Atheists in a hypothetical life and death situation, can it be more understandable to
take for instance your on your own in the wilderness, you can hunt OK but its really not enough to feed yourself and its iffy on results, however you do have some seeds for a garden. Now you do have Little food stored up and dried because you are no dummy but its just turning spring and has warmed Little and ideally you should plant now to ensure your food supply for the next several months, but .. you only have a few seeds. So, you risk it and plant now, but a frost could kill your crop the week after it pops up and your done ... can THAT be an OK time to say 'hey God', just let it stay warm enough to keep DA beans a go in' ?
Okay, hypothetically speaking, what if the real god doesn't like your God and your God is the Antichrist to his god, then what happens? You p1SS the real god off mightily by praying to the fake Christ one.
it still doesn't make "sense", but we appear to be genetically hardwired to be superstitious beings. prayer and belief are "natural" states, despite our knowledge and intellect.
It all depends on where you live. In Canada we were told not to plant until after "Queen Victoria's birthday" (May 24 or 25), which was usually the first frost-free date. Farther north and I'd think waiting a bit longer might be a good idea!
Prayer has NOTHING to do with it. Watching the weather and following the Farmers' Almanac is much more informative -- and reliable.
You seem to have forgotten about foraging for wild foods, like roots and berries.
No, Reason? One your hypothetical situations doesn't really apply to me as Ive live in the wilderness most of my life and I know how to take care of myself. Second even if I was desperate enough to actually pray I wouldn't id rather die with dignity than crawl back to religion.
Say it all you want, but it has no bearing on what will actually happen. If there is no frost, you have a self-fulfilling prophesy; if your crop dies, it's always said that god had his "reasons."
By the way, if you are going to come up with a hypothetical life and death scenario, can't you do better than this? Why the hell would I ever find myself planting seeds in the freak in' wilderness?
I could even see myself doing it, if my situation was dire enough, and I was literally unable to do anything to change my situation (for instance, if I were all busted up, unable to move, and bleeding to death in the woods by myself). A brain that is desperate to survive in spite of the odds against it is liable to try anything. If I were desperate enough, I might try praying to all the gods I can think of, throw some salt over my shoulder, cross my fingers, turn around three times...whatever. But in a rational state, I can honestly say no amount of appeals to supernatural entities or superstitious ritual will help a person get out of a bad situation.
Rational people understand that pretending to talk to imaginary beings for which there is no evidence of any kind is NEVER going to do anything useful or helpful.
So "praying" would be exactly as useful as dancing around your seeds naked and screaming to the full moon to keep your beans warm -- not at all.
And if you are going to be silly enough to "hedge your bets" by pretending to talk to a non-existing magical god, why choose the christian one? There are so many other claimed gods -- some of which are specifically gods/goddesses of crops. It would make a tiny bit more sense to pretend to talk to those gods/goddesses...
Nope, I would be finding materials to cover the seedlings with and monitoring the weather in case it got cold enough to need to. That's what I do in my garden here at home, why would I give up and pray for warm weather? I know how to keep plants alive through freezes, hard frosts, hail, drought, you name it, I don't need to pray.
It may or may not be more understandable. But it is still totally useless.
I would actually spend the time thinking of how I could protect the seedlings against frost.
Also the fact that I would stagger the plantings -so I did not go from famine to excess when everything ripened at the same time - would reduce my risks.
If I am "no dummy" that I can store enough food to last me until harvest how come I was so stupid not to get decent fishing equipment, or snares and traps for game? Spring and summer should be no problem for trapping and fishing (hunting is a mug's game) unless I have picked a desolate wilderness. It is storing enough food for winter that I would be worried about.
I am sorry if this answer sounds overly complex, but I need to explain a bit first:
I am an agnostic (don't believe in knowledge). Our brains have evolved to deal with questions of survival. We develop methods of logic to predict the future and explain things (science), but science is just a model of reality. Just as we cannot see radio-waves, any thoughts we have are simply 'models' of reality. Useful, but not real.
All primitive human cultures, and most modern cultures, have some spiritual beliefs. These may have evolved, but this makes them no less real than the way we see co lours.. they evolved for a reason. Personally, I know that spirituality is a part of me, whether or not I can define it in scientific terms (and there is really no need to, just as there is no need to define science in religious terms - the way we THINK about them is purely abstract)... spirituality is about the heart.
Now, I used to feel guilty in the past that in stressful times I would pray to God, but in non stressful times I would be an atheist. It is possible that personal spirituality (as opposed to group cultural religion) is a coping mechanism. At very high levels of stress, we need a psychological tool that enables us to function better i.e. you need stress to do things such as feed yourself. If you completely run out of food and think there is no likely way you will survive, instead of just giving up and accepting failure, your psychological switch gets you to pray to god. In this way, you have HOPE. This hope is beneficial because it enables you to try options, even when they are unlikely, rather than giving up. (it is selectively beneficial).
Thus... no reason to feel guilty about that anymore everyone
Now, I am a theistic agnostic i.e. I believe in 'god' but believe he is indefinable with the brain. Now you may be thinking, this is just CRAZY! You are religious, but think your spirituality might just be evolved?! Well, really, it's not like that. I don't believe that there IS such a thing as knowledge. I feel my spirituality. Just as love may be chemicals in the brain on a superficial level, it has evolved over millions of years as a complex process for a reason.. so it really is not JUST chemicals in the brain, although these chemicals are the result of that evolutionary process. Thus, yes, maybe I am evolved to be a spiritual person (take that atheists, he he) but what underlies that process may be something more profound. Indeed, its not really useful arguing to much about this, since I don't believe in such a thing as 'objective truth'.
Oh Sven! You did that "polar bear club" thing with the water and the bathing suit, didn't you? So you don't realize how silly that sounds. Maybe your bean god can get you straightened out by spring.
Atheists in a hypothetical life and death situation, can it be more understandable to
