Here's what I find very depressing.

[Pale Blue Dot]

I made the final leap into being a full-fledged atheist last year, right before my 40th birthday. My conversion was due to the usual circumstances (Dawkins, Bryson), and to finally being able to admit that whether I liked it or not, the evidence shows that I'm going to die someday, and that there will be nothing after that.

But that's not what I find depressing. What bothers me is that now that I have been doing research on religion, I realize that there is no "there" there. Religious beliefs aren't even close to being supported by any evidence and those who argue in favor of belief use the grossest logical fallacies and circular reasoning to back up their claims. There is absolutely nothing that is the least bit convincing about religious claims, yet I allowed myself to believe all or some portion of them for almost 40 years. And millions of people are doing the same now.

The same things can be said about UFOs, ghosts, ESP, or any number of paranormal claims. They are not even close to having any convincing evidence to back them up, yet people still believe. In fact, people will cling to tiny slivers of verifiably false evidence in order to continue to believe in these fairy tales.

How can we convince people to give up strongly held beliefs that are not just untrue but demonstrably absurd? And how can I blame people for believing when it took me almost 40 years to see the absurdity?

[immoderate]

1. Think you're out of the woods, eh?

I was at my local atheist's weekly meetup last night, generally a very fine group of really smart people. We meet at a pub, and discuss all subjects. So two of my fellow atheists get into a rather heated argument over whether Orwell's {i]1984 or Huxley's Brave New World provides a more accurate view of the world we live in.

After a while I started laughing. They were arguing over which satirical novel provides the better view of reality! So, I'm reading your post and I want to tell you that even when you ditch all the gods, religions, Santas, and tooth fairies you still have the notion of reality that sits only in your own mind. No one shares this with you. Scary, huh?

At most, there can only be one person in the world who has it all right! But the odds are against that. You might as well be a disembodied brain, floating in a tub of nutrient fluid. Don't worry -- you're not, but you wouldn't notice if you were.

Everybody believes in something. I believe I'm going to get a beer. :beer:

--IMM

[Pale Blue Dot]

2. I don't think you and I are talking about the same thing at all.

For one thing, nobody I know devotes their lives to 1984 or Brave new World. No one makes daily decisions based on them. People don't raise their kids to believe in one or the other. They don't infect every fabric of our society. No one thinks that either book is going to be their key to eternal life after they die.

More importantly, as trivial as the argument may be, you can actually have an argument about which book is more relevant based on facts and evidence and without ever once resorting to logical fallacies. The same can't be said about religion: There are NO logical arguments based on facts or evidence to back up religious claims.

The fact that everyone believes in something does not excuse those, including myself, who believe in things that cannot be backed up with concrete and verifiable evidence.

[immoderate]

7. I was talking about nailing down reality.

Everyone has his world view that exists nowhere else than inside his head.

--IMM

[FiveGoodMen]

8. Are you saying that there is no objective reality, or that we just can't be sure what it is?

[immoderate]

9. We can't be sure what it is.

We each have an individual model of the universe in our head. What we know is filtered through our senses and colored by our personalities. There is a reality (I think) but no one is directly connected to it. Knowledge, as such, is verifiable, according to its nature. That is, we can't know if red looks the same to everybody, but we can agree pretty well on the length of a meter.

--IMM

[Warpy]

3. Convincing other people about this stuff is not my job

which is a good thing because I doubt it's possible to do unless we're in the middle of a massive disaster of some sort.

One of the things that caused a lot of Jews I know to drop the fantasy of the tribal god who was minutely concerned with the fate of them personally and as a people was the Holocaust. If a god can't be counted upon to save his chosen people from genocide, what good is he?

It took Europe 2 world wars fought on their soil with the Depression between them to give up the attachment to the invisible friend in the sky that Sunday teachers go on about being benevolent and minutely concerned with their fates.

So even though you'd like to grab these people by the collars and shake them until their teeth rattle out of their heads, don't bother. Belief and the fear of not believing will continue to be strongly maintained until they're crushed by events.

The best we can do is educate them on who atheists really are.

[RebelOne]

4. ESP is definitely not a fairy tale.

I have had too many experiences to deny it.

[regularguy]

5. I share your frustration, but

you really can drive yourself nuts worrying about the crazy shit that people(like me occasionally) believe in. I don't want to try to convince anybody to give up their strongly held beliefs; how do I know that it will make them a happier or better person? I suspect it might but what if I'm wrong? On the other hand if they ask me, I'm happy to tell them all about a life free of superstitions and supernatural stuff.

[qb]

6. Congratulations on your conversion!

The architects of organized religion knew there was no "there" there. That is why the central tenet is blind faith. It is a sin to question god's word or seek proof of his existence. When that message is pounded into your head from infancy onward it is difficult to break free. So be proud of your accomplishment and enjoy life!

[and-justice-for-all]

10. When the subject comes up...

you just have to be willing to say "rubbish!"

There is more evidence, it may not be hard evidence but it is something, for UFOs than there is for the invisible friends nonsence. I would not say that I 'believe' in UFOs, it is more of a 'I want to believe' in UFOs but the evidence is not solid so I will want to see if there is any thing conclusive. Until then, I do not 'believe' in UFOs because I can not, as invisible friend supporters do, take it on 'faith'.

'Faith' and 'fact' could not be further from each other. when there is not evidence to support their claims, all they have is 'faith', which is nothing more then believing without 'facts'/evidence.

