godPlease, I mean no offense. But it is very ironic that atheists probably think about God or God-not more than the average person. If I don’t believe in ghosts, then I won’t dedicate my entire life to not believing in ghosts- I’ll just not believe in ghosts, end of story.
most atheists I know are just like your non ghost believer.
They are very relaxed in their world view and rarely mention religion or god.
I think on a forum such as this you will see the tip of the spear for both sides, and it should be remembered as such.
If everyone else believed in ghosts, and did silly and sometimes destructive things because of their beliefs in ghosts, you might have to pay a little more attention to belief in ghosts than you do now.
Unfortunately, in many areas atheists are in that situation with respect to God. I would really rather not pay any attention to that idea (or any other incorrect idea), but there seems little choice these days. At the very least, it’s hard to understand the actions and sayings of other people without paying quite a bit of attention.
Why are atheists so obsessed with God?
Are they? I know of none that are. What some atheists are obsessed with is the constant meddling of religions in the daily life of people who don’t want that. Gods don’t play any part in this. They are just drawn into the discussion by theists.
I can’t speak for other atheists, but I’m not obsessed with god at all. God is a complete non-entity to me.
Any commentary or statement that I might make that would cause someone to believe otherwise, such as responses to theists in a debate and/or frustrations over the undue influence of religion in government or society is just that: a response and a reaction to something that ought to be private. If theists weren’t so obsessed with forcing their god down my throat, I wouldn’t appear anywhere near as obsessed as I must to some…
I don’t believe in God but I can’t say I never believed in God unlike my fellow atheists.I have got the privilege to be a believer and non believer and record my thoughts.To me God is part of person’s thoughts.When you rationalize finally God is an hallucination which most don’t realize you either throw it out or try to ignore it.Unfortunately God does exist in thoughts of other people and very much part of them.It offends them that some part of them is not accepted by these God hating atheists.
Two reasons. One, they’re ex-theists. That’ll mean you gave it a ton of thought. Two, it’s reactionary to theists always talking about god.
It’s not obsession. It’s self-defense. I can give you a parallel which might help you understand.
My husband and I married fairly young. My mother-in-law began asking almost immediately when we were going to have a baby.
Now, he and I had already discussed the idea. We did want kids, but not right away. We were young, not finished college, and frankly not finished growing up. We wanted to establish our careers, get settled in our marriage, and probably own a house.
No matter how many times I explained this, my MIL would nod and smile, and then go right back to asking when we were going to have a baby already.
For various reasons (financial, logistical, medical) we didn’t have a child until we’d been married for 14 years.
And for 14 years, at almost every dinner, every holiday, every get-together, every bloody phone call, my MIL would ask whether I was pregnant or when I was going to have a baby already.
This frustrated me, enraged me, insulted me, and upset me. And while I tried my damnedest to be polite to my MIL, I vented a lot to my friends and family.
So my friends and family might have thought I was obsessed with having a baby, because I talked about it so frequently and so angrily. But I wasn’t obsessed. I knew exactly what I wanted and when I wanted it. What I was doing was reacting to someone else’s constant hurtful prodding.
If my MIL had just accepted my answer at face value and shut up, I wouldn’t have mentioned babies until I handed her my ultrasound image.
It’s the same with being an atheist and talking about [god]. Religion and deities play zero part in my life (other than entertaining myths, like the Greco-Roman pantheon). I wouldn’t talk about either of them if I weren’t being constantly hurtfully prodded with people insisting I have to believe or I’m immoral, or people wanting to put up crucifixes in my child’s school, or saying that I have no right to decide if I’m going to terminate a pregnancy, or that my cousin can’t marry the man he loves because they’re gay.
It’s not obsession. It’s self-defense. Stop poking me and I’ll be happy to stop talking about it.
For example: In a recent discussion a popular politician here in Germany, Mr. Rüttgers told in a TV debate, that the question of nuclear power plants should be discussed from accountable organizations, like enterprises, labor unions and the big churches.
Churches shall judge about energy and risks! They are engaged all over the political and social landscape.
To argue about that, it’s important to know the enemy, to know which arguments hit, and how to defend your positions.
When people making political decisions (e.g. Bush/Blair to invade Iraq) follow the instructions of an imaginary being instead of the advice of the intelligence services. They negatively affect everyones lives, including those of atheists. Then some atheists want to find a way to improve matters so that things like this shouldn’t happen.
Some do, some don’t . I don’t think that generative judgments like this can be made. I have to say though that many people just follow the crowd and live meaninglessly in bliss (something that can be philosophically challenged as well but let us just use the term as is implied in general). Most choose their religious or non-religious views based on personal comfort and lifestyle or due to social compulsion, or both. Many just don’t care.
I have to agree with the majority of the answers that it is only because atheists are confronted with questions about their non-belief (even by other atheists sometimes) that they appear to be constantly thinking about God.
But to add- for myself, I believe the idea of deity to be one of the biggest and most influential concepts of human history. As such- I am very interested in studying all aspects of this “theory” because it is very important to who were are and where we are going.
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