Personal Beliefs

Do atheists hate believers? And other Myths

To all my millions of readers (lol) chomping at the bit (double lol), wondering what may have happened yesterday when you didn’t receive a daily missive of my preponderant wizdumb, I have an explanation and an announcement below my typical approach to composing my publications by posting answers to questions on Quora.

Today is a departure from my standard fare in three parts: an answer to a typical Sunday question, an explanation for my derelict behaviour, and a summary of my delusion.

Now, on with the question:

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

Hate the sin, and love the sinner.

Do only believers believe this principle?

I don’t think so. 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 many believers value an atheist’s right to think differently than they do.

After all, believers perpetually impose their beliefs onto others and 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 most 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 a person for beliefs they hold is a myopic way of avoiding truths about doubts one is haunted by.

Values are another matter altogether, which warrants concern because they form a foundation for one’s beliefs and the actions they inspire.

Among the many reasons I began my daily routine of publishing long-form articles on Medium, Substack, Patreon, and WordPress was a realization I had about myself after reaching a milestone of about 18,000 answers to questions on Quora. There are a lot of words inside me itching to get out, and I can’t keep my mouth shut. I write because I must.

I didn’t think I could sustain a long-term effort, particularly not one that provides no compensation and likely not for a long time. It’s much easier to stick to a discipline when some extrinsic rewards accompany the intrinsic ones. Nonetheless, even though I have written almost daily for most of my life, I began my sustained writing journey for public consumption nearly a year ago because I wanted to establish that I could find enough inspiration to maintain a long-term writing vocation.

I joined Quora in 2014 to leverage the social media site as part of a marketing funnel for myself in a career as an Instructional Designer. Long story short, I couldn’t continue that particular career for reasons I won’t get into now. Still, I did find myself relying heavily on Quora and in answering questions I believed on some level to be helpful to others, while being a form of therapy for coping with a significantly traumatic experience I’ve been struggling through for much longer than I would have believed at the outset.

Ten years later, I realized I could package my writing into publications of sufficient length that might appeal to an audience, and so that became one of my goals. I also decided to commit to an entire year of daily publishing long-form answers. I managed to reach 314 consistent days on Friday. 

I’ve also been relying on Grammarly to save on efforts to clean up my grammatical sloppiness and have been receiving weekly reports of my performance. Since January 13th of 2017, Grammarly reports processing almost 80 million words I’ve written. I’m also less than 3 months away from a 200-week writing streak achievement badge. (woohoo)

Another reason I gained for continuing my daily publications about 50 weeks into my efforts was an article about someone who experienced new professional opportunities opening up for them on LinkedIn after one hundred days of daily publications. Since I was already halfway there, I figured if I held out long enough, I’d receive a touch of magic myself.

No such luck, but realizing I’ve been writing at a consistent volume of more than 9 million words per year, it eventually sunk into my thick skull that I’m producing enough volume to have written several books by now. Not only have I struggled to maintain my publication schedule while working on other writing projects, but I’ve also been somewhat disappointed by an issue of inconsistent quality in maintaining such a frequent publishing schedule.

I can do better by scaling back on publishing frequency, giving myself time to provide background research to support my content, and providing you, as a reader, with a much richer body of copy to engage your mind and stimulate your imagination.

…And since Saturday was my birthday, I used that as my lame excuse for taking a day off.

At any rate, I’m considering a three-day-per-week schedule — possibly Sundays, Tuesdays/Wednesdays, and Fridays from this point onward.

I intend to focus more in-depth on some ongoing topics, including elaborating on my personal experiences in ways that contribute to the public dialogues on issues of governance, UBI, and the “defunding the police” movement, and of course, including religiosity as I have each Sunday for several months and other topics I am moved by.

I hope you enjoy my more focused approach to long-form writing, and if you prefer shorter pieces, I will continue being an uncensored smartass on Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Antonio-Amaral-1/

I very much appreciate your support. Thank you.

Now, onto part 3, where I become an obtuse smartass once again with an answer to another question:

What are some common myths social media tells us?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-common-myths-social-media-tell-us/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1

Social media is an ecosystem, not an entity.

