Juggernaut Nihilism wrote:Rationalist philosophers have, in every age, tried and miserably failed to come up with convincing and meaningful rational substitutes for the passionate, irrational, and functional myths they destroy. It goes like clockwork. A religion emerges out of a dark age and darker impulses to structure a mass of confused men into a society. In the late decadent phase of social formation, people denounce the traditional mythology as useless because it cannot be described in a series of rational propositions that correspond to measurements of the natural world (each time it occurs, these rationalists believe they are original and unprecedented). A brief period of rationalist triumphalism is immediately followed by the realization that people are bored, disillusioned, directionless, and suicidal. Various rational alternatives are suggested for the now irretrievably damaged social myth, all of them gaudy and ridiculous (some of the silly 'eco religions' and ersatz pseudopsychological new age crap are good examples). Failing that, secular symbols are grafted onto the existing mythology like Band-Aids. Unfortunately, Martin Luther King is no substitute for Moses, nor Steve Jobs for Prometheus, so the secular symbols are subject to far more scrutiny and are inherently more fragile and short-lived. Whereas the promise of heaven in the afterlife could be kept hidden from practical experience, the promise of progress and utopian futures engineered by human intention is quickly put to the test and found wanting. Cracks begin to show in the foundation as people realize they've gained freedom, but given up structure, acquired power, but forgotten any meaningful reason to exercise it. Too late, they realize they made a horrible mistake, and then the tide goes out. As the rationalists pick the through the rubble looking for seeds and roots to sustain them another day, the plantlike peasants return to the old religion, which outlasts its assailants in one form or another.
Atheism and agnosticism require a certain degree of culture and intelligence. Otherwise it is (or at least atheism tends to be) as primitive as any typical religious feeling. To be clobbered on the head by someone shouting that God doesn't exist is no better than being clobbered by someone who does it in the name of God or Allah. As people acquire culture and knowledge they will tend to realize that while God may exist, He certainly cannot be anything like what religions say He is. There may be some social value in religious based ethics, but all the rest is so nonsensical that no reasonable person can ever believe it, as long as their brains are switched on and they are not functioning on automatic mode. Religious education is simply brainwashing and even intelligent (young) people may fall prey to it, but we are all under the obligation of looking at it in a more critical manner, once we grow up.
As to the need we all have for a reason to exist, it may be true. But the reasons religions give us are good only for the more primitive minds. I never found it difficult to find a reason to exist in a universe without a God. Being is a good enough reason to be. Existence is a good enough reason to exist. The universe is its own reason, and our part in it is absolutely meaningful. My body is made up of atoms and molecules generated in the core of stars, and my self-awareness is as much a part of that universe as those atoms. As long as the universe exists there will always be a self and a self-awareness, although it may be embodied somewhere else in a very different sort of rational being... We are afraid of nothingness, but there is no nothingness. Never, as long as the universe exists. What the hell are we afraid of?...
