Hi jimbo1000,

I followed you up to this point:

Organized religion is man's attempt to get to the truth.

If that were true, organized religion would adjust to facts found in nature. It would have discarded scripture long ago. In fact, organized religion does the opposite. It pretends it "has" the truth already, and every evidence that disproves any dogma or faith is violently opposed. Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Darwin...

Either existence is purposeful or it is meaningless.

These are not mutually exclusive, and meaning for one is not the same meaning for all. To assume that "if there is no god then life is meaningless" is a false supposition from the start.

I kno...

Hi jimbo1000,

I followed you up to this point:

Organized religion is man's attempt to get to the truth.

If that were true, organized religion would adjust to facts found in nature. It would have discarded scripture long ago. In fact, organized religion does the opposite. It pretends it "has" the truth already, and every evidence that disproves any dogma or faith is violently opposed. Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Darwin...

Either existence is purposeful or it is meaningless.

These are not mutually exclusive, and meaning for one is not the same meaning for all. To assume that "if there is no god then life is meaningless" is a false supposition from the start.

I know of no gods personally, but to assert therefore that my life, or nothing in my life, has no meaning is senseless. There are a great many things in my life that have a great deal of importance and meaning.

On the flip side; assuming that there is a god in no way adds to or subtracts from any meaning of life whatsoever. It can have meaning, but is in no way a meaning itself.

In practice atheists have to behave as if existence does have meaning.

In practice, everyone behaves according to what is important in there lives. The babe cries for milk, the devout bends his knee, the scientist digs for knowledge.

Is your life completely meaningless? My guess is that it's not. And yet neither you nor anyone else knows of any god.

Removing the stumbling block for theism amounts to honesty. When we find a demonstrable fact that disagrees with scripture (the basis for theology) the inevitable conclusion must be made.

The remainder is a form of Pantheism, or existential pantheism like Spinoza's god or Einstein's god. It is simply the universe as is, ... impersonal, blind, and full of wonder.