The Atheist Book Club discussion

Hi guys. Well i thought I'd add some somewhat weird comments here and see if i come out of it with all of my limbs attached. First off, i am a stone cold atheist whatever that means. You will never find a bigger one. I have read Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris all the boys.

But let me get started I remember perhaps 20 years ago down at the center for Inquiry on Hollywood Blvd. The great Dr. Paul Kurtz was there. i shook his hand and it was an honor to meet him. I remember him standing up in front of about 100 people in the Steve Allen Theater there and him saying that he thought atheism was great. He loved it. He felt emboldened by it. it made him feel strong not to be a slave to some whimsical god. I looked out into the crowd. I didn't see his sentiments echoed in the faces of the troops.
This is what I see as the great disconnect between atheism on the intellectual plane and atheism in the emotional realm.

So another back track. When I finally realized that god was a comfort-giving illusion (without doubt) I'm speaking only for myself, was sick. And sick for a good long time. I personally, and perhaps it's just me, felt like I had been gutted. All of the magic of life began to slowly dissipate. As has been pointed out by a very good book named the Re-enchantment of the World, people, humanity before the scientific revolutions of the 16th and 17th centuries felt that the world was alive, and the people were alive too. They were all part of the world and it all interacted with them.

After god and the after life and heaven and the rocks and the trees that were previously thought to be alive were all pronounced dead it created a great despair for many. Emptiness, a palpable bleakness. I see the world as bleak as well. ALL of the joy that I once had toward life quickly soured into a mechanistic exercise of nothingness.

And this is the part I think modern day atheism either misunderstands or simply skips over. Believe me I've done the same things. "These are the facts, you don't like it, tough," and then I might add, "well hey my friend, don't like it, don't argue with me, go argue with evolution it didn't quite see it your way."

So now hold onto your cookies, I'm going to bring that ball-breaker in from which no one ever really recovers. The "Human Condition." Yes the human condition, human nature and all of that lovely ball of wax.

Many people in the west having gone to University and having played rainbow parties in their fraternities and sipped Jim Beam seem to never fathom the real pain and misery that really is out there. We in the western worlds have on offer, booze, drugs, tobacco, too much food to eat, preachers, psychologists, psychiatrists, medications, women, the pursuit of wealth, the pursuit of stealth, you name it. Our chases are repleat with nothing that will really work to assuage our dolor but it at least gives us something to do, it keeps us busy.

In many regions of the world, the only tonic, the only elixir that exists for them is god, and probably sex (And I remember Quentin Crisp saying that sex was the last refuge of the miserable, maybe it should be amended to sex AND god) certainly true in many parts of the world. In many parts of the wondrous globe these are the only anodynes to assuage the ever-gouging pain of existence. Then we will come along and make an intellectual argument about the biology and chemistry and the evolutionary psychology that avers against such mythical beings. What success rate are you expecting? Hmm.

The point to this onslaught of ink? Before I do let me broach one more. The NIMH National Institute of Mental Health has proffered hat in their life times 48% of the population of the United States will have one of only the following 4. Alcoholism, Drug Abuse, Depression, Anxiety. Just those 4 conditions will afflict almost 50 % of the American population at some time in their lives. When you consider all of the other almost endless maladies such as insomnia, serious mental illnesses, serious physical illnesses which can produce serious mental illnesses the point is that very few people will live out their lives without running smack dab into very hard, unforgiving scabrous m,malady. Into this environment of a people living with and experiencing pain at a nearly universal number, you're not going to take their gods away from them. It's a placebo, true, but nonetheless, placebos work and I believe that until we are able to treat and help the underlying pains, hopeless feeling and just general downright misery of the average human being, I'm not sure that the belief in god, while false as can be, isn't a good thing in helping beaten and bleeding people put one foot in front of the other and in many cases, literally, survive for one more day. So what do you think of them apples?