Is Atheism a delusion?

Question

I'm not sure who is more deluded, the Believers or the Atheists.
Here's a few things I've been wondering -you might want to do a copy & paste in WordPad. :-)

1. If you believe that there is no life after death, why haven't you invested in having your head frozen after death? It probably wouldn't work but isn't a slight chance of survival better than none?

2. Do you think about death or is just something that happens to other people?

3. Why do you have children if you know that you are condemning them to face being obliterated from existence the same as you do?

4. Where do you think life (and by life I mean consciousness and sentience) comes from?

5. Why do you think it is more likely that the Universe came into existence from nowhere by itself than being created by a God - or Gods? Both are equally impossible events.
And before anyone gives me the "in quantum physics, effect can precede cause" answer, you must then answer how that law of quantum physics came into existence.

This has quite surprised me. No offense, but most of the answers that the Atheists here are using are just as bizarre and illogical as I've read in the Believer and Christian topics.

Regarding cryogenics, how can you put a price on a chance for survival? If you are going to be erased from existence then you will NOT care about your children or family, or have any memories or emotions of any kind. No price could be too high.

And creating even a single atom from nothing is EXACTLY the same in terms of probability as creating a giant banana, a talking purple dinosaur or an entire Universe from nothing! How can anyone not get that?

I'm exasperated! ;-D
But feel free to mail me if anyone wants to comment.

"But you live on in the hearts and minds of the people who loved you and the lives you touched while you were alive."

Tina, what would that matter? If you don't exist then you can't care. If you don't exist anymore then you won't care about it anymore than someone who hates and despises your friends and family: You would not be a person anymore.

Answer 1

Is being a vegetarian a delusion? Is being Christian a delusion? No it's a choice. Though it might not be the choice you made still wouldn't call it a delusion.
1) I eat frozen meat and I can assure you is dead. No 'slight chance'.

2) Oh no... I'm immortal! Unbelievable... Anyways yes I think abt it and it will happen to all of us...in case you wonder :p

3) 1st of all some people don't have children. Do some reading and you'll find many respectful human beings with no children. And then again some are hopeful things will change, others are just opsies! No one condemns any of their children to any 'obliterated existence' individuals have actual rights, including the right to choose their beliefs even if different from their parents. (It's a miracle! :p)

4) That's how you define life? Tht' sad because life it's so much more than that. But then again only time can say whether you will ever be capable of experiencing it. As far as 'consciousness and sentience' Instead of coming up with interpretations from the Bible and quotes from a Pastor people should try humbleness and honesty such as 'I don't know'. If anyone has the one single answer we don't need the Yahoo answers for anything ever again.

5) "The Universe came from nowhere by itself." Wow your sources of quantum physics are great but I must say there are some 'crazy scientists' out there that actually state (again try some of that honesty and humbleness) that in regards to the big bang theory they do not know exactly what came before it. And believe me or not that doesn't mean 'the Universe came from nowhere by itself' quite a stretch.
Though of course the data about God's Earth making recipe makes so much more sense to me.

Answer 2

Where's the delusion in any of that?

"1. If you believe that there is no life after death, why haven't you invested in having your head frozen after death? It probably wouldn't work but isn't a slight chance of survival better than none?"

As a frozen head? Nope.

Better is to live life while it's still here.

"2. Do you think about death or is just something that happens to other people?"

Atheists believe in death. Ask the Christians, who don't.

"3. Why do you have children if you know that you are condemning them to face being obliterated from existence the same as you do?"

Because they get to live life? That should be obvious. Is it really so hard for Christians to imagine valuing life?

"4. Where do you think life (and by life I mean consciousness and sentience) comes from?"

We don't know yet, but we're getting close. It's in neural firings, of course.

"5. Why do you think it is more likely that the Universe came into existence from nowhere by itself than being created by a God - or Gods? Both are equally impossible events."

Nope, that's false. The "god" schtick begins with all of the difficulties of any natural explanation, then adds the additional problems of where God came from, how a "god" could have created a universe, and why there isn't any evidence for such a god. It's not merely a worse explanation - it's not an explanation at all.
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"No offense, but most of the answers that the Atheists here are using are just as bizarre and illogical as I've read in the Believer and Christian topics".

