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Originally Posted by Eolas Pellor
I don't know...if it [atheism] is an "essential" step. It is certainly a step I went through, and passed through. (I gave it up at about the same time that I realized it was not necessary for me to rationally understand everything, in order for everything to be.)
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Now that's interesting, because I also don't need to rationally understand everything in order for it to be. But I go one step further ... I don't need to invent an explanation [god] for that which remains inexplicable. It may not be true of you, but I think you'll find that for a great many people, "god" is that which they still can't explain.
I'll go even further and suggest that many, many suppositions are simply made, willy-nilly, about things for which we have as yet no formal understanding. A terrific example is consciousness, which to read Baars, Blackmore, Dennett, Crick, Edelman/Tononi, Zeman, James, Hofstadter, the
Journal of Consciousness Studies and
Consciousness and Cognition, and much else besides, is a thorny problem. No problem, say many on this very site. Let's just suppose that consciousness is all, exists without something to exist on (even though we can't actually demonstrate anything even remotely like that), that it/we invented itself/us, and Bob's your uncle!
Brilliant! While it may not be necessary to rationally understand everything, I don't know that it's all that helpful to make stuff up out of nothing.
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Actually, in many ways, I think that atheism as a spiritual crutch is a pretty poor thing; it rattles and clanks through every discussion about belief, about deity, religion, morality/ethics, cosmology, eschatology, etc.
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That would probably be true, if atheism were a spiritual crutch. Atheism doesn't pretend to any such thing, just makes the assumption that there are no deities around. I won't go so far as to suggest that an imaginary crutch can't be effective for the theist. Just that it won't be effective for quite as long as he generally expects.
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It's an easy out, a way to refute others' arguments without every really thinking about them, a way to question others, without every attemtpting to really examine oneself.
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And that, for the record, is very precisely how the atheist sees deistic belief -- an easy way out by simply ascribing everything not understood to "god" and dusting off one's hands. I am sorry that you don't think that I, for example, have spent any time really attempting to examine myself. It appears that you've made the rather facile (and perhaps egocentric) assumption that if I had, I would have arrived at conclusions much like yours.
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It's such a "sewer" of an ideology; and that reflects its essential sophomoric character.
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Thank you. Always pleasant to hear your considered assessments of one's character. "Us and them" with them always the bad guys, eh? Why are theists so very often given to name-calling? Is this a religious attribute?
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Some people do seem to avoid formal atheism. That, however, is not to say that they do not question or doubt. The Dark Night of the Soul is, probably, a necessary step on the path to spiritual maturity. Outwardly it might appear similar to atheism (it certainly does to me, at times, when I am beset), but there is an underlying difference.
Let me use this analogy: The atheist looks in the bucket, and decides the well is empty. In the Dark Night of the Soul, we look in the well, and see that it is empty, but we do not conclude that water doesn't exist on that basis....no matter how much we fear we are in a desert.
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On this basis, the atheist goes on to look for another well, wherein he may just find something to drink. What will the theist do, sit and wait? How often, in this world in which we live, will that avail, I wonder?