Atheists: Take the red atheist pill or blue religious pill?

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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For atheists: Red religious pill or blue religious pill?

  • Would you take the red pill and remain an atheist?
  • Would you take the blue pill and become a believer of one of the monotheistic religions (Jew, Christian, Muslim)?
0 voters

This metaphor borrows from the Matrix question, however since the matrix itself has so many interpretations and different personal opinions i will define my own blue and red pill. The red pill will keep the atheist an atheist and the blue pill will change the atheist into a true believer of one of the monotheistic religions (Ill be using Christianity).

To make this decision i will go over the advantages and disadvantages for each option according to my viewpoint. Though the truth is there is no God, the belief may bring happiness (or at least an opiate-like effect?), the end goal.


If i was a Christian:

Advantages
Absolute good and evil - Easy to determine what actions and people are good or evil. This gives me righteousness which absolves me of a guilty conciousness and gives me the strength of certainty. I would be able to call myself absolute good and believe in it and my actions. There would be no questioning, just doing and beliving. If I believe I’m doing absolute good by going door to door of my neighbors and knowing I bother, waste their time, and make them angry, it won’t matter or make me feel guilty because I am doing God’s work and that’s what matters. The same goes if I massacre a million people in a holy war.

Forgiveness - Confession, the water ritual, Jesus taking all the sins, and the apple make it all seem like i was meant to sin and if i do its ok. Not only was i meant to but i can be forgiven by God and the guy in the confession booth. After i do that its a clean slate, and yes ill really mean it, but if my emotions take over again, hey what can you do, i was meant to sin and it was the heat of the moment. I didn’t think about it, I wasn’t trained that way.

Fantasy and mystery - Star wars and LOTR was cool but Christianity is the coolest. All powerful beings, “spells” killing firstborn and parting waters, angels and demons with all different categories, poltergeists, ghosts, exorcism and possession, good and evil heroes, coming back to life, large monsters and ancient beasts, different levels of hell, holy wars, etc etc. its a whole fantastical world. Wouldn’t it be cool to live in it? I could be some religious hero like Goliath and fight alongside archangels against demons with special strength or powers that God has given me. Why wouldn’t i be able to, becuase im…

Special - Chosen by God with specific goals in mind as part of his perfect tapestry. As long as i was a christian, i would never have to doubt my actions since it would be all part of his plan, and if i believed i was doing good, then i would do it with all potential and with certainity since i was doing it for God himself. True love exists, and every action is special from eating a donut (especially made for me) or a cinder brick falling on that guys head. It was bad, but it was meant to happen for a reason so it can’t be that bad. Whatever i would do would have an important and forever lasting affect on the universe and i would be so very important myself.

Afterlife and soul - I believe I will exist forever. Most likely pure heavenly eternal bliss exists for me at the end of life. Not only that but i get to see all my family and friends that died before me and those that will die after. If I had a child and she died at a young age, its ok because I will see her again. And we will be together forever in eternal happiness, what more can you ask for?

Social advantages - I make up the majority of the population and this not only gives me social acceptance but political power. The laws and politicians i want to be in place will most likely be in place, social support will be anywhere i look for it, most people will agree with me and support me soley because of my faith alone. There is strength in numbers, and better to be part of the lynch mob than being lynched. I will not likely be ostracized or displaced. My family will support me if their Christian, and if theyre atheist they won’t care that much that I am.

Disadvantages

Potential of eternal hell - I have the chance of messing up somewhere along the way (though very minute) and being damned into eternal hell to eternal suffering, I am always fearing God and his hell that he has planned out for the unforgiven sinners.

Existence of ghosts and demons - All those horror movies I watched and stories I heard could actually be horribly true. That spectral whiteness I saw in the darkness, that could be a lost soul seeking vengence. Bloody mirrors, the ring girl coming out of the TV, the dreadful feeling of struggling with demons, the dark figure in the corner, the suffocation between sleeping and waking might not be sleep paralysis, they could be coming for me i can never walk the darkness alone. Is Satan out to get my soul?