As such, social media is the chaos of billions of voices shouting at the universe.

If all of that were to consolidate into encapsulated messages or narratives in concise enough forms to be considered myths, then one would be that we are an ocean of rudderless beings all vying for some form of ascendence, whether individualistic or tribalistic.

We fear death as we revel in it through our rampant destruction of life, as we deny the finite nature of our existence and dream of immortality.

Social media reminds us of our insignificance as individuals on this Earth and as a species in this universe, as the cacophony of voices harmonizes into an anthem proclaiming our relevance.

Is it better to have faith or not?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Dear Atheists, do you think its better to have faith, or no faith?”

Believers should learn to understand how various forms of faith exist that don’t require you to check your brain out of service to maintain them.

For example, one can have faith in all the other drivers on the road to mostly observe the rules of the road.

One can also have faith in the referee for your game who is sincerely interested in being objective.

One can also have faith that the person they hire for a job sincerely wants to succeed and contribute to your success.

None of these forms of faith are guarantees against misjudgment but are optimistic expectations that will generally pan out positively. The odds of a negative outcome are far fewer than a positive outcome.

These are forms of faith based on an awareness of the world and an objective understanding of how people generally behave.

We know there are outliers and sometimes disappointments, but for the most part, one’s faith in these conditions is met with positive results.

This is a justifiable form of faith.

What is not a justifiable form of faith that essentially amounts to wallowing in self-serving delusion is believing in the existence of a human-like entity endowed with magical powers seen nowhere else in the universe… particularly when assuming such an omnipotent being of galactic proportions will intervene in the life of something less than a speck of bacteria to it… and most especially in matters of convenience like one’s favourite team winning a ballgame or a parking spot opening up in a timely manner.

Otherwise, it is much better to have enough faith in oneself to ignore the naysayers in one’s life than not because one will never have any hope of realizing one’s goals or dreams without it.

What to say to an atheist.

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “What are some things to say to an atheist that will make them think about their beliefs?”

This question is a sad indictment of believer conditioning.

Very few people think about their beliefs more than atheists, particularly those who have spent a lifetime detangling the nonsense crammed into their brains by the religious conditioning they received since childhood.

If believers want to know what to say to atheists, they must first learn to emulate the humble nature of their Christ and not assume they’re in greater possession of a deeper understanding of their own beliefs. You don’t understand your beliefs as well as you think you do. Your attitude in seeking a way to “make them think about their beliefs” shows you have very little depth of understanding of beliefs you inherited and have swallowed wholesale without putting any effort into understanding them beyond how you should submit to nonsense.

Every day on Quora alone, numerous believers pose questions demonstrating a very underdeveloped and even childlike apprehension of beliefs in general. At the same time, statistics show that atheists are generally better informed on religion than the religious themselves.

Yet… here you are, assuming you have unlocked the universe’s secrets because you submit your entire life to an illusion you can’t prove to yourself is real. You have accepted the words of other believers without questioning them and then have chosen to behave as if following instructions is the same as developing one’s beliefs about life and the universe we inhabit.

The arrogance you demonstrate with your question embodies the reason why religions incite conflict in this world. It is the blind arrogance you demonstrate with your question which shows you have no interest in understanding how others might arrive at their beliefs. You assume the instructions you were fed and followed like an obedient pet constitute a superior set of beliefs.

They don’t.

They demonstrate your incapacity to take ownership of your mind.

They show your willingness to give up everything of your natural identity to submit your entire life to a lie.

Your blind adherence to your instructions demonstrates no understanding of your beliefs but obedience. This is why believers betray their inability to understand what belief means daily on social media.

You should be embarrassed by your question, but you’re not because you sincerely believe you happened to be born into the right family to imbue your mind with the correct beliefs that make your inherited views superior to all other views on the planet.

That’s why religion is toxic. This is why religion is responsible for thousands of years of warfare. This is why religion is a cancer we must cure from human society if we wish to achieve our potential as a species.

