Goodness, is that the time?

The most annoying response to ones declaration of Atheism has to be – so do you believe in nothing then. Why would you even get up in the morning? The world must be very bleak.
 
Let’s parse this for a second –
 
1. So do you believe in noting?
 
What’s so great about belief anyway? Belief is the attribution of truth to an uncertain supposition. That’s also called credulity. Belief arises out of received wisdom – What others have related to you which you either didn’t have the interest or the means to check for yourself and took on faith. Or it arises out of imaginative speculation – neither of which would stand up in court.
 
Also – Atheism is not nihilism. It is inherently negative only so far as it relates to the belief in a deity. To those whose entire being rests on that belief then Atheism must seem like a hellish thing. But that is their lack of imagination showing. An Atheist can of course be a nihilist – But it is far from necessarily so. To my mind the belief in a deity blocks all sorts of wondrous and magnificent realisations about the nature of being and what it took to get us here and what a wonder it is to even be. The products of science – especially these days when the quality and quantity of easily available information about the universe is so vast, liberate us from these beliefs – How less wonderful a world that came about by magical means is.
 
2. Why would you even get up in the morning? The world must be very bleak.
 
When we can look into the mechanisms of creation and the deeper we look the more perplexing and inspiring they are. I do have moments when my cells feel like they are bursting with joy at simply being here to witness this. This is not infrequent. Now perhaps you might say I should lay off the solvents – But I think that the human ability to normalise the magnificent and consider such things old hat just because it’s already been heard. I am consistently surprised by re-experiencing things I’ve known for decades. Just thinking about some things that are familiar to me can bring me a sense of wonder and a sense of the majesty I am participating in every moment. The iron in my blood was forged in the heart of a dying star. The light reaching us from some of those pinpricks in the night ceiling started out before even the first spark of life was ignited on this earth. These things are old news. So what. So what? So bleedin’ everything. That is incredible. If you don’t think that’s interesting or inspiring and breathtaking – just because it’s a known. Just because you understand the mechanism of it, the you do not know what time it is. You do not know who, what and where you are.