4.2 - Atheism/Spirituality
"Do you believe that you are an evolutionary accident? Or are you a divine creation? You must answer this question first. Above all other existential debate." - Unknown
a. Atheism
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"Of all the roads you could ever travel on, I think the journey back to finding yourself is the most magical one." - Unknown
"Buddhist Master: You must seek to find out for yourself.
Student: But how does one find out?
Buddhist Master: Fuck around." - Unknown
"If humans weren’t created by God then why are we here?" - Unknown
"The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is 42." - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams on what the Deepthought supercomputer answered is the meaning of life (it took 7.5 million years for it to come to that conclusion).
“It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought ‘42 will do.’ I typed it out. End of story.” - Douglas Adams on why he picked 42.
“If God does not exist, then everything is permissible." - Dostoevsky
"You say you lost your faith, but that’s not where it’s at. You had no faith to lose and you know it“ - Unknown
"Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.” - Thomas Sowell
Our culture used to be based on Christian morals and values. Now, we've gone from a Christian society to a secular society and left a giant God-shaped hole in everything. The civilization we live in is busy shoveling that hole with spiritual nonsense. The people in charge are desperately trying to figure out how to coexist peacefully and are starting to realize we aren't smarter or better off.
"Disbelief is a religion too. You believe in God, he is just you instead of something greater than you. Atheism is the perfect cult for the self righteous Narcasist and a well studied and staple for progressive politicians and globalists." - Unknown
“Man becomes an atheist when he feels better than his God.” - Unknown
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” - Psalm 14:1 KJV
Absent believing in transcendent Truth and God, people will create their own secular religions complete with liturgy, sacraments, saints, and precepts.
Vegans make food their religion. Communists make equity their religion. Feminists make gender their religion. It seems that when people don't have an actual religion they will find something else to dictate and inform their worldview. Humans have a need to believe in something.
Some people can't see God because they don't look low enough (the giggle of a child, the hardworking poor, the oppressed, the outcast).
"It is helpful at this point to register a protest against what Mary Midgley calls 'nothing buttery.' There is a widespread habit of declaring emergent realities to be 'nothing but' the things in which we perceive them. The human person is 'nothing but' the human animal; law is 'nothing but' relations of social power; sexual love is 'nothing but' the urge to procreation; altruism is 'nothing but' the dominant genetic strategy described by Maynard Smith ; the Mona Lisa is 'nothing but' a spread of pigments on canvas, the Ninth Symphony is 'nothing but' a sequence of pitched sounds of varying timbre. And so on. Getting rid of this habit is, to my mind, the true goal of philosophy. And if we get rid of it when dealing with the small things - symphonies, pictures, people - we might get rid of it when dealing with the large things too: notably, when dealing with the world as a whole. And then we might conclude that it is just as absurd to say that the world is nothing but the order of nature, as physics describes it, as to say that the Mona Lisa is nothing but a smear of pigments. Drawing that conclusion is the first step in the search for God." - Roger Scruton, The Soul of the World.
