Your experiences of not being a theist (being an atheist).

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I was born and raised...even confirmed a Catholic. I used to believe in it all, I found comfort in the idea of not being alone on the cosmic scale.

I went into college as a Neuroscience major (was highly ambitious hah) and things changed.

Now, and for many years later, I don't know what to believe in anymore. There are times I can hardly comprehend my own reality, or make sense of the ways I feel, if ANY OF THIS IS "REAL" OR MATTERS.

We'll find out in the end, but I refuse to believe anyone that claims they are dead sure of what awaits us.

On another note, anyone remember that awesome line from True detective season 1:
"

"To realize that all your life—you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain—it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream. A dream that you had inside a locked room. A dream about being a person. "
 

Industrialsize

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There is a clarity in a morality that comes from God. If you believe in God and God gives a moral code, well you have a God-given moral code. Simples!

However I'm not saying that any other source of morality is inferior, though I suppose it is inevitably more complicated. There's nothing wrong with complexity.
Why is a sense of morality that does not come from god inevitably more complicated than one that does? Why? In Buddhism we have The Noble Eightfold Path, no more or less complicated than the ten commandments.
 

Jason

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Why is a sense of morality that does not come from god inevitably more complicated than one that does? Why? In Buddhism we have The Noble Eightfold Path, no more or less complicated than the ten commandments.

The ten commandments give rules, and if you don't like them, well tough! You don't need to understand a reason for them. Just do as you are told! And no, they are not negotiable.

The Noble Eightfold Path is a moral code. But some in Chinese Buddhism have a Noble Tenfold Path. Who is right? Is eight precepts the right number of two too few? Is ten precepts correct or does it contain two wrong precepts? Or can the whole lot be simplified as a single precept? Who is the authority who legislates? Where did these ideas first come from? Where did Buddha get them from?
 
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The ten commandments give rules, and if you don't like them, well tough! You don't need to understand a reason for them. Just do as you are told! And no, they are not negotiable.

The Noble Eightfold Path is a moral code. But some in Chinese Buddhism have a Noble Tenfold Path. Who is right? Is eight precepts the right number of two too few? Is ten precepts correct or does it contain two wrong precepts? Or can the whole lot be simplified as a single precept? Who is the authority who legislates? Where did these ideas first come from? Where did Buddha get them from?
I got it, not christian=way too complicated. except, according to Catholicism, some are mortal sins and some are venial sins. I was taught you cannot go to heaven if you have committed a mortal sin. But the church has changed the rules as to what is a mortal sin and what is a venial sin. When I was young, missing mass on Sunday was a mortal sin. Now it's not. Sounds like negotiation to me. But I don't believe that protestants have mortal and venial sins. So complicated!
 

Klingsor

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The analogy is that we use everyday concepts we struggle to define, and struggle to have an agreed definition. It is certainly true that definitions of God don't agree, but this doesn't mean we cannot discuss the concept.

Fair enough, as long as we're only talking about definitions. I just wanted to make it clear that a belief in the concepts of virtue, justice, and courage does not in itself make the existence of God any more likely.
 
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The ten commandments give rules, and if you don't like them, well tough! You don't need to understand a reason for them. Just do as you are told! And no, they are not negotiable.
Are you sure there are ten commandments? Exodus 34 lists a whole bunch of rules without an escape clause(non-negotiable)
And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.

2 And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me in the top of the mount.

3 And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount.

4 And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.

5 And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord.

6 And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.

9 And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.

10 And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the Lord: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee.
11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:

13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:

14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:

15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;

16 And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.

17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

18 The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.

19 All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male.

20 But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.

etc. etc
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+34&version=KJV
 
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Tight_N_Juicy

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However I'm not saying that any other source of morality is inferior, though I suppose it is inevitably more complicated. There's nothing wrong with complexity.

I don't agree actually... I find it much less complex to just look at what I feel when I interact with others, and how others react to the world around them. It wasn't hard to figure out that hurting people and taking them for granted is wrong and that helping others when I can and just being a productive member of society are good.

Didn't need religion to figure that out. In fact, I think religion makes it all much more complicated than it needs to be. But, that's just my opinion.
 
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malakos

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It wasn't hard to figure out that hurting people and taking them for granted is wrong...

On an internal, individual pragmatic level, intuition is fine for deriving a personal moral code. But I don't see how it is sufficient for discussing right and wrong, in an objective sense. Your feeling it isn't right to hurt people isn't a sufficient basis for telling someone else that they ought not to. You can't really make an ethic of it. So one is left wondering "Why?" "What is the basis for this?"

