• Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.

Ask an atheist

Wedjat

Spirited Apostate
Aug 8, 2009
2,673
145
Home sweet home
✟26,307.00
Faith
Atheist
Marital Status
Single
Well, being an atheist and all I don't really believe that God even exists, so I don't think he/she/it (depending on your religious beliefs) has done anything lately.

I suppose a religious person in my position might thank God for having an amazing host family while I'm on my exchange here in New Zealand, but after being moved through four different families (and a fifth that I didn't even get the chance to move in with before something had come up) within a six month period, I'm more inclined to think random chance had more to do with it.
 
Upvote 0

Wedjat

Spirited Apostate
Aug 8, 2009
2,673
145
Home sweet home
✟26,307.00
Faith
Atheist
Marital Status
Single
Sexual reproduction, propagation of the species, as it is with all living organisms.

The meaning I give to my own life however is quite different. My goal first and foremost, is to live out this life to the best of my ability, to be happy, and to gain experiences and knowledge that I can reminisce upon on my deathbed.
My secondary goal is to make others happy, to be a contributing member of society, and bring joy to the broader world. However I cannot be happy when there are unhappy people in my presence, so my secondary goal tends to go hand in hand with my primary one.
 
Upvote 0

christianmma

Newbie
Sep 24, 2009
6
0
✟22,616.00
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Private
Sexual reproduction, propagation of the species, as it is with all living organisms.

The meaning I give to my own life however is quite different. My goal first and foremost, is to live out this life to the best of my ability, to be happy, and to gain experiences and knowledge that I can reminisce upon on my deathbed.
My secondary goal is to make others happy, to be a contributing member of society, and bring joy to the broader world. However I cannot be happy when there are unhappy people in my presence, so my secondary goal tends to go hand in hand with my primary one.
My assumption by the bolded is that you mean you put yourself and your state of being before others. My question would then be, if you found true happiness and needed not look any further/strive for it, let's assume you gained an immense amount of knowledge and were satisfied, then what would you do? Help others acheive the same?

Do you believe you will ever reach the point where you can help others? At what age do you think?

Then if Christians find all our happiness/love/wisdom, etc. that we could possibly have in the Lord, are we then fufilling your life purpose better then you are by serving others before ourselves, because it is not us who need to be helped/saved?

Why do you have the eye of Horus as your display picture, and use the name wedjat? You are an atheist, so what does that mean to you/your life?

What does the quote in your sig mean to you?
"We can easily forgive a child that is afraid of the dark, the real tragedy is when people are afraid of the light"
-Plato
 
Upvote 0

Wedjat

Spirited Apostate
Aug 8, 2009
2,673
145
Home sweet home
✟26,307.00
Faith
Atheist
Marital Status
Single
My assumption by the bolded is that you mean you put yourself and your state of being before others.
In most cases yes, although not all the time. Sometimes sacrifice is a logical necessity, sometimes it is an emotionally fulfilling one.
My question would then be, if you found true happiness and needed not look any further/strive for it, let's assume you gained an immense amount of knowledge and were satisfied, then what would you do? Help others acheive the same?
That sounds like a great idea, because I don't see how anyone could ever exist without a goal. If my goal was to gain knowledge and then I went and gained most existing knowledge, one of my goals might be to teach others (I do get some fulfillment from teaching), another might be to use the knowledge in a practical sense (science/medicine). However, generally people tend to have more than one goal at a time. I could teach and learn simultaneously. Like I said, I am first, but others are a close second, and so often how others feel affects how I feel, so by helping others I am helping myself, which is how I remain first.
Do you believe you will ever reach the point where you can help others? At what age do you think?
You don't need to fulfill all of your goals to move on to something else. Helping others is interwoven into my day's. Sometimes I view helping others as helping myself. The satisfaction from inspiring a homeless child not to give up on his education, or working at a soup kitchen on Christmas is a personal reward. Helping people makes me happy, therefore I feel I am putting myself first, even though it is I who am making the "sacrifice".
Then if Christians find all our happiness/love/wisdom, etc. that we could possibly have in the Lord, are we then fufilling your life purpose better then you are by serving others before ourselves, because it is not us who need to be helped/saved?
Are you? Maybe, maybe not. Is this a competition to see who can best fulfill my life purpose? There will always be someone who has gained more knowledge than me, who has a better family than me, who has more friends than me, who helps more people than me. Why should I care? I just do the best I can with what I have. Do not think me a selfish person by how I word my views on this, I'm quite the opposite actually. I have been told by a puzzled friend that I am the only person she knows who no one (who she knows of anyway) talks bad about behind my back. I like helping others, doing it for the satisfaction of helping others does not darken my intentions.
Why do you have the eye of Horus as your display picture, and use the name wedjat? You are an atheist, so what does that mean to you/your life?
Because I've always been fascinated by mythology, Egyptian is my favorite, Norse is a close second. There have also been a lot of claims that the Jesus story matches many aspects of Horus. I find it unverifiable for now because I have not seen any mythology involving Horus that coincides with scripture and is not part of a list of Egyptian mythology that coincides with scripture. The information is biased until I can find something more neutral, but for now the whole Horus themed user name/profile/avatar theme is just my little joke.
What does the quote in your sig mean to you?
First and foremost it is meant to seem ironic to Christians, a goal that was achieved by Rita727 but one day after I had joined. To me I equate "light" with knowledge and understanding. To me many (obviously not all, actually probably not most) religious people seem afraid to learn about the way the world works (specifically YEC's who deny scientific facts for their theology which is more comfortable to them)
 
