Atheist needing some advice

[the_antithesis]

To ween yourself off this, I suggest you follow an ancient practice and pray to feces instead. Many people do this already and I guarantee you'll get the exact same results. So just say "Shit, I don't want to die," or "Shit, I need to get some money to pay the rent," or "Shit, I just killed that guy."

Try it!

Pray to feces. It's just as useful as praying to god.

[Aleps]

Mark Twain was once asked if he'd rather go to Heaven or Hell.  He responded, "Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."  All the interesting people would be in Hell, if there were such a place.

I can assure you that childhood fables lose their power with time.  I have been an atheist for many years, having been a Bible-believing, born again Christian before that.  The nonsense fades gradually.

[s:1bv2cx8t]Good luck.[/s:1bv2cx8t]  May random chance operate in your favor.

Frank

Good point, however, I don't believe anything in the universe is technically "random". If you plugged in every variable, all matter, energy, potential energy, human personality, etc, and plug it into a super computer billions of times stoger then anything we have, you could calculate the future. This being said, can you point out anything truly "random" in the universe?

[FrankDK]

> Good point, however, I don't believe anything in the universe is technically "random". If you plugged in every variable, all matter, energy, potential energy, human personality, etc, and plug it into a super computer billions of times stoger then anything we have, you could calculate the future. This being said, can you point out anything truly "random" in the universe?

I agree in principle.  However, chaos theory points out that the eventual outcome can be highly dependent on changes in initial conditions that are too small to measure.  For example, in the three-body orbit problem (two planets orbiting a star), no matter how small the errors in initial locations and speeds are, any error will eventually wind up having a major effect on the locations of the two planets.

So in practice, many things that are technically deterministic appear random, simply because we cannot measure or control the initial conditions with infinite precision.  Try throwing a 2 with two dice ten times in a row.  Purely deterministic, but hard to do.

Frank

[Brian37]

When your sponge of a brain which is empty as a kid gets filled with the abusive images of "punishment" which hell is not, as described it is not "punishment" but revenge in the form of torture for not kissing god's ass. Fill a child's brain with that mind rape, and it is going to be hard to let go of that once it is deeply ingrained into you.

I can remember that lingering fear when I knew I was an atheist, but was not online with other atheists. I got tired of feeling isolated, and typed "atheist" the search bar. While doing such, my lingering fear had me thinking "What am I getting myself into". I had unfounded images of running into anarchists and barny bad ass lawless attitudes and satan worshipers. Yea it was stupid at the time thinking that, but my entire life society beat me over the head that you had to believe in some sort of god to be a decent person. I look back at that and know how silly it was, but how serious it is worldwide causing needless human division.

So yea, you will have those feelings, but always remember that fear was mentally beaten into you. You are not alone here, on this website and others you will find some atheist who were never indoctrinated, and others who were indoctrinated but managed to escape.

The good news is there is no hell to be tortured with, no Muslim or Christian or Jewish or Hindu or Shinto hell. Life after you die will be the same as it was before you were born. No punishment or reward. Life is what you are living now and what you make of it yourself.

But rest assured you will always have plenty of atheists online to talk to when you feel the need.

[Colanth]

This being said, can you point out anything truly "random" in the universe?

The coming into existence of any particular virtual particle.  Which can affect a lot of other things, making them all random too.

[WitchSabrina]

Mark Twain was once asked if he'd rather go to Heaven or Hell.  He responded, "Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."  All the interesting people would be in Hell, if there were such a place.

I can assure you that childhood fables lose their power with time.  I have been an atheist for many years, having been a Bible-believing, born again Christian before that.  The nonsense fades gradually.

[s:3anrmxpk]Good luck.[/s:3anrmxpk]  May random chance operate in your favor.

Frank

Good point, however, I don't believe anything in the universe is technically "random". If you plugged in every variable, all matter, energy, potential energy, human personality, etc, and plug it into a super computer billions of times stoger then anything we have, you could calculate the future. This being said, can you point out anything truly "random" in the universe?

the insides of my head
 :rollin:

[Solitary]

This being said, can you point out anything truly "random" in the universe?

Any coincidence like car accidences are random events. Solitary