Are atheists inevitably pessimists?

I’m just saying I’m not personally interested in formal philosophy as I don’t think it’d get me better results than muddling through. If it’s correct to say that I’m already doing street level philosophy or something, I won’t argue. I think you’re reading more hostility or negativity into this than I intended.
 
Lithrael said:
I’m just saying I’m not personally interested in formal philosophy as I don’t think it’d get me better results than muddling through. If it’s correct to say that I’m already doing street level philosophy or something, I won’t argue. I think you’re reading more hostility or negativity into this than I intended.
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Of course, many political, scientific or philosophical theories reach the street through the media and that's the information that ordinary people have. We can't be experts in everything. Although some pretend to be in the forums.
 
David Mo said:
Of course, many political, scientific or philosophical theories reach the street through the media and that's the information that ordinary people have. We can't be experts in everything. Although some pretend to be in the forums.
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Now that's ironic.
 
Just to steer things back on topic. I was not optimistic as a believer so many years ago - being convinced I was destined for eternal punishment.

I wonder if others shared my dilemma.

Convinced I was damned, because I did not seek salvation by attending church and partaking in ritual, although convinced of the truth of the religion itself, as I had no alternative presented to me.

Not attending church because I felt repelled by. The monotonous singing, prayer, and boring sermons. "Stand up, sit down, kneel, recite after me." Christ what an ordeal! Do some really enjoy this stuff?
 
Thor 2 said:
Not attending church because I felt repelled by. The monotonous singing, prayer, and boring sermons. "Stand up, sit down, kneel, recite after me." Christ what an ordeal! Do some really enjoy this stuff?
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I sometimes do.

If the music is right and the officiant is good, I can have a good experience at church. Over Christmas we went to a church in a beach town and everyone was very casual, local and tourists alike. The priest was very upbeat and positive and I really enjoyed the service. Christmas hymns are always fun to sing and my kids are always embarrassed by my joy in singing out loud, even as they are now moving into adulthood.

Not my first choice of what to do that day, but I had a good time. And the people we were traveling with appreciated the we fit it into our schedule as it was important to them.
 
Dr. Keith said:
I sometimes do.

If the music is right and the officiant is good, I can have a good experience at church. Over Christmas we went to a church in a beach town and everyone was very casual, local and tourists alike. The priest was very upbeat and positive and I really enjoyed the service. Christmas hymns are always fun to sing and my kids are always embarrassed by my joy in singing out loud, even as they are now moving into adulthood.

Not my first choice of what to do that day, but I had a good time. And the people we were traveling with appreciated the we fit it into our schedule as it was important to them.
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Music was what I liked about religion, and I sampled many different types of religion over the years, but the music I loved. Some I still do. Ava Maria can tear me up, for example. Some times I would go to a small, country, Catholic Church, where they had guitarists that sang, and I loved it.
 
wasapi said:
Music was what I liked about religion, and I sampled many different types of religion over the years, but the music I loved. Some I still do. Ava Maria can tear me up, for example. Some times I would go to a small, country, Catholic Church, where they had guitarists that sang, and I loved it.
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The church my family went to, Trinity Episcopal Church in Morgantown, WV, had what was (as nearly as anyone can determine) the very first live Christian Rock service in the world with the band the Mind Garage playing a service they composed, which they called an Electric Liturgy, on March 10, 1968.

This was your classic, huge, foreboding pile of stonework type of church, and the average parishioner was about what you'd expect for Episcopalians in 1968. The chaplain, Rev. Michael Paine, was also the chaplain for West Virginia University, and definitely didn't fit into the staid Episcopal mold. He felt like, "Worship patterns are too often dull and old fashioned. The church is missing a lot of people and it shouldn't." "It's not such a new idea", he said. "Bach used popular tavern songs in his music. We're merely trying to use the best resources available in modern music."

So he worked with a rock band to develop a service and brought 'em into the church.

In spite of a great deal of offended believers before the service, nearly everyone who attended left being quite impressed. Even deeply moved.

A quote from the local newspaper's article after the service;

"'I didn't know they were like THAT,' one woman exclaimed, "That was beautiful!"

I was thirteen at the time. In my own words, at that time, "It was really, really cool."



It wasn't a one-off, either. They performed their Electric Liturgy more times in M'town and then went on to perform it in churches all over the country, and on national TV. Even though they are pretty obscure now they made quite an impression then.

As well as secular music. They weren't a "Christian Rock" group, just a rock group who happened to be Christians who had also performed in churches. They made five (or thereabouts) very secular albums. They played at Fillmore East (among other substantial venues), and turned down an invite to Woodstock.

Good fun.

They can be found on YouTube, both secular music and the Electric Liturgy. This is the only fully assembled recording of the Liturgy I could find there. Lots of pieces of it, though.

****************************

(Note: It wasn't 'til I left the influences of Rev. Paine and his successor, the Rev. Charles Roberts, known to all his flock as "Snork", and was subjected to the Church of God clowns that my mother had fallen in with that I became seriously disillusioned with Christianity and religions in general. The CofG didn't stand up well in comparison to the sort of religion those two men taught.

If not for that, who could tell where my beliefs would be now.)
 
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So it would seem that some here had somewhat different experiences to mine.

As a child I was reluctantly forced to attend C of E and Protestant churches in an Eastern Melbourne suburb. The music was not inspirational and the services as boring as you could imagine.

