How do you atheists stay so calm, not believing in a God?

Let us speak about religion who is very important for many Americans...
I'm really sorry if I gave a bad impression with my question. I didn't mean to insult anyone. This is no way was a derogatory question/statement against atheists.
Atheism I would call not believing in 'A God', not a specific God. People keep on referring to some terrible God. I'm not talking about a specific God, just not believing in a God at all.
Is atheism a good way to live?

 

Atheism isn't a "way to live", it's a singular characteristic. It can (though won't always) have consequences and effects on how a person lives but they could be vastly different effects in different people.

The key thing to remember is that atheism isn't the opposite of religion, it's the opposite of theism. You can only make as many generic statements about atheism and all atheists as you can about theism and all theists.

 

it's actually very easy. I dont fear death, and fear of death is THE reason people need to postulate a "life after death", or some 'god". Death is a welcome surcease from pain for us all (one day). So why fear it? We are all condemned to death at birth and death is what gives life MEANING, Since we HAVE to have death, why fear it? Being grievously maimed/terminally ill, or enslaved are worse than death, so death offers us an "out" from those intolerable conditions. Once you realize these facts are the case, then why bother with a 'god', hmm?

 

Buddhism is basically a non theistic way of life - so yes, having a God isn't really necessary for millions of people.

 

The question is either very poorly-worded or just generally I'll-conceived because I can't really figure out what the OP is trying to address specifically. I remain calm by trying to surround myself with things that make me feel happy and comfortable: friends, family, music, nature, and pursuing my professional goals.

 

To reply to the title: First of all, why should atheists be not calm, because they do not believe in a god? I personally see 2 ways to interpret your statement:
First- Without a god, you think you would be not calm
Second- From the first conclusion and the nature of most monotheistic religions, that is believing in an afterlive, I combine that you either fear death, which is perfectly normal for every living beeing, or you dont know very much about science and think therefore that everything in the world was caused by God without a proper explanation for it meaning that you would be bound to fear the unkown without your explanation for everything: God, which is also perfectly normal and nothing bad.
Now I combine that you think all atheists share those two fears, and it would be almost a lie to say that this is false, because these fears are within almost every living beeing, capable of thinking.
I cant speak for others but for the fear of death, I have those two things I expect on beeing developed in the future:
http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading
To explain everything in the world I have science.
There is also the fact that not believing in a God is something perfectly normal for every atheist and therefore not shocking for them. Its as natural as breething.

 

I've seen believers in natural disasters they are largely not calm even though if they die they supposedly go to a better place. I'm calm because life is life its bad and good, you will someday die so have some pride being the product of millions of years of our species evolving to this point and go out with pride. Try to void death but if it comes try to leave with the world better off.

 

Anyone that is claiming to know what they cannot know, should not live in that paradigm. For it's living in a delusion. No one knows, that is the fact of the matter. But then we state an opinion, and claim it is fact. LOL. We are very much like children, even once grown.

 

How do you keep so calm not believing in unicorns or the tooth fairy ?

 

many religions do not believe in Gods, just as many religions do believe in Gods

Atheism and Theism.....

 

I don't understand the question.

Why do you think all atheists are calm? Why do you think atheism is a way of life? Atheism ONLY means not believing in a god or gods....it doesn't mean we live a certain way.

 

It's not a way to live. It's just a thing that you are. Much like a lot of things that I just happen to be, it has little to no real impact on my day to day life. I don't believe in ghosts either, so if not for other people mentioning such things, I probably wouldn't even think about it. It's just a non-issue.

 

How does a theist stay calm, knowing there is a dictatorial, evil tyrant watching their every move and waiting to punish them with INFINITE torture if they slip up?
I mean, here we have to deal with Judge, but even he's not that scary.
Just imagine Muslims with their Sheitan...

 

What does calmness have to do with believing in sky monsters (who can kill you with a mere thought)?

Most theists I know seem to spend their lives placating these sky monsters, which strikes me as the very opposite of calm.

 

I'm having a hard time pinning down what you want an answer to. I don't see my calm as being dependent on my stance on religious world views. I would have to have the argument why my religious attitude should matter before I can address it.

 

I generally refer to it as rational thought. When one does not rely on the imaginary and instead lives in accepted reality, the world is not scary enough to instil panic and fear that causes the need for remaining calm in the first place. Religion (God) is not conducive to noting the beauty of our world as it instead tells those in its grasp to be afraid, and cause others to do so as well.

 

further to this (bolded), they're taught to believe it's all temporary and relatively meaningless in comparison to what happens post life. taking it a step further (as some do), they're actually taught that things of the world are necessarily wicked. ie, nature.

so .... you live in permanent fear of transgressing poorly defined rules and regulations which may or may not have been accurately translated by primitives thousands of years ago, in a world you philosophically must regard as unclean and meaningless. on top of that, your fellows are all corrupt, and most likely doomed.

if someone is able to extract a feeling of calm from that explosion of horror, I suspect they may be insane.

 

Seems to suit some better than others.

Give it a try, eh.

 

Being atheist is understanding that you are the most important for yourself, not God->you/you-God
I have little from Buddhism but not much, no meditations or diet, only philosophy
Being atheist is easy, believe me

 

It's pretty simple, If there is no god, there is no problem, if there is a god, then if it's a being of love and compassion that some claim, it probably won't really mind that I didn't believe in it. If it's the god of the bible, then, I'll go to hell and take over.

So, yeah, it's cool.

 

Who ever said atheists were calm?

In atheism, there are certain facts about the world you need to totally disregard. To be an atheist, you have to ignore many principals found in human beings. It's not as simple as believing God doesn't exist.