Upvote 0

TrueImpossibility

Regular Member
Apr 10, 2007
444
10
✟23,104.00
Faith
Non-Denom
Marital Status
Single
Aww, and here I thought it was all about Plato's cave and how no one would go outside with the one who left because they were in their comfort zone and wouldn't try something new.

Of course, being a Christian forum and all, the light usually refers to the knowledge and kingdom of God. So for me the quote means that it is tragic when people are afraid of the light of God and instead stay in the darkness of their own ability and understanding.

Errhmm, any way, on to a question. Who in your life is family to you? (not names or anything, just relationship to you etc.)
 
Upvote 0

Wedjat

Spirited Apostate
Aug 8, 2009
2,673
145
Home sweet home
✟26,307.00
Faith
Atheist
Marital Status
Single
My mother, father, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins (obviously). Beyond that I have probably four or five very close friends (not all in the same group) who I would consider family. My dad's side of my "blood" family is closer to family than my moms side (they were extremely dysfunctional) There are some members of that branch that I would not consider family.

I judge family by love, not relation.
 
Upvote 0

Big Mouth

Forum Queen
Oct 22, 2009
293
9
Illinois
✟22,973.00
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
Politics
US-Democrat
I know there's a bunch of questions out there. I know I get asked enough in real life. Go ahead, fire away. Ask me anything and I mean anything (within forum rules) I'm temporarily suspending my own right to be offended, so really, anything at all.

Where do you find spirituality?
 
Upvote 0

Wedjat

Spirited Apostate
Aug 8, 2009
2,673
145
Home sweet home
✟26,307.00
Faith
Atheist
Marital Status
Single
Spirituality is that feeling you get when taking part in a "spiritual" experience, church/ritual, whatever. When I was a Pagan, I participated in rituals that gave me a "spiritual" thrill, but I've never been a real avid music-listener until recently. When I acknowledged my atheism, I stopped doing rituals on such a regular basis, I definitely felt empty where that feeling used to be. I still participate in some rituals at my UU church (we have a samhain festival every year and some other ones if we can organize it) and they still give me a spiritual experience because I let myself get ensnared by the feel of it, let myself experience the buzz of "power" and let myself forget that it's all just nuerons firing in my temporal lobe.

But one activity a year isn't really enough to sustain one "spiritually" there was a little build up of stress (for me anyway) because I didn't have an outlet. But then I moved to New Zealand for an exchange program and became completely seperated from my church. My sister had bought be an ipod for my trip and I loaded up some bands that I had heard on the radio, there were some songs that I hadn't expirienced yet on the ipod, some really good songs.

