Musings about different types of atheist!

by Seraphim23 304 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  snare&racket

  When I was a young JW i saw and walked up the mountains of our locality and had a huge sense of awe and a tinge of sadness on my first visit, I remember, it was half way up, looking down to a body of water. I couldn't nail why, but I put these feelings down to 'spiritual' experiences.

  I felt at one with life itself, but somewhat melancholic at the end of the emotional rush.

  I remember daydreaming on a sunday in the middle of a watchtower 20+ years ago, I remember where I was sat, the winter sunlight coming in to the k.h. via the tinted glass. I was pondering the field of atoms, us being made of atoms as was the universe. I attempted to picture the universe from an atomic level and I saw that the universe would simply be one dense field of atoms.... No people, animals, planets... My mind blew a fuse at that point and i got lost in the same sense of awe once more but with that same tinge of sadness at its dissipation. This same experience happened a few times in my youth. Each time felt like I was plugging into the universe for a millisecond, having its truths downloaded and them existing as quickly as they dissapeared in my mind, that typical description of feeling 'at one with the universe.'

  I remember talking to my group overseer about it, he seemed a smart guy and to my amazement he said he knew the sense I was talking of. He was a naturalist too, he left the Jw's in the end, with his son, leaving his wife behind. I respect the man deeply to this day yet have not had the means to talk to him. Anyway, I asked him if the feeling was based on a spiritual connection tarnished with our imperfection, explaining the awe and the sadness. He didn't seem convinced and when I examined myself further i knew those feelings were more than that, they were a profound recognition or something but of what I wasn't sure.

  When I distanced myself from the Jw's many years later those feelings had long stopped, i started my education in science once more at age 26 and amazingly those feelings returned. Whenever examining something universal or dimensionally huge or even infinitely small . I would get lost in thought, then awe and wonder, then the wave of sadness hit me... and on one of those occasions some 2 years later, now an atheist, for the first time ever I understood it.

  It was like an explosion when I recognised it. The awe was always a recognition of the fragility of me, before a mountain, before a universe, before an atomic world..... The sadness was my acceptance that I unlike the mountain and universe will die, will not be around to understand it or see it other than my time now. What makes life and the universe so awe inspiring is also what makes it a little sad, it is a privelage we have for a limited time. As soon as these thoughts crossed my neurones I knew for sure that was my feeling explained exactly, from all those years ago and it continues today,

  When i see something profound, whether it be old, big, small or complex, I know it was here long before me and will be here long after me,,,, a beautiful and yet melancholic realisation.

  What i was calling spiritual, i now know to be very human and I am more appreciative of it than ever, for as an atheist, my life is more precious to me, which makes the value and desire to live even stronger and the search for awe in the universe more exciting than ever before.

  it is just my anecdotal story and just as other people's experiences are just their own, this is just mine.

  But that is my experience of feeling awe, wonder snd spiritual and it's place in my life. I have discussed this a few times here, I have read other people reach the same conclusion too. Oddly I once read it mid fictional book as a charachter expressed the same sense (Alex Garland).

  One thing is for sure, theists or one religion or one god or one belief system don't own awe, wonder, spirituality or such experiences And I am lost to know how you would know there are atheists too afraid to say them, as by that explination they would not tell you or if did were obviously content to do so. Weird.
• 

  latinthunder

  My favourite &'worst is "sometimes the unobservable is observed" ... Wow that is dumb, if'it is obseved we can test it ..... But we never do.

  I would imagine that a scientist would know that when humankind observes something new for the first time, that's it's going to be hard to pin down. Why does science take so long? Because it's an incremental process. Just because we can observe something, like the effects of electromagnetism, doesn't mean we know and can test everything about it. Why DON'T we have it all mapped out? We ARE observing it on a regular basis?

  We are a transcendent species, which means what's NOT observable to us at a certain point of time MAY be observable in another. To animals electromagnitism isn't something they are concerned with because they lack the capacity to understand it. Yet, through the process of evolution they eventually developed a high thinking mind and were able to comprehend and manipulate it. The awareness of electromagnistism came through an incremental process of comprehension.

