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Atheists and their doubts

Posted on: May 13, 2009 - 9:25am

OrdinaryClay

Posts: 440

Joined: 2009-04-19

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Atheists and their doubts

When faced with their own mortality atheists doubt the strength of their own convictions. When it comes time for "lights out" the whole idea of death being equivalent to being not borne gets a worrisome. Why? Because there was no time before not being borne when we thought about not being borne.

Posted on: May 15, 2009 - 9:18am #101

jcgadfly

Posts: 6791

Joined: 2006-07-18

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OrdinaryClay

OrdinaryClay wrote:

FreeHugMachine wrote:
You'd think Christians would all be rushing up to heaven eh?
You are basing your vision of Christians based on your atheist view of the world. Why would someone want to rush to eternity when they have work to do while mortal. There will be plenty of time to enjoy eternity.

Quote:
... You say your goodbyes and you prepare for your demise. I don't see how your explanations of a theist valuing life and family more come into play. I would value my life enough to allow for my end with some dignity. I would value my family enough to not have them suffer for that many more days waiting for the phone to ring that I've passed. Don't try to make selfish acts appear noble.
You seem to have very different experiences then I. My time with my family has never been suffering.

OC, why do you claim you appreciate honesty in one post and then quote mine FHM? Did you think we wouldn't be able to read FHM's post?

Also, why do you consider frightening people into kissing Yahweh's butt the work of Christ? That seems to be all you're trying to do here. Can't you do something more beneficial to humankind?

"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin

Posted on: May 15, 2009 - 9:20am #102

FreeHugMachine

Posts: 152

Joined: 2009-04-02

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OrdinaryClay wrote:You are

OrdinaryClay wrote:

You are basing your vision of Christians based on your atheist view of the world. Why would someone want to rush to eternity when they have work to do while mortal. There will be plenty of time to enjoy eternity.

So your perfect heaven can wait a little bit while you try everything in your power to avoid it? We are not talking new car smell here... this is a terminal illness. I assume you would want to live as long as possible if you were struck deaf blind dumb and paralyzed?

OC wrote:

You seem to have very different experiences then I. My time with my family has never been suffering.

Wow:

1. That sounds like a bold face lie. (I can't imagine you have never once been at odds with a family member)

2. How does my saying "I VALUE MY FAMILY" lend to thinking that I always I suffer with them.

3. Do you honestly think your family would prefer sitting around a hospital/home deathbed an extra month? Do you understand the anxiety and stress you'd be putting them all through? You are just prolonging the grieving process at this point. If you were with minimal pain and in a nearly perfectly conscious state I could understand wanting to prolong life, but towards the end that is rarely the case.

Posted on: May 15, 2009 - 9:25am #103

Manageri

Posts: 392

Joined: 2009-05-09

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OrdinaryClay

OrdinaryClay wrote:

FreeHugMachine wrote:
You'd think Christians would all be rushing up to heaven eh?
You are basing your vision of Christians based on your atheist view of the world. Why would someone want to rush to eternity when they have work to do while mortal. There will be plenty of time to enjoy eternity.

Because why the hell would you care at all what happens in this flimsy excuse of an existance if you KNOW you have eternal paradise awaiting, and all you need to do to get there is jump off a building or shoot yourself? For the same reason, why would "having work to do" in this world (and I wonder what that work might be btw) have any meaning for anyone? If everyone's gonna get to heaven as soon as they die, the logical thing to do is to not only kill yourself, but to nuke the whole world. If you truly believe in heaven, you are being a huge prick by not attempting to destroy the world, and if your excuse is "god wouldn't want me to" then he's the one being a prick and endorsing the prolonging of torture and suffering in the world.

Posted on: May 15, 2009 - 10:37am #104

latincanuck

Posts: 2038

Joined: 2007-06-01

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OrdinaryClay wrote:Wow, you

OrdinaryClay wrote:

Wow, you have a lot of anecdotal evidence.

Quote:
All I can say to that is you have no evidence to back up your claim, I at least can honestly say that many non believers didn't have doubts when their time came, however those believers did have doubts.
Quote:
Oh as well there has been research into this, this is one of the latests ones http://www.acperesearch.net/apr09.html which shows that people suffering from cancer that held relgious views had a higher percentage of wanting life prolonging procedures,
A value for the sanctity of life was not accounted for. This correlation does not really apply to this subject.

"Our findings should not be misinterpreted as denying the experience of many patients who find peaceful acceptance of death and pursue comfort-centered care because of their religious faith. Although religious coping is a theoretically appealing measure of functional religiousness, we cannot say that positive religious coping rather than other religious factors (e.g., religiously based morals) completely accounts for the associations observed. [p. 1146] "

Quote:
Value of life is not the issue here, it is the fact that they are going to die, there is no turing around here, these are terminal cases, however theists tend to have higher cases life prolonging procedures done, even though they are going to die no ands if or buts about it. In my experience (about 7 people) 4 were religions and they did everything to avoid dying, the non believers accepted their faith and died not with doubt but with acceptance of death. If that believers tend to be more doubtful/fearful of death.
Quote:
here is another one regarding physicians and their views of death http://www.tau.ac.il/socialwork/adler/docs/Articles/1_6.pdf which also states that the non religious physcians have less fears about dying/death. There are lots of studies regarding this, I would like to know how you came to your conclusion?
The thread was not about present fear. It is about doubt at the moment of death. The thread has never been about bravery. On the contrary, it is a given we develop communities to bolster our bravery. It is a given we all have fear. Fear may actually be an indicator of less doubt about ones beliefs.

Doubt can be fear, again, can you please back your claim? Or are you just projecting? Because so far, that's all you been doing, you merely made a claim without any thing to back it up. Is this the best you can do? at least I can show you studies that show that your wrong. I can say at least that having experiened death, I have no fear about it, and I have no doubts about dying, it's going to happened, I have accepted the fact that I am going to die. Which is completely different that simply knowing I am going to die.