y believes they have no true control over their responses, they're not going to value their selves highly or see the potential of annihilation as any great loss.