Moments of tasting the marrow in your own life?
Offline Ever had one of those moments, however long, where you just feel incredibly lucky?
I'm having one right now.
I could've become some gibbering nutcase. I could've been born into Catholicism or Christianity or any number of other religious ideologies and grew-up entwined in their blindness. I could've done something rather tragic / foolish and wound-up imprisoned or on the street (or both). I could've been thrust into oblivion by any number of terrible fates.
Instead, I'm at my keyboard, sipping Pepsi and dining on take-out, admiring the beauty of the snow outside from the shelter of my apartment (and mentally laughing at all the suckers who had to work today that get to drive home in that shit). Fuck... I can't believe I sometimes complain about my position here at all.
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
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Some of the classical philosophers might consider your moment a "divine realization", and I know that Augustine in particular would have labeled it as such. I recall one euphoric moment in my youth, when I was at Valley Forge Military Academy my first year, when I was standing atop of Cardiac Hill (called that because just making it up the thing could give you a cardiac arrest) and admiring the damn near beautiful view from it - a gorgeous spring day. At the time, I was mentally deluding myself into believing this was all placed here by some imaginary god-being. But now I appreciate it even more knowing that it was primarily due to cause-effect and evolution.
Today, I feel those moments even more. Especially looking back at the direction where I was heading, and I'm so appreciative that I was able to break out of that mindset, and be in the position that I am in, knowing what I know now, and just downright hopeful of what will come in the future.
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Personally, I would think of that as cheapening it. Now all of a sudden I'm not really so lucky - just opening another parcel that God put under my Christmas tree, and turning like so many cogs in His plan / 'design'.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Agreed. This is precisely why as an atheist I feel I can appreciate life better than I would have as a Christian when I was much younger. I'm happy for you, mate.
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server, which houses Celebrity Atheists. Books by Rook Hawkins (Thomas Verenna)
I remember hiking up near the divide in the Colorado Rockies with a couple of gorgeous young ladies, climbing up a rock face and spending the evening sipping wine and sunning ourselves on a rock shelf overlooking a misty valley...
Thanks for reminding me.
LC >;-}>
Christianity: A disgusting middle eastern blood cult, based in human sacrifice, with sacraments of cannibalism and vampirism, whose highest icon is of a near naked man hanging in torment from a device of torture.
Flying from London to Los Angeles and, half an hour or so after takeoff, looking down and seeing the entire island of Ireland under me without a single cloud to obscure it.
99% of all that I knew and all that I was at the time lay on that grass covered rock. The sky looked very big in contrast.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Every time I watch one of my kids dance around laughing.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
When my checkbook balances somewhere above -0-
Your god's silence speaks loud and clear
I have had those moments (if you ever seen the car commercial with the brit dude driving and everything is just perfect for a split moment you'll get what I mean) in which everything just seems perfect, even on a rainy day, it just feels like everything is lining up just perfectly. Snowboarding at Mont Tremblant even though it was -30 celcius, the view was just spectacular with the snow coming down the mountain view and the trees it was just beautiful, and snowboarding down it, there was a moment of absolute perfection for me. Same when I was up in the Andes in Argentina after a bit of mountain climbing there was this view of the mountain range that was the most amazing view I had seen with the sun at the horizon. But it is just for a split moment that seems to last forever, that I feel incredibly lucky and that everything is just perfect for that split moment.
I feel very fortunate I got out of theism while young. I may have lost my teen years to it, but I have my whole adult life for learning now.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
I'm confused; I thought you were going to say something good happened...
/ I kid
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maybe if this sig is witty, someone will love me.
Hahaha, I wish. My luck is so bad that my friends joke that they keep me around to make themselves feel better about their lives.
I think it might be in genetics, my grandfather used to say "if it were not for bad luck i'd have no luck at all."
This is why I get irritated when I hear people complain. For the most part, if you've got a job, shelter and food in your fridge, you've got nothing to complain about. There are so many places in the world where people have none of the above.
I feel ridiculously lucky to have the things I do, tangible or otherwise. The only two things I complain about are religion and the destruction of the environment.
Nobody I know was brainwashed into being an atheist.
Why Believe?
