Atheists & Agnostics

trotsky

(49,533 posts) Thu Dec 28, 2017, 03:52 PM Dec 2017

Being an atheist shows you that every minute is sacred

https://quartzy.qz.com/1151677/how-atheism-can-make-you-appreciate-every-moment-of-life/

My father died when I was 21, and I was devastated to realize what he’d miss seeing. He’d never see the bulbs he planted that year bloom into flowers. He’d never see me flourish in my career. He’d never walk me down the aisle at my wedding.

As an atheist, I knew that was it. My father wasn’t looking down upon me from some cushy cloud, with harp music in the background. I could take no comfort in belief in an afterlife, or the notion that life on earth is just a journey towards some spiritual payoff in another dimension. I’m pretty convinced that what we do here and now is all that we get.

...Let’s be honest: Being an atheist can sometimes be exhausting. It’s not so much defending my stance against those who practice a faith. It’s the pressure and exhaustion of trying to achieve everything you can before you shuffle off this mortal coil.

But atheism has infused my life with the mantra that every moment counts, so don’t waste it. That attitude has opened doors, and the happiest moments of my life would likely never have materialized if I didn’t have such a “carpe diem” attitude.

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Being an atheist shows you that every minute is sacred (Original Post) trotsky Dec 2017 OP

Conversely, being an atheist means addressing the possibility that time does not exist. byronius Dec 2017 #1

Humans tend to think finite. safeinOhio Dec 2017 #2

I came to this realization over the past couple years and it has been rurallib Dec 2017 #3

byronius

(7,602 posts)

1. Conversely, being an atheist means addressing the possibility that time does not exist.

Reply to trotsky (Original post)

Thu Dec 28, 2017, 04:29 PM

Dec 2017

The new physics, especially the new quantum physics, is more startling than most realize.

To a certain extent, being an atheist means coming to grips with evidence that is more bizarre and seemingly fanciful than the idea of a supreme being.

For instance -- particulate consciousness. Gravity waves being broadcast back in time so that they effect distant particles in the current moment. Good lord (!), what about the idea that the universe is composed of a single electron?

It's important to be an atheist that explores. And a lot of new science suggests that, even though there may be no afterlife, it's possible that that writer's father is in fact always alive. And that his consciousness may effect events elsewhere along the timeline that have happened before or after his 'death'.

Just saying. It's a weird goddamned universe. Atheism doesn't mean making it simple and dreary and matter-of-fact. A 'God' must exist in some universe simply because the concept is imaginable. Everything that is imagined exists somewhere in some universe in some part of the timeline.

These word I'm writing are probably causing ripples in some distant future or past place. Atheism means refraining from the Hiding humans do, through whatever means, from the wildly disturbing and often terrifying truths of our existence.

It's important for atheism to be more than the opposite of religion. It is indeed far more than that.

safeinOhio

(34,093 posts)

2. Humans tend to think finite.

Reply to trotsky (Original post)

Thu Dec 28, 2017, 07:41 PM

Dec 2017

A beginning and an end to space and time. If you think the past and future are infinite, it makes a God not so possible. A billion years in heaven might not be much better than hell in a few million years and you haven’t even started.

rurallib

(63,201 posts)

3. I came to this realization over the past couple years and it has been

Reply to trotsky (Original post)

Thu Dec 28, 2017, 08:09 PM

Dec 2017

quite an eye opener. When people you know die and you realize - well that is it for them. It truly makes you realize just how valuable every moment is.

It also makes you realize that those who are the biggest sellers of the concept of the afterlife - the elites, the church powers, the priestly classes in many religions - don't really believe. Otherwise why would they be trying to grab all the world goods and pleasures that they can while they can?

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