Sheep like mentality - Though i may question which particualar tenets to follow or what specific christian division i will follow or what church i will go to, i never really have the full range of freedom an atheist will have. My beliefs may not follow exactly with my preferences or what I feel to be innately right. I have to follow what I believe someone is telling me to do. This includes the good book, the commandments, or my priest. This unquestioning behavior will most likely apply to my political, social, and job life. I will follow and listen to Christian authority figures and most likely adher to and believe in the system in place. I have a high probability of judging and not understanding people not like myself; and of being tool, I am God’s tool after all. I have to follow God above all. Doing anything less might make me an…

Atheist:

Advantages

Free thinker - I will be able to decide what is wrong or right for me. Outside i will be able to understand and tolerate other human beings more since i don’t believe in absolute good or evil. I will recognize that we can be shaped and conditioned by our environment and some actions are just the results of culmulative effects. I can choose my own values and goals. This will be tailored perfectly to my own being to make me happy, to what i am, and what i want. I will question everything and be able to see different persepectives. This unbiasedness and openness will allow me to see the:

The truth - I will know the truth that humans have just made up these stories and though i do not know how the universe was created, i do know that it was not made by a concious, sentinent, all powerful being. This truth allows me to build my life and knowledge upon truth instead of living a lie behind a myth all my life and wasting it on a lie.

Disadvantages

Social disadvantage - I will be the first minority group to be distrusted and hated in any stressful situation. Most people will falsely believe i have no morales and values and thus should be looked down upon. I will have a limited social support network, and my fellow atheists are not only few in number but hard to communicate to due to our more independent and free thinking nature and diverse beliefs. Most laws and politics i will not agree upon since i do not make up the majority. If my family is Christian they may likely disown me and stop talking to me altogether. I will be looked down upon and every conversation and action will be an attempt to convert me and save my “soul”.

Finite nature - People I know will die one by one, never to be seen or heard from again. I will most likely die alone and buried in a pile of dirt and eaten away by bacteria. Nothing will be left of me except a few bones in a few months. After a couple of hundred years even my bones will dissapear. If i have children they may carry on my genetic code, memories, and values, but that means nothing to me, for i will not be concious and it will be like as before i was born. Nothing i did in life will have a lasting nature so that means my life is…

Meaningless - Though i will search for meaning in my life and say some things are valued or meaningful to me, in the end the universe will probably condense or explode leaving my existence to have no effect, thus no meaning or special goal for me. All that work for nothing.

I evaluated this question a long time ago and weighed the pros and cons somewhat like this and i decided i really would rather be a believer than an atheist. I joined a church group with an open mind and heart for about a year, not only to try to convert myself but also to gain perspective and knowledge. I particpated in going to church, listening to sermons, doing the rituals, going to their small group meetings, questioning people about their faith, participating in prayer, bible discussion, social activities, and all the rest. Needless to say by the end of the experience, i had become actually more solid an atheist. It had strengthened my belief.

People of the faith would obviously not say they would prefer to be atheists since they can not go against their God. However, atheists can state their preference. So my question to you is what pill and why?

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i’m not an atheist, but i am much closer to atheism than any theistic ideals.
i find that the idea of holding true something that may be a lie incredibly scary. sadly, i know that there are a variety of things we all “know” that are not true - correction, i’m just sure of it.
attending a lutheran college, i find it disheartening to be so completely convinced that there are no all-powerful entities worthy of worship, but also not able to declare with 100% commitment that i know this because i know i don’t have all of the information necessary to make that conclusion.
i feel that “forging” myself as a complete atheist would be more satisfying in the long term because i would not cloud my search for knowledge with any silly concerns about “right/wrong” or fears of salvation vs damnation.
there are so many more things i could say about this, but i think a little explanation about my ambivalence should suffice

3

You didn’t mention which pill reveals the truth. If there is no God, then I’d want to take the atheist pill, I wouldn’t want to live under a delusion (and vice versa).

