My way of being atheist/skeptic/etc. Are you similar?

[Tanja]

I think people can be atheists for different reasons. Some were religious at some point in their life, but something happened to them which turned them atheist. Some thought a lot about whether God existed or not, and after a lot of critical thinking decided they were atheists.

I am simply an atheist because I never felt any need or inclination to believe in a higher being, or ponder the meaning of life, and never understood what draws people to even think about such questions.

In a similar way as someone who has no aptitude for logical puzzles will try to solve a puzzle but have no clue what it is about as it is not "pressing the right buttons", I can read a religious text (or actually a philosophical text, and very often, poetry) and just not get it. My brain does not have a part devoted to the analysis of such material.

I see this trait as something essential to my personality: I am a good logical thinker, I was always good in sciences and mathematics. I was good in writing essays as they were always well structured and addressed the right points. I am just about the only person I know that never had an urge to write a poem. I am a reasonably good painter and singer, but my paintings start with ideas, rather than feelings. I don't like "deep" films and books because I don't get them. I often have a feeling than when an art or film critic describes something as "deep" it means "I don't understand it". And, what the hell does "transcendental" mean?

I somehow assume that on this forum there should be more people who are in this respect similar to me. I am quite sure there are many people who are good in sciences and mathematics, but do any of you make this same connection between religion, philosophy and poetry as I do? Are you also not the type of people to think about the meaning of life? Do you understand or write poetry? Please share your thoughts.

(edited for typos)

[Dancing David]

Welcome Tanja!

Uh, hmm, my own experience was very different, I was/am the 'religous one' in my family of origin. My brain is wired in such a way that I see conections and meanings everywhere that I look, I just have all these emotions, thoughts and feelings about the life force of all sorts of inanimate objects.

I swim through a world of allegory and metaphor, but as I grew older I learned the value of objectivity and the need to have some boundaries in my personal life. So while I have a very hard rational/sceptic side it has to balance my emotional/soul side to keep me from becoming enmeshed in insanity.

One of my best friends is much like you, he is an atheist becuase he feels that it just makes the most sense.

[Zero]

What happened to me was that I started reading early, and on my own. I was reading mostly stories about Greek and Norse mythology, and I asked my mom about it. She said stories with gods and godesses and talking animals and magic tricks were just fiction. So, of course, when I stumbled across Bible stories, that was the standard I held them to...boy, was my mom angry! She tried to rationalize her way out of it, but it is her own fault.

[c4ts]

Went through kindergarten and first grade at a Catholic school. It's enough to make anyone an atheist, with the crazy nuns and all.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Welcome, Tanja! It sounds like your belief/god module may be broken. :D I don't think that's much of a loss, especially if it keeps you from wasting too much time trying to understand philosophy.

~~ Paul

[c4ts]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
Welcome, Tanja! It sounds like your belief/god module may be broken. :D I don't think that's much of a loss, especially if it keeps you from wasting too much time trying to understand philosophy.

~~ Paul

Oh to lead the unexamined life...

[fishbob]

do any of you make this same connection between religion, philosophy and poetry as I do? Are you also not the type of people to think about the meaning of life? Do you understand or write poetry? Sounds pretty similar to my experience. I like math and the sciences. My interests and profession revolve around learning how things work, why things work.

Religion never made sense, philosophy is most tedious, and anything more poetic than a limerick is lost on me. I never felt that I missed out on anything because of this.

[Tanja]

Originally posted by fishbob
Sounds pretty similar to my experience. I like math and the sciences. My interests and profession revolve around learning how things work, why things work.

Religion never made sense, philosophy is most tedious, and anything more poetic than a limerick is lost on me. I never felt that I missed out on anything because of this.

I am glad to see you think in a similar way - I don't particularly think I am missing out on something either - but I do notice that I differ from most people in this respect. Thankfully, my parents and my husband think similar to me.

Talking about limerics - I got once as a present from my sister a book of "nonsense poetry", which I liked very much (my favourite book is Alice in Wonderland), exactly because it was more about humour, punchlines and logic (or lack of it) rather than poetry.

[Jon_in_london]

I never belived in God. It all seemed a little on the silly side to me. My parents always had stacks of kiddys books about science, and always were happy to take me to the Science Museum and stuff.

When I first got to secondary school (high school), I was astonished to learn that some people actually belived the whole adam and eve story :eek:

[RabbiSatan]

Hhmm - don't remember much.