[vixengrl]

11. I think I see where you're coming from.

I know I believed for a time in reincarnation on the basis of a "deeply personal impression" regarding my supposed past lives, but it dawned on me as I lost faith that my impressions were based so much on periods of history I've read, and resonated strongly with the kinds of ficion I enjoy--I could see where my subconscious had made up dreams and stories when I was in a semi-hypnotic state (and really drunk, but that's another story.) I didn't question them because they were *my* impressions, and were in line with the New Age, Celtic, Pagan, Buddhist stuff I read when "looking for answers." And I also started to realize how, if I were exposed to different things, like, for example, baptism, communion, confirmation, etc, in a Christian Church, I might be more inclined to feel a personal relationship with Christ. The subjectivity of the belief experience is persuasive--the believer convinces him or herself.

I understood how this works better when reading some of Robert Anton Wilson's non-fiction stuff, and although he had some things to say about CSI-COP being too quick to rule things out, he really was my introduction to embracing doubt. (This lead me to a better appreciation of Aleister Crowley *and* Carl Sagan. It's a weird old world.) It helps to try on different beliefs, and really explore what it's like to look out from some other point of view. And then work at tearing that recently adopted belief down. They generally all have myths, control and hierarchy behind them.

Changing people though--that's like the old joke about how a psychotherapist changes a lightbulb (first, the lightbulb has to really want to change.) One of the criticisms of the New Atheists is that believers feel they are being "put down" by the atheist argument--they feel insulted for believing. But if it could be explained how losing the supernaturalist viewpoint can be freeing, how it takes away the fear of damnation, and lets a person just seek their own rational ethical truth, without the arbitrary-seeming absurdities of deities from cultures long outdated; that could begin to loosen the hold of the old horrors of sin and hell. If "Do unto others" was better understood as being a sublime utterance of morality before Christianity, and formulated by cultures globally, that might help understanding. If the pet supernaturalism of any group of people was put in the light of being no truer or more realistic than that of any other group (Pascal's wager being as valid for Pele, Moloch, or Montezuma), maybe that would be the trigger for shedding the certainty that any given book was true.

And it's hard to blame anyone for believing. Right now, based on 35 years of familiarity with western science, I am cetain I am on a sphere somewhat flattened at the poles that not only spins on an axis but goes about the Sun, a hugely big and dense bit of flaming matter, in some elliptical way. I also have some idea that I am a carbon-based bipedal life-form that descends through other primates back to some single-celled lifeform. I am convinced of these things, and I tend to think that just as I have no cognitions regarding the time before I was born, the time after I die should be equally blank. But for these things I am also depending upon external cues, to an extent. My present conceits seem more thought-out to me, and more in tune with the realities I percieve. But I have been as mistaken in the past as many are now--and I can still recall the feeling of certainty--"knowing" that what I experienced, and my explanation of it, was so. It is a powerful feeling. But I think reasoning out the truth for oneself feels more rewarding, and if it isn't comforting in the "faith" sense, at least it's honest.

[Az]

12. Because we do not truly live in reality

No one really lives in reality. What we experience, if it can even be called that, is our brain recreating the reality it perceives with our senses. This data gets relayed to our brain via various nerve connections. The data then gets processed by our brains. And the important bit to notice at this stage is that it is not a straight feed from our senses to our conscious mind. The brain filters all our senses and places importance on various things based on learned reactions. Our emotions form the guidelines by which the mind filters all we experience After some time (literally measurable) all this processed data gets fed to our waking mind as the reality we are experiencing at this moment (despite the measurable time delay).

Thus each of our realities differs slightly with everyone else's. A person has their hands full just trying to make sense of it all. Over time... a lot of time... we have cobbled together some sense of what is going on in the world. But because not everyone approaches the matter in the same way not everyone comes to the same conclusions. And we certainly do not have a complete understanding of everything even at this time. And even the idea of gathering all the understanding we do have at this point into one mind is ... well its not gonna happen. There is so much to know and understand about this world that we have specialists who keep tabs on various niches that we have probed and cajoled into giving up their secrets.

The upshot of this is that no single person just trying to get on with their life can be expected to know all there is to know about the world around them. So instead we take whatever works and put it to use. For most this means religion. Religion has an advantage in that it is a self replicating social construct. That is religion is a belief that as part of its belief teaches others to believe it. Thus it seeks to spread itself far and wide (well some forms of religion do, others use different distribution methods). And for most people religions works in getting them through the day. And for them that is really all that matters.

[JNelson6563]

13. It is quite natural.

I remember when I first arrived at atheism in my mind once and for all. It was time to reflect and there do seem to be stages of it. At times you can feel like you've been chumped even by those who love you! This is generally followed up with the realization that they believe it themselves and only acted in "good faith" (as it were). Then there is the power structure of religion, how it permeates everything. Easy to hate the leadership of the various faiths/churches. But then you realize many of them really buy into this belief system too. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by it all too. As an atheist you are truly in a small minority. When one watches the world in constant conflict and know religion has always and will always play a role in this senseless misery, well it's enough to frustrate anyone.

So, really, no matter what perspective you're looking at it with, your own personal life or geo-politics, there are endless sources of anghast to be had with your relatively new atheism. Remember how short life really is. No virgin filled paradise afterlife for the atheist, this is it. One day your time will come, like all of us, and think about what you'd like in your mind then. As I like to say "To prepare for when your life flashes before your eyes, make sure it's fun to watch."

Enjoy your freedom of thought and go drink of life's pleasures as you can. Leave the religious to their own miseries. ;-)

Julie