OFF TOPIC: This brings me to a point I want to bring up I don’t say god dammit as prayer or oh god or any other religious sounding sentence as prayer but as exclamation. It is like swearing its not actually prayer. This is why I hate the no atheists in foxholes theory if you grow up around anyone people will use these phrases but if you use them in anyway you are no longer an atheist, what kind of crap is that you always have to use secular swear words, I guess I must have been Jewish this morning because I ate a bagel, there is no logic in this.

Thank you for promoting the value of gratitude.

Good luck, Frank – and welcome to the world of reality.

I have TWO “objects of my gratitude”. Serendipity, and Mother Nature.

As an (recent) ex-Christian living in the Bible-Belt, if I went around being militant about not personifying random events and uncaring forces, I would alienate many good-hearted people, thus increasing my friendlessness, reducing the quality of my own life, AND perpetuating a stereotype of Atheists as militant “Grinches” who only get off on tearing down other people’s beliefs.

(wow, that was all one sentence….)

If the weather is nice, and I feel a need to gush about it, I “thank” Mother Nature. Christians and Theists “believe” in Nature as much as I do, and it won’t start a Theological argument. If the weather is terrible, I can “blame” mother nature, as nobody expects Nature to be Omnibeneficent, or “all good”.

If an incredibly random thing happens to break my way, I “thank” Serendipity. Or even “Thank my Lucky Stars”, as we say here in the south. No one interprets this to mean I actually believe in “lucky stars”, which would be Astrology, it’s just a saying. To most people, so is “Thank God”, but many people take that one a bit too literally, So I try to avoid it. Almost three decades of Christian training die hard, though, so I have “relapses”.

Great topic! Keep ‘em Coming!

To be fair to Wade he did state that he wants to understand what atheists think so it’s a reasonable question — I thank god but if you don’t believe in god what do you thank? To be fair to Wade (again!) he’s one of the few believers that post here who I consider reasonable then again he may secretly be working out which of us is going to hell :-)

To ask the question Wade does to a group of atheists, who don’t believe in supernatural agents, doesn’t seem to make much sense, except that, in my case, it does serve to reaffirm the nonsensical concept of a god.

I think it’s of a piece with many theists’ inability to believe that an atheist can behave in a moral and ethical fashion without it being mandated by an Edict From Above (with optional threats of punishment for non-compliance). They don’t believe that humans can be self-regulating in any positive way, individually or in a group. With no deific hand on the tiller, the boat has no way to hold a course.

It’s really nothing at all. Not having an object for my gratitude doesn’t diminish the gratitude itself, not one bit. It’s still worth the same as anybody else’s gratitude, and I’m pretty sure it feels just as warm and fuzzy inside when it’s undirected, as it would if it were sent up to a deity. It’s satisfying enough to just say “The sun is out today! AWESOME!!!” I don’t need to thank a god for it. (But sometimes I do exclaim “thank god!”, or “oh my god” just as a force of habit, and because those are standard figures of speech.)

Most atheists’ senses of wonder, fascination, gratitude, joy, all those good things, are fulfilled by nature itself. (You don’t just lose all those good things when you lose faith – a common misconception. Same goes for morals. You won’t suddenly start committing crimes if you lose your fear of eternal punishment. The conscience is sufficient to keep a person in check!) The universe is even more amazing than you’d expect, once you take off the rose-coloured glasses and look at it for what it really is. I think religion is like a painkiller. It numbs the senses to all the truly amazing stuff that’s right under our noses!

If anything, I’d say that not having a god or gods to turn to when you need help is probably one of the scariest ideas (to a theist, anyway). Luckily, statistically speaking, results in times of need tend to come out the same, regardless of who’s praying (or not praying) to whom.

I think it’s logical to ask that question within the framework of first assuming the reality of a supernatural agent – god – who hands out good things.

To ask the question Wade does to a group of atheists, who don’t believe in supernatural agents, doesn’t seem to make much sense, except that, in my case, it does serve to reaffirm the nonsensical concept of a god.

But in those situations? I just mean to thank. Thanking no one in particular, and just being thankful. Something goes my way for once, I feel grateful to all who had a hand in it, whether I know it or not.

>How on Earth is that being dishonest?<

I agree with you Wade, I think you’re honest. Delusional, maybe, but honest.

Above, you quoted Fyodor Dostoevsky (correctly). He wrote his friend that he could believe something (Christ) even if he knew what he believed was not true.

That’s a good definition of faith – and a good definition of delusion, too.

Dostoevsky also wrote, “In Western Europe, the peoples have lost Christ (Catholicism is to blame), therefore Western Europe is tottering to its fall.”

The Berlin Wall, the leading edge of Eastern Europe, did fall, and perhaps all of Europe is in an economic free-fall now, but so is the rest of the world.

He also wrote about the “ultimate destiny, of the Russian nation: namely, that Russia must reveal to the world her own Russian Christ [snip] who is rooted in our native Orthodox faith. There lies, as I believe, the inmost essence of our vast impending contribution to civilization, whereby we shall awaken the European peoples.”

He imagined Christ, and Russia gave us Stalin.

Dostoevsky was therefore both delusional and a poor prognosticator of future events.

Dostoevsky’s books, like the bible, are fictional. Yes, works of fiction can contain truths. But just as there was never a real Rashkolnikov, so there was and is not a real Christ, nor a Santa Claus who flies through the skies with the help of tiny reindeer, except as each exists as electro-chemical reactions in the human brain. To believe otherwise – as a thinking adult – is delusional.