is atheism inadequate to the human experience?
As for atheism, I think it can be internally coherent, but ultimately inadequate to the human experience; it always seems to end up crudely reducing the human person to a bag of meat.
While lurking round a spirited conversation on a recent post, I came across this interesting perspective. Is it possible that this perceived inadequacy explains the human craving for deities? I always knew “but I’m special” was one of the main petulant appeals of a religion such as Christianity, but I’ve just never seen someone of the religious persuasion express it quite so openly and clearly.
Accepting that I am a random collection of atoms along with every other object on this planet, that I am a bag of meat along with every other creature on this planet, doesn’t for me, in any way reduce my human experience. It gives it context and explains a lot of the behavioural conundrums that have perplexed our superstitious forefathers.
I think it can’t be a coincidence that almost every atheist I’ve come to know has a serious respect and love for dogs. Perhaps it’s that grounding in the animal reality of our existence that gives us perspective to more clearly understand that the human experience isn’t so far removed, that isn’t so uniquely special that it requires a mysterious god to magically carve us out in her image. This bag of meat feels adequately explained.
Who’s the good looking boy?
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She’s our beautiful doggy that was dying from the mange and had a kidney eaten by a giant red parasite. I miss her so much! She’s still at our house, tenant’s a friend and dog lover.
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Oh, the Argie dog? You never did post a pic of her.
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Hmph, shows how much you relish in my posts! This is the third time I’ve used that picture! I think you just lost the best blogging buddy crown .. going to have to suck up to Ark again. 🙂
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He’s so easy, but you never used this. I’d remember… wouldn’t I?
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That’s me….eezy,peezy!
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Local bicycle.
Good job frustrating Prayson. That was funny. Read Tildebs thread… He’s being merciless.
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I did. In fact all but a couple of writers flayed him. I am waiting for Roy to make an appearance!
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Oh, he’ll be along soon to rescue Prayson!
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Whaddya mean, local bicycle!
Sigh….s’pose it’s better than secondhand dart board. 😉
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Oooh ouch, never heard that one before! Yup, that’s worse than a free local ride. 🙂
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Never heard it? Serious? You mean you had to Google it? LOL!
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The combination of meat bags and bicycle talk has me going down this road:
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“I HAVE THE SHINIEST MEAT BICYCLE!”
I do believe that’s the most brilliant thing i’ve ever seen! 🙂
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I’m glad you approve 😉
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Really? I suddenly feel 100 years old and out of touch with the youth today. Kind of like Ark must feel I guess.
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Ouch! Nice one! Excuse Ark while he collects his entrails from the floor 🙂
You didn’t find that superb? Out of interest, did you ever watch Ren & Stimpy cartoons?
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There was something interesting and mildly amusing about it. I don’t even like cartoon violence though.
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“Mildly amusing”?? That was art!
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tell her….
omg..that was priceless..
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Precisely my issue with religion. I know full well that I exist at the atomic level and one of the most traumatizing experiences of young life was when, at about10-12 years old, I asked the priest about the afterlife (The Episcopal Church is very vague on these things), he gave me a long talk that scared the ever-loving be-jeepers out of me. My mother found me sobbing in the pantry and, naturally, asked what was wrong. I said, “I don’t want to go through eternity as a semi-cognizant bolt of light,” which was just about all I managed to make from the priest’s ramblings. My mother winked at me and said in her best psychologist voice, “I doubt it’s going to be something you need to worry about.” Anyway … sorry … I just wanted to say that I was quite thought-provoked.
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Oh I don’t know, a bolt of light, how cool! Maybe I’ll go religious after all. 🙂
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What’s your take on this story?
http://gravityswings.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/i-support-channel-4s-decision-to-censor-mohammed/
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Ooops, must be living in a bubble. I disagree with you. I think the media have a duty to avoid offending people. It’s not just the nutty extremists threatening murder that would be offended, it’s every other Muslim in the country. I don’t say to c*nt to my granny because she would be offended. And it’s ridiculous because it’s just an anatomical label. I don’t show pictures of gods to people whose religion bans pictures of gods because they would be offended. And it’s ridiculous because it’s just a picture. The less people are offended, the more likely they are to change and realise things aren’t such a big deal.
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Fair points, but you think this is going a tad too far? It’s a Jesus and Mo cartoon, and I see caving to the lunatics to be setting a terrible precedent.
