Besides your belief that there is no higher power, what are your thoughts on supernatural phenomena?
Besides your belief that there is no higher power, what are your thoughts on supernatural phenomena?
Lets take a little break from politics and have us a real atheist conversation.
Personally, I'm open to the idea of the existence of supernatural phenomena, and I believe mainstream religions are actually complicated incomplete stories full of misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and half-truths.
Basically, I think that these stories are not as simple and straightforward as they seem to be to religious people. I feel like there is a lot more to them. Concluding that all these stories are just made up or came out of nowhere is kind of hard for me.
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I don't have anything to add to this conversation as I'm in agreement that the "supernatural" is simply how humans have historically described natural phenomena that is not yet understood.
Now... what I do find interesting is the shared art. I've seen similar styles, but not this piece. I looked it up and thought I would share because I find it to be pretty rad.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammarion_engraving
The Flammarion engraving is a wood engraving by an unknown artist. Its first documented appearance is in the book L'atmosphère : météorologie populaire ("The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology"), published in 1888 by the French astronomer and writer Camille Flammarion.
The illustration depicts a man, dressed as a pilgrim in a long robe and carrying a walking stick, who has reached a point where the flat Earth meets the firmament. The pilgrim kneels down and passes his head, shoulders, right arm, and the top of the walking stick through an opening in the firmament, which is depicted as covered on the inside by the stars, Sun, and Moon. Behind the sky, the pilgrim finds a marvelous realm of circling clouds, fires and suns. One of the elements of the cosmic machinery resembles traditional pictorial representations of the "wheel in the middle of a wheel" described in the visions of the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel.
When I say supernatural, this is what I mean.
As the article says, "The supernatural is hypernymic to religion. Religions are standardized supernaturalist worldviews." It also says "the supernatural is featured in folklore and religious contexts, but can also feature as an explanation in more secular contexts, as in the cases of superstitions or belief in the paranormal. The term is attributed to non-physical entities, such as angels, demons, gods and spirits."
There may be "non-physical entities, such as angels, demons, gods and spirits," but semantics clarifies how I would interpret their existence. They aren't entities as described by religious beliefs. Instead, they would be "natural" and certainly "alien" to the human experience. If they violate natural laws, it's only because humans lack the understanding to comprehend their nature.
There are absolutely "phenomena" beyond our current understanding. And you are correct when you say "mainstream religions are actually complicated incomplete stories full of misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and half-truths." Science and history have shown this to be exactly the case.
With that said, I am apostate for a good reason. Religion doesn't have the answers I zealously sought. It simply cannot, by its very nature and definition, do that. Science is the only way humans might honestly understand the world around them. While pragmatically I'm atheist, in terms of belief, I'm agnostic.
Alien non-physical entities may exist. Perhaps it's probable... somewhere in the universe. However, most religious beliefs can be demystified and logically explained false. For everything else, such beliefs make good stories. Until science proves or disproves the belief though, it remains just that--belief in a story.
I'd give anything to practice "magic." It's probably why I read so much fantasy. I love science fiction because it envisions so many very different and greater things. Frankly, I could have been spared an incredible amount of pain if there truly was a "benevolent" god I could trust. It would be absolutely wild to know that, beyond my short frail human existence, there factually is an afterlife.
More important to me than anything is Truth. Believing in something for which there is no evidence does me more harm than good. Trusting in that which is known and natural keeps me steady and able to embrace the moment rather than laying false hopes in an improbable future.
Sure. There absolutely could be non-physical entities. I would call them "alien" because that better describes them than our religious terms. If they exist though, I'd wager they wouldn't be friendly to humanity either by nature or intent. Angels and demons make better story devices than they do real life neighbors. We are at the top of our food chain. The last thing we need is to encounter something worse than we humans already are. If science ever proves that other beings exist, then we need to immediately determine next how to ensure human autonomy and survival amongst something that would more than likely be a threat.