No. Such people are bound to die restless and unfulfilled. There's a class of people who need to know the answers to all questions. It strikes me as a sort of ADD (I mean it in the non-technical "I am not a shrink" way). I agree with the article that the answers to many questions are unattainable or unknowable.
The trick as an atheist is to find peace with that. Some even satisfy their natural drive toward spiritualism with it.
This structure very clearly implies that he is unfamiliar with the two. Just as "I think you would like Brazil" implies the person has never been there.
No big deal. I only mention it because "It's funny you thought" implies you don't realize your wording made this interpretation the obvious one.
creating an natural drive
I didn't put it that way. The natural drive is preexisting. That's sort of what the "natural" means.
Having an unattainable goal is not a bad thing!
I, for one, dabble in these questions out of genuine and innate curiosity and I believe others do too. Isn't it then counterproductive to deal in absolutes when the only thing we can be certain of is that we are still quite too ignorant to answer those ultimate questions?
Maybe I am reading too much into your "theology studies that which does not exist", but, again, remarks like these are really off-putting. It is already almost impossible to find discussions in this area that take an exploratory and open-minded approach, and I'd hope that at least forums like these could be free of that.
Importantly, it is not the opinion itself which I find off-putting - it's the way in which it is conveyed. It was neither insightful nor did it encourage any meaningful discussion... No, I'd go further: consciously or unconsciously its only purpose was to reaffirm the author's pre-existing convictions and to put down those of others.
I also understand why my comment could come off as trying to cut off certain lines of conversation as well, but the only reason why I am even getting frustrated about this is because I want to have MORE of those honest conversations about these seemingly controversial topics; it doesn't matter to me which way they lead me.
I believe that the "ultimate" questions have value in them that is not necessarily tied to them being answered, at the very least in the same way the exercise is good for one's body - I hope you would agree here as well. Unfortunately, most of the time, it is quite hard to find balanced online discussions which would bring an exploratory and open mindset to these questions; instead, they're usually quickly bombarded with dogmatic responses - an example of which I'm now ranting about.
The "ultimate questions" are the realm of philosophy.
But, again, my issue is not with the dismissal - I'm completely fine with the idea that people might come to that conclusion and I'm open to the idea myself. My issue is with the cheap jabs that are not even honest expressions of one's feelings.
My criticisms might seem strange and uncalled-for if one only considers this instance in isolation, but it keeps happening, again and again, and throughout many different types of media. Just recently I was reading Sam Harris' book; it's quite small and a fun read at times, yet it quickly became a chore to get through, as it is full of those irrelevant cheap-shots. The thing is, in the right place, in the right context, those remarks could be interesting, however, when misplaced like that, they end up coming off as someone simply having a chip on their shoulder.
I consider it really unfortunate that it seems that the atheist side, whose thoughts I'm most interested in hearing, fallbacks to this strategy quite too often. And thus, instead of a philosophical debate, we end up with a two-person monologue where the beliefs of the atheist are presented no more rationally the those of the religious.
You either dismiss it all as false, accept it all as true, or you are a hypocrite. The evidence is the same for all theologies. It's unproductive to consider ideas that either have no evidence or have no logical basis, and that describes theology.
> The thing is, in the right place, in the right context, those remarks could be interesting, however, when misplaced like that, they end up coming off as someone simply having a chip on their shoulder
For most of the past several thousand years, politely wording these sentiments could end in your death. Even now, a failure to at least pay lip service to Christian theology leaves you largely ineligible for public office, and may limit other opportunities. So yes, there is a chip on their shoulder, many people have a negative opinion about them no matter how tactful they are.
>And thus, instead of a philosophical debate, we end up with a two-person monologue where the beliefs of the atheist are presented no more rationally the those of the religious.
There is no debate with "the religious," there belief is based on things that are not debatable. They often pride themselves on how their belief comes from faith. The philosophical debate is another thing altogether.
The fact that many different religions try to tackle the same questions makes the possibility that a particular one has THE answers seem unlikely. However, the fact they all gravitate towards the same kinds of answers is something that should not be easily dismissed if we want to move the discussion forward. To me, it seems that some sort of spiritual element is always gonna have to be in play; that is, if we want to have any chance of answering those questions in a manner that is not only true in the scientific sense but also in a way that satisfies the restlessness which had inspired the search of the answers in the first place. I must add, that the need to satisfy the restlessness, of course, should not be taken as an excuse for accepting sub-par resolutions.
>For most of the past several thousand years, politely wording these sentiments could end in your death. Even now, a failure to at least pay lip service to Christian theology leaves you largely ineligible for public office, and may limit other opportunities. So yes, there is a chip on their shoulder, many people have a negative opinion about them no matter how tactful they are.
This has genuinely changed my view on this matter, thank you for bringing it up. Reading or listening to eloquent people discuss the topics, it's been easy for me to get hypnotized by their elegant arguments (even the ones I don't agree with) and to forget the human that has crafted them. Growing up in a country where militant religious attitudes (or strong religious attitudes at all, really) are basically non-existent, I didn't really think about the point that those people might have actually been slighted by religion in some way.
If you analyze their answers, you realize that the same questions remain after answered. Answering "why are we here" with "god made us" just changes the question to "why is god here?" Their answers are similar as they generally were not developed independently.
And again, all of their answers have no logical or scientific foundation. I could not develop Christian theology without already having a bible, while the philosophical debates presumably could be reproduced independently.