I was raised in Thailand for most of my younger life, and was pretty much indoctrinated into an almagamated version of Buddhism - whole cycle of life, yadda yadda, pain and suffering, enlightenment, et al, that somehow also included indeginous Chinese gods, although no one asked how exactly two religions from two different sub-cultures are supposed to be mutually inclusive in the first place - it was just accepted without thinking.

Eventually moved to Hong Kong at the age of 6 to study, started being exposed to other religions and ideas, and as a carryon mentality from Thailand, amalgamated them into my own little religion in my head. It wasn't until reading up on various other pantheons, dead religions, norse and greek mythology, and then my father saying, "Oh, god? I don't believe in any of that rubbish", did logic and reason finally slapped me over the head with a slippery fish (My father let me loose to come to my own conclusions).

"Waaaaaaiiiit-a-minute"

Eventually, I just dropped the entire notion of invisible people in the sky, commanding us to do things or terrible consequences will follow. I mean - so many different versions! Not even Pascal's Wager would work.

[trasa]

Tanja, hi

I envy you a lot, since I have no logical ability whatsoever - and still does not get the beauty of religion. Okay, I do have some logical skill, but what do you say about someone who after after 5 years of university studies in french and english still don't master the basics of grammar. I just cannot understand it and it's theory (and no, I'm not dyslexic and I am higly intelligent, according to my profesors).

However, when it comes to writing, and exercises such as filling in blanks, I'm as good as anyone with the same education.

I guess you don't have to be able to scientifically "conclude" what is wrong/weird/not-logical with religion to dismiss its ideas - you can do it in a intuitiv way as well. I am the proof.

(Funny detail though, I cannot stand poetry. And yet again, I am a writer. I guess life is complicated...)

[Dorian Gray]

I became an atheist in a way similar to how I stopped believing in Santa Claus. When I was about 5 or 6, I saw a globe and deduced that if there was nothing but ocean at the top, there couldn't be a Santa at the North Pole, even if it was frozen.

Later, I saw a few cults, went to a few churches, looked around and realized that if there is nothing but hypocrisy, greed and hatred in religion, there couldn't be a God, even if there was a Bible.

Then I noticed that everyone had reasons for not believing in the Greek/Roman/Norse/Amerind/Aboriginal/Indian/Chinese/Mormon "myths", and that there was nothing that different between the myths that were 'obviously' false and the religions that are around today.

Finally I solidified my ideas about God, and became an atheist.

[Keneke]

I understand and can enjoy such creative activities, but also have a strong left brain. The reason I became atheist is because I *could* understand what religious people are going through: I know why people want to suspend logic to make themselves feel better, because I feel that pull in myself. After demystifying "hunger for the Lord" and other measures of self-fulfillment, I looked at what these desire cults are based on. Once the need is diverted, everything else falls apart.

[Tanja]

Originally posted by Keneke
I understand and can enjoy such creative activities, but also have a strong left brain.

Regarding my creative activities: I have been doing some singing recently, and as almost everyone else in the band is writing their own music, I thought I could try myself. I relised I can come up with a melody quite easily, but no lyrics come up at all. I really am "poetry challenged".

[diddidit]

I suppose my experience is similar (must be a Dutch thing - I'm half, and went to college in Holland, Michigan, where they have klompen dancers on the streets every spring). I wasn't religiously indoctrinated as a small child, which surprises me today as both sides of my family are quite religious. I'll have to ask my parents why; they supplied me with science books and whatnot, and made only a halfhearted attempt to get me to read the bible, and we rarely went to church. I did go to a church youth group when I was in high school, but that was mostly because they went on a cool ski trip every winter, and there were girls there who weren't pre-aquainted with my nerdiness.

Like you, I find many art forms to be inscrutable; ultimately I find elegant function to be more aesthetically pleasing than a painting - I'd just as soon hang a finely-ground gear on my wall as anything. I'm an engineer, to no ones surprise.

What do you do in real life? And are you open about your atheism?

did

[Tanja]

Hi Did who did it,

I grew up in a country that was communist at the time (I am from Croatia, ex Yugoslavia and I have only been living in Holland for a couple of years.) I think that the former Yugoslavia had a milder attitude towards religion than most communist countries - religion was discouraged and not state-endorsed, but not banned in any way. Since the fall of communism, Croatia became, or returned to being, very Catholic.

