What Now?

[Alzael]

....With those thoughts in mind, it really makes existence depressing and of course, ultimately meaningless.

Right off the bat you're incorrect.  Insultingly incorrect.

There's no god, so your life must be an unending spiral of misery and hopelessness.

I agree, it's one of the common theist insults and one of the stupidest. It reflects more on how pathetic the life of a theist is than how empty the life of an atheist is.

After all, if losing faith in an invisible sky man all of a sudden throws you into a spiral of despair your life obviously didn't have too much meaning in the first place.

Theists like to pretend that their own inadaquecies universally apply to everyone else.

[Zankuu]

This thread is still being a little misunderstood.

The OP is not layering a guilt trip on the atheistic view of life. He's saying Christians are taught that without God, life is depressing, meaningless, and finite. Which is true. We're very aware the Christian cult preys on the human desire to survive.

No insults are being thrown.

[Add Homonym]

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are were copied from one another but what gets me is the Q source. The Q source is the Gospel of Thomas. The thing about that is there are two version, one when jesus was a child and one that almost says the same thing as the Synoptics  Gospel

I think we should ditch our preconceptions of how the gospels were derived. Although OT study is quite advanced, NT academia started off on a wrong-footed axiom: that there were very few versions of the gospels in circulation prior to their ultimate construction. To feed their axiom, they begrudgingly admit the existence of Q. Even that was problematic for them, because it made some authors write books saying that Q-Thomas came first, and was therefore truer. Any time they admit to other prior versions, it's an admission that they are not eye-witness accounts.

We essentially have 3 streams of Christian rationale in the NT: (1) synoptics, (2) John and (3) Paul. The only intersection between the synoptics and John is the narrative story of Jesus and the idea that he was a messiah; even if that meant different things to the authors. It's difficult to conceive of how the author of John managed to write his book in such a different way, without reading a synoptic gospel, but never-the-less that appears to be the case; which implies the existence of an original simple narrative, which could have been a stage play or orally transmitted legend. There is a similarity between John and Paul, in that both seem to be explaining their ridiculous positions as a consequence of the OT prophecies. The gospel of Thomas seems to be all the cryptic wit of the synoptic without the narrative. Did someone combine the narrative with Thomas, to construct the synoptic variants? I doubt very much that the synoptic gospels were suddenly born in one hit (and orally transmitted), or that there were only 3 of them. Quotes from Justin Martyr reveal at least one other. It's likely there were tens of them.

[Truth OT]

From what we observe about nature, it seems clear that if there exists an unwritten rule or order, that rule would be to survive. Evolution and the adaptations that come along with it seem to have the end goal of survival "in mind" and with this goal of survival being so pervasive, I am wondering why our race has not been more agressively involved in the quest for immortality.

If there was a such thing as the satan entity that was the enemy of man and life, I would postulate that its name would be Unicron (I had to throw that in there, I just had to!) On a serious note, I would postulate that its greatest invention would be religion. I say this because religion promises immortality to its adherants while coercing them to accept the notion that nothing can be done on their part to earn, deserve, or contribute to it becoming a reality. SO in a real way religion has stunted man, the most sentient and highly evolved beings ?known? to exist to sit on our hands and continue to let not only our individual lives, but also the fate of our world and cosmos continue unabated towards what a final destination that could very well mean not existence of anything while we have put our faith is that which cannot be verified or even observed.
Those thoughts make me wonder where we'd be if the age of enlightenment would have occurred 2500 years ago as opposed to a few hundred years ago. If we managed to travel into space less than 100 years into the industrial revolution, imagine what could have beeen accomplished by now if that revolution would have began a couple of millennia ago. I guess what I am putting worth is the idea that religion may be the culprit that has caused us to waste time and loose focus on the pursuit of that which is most natural, survival.

[Add Homonym]

... religion may be the culprit that has caused us to waste time and loose focus on the pursuit of that which is most natural, survival.

Much as I'd like to join your quest to blame religion for everything, I'd have to note that religion has barely stopped slavery, child exploitation, wife beating, corporal punishment, vanilla ice cream, warfare, masturbation, used car salesmen, prostitution, capitalism, toxic waste, crystal meth, etc etc. When it comes down to it, we will ignore religion every time, in favour of a bigger orgasm, the quick fix and more bucks.

A plausible reason for the lack of interest in genetically engineered immortality, is that for it to work, we need to have conquered cancer and alzheimers, first. I'm OK with them slouching on age research if they can cure cancer, because that will be the main thing stopping me making it to 100.

[theczar]

I absolutely understand the viewpoint of the world seeming meaningless without God. I felt the same way when I first moved away from religion, and there's still times of fear and hopelessness. But what if we are all just beings, with nothing after death, with no real purpose on this Earth. Say we are just a higher evolved lifeform.

We have life. We have consciousness. We can form meaningful relationships. We can help others.

I can love. I can pass on knowledge and experiences to my children to help them enjoy life. We can travel and appreciate the beauty of Earth. We can be happy.

What is depressing about that? If we only have 50, 60, 70, or 80 years...than isn't that all the more reason to appreciate every conversation, every interaction, and every day we have?

Sort of ranty, but that's all I got.

[jetson]

Sounds good to me czar.

We are here, and there really are good reasons to try to make the best of it.  While we all don't agree on what "the best of it" is, as long as we don't go around hurting others, or trying to get everyone to agree with us using delusions, we should be able to enjoy our individual short stays!

Peace

[Truth OT]

... religion may be the culprit that has caused us to waste time and loose focus on the pursuit of that which is most natural, survival.

Much as I'd like to join your quest to blame religion for everything, ..............