No, they're not. You're just determined to convince yourself that they are. You're willfully choosing to not understand any of this.

Answer 3

I'm an atheist.

1. Right, it probably won't work. And I'm not a gambling man. I would rather use the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would cost to undergo such a procedure to leave to my family or charity upon my death, as well as donating my organs to people who need them, or even donate my entire body to a medical school so that it can be used to train new doctors. Then I will be sure that there is a beneficial effect, and one greater than such a gamble.

2. Sure, I think about it. I try to enjoy life as much as I can as a result, because I'm not expecting "round 2" after I die. Life is more precious to those who do not believe in afterlives.

3. Life is about much more than its end. Think about it.

4. Uh, why don't you just say "consciousness and sentience," then? Consciousness comes from the coming together of all of our senses, and our brains combining all of the inputs to give us a 'complete' (as complete as is possible--we can't sense nearly everything, you know. For example, the part of the spectrum of light that is visible to humans is something like 1% of the entire spectrum) awareness of our surroundings.

5. First of all, the Big Bang comes closer to saying "the universe was always there in some form or another" than "the universe came into existence fom nowhere by itself." I've never seen any scientist state the latter. Secondly, both are not equally impossible--one of them adds an extra variable: God. However unlikely the universe just being there may be, it is MORE unlikely that a suggestion that adds another variable to the equation is correct. Simple logic--Occam's Razor dictates that it is more likely that there is no supernatural agent that's 'behind' the universe, since there is no evidence of such an agent existing.

Also, there is no way one could ever prove "God did it," because in the EXTREMELY unlikely (in fact, probably impossible, due to the very distinct possibility that there are natural forces we are completely unaware of, and therefore hypotheses concerning them will never occur to us, so we'll never truly 'run out' of natural explanations. But I digress; I'll assume it's merely "EXTREMELY unlikely") scenario that all natural hypotheses are exhausted, one is stuck there. It is literally impossible to prove one supernatural guess over another--one can't say it was God and not aliens, or not ghosts, or not some other supernatural force never even conceived of by humans. This is why "God did it" will never work as an explanation for anything. That's something you'll just have to accept--it's a necessary consequence of having beliefs in the supernatural.

Answer 4

1 - Because I'm not silly. All things must come to an end, good or bad.

2 - It happens to every thing known in existence.

3 - So they can have a chance to make a difference in the world..? So they can live life..? I mean, are you stupid..?

4 - I don't know, but does that REALLY point to an invisible man in the sky?

5 - Then who created a God or Gods(which doesn't need to be capitalized anyways)? Wait. He was always there? Then why the HELL does the universe need to be created?

Answer 5

1) I have no desire to live forever, and I have no doubt that, even if everything worked out, I'd be as out of place in the world of 100 years from now as someone from 1907 would be here and now. They'd hate it.

2) Death isn't as scary to everyone as you imply it is for you. So you stop existing - so what?

3) I don't have children - in part because I think life is somewhat overrated.

4) Sentience - such as we understand it to be - appears to be an emergent property of a suitably complex brain. But, it, too, is overrated. Most humans are thick, and all of them are robotic.

5) Your assumption about what atheists think of the origin of the universe is bowdlerised nonsense. I can't explain it to you here, but suffice it to say that it's a lot more plausible than Goddidit.

CD

Answer 6

1. If you believe that there is no life after death, why haven't you invested in having your head frozen after death? It probably wouldn't work but isn't a slight chance of survival better than none?

Why is death so scary to you?
is it so hard to believe that people don't fear not existing
pretty much all your points follow that fear of death path.

Life is like a single day, as it wears on you get more tired by the end of it you just want to sleep

Answer 7

Nope, it's the antithesis of delusion.

1) Are you willing to cough up the money? If so, heck, I'll do it. No, wait, I'm donating my organs and that may include my eyes. Ah well, perhaps in the future they can create new ones for me!

2) I do. It scares me.

3) I don't think of it that way. I'm not sure why you would either.

4) Abiogenesis. Evolution.

5) It's not thought of that way. The Big Bang doesn't postulate that "something came from nothing".

Answer 8

Why would I want to copy and paste in WordPad?