I was brought up in the Catholic tradition but not in a religious sort of way (if that is possible). I sang in a church choir for years, my first boyfriend was from a church-going circle or friends - and I really enjoyed those years. Still, I never became religious and did not understand what it was all about (as I described in my post which started this thread). My upbringing become inevitably an integral part of me - for example if I feel guilty about something, I describe it as "my Catholic sense of guilt". I would also accept (and have accepted) to be someone's godmother at a christening or a witness at a Catholic wedding although I lie blatantly when I say I do it in the name of god. I am aware that it is hypocritical, but I would do it again. Most people in Croatia will have their children baptised - regardless of whether they are religious or not.

My family, my husband, and all the friends I ever discussed religion with know I am atheist. My husband is also atheist, I am really lucky that we think very similarly about these issues. He makes fun of my Catholic ways sometimes.

By the way, I am a psychologist by profession. I love psychology, and I love the scientific aspects of it (the psychology program at Zagreb University would make all skeptics proud). I work in the Hague, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, as part of a team providing psychological support to witnesses testifying there.

[Tanja]

Bump - because I hope to get some new, post TAM2 answers!

[CWL]

Originally posted by Tanja
*snip*

I am simply an atheist because I never felt any need or inclination to believe in a higher being, or ponder the meaning of life, and never understood what draws people to even think about such questions.

*snip*

I certainly do not feel the need or inclination to believe in a higher being (although I can certainly understand why the thought is tempting - not always easy being a human being after all).

Pondering the "meaning of life" on the other hand is something I struggle with on a daily basis - and I would be willing to bet that you do to. "What about my career"? "What about my relationship"? "How can I become a happier person"? "How can I make a difference"?

All such questions concerning your own human condition are in effect questions surrounding the "meaning of life" (namely your life). As for the big picture, anyone who is interested in any form of science is "asking the big questions".

The fact that I am an atheist/humanist is these days very much related to my interest in critical thinking and skepticism. I do not believe in a "god", simply because I see no tangible evidence. Show me the evidence and I shall believe...

[Kerberos]

I can understand poetry and deep movies when I really make an effort, but I never watch them voluntarily. It's much the same with art which I can interpret when I have to, but it doesn't speak to me the same way it does to some other people. Art and music where my to worst subject in school, l and while I did fairly well in Danish (which was mainly about interpretations of texts) it was one of the subject I liked the least. Of course that could be because our teacher was an idiot.

[Vitnir]

My parents wasn't very religious but they still brought me to sunday school, if you didn't bring your kids you were considered weird I guess. Not much discipline there, I remember that the kids were mostly playing and since there were boys, wrestling fighting etc that turned me off even then.

Then there was a long period until it was time for confirmation and during that year I ALMOST started believing for real. However when that was over I soon came to the conclusion that the Christian God wasn't a very nice guy, killing everyone if they don't like him and boiling them in oil for eternity. What is the deal between God and the Devil anyway? Hey Devil you can have these losers, I don't care.

When I look up atheist in the dictionaty today its defined as someone who denies the existance of God. Personally I'm more towards rejecting God, I don't care if he exists or not, I reject him anyway. When the first atheists came to light, wasn't that in a time when noone really thought of a world without God? They knew they were going to hell but thought it was the better choice?

[bjornart]

I grew up a-religious. I was baptized, and at my parents sent me to some sort of sunday school when I was 4 or 5 (except it was on mondays... and I've never considered asking them why they did that), but after that I got no exposure to religion, except saying grace at kindergarten and reading the lord's prayer in school. But those rituals held no meaning for me since I didn't think about god at all.

Then in the 5th grade our teacher said something about the bible being a really big and complex book and not something you read from one end to the other, and I set out to prove her wrong... The psalms made me insanely bored though so I stopped. (I did read it all the way through while at uni though.) At that time I started thinking about the meaning of life, god, and stuff. (Before that my only metaphysical experience were freaking out whenever I contemplated the infinity of space.) Fairly soon I was an agnostic or possibly a deist, I definitely was convinced there was no active god in the universe in the present.

I still think about the meaning of life a lot, and the more I think, the less I see god in the world. You could call me a hard atheist, because if asked I'll say I believe god doesn't exist. But I don't believe in invisble pink unicorns either, and no one calls me an a-'invisible pink unicornist' because of that. :D

[Tanja]

Thanks to everyone who replied for interesting answers!
My parents did not actively try to make me religious, as I can see some of yours parents did, and you became atheists nevertheless. It is something I see happening in another side of my family - my oldest (step)sister is very very Catholic, she not only goes to church but participates in all sort of additional prayer meetings etc. She brought up her children Catholic as well, mass, Sunday school, prayers at home and everything. Now I see that my oldest niece, who is a very bright girl of 14, has become atheist regardless of her upbringing.

