Lordy. Why do people think atheists are bitter?
Do we think without God there's no reason to be happy?
Can't I say that I believe
1. we all came from slime,
2. no one is watching me right now,
3. nothing holds a key to eternal happiness or eternal distress
and still be happy and good???
Isn't a relationship to God all about rejoicing and celebrating? Isn't God really an umbrella we love each other under? What is up with the God dependency for our emotional and moral health?
posted by overflow at
3:12 PM
10 Comments:
because we grew up thinking our parents were God. or rather, they grew us up to think they were God. So the God of popular culture and religions is really just a substitute for mom & pop. "Our Holy Father..." that's why we are supposed to FEAR God. remember all of that hummina about "poor thing, her parents are divorced. no wonder she is unhappy?" to diverge from this scarcely hidden agenda of monotheistic religion is to become an unwanted child, doomed to lead a bitter life.
well, if you ask me (i think me & "god" are the same) divergence from the paradigm makes me feel like the holy spawn of an acrobat and a rock star!
2:14 PM
hm...well, i see the parallel. We seek parental love and often we have to find it somewhere other than from our parents. But there's more to God than parental substitution, right? There's ritual, community, medititation/prayer, the power of positive thought. There's a slew of stuff religion gives beyond the "new dad" complex.
So humans want to be loved by something higher than themselves.
Good Good. It's all true. We all want a loving higher power. We may not get that from our elders. Elders are guaranteed to fall short on some level. So we go to God. Or nature. Or something else we can put on a higher plane than ourselves.
And then what?
Can I be an atheist and get this higher love? Are you saying we don't need this higher love? Here's where I'm confused. I want to be loved by something/someone more than myself. I can be loved by a group: a community, a circle of friends. That's good. Where do I get this community? If I'm not surrounded by friends (where the sum of love is greater than my "self"), then I go to strangers....where are these strangers?
Well, church is one place.
I'm not making myself clear, but I think you got the ball rolling.
Lonely atheists seem sad. Lonely Christians seem sad, too. So maybe that's it. We just project loneliness on people who are different than us.
Hm....more thought will go into this.
6:37 PM
humans want to feel alive and acknowledeged, and better yet, loved. to this end, we yearn to feel protected and connected. so that we feel stronger than what we often experience as our debilitating humanity and mortality. so that we feel strong enough to rise to the occasion of appreciating those enormously beautiful moments which might feel beyond our ability to fully digest.
so throughout the ages, when mom & pop pooped out on having our backs on this, we've been trolling around for an agent(s) to enable us feel safe, acknowledged, loved, and grand enough to digest the enormous beauty of life and living. Agent God, at your service!
so what if you don't believe in God? i suppose it depends on what you mean by "god". for instance, if god doesnt exist because we come from slime, no one cares and no one is going to show you how to get your groove on in life (ie. - no higher power separate from ourselves to help out) than it is up to you to find love, acknowlegement and courage. so where is your community? it is in the slime. you share the same slime as anyone else and that, my friend, has been scientifically proven! and i'm not just talking about the provervbial primordial tar bubble slime, i'm talking about the quantum slime that vitally makes up all matter and, according to some, consciousness.
does god = slime? some might think so. i like this notion, actually...
people tend to watch out for you as much as you watch out for them because all people are really concerned about is what you think about them. so if you give them attention, you will surely get something in return from them that binds you, for better or for worse. hey! but there it is! the sum that is larger than its parts. people only thinking of themselves accidentally caring about what other people think and getting involved with their lives in constructive and destructive ways. there is your community.
i never said it would be pretty. but it's a community you can count on.
church makes community alot less risky. because the only thing you have to put on the line with your fellow churchgoer is "i believe this stuff just like you" so whamo! you have community with them. but in my experience, it doesnt get satisfying until we both start talking about how we stumble around and fall in similar ways as well.
what binds me to the most profound experiences of love and life and light to others is a chameleon force of art and physics. but it really just boils down to art for me.
art = slime = god
i like that.
loneliness is a bitch and a big downer. lonliness can make a big pot of bitter, for real! that guy over there, who seems to ignore me, or better yet oppresses me, who holds a complete opposite set of beliefs, values, genes, sexuality - a seemingly inpenatrable matrix far as making community with him - can make me feel pretty damn lonely. but when i see him slip on the ice like i do sometimes, i don't feel so lonely. i feel something common between us. i feel inspired to create community through that chink of commonality that we share, even if the community looks like me driving an ideological stake through that small loophole of commonality and up his insufferable arse.
this is the stuff of comedy.
god=slime=art=comedy
god's community.