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Hmm, hmmm, know what you mean. But lunatics who are offended just become bigger lunatics and drag more lunatics into their lunaticary. (so much more pungent than lunacy)
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🙂 I think lunaticary is a word in a Harry Potter spell
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I’m not really fond of the way they handled the situation. I tend to avoid offense, provided that I can communicate what I need to say. That is the important part of the question. How essential was showing the cartoon to covering the story? Why did they show the cartoon at all? Was it necessary for communicating the story? If it was not, then they should not have shown it at all. If it was, then they should not have used the black blot. If they felt that showing the cartoon was necessary to the story but they were afraid of death threats, they should say so and give a url where their viewers could find the cartoon so they could judge for themselves… and then perhaps find a line of work more suited to the quiet lifestyle they evidently would like.
Personally, I think in this instance, showing the cartoon *is* essential to the story because it’s important to see how bland this supposedly offensive image is.
It makes me feel like I should get a subscription to Charlie Hebdo.
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Well said, and I tend to agree. Go over to Avery’s blog and let him know. There’s a deacon there who’s asked quite an interesting question.
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“Underlying prejudices, injustices or resentments are not addressed by arresting people: they are addressed by the issues being aired, argued and dealt with preferably outside the legal process. For me, the best way to increase society’s resistance to insulting or offensive speech is to allow a lot more of it. As with childhood diseases, you can better resist those germs to which you have been exposed.
We need to build our immunity to taking offence, so that we can deal with the issues that perfectly justified criticism can raise. Our priority should be to deal with the message, not the messenger. As President Obama said in an address to the United Nations a month or so ago: ‘…laudable efforts to restrict speech can become a tool to silence critics, or oppress minorities. The strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech’ and that is the essence of my thesis; more speech. If we want a robust society, we need more robust dialogue and that must include the right to insult or to offend.
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*Rowan Atkins
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Brilliant analogy, Holly!
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I thought you might like it , John. 🙂
Much better to hear him say it…He does it so well..
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Excellent. I just re-posted this over on Averies blog.
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Allow me to flesh out the comment a little more: a materialist vision will usually try to explain the human experience as “nothing other than” social conditioning, or sex drive, or economics, or the will to power, or breeding, or electro-chemical impulses. In this sense, atheism tends to be “reductive”. It tends to be “crude” in the sense that there is something smug and obtuse about confusing some one aspect of the human experience for the whole, and then congratulating yourself for having figured out the mystery of life.
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Is it smugness or relief? I’m certainly relieved to realise that my strong desires for random men at random times of my life are down to my need to breed and the resulting chemicals pumping round my body. Hurrah, it’s not Satan – an invisible, evil imp trying to make me SIN. The human experience is crude, it’s just that some of the crudeness still remains beyond our comprehension.
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Holly, further down the comments, has said that she also found atheism incomplete, given that it only describes someone doesn’t believe in gods. But she’s happy with humanism – does that not flesh out some of the starkness on the meat for you?
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Humanism does not imply being religious, but it does imply appreciation for the mystery of the human person. But if you start by excluding the possibility of the divine, you will have to explain humanity in purely material terms, and this always ends up with the “crude reductions” above.
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You’re clearly much more special than me. Maybe I simply evolved as a simple chunk of meat, and a special god-type creature hand-moulded your superior soul. 🙂
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@ dp
Considering your disparaging remark about “meat’ was this merely a Freudian slip?
Allow me toflesh out the comment a little more:
my emphasis
Sorry, dp. reckon you’ve already blown your wad on this one.
Time to pull up your pants. We’ve all seen your arse.
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Stay classy, Ark.
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Ah, dp, one of things taught at teacher training is always pitch the lesson with the slowest member of class in mind.
However, in your case, if we are forced to slow down any further we’ll soon have to put the car in reverse.
Aren’t you fed up building your worldview on a make believe, smelly eschatological Jewish rabbi?
Time to join the grownups, dp. You don’t even have to say please.
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I have come across this complaint before. I thought I dealt with it in this post:
http://fojap.com/2013/02/27/the-worst-of-all-possible-worlds/
but it seems that I stopped just short of it. At the end, I mention that a writer in a fairly academic book had responded to someone called evileddie. He actually doesn’t mention that in the body of his text. In trying to establish that there can be no secular basis for human rights, he refers to the concept that “we are meat on a rock.” He did footnote that notion and when I looked it up it it was a comment left on a dating site by someone called evileddie.