Keep posting!

[Silicon]

I'm starting to formulate a description of my type of atheism that would make sense to a theist.

Here's the idea:

God is a Mystery.

What is the nature of God, and what is the nature of Creation?

I will spend all my life trying to discover as much about the nature of God as I can, by studying the nature of the Universe.

However, we learn NOTHING of God, and Truth is not served by mangling science to fit the myths and legends of past generations.

And the question of the very existence of God? That is the ultimate mystery.


I think I can build an argument around that belief system such that people will shut up and leave me alone.

If they refuse to shut up, I can use MY God to tell them that THEY are the sinful ones, for denying the TRUTH of God's Creation (revealed by science).

It's simple enough logic for them to follow:

Likelihood that God created the Universe = Certain. (To those who decide they need to pre-suppose a God rather than letting it be a mystery)

Likelihood that God wrote the Bible, and stands by every word, including the bits about the sky being a tent, and spiders having 6 legs = Slightly less than certain.

So according to a Pascal-like wager, the Universe is a better expression of God's Will than the Bible.

So I'll study the universe, and see what I can discover. Will I discover that there is a God? I don't have enough evidence to draw that conclusion yet!

[69dodge]

Originally posted by Tanja
And, what the hell does "transcendental" mean?not algebraic

:p

[exarch]

I like religion for all the ceremonies and rituals they have to commemorate different stages in life (particularly birth, marriage and death) and the art it has brought forth, but I don't see the need of a deity to perform those ceremonies though. Those who attended TAM2 might recognise that sentiment from a remark (I think) Jamie Ian Swiss made.

I also don't disbelieve god, as some people do, I just don't think about him, and remain skeptical about his existance or non-existance until evidence shows is indeed a god, or there has become so much known about the universe that there's hardly anything left that could serve as evidence for gods existance. (The so called god of the gaps). Until then, he's Schroedingers god, who, similar to the cat, neither exists nor doesn't.

As for art, well, I like art that is a show of someones skill, be it their competence with a paintbrush or other materials, or simply a really original or interesting concept or idea. what I don't get is accidents with painbuckets selling for millions of dollars. I consider any creation, like poetry, writing, movies, basically anything that matches my first bolded statements as "ART".

BTW, I was also raised catholic, by really weak-catholic parents. I was baptised and did the whole confirmation thing, and may some day get married in church, but the bible already stopped making sense to me in first grade though ...

Right now, the only problem I have with religion (particularly fundamentalists) is their extreme unwillingness to accept things like homosexuality,euthanasia ,sexual education/birthcontrol/abortion and genetic/stem cell research (and other fields of science they consider "invading gods terrain" or "playing god").

[Vitnir]

Above I stated that I'm atheist because an omnipotent god must be evil and I'd rather be in hell than kiss up to him (in a nutshell). Thinking about it now I realise that the counter argument is that God isn't omnipotent and he and the devil is fighting over our souls and he really want's to save us. How does a atheist handle that argument?

And if God isn't running the show, then who is and should we not worship him/her/it instead?

Sometimes I wish I could meet a believer to get a glimpse of how they manage to fit these things together.

[CWL]

Originally posted by Vitnir
Above I stated that I'm atheist because an omnipotent god must be evil and I'd rather be in hell than kiss up to him (in a nutshell). Thinking about it now I realise that the counter argument is that God isn't omnipotent and he and the devil is fighting over our souls and he really want's to save us. How does a atheist handle that argument?

Simple. Simply point out that there is no valid evidence for the hypotheisis in question.

[Tanja]

Originally posted by exarch


As for art, well, I like art that is a show of someones skill, be it their competence with a paintbrush or other materials, or simply a really original or interesting concept or idea. what I don't get is accidents with painbuckets selling for millions of dollars. I consider any creation, like poetry, writing, movies, basically anything that matches my first bolded statements as "ART".

I have to agree with you on this Exarch - and your remark reminds me of the last Dave Barry column from the International Herald Tribune and Miami Herald, titled "A chance for amateurs to mumble 'Huh?' "
Here is the link:

http://www.iht.com/ihtsearch.php?id=125374&owner=(The%20Miami%20Herald)&date=20040119150230 (http://)

Edited: My link seems to work if you copy and paste it, but not if you click on it. I have to learn how to do that properly.