To believe God doesn't exist:
1) You need to figure out how objects came into being. If you believe everything that exists has a cause, then you have to believe something created that cause. If you say everything that exists does not have a cause, then you have to explain why we haven't observed objects sprouting out of nothingness.

2) Then you have to believe morality is subjective. When morality is subjective, then nothing is ever truly good or evil. However, if you claim that evil exists, then you're stating that morality is objective, because then evil would mean the same to everyone (thus the definition of objective in a nut shell).

3) Then the meaning of life is only what you make it. If you cannot make life worth living (because you're handicapped or mentally disabled), then, by definition, your life isn't worth living. If a person comes out and says a mentally disabled person can make their life worth living, then they are burdened with explaining how that is.



It's not that atheists don't believe in God because they aren't compelled to believe. Atheists don't believe in God because they don't want to believe. Some atheists have come out and said that if God truly existed, they will be depressed. The true reality is atheists want to be free. To believe in God would mean that they cannot be free. Atheists want that feeling of absolute freedom to do whatever they want. Unfortunately, that freedom comes at the cost of willful ignorance.

 

1) if you believe in cause and effect, you must explain what caused your god. and no, you can't opt out of the cause/effect rule when it suits you. that's what you accuse atheists of doing, after all. more importantly, you have no (*)(*)(*)(*)ing idea how the universe started. none of us do.

2) morality is simply a survival tool, evolving (into what it is today) the minute we started living in small groups. certain behaviours favoured survival of the group, so were encouraged, and behaviours which brought risk or danger were discouraged. your ignorance of this fundamental of anthropology is no surprise.

3) and once again you express your belief that disabled people cannot have worthwhile lives. I feel bad for you. And I mean that.

Meantime, your imprisonment within the cult compels you to imagine that atheists fear gods, or some such, because it has the effect (in your mind) of making gods seem real. After all, why would atheists fear them if they weren't real, right? The mechanism is very easy to see, from outside the cult. Again, I'm sorry for you.

 

Nike Borzov

To be an atheist, you have to not have a belief in a god. The rest is on an individual basis.

You don't need to do anything. I am eating a chicken, I do not feel the need to know where it came from in order to do so. It doesn't matter. That said, the whole something out of nothing thing has been done to death. It's a very slanted question that asserts that at some point there was nothing. As far as we can tell there was never a nothing for something to come out of. An extremely dense and hot expanding thing is not a nothing. And before you ask me where that came from, you should tell me where a god came from. Because if a god can just always have been there, how could the universe have not always been there in one form or another. The universe need not conform to human story structure after all.

Semantics.

It's nice to know that you believe the physically and mentally handicapped can't make their lives worth living without a god. I'm going to go out on a limb and think they might not only disagree but be greatly offended. If you want to know why a persons life is worth living you have to ask them. What you or I think has nothing to do with it. It is their life, not ours.

People cannot choose what to believe. It doesn't work that way. If it did I'd find myself some god that wanted me to have fun and be nice to people. One that would reward me with eternal fun when I died. I'd jump on that in a heartbeat, but it's stupid. I couldn't buy that for a second. Just like I can't believe any of these current popular religions.

I don't believe in a god or gods because it's absolute nonsense. No part of it holds any water. None. If there was only a lone man running around, dressing up in costumes, and claiming the ideas of a religion were true they'd call him delusional. However, because it's the norm it gets to be okay. Even our books on mental illness have to point out how since religion is an accepted norm it doesn't fall under some form of delusion. People who say things like this always forget all the other people who don't believe in their god but believe in some other one. Do those people only believe in that one because they want freedom from yours? Or do you have some other absurd way of explaining that? How about all those people who were around before the idea of your god? Was that just all about freedom too?

Is it too hard to understand that other people really don't believe in your god? That it really makes no sense to them? I'll try to explain the best I can. Think of Tlaloc, the Aztec rain god. How do you feel about it? Do you believe in it? Mindbogglingly laughable, right? That's how an atheist feels about yours. Get it?

 

Alright. So, here's the burden I was speaking of... What could a mentally disabled do to make their life worth living? For example: my gf's uncle has water on the brain. He's paralyzed from the shoulder down and he's blind. So, if you could just let me know what he could do to make his life worth living, that would be awesome.

1) People can't choose what to believe? So.... You're saying it's involuntary? People are just born with particular beliefs in mind?

2) Ok. Believing in God is non-sense. So.... How did you come to that conclusion?

3) Understandable. I totally understand that you believe God is a fairy tale. How much evidence was presented to you in favor of theism?

 

No you don't. You only need to know how they did not come into being. And "objects" is a broad abstract term that doesn't work here. How did Papa Smurf come into being? Unless you created him yourself how would you know that? Just because you have a concept of Papa Smurf doesn't mean he exists in reality. His non-existence changes nothing in the belief of his existence.

You're leaving out the effect in the equation. Everything in the natural world has a cause. It also has an effect. Presuming an effect is presuming a cause. This is temporally dependent. We cannot divorce our thoughts from the temporal. It a pointless exercise...unless it works. How does one say....fruits?

Yes.

Yes.

Evil doesn't exist. You interjected that in there.

Yes. Not so bad, right?

That's for the mentally disabled person to decide. I can't tell them their life isn't worth living if they don't believe it. Their life is worth living. Maybe a God would think they would be better served dead, and their spirits in his kingdom? But nobody would agree with that because God is not real. It's an abstraction of moral thought, and poorly done at that.

Not really. You are the only one compelling anyone in this discussion to believe. I would sooner believe in Big Foot because Big Foot hunters are more compelling on behalf of Big Foot than you are for God. Don't try to convince me of what I don't believe. Convince me of what you believe, it's more effective.

Theists want that feeling too, they just go about it the completely wrong way...and also arrive at willful ignorance.