If you insist on talking to atheists about their beliefs, then you should emulate the humility of your Christ and approach them with an open mind full of questions and a willingness to learn about your own beliefs. Otherwise, you’ll get the animosity you have already seen in the answers you’ve been given.

How do atheists think this brief existence is all there is?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “How do atheists think this brief existence is all there is? Don’t you have a yearning in your heart that there must be something over the rainbow?”

That’s not exactly how that works.

This brief existence is all there is for this thing we call “ego.”

This thing we call “ego” is far from being “all there is” and is, in effect, as relevant to the universe as a speck of dust on our planet. The problem here isn’t the insignificance of ego but the ego’s addiction to being (or being perceived as) relevant beyond its existence.

There is much, much more to existence beyond the human ego, but as soon as each life ends, so too does that frail construct that demands immortality for itself on the sole basis of simply recognizing its own existence.

What we should be doing with human egos is learning how to train them to focus on the lives they get so that the benefits of existence are maximized for themselves and through others because that’s the only way for the ego to validate itself within the context of its limited existence.

Pissing away one’s life by catering to delusions of egotistical immortality is the most toxic form of grooming for one’s ego that invariably metastasizes it into a cancerous tumour for human society.

Whatever may exist “over the rainbow” is not for the human ego to experience.

This existence is all there is for the human ego.

The sooner the human ego can embrace that, the sooner it can grow to appreciate a gift that can vanish at any moment for any reason. Appreciation for the finiteness of one’s existence is precisely the point of a limited existence. There is no other way to transcend this limitation.

Which religious books are the most convincing?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Religious books are a lost cause. I’m an atheist, but I’m wondering which religion do you think is the most convincing? Don’t say none of them please.”

As others have pointed out, you’re not an atheist because you think like a believer does when they interpret their “spiritual journey” as a gym membership where their responsibility is limited to picking the right gym.

This is the sort of thinking that doesn’t care about physical health and fitness, nor about whatever benefits might be derived from an adequately customized routine fitting their personal needs in a way that optimally contributes to their development.

This is the sort of thinking that wants to take a pill to get the benefits of heavy lifting without having to do the work.

An atheist will have already sorted through this nonsense to arrive at a point where they understand that picking a religion doesn’t have anything to do with whatever one’s “spiritual journey” might be.

Picking a religion is like choosing between clown costumes to attend a formal affair.

If you were an atheist, you would be interested in the concepts defining the differences between belief systems rather than viewing them as package deals in which to immerse oneself.

If you were an atheist, you would want to know why it is that the “least spiritual” and most blatantly hypocritical and brutally violent religions are three of the most dominant religions on the planet and are entirely products of toxic patriarchy.

Many other religions demonstrate far more respect for life like Buddhism does and without dogmas rooted in barbaric violence.

If you were an atheist, you would not care about “which religion” but about which religious practices and ideals are beneficial and which are toxic to your growth. The notion of joining a team to achieve “spiritual growth” would send chills down the spine of an atheist who is otherwise clear on how utterly destructive such tribalistic thinking is to one’s mental health and personal growth.

The fact that so many believers feel compelled to address their issues through fraudulent representations of themselves is just proof that believers don’t sincerely believe their delusions. They struggle with their doubts, so they feel compelled to overcompensate through fraudulent behaviours. Sadly, they don’t know how to escape their mental prison and see no alternative but to indulge in sinful betrayals of the tenets in their scriptures.

What are the 3 things that atheists would like from Christians?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “I won’t give up my faith, but what are the 3 things that atheists would like from Christians (or any religion really), in order to live in the best society possible?”

No one is asking you to give up your faith, and if someone does, then you have every right and justification to tell them where to stuff their opinion. You have every right to whatever belief you choose to hold. Sovereignty over one’s mind is an inalienable right (regardless of whether some might disagree — I’ll fight this one to the death — which is my belief, and if I choose a belief and hold onto it strongly enough to go to war to defend it, then I have to respect another’s right to do the same).

Having said all that,

I don’t impose my beliefs onto others (what I spoke of above was defending my belief — a big difference), and I do not want others to impose their beliefs onto me. I am severely offended by attitudes that do not respect my choice, yet I expect respect for theirs.

