Belief System

Atheist Four-Play

Today’s Sunday Question (for those who may have noticed a theme to my Sunday posts) is a collection of four questions posed on Quora, which were addressed with short answers. Most of my currently 22 thousand answers to questions there are quite short, and others are streams of images. I respond to questions in various ways, depending on what feels like an appropriate answer.

Most of the questions I’ve been publishing through this publication system are repurposed from long answers I’ve written there. I use Quora much like a sketchbook of ideas. I want to think some of the shorter answers have as much reading value as the longer ones, but feel they are generally inappropriate on their own in this long-format publishing system.

So, rather than letting them slip into the ether, I’ve collected a few that can add up to a cumulative reading time typical of a long answer. I hope you enjoy them.

Question 1: Why is faith not for everyone? Why is it that only some people get it?

The more comfortable people become with facts and acquiring knowledge, the less they rely on purely subjective faith as a crutch to navigate a complex world. The more one learns about their world, the more refined and sophisticated their faith-based choices become.

Everyone holds some faith in some things. The difference between those who rely on subjectively-supported faith to establish their views of the world and those dependent on understanding the world to develop their factually-supported faith boils down to intellectual curiosity and simple maturity.

The more intellectually curious one is, the less reliant they are on magic to explain gaps in their knowledge. The more intellectually curious one is, the more willing they are to explore the world to find more satisfying answers that awaken their mind to a fundamentally more complex reality.

One never loses one’s capacity for faith, even when divesting oneself of religious beliefs over time to discover that they have become an atheist. People become more selective in what they are willing to put their faith into, which correlates with their intellectual and emotional development.

Question 2: Is scientific evidence the only evidence atheists would be willing to accept for the existence of God?

There is no such thing as “scientific evidence.”

There is only “evidence,” and that evidence must be verifiable through some form of empiricism, which can, if necessary, employ scientific methods and discipline for examining it.

The evidence must be verified directly through human senses without equipment or through a technological means of detection.

We must be able to examine and test that evidence to verify any claims about it being a god creature or that it supports the existence of a god creature.

“Evidence doesn’t care” what area of inquiry it serves or what answers or conclusions it supports. “Evidence is evidence,” whether it’s to establish the existence of alleged beings or conclusions drawn in a court of law.

Question 3: Is atheism infallible?

No. Atheism is an illusion to placate believers.
Atheism is a non-existent belief.
Atheism is the absence of a belief.
Atheism is nothing.

Nothing can fail if nothing cannot succeed because nothing does not exist.

Nothing is an imaginary spectre haunting the minds of those who doubt the veracity of claims they have been instructed to believe.

Nothing is a terrifying abyss to those who have been convinced that their lives are sustained only by submitting to an imaginary cosmic nipple. They are made so dependent upon their imaginary nipple that they fear for not just their lives but their imaginary eternal afterlife as well.

They are conditioned to believe nothing is worse than eternal torture. Their indoctrinated belief causes them to be so afraid of nothing that they cannot grasp how nothing is ever alone.

Without that indoctrination, atheism would vanish altogether to become a forgotten nothing.

Question 4: Is it possible that some atheists hate believers simply because they believe there’s a God?

Whatever happened to hate the sin, love the sinner?

Do believers believe only they believe this principle?

They don’t, and I would argue that atheists uphold this principle better than believers.

Atheists don’t care what people believe because they value their right to disbelieve more than believers value their right to believe as they choose.

After all, believers have been waging wars over beliefs in conflict with other believers for centuries.

Atheists, on the other hand, have had to survive in a world where they would be killed for disbelieving the beliefs held by believers.

Atheists generally find believers’ behaviours to be intolerable because they are often intolerant of those who don’t share their beliefs.

If believers stopped trying to impose their beliefs on non-believers and those with different beliefs, there would be no reason for atheists to have difficulties with believers.

There is no point in hating people for what they believe. Hating someone for their beliefs is just a coward’s way of avoiding the truth about themselves and the doubts that haunt them about their beliefs, or lack thereof.

For anyone interested in exploring other answers to these questions by others on Quora, these are links to each:

Question 1: Why is faith not for everyone? Why is it that only some people get it?
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-faith-not-for-everyone-Why-is-it-that-only-some-people-get-it/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1

Question 2: Is scientific evidence the only evidence atheists would be willing to accept for the existence of God?
https://www.quora.com/Is-scientific-evidence-the-only-evidence-atheists-would-be-willing-to-accept-for-the-existence-of-God/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1

Question 3: Is atheism infallible?
https://www.quora.com/Is-atheism-infallible/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1

Question 4: Is it possible that some atheists hate believers simply because they believe there’s a God?
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-that-some-atheists-hate-believers-simply-because-they-believe-theres-a-God/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1

Bonus Question 5 (this one is included as a bonus because the written part of my answer is quite short while a long stream of images would make its inclusion in this post too long to contain within an email — of all the answers I’ve given here, this one has been the most popular and has received the most upvotes):

If they ask me what I love most, I tell them I love God. What about you, an atheist?
https://divineatheists.quora.com/If-they-ask-me-what-I-love-most-I-tell-them-I-love-God-What-about-you-an-atheist-106

Why don’t you believe God exists?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://caseforatheism.quora.com/Why-dont-you-believe-God-exists-16“

Your question is entirely backwards.

Atheists don’t need to justify why they don’t believe God exists.

You don’t need to justify why you don’t believe the Sun turns pink at night and shoots golden sprinkles throughout the night to create stars that fairies light up with their magic dust.

