ATHEISTS CAN RISE ABOVE THE HORRORS AND THREATS OF LIFE

Christian circles make out that atheists who reject God are refusing to line up to the truth and thus bringing harm on themselves.  The atheists are said to refuse the help God can give to face life.  None of that is true.

The Key to Transcendence is Virtue

Transcendence here is the feeling you can take whatever life throws at you. You can avoid going down to the bottom and if it happens you know it cannot last. Virtue will be your method and the method will empower you.

Virtue is about the kind of person you are. Virtue is what you do naturally as if by habit for you are a person of virtue.

If you hold on to virtue you are guaranteed to be treating yourself the best way possible even under the most dreadful of circumstances. Never do this for yourself only but do it as a light for others as well. Doing it for others helps make it more powerful.

Here are the seven virtues.

Knowing you as you are - not thinking you are better or worse than what you are. If you are not made by God or a subject of God you need to know.

Warmly helping others and thinking them of them as vulnerable people and not as good or bad people.

Being in charge of your appetites instead of them being in charge of you.

Being dedicated in doing what needs to be done in your life or in your ethics.

Be patient as in respecting the freedom of others to grow.

Showing compassion out of kindness for we are all in a sense in danger and need it.

Do not treat others as mere sexual objects.

Don’t just act in a good way, be good

If you are bad inside, it is better to act as if you are good though you are not. It is better still to really become good. Don’t act good but be good. Why waste time and energy faking? If you pretend to be good, you will lose your appreciation for goodness and good people will be unable to make you happy.

You risk people seeing through you.

You fear them seeing your true colours.

You degrade yourself by not being you and asking for yourself to be respected as you.

It is easier to be good if you really are good. The goodness will come naturally.

You understand the beauty and value of goodness best when you do it for others.

Doing good for yourself and not others will not bring you happiness for you don’t want others to ignore you.

You believe best in the goodness of others when you practice goodness yourself. You need to experience being a good person in order to appreciate good people properly.

We must not do secret harm or indulge in secret vindictive thoughts. They might seem to hurt nobody but they do. They distort the way we see the world and consequences will come. People may sense that there is something sinister about us. Avoid secret ill-will for it is not harmless at all. It is very harmful. It will stop you enjoying the trust others place in you. You will feel they trust not you but what they think you are. Keep the heart pure and you will find that the people that matter will trust you.

Affirm yourself with Positive Action

To affirm yourself as a good person, to feel it better and to have better faith in yourself you cannot affirm it by telling yourself how good you are. That only works if it is true so you can only affirm it by taking action. Why say it when you can do it?

For example, if you give money to the poor you are making an affirmation that you can do something to keep money coming to you so that you are not going to go without. You are sure enough of this to give. Your action is an affirmation that says you are a giving person and a wonderful person who draws others to care for you should you fall on bad times.

The meaning of the affirmation is what matters not any words used or the way the affirmation is done.

Affirmations do not work alone. They need to work with and through evidence. That is why you must do affirmations by doing good for others - you are giving yourself affirmations indirectly. You are also giving then affirmations when you help them.

Rights and responsibility

With rights comes responsibility. Responsibility requires that you be honest and compassionate. This takes courage. You must be fair to the truth, to yourself and to others. You must take ownership of what you do and omit to do. Responsibility then is not a thing but a number of things. One cannot be left out. You need them all.

Rights are based on needs. Anything extra is a privilege not a right. Freedom from discrimination.

Free will

The subject of whether free will is real is controversial.

If it is an illusion then my decisions are not really decisions but just the way I have been programmed. Some think though we feel fully free we are only really semi-free.

If I accept the reality of free will, then I do so in recognition that my choices are mine at least up to a point and not entirely down to programming. Some suppose there is no programming involved at all.

I must make up my own mind. But whatever I believe about free will, I believe it to honour myself. It is not for God or anybody else.

The notion that I have free will to decide between holiness and sinfulness is suggesting I have it for that reason and not for myself. God supposedly gave it to me for me to use it wisely instead of sinning - going against him. I have it for myself.

Free will should not be about God which is why I will not accuse human beings of bringing evil into the universe so that I can hold God is innocent. Innocent until proven guilty. If free will should not be about God so evil is his fault if he makes it about him. If it is not real then evil is also God's fault.

