Is it normal to think this way?

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9 Comments

This is gonna be hard to summarize because it involves very deep thinking, but it seems whenever I bring up the topics of atheism and religion there's a lot of miscommunication, so I guess I'll start by saying this:

I used to be a Christian. I'm more agnostic if anything, but I lean more towards atheism, but I believe in occult and various supernatural things that most atheist may not agree with. One excuse I had for not becoming atheist is one that I still kind of believe: it means nothing. It's hard to put these kinds of thoughts into words, but from the Christian perspective, God made humans to rule over animals and placed importance on us, and gave us all our emotions and languages (before the Tower of Babel at least). Now, one thing I want to get out of the way because it's debated all the time: yes, I know atheist can be moral. Yes, I know that atheist majority countries are usually safer. Yes, I know there's violent passages in the Bible, but here's the thing: does morality even exist? How do we examine what we should and shouldn't do, and why we should it shouldn't?
And this part ironically is hard to put into words, but do words have any real meaning? Considering the fact that we're just animals, it almost feels like we're cheating. That we shouldn't have languages and that we should live in the jungle like animals. I'm not saying I WANT to live like that, but sometimes it feels like we should.
I hope this made SOME sense. Hopefully someone can cheer me up because this is driving me mad.

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64% Normal
Based on 11 votes (7 yes)
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Comments ( 9 )
  • kasei
    6 years ago

    We happen to be what we'd call an intelligent specie. With civilisation and hundreds years of evolution, we created morals and perfected our ways of communication, because as an "intelligent specie" we had to live together in "peace" inside a society ruled by morals and ethics. Religion isn t the source, it s just one way of implementing these morals to those who are more spiritual than others.

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  • rayb12
    6 years ago

    To contextualize, for the vast majority of human existence we live in the jungle like animals. And coincidentally the same number do still today as there were at the dawn of agriculture. Of course agricultural brought with it an acceleration of population increase, and religion for that matter.
    The majority of words do not refer to things, in the sense of specific physical objects, however meaning and its definitions is a broadly studied topic both specifically within the concept of language and otherwise. However in hunter-gatherer societies we do see fewer words and the language generally is more like direct symbols for what is physically observable in a very non-abstract way.

    Morality is many things, but are meant to be a set of ethics that when applied to behavior produce the best results for the individual, community, and world. In academic situations the words 'ethics' and 'morality' have more specific definitions and this summation isn't entirely accurate. Also with industrialization, globalization, and concepts like civil rights, secular as well as religious interpretations of morality have changed or at least had new connotations.
    The issue I find with morality is when people start to carry a weight of significance on their actions that I believe is exaggerated. Not so much in the sense of a person believing they are changing the world in any significant way when they are not, although this does have its problems. But when violence is allowed because the victim has acted immorally, and are seen as doing more wrong than the amount they did, if any.

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    • rayb12
      6 years ago

      If you are serious about these questions, I'd suggest reading up on morality, ethics, and semantics. As well as ontology and speculative realism. Also anarcho-primitivism and of course agnosticism and secular books on religion.
      I come from a religious background as well, but have distanced myself from it enough that all the question you've asked here are ones that exist within a secular understanding of the world and have nothing to do necessarily with disproving god or religion. Also depending on your faith these are all also deeply religious questions.
      But yeah, dont go mad, read lol, or atleast know people have asked these things for hundreds of years, you don't need to re-invent the wheel to explore these topics

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  • suckonthis9
    6 years ago

    1) Please avoid the use of both "agnostic" and "atheism", to describe yourself or others, since both terms were coined by religious people who had incorrectly presumed that a deity or deities must exist.
    "Atheism", literally means: a doctrine [of people] without a deity. Since deities do not exist for non-religious people; it is nonsense.
    "Agnostic", without the religious denotation or connotation, means that any ultimate reality is unknown and probably unknowable, which is simply untrue.
    Everything in this Universe, and in every other Universe is, in fact, knowable, to some extent, if you study thoroughly enough.
    Everything that does exist in this Universe and in every other Universe is:
    Space: actually nonphysical,
    Proto-quarks (particles),
    Quarkenergy (particles),
    and Massenergy (particles),
    and the corresponding antiparticles of the latter three.

    Space is fairly well understood.

    The massenergy part of the Universe is fairly well described by Physics, except for a popular misconception of 'energy'. This comprises about 15% of the Universe.

    The remaining ~85% of the Universe (proto-quarks and quarkenergy) are quite easily understood, as I had described these elsewhere.

    2) So-called "occult and supernatural things", aren't actually things; since the prefix 'super-' means over or beyond. Since both over and beyond are relative directions, and because relative directions do not exist in nature, only nature can possibly exist.
    What is hidden, in the so-called occult, is proto-quarks, and quarkenergy.

    3) Humans cannot "rule over" animals, since humans are, in fact, animals; and since animals (including humans) are part of nature. Because 'over' is a relative direction, and relative directions do not exist in nature, this is impossible.

    4) Morals or morality are things learned (lessons) from listening to or reading stories.
    If you wish to gain a different perspective on life, then I would recommend reading Aesop, Gautama Buddha, Confucius and Tao (not necessarily in that order) & the like.
    Ethics requires a higher level of intellect and reasoning ability.

    5) Some small groups of human animals, still do live in jungles; and in relative harmony with nature.
    Please leave them alone, and please try to do your part in not destroying their world.

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  • bob7
    6 years ago

    Morals didnt exist before religion , no matter what religion it was

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    • Kevinevan
      6 years ago

      And you know this how?

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    • suckonthis9
      6 years ago

      Is not true.

      Morals are things that are learned from listening to stories.
      Since humans have been telling stories for about as long as language has existed, morals pre-date religion.

      We know that the earliest [modern human] languages are Khoisan languages or African click-languages.
      As far as I know, the Khoisan people had never developed any organized religions.
      I would surmise that organized religion did not arise until sometime after the advent of more sophisticated phoenetic languages.

      It would be interesting to study whether the Khoisan people do, in fact, have religious or religious-like beliefs (that were not learned in modern history), and to what extent, if any.

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      • suckonthis9
        6 years ago

        Remember that the ancestors of the Khoisan people, are also the ancestors of all people who have a long ancestry outside of Africa (meaning the vast majority of us).

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        • suckonthis9
          6 years ago

          We also know that neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), had religious-like behavioural attributes.

          Since some neanderthals, are the ancestors of many of us, it is quite possible that we had inherited much of our religious or religious-like tendencies from them.

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