Your plans will change based on this new understanding, because now you know that this life is not a dress rehearsal for something yet to come.This is IT.
This has always been IT.
Pure and unmitigated truth.
I struggled for years with the terms agnostic and atheist.
I went to an atheist meeting to get some clear definition. One of the long-time members helped clear it up by telling me -- by the strictest definition everyone is agnostic. That is, nobody can prove or disprove the existence of a deity that may have originated the universe.
The question that must be faced is, do you choose to live with belief in a God, or do you choose a different route? Some agnostics (i.e., some people) choose to believe for various reasons. Others choose not to . The latter people by definition are atheist.
So you too may be atheist. Many really are, but don't call themselves that. The reason is that many people have a negative assessment of the word atheist, thinking godless equates to immoral hedonism or angry anti-Christianism. In many or most cases though, atheists are not anti-theist (actively preaching against the idea of God). They simply do not care to live their life in that paradigm. Many atheists like myself have some doubt about whether God exists, but simply choose not to rely on that because it seems like such a fantasy.
I thought you might enjoy the following, Gopher.
Is the definition of an Atheist really someone who denies the existence of God?
By capella
Belief or without belief. Assertion or lack of assertion.
The words atheist and atheism are inaccurately defined in many dictionaries as someone who is a disbeliever/denier or has a doctrine that there is no God. Some dictionaries even include in their definitions phrases such as “immoral” or “someone with nothing to touch their inner being.”
My experience is that most atheists think an atheist is someone that is simply without any belief in gods.
This may not sound like a significant distinction to some, but it’s very important because sometimes atheism is portrayed as an assertion of a negative, which is a false argument. Sometimes atheism is also portrayed as a religion or doctrine which comes down to a matter of faith.
Although some dictionaries at least include the “without belief” phrase, the problem seems to be that dictionaries are about the common use of words, not whether the concept is necessarily valid.
For example:
“A nether world in which the dead continue to exist : (2) : the nether realm
of the devil and the demons in which the damned suffer everlasting punishment.”
(Merriam-Webster definition of “Hell”)
“The appearance of the sky when the sun starts to rise”
(Cambridge Dictionary definition of “sunrise”)
Although these definitions are how the words are probably most often used, some people might not agree that the definition of hell was factual and many people would agree that the sun doesn’t really “rise” (it appears to rise because of the turning of the earth).
Again, nit-picky? Yes, but the atheism definitions are often pulled out of dictionaries and paraded in discussions about the validity of atheism as if they are precise, valid, technical definitions.
Isn’t a lack of belief agnosticism?
Yes, but an agnostic is someone who asks a question about the existence of a particular god or gods and says that the answer is unknowable. The difference is that the atheist is not asking a question.
Does this imply the atheist thinks the matter is settled? No, it just means the atheist is not pursuing the question any more than the atheist would have a burning desire to know if Fred Flintstone exists.