well, my first instinct was to say,
“Eh, he was a philosopher, he got paid to say weird paradoxical shit like that.”
But giving him the benefit of the doubt, if still no points for clarity, perhaps he was saying he’s like me, agnostic. I don’t believe in god, but I don’t go round making a big deal about it. It’s like mobile phones, I get why people have them, but I don’t like them, so I don’t have one. I’m not a rampant Aphoneist.
Was he anti-labelist. Is labelling everything bad…? Hard to make tea if you just throw random stuff in the pot and add a random boiling liquid. But I get what you mean, imposing labels on things that may not be comfortable with them is not always good.
Camus said other stuff in the same vein though.
Which sounds awfully like he took Pascal’s wager. Which is something I don’t agree with because of the hidden costs to abiding by a religion you don’t believe in. It’s not free, you do have something to lose.
I dunno. Depends what he meant by “living a life as if there was a god” if he meant a life of lip-service and hypocrisy where each virtuous act is done purely from a fear of punishment and/or the expectation of a reward at the end… then fuck that guy frankly. But if he meant a life that was ‘good’ and lived that way because you’ve decided living that way is a good thing in and of itself, with or without a god at the end - then yeah, I think that is probably the way I try to live also. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much.
God goes a long way to making ‘living a good life’ meaningful. Without a god, all lives are ultimately equally meaningless, and all ways of living equal. Saint or serial killer, doesn’t matter. Get born, do stuff, die. Same same. No scoreboard, no points, no rubric.
Without god, you have to do all the heavy existentialist lifting by yourself, and create your own meaning. It’s hard work to live a good life without a lil’ angel on your shoulder, especially when you get overtaken by complete bastards. And I’d like to be able to put my hand on my heart and say that it is this element of hard work that makes it an admirable choice, to live life on hard mode rather than regular, but again, get born do stuff die. Same same. Important to note here I mean actively choosing to be good, not simply being good by default because you are too cowardly to do bad. I mean being the good monster.
That’s a bit bleak. I think one of the major keys to happiness is finding enough good people to surround yourself with who will accept you because, by being good yourself, you’ve kinda paid the entrance fee. You have to be good first though, you don’t get into the good people club by being an arsehole at the door but promising the bouncer you’ll suddenly become good inside later. Good people are selfish that way. But sensibly so.
Damn I forgot the question lol.
Ok. If I (gun to the head etc.) had to make a choice - no particular religious trappings required, just a yes or no on the god question - between being a theist, or an atheist, I’d choose theist. Because of the two, it’s the more hopeful choice. A theist on death, has the possibilty of being proven right, but an atheist only ever has the possibility of being proven wrong. That makes atheism the more stupid choice. So maybe Camus was just implying atheists are dumbasses.