Remember, I didn't really listen to music that much before coming over to New Zealand, so when I started to, it was like someone eating sugar for the first time. I found that if I lay down with the lights off, just like I was meditating, with the ipod set for some of my favorite songs, I could get the most amazing expiriences, ten times better than anything I had gotten from religion, and just as, if not more fufilling spiritually.

Understand, I don't believe in a soul or spirit. Spirituality is just a word for me to describe what other people attribute to something on a deeper level. But studies have shown that a healthy "spirituality" is important for general wellbeing (not for some people, but for most). I find that music is the best way to fufill that piece of me while still remaining true to reason.
 
Upvote 0

mystery4

Senior Member
Jul 11, 2004
708
48
Visit site
✟1,104.00
Faith
SDA
ooh...
So... how do you like Kiwiland? hehe... and just as you're about to experience your first ever Christmas at summertime, I'm about to experience my first Christmas in wintertime... hmm... btw I'm an Aussie in Pommy kingdom...

How do you like your fush and chups? And what about the accent when they say "six" hehe... sorry... then there are all the sheep jokes, but err... I won't go into that here...

But I must say, you definitely picked a brilliant country for the music and scenery... Have you heard those islanders sing... boy are they good... (and btw when I say islanders I mean like Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands, etc and so forth, the Mouri's are pretty good too)...

And if you were wanting people to ask questions here they are:
1. Why did you choose to go to NZ? (not that I'm complaining about your choice, but being biased I woulda said Oz was a much better choice... hehe)

2. Why are you wanting Christians to ask you questions?
 
Upvote 0

Wedjat

Spirited Apostate
Aug 8, 2009
2,673
145
Home sweet home
✟26,307.00
Faith
Atheist
Marital Status
Single
1) I didn't choose NZ so much as end up there. Quite honestly I'm not very good at foreign languages, I dropped out of Spanish and only know "thank you" in pretty much every other European language, plus I decided to try and get back in time for university, so pretty much any country that started school at the same time as the US was out because at the point that I decided to go on exchange it was too late to get on them for the next year, and the year after I would have been too old (I only just barely made the cutoff age for NZ). Had I not been given those time restraints I probably would have taken the language plunge and gone to Norway, but that was not the case.
So, english speaking places that start school at different times pretty much narrowed it down to Australia and NZ. I origionally chose Australia, but you guys cancel your program almost every year because your only allowed to take in as many students as you send out, so I ended up in NZ.
After that NZ decided that it was cutting back on english speaking students, and since I take medication, decided to use that as an excuse to cull me out of the program. At that point my only other choice was Malaysia, and as much as I'm sure it's a beautiful place to visit, I really didn't want to live there for a year, so I called the exchange program up and figured out what hoops I had to jump through to end up in NZ. After 3 letters from my psychiatrist and a lot of interviews, I managed to get my application through two hours before the deadline, and here I am.

2. Because a) there are a lot of misunderstandings about atheists that I would like to give people the opprotunity to clear up. And b) because I'm bored.
 
Upvote 0

Krystabelle

Regular Member
Sep 3, 2006
285
21
36
✟22,998.00
Faith
Protestant
Marital Status
Single
I would agree very much with the music part. i used to really listen to my ipod like hours a day when I wasn't a Christian. It's just some way to feel intoxicated. I still do get some ecstasy feeling with my headphones though I understood the spiritual is driven by music. Scientist have tried associating music with DNAs. It's rather fascinating actually. When they decoded a particular cancer DNA, the music that played was Chopin's Funeral March. Cool huh?

I was the biggest evolution fan, and have many Scientist icons to look up to. My favourite medical scientist is still Robert Winston. Though the truth is, the more we try to understand science, the harder it is to believe in evolution. if our DNA or our body composion is of 1 percentage difference we die. I'm in the health sciences stream.

Since you believe in your purpose in reproducing and so on, survival basically. Have you ever wondered why there is a need for feelings? Or why we actually put people in jails even without God's law?

If you have no other purpose living, think about it, if you have nothing worth dying for, is there any reason worth living for? Down 2 or 3 generations who'll remember your name?
 
Upvote 0