askchapo

"Reddit" Atheism is when you're stuck dunking on young earth creationists (who deserve it but are extremely low hanging fruit) while also being islamophobic.

I was raised YEC so reddit atheism was good for me to an extent, but then I had to shed the islamophobia. fortunately I also came down on the right side of "Atheism+" schism, which deserves its own writeup but I'm not doing that.

I feel confident saying I know, as a fact, that the Abrahamic god does not exist. That said, I don't know how or why the universe exists. Life & consciousness seem to be phenomena which arise naturally out of laws of physics so I have no reason to believe in survival of the self beyond the physical body. It is literally true that we are "the universe experiencing itself" and not something separate from it. That idea is a form of monism which has a rich tradition in eastern religion, and even Marxism!

There are even forms of the idea of reincarnation which I find somewhat compatible with a materialist, monist view of the world. This is a powerful essay on the subject.