  Similar to science our interactions with the great beyond is also an incremental process. Again, we call this revelation which Thomas Paine so aptly described as a personal experience which could not be empirically demonstrated to others. He didn't say the supernatural didn't exist, he said that it was mysteriously confined to the experiencers. That's why I brought up the psychic in the Dawkins series "Enemies of Reason" a few posts ago. He can ONLY corroberate evidence with others of his peer review group. There is a brick wall between his experiences and the scientific community because his was one of personal revelation. Dawkins has no choice but to leave him to his devices, but he doesn't have to accuse him of fraud or stupidity.

  latin and seraphim both go to hospital when sick, not their minds or a crystal store on ebay....when life and death is in the balance they snap out of the woo and come to science.... At least, I really sincerely hope they do.

  Of course I go to the hospital when I am sick, if I have the money.

  That is me signing out, I come here and give my time to help people with genuine questions and wanting to understsnd science, as,I once did, not to argue the unknowns. You two may think it is funny or entertaining to use JW logic in seeking uninforrmed back doors to deny reality...but people will read this,and get caught up in your woo. Every time you read of someone denying science for woo and hurting themselves, know that such illogical, uneducated, unintelligent, unscientific, biased, bullshit...harms people. Do not dare joke or take that sentence lightly, children die in the hands of parents denying science and administering prayer or spirit or some other woo.... There have been several cases in the last 5 years and it amounts to child abuse, what you promote is no joke, it is no HOBBY latin, maybe it is time to grow up.

  Snare, I strive to provide the antithesis to the thesis, which has the nifty result of synthesis. I like to provide the other side of the coin especially on a forum with lots of one side. I actually take faith healing very seriously. The hobby is foruming, not faith healing.

  How many people in your medical career are you going to have to tell they are going to die no matter what? Remember, I said that I wanted to fill the holes Science leaves behind, not replace it. I OBSERVE the failings of Science and wish to suppliment, it's not the devious cause as you making it out to be. I simply reject the idea that all we have is Science which comes with an extreme amount of suffering. We are both doctors in our own respect because we both seek to heal our fellow man. I highly respect people like you who work hard for the benefit of others. Please don't get the idea that I believe you are obsolete in any way, shape or form.

  I think it's important to point out that I totally logically agree with everything you have said thus far, minus the ad hominems. My logical mind says, YES faith healing is NOT a replacement for the medical industry, at least not yet. But there is something IN me besides my logical mind and it tells me there is something more. As I look back in the historical record I see nothing but endless possibility. I see people being raised from the dead, the sick being cured and then, for some reason, it all melts away like a painting getting wet. My gut tells me it was real, not my logical processors. I have faith that we can bring it back, and I know if it were true even you would get on board. Because in the end we both want the same thing, life to the FULL.

  Enjoy arguing with the findings of reality for the rest of your life, keep in mind where you turn to when you need technology, medicine and answers and i'll go on supportimg the looking for such findings so we can help more people like you.

  OK, but I ask you to keep in mind who the patients you claim have no hope to live turn to.
• 

  adamah

  Seraphim said-

  There are atheists even, on this board, which have experienced spiritual experiences, but won’t admit to it because of the reception they would get. Surly that tells you something, but perhaps not!

  It's unlikely, but one can be an 'atheist' and still believe in spirits: the 'atheist' adjective only indicates their belief in a God.

  However, if a person believe in spirits, they're not exactly skeptics, and their claims of 'atheism' are questionable: a person doesn't believe in woo-woo spirits OR God(s) without having any evidence on which to base their beliefs. But again, there are some who CLAIM to be atheists but cannot explain WHY they claim that: as far as I'm concerned, they're no better than those believers who cannot explain why they believe, either (and the most-likely explanation is they both based their beliefs on only hope).

