For me, I just can’t shake the idea that atheism (and skepticism, to a larger degree) is a sort of failing. All sorts of religions and systems try to postulate some order, some explanation, and they all have problems that need working out. Atheism seems to be a surrendering to those problems, and not an attempt at any solution.
What can I say: Buddha, Jesus, and a host of others said we live in self deception including me. I agree. I cannot help that it is insulting.
I appreciate the Tao. Heck I’ll be even contributing on This wonderful Tiawanese pianist’s Yin-chu jou’s blog on the Tao and life.
There is an old expression: “rat poison is 98% good corn.” I’m not denying the relevent perceptions but IMO you are unaware of the extent of self deception.
Hopefully shortly I will be bringing an old friend here to discuss Peace, the human condition, and maybe the spiritual meanings of Plato’s cave to invite some young new responses to join us. Then maybe you’ll see what I’m driving at.
She can speak on peace because she puts her body on the line in support of it and recognition of the human condition irrelevent of politics. That is why she and some others went toIraq during the bombing.
Here is an excerpt from one of her e-mail letters from Iraq:
Baghdad, Iraq, 15 April 2003
No cutsey pooh here. Nothing awake could ever create a situation of suffering children. We don’t realize it because collectively life slowly builds to that during its cycles. I’ll gladly take the role of the bad guy here.
Her father recently passed on and once everything settles out I hope to invite her for some discussion if she has the time.
Hi Uccisore,
I’m not sure that atheism fails any more miserably than any other explanation. To be sure, there are as many holes in that sort of explanation as in the most far-out form of religion ‘understanding’, but atheism is capable of creating as good a system of thinking about as any other. Like all explanations, the failure is always in the individual refusal to actually try to make it work. 
JT
As any atheist on the defensive will tell you, it's [i]not an explanation[/i]. It's an assertion that someone else's explanation doesn't meet a given standard. Now, the atheist, when pressed, may try to explain some things, using naturalism for example. But that's not a requirement of being an atheist.
Hi Uccisore,
Any position we choose is an explanation. Anyone who calls themselves atheist and suggests that atheism isn’t an explanation doesn’t have the foggiest. By saying what they are not (theist) they’ve already proposed an explanation of their perspective. Asserting that one explanation doesn’t meet a particular standard is the setting of that standard. That’s an explanation, no matter how convoluted the arguement.
JT
tentative,
It is possible to be an atheist who simply lacks theist belief, in the same way it is possible for someone who has never heard of Islam to lack belief in the Islamic god. But basically that would require that you have never heard of belief in god, or if you did you didn’t care enough to think about it and give a reason for rejecting it. Most likely, almost every atheist human being on the planet has thought about belief in god and rejected it for some reason or another.
Therefore while atheism is not in itself an explanation of anything, nearly anyone who holds the atheist position have alternative explanations to theistic ones (unless they’re utterly unconcerned with explaining anything at all).
Yes Nick, bring someone in from the outside to interpret my words. Good idea.
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You must be confusing something. I mentioned Yin-chu’s site that she wants to bring back but that has nothing to do with here. I’ll ask her if she wants to make it known to the general public and if she does, I’ll post a link. She is just so nice, I’d hate to see her abused though she’d probably welcome the idea of changing hostile minds. I just cannot undersand how anyone could remain hostile around this wonderful young woman.
I mentioned my friend Bettejo. As I’ve always said, we live in a dream necessary to make our inner contradictions bareable. Bettejo feels a compulsion to witness these manifestations of our inner contradictions in war and the horrors it produces.
My desire to coax her into some conversations is because it is impossible to be cutsey pooh expressing PC platitudes to someone helping kids with their limbs blown off because of war between adults. Anyone with any sensitivity begins to see that we are collectively part of something that is not right. One day we can intend for peace and brotherhood and on the next, tearing each other apart.
This is not to battle anything you’ve said. I just know how deep and sincere Bettejo is and her experiences make it easier to accept the hypocrisy of our collective nature. There is simply no way to rationalize suffering and dying children as a result of war as reflecting anything related to human consciousness. This is a gradually developing collective reaction of sleep influenced by cosmic conditions.
I can say something and it appears insulting. But if and when she is able to contribute, the idea of humility will not be as repusive as it is now. This has nothing to do with interpreting your words. I would just hope to make what I believe to be a necessary understanding of our inner nature for anyone with spiritual interests brutally obvious. When an individual sees it for what it is and feels deeply that it is “not I,” then perhaps they can be inspired to consciously change becoming more real and not such a slave to societal motivations.
All of this is very well and good Nick, but I’m not sure how any of this relates to this thread.
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It relates because the question of the thread is about being “stuck.” We are stuck because our acceptance of sleep doesn’t allow us to experience the reality of ourselves. It is an intimidating. If we could experience it, we would no longer be stuck. What we allow done to ourselves would be obvious.
It is a slow process. These reality shocks sometimes help.
Alright, I’ll bite. What reality shocks are you talking about?
I’m still really uncertain as to why you need to invite a friend to come and ‘talk’ to us about your ideas.
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Hi Aporia,
I do understand that some atheists would like to say that atheism is not a position of anything. They declare it a not-position as if they are capable of standing outside of themselves. All I was trying to suggest that there is no perception from no-place. All that we say and do and are is always from a perspectival point. Thus, no matter how hard I try, my perspective says both where I am, and where I am not. This has more to do with the typical western concept of being- not being, where the either/or analysis allows something to exist or not exist. It ignores the possibility of “God” simply being present or absent, without questioning the issue of ‘existence’.
