Why is atheism so depressing

Death itself is mysterious. You can't imagine it, can you? Losing consciousness and never regaining it. There is something tremendously strange about it which hints that there might be mysteries beyond our current comprehension involved.

This. Atheism doesn't deny the possibility of an after death conscious experience it just doesn't say what it could be because we don't know.

Why does it seem like atheists are so averse to any sort of attempted explanation of the great mysteries? They prefer this superficial admiration of these problems. It seems very lazy because any idiot could be awed by something they don't know. It takes work to ask why and they just don't want to do it. Imagine if everyone acted like that in every field of knowledge, "we don't know how that volcano works just happy with how beautiful it is." It's useless.

Atheism doesn't do that; it just recognizes the limits of our knowledge about these things. Anyway I personally don't see atheism as opposed to the mystical experience it just is opposed to the institutions which try to portray themselves as having a monopoly on those experiences. But maybe I'm just a Spinozan pantheist desu

We're not averse to attempted explanation of the great mysteries... we're just averse to unsupported speculations and non-explanations being sold as truths. If someone actually came up with some genuine, rationally defensible explanations, I'd be ecstatic

So there's a limit to knowledge. How do you know we can't find the correct answer to these mysteries?

What do you mean?
i'm quite happy with it.
to be honest, i barely think about it anyways.

What does genuine rational explanation look like?

Precisely. True atheism is not at all opposed to mysticism. And true mysticism is not at all opposed to science. Indeed, the highest form of mysticism is utterly scientific in that it does not attempt to hold unverifiable claims as having been somehow verified. Explorations of the questions of time, death, and sentience naturally take us to mystic ground, but it is not a ground on which reason should or must be abandoned.

I don't know. But knowing that I don't know is better than not knowing that I don't know.

>True atheism
atheism is just a-theism you fucking shyster

What is this mysticism that you're talking about? Questions about the universe existing rather than not are philosophical problems.

>the correct answer
I imagine when considering questions of such magnitude the ability for us to comprehend the correct answer is doubtful.

>True atheism
Not today.

When I say "true atheism" I just mean actual rational, open-minded atheism as opposed to juvenile edgelord anti-church reaction or extreme reductionist materialism that itself becomes a form of dogma and blindness.
By mysticism I mean basically the same thing as philosophy, but with less narrow emphasis on writing, reading, and verbal thinking and more openness to learning through experience/awareness.

Is there any variant of atheism that allows for the reality of the supernatural? I've always wondered.

So you can't tell me what a good rational explanation looks like, does this mean you don't believe anything is true?

Of course, atheism isn't synonymous with hard materialism. The word "supernatural" is a little problematic I suppose.

Why do you believe this?

No and this why I consider atheism the more close-minded position. The supernatural is automatically excluded without justification.

I thought you were asking what a rational explanation of the great mysteries would look like. If you're just asking what a good rational explanation of anything looks like... well, there are many things that can contribute. Consistency with other phenomena helps. Reproducibility helps. Predictive power as a model helps. Etc.

You can think about it all you want, see what good it does you. The human lifespan is seconds long in the calendar of the universe

Why did Jesus say "father, why have you forsaken me?" The fact that even Christ needed to question God is a sort of poetic metaphor for why I believe it.

>variant of atheism that allows for the reality of the supernatural?
Then that's not fucking atheism.

But while you are alive it does matter, does it not?

Atheism still allows plenty room for wacky beliefs, so yeah.

Well he was quoting a Psalm but I don't know why you're bring that up. It seems wildly unrelated to the conversation.

>The supernatural is automatically excluded without justification.
i suppose if we let the most retarded people that identify as believing in something define what that belief means then christianity is just the automatic inclusion of god without justification

*existence of humans
ftfy

Well no because there's good philosophical reasons to believe that god is real and this provides explanatory power. There's no good reason to automatically exclude the possibility of the supernatural in any problem.

>good arguments
I have no doubt. But say they're granted. Wdn't 'atheism' itself stop?

I was raised a Christian, but after going back as an adult and doing a scholastic study of the Bible and comparative religion, my faith was completely shattered when I realized it all sprang from similar roots and the entire Old Testament was just another interpretation on a pagan religion.

I'm just now starting with philosophy and have read Plato and Aristotle pretty extensively. I'm hoping to find some meaning.

>there's good philosophical reasons to believe that god is real
that's where you're wrong lad
cosmological arguments are all garbage

So basically any explanation or true belief must be verifiable with empirical evidence?