  Adam
• 

  cofty

  To animals electromagnitism isn't something they are concerned with because they lack the capacity to understand it

  Tell that to the duckbill platypus or the paddle fish.

  We are both doctors in our own respect... - Latinthunder who thinks he can raise the dead with the power of his mind.

  In the same way that Brian Cox and Mystic Meg are both experts on the stars.
• 

  Seraphim23

  Well this is certainly about different types of atheist adamah! I think one can be a sceptic, or appropriately sceptical, which might be a better term, and a theist or atheist and still believe in spirits, regardless of not necessarily knowing what they are exactly. Spirits being but one paranormal category of many of course! Being a sceptic doesn’t mean disbelief in everything regardless of evidence. It means having a high regard for evidence in guiding what is believed. at least in a provisional way. Of course faith often gets defined as belief regardless of, or even despite evidence. Of course in reality even the most sceptical person doesn’t demand evidence for every specific thing. A general pattern of things may be enough to keep them going, providing what I would call faith, in the more specific things.

  Of course faith in my definition doesn’t mean believing things regardless of evidence, or without evidence, or despite evidence. To me faith means the opposite. It many ways it is like scepticism but with patterns observed in different ways that give logical credence to things not directly observed. I believe in the methodology of science and its key development of that methodology, which was accepting the existence of things like atoms, despite not being able to directly observe them. Other evidence that was more directly observable made more sense and was more intelligible with the addition of atoms. So faith in atoms, again at least in a provisional sense was good science.

  Spirits and other supernatural phenomena may well not be of the nature that many get from reading the bible, or Koran and so on, but they may be well be something, and anecdotal evidence does count. Its second hand evidence for others who hear the story of course, but then again so are many things in life that sceptical people accept every day. If an atheist or theist sees a spirit, or experiences some other paranormal phenomena, it may not be clever or intellectually good to reject it on the ground that such things don’t have a so called explanation. The word yet comes to mind.

  If we accept atoms due to indirect evidence, why doesn’t good quality anecdotal evidence at least count toward keeping the mind open on such matters? Science has often been delayed in its understanding of things due to rejecting anecdotal evidence that was later seen to be true. Also this tendency was sometimes made worse because a theory of how something worked most of the time was already in place, making the new evidence even more prone to being dismissed. This was a failing, not of science, but of people who suffer from intellectual arrogance.

  If such people who believed in things that were not thought to be possible, according to current scientific understanding, were asked why they believed in them, the answer certainly wasn’t an explanation of the phenomena, unless they had some ideas of their own, but normally it was the simple fact that they said they saw the phenomena in question. It would not be hard to imagine that some would mock such claims, exclaiming that `such people can’t even explain why they believe in the woowoo they saw!`. Of course that was arrogance speaking because in the past, it turned out that the simple souls who saw what they saw, turned out to be right.
• 

  xchange

  Seraphim: If we accept atoms due to indirect evidence, why doesn’t good quality anecdotal evidence at least count toward keeping the mind open on such matters?

  Because we don't accept anecdotal evidence when it comes to atoms.
• 

  cofty

  Sab stop pretending there is anything remotely reasonable or rational about your position.

  You wallow in woo without a modicum of evidence. Just admit it and celebrate it.
• 

  Finkelstein

  Here's an interesting debate discussing the values of scientific knowledge over spiritualism to humanity's evolving betterment..

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKNd_S3iXfs
• 

  latinthunder

  Tell that to the duckbill platypus or the paddle fish.

  I thought it was only religionists who believed in talking animals ;)

  I said that animals don't have the capacity to understand, or comprehend, electromagnetism. Just as they can't comprehend their own ability to smell, taste, see, hear and feel. They are not concerned with the concepts because they are not evolved enough. My point was about the transcendental nature of human evolution, which did start in the animal kingdom. It's a tumultuous process becoming aware of forces greater than yourself. Incremental; gradual.
• 

  yadda yadda 2

  What snare & racket said. Voted the annual worst pathetically annoying dribble and total bollox thread.