7:47 PM
you said arse. hee hee.
okay, but if we can call god slime, then we got ourselves a loose definition of God (er, in this particular text we do. we can call god slime and also be making a moral judgement, but hey, that's rude!).
I don't call the commonality of man or the source of man "god" because I think both are not sentient or moral. I mean, I think if we all agreed that "god" exists and then debated the definition, we'd end up on the same shaky ground, so it's all semantics. So let's make the definition for this thread the following (since it is my site and i can do whatever i want):
One could define god as that unknown variable of science, but let's try to split it up for this debate into "no god" means that while there may be commonality among men and a sum that is greater than the parts and unanswered questions, these do not make "god."
Let's say "god" is a being or force that consciously (or with a group conscious) desires a self defined "positive" outcome for the universe and makes action for that desired outcome. This allows God to be a monotheistic god, a pantheon, or a "force" that drives the universe. Whatever mythology is attached to this God is of no import.
Okay, with that said. If we do not believe in something trying to make things positive except ourselves, then it can get scary if we don't believe in ourselves.
Hm...I'm starting to see where the bitter atheist idea is coming from...
damn, i gotta do something mundane....i'll be back.
8:55 PM
i love other words for "ass." i love "ass"- really, i love it! - but it is primarily sexual in my small mind so borrowing from other cultures to conduct an anatomical or philisophical discussion (arse, bum, etc) is something i find very handy.
there is a really interesting book about this stuff and i wonder if you've already read it - THE QUANTUM SELF: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics by Danah Zohar. she makes a very interesting case for the "slime = god" concept by addressing the communal/moral/sentient implications of quantum behavior. somehow, i think you might appreciate it. in fact, talking about all this stuff makes me want to pick up up again since the last time i read it was 15 years ago. it was published in 1990 so i suppose quantum physics was still new in crossing over to popular culture/art/religion.
BUT, it IS your world and you do get to call the shots on your own bloguniverse, therefore, i have a couple questions about the ground rules here - what are you defining as a "postive" outcome? why does god have to be separate from us humans?
4:51 PM
Positive can mean anything. As far as I can tell, defining the term isn't necessary. I'm using it in the sense that a god would be a thing/force/being that prefers an outcome and works at getting it.
I'm defining the term, "God," so we can continue the conversation. If we said anything could be God, then anyone who believes in anything can be a theist and that makes the whole discussion pretty silly.
I believe in "slime." I think we all share -as a species- a desire to commune. And in that desire we do actions and think thoughts in hopes of community. I do not think anything outside of ourselves works with us in that. If there was something outside of ourselves working with us in creating a community for us, then I would call it God for this discussion.
So back to point. Can a person be happy and not believe in a god? For this discussion, God is defined as a being/force/thing that works in a physical way to create a specific outcome for our species.
1:53 AM
well, with the definitions you have set up, i can imagine a person feeling pretty peachy keen that they are a part of something larger than themselves with out believing in a separate God because they have slime to depend on. and if they need to know and feel that they and their species are headed for a definite outcome, they wouldn't need god because they have the first and second laws of thermodynamics for that. of course, that outcome is chaos and disorganization, but it is an outcome you can count on. so happiness, then seems to become a question for this person of how they define what is beautiful to them? assuming that what brings them happiness is this beauty in question. is a scientific explanation of dissolution beautiful to them or scary as hell? is it a source of poetry or hopelessness in thier life? i suppose it would have something to do with their own self worth and with their attitude toward death. and maybe how generous a soul they possess as opposed to how much power they need to feel in order to appreciate the beauty of a given situation? does that person need to take and control in order to be happy? or do they need to surrender and give it all up to feel happy? i suppose in a godless world, happiness is subject to one's personal philosophy about these things. that or how comfortable our mom & pop made us feel about our poo in the potty training process.