I noticed that you provide any reason to automatically exclude a supernatural cause.

I'll never understand this attitude.

Put yourself in a sincere fedora's shoes. Better yet, imagine that the fedora in question is as socially well-adjusted as it is reasonable to expect that a fedora might be, had a happy childhood and loving parents, is not constitutionally disposed to depression, etc. In short, imagine that you are me - or a version of me which serves as our stock character.

Now, what have you got? The stock reliefs, of course - a scientistic worldview which is "better aligned with reality", the notion that hell isn't real, and the smug superiority.

Just now, the sensitive user will point out that the whole business leads to nihilism, which it does. Which just leads back to the initial prompt. Surely a decent human being ought to find this whole area of thought depressing. Obviously the writer of this post is a teenager who hasn't actually thought these things through at length, or read Nietzsche, and so on.

But there's a further joy in it: the joy that where it really counts, /nobody gets ahead of anybody else/. A leftist sense of justice is preverted in a happy negative sense, to the effect that not even certain leftists would avow same.

It is a great relief and empowerment to conceive that this is all for nothing. Then you are free to dick around and do what you will.

>The human lifespan is seconds long in the calendar of the universe
Does this not trivialise human experience almost to the point of insensitivity.

what do you mean?
i don't automatically exclude supernatural ideas (though if god existed i would just call him natural), i say that theists are unjustified in their belief in god because all the arguments for the existence of god that i ever heard are bad and i feel like i comprehensively exhausted all of them
the only other way you can be justified in believing in god is if you had personal experience

I was talking specifically about the individual, because it's the individual who chooses atheism or religion

If you're implying that that's even less than seconds then whatever, the point is that it's minuscule to the point of nonexistence

We have our cultures, our human legacy. We don't have a significance outside of what we've created for ourselves here on our tiny planet in the course of mere hundreds of thousands of years

I have no problem with atheism, it's just that most of them are legitimate fedora-tier retards who base their beliefs on pop science articles they know nothing about. Classes like organic chem, microbiology, and physics only increased my wonder of life and the universe and convinced me there has to be some kind of god. I'm not really religious but I do meditate and try and shape my view of god daily.

The problem with religion comes when you get dogmatic retards who refuse to consider other views.

>Does this not trivialise human experience almost to the point of insensitivity.

It does if you're insecure, which I thought was the point of the whole thread

You can equate atheism with existential pessimism and be depressed or step away from the edge and look inwards

You're familiarity with all of the arguments for Gods existence? That's great man you have to teach me. Can you explain to me what this argument from motion is?

I believe you misspoke when you said that if God existed you would just consider him a part of nature because that's silly. The creator of the universe can't be a part of the universe itself.

>Wdn't '
is this a koan
are you trying to enlighten me

the argument from motion basically goes that every object in motion is contingent on another object and so on and in order to avoid infinite regress there necessarily has to be an unmoved mover called god

So what's wrong with it?

Cause you're arrogant.

There is no reason to believe that there has to be an unmoved mover. Thinking that there has to be one comes from seeing motionlessness as having primacy over motion. But this perspective is an artifact of living in a place where gravity stops motion after a while unless the motion is powered by some force. In outer space, away from gravitational wells, motion is just as normal as motionlessness.

>god of gaps become the gaps themselves
It's pretty poetic, really.

What is empirical evidence, again?

But you just gave me a good reason to believe the unmoved mover is necessary, which is to avoid an infinite regress. Everything that moves or changes is potential that is being actualized. A potential can't actualize itself so it's a logical necessity for there to be a "pure actual" at the beginning of any causal chain.

>infinite regress.
What would be wrong with this?

and as for the second part, i take "nature" to be greater than "the universe", and it includes everything even outside the universe

i have several problems with it, but the biggest one is this. the argument rests on the premise that an object not in motion must be moved by another to be set in motion. this premise is taken for granted when you talk about the natural world, but the universe is not an object, so i don't think it's justified to start with a natural observation take it to that level, that's just committing fallacy of composition. just because something is true for a part (or even every possible part) doesn't make it true for the whole.

Imagine you drive up to a railroad crossing, only to find a train is passing by. You see boxcar after boxcar, first dozens of them and then hundreds of them. You arrived as the train was already in motion so you never saw the engine. But you must infer that the train has an engine: because, if you see a train in motion, you know something is moving it. an engine is pulling it. If you try to solve the problem by positing an infinite series of boxcars, you haven't done away with the need for explaining the motion. You've enlarged the problem infinitely. If you deny the existence of the engine, then you've enlarged the need to find a much bigger and extraordinary cause for the motion of such a long line of boxcars.

