Is It Serious?

—This is a serious game, these emergent property humans that have no meaning but continuation. Or is it the one-and-done chance at eternal life for the created Christian? That’s a great game, very serious, but a game nonetheless. “and for His pleasure they were created”—Rev 4:11

Does life have meaning? If so, it is a serious business. But life is not serious at all, “it is a non-serious play—with nothing to be achieved, with nowhere to reach. It is just a play, with no end”—Satrakshita. There is only continuation—til it all burns out then arises again. How long it takes matters none wit, like awakening from a long and dreamless sleep. You will never know what happened when you were out.

Seriousness is always end-oriented. It means that you are living in order to achieve something and life will be meaningless if not achieved.
It also permeates culture—“the way and influence of Hebrew thought in western culture creates the backdrop of serious, scientific existentialism influenced by that same tradition”. We must save everything!

Science can pat itself with its competitive sense of compassion—to reduce suffering, while religion professes gods love for you while it does nothing. The only real thing that gives life meaning is death. The limits of time gives everything meaning.

Is data more important than conspiracy theory? Is one more organic than the other? It is this tug of war that makes life interesting. That same stressors of nature that pushes evolution into new boundaries.

So we see there are a couple of goals in mind— every last human is innocuously protected to die without suffering—if they would only listen… If they won’t—sanction life itself. It is very religious to do so. Life is so serious that punishment be administered for simply following your programming. No immutable attribute of oneself can be a sin, but it does make it interesting to think so.

“We will not survive to that day (500 years) unless major changes take place in our conduct to one another and to the extent in which we embrace the role of technology as being basically the lone source of our survival”—Neil Degrasse Tyson

No thanks. Not ready to play that game, but I’m sure the upcoming spirit children of god have been held back just for this specific, end-time (again) trial of their faith—to accept a purely mechanical, nuts and bolts universe or be ostracized as the heretics, shunned from medical care unwilling to comply. The flip-flop-ability of the game provides millions of variables.

“It is the knowledge that I am going to die that creates the focus that I bring to being alive. The urgency of accomplishment—Neil Degrasse Tyson

Front deck

Advertisement

Is This All There Is?

I’ve heard it said many times (mostly by theists) that the atheist believes when this life ends, that’s it—it’s over. That life is evolved from the primordial ooze and has no meaning but evolution, or survival—one and done.

An atheist I recently encountered said “life has no purpose beyond this existence which makes every single moment we have here precious“. How would it possibly matter in the slightest what we see, where we go, what we achieve, or what we learn in this life, if in the end it’s lights out with no memory or collection of experience—period?

True there are no gods, but does that mean there is nothing at all? Is consciousness simply an organic process? Not only would that violate the laws of energy, but is even stranger than imagining a life in some heaven at the feet of a god. Atheism may not be the last stop on the tracks, but merely an awakening—a clean slate to see the universe though a different light.

This short span of measured time we call living is not really our normal existence. We have spent vastly more time dead than alive, which is by far our most natural state of being.
While existence here is an odd presentation, bookended by two unknowns, the mere fact that we don’t know is likely the only thing that could possibly entertain an infinite being. So, are we that, or just temporary processes of nature?

Life has a strange, but consistent way of offering us two wrong choices. Maybe in this case it theism vs atheism. Is there no other way?

So where is the consensus of atheist on some type of continuation, and if it’s truly over, what evidence led you to think that?

Who are We Really?

Misconceptions about atheism are so common I sometimes feel like a minnow in a piranha pool. Mention you’re an atheist or humanist, and immediate visions of the horned immoral boogeyman appear in people’s heads. Who are we really? In your own words maybe give a line or two about what you think people should imagine when they hear the word “Atheist”.

Photo by jim-thecommonatheist

Cambutal, Panama 🇵🇦