The thing that bothers me the most is that none of us ever asked to self-consciously exist. How many people would choose to consciously exist if they knew the totality of what the conscious living of life entailed? For me, I would rather non-self-consciously exist in oblivion.

@Tomm Conscious existance and the human condition are interesting topics to ponder. Your exact train of thought used to REALLY bother me when i was deconverting. It was the last straw for me; as every human in exsistece would likley choose to not exist rather then have an 85% chance of going to eternal hell!

Christians simply answer the question, Why do we exist? by simply saying that god created us. For us atheists its not that easy. The question for atheists is, Why is there existence instead of non-existence. To that question there is no conceivable answer. When it come to hell, I believe that christian scholars teach that hell is a place absent of god's presence. Welcome to earth.

@Tomm I might be wrong but it sounds likeyou might be going through a little bit of mourning for your religion? Or perhaps just parts of it. Lol that was good half joke about hell. You are correct, christains have the annoyedly easy road for "answering" tough questions. Like the good ol' "god did it". It is a lazy "one size fits all" answer i used to get for to all my questions. For the longest time i unconsciously mourned the loss of a sense of meaning, a heavenly father, and most of all heaven. I thought that life had no meaning (incidentally, i was indoctrinated with this thought trap) and almost ended all the spinning questions and fear more times then i can count. It to me six long years of research after deconverting to learn and understand enough about, like EVERYTHING, to completly let go of religion. Yes, existence is a mystery that there may be no answer to. I think we must learn to ponder the unanswerable questions without obsesing; as it can possibly lead to madness.

I know that some atheists will think that I'm not being true to atheism when I say that there are teachings in the bible that atheists can follow without having any belief in god. The parable of the good Samaritan is a good example. In that parable, there is no mention of religion or god, except to say that a priest and a levite ignored and walked by the injured traveler. The good Samaritan showed kindness and compassion with no exhibition if religion. I'm not willing to throw away thousands of years of human history just because humans have been deluded into believing in a personal god.
Do I mourn over past associations with religion? In some ways I do, especially the friends I grew to love. It is disconcerting, for me, to admit that if I didn't care about logic and common sense, or whether or not god exists, I would have had a much happier life. So, the question for me was; Is happiness more important then being true to oneself. For me, there really wasn't a choice, I will remain true to myself and I will accept the consequences. If there is a god, which is not conceivable to me, (s)he knows the hearts of everyone, I will accept (s)he judgment, but I will never comprise what I am or what I believe. Hopefully most atheists would agree with me.

@Tomm I agree with both of your points. In fact i will be very elusive in a professional setting by saying that i believe in the main good ideas that most christains believe and act as if a god exists. (it helps put most christains more at ease, even if they gather i'm not a christain). I also agree that ignorence is bliss. i was in ways much happier not thinking for myself and if circumstances had been different i would be a happy bigoted christain right now. (Very culty back story). Anyways, its nice to meet someone online who has a calm nuanced vibe. So, peace man!

For the most part I agree with your comments. You seem to indicate that there is a universal consciousness, I agree. Where I disagree is that you say our bodies are dumb robots. To bodies represent the reflection of our thought, nothing more, nothing less.

@Tomm Interesting. You might be right.

Our bodies are so complex though, and they are conceived and they grow and die.

Can you elaborate?

I absolutely agree; but,I would just add, from my perspective, life (reality presents itself to us, and are the ones who interpret goodness, badness, or indifference into existence (life).

It seems that we agree about life, but your're a little more optimistic that I am, I don't see any value to self-conscious existence. I would rather exist as a tree, with a non-self-conscious sense of existence.

@Tomm Not more optimistic, just more pragmatic. I understand the preponderance of life experience involves suffering and disappointment, I just don't see any percentage is making the propensity natural selection has given me to pay way more attention to negatives than to positives, worse than it already is. And I see percentage in deliberately compensating for it. One does not have to be a Pollyanna to do that, simply to be intentional in choosing one's focus of attention.

Your views are pragmatic and probably the correct way to relate to our non-asked-for lives. For you, as I understand it, adapting to life is a pragmatically desirable. But, it seems to me, that you put a value on conscious existence that I don't, even though I may also be pragmatic, at times.

Maybe ancient aliens seeded us into existence 100,000 years ago, as an ant-colony experience. If they did fuck em, the lousy bastards.