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Now, frankly, I'll get into my own worldview here, so I only speak for myself, and things may vary between myself and other atheists, but I want to put some bullshit to rest, because I see some really nasty shit that it seems all atheists share, a prejudice that is frankly just wrong.
First things first, I'm an Atheist, a person who does not believe in any God, I'm an atheist because I see no evidence for God. Pretty simple, I know, but that's it.
That's it, that's pretty much what I am as an atheist. Beyond this Atheists vary, sometimes greatly, on other issues. But one thing to make clear, atheists are not missing some part of our humanity because we are Atheists.
Being an atheist, for myself, means that no religion guides me in my morality, no book, no dogma, no revealed knowledge that only I have access to. Instead, my code as it were, was and is acquired through my experiences on this planet, in this material universe, and through my interactions with people and the rest of the world. I use knowledge that I assimilate into my worldview to change it, I'm a humanist, and an environmentalist because of this knowledge.
Using knowledge in a rationalist approach, using science to help gain this knowledge is something that is important to me. I don't know what name to give my worldview, I just call it my own, and its something that helps fuel my awe and wonder at the universe.
The one thing I find interesting is that many theists seem to assume that atheists cannot appreciate certain things without believing in something beyond the material universe. This isn't true.
Let's give an example, I look at the sky and see a cloud shaped like a rabbit, its beautiful, I know that the rabbit, as it where, is a collection of water droplets, formed from well known principles of the wind, climate, and cloud formation. I also know that my mind is wired up to look for patterns in shapes of random material. I know all this, and yet, when I look at the cloud, I still see a rabbit, and its still beautiful.
The key is this, you don't need to think that some supernatural force is responsible for creating this rabbit in the clouds to appreciate its beauty. Same is true of sunsets, and most other natural phenomenon that we witness and call beautiful. Nothing is missing, the sense of awe and wonder can still exist, and does exist in a materialistic worldview.
This type of wonder turns, for me, into love, I absolutely love the world, and universe, its something that I view as important to my worldview. To give another example, back in school, I was learning about evolution, and, to the annoyance of my mother, I asked her a lot of questions about it. I needed clarification with her on how it worked, and so she took my cat, Dino, and much to his annoyance she pointed out the similarities between him an me, 2 eyes, 2 ears, 4 legs/limbs, etc. She then said that many years ago, his ancestors and mine were the same, and that they branched off, one becoming modern cats, the other becoming modern humans. She said to think of my cousins, who have a common ancestor, as it where, with me, through my grandparents. She said that all life on Earth are cousins to each other, humans not excepted.
This lead to a shift of worldview, in contrast with so many other people, I realize that I'm part of the natural world, not above it. We are all connected, not through any metaphysical or supernatural sense, but through our physical and genetic sense. Just like I'm not exactly like my cousins, nor is my cat, but we are all related.
This lead me to view the world with appreciation, it gave people so much, the Earth, through its resources, etc. The ecosystems that our cousins maintain through just surviving allow us to survive and thrive. We have to protect it, if not for them, then for ourselves. And for humanity itself, we should protect each other, because we are so closely related, within our species, we are practically siblings.
But again, what fueled my need to want to protect and take care of others? Again, something else that required no holy books or religion, its the natural drive of empathy, an instinct that I have, I can no more stop it than I can stop breathing. I don't need God to explain this instinct, its enough to be human. There is no denying of emotion here, but rather an embracing of them, a way to act on our knowledge to help each other, appreciate the natural world and human works, to be able to use our intellects to enrich and foster even greater creations, our extensions of the natural world. However, to do it responsibly, so that we do not diminish that we appreciate so much.
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