Revlgking wrote: "Atheism is so unimaginative, boring and dull, and dead-end! Who can possibly be excited by the concept?"
I don't know about that. Have you tried it?
Yes, for a short time. I think I was fifteen. It certainly felt like a dead-end street. Without eternal values life seemed without meaning.
Looking back, I now feel it is one of the reasons quite a few young people take their own lives. When they come to the conclusion that no one cares, not even a God who cares, they reach the point of despair and the feeling that life has no meaning.
It was the next year, at 16, that I decided to study for the ministry. I was in university at 17.
WHAT ABOUT SUICIDE LATE IN LIFE
And there is more than we will ever know.
I have met many people who dug their grave with their teeth. Look at the epedemic of obesity. I even took their funerals. Not to mention those who drugged themselves, in one way or another, to early graves.
Then there are those who suffer pain and loss, in old age. I write as one who was born in 1930. Loss of faith in GØD, and the eternal values of life, can cause some people to take their lives to get away from it all.
Ernest Hemmingway, in one of his war novels--I think it was Farewell to Arms--using the voice of the hero, wrote that "life is a dirty trick". When he came to a painful old age--and he was not that old, really--he killed himself.
BUT, EVEN IN THE MIDST OF PAIN, LIFE CAN BE MEANINGFUL
Dr. Victor Frankl, in his great book, Man's Search For Meaning, makes the point that when we find meaning and purpose in life such as that given by faith in, what I call GØD, we will find the way.
Interestingly, Frankl claims that his belief that life does have an ultimate meaning is what helped him survive the death-camp called Auschwitz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankland http://www.geocities.com/~webwinds/frankl/frankl.htm
Great stuff!!!
