Coming out of the atheist closet help thread

Depends. In Latin America the Upper Classes are extremely Catholic. Huge altars in the house are hardly uncommon.

I honestly don't understand why Catholicism doesn't get more flak, despite being a former Catholic myself. They've done an assload of bad things. Everyone's acting like the pedophile priest coverups were the worst thing they've done. It's horrible, it's permanently scarred hundreds of lives and made it so no retribution could be made, but it doesn't compare to being the cause of millions of deaths.

Hell, the Catholic Church, in 1155, issued a Papal Bull known as the Laudabiliter. It told the King of England "Hey, you know that country next door, pretty much entirely faithful Catholics? Not Catholic enough. Invade it, it's yours."
Pretty much everything bad that has happened in Ireland over the past 850 years can traced back to the Catholic Church, either that proclamation or later deeds. What's left over can be attributed to greed. Yet, 84.2% of the country are Catholics. I simply don't understand.

OK, enough of the Catholic-bashing. Let's get back on-topic.

When I think of the events following the Big Bang, the condensing of hydrogen into stars, fusion into helium and heavier elements, the supernovae that scattered those elements, the condensing again into heavy-element-rich star systems, the beginnings of the most primitive self-replicating organisms, the interplay of environment and natural selection that resulted in the diversity of life on this world alone, the resilience and tenacity of life despite multiple wide-spread extinctions over the ages and the extreme locations on this planet alone, the rise of one particular group of primates and the technology we've developed over the years - or when I explain it to my kids - I feel very moved and I cry.

Reality is far more awesome than anything in any book of Holy Writ I've ever seen.

The elements that we need to live were forged by fusion in the hearts of stars, we're here because the right things were in the right place for life to start - which makes us rare and "special" because those conditions don't turn up everywhere, and we got how we are today through the application of the intelligence we developed to cope with an often hostile environment.

That's Made Of Awesome.

And it literally brings me to tears - I shed a few just writing that very brief synopsis.

I remember being confused about atheists. Before I got to know some of them better, I didnt think they could have the same sense of awe at the mystery of the universe. I've since corrected that impression, of course. The point is, be patient with some people who may simply be acting out of honest ignorance.

I dunno, dude, once you get past the crazy scales and weird physics, it's just... well, maybe my studies as an engineer broke my spirit, but right now I feel like all these amazing phenomena are just a huge pain in the ass to study and understand. Mostly because I've found out that my intellect just plain Can't Catch Up to the true geniuses, and that, after a certain level, I just don't get it.

But, yeah, sure it's more impressive than anything any God did. Except the Hindo gods, those bitches be crazy. Like, seriously crazy. They play with infinity and eternity like it's all a big joke. Asuras Wrath only gives the teeniest tiniest idea of how those guys are.

I've never understood that line of reasoning at all. I mean, how does explaining something with magic make it any more impressive?

Those who are genuinely ignorant of how/why a non-believer can be filled with awe at the nature of the universe (or even capable of feeling love) are those who usually get reasoned and polite explanations (providing they express their surprise in a polite and reasonable manner). It's only the people who launch into angry tirades and behave in an unreasonable manner that are deserving of a reciprocal verbal smack-down.

Oh, I get plenty overwhelmed by a lot of the science, especially what's been learned in recent years, and find it hard to keep up with some of the basics (when I went to school, there were only 3 allotropes of carbon) and confusing to follow a lot of the rest - quantum foam and such like - but I don't have to understand every last bit of it to determine whether or not other scientists support any given discovery or theory or whether it's controversial.

And that's part of the awe - there's so much we've discovered, so much more yet to discover, what we have discovered shows a truly amazing universe and that we're pretty damned amazing as a species to have been able to discover it.

edited 1st Dec '13 11:02:55 AM by Wolf1066

Yeah, I can handle equations pretty well, but some of the beasties you meet in high level physics and engineering will have your head off.

I was a chemist turned computer programmer then technician, most physics leaves my head spinning. I rely on experts in those fields to tell me what's what - and the great thing about the scientific method is that there's plenty of them to peer-review each other, so I know the science is sound.

It's really lucky for us plebs that many of the top experts in each field are interested in talking about their field to the general public. Lawrence Krauss, Michio Kaku, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Peter Atkins, Jim Al-Khalili, Peter Medawar, Brian Cox, David Attenborough...

If you read or watch anything by those people you'll get to see how a person can connect with nature in a profound way that they want to share.

By the way, all of the people I listed are also public atheists.

Brian Cox is a good one to steer people at: his voice is easy to listen to... and, he gets so enthusiastic, he practically morphs into a puppy in front of you.

And he used to be a musician in a (somewhat) popular band.

One thing a "coming out" atheist is going to contend with is the numerous lies told by Christians to debunk scientific thought, the most common one I've heard being that Darwin himself had a change of heart on his deathbed, renounced all that "evil evolution crap" and acknowledged that we were created by God.

This particular lie started with an Evangelist styling herself "Lady Hope" shortly after Darwin's death. She claimed to have been at his deathbed and witnessed his recanting of his heretical beliefs.

Despite the fact that Darwin's daughter, Henrietta, stated the story to be a complete fabrication all the way back in 1922, I still hear Christians repeating it these days in a vain attempt to "disprove" evolution.

I've also encountered those who hold up Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727) as "a scientist who was a Christian that did not believe in Evolution" to prove that great scientists disagreed with the works of Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882).

Yes, I've met people who claim that a physicist/mathematician who died before Charles Darwin was ever born is proof that "reputable scientists reject Darwinism".

So be warned, not only will you have to answer questions about your morality and why you believe no creator was needed to get us here, you will be subjected to deliberate falsehoods designed to denounce atheism/evolutionism/science.

edited 1st Dec '13 3:13:31 PM by Wolf1066

@Somerandondude: In my experience with people converting the other way, I think they get that belief because a lot of people who convert to fundamentalist or evangelical strains of christianity start by deciding to do so, then proceed to wrap themselves in as many layers of preaching to the choir and fishing for affirmation as they can to quiet any doubts they have with pure uncensored belief.

in short, they chose to become christian and believe in god, so they figure the opposite must be true.

edited 1st Dec '13 3:29:07 PM by midgetsnowman

"I've never understood that line of reasoning at all. I mean, how does explaining something with magic make it any more impressive?"

It doesn't have anything to do with "more impressive". More like "comprehensible". At the time, I attributed my feelings of awe and wonder to my religious beliefs, and hence was genuinely confused at what someone without those religious beliefs would feel.

While I can't comprehend many of the more advanced scientific principles, I can certainly comprehend natural selection and evolution and fusion of hydrogen into heavier elements.

I don't know which exact mechanisms caused abiogenesis - I've heard interesting theories of how it could have happened - but I'm still enough of a chemist to understand that the right chemicals in the right place under the right circumstances are going to react in predictable ways due to their valencies.

It's the things I understand about the universe that awe me the most.

Tell me that some magical entity spoke the universe into existence and it's "meh".

Tell me that ancient stars had to die to scatter their fusion products through space to form newer stars, rocky planets and life forms and it's "AWE-FUCKING-SOME!"