What do Atheists think?

I would think in going back to the OP, not being an atheist myself, but in reading the responses here, it makes sense to recognize there are two kinds of atheist, just as there are two basic ways to look at the question as the film itself portrays.

One, like that of the Squire, is to basically show impatience with the whole question. Whether they are right or wrong in any sense of absolute truth to do so is not really the immediate point, altough it indirectly does come back to that. But impatience, as for Jons in the film, is the way such people orient themselves to this basic fact and circumstance of existence, what Heidegger called being towards death.

Such people tell themselves and all others who will listen that, among other things, the question itself, and consideration of it, are both "boring". Instead they focus on other things, which by their nature are in their everyday lives, and therefore provide the comfort of involvement in everyday life. This in turn allows them, enables them, to turn away from this existential questioning.

But it should be apparent that there is an inauthenticity involved in such a turning away. The elements of our everyday lives do not, in and of themselves, have any intrinsic meaning, in the sense of providing an alternative to Nothingness. They instead are most significant in the way in which they serve to distract those who do so from examining the meaning of their lives, and possibly its lack of meaning.

They ignore or turn away from Socrates's maxim that the unexamined life is not worth living.

Of course some may respond, I have already thought about this, and it is pointless to think further on it, since there is no answer, and only Nothingness.

On its face this is not without basis. But to then say, to take on the mantle of, indifference and boredom, still strikes me as an inauthentic way to characterize one's relation to the meaning of one's life, or lack thereof.

As a contrast the atheist who does in fact examine and have awareness of being towards death as fundamental to human existence, and cannot comfort themselves for whatever reason with a belief in God, or even the possibility of God's existence, would inevitably be troubled by such understanding. Not completely unlike those atheists wholly caught up in a way of being that is totally within the everyday world, they may live in that world and for the most part not think, not contemplate, the fact they are being towards death. But their underlying awareness of the truth that they are, I think, makes their life situation more authentic, true to the essential nature of existence, as compared to those who ignore and have no patience for that understanding.

In short those who understand and acknowledge this fundamental reality will not be bored by such recognition. They will be more like Antonius Block as compared to Jons. They will not be bored by The Seventh Seal, either. That boredom is left to those who insist on an inauthentic relationship with being torwards death.

As a postcript one might say there is in fact a third type of atheist, whether or not he or she might overlap with the two identified here, but having a distintive characteristic not identified yet. And that would be what we could call the committed nihilist. Such a person, in theory, can accept both the lack of metaphysical meaning that seeing death as Nothingness effectively requires, as well as see themselves as "not fooled by" the inauthentic "meanings" found in everyday life.

Well, I can imagine such a person in theory, but imagining such a person as really existing is quite a bit harder.

leaving out that third theoretical type of atheist, we seem to have come to a basic distinction.

Those atheists who find The Seventh Seal to be boring, to have no interest in or sympathy for its fundamental questions and searching, can be seen as being of the inauthentic type, fooling themselves that they can find meaning in everydayness.

Those on the contrary who identify with The Seventh Seal, who recognize that its questions relate to the basic nature of existence, are to at least some extent more authentic, even if that realization is unpleasant, uncomfortable, and even terrifying at times. That and that Socrates would approve.

It sounds like an expression intended to be characterized as apathetic, not caring, but also not professing to know, whether God exists, at least categorically on the question of existence sounds more agnostic than atheistic. Care in that context is a rather bizarre word to use. Does it not matter? "cool!" Hm. Cool suggests it does, at least to some extent, and I question the truthfulness of someone saying the nly concern is that one would have "quesions". is this intended to be some post modern irony?

I have a certain amount of respect for people who say they've examined the subject, thought it through on perhaps a number of levels, and that belief in God does not make sense to them. Even then ftr I would say such thought process does not establish God's non-existence. We have imperfect knowledge, and are hardly only capable of analysis that always leads to the correct conclusion. But the sense part of it is there.

I suppose I can even understand someone saying that they live their life in a way that it will not matter whether God exists or not. Whatever problems are actually experienced in the actual experience of living life, I assume secular humanists at least purport, more or less, to achieve that result. Perhaps in fact most agnostics do so.

But to say God's existence does not matter - I can't make any sense out of such a view.

What kept me up all night as a child frequently, was the idea if infinity. If you focus on the impossibility of infinity (I saw it in terms of all that exists in the universe), then you can see something that has no end and no matter what opinion or theory you try to come up with an answer, infinity both exists absolutely, yet is absolutely impossible.

That is the closest I have ever come to being religious. I'm not an atheist, but I think organized religion is purely a creation of man and it bothers me that so many people kill, torture and hate for the sake of their religious belief.


"Everyone is entitled to my own opinion."