[Frankie]

Tanja as you said. I was once religious catholicand something happened that changed my views. I was never deeply religious to start with. I would even go far as to say I went along with religion as it was the correct thing to do so, and my peers all followed such without question.

Now I am an atheist, I do not need to hold the belief some greater entity created all around us. I do not need to be told I am condemned for all eternity to purgatory for my sins.

Everybody makes mistakes at some point in their lives. Why should a mistake be turned into a black-mailable sin in the name of god and religion?


That was what, turned me off from religion the blackmail and guilt trip that is so heavily used in spreading the good word.


As for your comment on logic based pursuits. You said you sing, to myself IMHO, singing is an emotional pursuit. A logical analytical mind cannot produce the emotions needed to really sing the song. But yet you say the deep films or books are lost on you, this seems at odds. Does that make sense?

Art is a skill, again emotions are used to convey the meaning of art, to capture the beauty of say a sunset beach scene.

Logical art is more like Abstractism, like Patrick Caulfields. Monet, Caravaggio, or Artemisia Gentileschi, are more on the empathetical side.


I am not solid based logical or solid based empathetical. I have a mix of both. Some days one is higher than the other. I can see the emotion in some things as well as the mathematical logical in some others.

As a job I deal with in some cases the extremes of human emotions so I would say I have that more to the front than my cold science logic.


Has there ever been a Psychological study of personality types that show the differences between a science based logic personality and that of a empathic logical personality?

I took part in a Psychological personality experiment once. The results did show very clear similarities between certain persons and certain strong beliefs. Those who were religious were found to be easily led. Those who were more emphatic were more adaptable to sudden changes in situations. Those with strong scientific minds were prone to more mental illnesses. Just few of the results I can recall.

I, would be interested to see any brain scans of the distinctive belief groups of people. I, would envisage that there are some changes to certain brains belonging to these different groups.

[exarch]

Originally posted by Tanja
I have to agree with you on this Exarch - and your remark reminds me of the last Dave Barry column from the International Herald Tribune and Miami Herald, titled "A chance for amateurs to mumble 'Huh?' "
Here is the link:

Edited: My link seems to work if you copy and paste it, but not if you click on it. I have to learn how to do that properly.You have formatted it the wrong way: This is how it works (http://www.iht.com/ihtsearch.php?id=125374&owner=(The%20Miami%20Herald)&date=20040119150230) (Quote the post to see the difference)

Anyway, most people are probably like that, and there's a good chance the real art people are just really good fakers.

Personally, I can find just as much beauty in a really nicely finished aluminium dashboard frame or a piece of nicely written and formatted visual basic code as in a real piece of art. It's all about noticing someone spent time creating it, and you can just see they enjoyed putting the finishing touches to it. Someone dragging a dirty old couch from the dump and making a movie of a naked old geezer skating to go with it is not my idea of a display of either skill or originality, but more likely an insult to old things/people :rolleyes:

Asking $2800 for it is ridiculous, paying that much for it is just embarassing.

[EternalUniverse]

Hi there. Pondering the meaning of life is one of my central activities. As one previous poster mentioned, everyone ponders these questions some time or rather. However, the difference may be in the type of questioning that one undergoes. I see the meaning question in 3 parts:
a) what is the meaning of the universe and everything?
b) what is the meaning of the human race?
c) what is the meaning of my life? (the subjective route)

I'm sure you've asked the "c" version many times, as have we all. Questions such as what we should do with our careers, for example, pertain to a "type c" question. I'm not sure, but it may be the case that, in terms of depth of questioning (however defined), "a" is deeper than "b", and "b" is deeper than "c".

It is possible, and usual for people to start becoming religious (by this I mean start pondering questions of meaning, not start believing in Christianity) in the latter years of their life. Perhaps you might start to find a need to ponder questions "a" and "b" later on in life.

Oh, and don't let the word "deep" get you down. Lots of people use it just to put people down unecessarily. I'm sure you've had lots of "deep" thoughts, being a psychologist.

Yes, I'm just rambling.

[Tanja]

Originally posted by EternalUniverse

Oh, and don't let the word "deep" get you down. Lots of people use it just to put people down unecessarily. I'm sure you've had lots of "deep" thoughts, being a psychologist.

Yes, I'm just rambling. [/B]

Thanks, eternal universe! You were not rambling! I can see even from your name that you do think about such issues. Compare that to me, I was so uninspired I used my real first name as my user name on the forum!

