Comment by haswell

> The rejection of any "higher power" is precisely what being an atheist is for a lot of us. Accepting that we are just the result of random thermodynamic processes in a cold and uncaring universe

I’m somewhere between atheist and agnostic. My mental model is a bit different. While I don’t believe there is a god or some “divine entity”, I do see “the stuff of primordial existence” as some kind of “higher power” to the extent that I’m a product of it, and its laws — discovered and yet to be discovered — govern my existence. Not some anthropomorphic entity.

Put another way, those thermodynamic processes and whatever factors of existence that enable/govern them are the “higher power”, and I don’t think that is incompatible with atheism.