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Are atheists inevitably pessimists?

Thor 2 said:
I wonder about the twisted minds that come up Hell as a concept.

I can see it as an excellent draw card for religious observation however. Selling eternal punishment as a consequence of non compliance, is much more compelling, than eternal bliss as a reward.
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To poke at this subject, it's been a while since I delved into it, but IIRC, hell fairly certainly was a concept absorbed from Zoroastrianism, where it served a role more along the lines of limited cleansing suffering that achieved justice than eternal damnation and punishment. I also recall reading of very early, quite influential figures for the forming doctrines of Christianity writing gleefully about looking down from heaven and laughing at the immense suffering of everyone who didn't believe their claims and ending up with the impression that the whole eternal suffering thing is likely the result of early leaders having hurt feelings when the absurdities that they preached were inevitably mocked and they had no way to fight back against the mocking with either reason or evidence, so they resorted to vindictive fantasy.
 
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theprestige said:
I confess I haven't encountered a lot of "out and proud" atheists outside this forum. But every one of them seems to harbor a characteristic disdain, if not outright hatred for their fellow man.
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Are you assuming that the "characteristic disdain, if not outright hatred for their fellow man" when it's directed at that subset of humanity that's actively working to cause harm for selfish gain and that subset that aids and abets such is inherently misanthrophic?
 
I would like to turn this around, with a simple example from the dutch news.

Yesterday the body of a 17 year old boy was found in a canal. He'd left his friends late at night and never arrived home. Everything indicates he had an accident on the way, fell in when no-one saw or heard it and drowned.
Now to me, as an atheist, this is a terrible accident that will devastate his family.

But to theists this needs to be planned. Your god, or spirits, *wanted* that boy to die. It or they actively made sure his life was cut short and his family and friends will carry that wound for the rest of their lives. How can you live with the thought beings that do that control your lives? That all the horrors in the world, of which this is just a small example are planned and beyond your control to change? Is that not actual pessimism?
 
theprestige said:
I confess I haven't encountered a lot of "out and proud" atheists outside this forum. But every one of them seems to harbor a characteristic disdain, if not outright hatred for their fellow man.
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I've been here for a few years, and been involved in quite a lot of threads discussing religion & related issues, and I have really not seen any atheists here (or anywhere) who I would describe as acting "loud & proud" ...

... nobody here is preaching or evangelising etc. as theists do on the streets and in churches and even quite often in everyday greetings & conversations where they keep dropping in phrases like "thanks be to God" or "God be praised" or for Muslims the constant "the prophet, Praise be unto Him" etc. I have never seen any atheists doing anything like that. In fact most atheists here that I've seen/read, say that they rarely have discussions about their atheism or about religion outside of forums like this ... though here you should expect atheists (and visiting theists) to be fairly committed to expressing their views on religion, because this is a forum specifically provided to discuss exactly that.

As for your claim that "every one of them seems to harbour … if not outright hatred for their fellow man”. I've never seen anything remotely like that here, on other forums, or in real daily life. I think you must be talking about threads where atheists argue strongly against religious beliefs and against religious people who preach, evangelise and generally try to “spread the word” of their religion …

... in which respect I'm sure it's true that a lot of atheists (here or anywhere) will be “anti religion”, because most atheists (certainly in threads here) do regard religion as dangerous and generally a force for bad things in this world, in which respect – even if you leave aside the obvious Elephant-in-the-Room of how often organised religions like Christianity and Islam have waged horrific wars against all sorts of people all over the world, even ignoring that, religious belief is inevitably anti-educational and in particular anti-science … that's become an inevitable outcome for religion, because over the course of the 19th, 20th and 21st century it's become obvious from science (if not from education generally) that religious belief in Gods, miracles, the supernatural etc., is almost certainly not true and no longer credible …

… so it's pretty obvious from that, why in the 21st century any honest caring people (atheists or otherwise) will try to discourage people from becoming involved in what is often the life-long belief system of religions like Christianity and Islam.
 