I'll not suggest that divine command is the only fair answer, but I will say intuition isn't one.
 
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Tight_N_Juicy

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On an internal, individual pragmatic level, intuition is fine for deriving a personal moral code. But I don't see how it is sufficient for discussing right and wrong, in an objective sense. Your feeling it isn't right to hurt people isn't a sufficient basis for telling someone else that they ought not to. You can't really make an ethic of it. So one is left wondering "Why?" "What is the basis for this?"

I'll not suggest that divine command is the only fair answer, but I will say intuition isn't one.

The "Why" is explainable. Religion does do this in its own way, but in my personal opinion it makes it all way more complicated than it really needs to be. Do unto others and all that... it's explainable. If I ever become a momma, I'll have a hell of a time doing so to my children. Teaching someone the difference between right and wrong isn't simple whether you're religious or not.

Also, keep in mind that there are no short answers in conversations like this. Forgive me for being overly simplistic in my explanation. I basically just summed up why I disagree with what Jason was saying. I personally don't find it more complex to have found morality without religion.
 
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Jason

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It seems that @Tight_N_Juicy is a nice human being. Great! However there are sadists whose personal experience is that giving pain to others gives them pleasure. A self-derived morality presumably suggests to sadists that morality is based on power, and that if you can do it, it is right.

I don't see how an ethical system can be based on feelings. When there are different views on how an ethical issue should be considered there doesn't seem to be a way to discuss it. Person A feels X; person B feels Y; the two courses of action are incompatible. How can we possibly resolve this? What happens when a suicide bomber feels it morally justifiable to kill innocents? If this is his feeling, do we say he is morally justified? I assume not.

In the final analysis there has to be a basis to morality. I can see as that basis:
1) God/gods
2) teaching of the Buddha, though this begs the question where the Buddha got it.
3) society. However does this work because sufficient numbers in society get their morality from (1).
 

Tight_N_Juicy

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It seems that @Tight_N_Juicy is a nice human being. Great! However there are sadists whose personal experience is that giving pain to others gives them pleasure. A self-derived morality presumably suggests to sadists that morality is based on power, and that if you can do it, it is right.

I don't see how an ethical system can be based on feelings. When there are different views on how an ethical issue should be considered there doesn't seem to be a way to discuss it. Person A feels X; person B feels Y; the two courses of action are incompatible. How can we possibly resolve this? What happens when a suicide bomber feels it morally justifiable to kill innocents? If this is his feeling, do we say he is morally justified? I assume not.

In the final analysis there has to be a basis to morality. I can see as that basis:
1) God/gods
2) teaching of the Buddha, though this begs the question where the Buddha got it.
3) society. However does this work because sufficient numbers in society get their morality from (1).

I don't see how morals could be based on Religion. An example as to why...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ngelical-adviser-says/?utm_term=.600bd8a42517

How is that religious man any more 'moral' than a non religious person who doesn't pretend to have been given the authority to kill Millions of people?

Also, that's kinda my point. A sadist is gonna be a sadist with or without religious beliefs. Some of the most sadistic people who ever existed were religious.

Religion does not equal morality. There are so many ways to interpret the texts, people cherry pick all the time, and people use it as an excuse to Kill in Gods name. Moral? Ethical? Not in my opinion.
 
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God, if there was one was probably an atheist, or a spiritualist. Probably because him, her, it or they were wondering how they came into being.

So, it goes around and around. And we all become giddy. Some people laugh, others spew up...:)
 
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Anyway, if it was discovered there was some...thing. What would be your question, if you only had one? Because, you know, the cue would be pretty long...........

Just 1.

Do they serve fries with that? Is not a question :)
 
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Drifterwood

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Just to catch up.

We have this concept of godness, but unlike any other concept that I am aware of, this concept is capable of physically transmitting sets of laws.

My conversion may take some time.
 
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Just to catch up.

We have this concept of godness, but unlike any other concept that I am aware of, this concept is capable of physically transmitting sets of laws.

My conversion may take some time.
If all of a sudden we all awoke one day from a deep sleep and found ourselves with intelligent thought there probably would be cause for thoughts and questions of beginnings.

But as it seems the case, we have found we have evolved here for quite a while, and many animals and species before us. Yet we still are inquisitive of how we arrived, what is our place and how do we fit in. Where and when we decided we do not think alike. At what point did this happen?

So, it seems we have had since the beginning of our existence the same question.

I agree, it will take some time, and then some I reckon. Probably to the end of it, maybe.