In a comment to the topic Paley's moral compass, Cliff Martin said, "Here is my challenge to you if you wish to contend that [everyone's] world-view should be driven by reason alone. I have always thought that Earnest Hemmingway showed us where that leads. Atheistic rationalism > Existentialism > Disillusionment > Despair > Suicide."
What Cliff seems to be asking is how atheists employing the rational argument can avoid being blinded by science. If everything is rationalized, how can you ever let loose? If you keep whittling it down, you find we're just a clump of molecules interacting with other molecules in the world and this thing called Life is going to end. These molecules that make up our body will not be under any transcendental control that we are able to impose on them while we're living. No more creativity. No more emotion. We'll simply rot.
I tend to error too much on rationality, trying to see all sides, that I remain frozen with inaction. Movies and jokes that I would have once found hilarious I see now as juvenile or just plain stupid.
Why do we play sports? The rationalist looks at a sport and sees people running a ball down the field and trying to keep others from doing the same. To what goal? It's nonsense and temporal. What is inside the game that transcends its futility?
What is the atheistic rationalist to do to find the world beautiful, mysterious, and enjoyable when it is temporal and seemingly futile? Is the theist too scared to confront the realization of mortality?
Only Physics Computes
2 years ago