#1. STOP proselytizing. I don’t care if it’s a mandated directive. Do NOT impose your beliefs onto others if they do not want to endure your rendition of them. Please respect that you have the right to your beliefs ONLY because you acknowledge another’s right to their beliefs.

What this means in “real world terms” — NO MORE anti-abortion nonsense. NO MORE sexist, misogynistic imposition of your religious beliefs onto a society of individuals who do not share your beliefs. STOP PROSELYTIZING. PERIOD. Nothing of your belief system belongs in a shared society’s laws… nowhere in educational policy… nowhere in anything beyond its context.

By all means, use your existing houses of worship and your homes to worship, practice, or do whatever you like concerning your beliefs. DO NOT attempt to push your interpretation of your own beliefs onto a public sphere. Your beliefs are yours, not everyone else’s. Learn to respect that and put it into widespread practice. Speak out against toxic hypocrites like Jim Bakker, who pushes an ignorantly incendiary and self-serving agenda by riling up his “flock” into supporting violence to further his cause. That is entirely disgusting behaviour. Your beliefs do not belong anywhere outside the context they serve you.

#2. Get out of politics and learn to respect what is sacred about the separation between church and state. While you’re doing that, start paying taxes and take every dollar back from the rich evil monsters who are preying on the weak to con them into supporting their personally lavish lifestyles. (I don’t remember who it was now, and I’m not going to research it, but an example I remember from recent news was one hypocrite crying about needing a personal jet because public air transportation is full of sinners. — — I’m happy to report that person did not say that directly to my face because I’m not sure I would have contained my disgust with that particular attitude. Still, I can tell you, every one of those entitled monsters who prey upon the weak have nothing but enmity from me, and I’m pretty sure many others as well. Do SOMETHING about them because they certainly do NOT represent any spirituality or belief. They are the same cut of sociopathic monsters as those who lead terrorist groups from other belief systems.)

#3. Get out of science and learn to respect your boundaries and the role of religion in society. Your beliefs are not science or scientific in any nature or stretch of the imagination. Your beliefs do NOT trump scientific discovery within the realm of science. Evolution, for example, as your beliefs don’t bind a topic. Evolution occurs whether you want to believe it or not. Still, you need to understand how the moment you think your subjective belief somehow forms an equivalent counter-argument to hundreds of years of an evolving discipline, you betray your faith by stepping into territory which doesn’t belong to your faith and is not beholden to any subjective conclusions you may arrive at.

Facts are Facts. Period.

Arguing creationism as some form of valid response to evolution is a disgustingly stupid form of willful ignorance. It has polluted this world far too much already, and the disgusting attitudes of believers concerning this issue are just too much to deal with now. We have more significant problems as a species, and being bogged down by idiots who think their personal, insular, and subjectively defined perspectives on life should be given enough credibility to be treated seriously in a public dialogue only makes things worse for everyone.

Keep your faith, but know this; it is subjective and not remotely determinate about our physical universe. Learn to understand how faith does not trump facts because it should work the other way around. Physical reality should determine our beliefs because we are bound to this existence. Anything beyond it is speculation. If you want to call it a belief, go ahead, but it means nothing to the facts we all must live by together.

How can a believer provide evidence for God’s existence?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “How can a believer provide evidence for God’s existence to refute the claim of atheists?”

The real problem here isn’t that you don’t know how to provide evidence for God’s existence but that you see that no evidence exists but still insist your God does.

The lack of evidence should be the cornerstone of your disbelief in the existence of something.

It’s the same reasoning you would use to refuse to make a significant purchase like a vehicle without taking it for a test drive.

Your approach to your God belief is like reading an ad without pictures for a $100,000.00 sports car and sending money to an address in another country while expecting your sports car to appear at your doorstep the next day.

Do you usually make your major purchases without inspecting them first?

Would you recommend buying a house without doing a walkthrough?

Why, then, would you structure your entire life around something you can’t verify?

The best you have is someone else telling you it’s true.

You can invest in some incredibly valuable swampland from me if that’s how you make big decisions for yourself.