There is no free will to be evil. Evil is misplaced good and so is best described as a mistake that cannot be tolerated. The person doing wrong is attracted by the good results he or she thinks will happen.

Suffering

Suffering is essentially a sense of worthlessness for you can be in great pain and still be happy. So suffering is really in the mind.

Suffering is the only true evil.

Suffering is, strictly speaking, a set of sufferings. Suffering is really sufferings.

What you do is if you suffer you oppose the suffering in the right way which is allowing a situation to happen which brings good out of it in spite of it. This does not make suffering in any way a good thing. It makes it loud and clear that it is not to be tolerated.

There is no point in doing good for people if you regard suffering as a good or okay thing.

Being good

Belief in goodness more important than goodness for there can be no real goodness without it. To really intend something to be good I must have reasonable grounds for thinking it will produce more good than bad. If I do something without knowing what I intend it to be, I intend both bad and good. Neutral means I intend both bad and good for to intend neither is to intend both!

It is for the sake of goodness, that I must form my opinions and beliefs with great caution. I must do my best to be sure they are actually correct. And I must stand by them no matter who pressures me to abandon them.

I don’t need to believe in God to believe in being good.

All relationships require vulnerability and a lot of it. Thus it is cruel to encourage people to become vulnerable for a God who may not exist. Relationships should be based on real people and what you know about them.

Those who say they are believers may try to confuse people into thinking that you cannot really believe in right and wrong unless you believe in God. They endeavour to hide the fact that you don’t need God to be a good person.

Does God have a good reason to let us suffer?

If you can be good because of faith in God (its an if remember!) then you can be better without faith in him. To say an all-powerful and all-good God lets people suffer for the sake of a purpose that makes it worthwhile perhaps in a very long-run is to assume God decides what goodness is not us so he can justify letting us suffer terribly. The doctrine is evil for even if the universe were full of suffering forever with nobody well, believers still say it can fit the existence of a loving God!

Is causing pain to a baby bad because it hurts the baby or because God forbids it? If we care at all, we will decide the matter on how it hurts and degrades the baby and nothing else.

When you see a child suffer horribly, the proper response is compassion. That matters and not thinking, “Somehow God is right to let this happen.” Compassion is not mere sympathy but doing all you can for the child. You should be so compassionate that you will be God to the child instead of hoping there is a God for the child. Thus God is irrelevant when somebody suffers. All criticism of the worship of God in the face of evil must be expressed in a tone of compassion, both for those who suffer and for those who cannot see that they are condoning a God who lets evil happen and who does not help.

I will not tell anybody that God loves them. I will be God to them and love them - show them love. It is cheating to tell them that somebody that may not exist loves them. I will do the right thing and love them myself instead.

To say you are made to love God and others is to treat you as a means not as an end. You are made for you and not for anybody else. You do not love others to fulfil the purpose for which you were made but because you gratuitously wish to do so. Atheism has the answer.

I must dismiss God to be good

Christians say that God is infinite in all perfections. He is perfect without putting it to any use. He doesn't even have to create unless he chooses to. He would still be perfect. This is rubbish. God might be perfect in his own way. But what about other kinds of goodness? Imagine a mother and child could exist by chance and without being made by God. Surely her love for her child would deserve more praise than God's for it exists by chance and she continues it? She creates it. She creates it against the grain. Love produced without the assistance of God is the best love of all. Love against the grain is the most authentic love. Atheism no matter what flaws it has or how much it is abused or misused by atheists, alone opens the door to real goodness.

Those who say they believe in God, are dismissing him when they do good.

Sin - a religious/spiritual crime

The wrongdoer needs encouragement and help not an accusation of sin!

Sin is an offence against the law of God meaning it cannot go unpunished. But it can be forgiven if you rehabilitate. A law that does not try to force you to obey at least with the threat of punishment is not a law at all. Sin is a threatening doctrine and nobody has the right to say they or anybody else needs to be treated by God like a law-breaker!

FINALLY

Feeling you are bigger than what life casts at you, involves being aware of positives that grow this sense of transcendence. There are things you need to cast out of your thinking as well. The obstacles need to go.