God is the universe we inhabit. It is the energy that has slowly condensed forming quarks, to protons, to atoms, to molecules, to cells, to consciousness. Anyone with the capacity or desire to learn and comprehend the vastness and intricacies of our universe and all the laws it obeys will undoubtedly experience a religious feeling. Religious meaning a certain profundity and sense of awe of the very idea and complexity of existence. This is something that I personally feel.
Assuming knowledge of what is generally known about the universe and the laws that make it so, one cannot deny the miraculousness of the behavior of life. Biochemistry is the most remarkably complex aspect that I have yet discovered in all the cosmos. To see matter working so perfectly in the way it does is just too overwhelming. I am no denier of evolution. Although the very word intelligent design irks most intellects to the point of cracking, which it used to with me, if one goes back further than the beginning of life, then you can see a design. A remarkably beautiful design of our existence that, as far as we know, had started at the big bang and has been culminating up to the point of creating intelligent life that is self-aware. It is just too extraordinary. I have no delusions of heaven or hell or being judged, nor any allegiance to any organized religion, but I will live the rest of my life in the appreciation of this great cosmic beauty.
Does anyone understand where I am coming from? To be atheistic is spitting in the face of your own existence.
How do you deal with evil? You say the universe obeys the laws of God, and that you want to spend your life appreciating the cosmic beauty of obedience. But this begs the question of evil, of how it enters into the system, and why, instead of just appreciating the cosmos, you aren’t doing something about it or even acknowledging its existence…
I see what you mean alyoshka. For awhile I’ve only heard the atheist argument, mainly from Dawkins and Hitchens, and my post is more directed toward their total denouncement of any God which I cannot bring myyself to comprehend. It seems they know something I don’t.
Evil is a facet of humanity, and it is something that we must deal with and accept. I believe that there is always an explanation for evil, not to say it is justified but rather that the doer of evil has reasons, whether from evolutionary impulses, lack of a conscience guilt (sociopath) or even simply to exercise volition. I don’t intend to sound sophist, evil is still evil, but I repeat there are reasons to it and by understanding those reasons it becomes easier to deal with and understand.
True, but they are the ones doing the work of criticizing and pointing out the flaws of organized religion to the general public which I believe is a very noble and valid cause.
Ya, but you can still be very mushy and do it. Take me for example. I’m a very mushy atheist. I’m happy just as long as you don’t assign a designer to the design, where designer implies persona.
It seems to me everything reduces, for them, to a crass materialism. It’s nothing but cause and effect all the way down; rigid determinism; etc. We are the way we are because that’s how we evolved. We can trace our development, and that of the whole cosmos even, in a line of genetic mutations that logically follow from each other. I think you’re very close to this position in the way you formulated your post (so good on you for presenting an immanent critique of their thinking).
But if I could offer you another way of thinking, switch from law and obedience to grace and being graced. “Religious feeling” is not felt in the face of universal obedience to law, but in the face of blessing and being blessed. God is not the great law giver, but more simply (and profoundly), the great giver.
I hope you don’t mean to say here that evil is necessary. Though I can’t prove otherwise, I find this even harder to reconcile with your OP. If evil is necessary, i.e., a facet of humanity, then I don’t think I could ever feel awe before the beauty of the cosmos.
Have you ever read Schopenhauer? I recall a passage in The Suffering of the World which is basically that the pain in our toe takes up all our attention even though everything else is in great working order. In other words: If evil is necessary, and part of this so-called beautiful cosmos, then just as I wouldn’t be able to help but focus on my hurting toe, so I would be unable to appreciate cosmic beauty.
How so? And extreme in what sense? Does “extreme” in regard to these atheists imply the same thing as when it is used with regard to extreme theists? Does it vary? I ask because it seems to me the standard for “extremism” is very unfair in this matter. An atheist is extreme when he wants to simply debate religion, whereas a religious person has to go so far as to blow himself up to earn that same title from you folks who use this term.
No. To be an atheist is to lack a belief in God. That’s it and that’s all. To say that to be an atheist is spitting in the face of your own existence is spitting in the face of common sense, not to mention in the face of all atheists.
Moreover, if we might conceive the “New Atheism” as simply an aspect of that propelled by the winds of change now invariably sweeping the globe, as multifarious (religious) traditions must contend with the conflicts of belief which science in the age of mass communication compels upon all Believers, perhaps it might be considered that to spit at atheism is in fact to spit against the wind of civility. No need to spit… if there’s something unsavory in your saliva, use a kleenex.
