Category: Phil Ossify

Much of this post is duplicated in the adjacent one, because I wanted to separate out the responses.

Thinking about writing a book about how I’m handling the death of my Dad, I realized I was going to have to answer the question “Why is atheism better?”

After all, if the title of your (might-be) book is “Saying Goodbye to Dan: An Atheist Deals With Death,” you’re pretty much obligated to attempt to differentiate yourself, and your named-in-the-title philosophy, from the traditional method of dealing with death — the religious one.

I have a lot of my own ideas about how to answer the question, but I’d like to ask YOU about your own answers.

Because we wouldn’t BE atheists — would we? — if we didn’t have SOME idea that it was better.

Unlike most religious thinkers, who would always assume we’re atheists because we’re bad, the real reason we’re atheists is because we’re GOOD. Or at least trying to be. Trying to be better, righter, more accurate, more oriented toward real-world facts and truth.

So the two questions are:

1) Why is atheism better for you as an individual?

2) Why is atheism better for society?

This specific post asks that second question:

Why is atheism better for US?

 

Much of this post is duplicated in the adjacent one, because I wanted to separate out the responses.

Thinking about writing a book about how I’m handling the death of my Dad, I realized I was going to have to answer the question “Why is atheism better?”

After all, if the title of your (might-be) book is “Saying Goodbye to Dan: An Atheist Deals With Death,” you’re pretty much obligated to attempt to differentiate yourself, and your named-in-the-title philosophy, from the traditional method of dealing with death — the religious one.

I have a lot of my own ideas about how to answer the question, but I’d like to ask YOU about your own answers.

Because we wouldn’t BE atheists — would we? — if we didn’t have SOME idea that it was better.

Unlike most religious thinkers, who would always assume we’re atheists because we’re bad, the real reason we’re atheists is because we’re GOOD. Or at least trying to be. Trying to be better, righter, more accurate, more oriented toward real-world facts and truth.

So the two questions are:

1) Why is atheism better for you as an individual?

2) Why is atheism better for society?

This specific post asks that first question:

Why is atheism better for YOU?

 

Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3

Devout Christians will probably always assume that atheists are simply denying publicly what they know deep within to be true: that God exists and watches over us all in a sort-of benign Big Brother bit. They will assume that atheists really do believe, but avoid admitting it for their own selfish, sick, sinful reasons. They will always believe that it is impossible to not-believe, that our god-created human minds are not capable of it.

For me, at least, they will always be wrong. For me, eventually, all the last shreds of belief, the last suspicion that there might be a god watching me and judging me, drained away and vanished.   Continue reading “Granny’s Hands & Travelin’ Dog — Part 3”