A plausible reason for the lack of interest in genetically engineered immortality, is that for it to work, we need to have conquered cancer and alzheimers, first. I'm OK with them slouching on age research if they can cure cancer, because that will be the main thing stopping me making it to 100.

I do not wish to blame religion for everything, but I will blame it for making it practioners lazy and God-dependant as opposed to self reliant in many circumstances.

I'm on the opposite spectrum as it relates to where my priorities lie n reference to where the research dollors and time are to be best invested. I would LOVE for cancer, dymentia, alzheimers, and HIV to be curable, but I LOVE even more for the decline of the aging process itself to become a thing of the past so that if we were to live to be 100 plus, we wouldn't be feeble and helpless.

[Add Homonym]

I think age research is inextricable entwined with cancer, because the age mechanisms seem to be to thwart cancer.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7155/full/nature05985.html

Others are now saying that cancer is an immune problem.

[violatedsmurf80]

HIV to be curable,

It is almost cure able

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/38630/
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2011/10/Life-Sciences-Diseases-Clinical-Trial-Uncovers-Potential-Cure-For-HIV/

[RaymondKHessel]

HIV to be curable,

It is almost cure able

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/38630/
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2011/10/Life-Sciences-Diseases-Clinical-Trial-Uncovers-Potential-Cure-For-HIV/

Almost? Prepare to have your minds blown, gentlefolk... IT'S BEEN CURED!!!!

http://nymag.com/health/features/aids-cure-2011-6/

That article is a few months old. The medical community's been following this guy VERY closely for obvious reasons though, so I'm sure you could find more recent stuff about it.

But yeah. They've run some INSANE number of tests on this guy, like 150 different ones or something, over and over and over, and there's just no denying it... He's been cured of HIV.

Of course the methods they used are prohibitively complicated, expensive, difficult, etc... But they worked. And apparently, worked perfectly. And if you read up on the Dr. that worked out the treatment... Pretty brilliant. Especially since, from what I can tell, it was almost entirely speculation... Just this guy sitting around thinking to himself and saying "You know, that might work."

Crazy times we live in man. 

[Truth OT]

I prolly shoulda started another thread, but i didn't...............Here goes............

At this point I believe that IF there is a God, then for us, God is unidentifiable and may not even be God in the sense that God has been defined in religion. The God of creation need not be all-powerful, just powerful enough to create a universe. God need not be all knowing, just possessing enough knowledge to create a universe. God need not be one, God would just need to be. God would need not the ability or desire to communicate with us, etc, etc, etc.
The point is that God, IF there is/are such, CANNOT be defined or described with any degree of accuracy.

[Finntroll]

I´m not an ex-christian, because I still belong to the Finnish Evangelical-Lutheran Church. And so do most of us Finns. The trick is, that nowadays the church is very liberal, and most of the priests and bishops are far from fundamentalism. They are university-trained (we have a sort of national church here), and I guess many of them really don't believe nothing much. As for regular Finns, most of us are not aware of church theology, and we don't care. It's more about tradition and rituals. Church is attented at weddings, funerals, infant babtisms and sometimes Christmas morning.

However, the american style fundamentalist/charismatic christianity has been on the rise here too. There is a faction of that even inside the Lutheran Church. And there are stubborn old-time-religion Laestadians up north. But the majority of general public considers these people nutjobs.

So in Finland I would say to those who get out of fundamentalism: "Relax. Look around you. You were a member of an obscure cult, that's all. Get over it."

But it must be more difficult in places where that kind of religion is mainstream. Like in the USA, I recon.

[gonegolfing]

I prolly shoulda started another thread, but i didn't...............Here goes............

At this point I believe that IF there is a God, then for us, God is unidentifiable and may not even be God in the sense that God has been defined in religion. The God of creation need not be all-powerful, just powerful enough to create a universe. God need not be all knowing, just possessing enough knowledge to create a universe. God need not be one, God would just need to be. God would need not the ability or desire to communicate with us, etc, etc, etc.
The point is that God, IF there is/are such, CANNOT be defined or described with any degree of accuracy.

If your referring to the definition of an external of the mind god, then you've assessed well.

For the critical thinking and rational mind, if an abstract idea cannot be made manifest in our reality and especially if it cannot be defined coherently and supported empirically, then that idea is absurd and impossible to believe as true and possibly real.

You do understand however, and know wherein the problem lies, that millions of different gods do in fact exist, and are defined and described quite well, in the millions of minds that have their very own specific and personal beliefs in each and every one of these different gods that they've created. The problem ? This fact causes division, confusion, stifling, and strife in our world, as all of these different individuals different beliefs manifest themselves in their daily lives and then of course out into our societies.

Wouldn't an all powerful, all loving, and absolute deity who had compassion for, and comprehension of, what its creation was going through and what it was fallaciously thinking about the supernatural, then enlighten them properly so as to avoid this confusion and bring about a unified system of proper belief in the one and only deity ?

You'd think so wouldn't you ? I would.

But such is not, and that possibility is out of the question because the existence of such an external of the mind god is out of the question based on the absurdity of the indescribable idea itself.

[JeffPT]

I prolly shoulda started another thread, but i didn't...............Here goes............

At this point I believe that IF there is a God, then for us, God is unidentifiable and may not even be God in the sense that God has been defined in religion. The God of creation need not be all-powerful, just powerful enough to create a universe. God need not be all knowing, just possessing enough knowledge to create a universe. God need not be one, God would just need to be. God would need not the ability or desire to communicate with us, etc, etc, etc.
The point is that God, IF there is/are such, CANNOT be defined or described with any degree of accuracy.

Sounds like you're dabbling in Ignosticism.    Interesting turn of events.  I think we got a few of those on the boards. 

As Epicurus might say... If it's not all powerful, if he's not all knowing, if he's not the one and only, then why call him God?