"Look, this world is simple. The poor want to be rich. The rich want to rule. And the rulers want to rule absolutely. The strong prey on the weak. Humans are imperfect, yet overall we do okay considering we are on a pebble floating in cold space near a ball of fire. Civilization and society often disappoint, yet we occassionely rise above and create great love, art and humor. **** the government and love your family, friends and animals. Eat well, exercise, be spiritual and have fun. There, I just explained everything and gave the secret of life in a blog comment, you are all welcome. Be good and be well." - Unknown
"This is a war between the Materialists (Luciferians, Satanists, Athiests, Marxists, Socialists, Communists, Technocrats and Mammon worshiping Capitalists) and the spiritualists (we are a soul/spirit, created by God/Source/Creator having a material experience). Materialistic thinking creates ideologies such as Social Darwinism, Eugenics, Marxism, and stakeholder Capitalism. Materialism and Spiritualism are like oil and water, they don't mix. If the spiritualists don't wake up to the war at hand, the materialists will exterminate all of us. No amount of rejiggering of the system will work, if we don't also change the foundations of our society, by answering the question who are we and why are we here." - Unknown
"If one cannot 'prove' the existence of God, then one cannot 'prove' the existence of good and evil. Things just are. Survival of the most ruthless is the highest moral law. We proved it by being the most successful, famous and powerful men in history. Sincerely, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot..." - Unknown
"There are no atheists in foxholes." - Chap. William Cummings after the Battle of Bataan 1942
b. Spirituality
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"See a man ain't like a dog. And when I say man I'm talking man as in mankind. Not man as in men. Because men we a lot like a dog. You know we like to piss on things, sniff a bitch when we can, and we get a little pink hard on. We territorial as shit. We know we gonna protect our own. But man he know about death. Got him a sense of history. Got religion. See a dog don't know shit about birthdays or Christmas or the Easter Bunny. None of that shit. One day God gonna come calling. They go through life carefree. People like you and me we always guessing. Always wondering. What if?" - Hustle and Flow
Religion is the technology by which we have devised moral values and virtues. The system keeps man from the darkness of his own nature. This is why communists hate religion. The easiest way to make you give up your God-given rights is to make you stop believing in God.
"And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure - reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." - George Washington, Farewell Address 19 September 1796
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people" - Karl Marx
"It appears that lack of belief in God can leave an ethical vacuum in the weak willed - a vacuum that can be filled by the lies and propaganda of unscrupulous and murderous governments." - Unknown
"Imagine a boy born on a desert island and raised by animals. Around 14 he starts to have these desires that he can’t express because he’s never seen a woman. Maybe it’s the same way with God. We all have this God shaped hole inside ourselves. And we have to choose what we fill it up with." - John Waters
Without a spiritual anchor, you’re like a feather in the wind. Meanwhile, they control the wind's direction and how hard it blows.
"Dr. Curt Richter placed rats into buckets of water and timed their ability to swim. Rats, who are apparently known for their strong swimming skills, lasted an average of 15 minutes before drowning. In a second experiment, Richter rescued the rats when he saw them begin to stop swimming and sink. When he took them out, he dried them off and gave them a short period of rest. And then, just as they were dry and rested, Richter put them back into the water. However, this time Richter identified a substantial behavioral change. The rescued rats swam longer than 15 minutes. In fact, they swam for nearly 60 hours." Dr. Casey Wolfington, The Power of Hope
To the rat the hand that came down from heaven was a miracle. Belief in miracles prolonged a rat's life by 24,000%. A 24,000% advantage in survival is something atheists will never know. Spiritual strength, not gadgets, is what makes people of faith superhuman.
What's the downside of believing in a higher power? There's certainly plenty of upside having a 24,000% advantage in life and death situations. As an added bonus if you're right you also get to go to heaven and avoid eternal damnation in hell. If you're wrong you still have your faith to lean on when you go through difficult times (Pascal's wager).
"Belief is a powerful weapon. That’s why the empire feared Hari Seldon's predictions so much. Empires govern worldly concerns. But what comes after? Our souls? These realms are the purview of faith. And faith, is a sword forged in the fires of the infinite." - Gaal Dornick, Foundation
“How would you answer these questions:
1) Did you exist before birth?
2) Do you believe that the greatest spiritual truths (these questions) are 'inside you,' or do you need to search outside yourself for these answers?
3) Do you believe you will exist after death?
4) Do you believe the whole of you is inside 'Earth' or a part of you outside this place?
5) Per #3, will you still be 'you' or something else after death?
6) Per #1, were you tricked into coming here to this place called Earth?
7) Do you believe how you live your life NOW matters in the afterlife?
8) Do you believe a god is needed to 'take you out of here?' - Is the power in you now, OR must the power be derived from someone or something else?
9) Do you believe that 'your beliefs' or 'what you expect to happen' influences or creates what happens to you at death?
10) Do you believe a trick is coming at the moment of death? If you believe in reincarnation, do you believe there is a way to avoid another life in another body?
11) Should the questions asked here be decided for you, or should you decide these yourself?" - Quantum of Conscience
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