Joyless Atheism

Apparently all atheists are angry, sad, demoralized, hopeless, aggressive, wretched broken human beings devoid of all joy and sense of wonder. Or so I am reminded when a theist, pantheist or polytheist insist that a lack of faith induces some kind of affliction that makes atheist incapable of experiencing  the world through any other emotions but for the ones defined in the opening of this article. Even after explaining that as an atheist one often develops a far deeper appreciation for the elegance, finality and the sheer probability for everything that constitutes the human experience. Such a person may also find themselves in an endless state of wonder at the deep mystery of all existence if they so inclined to research the evidence based findings of science. So strong are these convictions, that there really is very little one can do to sway them, to theists it seems that it is just impossible to have a meaningful existence in a purely material world without the magic of belief.

But Why?

I’ve often wondered why religious people from every denomination and faith systems so readily default to this conclusion as if it is some kind of knee jerk reaction. Even now it is hard to count anyone who has not posed this question to me in one form or another. And, if it is not out rightly stated, atheism is often viewed with similar concern as one would give to someone with a terminal disease.  As if they are moments away from decapitating themselves out of some kind of severe depression. Based on many of these conversations that I’ve had, I suspect that this misconception arises from the calculated nature of reasoning employed by atheist combined with a misunderstanding of their inherently critical nature.

Knowing Is Fucking Hard Work, Lame and Scary

I have been told that all my endless research into random things just seems like a lot of needless hard work and stress. This thinking might be a contributing factor to the depression misconceptions…  Many theists in South Africa often feel that an experience is somehow reduced, or robbed of its essence when rationale is applied to it. They feel that this is a very cold, calculated way of looking at the world as opposed to the bliss of an anthropomorphic connection with the natural world posed by faith based world views.  Too look at the world as nothing more than a rational sequence of events seems to rob it from “The meaning” we as humans often try to find in everything. I believe that it could be this mechanism that gives rise to the misconception that atheists are incapable of experiencing joy.  Furthermore drawing or making sense of scientific conclusions can take a great deal of effort, and usually involves dealing with complex problems, perhaps it is this complexity that causes theists to reject these views in favor of easier imaginary constructs. Perhaps it is the  effort associated with learning or coming to grips with such knowledge that lead theists to believe that atheists simply cannot be happy if this is the life they choose. It might seem like needless self-inflicted stress and hard work…

Angry Poo Flinging Monkeys

Militant, argumentative, angry, aggressive and rude often get thrown around when talking about atheists. I personally think that all of those terms can be branched under disagreement, with the catch that it is nearly impossible to disagree with an accepted world view like religion without seeming as if you are personally attacking those who hold it.  Abandoning religion takes a fair degree of critical thinking, and with many atheists it doesn’t stop there. I’ve found that atheist inevitably start becoming opinionated about a great deal of other things soon after abandoning faith. This usually means rightly identifying many deficiencies in systems that most people seem happy to ignore, an unfortunate result of which is; you are often viewed as having a very negative outlook on life. This means that in one way or another you will always be in disagreement with pretty much 90% of the world’s population! It’s only when you go against these widely accepted grains that you are label under this branch of argumentative, pessimistic, out to get everyone, anti-establishment human beings.

No God, No Joy

Ok let’s just get one thing straight here…  The one thing in this universe that I think makes all atheists exceedingly happy, is that there is no God!!! So this thing that God somehow let atheists down and now they are so upset and angry at him is actually quite; as South African’s would put it:  “Kak funny”!  In fact this god delusion often provides atheist with endless laughter as they joyfully ridicule religion for its stupendous stupidity! Trust me; sometimes it’s very hard to stop yourself from bursting into laughter when faced with “theistic logic”… I would probably attend church regularly for some comic relief if it was not so unbearably long. Obviously atheist only laugh at religion when it’s not decapitating people, putting out fatwas, threatening little girls, oppressing women, condemning  individual sexual preference, influencing policies it has no business with, and  generally spreading misery and death across the world. When these things happen we get very serious, negative and angry about this religion business…

 

Hallo From The Other Side

From a traditional theistic view as well as spiritual views, the general consensus appears to be that one simply cannot experience any type of real joy or a meaning full existence without super natural aid.  But let us for a moment consider what this actually means; are the lives of theists and spiritual adherents so devoid of value; so meaningless that they feel the need to invoke entirely made up deities and glowy things from the ether to compensate for the deficit in self-worth.  Is it not grotesquely perverse to subject one’s self to such constructs that devaluate existence in this manner? Furthermore if theists insist on mining bliss from these ultimately false world views, then are these feelings of joy and wonder not equally as void as the views they are so heavily invested in.  On deeper inspection it seems to me that it is not the atheist world view that is restrictive, demoralizing, joyless and without wonder as is often presumed, but it may very well be the theistic view that suffers of this cancer that it so readily and so frequently  accuses atheism of.