Showing posts with label existence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label existence. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Why I am so sure that God doesn't exist

Why am I so sure that god doesn’t exist? 

I would say “I can just feel it!” but that wouldn’t make sense. It’s like that feeling when you are standing in the middle of nature, in awe, and a theist says “Wow! I feel god out here!”. No, you feel science. You feel plants, animals and fresh air. Yes, it is beautiful but I don’t know why you would want to feel a wrinkly old man out here. 



I can’t just say that I “feel” god doesn’t exist. There has to be a reason. There has to be logic. Ironically, it was logic that led me to believe god doesn’t exist. 

When I was 7 years old I found out the Easter Bunny wasn’t real after looking it up in the phone book and discovering there was no “Bunny, E”. My mom admitted it and I asked her if God existed since the easter bunny doesn’t exist. 

God is pretty much the same idea as the tooth fairy, easter bunny and Santa, except adults still believe in God.

What if God was just like Santa? Like “Oh you don’t have to act good! God doesn’t exist! We just die and there’s no afterlife because that doesn’t make sense! HAHAHA GOTCHA LIL’ JOHNNY!”

I digress.

I am so sure god doesn’t exist because it doesn’t make logical sense. A man in a sky telling you what to do and what not to do? Earth created by another man? We are just animals, like cats or snakes. We just happened to figure things out faster than any other animal. We are not that special. We are quite stupid to have created a god out of our minds and said “This fictional man did it!” and have a huge population believe this is true.

I am an atheist because of logic. I am an atheist because believing in something with no proof doesn’t make sense. I am an atheist because just because religions have existed for a long period of time, doesn’t make their beliefs a fact. It does make their actions funny things for us to read in textbooks. 





Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Annoyed Atheist

I was extremely annoyed yesterday, although it is mostly my fault.

I have inevitably been doing a lot of thinking about atheism, since I am writing a comedy book about atheism, but also because I decided to take Religious Studies in my first year at university.

Let me give you some background before I tell today's story. I am an (agnostic) atheist and I am pretty strong on my views. I was talking to somebody close to me about theism and atheism and how I am taking the Religious Studies course. 

I was explaining my reason for taking Religious Studies to this person and for your curiosity, it is for a few reasons:
1. I genuinely find religions fascinating
2. I feel like I will have more credibility than the average theist if I have taken a religion course, I feel like I might get something out of it
3. There is a 3rd year atheist course I want to take (which can be counted towards my Philosophy degree) but I have to have the 1st year credit to take it.

So I was explaining this (well the first and third reasons) to this person and then I jokingly said "Hey! At the end of first year I could change my major to Religion!" and they responded "Why would you do that?"

I actually took a little bit of offence to this, but I let it slip. I started talking about my majors again as well as what that might mean for me if I decide to go into teaching (which I likely will).

At one point in time, deep into the conversation this person said something along the lines of "You can't be a teacher if you think that".

This is making me furious just sitting here typing it. They were referring to me being an atheist. 

Excuse me? I can't be a teacher if I am atheist? And people wonder why theists frustrate me so much.

I tried to explain that as a teacher you have to be open minded and obviously if I were to ever teach a course (we were specifically talking about teaching a religion course) in high school that I would have to share all aspects and points of view of a subject, and as a teacher I can barely even share my opinion (which is part of the reason why I am not leaning towards NOT wanting to be a teacher). To be a teacher you must be open-minded, which I am fully aware of. This person seems to think I am going to start forcing atheism down people's throats in a classroom.

Anyways, I was attempting to explain this, but this person wouldn't shut up. They kept talking over me. This is when our conversation that led to debate which led to disagreement, then became an argument. I started shouting out to "shut up and let me talk" and this person wouldn't let me.

That is basically the end of this. I didn't get a chance to explain anything because they wouldn't SHUT UP. 

I am furious. I am annoyed. These little interactions with theists or even just people close to me, make me want to stomp out a puppy. 

This led me to cry a little. Not because we argued, I was literally crying because some people are so (for lack of a better word) STUPID and can't be open-minded. 

Sometimes when I talk atheism vs. theism I am offensive. I honestly don't care. I feel the need to push my limits because I look at theism almost like a societal crisis. A mass group of people believe in something that doesn't exist! Can you really blame me for wanting to stop it? 

I cry because I am so frustrated that people won't be open-minded to really realize god doesn't exist.

Although saying this to a theist means nothing, because they just try to rationalize me being atheist by saying I am the devil, by saying that I had a bad childhood or I am just mad at god. 