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Lukraak_Sisser said:
But to theists this needs to be planned. Your god, or spirits, *wanted* that boy to die. It or they actively made sure his life was cut short and his family and friends will carry that wound for the rest of their lives. How can you live with the thought beings that do that control your lives? That all the horrors in the world, of which this is just a small example are planned and beyond your control to change? Is that not actual pessimism?
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As a comedian once said: for an atheist, people live in a beautiful, complex, wonderfully unfathomable natural world! Unless there is a God, in which case people live in a terrible world full of horrors!

Another one I like is: some atheists know the Bible better than the priests... at least, the parts where someone dies! :)

I'm a theist who believes that God is omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent. Given that belief, then logically, if God is all those things, then whatever happens is for the long-term best. It doesn't explain anything -- it falls under the "mysterious ways of God" -- but it does provide optimism when bad things happen to me. Though the logic is not sound (since the existence of God is an assumed premise), the logic is valid. It's the natural conclusion of belief in an omni-God.

I was an atheist for the first 30 or so years of my life before becoming a theist. I don't see how being an atheist results in pessimism. I certainly wasn't a pessimist in that stage. That there are good things and bad things in the world is obvious. No after-life means that the bad things stop at death, which is a comforting thought. So I disagree with the OP that atheists have no "underlying (spiritual) beliefs". Metaphysical naturalism can provide underpinning values that aid in satisfaction in life. But I do think that optimism is helped by some kind of metaphysical underpinning, even at a subconscious level.
 
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The idea of hell does not originate with Christianity, and is not even necessarily 'punishment', just the opposite of living. The ancient pagans had the idea right from the start. Blame them for the pessimism and cynicism. Atheists are bundles of joy in comparison.

 
When I was young, I well remember the distress of worrying about whether someone I cared about might die "unsaved" and be condemned to an eternity in Hell. It was common to include the question, "was he/she saved?", whenever a death was mentioned.

I remember how horrified I was when I heard that a friend's best friend, whom I'd met once and liked, had committed suicide, because I'd been assured that all suicides go to Hell.

All this talk of the "optimism" of eternal salvation ignores the all too common component of eternal suffering in religious beliefs for those who don't follow the rules. What's more pessimistic than thinking that most people who die are bound for eternal suffering?
 
Maybe there's something self-fulfilling about the category "out-and-proud X" which means it almost inevitably consists of a defiance if not actual disdain for not-X.

I have no idea about whether most of my acquaintances are religious. Most of those I do know about are not.
 
Dave Rogers said:
Same here. Then again, he's every bit as much an atheist as I am.

Dave
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Same here, although I didn't know it for a long time. He loved my mom, and had been going through the motions for her sake. When she passed away in 2013, he asked me if I still believed in God. When I answered "no", he surprised me by saying, "me neither".
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Maybe there's something self-fulfilling about the category "out-and-proud X" which means it almost inevitably consists of a defiance if not actual disdain for not-X.

I have no idea about whether most of my acquaintances are religious. Most of those I do know about are not.
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That's what gets me. The Prestige is carefully defining a category of atheists he labels "out and proud", whatever that means. I find that the stereotypical atheist is imagined as someone who goes around constantly announcing their atheism - arguing with store clerks who say "have a blessed day", trying to start religious arguments every time someone mentions attending church, etcetera. But he and others with the same prejudice have no idea how many atheists they've met who gave no indication that they were atheists. I know that the vast majority of my acquaintances have no idea I'm an atheist, and none of the people I encounter throughout the day have any cause to suspect anything about my stance on religion.

My problem with the definition "out and proud" is that it implies that the rest of the atheists are "closeted" - that they're somehow hiding their atheism. On the rare occasions that I've been directly asked in conversation, I've immediately stated that I'm an atheist. But it's not something I feel the need to announce to everyone I meet.
 
GDon said:
As a comedian once said: for an atheist, people live in a beautiful, complex, wonderfully unfathomable natural world! Unless there is a God, in which case people live in a terrible world full of horrors!

Another one I like is: some atheists know the Bible better than the priests... at least, the parts where someone dies! :)

I'm a theist who believes that God is omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent. Given that belief, then logically, if God is all those things, then whatever happens is for the long-term best. It doesn't explain anything -- it falls under the "mysterious ways of God" -- but it does provide optimism when bad things happen to me. Though the logic is not sound (since the existence of God is an assumed premise), the logic is valid. It's the natural conclusion of belief in an omni-God.