JT
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Our personalities our constructed to make life acceptable regardless of the sense of it. It allows us to live with and accept obvious contradiction. It provides the security of familiarity.
A shock is that which our personality cannot rationalize so the experience touches our being. The shock of an unexpected death of a loved one is like this. The grief is then genuine and provokes us to question in a deeper way.
Simone Weil expresses this idea with profound understanding:
We do not naturally learn by experience because we do not allow ourselves to experience in the raw. We lack this courage to let go the familiar which even exists in the horror of addiction.
But by consciously allowing ourselves to experience these shocks rather than rationalizing them through imagination, then the truth of our slavery is revealed which is freeing for us.
In Karma yoga the idea is to consciously attempt to meet with pleasant and unpleasant things the same. It is the “science of action with non-identifying.” It opens us to experience the shocks of life. It is so easy to psychologically change it for ourselves into “the science of action without identifying”. This is unconscious escapism and removes us from the experience so we cannot learn and remain stuck.
Gradually becoming more free is the way of the good householder which is like Buddhism. It is just trying to do the right thing from not being obsessed with life itself since we begin to see it as meaninnngless. It may be slow but people at least do not hurt themselves It is what is described in Ecclesiastes. The ways like karma yoga are quicker through consciousness but more dangerous for our beingwhen taken wrongly and leave us much worse off then before beginning.
But the bottom line is that to become un stuck requires having the willingness or courage to experience without covering up psychologically. The apex of this idea is the Crucifixion where the greatest horrors are consciously experienced for what this freedom can bring.
Ok, simply put, what is atheism an explanation of, and what explanation does it offer for that?
Atheism is a perspective on a matter- namely, the matter of whether there is a God or not. But it's not an explanation anymore than me not having had eggs for breakfast today is an explanation. Now, there may be a certain situation about which a person could ask "Why is that so?" and the answer might be "Because there's no God." In that case, atheism could be used to explain something.
My point was that Atheism does not provide an alternative to religion. Religions are complex systems that happen to account for things like why there are ethics, what happens when we die, and why there is stuff rather than not, and so on (I say [i]happen to[/i] because we could argue whether or not that's what they are [i]for[/i]). Any complex system about something so abstract is bound to have difficulties. Atheism says "all theistic systems are wrong" without putting anything in it's place. As aporia pointed out, an atheist may try to fill that gap with something, but that's not atheism.
The main reason why I can't see myself being an atheist is this: I see a certain appeal in saying "All theistic systems are wrong," and I think that position can be argued pretty well. However, when I reflect on atheism, I immediately try to fill those gaps, and every replacement for religion (such as materialism or humanism or what have you) seems just as rickety if not worse than theism. So, if atheism just means becoming an apologist for some secular system full of holes and besieged by skeptics...well, that's not a lot different than what I had as a theist. From my perspective, theism seems at least as plausible as the non-theistic systems I know of (in part, no doubt, because I'm so much more familiar with theism), so I may as well stick with what I've got.
Hi Uccisore,
I understand what you are saying, but perhaps I’m seeing something else.
If you say ‘egg’, there is no inherent explanation. It is the name of an object and requires explanation if I have never seen the word, or the object named. If you say aetheist, it is a label, a one word description of a concept. Instead of saying, “a person who subscribes to the concept that there is no God”, you simply say aetheist assuming the explanation within the conceptual description… You only offer further explanation if I say I don’t know what the word means.
Of course, further explanation is always a good idea regardless.
I mean we all know what a ‘liberal’ or a ‘conservative’ means, right? 
JT
That’s pretty much why I can’t see myself being a theist/deist. I can’t subscribe to some supernatural explanation simply to avoid dealing with the alternatives. Yes, without religion to wrap things up with a bow, I have to accept the fact that death might be final or not, morals may be arbitrary, or not, and that I may never know. It would be nice to have it all spelled out for me, but ultimately that’s not a need so compelling that it’s worth trying to talk myself into believing something that, at first face, strikes me as absurd.
I’ll take genuine mysteries over settling for the “wrong” truths. 
Without all the ‘flavor text’, it looks like you and I are saying about the same thing- we acknowledge holes in our own ways of looking at things, but no alternative is enough of an improvement to inspire us to jump ship, eh?
Just so long as it’s not fear that keeps either of you from “jumping ship.” Fear of the unknown, fear of leaving one’s comfort zone. I don’t happen to think it is. But I think that explains most people’s position.
It was through most of my youth and teen years. The interesting thing about fear of changing one’s beliefs is that it keeps you from examining them, and hence, keeps you from learning everything about them that you can- an opportunity for your beliefs to be stronger, ironically.
Jerry,
See, I see it the exact oposite way. I think fear is what keeps people from letting go of the comfort of belief, to seek the unknown truths. The unknown is inherantly scary, to just about everyone. Having the answers is comfortable, and that is what belief(religion) provides.
Even to educated, otherwise bright people that are aware of all the arguments and withstand the skepticism. Much easier and much simpler to believe than to question.
You portray the believer as having the courage to make a choice, where I see him as not having the courage to face the unknown with self honesty.