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Where Science and Atheism Fall Short |
Barriers to understanding the role of humanity in the universe don't come just from the religious world of believes locked into old Bible stories as their map of reality. The Atheist culture is a barrier to understanding as well. In the religious world we have multiple warring camps arguing about what isn't real that what is real gets left behind.
Atheists care more about the God of the Bible Stories than religious people do.
The big problem with Atheist culture is that they are so fixated on the God of Bible stories that nothing else matters. Much like alcoholics who no longer drink, not believing in God for people who were believers is a very big deal to them. Although it is true that the God of the Bible stories isn't real, knowing that is like getting one answer right on a test with and infinite number of questions. And what they get wrong is the importance of their one answer. What Atheists don't get is that Reality is what's important, not the God of the Bible stories.
What Atheists don't get is that no one cares what you don't believe in. What people are interested in is what you do believe in. Atheism is somewhat frustrating in that it is difficult to move the focus away from God and the Bible stories and put the focus on science and Reality where it should be. In contrast the Church of Reality focuses on what is real rather than what is not real.
Message to Atheists, no one cares what you don't believe in.
In Atheist culture it's hard to discuss meaning of life and purpose of humanity issues because these topics because it's religious sounding and anything that sounds religious is taboo. The very name Church of Reality even tends to shut down conversations with Atheists because once they hear the word "church" they have already filtered everything they hear. To suggest that a person has a "soul", even one that ceases to exist when you die, is treated as if it were blasphemy. But ignoring the soul eliminates the possibility that in the future when a person's conscientiousness can be uploaded to a computer. Your "soul" can live forever in "the cloud" if we keep advancing technology by increasing our understanding of Reality over time. The term, "If we know God we will live forever.", makes sense in the context that God is the personification of Reality.
The scientific community has barriers as well when you get into questions about Meaning of Life and Purpose of Humanity in the universe. Science, which is the study of Reality, is often at war with the religious community which is taught to put belief ahead of Reality. Because of these conflicts scientists tend to stay away from subjects that are anywhere close to the religious world topic. So scientists, who have better things to do than get caught up in religious arguments tend to stay away from the edges.
But things are changing in the world of scientific disciplines in that there is more overlap between different disciplines. For example, historians study history. Generally the study of history was limited to humanity and mostly to the time after writing was invented. But we have a new historical discipline called Big History, which is the study of everything from the Big Bang to the end of time. In Big History one has to start with physics, then chemistry, the evolutionary biology. Only through the lens of multiple scientific disciplines can one see history from the widest possible angle.
Similarly to understand Reality as a whole one must be able to include philosophy into the mix to talk about concepts like meaning, purpose, and value. Some in the scientific community think that in the context of pure science there is no purpose, no meaning, no value. That whatever happens is just whatever happens. But if nothing has meaning then why do science? If science has meaning then meaning exists.
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