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Oooh, now that is crude! 🙂
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Atheism, rather than degrading humanity, elevates meat bags.
Also, I’m allergic to dogs. Does that exempt me from your statistics?
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Nice thinking! But given you don’t touch dogs I suspect you’re an uncover Christian troll of some description …
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Unfortunately, depending on who you ask, elevating meat bags is degrading to humanity.
Dogs love me, if that makes it any better.
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A tad. You’re in the ‘potentially dodgy’ pile.
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Well, I see I’m in good standing with two rescue friends living with me. On even casual study it is easy to see that the common dog has many of the faculties of a sentient being if not all that are required for sentience. The difference between apes and canines is rediculously small on many levels. For the theist to claim “look around you at the beauty and structure of the world – how can you not see the work of god?” but yet fail to look at their pet and not see the beautiful result of evolution is beyond sad. They have the ability to be curious and embrace wonderment yet cannot see what is right in front of them.
On the matter of jesus and mo, I don’t know why the issue is difficult to resolve. To be ‘offended’ by such material does not demonstrate religious sensitivity, rather it demonstrates either childishness or senility. To change the world we live in to suit either of these is to ignore logic and reason. How long before sending ships to space offends those that think us trying to get closer to god? If the thoughts of lunatics were to be trusted, never mind given considered respect, there would be no locks on the doors at the insane assylum. Better yet, you need only spend enough time at the assylum to drink a coffee to know with great certainty that prayer does nothing at all. With that understood the entire house of cards begins to fall.
Freedom of expression is for all or none because the oppressed will write down their right to expression with the blood of the oppressors. That brings us to the most important part of the discussion: when does ‘being offended’ become oppression of others? I will defend to the death your right to free expression but I’ll kill you if you deny it to me. In the most basic terms “that offends me” == “shut the fuck up” == “I think your rights do not count”
If the cartoon offends you, do not look. If it still offends you, may I ask what size of bullet hole does not offend you?
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You and John should start an atheist animal shelter together. No religious people allowed because they clearly don’t understand dogs properly. I’m still not convinced about the offence issue, and until I can call my granny a c*nt I’d feel hypocritical telling other people what they should be offended by.
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I think it is a category mistake to compare calling your gran names and making fun of an ideology. One is nothing but personal… the other is anything but personal.
Talking to your grandma that she shouldn’t get upset that people use the word c*nt is more closely comparable.
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Yes, I realised that after typing it. And I think that is a valid comparison. Most people don’t offend those closest to them for things they perceive to be irrational, yet are quite happy for someone they don’t know to be offended. I think the argument I’m hearing from everyone about this stems of the fact that they don’t like Islam. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I seriously dislike it, but I can separate dislike of a nonsense religion from people with genuine and non-violent beliefs who would find a picture of their god to be as offensive or more than my granny hearing me use that word. It’s not just about fundamentalists (when it comes to the question of broadcasting images on national TV).
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I see what you’re saying in as much as it is never hard to be kind but this runs into another problem of someone else telling me how to be kind. Ideas are not immune from ridicule nor should the be protected under law from ridicule. People taking offense at the ridicule of an idea they find appealing and then complaining that I should modify my behavior creates a protection for that idea under the law or common law of societal norms. In either case such protection is both unwarranted and in violation of my personal rights
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I personally found atheism incomplete. As it is merely a description of a lack of belief in any gods. And not any proscription of how then to live or why. I found secular the next reasonable step in my journey.
In which humans are realized to have the ability to think, feel, share, care, appreciate beauty, empathize, realize that our actions affext each other, and realize our interconnectedness with the universe…something I have yet to find meat capable of….;)
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Spot on. Atheism is nothing except a statement of disbelief. Secularism is where the party is at.
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I see what you mean. Atheism describes very little, and humanism does lessen the starkness for anyone wanting it. I’ll ask dpmonaghan if his feeling about atheism extends also to humanism.
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oy..that was supposed to say secular humanism….! i missed the most important word! 😀 but I am glad you knew my heart before it spoke it… 😀
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Well, I don’t keep pets but I don’t think a bag of meat that thinks degrades the human situation. It is what we are.
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You’re the starkest of the stark. 🙂 Interesting you’re not down with the animals though …
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I think somehow I just did not get into the habit of keeping pets. We had some very fierce dogs once. I could take care of them but I never got attracted beyond that.
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