I was an atheist for the first 30 or so years of my life before becoming a theist. I don't see how being an atheist results in pessimism. I certainly wasn't a pessimist in that stage. That there are good things and bad things in the world is obvious. No after-life means that the bad things stop at death, which is a comforting thought. So I disagree with the OP that atheists have no "underlying (spiritual) beliefs". Metaphysical naturalism can provide underpinning values that aid in satisfaction in life. But I do think that optimism is helped by some kind of metaphysical underpinning, even at a subconscious level.
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To me it's always a very lazy way out. Yeah, my god is all powerful and all caring, but I am just too stupid to understand why bad things happen.
I'm happy it give you comfort, but it always reminds me of people trapped in abusive relationships. Yeah (s)he really loves me, it just my fault I said the wrong thing so they had to beat me up.
 
Lukraak_Sisser said:
But to theists this needs to be planned. Your god, or spirits, *wanted* that boy to die. It or they actively made sure his life was cut short and his family and friends will carry that wound for the rest of their lives. How can you live with the thought beings that do that control your lives? That all the horrors in the world, of which this is just a small example are planned and beyond your control to change? Is that not actual pessimism?
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No that's not a justified assumption at all. You cannot get all of that from being a theist alone.

Foster Zygote said:
All this talk of the "optimism" of eternal salvation ignores the all too common component of eternal suffering in religious beliefs for those who don't follow the rules. What's more pessimistic than thinking that most people who die are bound for eternal suffering?
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A fair point
 
A modest adaptation of Aridas's proposition about early chrrrristians:

They have no way to fight back with either reason or evidence, so they resort to vindictive fantasy.

By changing the tense, you can apply it to the religionists, and to their close allies the haters, of today.

Adapting it again to apply to atheists, and to the liberal-spirited in general:

They can argue using both reason and evidence, and have no need for vindictive fantasy.

Damn, Dr. Aridas, this feels like grad school again, only a helluva lot more fun!
 
theprestige said:
I confess I haven't encountered a lot of "out and proud" atheists outside this forum. But every one of them seems to harbor a characteristic disdain, if not outright hatred for their fellow man.
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What is an "out and proud" atheist? :confused: Are you implying that everyone who is atheist necessarily announces it to the world? Because that is not at all the case.
 
Foster Zygote said:
Same here, although I didn't know it for a long time. He loved my mom, and had been going through the motions for her sake. When she passed away in 2013, he asked me if I still believed in God. When I answered "no", he surprised me by saying, "me neither".
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My father was raised in an atheist family. My mother had a religious upbringing and rejected it to become an atheist. Their good-natured "I'm more of an atheist than you are" bickering is a joy to behold.

Dave
 
Aridas said:
To poke at this subject, it's been a while since I delved into it, but IIRC, hell fairly certainly was a concept absorbed from Zoroastrianism, where it served a role more along the lines of limited cleansing suffering that achieved justice than eternal damnation and punishment. I also recall reading of very early, quite influential figures for the forming doctrines of Christianity writing gleefully about looking down from heaven and laughing at the immense suffering of everyone who didn't believe their claims and ending up with the impression that the whole eternal suffering thing is likely the result of early leaders having hurt feelings when the absurdities that they preached were inevitably mocked and they had no way to fight back against the mocking with either reason or evidence, so they resorted to vindictive fantasy.
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Tertullian, one of the early fathers of the church, was one of those. He suggested that the saved souls in Heaven would experience intense pleasure, by observing the eternal suffering of the unfortunate souls in Hell. Must have been nice guy, don't you think?
 
Foster Zygote said:
My problem with the definition "out and proud" is that it implies that the rest of the atheists are "closeted" - that they're somehow hiding their atheism. On the rare occasions that I've been directly asked in conversation, I've immediately stated that I'm an atheist. But it's not something I feel the need to announce to everyone I meet.
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Not so much in recent years, but I used to be fairly careful not to tell some co-workers I am atheist. Believers would occasionally react with distrust or even fear.
 
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