Music Banter - A reason why people remain religious

Quote:

Originally Posted by MattMVS7 (Post 1480840)

I am a hedonist who feels that pleasure is the only thing that matters in life and that if I don't have it, then I and this life are both worthless. I am also an atheist who knows that, even though life is about not giving up and ending your life, I actually feel otherwise and I will present a compelling reason as to why:

There is something in life that I absolutely hate and wish to be superior to which would be acceptance of major problems in life (such as if I had to live the rest of my life in a hospital bed with cancer or live my entire life with little to no ability to experience pleasure from a mental condition known as anhedonia or depression). This sense of superiority can come in 2 forms: 1.) Having delusional fantasies and living a happy life not having to deal with these problems or 2.) Actually using a hard cold fact of reality to my advantage such as that, since there is no point in living and that we are just all going to forever die in the end anyway, instead of being someone who accepts major problems in life and continues to live on anyway, I will become a cold hard bastard and decide to do what I want by ending my pointless life. The cold hard fact of reality that since we are forever going to die in the end and that we might as well just kill ourselves, this is actually something liberating to me and I can use this fact of reality to become superior to acceptance of reality’s major problems. I would have given up and died. But at least I have given up and died as someone superior. I would actually feel empowered and superior for deciding to have given up and killed myself and feel that this cold hard fact of reality I stated is my best friend since I can use it to my advantage here.

Most people would not only consider those who give up and end their lives to be cowardly (weak), but they would also consider those who don’t deal with such problems and escape such problems through delusional fantasies to be cowardly as well. But I, on the other hand, do not feel cowardly (weak). Instead, I feel the opposite which would be feeling empowered by those things. Therefore, since I feel empowered instead of cowardly (weak), this is what makes me the opposite of cowardly (weak) in that I would instead be a powerful human being.

Meh. You're overthinking things. If life is pointless and absurd, then instead of deciding how to be better than the absurdity it makes more sense to accept the desires brought on by evolutionary instincts, though tempered with logic of course. You're not going to make yourself happy by going against your basic human nature just because you don't want to be a slave to it. Will rejecting basic human contact and human relationships make you happy? Of course not. Sure, it's only something you're compelled to do because evolution has programmed you to form alliances with other humans to maximize survival odds, but that doesn't make your relationships with your family and friends any less emotionally fulfilling. Tasks such as reaching career and financial goals may likewise be based on preprogrammed survival instincts, but a hard day's work still makes one feel satisfied. Trying to invent life choices purely with the intent of rising above whatever human characteristics you find to be "inferior", even if they still apply to you, whether you like it or not, will only result in you making yourself miserable.