Atheists of lemmy, what is your coping strategy when things goes downhill? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by lolan@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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I am at an accepting stage that not everything that happens in your life is in your control. When things goes really bad and you dont have much control on it, I would assume a person who believes in god or religious figures has their belief system as a coping mechanism. For example praying to the god and so on.

I passed that stage where you believe a single entity has a complete control of each and everything happens in this entire universe. So falling back to god and thinking it is all according to the plan and he will find out some solution is not really an option for me. At the sametime I also acknowlede that there are some gray areas where science can't provide a logical explanation so as to why this is happening to some of the life events.

So to atheists of lemmy, how do you cope up with shits that happens in your life that you can't explain logically and you really don't have much control?

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[-] echodot@feddit.uk 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Can you provide an example where science cannot explain a situation, because I can't honestly think of any.

If you get sick then that's biology.
If your boiler bursts and your house floods that's an engineering problem.
If lightning strikes your house and your home burns down then that's just physics.

Just because it sucks doesn't mean science can't explain it, and it doesn't mean that it's inexplainable.

Ultimately everything is either physics or politics, both of which are very easy to understand at a basic level. Especially politics.

[-] lolan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Examples are like losing the loved ones in your life, or someone getting a disease at a young age and not able to live a proper life and so on. You could argue that as per the science that is how life works. Like if you are born you must age and die eventually. Or as per the science you can diagonse the disease and come up with an explanation on how things happens and what lead to it. My why question was more of why this is happening at the first place and absurd randomness of it. Or on philosophical level, I can't comprehend the meaning of certain events. For example you dont even learn or improve anything from such events. And my original question was not to solve any of this for the entire universe, but how people are dealing with with such situations..

[-] dustyData@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

There is no why. The Universe has no inherent purpose or meaning. Nothing happens for any particular intentional reason. There was no plan. There is no plan. It can't be absurd because absurd implies there is some way things are supposed to be like, but there isn't a right, just or correct way for things to exists. Things aren't random though, everything in the universe is intricately interrelated and everything affects everything else at some level on some minuscule way and what ends up happening is the result of a million million years of causal collision of particles and forces interacting.

The nice part of this all is that meaning and purpose can be anything you want it to be. They're human concepts and thus humans can mold them freely. You only have one life, savor the bittersweet, elate on the joy, for it all will pass. We are just the accumulative force of carbon combining in a futile attempt to stave off entropy, resulting in an data flow that makes the universe experience itself. And that I find to be wonderfully delightful.

Now sit down and eat your breakfast.

[-] Kerfuffle@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

Can you provide an example where science cannot explain a situation, because I can’t honestly think of any.

Not OP, but there is some stuff. One big example is qualia. How does matter give rise to actual feelings, experiences of things? This isn't something we can measure directly and it actually seems like it won't be something we ever can measure. Might also be able to use something like "what was there before the big bang?" and that kind of thing.

Of course, the fact that science can't explain something doesn't really justify falling back on magic as an explanation though. Some stuff just may not have an answer.

this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023

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