this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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"If Christianity is man made, why does everything about it go against man’s desires? Atheists can't answer this question" ...but they Can (youtu.be)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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If Christianity is man made, why does everything about it go against man’s desires? Does Christianity go against man’s desires? If so, is that evidence for Christianity? I answer this question, discussing the history of Christianity, the cognitive science of religion, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, and more.

The whole “atheists can’t answer this question” and “atheists can’t explain this” thing is really getting old.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

As a naturalist, the thing I'm particularly annoyed about is it took me fifty years to figure out how to not be an asshole. That leaves me less than half my life to work towards a net positive. (And I'm still producing a fuckton of material waste, just by living.)

Then there's also the thing about facing pollution as a great filter, and if somehow the species survives that one, a dozen or so other great filters stand between us and sustainable colonies on other worlds. If we die off, the universe won't even blink.

It's nice to be able to imagine we're God's favorite, that our species is special, and even that God has personal interest in me. (This is not consistent with the entire Abrahamic narrative, though it is a major Evangelical selling point, and is believed by millions of Evangelical parishioners.)

We're not God's favorite. Even the earth, The aggregate of our joy and suffering is an infinitesimal speck, tiny and lost in an unfeeling universe. No one watches. No one cares. No one will care when the last human perished from famine or the elements.

And crawling on the planet's face
Some insects called the human race
Lost in time, lost in space
And meaning.

So when it comes to grokking bad news, I'm pretty sure naturalism has Christianity beat.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Well, yes an no. We watch, we care, we exist a most importantly, we know to exist. That alone make us quite fking special. We may actually be one the rarest state of matter in the whole universe, "thinking matter". That's quite something in my book.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Sure! A lot of atheists find spiritual satisfaction in just having lived, or in finding our connection to stars and to the beginning of the universe. But modern Christianity promises immortality and purpose. Granted, it doesn't match well with the material world as we understand it, but it's a comforting myth they need.

(Curiously, it also promises forgiveness, as if the typical Christian has engaged in war profiteering or marketed Fentanyl or let their workers perish in a burning factory. I've done shitty things, but nothing that might piss off a reasonable god. I suspect this is the case with most folk, so I'm not sure why so many folk are desperate for forgiveness.)

The whole point of absurdism is coming to terms with our mortality and purposeless, to find our own way, or a satisfactory sense of purpose in an existence that doesn't bear one out.

Part of the path to naturalism is coming to terms with that insignificance, whether it is to acknowledge it and move on, or decide that some aspect of it is significance enough.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

As above I agree up to a point. In the end ideas like "significance" and "purposes" are just humans constructs and can ultimately being find in different aspects of someone life, just like "happiness". Even without a human-centric universe, or any grain of spirituality, we can still see our existence as an "Happy incident" of casuality, and find our own purpose. In some regards, the grandiose promises made by the religions are even "reductive", compared to what our potential as species can archive. Or we can simply "be" end enjoy our little vacancy away from the entropy in all his many wonderful aspects.