Atheists: Are you intelligent?

Question

I don't mean like Steven Hawking, but are you able to reason and think enough to get by?

If you say yes, what makes you believe that the rest of the universe is just a bunch of dead particles bouncing around for your amusement? Or do you have another way to describe your relationship to the universe?

(Oh, and by the way, I'm an 'atheist' so I'm not trying to draw you into some belief in 'God'. )

I'm just trying to understand what your perceived relationship to the universe is.

Answer 1

Right now, I'm totally digging on a "Law of attraction" and "Thoughts are things"

I was raised Catholic and I gotta say a lot of it didn't add up for me. On a monthly basis my view of it shifted from my religion being a social club, to a lovely fine traditional institution, to a method of social control. Some days I managed to convince myself that there was a benevolent being watching over me. And then I would wonder where they were watching from and my mind woud explode as I tried to imagine some kind of barrier at the end of space where heaven began.

In my mid-twenties I suffered severe depression, call it a quarter-life crisis. I got some nice medication and a counselor and I began thinking about the powerful effect the way I thought about myself in the grand scheme of things had upon my experience.

I decided that there was no roadmap written for my life. I decided that I don't have control of many things, but the things I can control are important. I decided that everyday I choose what is going to happen to me and how I am going to feel about it. I decided things have meaning because of the meaning I ascribe to them, acurate or not.

Basically, I changed my mind and sought like-minded people. That's where I found out about "The secret" and how to use it to my advantage. "The secret" is what makes me smile when I see some red faced person in my rear view mirror because I'm going 60 in the rightmost lane of a 4-lane 65 mph highway. The fellow can easily go around me, but he chooses to be angry at the situation he's in instead of looking for a solution.

The universe is not random, it's just conducted by the wills and thoughts of so many people that it's hard to just why the wind is blowing the way it does. It's kind of like "Multiplayer Pong" or an interactive whiteboard where lots of people are trying to spell things with letters on a slate. Some people are working towards a goal, and some people are working to thwart their efforts.

I try to see myself not just as one person, but part of a continuum of a bloodline, of a generation, of a citizen in a country, as a human on the planet, etc. This pursuit of philosophical unity brings down the volume of the hubub so I don't see myself as something small, but rather as a powerful aspect of a much greater whole.

I decided it's easier for someone to dissuade me from belief in some stuff they taught me in CCD than for someone to shake my own confidence in myself. Egoito ergo sum. All I know is right here in my heart.

Someday I will return to a parish simply because I would like to marry my fiance in a church, because I think it is a fine tradition and churches are beautiful and they do say some nice stuff in church. Somehow I will just have to the browbeating about having children and raising them in the faith. Catholics are funny.

Answer 2

OK, I know that I am intelligent because i have the test results form all the exams that I have been subjected to over the past year and a half.
The universe just a bunch of dead particles bouncing around for my amusement?
Not really, but I don't think it was specially created by some supernatural power to revolve around me either.
I am smart enough to know that I don't have the math or the training to understand everything about the works of the universe.
But I don't need to believe that it only exists because God willed it ,or that to ask for more information is heresy punishable by burning at the stake.

Answer 3

The universe is too large to have any kind of relationship with. I conect with those around me, I fill my life with meaning, by helping out around the house, doing small thing that most people take for granted.

If what you are really asking is 'what have I replaced God with?' Then my answer would annoyingly enough have to be love...Yeh it sounds cheesy, but it's true.

I don't care about particles and technically am more of an agnostic than an athiest, but still. I came to my conclusions about there being no God not because of science or the universe, but by studying the world around me through human eyes.

I believe in the big-bang theory and evolution, yes, but only because they seem a lot more logical and reasonable than any answer religion has given me.
Basically I'm trying to say yes I think I do have enough reason to get by because I do not depend souly apon one thing (e.g science, religion, spirituality) I mix them up and try to come to the most likley conclusions about how the world was made, but more importantly how we should live in it.

Answer 4

Weird question. I am able to reason and think enough to get by. Extremely well, thank you. My perceived relationship to the universe? I don't have one. I was born in Michigan, I live in Michigan, and I raise my family in Michigan. I vacation all over the country so I don't no about a bunch of dead particles bouncing around. Sounds like you need some guidance in your life. Here's how I live. I don't steal, I don't cheat, I treat everybody like I liked to be treated, and I have fun! Pretty simple, but it works. Good luck

Answer 5

I am part of the universe. It is not there for my amusement. I thought that was the Christian view - that some god created the universe just for them?

Yes, I consider myself intelligent. I'm in the same field as Hawking.

Answer 6

I believe that I am also nothing but a bunch of particles bouncing around. Life is a chemical reaction, nothing more. We are just one independant unit of a chemical reaction that began billions of years ago -- our particular segment of that reaction began when our parents created sperm and ova... and their parents, and so on through the evolutionary chain -- in short, we aren't separate life forms, we are a continuation of the same reaction.

It's like this. Set up an oscillating reaction totalling 1L. At its 50/50 state, split the vat in two. Pour them into two 1L vats, and add enough of the appropriate chemicals to fill the two 1L vats. Are they new chemical reactions, or continuations of the original, just in two separate vats? And if you keep doing this until you have 2^32 vats, did the original reaction ever stop, or did it keep going just with the addition of more chemicals?

In short, I am nothing, the universe is nothing, it just exists, no separation between me, the reaction we call life, and the universe it exists in.

Answer 7

I am agnostic. I am not a rocket scientist, nor have I been in space. I am a tiny human on 1 planet that orbits one sun. Dead, who said anything about dead? Which atheist did you see say the universe is dead particles? I am sure that it wasn't the atheists that I see here frequently. Give me a name and back up your claim.

Answer 8

I'm not really an atheist, but if I was...

I would believe that I could think and reason. I would think that my ability to do so was a freak of nature, but a fun one. I would try not to think of my relationship to the universe except in that I would be happy to be there and would want to enjoy myself as much as possible while I was there.

Answer 9

I think we're in the middle of a chaotic random mess where things are only considered "normal" because the probability is highest for them to happen. Not much you can do about it unless you play outside the rules, but that's another story altogether.

Answer 10

yes. i do not think you are an atheist. Is more intelligent to base your life off a book that's thousands of years old with no proof beyond that book? Or to believe that the earth earth is what science continually proves?