My parents were not church goers but the parents of friends were. My parents condoned my brother and I being corralled by these folk as the attitude that: "A bit of religion will do the children some good." was their mindset - not uncommon in the community at the time.

My brother was always enthusiastic about going in distinct contrast to myself. Some years later he became a full blown "Born Again" devotee and joined the local Lutheran church. Attaining the status of "Elder" many years later he had an argument with the pastor. My brother wanted to liven up the service with some hip music and the pastor, (being something of a purist) disagreed. Exit my brother along with wife (doing as she was told like a good Christian woman) and kids.
 
Thor 2 said:
So it would seem that some here had somewhat different experiences to mine.

<snip>
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Just to be clear, Rev, Paine and his successor, Rev, Roberts were both ... how shall I phrase this ... somewhat unique in their view and application of religious faith. Certainly in no way mainstream. Anecdotes abound, but would serve no useful purpose. After Snork Roberts left, that church quickly fell back into a much more mainstream sort of environment. Their tenures could almost be described as an aberration.

The Church of God which my mother subsequently began to attend was in every way a stereotypical evangelistic church, congregation, and pastor. It is somewhat surprising that I did not part company with them without a much deeper distaste for churches and religion than I did.

I attended one of their summer camps and even though I had won a free week at the camp for memorizing the most bible passages I was not invited back because the counselors found the questions I asked about those passages to be too disconcerting to them and too "confusing" (their term) to the other campers.

They gave me a bible as a replacement for the free week at camp. (A rather nice one, I admit. I still have it. King James, which rather surprised me. Definitely not an equal value for what they charged for the camp. Which didn't ... surprise me, that is.)
 
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JesseCuster said:
Wait. Everyone does what now?

"Everyone must find their own path." Deep.
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I mean everyone who doesn't choose a consolatory way. Lucidity implies the recognition that the world is absurd. That is to say, it is meaningless.
Of course, if you choose to look for an illusion that comforts you, everything seems easier. But it is an appearance. You cannot live eternally a drooling happiness.
 
JesseCuster said:
You can't live eternally at all, so I'm not really sure what point you're going for here? :confused:
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When I said "live eternally", I didn't mean eternal life. I meant that you can't maintain a state of happiness all your life by denying reality.
Death is part of the absurd, but not only. Open the newspaper, watch the news, enter a children's hospital... You will be surrounded by the absurd. "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

My point is that lucidity begins with this. Other thing is delusion.
 
David Mo said:
When I said "live eternally", I didn't mean eternal life. I meant that you can't maintain a state of happiness all your life by denying reality.
Death is part of the absurd, but not only. Open the newspaper, watch the news, enter a children's hospital... You will be surrounded by the absurd. "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

My point is that lucidity begins with this. Other thing is delusion.
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What does that have to do with atheists being inevitably pessimists?
 
David Mo said:
That is why the question of this thread cannot be answered with a slogan.

Of course, atheism implies some dramatic question. You cannot abandon religion and continue to live like nothing has happen. This is the existential "nausea" that every one copes as he can. There are lucid ways and illusory ways.

But for all I know religious people are not free of this kind of nausea. They rationalize it in other ways like doubt, God's silence and distressing mystery of a terrible god.

I think that religious people are more prone to illusory ways that atheist. It seems more consolatory, in principle. But it is ironic that this illusory consolation leads them to new anguishes that come from a dependence of a terrible father. How do you be calm with an incomprehensible and violent father? It is useless that I constantly repeat that my Father loves me if I see how He treat his creatures.

That is why that questioning about the advantages or disadvantages of religion is an useless question. Be lucid and search your way. There is not other that is valid for you. The head-in-the-sand solution is not even useful for ostriches.
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I really wish I understood what the hell you're talking about most of the time. No on second thought I don't. What a truckload of psychobabble bs.

You can absolutely abandon religion and continue to live as nothing happened. Other than a few religious morons trying desperately to reconvert me, little has changed. Not believing in a god is like not believing in Spiderman. It's irrelevant. Nothing happened. The vast majority of people I know call themselves Christians but never read the bible or go to church except for weddings and funerals. They are not really religious..that is unless you're talking football.
 
acbytesla said:
I really wish I understood what the hell you're talking about most of the time. No on second thought I don't. What a truckload of psychobabble bs.

You can absolutely abandon religion and continue to live as nothing happened. Other than a few religious morons trying desperately to reconvert me, little has changed. Not believing in a god is like not believing in Spiderman. It's irrelevant. Nothing happened. The vast majority of people I know call themselves Christians but never read the bible or go to church except for weddings and funerals. They are not really religious..that is unless you're talking football.
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"Psychobabble" ...... I though you made that word up, but there it is in my dictionary. :)

I agree that abandoning religion doesn't leave a hole in you're life. Unlike yourself most of my friends are atheist and don't seem to be searching for anything to complete their lives.
 
Thor 2 said:
"Psychobabble" ...... I though you made that word up, but there it is in my dictionary. :)
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That one's been around quite a while and gets a fair amount of use. I'm surprised you evaded it.

I agree that abandoning religion doesn't leave a hole in you're life. Unlike yourself most of my friends are atheist and don't seem to be searching for anything to complete their lives.
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From my perspective atheism has led to a great deal less "searching".

I don't need to bother anymore.

:p
 
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