Seeing Americans on here complain does irk me abit. Sure,you hve a lot of religious people,but so do alot of countries. But you live in America-what more do you want? I know I can't really talk.Alot of people would love to have my life. At least I stay in the best country of Africa and even then I'm in the upper middle class. It's still nothing like America though.
You can pretty much be sure to find a job if you have qualifications.
If you call the police,someone will actually answer the phone.
If you go to a state hopital,you probably won't die in the corridor
You don't have the second highest murder rate in the world.
Just saying,cheer up Americans
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
I feel lucky whenever i watch the news as am reminded of how crap a lot of countires in the world are. Also that i was born into an english speaking county, if someone in another country speaks a second language it is most likely going to be english.
Zen-atheist wielding Occam's katana.
Jesus said, "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division." - Luke 12:51
ok ok guys, I wasn't complaining, that was meant as a joke. I am lucky honesty. I'm at college and my parents are paying for it. That's very lucky. Sorry if my previous post was taken the wrong way...
I took wilderness survival training once. Nothing like being left alone in the wilderness, burning 5,000 calories a day while consuming 500 just to survive 1 night so you can get up and do it all over again the next day, to get you in touch with the reality of life. It's an interesting experience struggling with that basic physical side of life, interacting with nature at that primal level.
It also makes you really appreciate hot running water and electricity when you get home.
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
Burning that many calories sounds like a terrible way to survive in the wilderness. Shouldn't you lay low in between what meals you come across unless you're actually running from something?
Regarding the OP's existentially satisfying moment, isn't there a psychologist who described those as seminal moments in mental development? They taught me his work and Abraham Maslow's as if they were two of a movement. My psychology's pretty shoddy and it ain't gonna get any better any time soon, but for trivial purposes I'd like to know.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
Well, yeah, the survival training was intended to help you survive for a short period of time until rescued. it wasn't to enable you to live like Grizzly Adams. Obviously you couldn't go on like that for long. But we were left alone with no warm clothing, sleeping bags, or blankets, a day-hike-gone-bad scenario. So the biggest concern was figuring out how to stay warm through the night. We had to make fire beds and that required many hours of hard labor, digging a pit by hand, collecting rocks to fill it, and collecting enough firewood (and it takes a lot of firewood!) to heat the rocks sufficiently. That requires an enormous expenditure of energy, true. But if you die during the night from hypothermia the calories you saved by laying low won't do you much good anyway.
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
I had such a moment just yesterday. I walked home from a bus stop in the late afternoon (from my intership job) along a road in fields, it's a countryside and it was a nice day. I remembered how it's written in a book about consciousness I had recently read, "look at things as they really are, as you've seen them for the first time, don't look at what you think about them. Don't judge them."
Well, it was like Pratchett's "Open your eyes one more time". I looked at one big, still leafless and quite worn out tree. I looked at it, stretched my sight a bit, and for a glimpse, it changed in my sight into fascinating, pleasantly bizarre structure of avantgarde art, the branches outlining a futuristic shapes of perfect symmetry, or something like that. Wow.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Sounds sort of Zen:
Observe without thought, wonder without words. Have you ever been lost in a flower?
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
Acid's a trip, isn't it?
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
SO that is how people see Jesus in Potato chips!
Slowly building a blog at ~
http://obsidianwords.wordpress.com/
I've never been lucky in my life.
Well you aren't a theist are you.That's pretty fortunate.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
Well look at it this way. If you don't have a dirt floor but you do have a fridge, microwave, and TV you are better off than 95% of people on this planet. That's pretty lucky, eh?
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
But seriously
I have always considered myself lucky. It may stem from my uncanny ability to see gold in a pile of shit, a silver lining in a piss soaked trench coat or a rainbow in a cloudy rainy afternoon (and trust me sometimes it can be blinding)
It comes from growing up in an abusive household where it was either : *let it get to you* OR *overcome* I was 'lucky' to overcome and be able to learn how to talk to my alcoholic father in a way that the outcome was good...
For me a positive frame of mind creates 'luck', at least in the mind of the one that holds it.
Slowly building a blog at ~
http://obsidianwords.wordpress.com/