NO. I am just the only sober person in a world filled with idiots drunken and poisoned by theism.

I feel like to a theist right now that I am actually pretty funny because I seem like the idiot. Trust me, I'm not.

I think that my point in saying all of this is that I have realized (once again) that I can't control everyone. I feel like my ideas, opinions, etc., should be the world. I fully believe I am correct. But I am also 100% sure that everyone thinks the same about their own ideas. Back in my Grade 12 philosophy course I would always answer questions by first stating that there is no correct answer because everyone's views are different, and would go on to tell my views and explain why.

I just have to accept that not everybody is going to agree with me. I just hope that there are some groups of people that will listen to me.

I have 2 last little tidbits about atheism to dissolve away from my rant...

1. I was considering getting an atheist themed tattoo, mostly just because people's cross tattoos annoy me, but also because I am an atheist and I wanted to display it. I soon talked myself out of it because I rationalized that it is weird to display that I have a belief in something that is a belief that something doesn't exist. It's like getting a tattoo saying "Frog-birds don't exist" to me. So I am not getting it, because I think it's weird.

2. My book. I shall reveal a little more. Not too much, though. I don't want my blog to become my process and ideas of my book. I already said that:
1. I am writing a book about atheism
2. It is comical

Now I shall reveal sort of the premiss. It is directed for the atheist reader, although some aspects may apply to theists. It's sort of a how-to book for atheists, but it is all completely bogus stuff, making it funny. Sort of. I may change some parts, I have barely started it. It is still in the brainstorming process. It will forever be in the brainstorming process, until it is published (which I hope someday, it will be). 

Does anybody else get really annoyed when someone has the complete opposite idea about something that you believe in? 
















Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Why I am a Nihilist

I am a nihilist. This means I believe life has no actual purpose. I don't think there is a reason humans are on this earth. I think we have about as much purpose on this life as any other living organism does, even non-living things.

I don't think we were placed here by some god. I do not think that we have some moral purpose or afterlife to attend to. I think we just evolved. I guess I believe in evolution. I am not committing to that belief though. But it's the closest thing I believe.

I think we are just here.

There is no natural purpose for humans to be here.

I think that many people will argue that there is a purpose to life, not just religious or moral people, but even people with similar religious beliefs to me. It is a social purpose.

They will say things like:
  • We have to get a job to contribute to society, economically and socially
  • We work together within families
  • We have friends, we live for people
  • Life has a purpose, it is to live with other people alongside each other and help each other

Therefore even though life has no natural purpose, life has a social purpose.

We have a social duty to each other. Great! So I guess that means I'm not a nihilist, right? Wrong.

I am also an individualist. I serve myself before the society. I do not like things within this society. Therefore I don't want to live out societies' social purposes. 

So living out society's purpose, doesn't appeal to me, therefore even though I believe there is a social purpose to life, I don't want to commit to it.

So there brings up the argument "Well why don't you just kill yourself?". That is the first thing people say to nihilists. For example, this post which pissed me off earlier. Well why don't I? Honestly. Why don't I kill myself?

I honestly have no idea. If I don't live for other people, I don't live for this society, and I don't think we have a natural purpose, why don't I just kill myself?

I want to say things like "I want to change society to my ideal, so I live for that" or "I don't want to hurt my family", but they aren't even 100% true. 

If I wanted to fully support the argument I am trying to make, I should just kill myself.

But I haven't. Some parts of me do want to have kids and become a teacher, but other parts of me just see no purpose to anything, and I just either want to die or become a hermit. 

Honestly I can make the argument that I can't stomach the thought of killing myself, let alone another person. I can't even stomach dissections. If I were to kill myself, it couldn't be painful. It would be a poison, or injection of some kind. 

But I think I like myself too much to kill myself. I hate everyone, I hate everything, but I like myself. I am pretty fine with the way I am, so I don't really see a requirement to kill myself, even though I think life is purposeless.

I am not sure if there is an afterlife. I don't think if there is an afterlife, we serve some form of divine purpose to act a certain way on earth, to get there. I think you just go there no matter what. Like different dimensions, or something. But I think it is more logical to say that nothing happens when you die, and you just sort of rot. There are a lot of things in this world we don't know of. Maybe the soul travels on. Maybe the soul has a purpose to keep travelling on. Now, I don't believe if the soul exists, and if the soul has a purpose, that it is moral, but maybe it does live on, and take other forms. Who knows. I don't know. You don't know. We don't know.

These are the mysteries of the world.

But for now I am alive. I don't plan on killing myself. 

Plus I need to stay alive to teach other people their life has no purpose, right?