Do I envy theists?
Offline To me theism and atheism are not very different at all.
- I talk to myself in quiet hours too and I get many insights out of it. (I just don’t call it prayer.)
- I am part of something bigger, too – the universe, the Earth as a living planet, the human endeavor. (I just don’t call it God.)
- Good things happen to me all the time. (I just don’t call it a miracle.)
- I enjoy the beauty in the world: Nature, art, the magnificence of life itself. (I just don’t call it God.)
- I think I’m thoroughly moral, too and I feel the love for all human beings. (I just don’t call it God.)
To take all of this and force it all into one label to me is poor. And to imagine that this is a being that killed all the babies in Egypt to me is disgusting.
No, I don’t envy theists.
(I also posted this here: http://www.asktheatheists.com/questions/74_is_there_anything_you_envy_about_theists )
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I don't get what this is all about. Are you feeling guilt for your personal beliefs? You just gave extremely good reasons how NOT believing in God can give you hope, comfort and strenght. People don't need God to be happy. They can find happiness within themselves. And even when things seem grim, they don't have to rely on a delusion to get themselves through. They can rely on themselves and their own abilities.
You don't have to call people Atheists or Theists, black or white, good or bad. Those labels just help you to categorize people surrounding you. This same categorization is what has caused apartheid and is still causing religous violence all over the world. There is nothing bad about not categorizing people. Infact, quite the opposite.
Trust and believe in no god, but trust and believe in yourself.
Umm, how on Earth did you get that idea?
Yes, that kind of was the point of the exercise.
Did you even read my post? You just basically repeated my point.
Labels are overrated. Labels haven't caused apartheid. Racial hate and prejudice has caused apartheid. Labels are useful to distinguish a computer from a dog. To say they are the problem is a syntactic trick. But even so... what does that have to do with my post?
When you say that you don't like labels, what you mean is that you don't like categories. And categories are due to perceived differences. The whole point of the text above was to show that we are not that different at all.
Oh, whoops. I may have written some stupid things there, but I don't get the point of this. The topic is "Do I envy Theists?" and later you answer the question yourself: "No, I don't envy Theists."
What I understood when I saw this, was that you were not sure about your beliefs, and that you weren't sure about the typical Atheistic beliefs. So I tried to tell you about the typical Atheistic beliefs. Apparently you needed no help at all, and you just wrote this for... What? I don't get it. You gave me the impression that you needed other's opinion to understand yourself. So that's what I did.
Trust and believe in no god, but trust and believe in yourself.
I certainly don't envy people who believe in fairy tales.
Ah, I see. Sorry about that. The reason is that this was a question that was submitted to asktheatheists.com. I am a writer there and I thought my answer to it was pretty decent so I figured I'd share it with you. I never was meant as a question that I posed. Although I'm of course interested in alternative answers and what others think about mine.
I think that envying any group of people would be a real sign of some serious insecurity. I'm glad that you are secure in your belief.
justmoon - I just stumbled across this today in an attempt to get caught up on threads. I found this to be a wonderfully well-written statement. To the theists that questioned it, please remember that as an atheist, I have been pitied by arrogant theists that claim "Aww...you just don't know god. I feel sorry for you." The implication behind this is that I am supposed to be somehow envious of theists for the "knowledge" of god. Like justmoon, I am not envious. Nor do I pity them. They have just as much opportunity to explore their beliefs as I did but most choose not to do so. The ones that do, and have come to this site do not pity atheists; nor are they arrogant. They realize that we are all about the same.
Thank you, justmoon, for posting this and I apologize for the delay in my response.