Important Disclaimer: This will be about RELIGION. It's also going to challenge a great many religious beliefs, on a VERY core level. I'm not attacking any one religion specifically if I cite or reference a particular religion. It may just be the most appropriate example. Moreover, I'm not really attacking anything. I don't have an answer either, but the fact is - the burden of proof falls upon the believers.
Deprivation Theory: Freud, despite his questionable sanity and presumption that everything was about sex, made an interesting epistemological leap here. The theory goes, that where ever we lack a definitive answer, we substitute God(s, or Allah, Yaweh, whatever you want to call God.) Sometimes this is a difficult thing to pin down, in a modern context, because we've shed so much of our dependency on God because of what we now know. We ask "Why did I get cancer?" "Why did I develop MS?" and often times, even now we presume that "it is God's Will." - Read: we have no real answer to that question, so we're simply deflecting it to a religion for the sake of satisfying the question we always seek an answer to... "Why?"
I'm heavily inclined to follow this theory as fact, as I have myself and have seen so many do the same thing.
So, let's add some regression... Why ask why? (No, the answer is not drink Bud Dry... though it could very well be, if they still produced it,)
Zoom out, if you would, on not just your life, what your life means and how others affect your life. But zoom out on the world as a whole. Part of an immeasurable universe (that we presume in the singular by that very word. It could well be a multiverse) in which we are a floating spec rotating around a ball of flaming gas. Depending on what kind of rhetorical spin you put on that, it sounds like you've got the basis for a sitcom, or potentially a crude Adult Swim cartoon. But really the purpose of religion and philosophy both, are to try and define the question of "If we came from being, where did we come from?" and "If we go out of being, where do we go to?"
With this, I would submit that Atheists are just as religious as any other group, like the Christians, Buddhists, Jewish, etc. The question we seek to answer either with theology or philosophy is functionally identical. "Where do we go after we die?" Note that only a few religious groups have attempted to address this question. Philosophers have been trying for milennia.
The three answers to the question are as follows.
1. You go to heaven/hell/the afterlife.
2. You're reincarnated.
3. You're dead. The end.
Here's the problems.
1. Afterlife - If you go to an afterlife of some sort, then the question has been answered, but more arise. Like what happens if you stop existing there? Where do you go after that? If this life is transient, why not off yourself now and move on? Read: What's the purpose of this life if there is a next... and the purpose of the subsequent life, and so on?
2. Reincarnation - Well if you're reincarnated, that means this is the only existence (possibly, unless you mix this with option 1.) More importantly, it means that there is no basis upon which to create a morality. If you'll simply return when you die, then who cares if you kill someone? Also... explain population growth? I mean, I've looked into a lot of human eyes only to see the same empty stare I get from a cow, but really?
3. Nothing - This may be the most scientifically and logically correct answer... potentially. A difficult thing it is, for us to imagine that we simply stop existing. I mean, I can't even really wrap my head around the notion of not "being." Everything we do, say, or hear presupposes our own existence and our own consciousness. Even attempting to imagine what non-existence would be, is contradictory. You can't imagine it, because you would have no method to perceive, or translate sense data (which wouldn't even be sensed) into experience.
The problem with the notion, however, is the question of why we're here, and whether or not this is all there is. "Zero" as I'm going to call it, supposes that we're here by chance, nothing controlled it and everything affected it. - So why are we shaped the way we are? Why are we on this earth? The answer Zero has is an extremely minute chance. The Laws of Nature just happened to come together in a fashion proper enough to create the fact that I'm typing this at this very moment. But this takes us deeper into the rabbit hole. How do non-human elements come to exist, like the laws of nature, or time? What defined and required their presence?
Ultimately, Atheists that use Zero as their answer are just as whacked out as the Christians who say "God." We're all just flailing about hopelessly trying to explain something we have no ability to understand... so far.
What changed for me recently, was this realization. Now my focus - Making lots of money and hopefully spending more time with Janell. I'm not done with philosophy, just marvelling in it's occasional futility.
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