That said, if I could choose one religion to be true, it’d be fundamentalist Christianity. It’s the perfect combination of peace-loving hippyness (Jesus) and totally BA post-apocalyptic scenarios (tribulation).

4

Since the poll is for atheists, we would all assume the truth is that God does not exist. However, i’m not sure why you would not want to live under a delusion, especially if you would not know or ever know. I would have to assume that the end goal for all atheists is happiness, so what does it matter the means to that goal? Even though i list the truth is an advantage, im not exactly sure how that would bring happiness innately. I know everyone innately feels that truth is always good and delusion is bad, in practicality (ie science) yes, but in terms of happiness and meaning i dont understand why there is always a connection between delusion=bad and truth=good. It would depend on the situation, for example if there was a father who had his daughter raped, tortured, and murdered, would it be better that he knew the truth or if he was under the delusion she died in a car accident without pain. In the situation of life, i don’t understand why everyone would say that truth is always better so i pick truth, why pick truth if it would lead to more pain. I think i listed truth as a good thing because it leads to existentialist thinking and self analysis and this leads to its own rewards which brings happiness. However, i dont understand why truth is innately the choice over delusion. How can one argue that there are more important things for an atheist than happiness?

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Ah, I misread. I edited my response out because I misunderstood the beginning.

However, an atheist should be prepared to provide an explanation for the beginning and the purpose of conscious life if he wants to take the road. If he cannot, then it is pointless for him to have moral discussion because they will be inconsequential to him in the scope of the universe.

Until people can explain how consciousness comes from “not-consciousness” and how matter comes from nothing, I will always believe in the first mover.

Some may view this as a “lack,” or a copout for a person who isn’t smart enough to find the truth, but there seems to be no way to even begin working on these problems. Science will always say, “We’re working on it,” yet the truth is, there may be a God and the beginning of conscious life is something that we cannot explain. Science would HATE to take this answer, and would thus search endlessly for an explanation, and that is what I think will happen.

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The truth is inherently valuable because it tends to lead to happiness. Sure, there are situations where knowing the truth will just make one unhappy, but more often knowing the truth will allow one to act in a manner to improve one’s life. Say, for example, there is a group whose members die due to a disease outbreak. It may sooth people in the short run to believe that they were taken because the gods are angry, and to thus perform rituals to appease them. But this ignorance, while imediately dulcifying, ultimately perpetuates the pain, and it is not until the hypothesis of angry gods is rejected and alternatives are tested that the problem that is causing the pain can be solved.

If all you want is an explantion of the origin of consicousness that compares with the ‘first-mover’ hypothesis, you aren’t asking for much at all. The first-mover hypothesis doesn’t explain consciousness, it assumes it. It simply says “consciousness was the first thing to exist, and that’s how consciousness exists today.” So, a parallel and equally useless explantion is to simply assume that consicousness can spring from nonconsciousness just like that, and say “there is no problem with consciousness coming from nonconsciousness, and that’s how consiousness exists today.”
It seems you have no reason to choose the theory you had chosen over the one I’ve presented. Until you find better arguments (and they abound), you should be a staunch agnostic.

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Ultimately whichever pill you take will have no effet on the outcome at the end. And the effect at the end is completely disconnected from whatever stance you adopt in the meantime.

I choose the atheist pill though because I can listen to rock music without guilt :evilfun:

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I’d rather not take any pill, but if it was a choice of necessity…

I would choose the red pill regardless of the Truth.

By taking the red pill I have the opportunity to do the best I can in life, to search for my self, and to see with my own eyes what is real. I may find belief in God, and that God is real. I may not. If I am not able to discern the Truth so be it, at the very least I will have lived my life with the best of intentions and with the honesty to be myself.

To think for myself is the greatest thing I can do.

There is a saying that I will borrow from DEB’s signature:

I simply disagree. I will not “believe” in God as a kind of safety measure. I will only believe in God if I think He truly exists.