Hi Frenchy, I hope you are well.
I think if we both wrote stereotypical definitions of our own viewpoint and the contrasting viewpoint, people could tell which one was written by the theist and which was written by the atheist.
Seeker has already pointed out some things I would, but I am more worried about misconceptions theists have about atheists and spirituality.
Atheists think that kindness, goodness, compassion, beauty, and even the love that they have for their mate and their children are all mechanical process that evolved out of primordial soup, all a series of accidents that led up to the complex universe of which we are a tiny part. He views loyalty, trust, friendship, moral values, hopes and dreams in the same light.
The way an atheist feels about kindness, goodness, compassion, beauty, loyalty, trust, friendship, moral values, hopes, dreams and even the love that they have for their mate and their children is no different from the way a theist feels about them. Origins might be a matter of opinion, but anyone who diminishes by one iota what I feel for my children and the wonder of that feeling just because I don't believe in god is making unsupported assumptions.
If you disagree with the theory of the mechanisms whereby those things arrise, attack that, not the way we feel, as the experience of that feeling is the same regardless of origin.
An atheist sees a lonely child in need and feels a need to reach out and do something about it and ascribes that feeling as an evolutionary twist that exists for the perpetuation of the species. An atheist sees his firstborn child for the first time and attributes that feeling he has for the child and to his wife who is smiling at him through a tear stained face to the combination of electro-chemical process in the synapses of his brain.
Yes, but knowing we are reacting on a subconcious level to our evolutionary programming doesn't make it less wonderful, does it? And don't forget, not only do we know, we know we know, which gives us the power to transform and assign values completely removed from the mundane. That we know we know is simply a scalar function of our brains. There is no deus ex machina, no ghosts in the machine, it happens anyway.
An atheist stands over the grave of a long dead brother and remembers when they ran together and played together and he can hear his brother’s voice and see his smile and the atheist realizes that this is just chemically stored data that has absolutely no relevance anymore.
Ah, come on, you're a smart person, you got to know that one is on thin ice... 'no relevance'? So atheists are unfeeling brutes? I know that is not what you are saying, but your logic is at fault here. The fact someone is dead, as in dead, means that how we feel about them and remember them is of an even greater relevance than for theists, as it is the only way we can 'survive' after death. My eldest brother died when I was eleven. He was the other 'black sheep' of the family, and I keep his memory alive, and to know that a theist might even think for the remotest instant that it is of 'no relevance' is simultaenously upsetting and annoying. I know you have no ill intent in doing that, don't worry, but do you understand better now?
An atheist looks at a spellbinding sunrise and the awe that stirs within him, and that feeling that goes down to his very core at seeing this marvelous display is relegated electro-chemical reactions in his brain and it means nothing to him because it’s all an accident anyway.
Ah, I will have to inform my tearducts not to work when I have an emotional reaction to beauty, as I am an atheist. Perhaps my tearducts believe in god? Perhaps the fact we know we know changes all the rules and makes us something wonderful that can appreciate wonder, all without a god.
If his child or spouse dies, it means nothing to him because all life is meaningless anyway and without purpose. Sadness and grief, joy and ecstasy, hopes and aspirations, are all chemically induced, biologic functions that exist solely as evolutionary quirks that just happened along and were retained by the organism.
Told you the ice was thin... now you're all wet, and need to go home before you catch a cold...
ANIMALS grieve, why can't we? Or do animals have souls too? If so, why is it just the big brained ones that obviously show grief? Do you have to have a big brain to fit a soul in, or... maybe it's something to do with some animals sharing a degree of self-awareness due to the size of their brains... and as for "meaningless ... and without purpose", HA!
Life is meaningless if you let it be. To me, it's actually the big adventure. Turning what could be described as a cosmic joke into something meaningful.
Yeah, Bach wasted his life, just like Einstein did. No purpose in their life. And the guy that carved the chair in my parents living room wasted the years of training just to have someone sit on his chari everyday for two hundred years. Oh, the waste. And atheist dads and mums, are not mourned by their children, as they never did anything in their meaningless purposeful lives. Come on Frenchy, that arguement was no good when it was first made.
We probably will end up in the same place. I think it'll be in the corona of the expanding sun in about 4,000 million years, where our components element's atoms will rub electrons with each other. You might think it'll be sooner!
Quick aside; check out Teilhard de Chardin and his concepts of Unity; there's a thread by me with some URL's, I'm sure you'd find it interesting.
People living in glass paradigms shouldn't throw stones...
