Are you an atheist?

[shiels]

I envy faith. im committed to doubt but I think I do want to find god, mainly to simplify stuff. Not too worried about heaven, hell etc just make this thing a bit easier to deal with please

 

[luka]

It makes it harder

 

[luka]

You get hooked onto a punishment and reward system. You're better off without. It's very strange.

 

[constant escape]

In terms of making things easier, I do think there is something depressurizing about identifying as some vast, molecular aggregate. Cognition being emergent, the psyche largely a spandrel. A case where all the technical jargon does have a tangible effect, in my case... In terms of making things easier.

 

[luka]

Yes but God makes demands and those demands get ever more demanding. It would be fine if He just left you alone

 

[constant escape]

Then education, or other spiritual pursuits, is a permanent occupation of otherwise restless energy.

 

[john eden]

I also identify as a vast molecular aggregate. This is partly my lack of exercise during lockdown though.

 

[version]

The precarity of operating without faith is tough. That sense of everyone and everything winging it. The Earth just hanging in space. Things just happening.

 

[constant escape]

Not sure I understand that @luka

You mean the stakes are raised every time you finish a climb?

 

[shiels]

don’t you feel hooked onto a punishment reward system regardless? Both in terms of a hangover from Christian morality and more secular humanistic ideals etc. You aren’t a psychopath afaik

 

[john eden]

The precarity of operating without faith is tough. That sense of everyone and everything winging it. The Earth just hanging in space. Things just happening.

I mean, there is science? Not for everything but that does provide a bit of info about why things happen. I don't want to get all Dawkins about it mind.

 

[luka]

don’t you feel hooked onto a punishment reward system regardless? Both in terms of a hangover from Christian morality and more secular humanistic ideals etc. You aren’t a psychopath afaik

You mean in terms of guilt/conscience?

 

[constant escape]

The precarity of operating without faith is tough. That sense of everyone and everything winging it. The Earth just hanging in space. Things just happening.

Part of what I believe is that winging it does and will continue to work.

 

[luka]

Not sure I understand that @luka

You mean the stakes are raised every time you finish a climb?

Well, yes I think they are, but also the consequences of falling are more severe each time

 

[john eden]

don’t you feel hooked onto a punishment reward system regardless? Both in terms of a hangover from Christian morality and more secular humanistic ideals etc. You aren’t a psychopath afaik

Yes.

 

[shiels]

existence must be made a wee bit easier when you have the answers in a book and when you don’t it’s just god moves in mysterious ways! In fact I’m pretty sure you’ve said similar I’m getting a weird deja vu writing this out

You mean in terms of guilt/conscience?

yes

 

[constant escape]

don’t you feel hooked onto a punishment reward system regardless? Both in terms of a hangover from Christian morality and more secular humanistic ideals etc. You aren’t a psychopath afaik

Not sure if this is to me, but just in case I'll answer.

I do feel hooked onto it, but not ultimately. That is just how the body works, no? Part of what I mean might involve acknowledging that much of the pain is a mechanism, and an effective one at molding/steering the intelligence/spirit that is tethered to it.

Like the difference between a first-person and third-person video game. You kinda absolve yourself of the burden of being, if you believe that much of the burden is functionally inevitable, and quite useful for matter to complexify itself.

 

[luka]

I'm talking more fundamental than guilt I think. But all this is obviously quite personal and liable to sound mad to anyone else. But they are the ways we choose to understand our experiences, how we characterise them, how we explain them to ourselves etc and for me the boring answer is always the wrong answer

 

[constant escape]

Well, yes I think they are, but also the consequences of falling are more severe each time

But when there isn't a ground below you, its always an infinite fall, and always an infinite climb. Winter withers the static soul. The climb is its own end, no?

 

[Mr. Tea]

It certainly inspired many acts of anti-social behaviour in my case.

Photo of John Eden as a nipper (colourised).