12:58 AM
I guess this is all questions for a person who believes in God.
But I can see where you're going. What I can say is that faith in an outcome does tint one's perceptions of self and the world.
I believe that I can work toward a specific outcome and I have faith that there are people of like mind who are working at that outcome and I have faith that we can achieve this outcome. My personal outcome is that we survive as a species with a high quality of life that is with less violence and more community than what we have now. I guess we can call it embracing the slime.
My faith in this outcome is admittedly as without logic or science as theism, so I will gladly call it a belief. And I agree that a belief in *my* desired outcome makes me a little happier than if I thought the world was going to go up in flames anyday now (strangely, a Christian belief...but that's a whole other can of worms).
I guess if someone proved to me that the world was pure chaos (or worse, Republican), I would be fetal for quite some time.
I was once a chaos embracing atheist and felt that people, goals, ideals, communities and species all died without lingering or eternal transitioning. And it was natural and normal and chaotic as the cells in our body dying and regenerating. And then, finally, the vessel we are a part of would die as it is part of a larger body...yadda yadda. And that is also a very peaceful state of mind.
Back to original point for a sec: This is why I am so annoyed by people who say atheists are bitter. To truly love being part of a chaotic system. To have no dogma except to create a present state that is positive for one's self. To know that loving other people and being generous of heart is a much higher state of mind than random pleasure seeking does help in that moment. To embrace that and see it clearly for what it is....Wow, it is as close to enlightenment I think I was ever at.
(Now back to the point we're getting at) I do remember at that time getting a heavy dose of "god proof" in the sense of prayer working, spirituality working, people of faith working for me -what some people call
"god shots." And that made me fetal for quite some time, too. So I guess I'm saying, maybe if anything were proven to us (happy god love or chaotic god absence), the proof itself would be quite mind bending.
God shots are scary even if you believe in them. To this day, they freak me out. When they defy the odds and go deeper than coincidence. Being freelance is full of godshots and it's wild. I'm not gonna say god's giving me graces, but I will say there's some kinda Santa Claus imp playing some happy ending practical jokes on a sad ending junkie.
10:19 AM
now i want to hear some of your "god shot" stories!
but yes, certainly, there is something about proving a thing that douses out the flame of magic and romance, not to mention, that beautiful, heady quality of faith. in fact, it seems that the more people feel they can "prove" their god, the more evangalistic and militant they get about their faith. but i love "god shots" even though i'm not really sure if i subscribe fully to a monotheistic god (recovering catholic). i do believe you can bring miracles and your will to you by the energy you put out. i also believe in interventions made on behalf of a force most of us are not entirely conscious of. what is wonderful about these moments is that they can be interpreted as god, or magic, or luck - all lovely and inspiring concepts - even if they spring from different ideologies. it is a wide, wide world and there seems like there ought to be room for it all. i mean, there is punk rock and there is blue grass but they are both music to someone. there is enormous strength in diversity. i'm not sure if i get excited about getting it right as much as i get excited about the options i have to consider.
maybe people say aethists are bitter b/c they resent the challenge of different options. maybe they spew bitterness b/c they want to feel they have a corner on what makes love and happiness. it's powerful stuff - love & happiness - so i can understand the urge to control it. but if you could control a wave, than surfing would be no fun at all.
8:31 PM
that's an interesting thought. It's possible some people are so happy in their faith, they can't fathom the other end of the spectrum. Maybe the only explanation is plain ol' naivete. Not in the lack of experience but really in the lack of a specific experience. Especially if the experience they did have as non-theists was unhappy, maybe they assume that's how it is for everyone.
I'm not sure. Atheists get so annoyed by Godheads sometimes, maybe we come off as bitter cuz we keep getting frustrated with God debates. It's like when Mom thinks I'm always tired when really I'm just always tired around her.
Aww..that was mean. I love my mom.
But she can be a little draining.
2:12 AM
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