As for me, I'm an atheist "Secular Humanist". What this means is that I believe that everything is relative, with any relevance or importance that exists being solely the subjective perception of the person or entity it relates to, and that the universe has no objective fundamental meaning. I don't believe there is any sentient power such as deities, spirits, dead ancestors, etc. or that there is any grand plan, fate, or "meant to be". However, I believe that religion and spirituality is a fundamental aspect of human psychology and human existence. For any entity with enough mental capacity to have self awareness and the ability to analyse and study the world around it, there's a need for answers to questions that aren't explainable through observation. Creating narratives such as creation myths, afterlives, and omniscient beings can help people deal with grief, stay strong in adversity, and take comfort in the thought of a powerful protector.
Not believing that such things actually exist frees me to invent whatever narrative that I desire and find useful. I believe that we are the spirits, the higher power, the magical beings that for centuries we've mused about. We may not be immortal or omniscient, but at least we're real. I believe that our existence is something rare, precious, and magical, but also precarious. Knowing that although nothing has any intrinsic meaning or value but that I have the power to give meaning and value to anything I wish, I have chosen to assign this meaning to humanity. To human feelings, suffering, passion, creativity, curiosity, and most importantly, human survival. Without survival, none of these other things exist. This means that the most important things to me are for people to care about and respect one another, for humanity to unify and find common ground rather than seek insularity, and for people to put compromise and reconciliation ahead of history, culture, power, politics, or most anything else.
This illustrates a striking difference between me and a traditionally religious person. For some religious people, nothing is more important than the higher power in which they believe. If they have a conflict with people of another religion or even with people differently interpret the same religion, they often feel that because they're fundamentally right and have a higher power on their side, that they'll prevail in the end. Therefore there's less need for things like compromise. With me, I believe the opposite. We're all we've got, and because we've got no omniscient baby-sitter in the sky, we have to behave. We have to be grown ups and do the responsible thing. We can't afford to allow things to divide us as we are all one people and we need to work together to ensure survival.
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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw
Don't ask people not to debate a topic. Just stop making debatable assertions. Problem solved.
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