Answer Me These Questions Three

Question from Stephen:
Dear who ever is reading this,

I am a Christian, now before you get all mad and make judgements please hear me out I just want to ask you a few questions so I get what you believe. Okay so…
1. If you don’t believe in “God” do you believe in a “higher power?” And if you do who is that “higher power?” Would you consider yourself to be “God” over your own life?
2. If you don’t believe in heaven then where do you go when you die?
3. How do you believe the world came to be? Though the Big Bang theory? Or did the earth always exist?

Please respond back with your answers I just want to know more about atheists.

Answer by SmartLX:
No problem Stephen. If I got mad when someone simply identified as Christian, I wouldn’t be able to think straight when answering their questions. I’ve numbered your questions for easy reference.

1. Plenty of entities are more powerful than me. The sun makes me look completely insignificant, when considered in all its enormity. The nation of the Commonwealth of Australia has power over me, since I’m a small part of it. Gravity, while not necessarily an entity, has achieved more than I ever will. The thing is that none of these entities are concerned with the intimate details of how I live my life, so they’re not the kind of “higher power” I can appeal to for practical help in all things. (My country does concern itself with some broad aspects of my life, of course, but fortunately not all.)

Therefore I don’t think there is the kind of “higher power” you’re thinking of. In the absence of this, I certainly don’t feel like the God of my own life because I don’t have anything like that kind of absolute control over it. I do have some control, obviously, but that just makes me a functioning person with my own will, not a god. It suffices.

2. I described my position on death in an earlier piece. Read it here, and comment (here or there) if you have any questions.

3. All the evidence points to a Big Bang, or a similar expansion of all existing matter and energy from a single point in space about 15 billion years ago. The Earth formed about 10 billion years later, coming together from materials orbiting the Sun (which had formed a few hundred million years earlier). You don’t have to be an atheist to think this, and in fact many Christians believe that God caused exactly this to happen. Where atheists differ is that they don’t believe a god was required for it to happen.

2 thoughts on “Answer Me These Questions Three”

  1. Comments like these, by people like Stephen are what really convinces me that the reasoning abilities of most christians are severly crippled. He puts the burden of proof that there is no god on the unbeliever, rather than offering proof that there is. The major reason for that is that there is no proof. That is why it is called “faith”. Faith can be defined as: “something that one believes in but has no credible proof of”. Like ghosts, Nessy, aliens and the like. As far as I am concerned, any one who will buy the mythology and the utter nonsence of the bible as truth is completley out of touch with reality or in denial. If christians could or would remove the blinders that organized religion has placed on them and try to look for the truth, they might eventually wake up learn what reaity is . There is no proof of any diety .
    There is no proof of an afterlife, or heavenly paradise, or even that
    the individual called Jesus actually existed. The ancients who had no knowledge of the natural law or science made up all of these stories to explain things that they could not understand. Now we live in an enlightened era where the church can no longer exercise its tyranical grip on science and the consequence of that has been an explosion of knowledge in science, natural law, and the truth about how the human race came to be. It is amazing to me that
    with all this wealth of information on science, natural law and the proof of evolution, that some still cling to the fantacy and lies that are abundant in the bible. I have to come to the conclusion that religion is, indeed, the opiate of the masses. A crutch for the emotionally crippled. Individauls who can not accept that they will grow old and die, like all life on earth, and that will be the end of it. No afterlife, no heaven or hell, just the same non existant state they were in before they were born . Nothing to nothing and nothing else. I have studied both sides of the coin. I can quote and understand the bible, even more than most who preach it for a living. I do not buy any of it. At one time, long ag I did. I woke up, I got smart, and I found the truth. That truth is in science.
    It is the ONLY tool that we humans have to get to the bottom of things that we do not understand or can not explain. Journeys into the supernatural, such as the bible offers only serve to cause the human race to continue to stagger around in the dark.

  2. Hi Stephen, here is my response to your questions. Note that there is no firm “atheist” outlook on these matters, as atheism is one lack in belief, not a set of principles, beliefs, or a philosophy.

    1. I personally don’t believe in anything that cannot be observed or logically explained. So no, I don’t believe in any sentient magical force (higher power) as you do. Also, the word god has no more meaning to me than the words orc and succubus. It’s just another mythical creature. So no I don’t consider myself the “god” of my own life. I consider myself a sentient being that is a small part of a large community, which is a small part of a larger state, which is a small part of a larger country, and so on and so on. Yes, all my actions and goals are made for myself (and so are yours, even if you don’t admit it), but I also understand that I am just a small part of this crazy thing called existence.

    2. Most people go into the ground or the ocean when they die. Unfortunately when you die that is the end. Your consciousness is gone. You can no longer think, dream, plan, or feel emotions. Nothing happens when you die, because you are no longer able to experience things. I know it’s comforting to think that there is no end (thinking there is an afterlife). But there is an end. That’s just the way it is. Have you ever seen anything that gives you a reason to believe otherwise? Notice I said seen, not read, or heard. Try trusting your own experiences, not tales that other people spoon feed you.

    3. I am a little fascinated with people’s obsession with “how it all began”. Personally I care about as much about that as I care who won the lottery last month. Either way, it doesn’t change that I’m here now, and I’m experiencing what I see,touch,feel,smell,taste, and think every day. I’m not ruled by the past. So how do I think the universe started? I have no clue. Honestly, I think it may be beyond our understanding as humans. We are arrogant and think we can learn EVERYTHING. Well, we can learn alot, but there is no reason to believe that all knowledge is obtainable by us. Humans are nothing special, nothing significant (in the overall picture of the universe). Sure there is the big bang theory. Which makes as little sense to me as the concept of a god to be honest. Although I’ve never studied it extensively. I’m sure the BB theory may make sense if I gave it the hundreds of hours of research it would take to make sense of it all. But, as I don’t really care about how the universe started, it’s not on my list of things to do. And no, the earth definitely did not always exist. From my own understanding of the nature of existence (minus the actual scientific evidence for the age of the earth) nothing is eternal. Even stars die. The only thing I can’t apply this argument to is the Universe. But like I said I really just don’t care how the Universe began, or if it ever did.

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