Starman

According to most atheists I have communicated with, you were born, had a life, and will die. Well. . .hard for me to argue with. I was born, some people tell me to get a life, but I am living, and someday I will die.

Did I originate from nothing? Did the universe originate from nothing? How did something come from nothing? There was nothing before the Big Bang, but the idea of nothingness is useless prior to then nothingness was non-existent (wrap your head around that).

Atheists, let's sit down and have a heart to heart. Your idea that the universe could have sprang from nothing is more absurd than the theists claiming that "God did it."

What do you have to say for yourself? How do you expect credibility when, if you critically exam your claim about the origin of the universe, is absurd.

You would have more credibility claiming that unicorns exist.

Can something such as our universe arise from nothing?

Don't say "It is a byproduct of the brain's activity." I ask you to not say that because it doesn't answer the question.

I want to know what consciousness is. That witness to the inner thoughts and feelings of the body you seem to occupy. If you are only the body, fine. But the body does not require a subjective experiencer who seems to inhabit the individual body. Organisms can survive without a witness to the experience of its life. What is consciousness and why do we have it?

Atheism is non-belief in a deity, but does that exclude spirituality from your life? Spirituality is the recognition that your identity, in an ultimate sense, is much larger than the limited confines of your body and brain.

Spirituality opens up the possibility that perhaps you are not what you think you are. It opens up the possibility that you are interconnected with the whole, that you are a manifestation of a large and incomprehensible 'being', call it 'god', ultimate source, Tao, or anything you want.

This sense of connection with something more than yourself, and your identification with it. . . that is spirituality. Do you participate in this? Do you see value in this?

I have always seen this as different. Here is why:

1. Belief in a deity requires no change to your thought system, personality, or way of being in the world. It is useless.

2. Belief in a deity requires belief that this deity will do something for you if you do something for it, be it sacrificing the neighbors cat or lifting a glass of Chablis to the god of weather (after all, tomorrow's golf game is at stake).

3. Spirituality is the recognition that you are NOT only a physical organism. It is something more. But what is it?

Do you recognize the difference?

As a man, I am not interested in women's clothing. Now, I might be interested in a woman's dress only because I might think my wife is interested in it, but I have no personal interest whatsoever.

Why in the blazing bejeezus would you be interested in anything related to god or spirituality?

Please don't say "No, I would be a Jedi." I already anticipate that answer. Don't do it.

The Force as described in Star Wars, by Obi-Wan Kenobi is "an energy field created by all living things." I do not agree that such an energy field is created by living things---it exists independent of anything living.

But if we were to accept such an idea, can you still call yourself an atheist?

This is not a troll question. This is for real. It is well known that some atheists will say a prayer from their childhood when faced with stressful situations.

Prayers do not have to be petitionary. If you believe that there is a force (not deity) in the universe that responds to intention and affirmation, you might say affirmations. These can be called prayers.

So, do you ever say prayers?

I know this question could require a book-length manuscript to detail what you might believe about it. But here is what I am trying to find out:

1. Are you a scientific materialist? By this, you only accept that the material universe is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be. We are made of material "stuff" and nothing more.

2. Reality has no more substance than a dream. Whatever a dream is made of...you got it, that is what reality is made of.

3. There is no reality. It is an aberrant concept and has no rational basis. All is non-existent.

Is there more? Please tell me your take on reality.

The words "god" and "deity" are quite open to interpretation as far as what they mean. When an atheist says they don't believe in a god/gods and/or deities, what exactly are you talking about?

Since there is no clear definition of these things, then it stands to reason (yes, I said reason) that the definition of an atheist is open to question. What is it that you do not believe in?

So, if we could redefine such obscure and archaic terms such as "god" and "deity", could we also redefine what "atheist" means?

I am not going to say that NDEs are brain-produced or something originating outside the body. What I am asking is why such an experience is of such intensity that atheists believe in a god after the event. What kind of phenomena can occur in the brain that would convince an atheist that God exists?

Just a hypothesis: Your brain is like a TV receiver and "receives" your conscious awareness. To say that the brain produces consciousness is the same as saying that a TV produces the TV show.

Why do you assume that your physical brain produces that which is "you"? Why dismiss the idea that you are a receiver of what is much larger than what you consider to be yourself?

I hear this a lot from atheists. Many atheists say that when the body dies, you cease to exist.

For those of you that hold that position, do you have evidence to back it up? I mean, scientific falsifiable evidence that has determined that your consciousness will cease to exist upon the demise of your body?

If you cannot provide evidence for the extinction of the self (which is what you claim to occur upon death), than why do you chastise people of faith who might believe something different than you do?

I know that you regard an eternal hell as a fiction, but if you think about it, hell is nothing more than the annihilation of everything in your experience that you regarded as good and worthy of continuing to experience. Hell, regardless of how warm it might be, is exactly that.

The same goes for the complete extinction of yourself. Your passage into non-existence is the annihilation of everything in your experience that you ever valued--the love you experienced, the beauty of nature, everything that made life worth living--gone. That is hell. The disappearance of all that is good in your experience.

Christians say you are destined for hell. Are they right?

Pantheism is a positive form of atheism, if you wish to look at it that way. Atheism is negative and denies what it deems to be untruth. But atheism does nothing to explain what is true. Pantheism is a logical and reasoned explanation of reality and your place within it.

No, I am not trying to sell you something.

Smiles.

You talk about that which you know nothing about. You don't know whether a god or gods exist or not. But, you feel so convinced of your version of reality, that you will fume and fuss and loudly proclaim the nonexistent of the deity of your choice.

Don't you feel embarrassed? Let's face it. You know nothing of which you talk about. You know nothing about the existence of whatever god you choose to deny.

Do you see the flaws? Do you feel that your belief system is flawed?

You spend so much time and effort negating what is claimed to be real. No evidence, right? So, how do you explain existence? Why is there existence?

The evidence clearly shows that reality exists. (At least, the last time I checked). Explain the origin of reality.