1. Why would I freeze my head? What would be the point, except I can make my inheritors place my severed cold head proudly on display (which actually sounds like a good posthumous joke: "This is my third cousin Janet* - we have to keep her head in a refridgerated glass cabinet or we lose her awesome house"...)? I still need a heart, a liver, lungs, kidneys, a circulation system, a gall bladder, a digestive tract and all manner of other things to live.

Besides, why would my not existing be so scary? I mean, I don't want to die - I'm not about to kill myself - but I didn't exists for aeons before my birth, so why would not continuing to do so affect this world so much? The only reason people care if they live is *because* they live - if they're dead, they can't care.

Regarding your cryogenics note, I'm not scared of leaving this world because it will likely be painless and anybody who was affected by it will follow shortly enough, so any pain I could cause wouldn't be permanent. And I don't want eternal life, I don't want to become Quinn***.

2. I know death happens to everyone, but its hopefully way into the future for me, so there's no point in thinking about it now.

I'm not about to make plans, say my last goodbyes, etc whilst I'm still young and healthy (I don't have any terminal illnesses that I'm aware of, I'm not genetically likely to throw blood clots, etc) - in the incident of my accidental death, my parents know my few wish (to have some of my ashes sent into space after a funeral that has fireworks and "I'm on the Highway to Hell" by AC/DC playing). Outside of that, why think about it now - its probably not iminent? Remember, "Don't worry 'bout the future, sooner or later its in the past"**.

3. I don't have children because I can't stand them for anything more than 5 hours at a time, but the whole point - outside of the joy it brings to peoples' hearts, the meaning it gives to life, its rewarding feeling, etc, etc - is so our species can survive because we need the next generation to carry on existing. That is the ultimate aim of it all, not to give them back to god.

4. It comes from your mind, which is a moderately evolved and capable of making you feel because its better for our survival - if we feel love, we protect our species; if we feel fear, we can take safety precautions; if we feel pain, we can hopefuly avoid accidents involving bursting into flame whilst touching an extremely hot oven.

Life doesn't need feelings, though - look at moss (and why wouldn't you want to?) It has no feelings, no senses, nothing outside of the pure biological need to plant, yet its one of the oldest organisms on the earth.

5. 'Nothing' is a physics nothing, which is of course not actual nothing at all - it was more like every piece of matter squeezed together in a tiny area, smaller than the dot on this 'i'. This tiny area was then forced open by the pressure and the matter was spread, creating space as it went.

Its more likely simply because we can prove it; ever heard of red shift, which proves that objects are moving away from us (the further light travels, the more the light travels to the red end of the spectrum)? The big bang theory states that space didn't exist before then and that it created the universe and still is causing it to grow - red shift proves that other galaxies are moving away.

Atoms and their creation is yet to be explained by science ... but so are so many things; we can't decide if Titan could host life yet. Suffice it to say that you have to accept - at least for the moment - that, sometimes, irregularites arise and things that shouldn't happen do. For example, can you explain how people with cancer spontaneously go into remission? No, but they do - for whatever reason, it just stops attacking their body.

And cause can preceed effect ... and no, I can't explain how, I'm not a physics professor, I've never studied this extensively. A lot of theists, when they ask about topics like this, don't understand that not all - indeed, not even many - atheists on Y!A have deep scientific education backgrounds. Evidence is conclusive enough for me to accept it happened.

Answer 9

factor one, it somewhat is to no longer do with seeing him bodily, it somewhat is approximately there no longer being a shred of knowledge for him. factor 2, that's a surprisingly shakey ethical point of view to account to your strikes if it somewhat is in basic terms by using fact you experience you're to blame to a "larger potential". factor 3, see factor 2. factor 4, Morality isn't a remember of absolutes and apart from, it somewhat is totally people who regard it in those words that locate it handy. The delusions lie in blind faith. some human beings desire to question and attempt concepts, ethical and in any different case, somewhat than basically settle for what they have been instructed.

Answer 10

1. I f you believe in an afterlife (Which is better) why aren't people killing themselves to get in.
2. Death happens to all of us.
3. I like sex.
4. I came from my parents.
5. I don't believe in anything after death.