The harsh reality you’re struggling with is that atheists make no claims.

Atheists only refuse to buy swampland from an obvious charlatan whose only interest in you is how much money they can siphon from your pocketbook.

Can I say I’m an atheist when I’m agnostic?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Can I say I’m an atheist, when I’m actually agnostic? If I say I’m agnostic I’m worried that people will either say that it’s not real, or try to convert me.”

You can say that your beliefs are your own. You have no obligation to share intimate details of your journey with anyone who isn’t a part of your life.

Anyone who presses you doesn’t respect your boundaries, and if that’s the case, tell them whatever they want to hear to get them off your case. They’re not interested in getting to know you as a person because they want to be closer to you but because they’re looking for some information about you that they can use for their benefit.

People in life will ask you questions about yourself only because they’re looking for weapons to use against you.

You cannot trust people who cannot respect your boundaries. Life does boil down to being as simple as that.

The next time you wonder if you’re “allowed to say something” or another about yourself, try to remember how an orange Nazi turd concocts bullshit about himself and others with every sentence spewing out of his lying piehole.

I am certainly not advocating for any “benefits” of becoming a pathological liar because that’s just disgusting. I am simply pointing out that you have no reason to tie yourself up in knots over how you describe yourself to someone else.

The harsh reality is that you could likely spend an entire month describing intimate details about your life and why you arrived at certain conclusions that prompted you to think one way over another. The chances are excellent that 99% of what you say will be lost on your audience. People remember only 20% of what they hear.

Most of what you say about yourself passes through another person’s perceptual filters, and you have no control over how they interpret what you say. The only thing you can do is make your best guess at understanding them well enough to use the right combination of words that will get them close enough to understand something resembling what you want them to know and then hope for the best.

Your thoughts and feelings are your own… and if you’re anything like what I’ve gone through, then one day, you’ll be agnostic within a specific context and then a militant atheist within another context the next day. The following day, you’ll be amenable to believers, and later on that afternoon, after encountering a zealous believer, you’re back to hating religion and thinking of yourself as an anti-theist while thinking atheism itself isn’t firm enough to get the stench of the zealous asshole off your body and cleared from your mind.

The entire point I’m getting at is that human beings are not robots. As much as too many people want to create labels and stuff people into neat little boxes, humans are not that defined in such discrete terms.

Humans are more like water or vapour, constantly shifting in the wind or changing direction and flow depending upon the shape of the land one moves over. Whatever defines you as you is summed up entirely as your collection of memories.

Meanwhile, your memories are not stored like magnetic particles on a hard drive. Your memories are stored in eleven-dimensional space as “signposts” — symbols that your mind unravels as you recall events from your life… and your recollection changes as your state of mind changes.

Humans are more fluid than literal fluids in nature.

The next time someone asks you what you are, tell them you’re human.

The next time someone asks you what you believe, tell them you believe dinner is being served at 6:00.

Unless you find yourself in a long and deeply meaningful conversation with someone who truly wants to know your person, you have no obligation to barf up serial numbers for their mental registration of who they want you to be.

Be you and let the “Nosy Parkers” in your life be confused. That’s a “them problem,” not a “you problem.”

Being worried about how other people will respond to you because you’re trying to be honest with them about trying to figure yourself out is an unfair and intrusive expectation from another person.

You may not feel annoyed enough by such prying yet. If you manage to get on to your senior years, you’ll find yourself pissed off at such a rude and entitled attitude precisely because you have gone through a lifetime of being worried about telling people what you fear might be the wrong thing.

Don’t apologize for being who you are. You will only end up hating yourself for doing that. If someone decides they have a right to push their beliefs onto you, tell them to fuck off. Seriously. If Helen Mirren can endorse this response out of regret for being more polite than she should have been, you should not ever feel guilty about drawing your boundaries with a nosy someone in the harshest of terms.

Now that I’ve gone on this rant, I bet you might remember a half-dozen words… assuming you read any of it with any consideration instead of skimming over it all.

Good luck in navigating through this monkey house we call life. You’ll do fine if you can learn to duck and weave around all the flying feces.

Cheerioz