Believers do, however, need to justify why anyone should believe their claim that a God exists.

You don’t have to justify anything you do or don’t believe to anyone until you try to convince them to accept your belief.

Atheism is the absence of a belief in the existence of a God. That disbelief technically means atheism is the same as nothing. Atheists have no motivation to share the nothing that comprises disbelief with anyone. Atheists generally don’t care what believers believe or disbelieve until they make it their business to convince atheists to think the same as they do.

Your question is like expecting someone to justify why they don’t believe snakes have wheels hidden in their scales that we can’t see, but they secretly use them to speed their way along the ground when no one is looking.

This atheist could write a novel explaining the journey taken from early indoctrination as a child and the early doubts about that indoctrination, which grew over time as more and more questions remained unanswered while more and more contradictions to the claims of the existence of a God appeared ever more undeniable, but none of that matters.

The only answer to your question that you deserve is that Atheists do not believe in the existence of a God. The only fact relevant to that answer is that atheists paid attention to reality and asked questions about reality in ways that made unjustifiable beliefs unsustainable.

There is no point in adhering to a belief when reality contradicts it.

There is no point in believing that Santa Claus exists as an adult because only children wake up on Christmas day to find a mystery of gifts deposited under a tree awaiting them.

Adults know there is no magical entity depositing gifts, so there’s no point in believing Santa Claus exists. Most adults would consider it quite delusional for an adult to think Santa Claus exists. I’m sure you’re one of them.

Meanwhile, atheists who deal with questions like this are left wondering when believers will wake up and start asking themselves why and how adult believers can still believe in fantasy figures granting magical wishes.

Why do you believe some supernatural Father Cosmos lives in some Quantum realm (instead of the clouds or mountaintop that used to be thought of as God’s home)? Why do you believe your fantasy father figure magically created billions of light years of space and trillions of galaxies, suns and planetary systems to place you at the centre of creation as his special child that he watches over? Do you watch over your eyelash mites? Do you communicate with your gut bacteria? Why do you believe your God looks like you?

If you can stop to think about your question, you’ll realize that it is backwards because it’s not about what atheists don’t believe, but why you do believe a God exists.

You would not otherwise pose your question to atheists if you weren’t already experiencing some shred of doubt in your belief. Instead of exploring that, though, you seek some form of justification from atheists because you’re afraid of losing your faith.

If you think about that for a while, you will realize that your fear was deliberately cultivated within you to keep you in line with your belief system, as it was designed to control your mind.

Instead of wondering why others think differently from you, try to think about why you believe the way you do.

You’ll get better answers that way, and they’ll be answers that get you further in life. The only answers you can get from others on this score are explanations of their personal views. Meanwhile, the entire point of being on Earth and living your personal life while experiencing growth and change as an individual is to learn your answers for yourself.

That’s the essential difference you’re struggling to identify with your question — why atheists are different than you.

The truth is that your beliefs are yours to develop in a personal journey through life. Your religious indoctrination has taught you to think that process is a “personal relationship with God.” The sooner you can rid yourself of an imaginary intermediary in your quest for knowledge, the sooner you will develop a clarity of mind in which you can understand on your terms why atheists don’t believe in the existence of the God you’ve been taught to believe in.

Otherwise, you will never truly understand any answer any atheist will give you to your question.

How did you determine that your nontheistic worldview is true?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Nontheists OFTEN ask theists for proof that their particular theistic worldview is true (ie: Christianity, Islam, etc). So surely reversing the question for once is legitimate: How did you determine your particular non-theistic worldview is true?”

Following a simple process of elimination to divest oneself of flawed and blatantly wrong-headed presumptions clears one’s mind of emotionally-based conclusions responsible for blurring the distinction between fact and fiction.

The flawed presumption you base your question on and use to justify avoiding your responsibility to yourself to ensure you are not living a lie is that you have confused absence with presence.

There is no such thing as a “non-theistic worldview,” but it is interesting to see how you feel compelled to replace “atheism” with “non-theistic.” It’s a dialectical choice which serves as evidence of your flawed presumption that a “non-thing” (an absence) is equivalent to a “thing” (a presence), and that you find a lack of a belief system you have been conditioned to adhere to is threatening.

As usual, it is neither legitimate nor rare when believers often attempt to flip the script as you have. Theists employ this most common form of disingenuous dialectical tactic when trying to dodge responsibility for supporting their claim that the product of their imagination is a fact, not a fiction.

The harsh reality you seek to avoid as you hope to mine justification for hanging on to a delusion you doubt, that has made no effort to determine your worldview. You opened your mind like a baby bird opened their mouth and willingly received your worldview like a series of instructions you memorized out of fear of what would happen if you failed to follow them.

Atheists don’t “often ask for proof” because they’re not compelled to proselytize anything. Conversely, believers are conditioned to believe that their recruitment efforts will garner them afterlife rewards. Any successes they may experience in promoting their worldview serve as validation for their beliefs and quell their struggles with cognitive dissonance.

The more you question why you adhere to instructions you’ve been programmed to interpret as beliefs, the more you free yourself from the effects of your brainwashing.

This is why believers are taught to fear non-believers.

You need to keep up with your conditioning to ensure you don’t stray, and that’s why your beliefs have many rituals and icons to reaffirm your commitment to your belief system.

Stop to think about it for a moment. You will eventually realize how none of that addresses how to rationalize your worldview because it is entirely based on submission to ignorance.

So, while you ask atheists how they determine their worldview, you are admitting that you have never made that determination yourself about your worldview.