>the argument rests on the premise that an object not in motion must be moved by another to be set in motion.

I don't think this is true. The argument from motion is concerned with the movement or change that is occurring all around us right now and we can see it, it has nothing to do with starting or stopping motion.

I wouldn't presume. Is that better? I take no stand with respect to this issue. Nonetheless it's odd that a realistic position finds itself affixed to a fairy tale, depends on that fairy tale for its very existence AS a position, in fact....

>correct answer
he thinks his language games affect and reflect reality!
let me guess, you believe objectivity exists too?

Completely false. Dostoevsky is a classic proof

Because if you are atheist, you don't believe in after life. You don't have the motivation to do anything because everything you do will turn out to be in vain in the end when you die.

Honestly, I'd rather be earnestly piuos then suffer from mental agony until my life ends, although religion can be a false concept.

>Because once you are one you'll never really stop being one.

Until you grow out of your edgy atheist phase around your early 20s.

please someone answer:

if i am going to die, and going to disappear forever, why should i care about anything

8gag christianity board please go

>When I say "true atheism" I just mean actual rational, open-minded atheism as opposed to juvenile edgelord anti-church reaction

Did you just come up with this definition? Isn't atheism just the denial of the existence of a God or Gods? The only open minded rational path is agnosticism

>inb4 stop being a dumb centrist

Because in spite of these true realizations you are trapped inside a fleeting animal body which tricks and deludes and pains you into believing otherwise.

You're literally smart enough to understand on one level that this is all bullshit and pointless, and yet at the exact same time you are an animal body (which is the same thing as saying that 'you are trapped in' an animal body) which can't help itself about its instincts, drives, pains etc.

The point of this is that the higher faculties of human cognition and realization and the simpler faculties of sense-perception, pain, etc are absolutely irreconcilable. Philosophers err when they attempt some noble project to "synthesize", generally. The point is to understand that it's all fucked and (that in any pertinent medium-term) there's no fixing it.

The older we get, the more we want to seek refuge in religion, either from death or some other existential threat to happiness, bliss, imagination, etc. We realize that the world that science proposes really is pretty fucking depressing. (I'm trying very hard to keep atheism and scientism separate, but at this point atheism has morphed into not just a lack of belief in god but a rejection of god in favor of science, and not just an accepting of mainstream science, but making it dominate every part of your life.) Religion and spirituality at large is usually argued out of our system in our teens and early 20s, and we reject it thinking we don't need it; atheism and science and reason satisfy me endlessly. But when you start to gain weight, lose your hair, fuck your wife less and less, you wish you had something to turn to other than entropy. You might try pantheism, or literature, or even distracting yourself, but you always wish that you had God or even the delusion of God to keep you above water. The biggest problem is probably how stubborn and persistent you are. Because any display of intelligence is a cardinal sin in these corners of the internet ill be lambasted for this, but most of us are too well trained in reason and logic and critical thinking to be able to convert into something spiritual. We're just not dumb enough and its because we actually were dumb enough at one point to screw ourselves over when we were young. Maybe the biggest obstacle of believing or believing again is that you'll be turning your backs to so many people that you used to admire. You'll no longer be in the same club as ditchens, even though you've long moved on from them.

Many of us realize that truth isn't as important as philosophy and science says it is, and that these two modes of discovering it are pretty damn flimsy, maybe not inherently but certainly in practice, what with all the semantics and human error, progress one funeral at a time, etc. The rest don't ever get tired of the hunt for truth, and those people are the ones with the red A as their profile picture, the argumentatives on youtube, facebook, even here (really do fucking hate you guys sometimes). I think one of the reasons why we shit on atheism so much is because the rest of us see how uncool it is to ruin someones day by telling them that theres no afterlife, no soul, that we're all just nerves and neurons and that's all there is to it, bud, sorry to say. I have a feeling the root of is really just (a) fear of being wrong and (b) wanting to be better than the people around you, either because you're protected against any delusions or because you just get to show do to other people what you're afraid of others doing to you. What im saying is that none of us want to be told that santa clause isn't real.

Just to shine a glimmer of light in a cold and cruel world.
Although we're just passengers, we are also the only ones who can grant things meaning.