Of course I do think about what is going to happen to me, to my family, to my country etc. But I think about it in a more practical way. It is questions like "how are we going to cope with this situation" and "is this what I really want to do" rather than "why are we here and what is our purpose here on this earth". Maybe no one actually thinks about such things in the way I thought some people think about them.

I am also somewhat not tolerant of people who suffer from weltshmertz for no particular reason (think characters from the film "the Hours"), possibly because through my work I have met people who REALLY suffered (lost whole families in the war, were tortured or survived executions etc) and who still manage to maintain a positive outlook in life. Dealing with those people really helped me grow as a person and focus on good things in life.

[exarch]

Originally posted by EternalUniverse
a) what is the meaning of the universe and everything?
b) what is the meaning of the human race?
c) what is the meaning of my life? (the subjective route)

[SNIP]

It is possible, and usual for people to start becoming religious (by this I mean start pondering questions of meaning, not start believing in Christianity) in the latter years of their life. Perhaps you might start to find a need to ponder questions "a" and "b" later on in life.I'm not "in the latter years of my life" but I have already pondered the "a" question. Then again, I haven't. I don't think either the human race or the universe have meaning. What I have pondered is what the universe is all about, how far it stretches, what's beyond the edge of the universe, what was there before the universe came into existence, how it could be possible for something to be infinite. You know, the usual brainthurting, logic defying, ungraspable kind of questions.

[sorgoth]

I seem to have had a different path than most people here.

Instead of just drifting out of religion, I drifted into religion, until I was volunteering at the church all the time. I wasn't a very critical thinker at all. Then, I began to listen in church. Really listen.

I was struck by God's cruelty at certain points...However, this alone had more of an effect of turning me into a god-fearing Christian than anything else.

Then, I began to become interested in science, learned about evolution and all that, and began asking questions : "How can there be Adam and Eve if we all evolved from primates?" Things like this worried me very much for a couple of years.
At this point, I quit the church volunteer group but was still weakly christian (Believing in God and Jesus, but not in most of the Old Testament.)

I believe I found JREF at around this point, although I did not pay much attention to it. I was struggling with some issues, and was to confused to worry much about science. When I had sorted my life out a bit, my interest in science stayed, but I began to delve into philosophy. This made me wonder about everything I had been taught, as so many things made sense, and did not include God. About half a year after this, and beginning to listen more and more in church, I became an agnostic. My sense of logic was not developped yet, and I still saw no reason to actively
disbelieve in God.

The JREF forums were a huge step towards atheism for me, as so many people here had a logical counterargument for God, and as I argued I realised many of my positions simply did not make sense. I thank all those who calmly argued with me, without insulting.

The last step towards atheism had to be found in myself, though. I was depressed for about half a year because life had absolutely no meaning anymore. I learned to cope with this, finally, and avoided that last step to becoming a Goth and terminally whiney (Good thing!).

Unlike many of you, and perhaps because of my experience on both ends of the spectrum, I see religion as something fascinating. I don't believe a word of it anymore, but I find it very interesting. I see Art and Music as some of the best things in life, and enjoy them both deeply. I guess my experience as deeply religious and as a hard-core atheist has allowed me to see things...differently.

[Vitnir]

I also find religion fascinating. I think it deserves more than just there is no valid evidence for the hypotheisis in question

Judging from myself I can see that people seem to have a built in need that is very strong and that is to believe in something. If someone comes to you and can fulfill your need you can be exploited. Religion is pretty harmless in this perspective, chances are that you will give all your money to a witchdoctor instead.

[EternalUniverse]

Originally posted by Tanja


I am also somewhat not tolerant of people who suffer from weltshmertz for no particular reason (think characters from the film "the Hours"), possibly because through my work I have met people who REALLY suffered (lost whole families in the war, were tortured or survived executions etc) and who still manage to maintain a positive outlook in life. Dealing with those people really helped me grow as a person and focus on good things in life.

I'm not familiar with the term weltshmertz, nor have I seen "the Hours". Are you speaking of something like Frankl's notion of the noogenic crisis, something like a crisis of meaning perceived by a person?

There are drawbacks to asking about the meaning of life...it can be psychologically stressful if no satisfactory answer is found, and hence the crisis. An answer is to keep in mind an idea in a certain movie (I forgot the name) - what is tragic is not necessarily death, but that it takes us so long before we start to live.