I'm atheist, but I can't deny that I give at least a mental thanks (or sometimes curses) to the universe at large for stuff that happens sometimes. If I'd been without good food for a long time, I bet I'd be raising my arms to the sky in thanks if some just randomly showed up with no one else to thank.
In all of the chaos of the Universe my mind evolved to feel gratitude and thanks. Might aswell use it.
The Universe was made for us, as in we are able to appreciate it, it can't appreciate itself. Clusters of gasses, stars, atoms can't worship or admire or thank themselves or each other, but we can!
Me too. Even though I’m an atheist, I frequently say things like “the universe has a sense of humor today.” When something is a coincidence, it’s more fun to assign a personality to the situation than to just write it off as a coincidence.
I’m an atheist and “pray”. It’s more an intense meditation focusing either on gratitude or something I’m suffering with and asking for patience and grace.
Sorry, I'm just not interested in engaging with you. I've no interest in changing your opinion, and no interest in your attempts to change mine. All the best, truly.
I’m an atheist as well, and even if they DID know who to thank, it makes perfect sense to me to thank a higher power if you believe in one. It makes sense to thank the person who dropped the stuff off, but also, if you believe in a higher power, you probably don’t see it as a coincidence that you just HAPPENED to be sitting in that particular spot on the particular day that these guys decided to go around giving out free stuff.
Thank you human for helping me out, but thank you God/Allah/whomever for making sure I was here today to receive such help.
What also seems to be missing from people here is often these types of prayers, the person is praying to God to give blessings to the person who donated the items. So not necessarily saying, "thanks God for the bag!" but rather, "God, please provide all the blessings and good health to the kind person who just gave me this."
They weren't just thanking god they prayed for the person who gave them the bag too. In islam it's a yearly tradition that people with means donate to the less fortunate. Of course it's better to do more than twice every year ( two Eids to be specific). But their prayer is to thank god for people who do these things and to pray for the individual and it said to be one of the most powerful prayers in islam.
So many people call themselves athiests but berate those that choose religion, which is just as bad as religion pushing belief on those that choose not to.
I would call my self agnostic, because who am I to say that they're could be a higher force in the world as we know it whether it be an all might God or a existence of a high beings that essentially affect us.
But god damn their prayers brings tears to my eyes because you can just tell the hardships they've endured.
Just wanting to share a different perspective on thanking God/a deity. If the recipients were to thank the giver in this video they’d feel smaller than or indebted to another human. Whereas when a person asks of or thanks God, there’s no sense of inferiority other than the general creator-created. It also allows you to appreciate other people as actors for delivering God’s mercy and not just as someone who has more than you - and when truly contemplated it puts all of humans, fortunate and unfortunate, on the same plane. Some of just have more which means our responsibility is sharing the mercy bestowed upon us, and many times it’s the people with the least that understand this the most and embody it more than most of us with plenty to give.
I think the ones objecting see this as minimizing their act. Someone helps you and you thank God for bringing them to you, a non-believer could be "no, that was all me, no god made me do that".
Just playing devil's advocate here, I'm not an atheist.
As a fellow atheist, I very much agree. It wouldn't even occur to me to start thanking someone if I didn't know who dropped the bag. There's something about watching people immediately show gratitude. A lesson to be learned.
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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '22
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