religion
- Started
- Last post
- 3,463 Responses
- Morning_star0
@mono & Ukit2
I'm suggesting that Atheism is as much a belief as Christianity.
Like Christianity, Atheism provides an answer to the question "Does god exist?'.
However, the burden of proof here remains with the Atheists because it is universally acknowledged that Christianity is a belief and subsequently beliefs, by definition, require no proof.
If Atheism is not a belief, where is the proof.- no you're WRONG,
GeorgesII - Probably.Morning_star
- Your burden logic is utterly flawedmonospaced
- How?Morning_star
- going from "beliefs require no proof" to saying Atheists have the burden of proof is absolutely bonkersmonospaced
- the simple fact is that anyone making a "supernatural" claim usually has to explain why it's breaking natural lawsmonospaced
- the very definition of burden of proof... when proof is needed to explain something absolutely impossible by naturemonospaced
- such as a man-like god with omnipotence and a focus on the middle east a few thousand years agomonospaced
- no you're WRONG,
- inteliboy0
Again....
Is it possible to have NO religious beliefs? NO faith?
And if so, what is that person called?
- Wolfboy0
@Morning_star
you appear to be saying the basis for faith based religion is semantics and dictionary definitions?
- how so?
Morning_star - by talking about the semantics of Atheism and the definitions of beliefs.Wolfboy
- Thanks. That's very helpful.Morning_star
- As helpful as defining the word belief to how that the burden of proof is on those that do not believe the unprovable.Wolfboy
- Does a belief or faith require proof?Morning_star
- no, it doesn't... but WHAT they believe in does... such as a god existing who judges everyonemonospaced
- Nope. That doesn't follow.Morning_star
- how so?
- Morning_star0
@inteliboy
Again... Atheism is the lack of belief in GOD(s) not religion.
The person who doesn't subscribe to religions or spirituality is a secularist.
- kingkong0
Christianity is just a “generation away from extinction” in Britain unless churches make a dramatic breakthrough in attracting young people back to the faith, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has warned.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/…
(open in private browsing if you're outside the UK)
- Wolfboy0
"the burden of proof here remains with the Atheists because it is universally acknowledged that Christianity is a belief and subsequently beliefs, by definition, require no proof. " Morning_star
By getting into semantics and definitions the only thing you are doing is working in definites - something that is very shaky ground for any faith based beliefs.
By coming to the conclusions above, you have lumped all faith based beliefs together; all myths, all stories from history become the same thing. If somebody believes them and that person says they are beyond the parameters of testing they then require no proof. If that’s what you think then fair enough, but the facts as set out by yourself place all major religions side by side with the likes of (as mentioned many times already) Scientology, ancients myths that have passed from religion to historical social points of interest and crack pots like David Icke. It also brings spiritual bollocks like astrology and homeopathy into play as real things that do what they claim to do. By working in the black and whites of definitions you remove all factors such as size of the following of a certain set of beliefs; the christian has no more relevance than the man in a tin foil hat protecting his thoughts from the government.
Now I’m sure it will be claimed again that I’m being obtuse, but your insistence regarding the definition of words and so on draws the line in the sand. For me, all you have done is devalued all faith based beliefs by lumping them together. That’s a much bigger argument for how ridiculous they are than any scientific proof you say must to be provided by atheists.
Oh yes, there is the other side to your semantic grappling; you want to say that atheism is as much a part of this as any of the other beliefs and if you want to feel all smug by proving that with a dictionary then here you go, there’s your pyrrhic victory. See how the world of not believing in myths and stories collapses as they all come to the realisation that they are not non-believers, but believers in something different.
I say fuck all of that and your insistence that entomology holds some kind of key to all this; I’ll just repeat what I’ve already said:
– Atheism is a refusal to believe the stories we are fed from an early age without some form of measurable proof that they are real; this in turn allows the people to seek answers to questions, acquire exciting new knowledge about the world around them and adjust their world view accordingly as civilisation progresses. By this structure, if proof that there is a god became available atheists would accept it and adjust their world view.
– Theism/spiritualism is a refusal to accept that the stories we are fed from an early age can be anything but true despite anything newly acquired information might describe; this in turns means people have to spend their time and effort skewing the information to their world view. By this structure, if proof that there is no god became available theists would deny it and skew the information to fit their world view.
- Wolfboy0
For the record, outside the arguments about what words mean and the impact they have on what an atheist is, I don’t believe atheism is a religion. I don’t think it’s faith based and I will always feel that if someone claims something fantastical and on the surface ridiculous, the burden of proof is always on them to prove it to be real.
I also think it’s a sad state of affairs that there are those in the world that feel they need to set up a ‘church’ of atheism.
I really don’t understand what they aim to achieve by doing that. I can almost understand it happening in places where religion has a fundamental element and there is almost a safety in numbers aspect to it. Maybe an organised group is the only way to gain acceptance in their own society? But as someone born and raised in a (technically) Christian family in the UK, I find not believing in myths has no impact on my day to day life as it would if l lived in say the bible belt of the US or Syria and see absolutely no requirements to gather and praise no gods.
- inteliboy0
if some weirdos never made a "church of atheism" we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
a few dorks trying to make a point and bombarding sites like reddit with their annoying atheist smugness = athiesm is now some kind of religion. go figure.
- Morning_star0
Wolfboy wrote:- "For me, all you have done is devalued all faith based beliefs by lumping them together. That’s a much bigger argument for how ridiculous they are than any scientific proof you say must to be provided by atheists."
100% Agree. Ridiculous to the point of madness. My irritation was with Atheism adopting the canon of religion and the hypocrisy that, that revealed. Bringing semantics into the debate is something that is a favorite tactic of the Atheist. Just have a look at the sidebars from the last few pages.
Wolfboy wrote:- "Atheism is a refusal to believe the stories we are fed from an early age without some form of measurable proof that they are real; this in turn allows the people to seek answers to questions, acquire exciting new knowledge about the world around them and adjust their world view accordingly as civilization progresses. By this structure, if proof that there is a god became available atheists would accept it and adjust their world view."
I find this difficult to agree with. Whilst I absolutely agree that truth/proof/facts should be followed wherever they lead and world-views adjusted accordingly, without prejudice. The issue I have is with the requirement that Faiths/Beliefs should provide measurable proof, they just don't have to. If it is a requirement for Scientology to provide measurable proof then it should also be a requirement for Atheism to do the same. Yet, all you tend to get from Atheists are the semantic gymnastics that are gleaned from a 30sec search of Wikipedia. Atheism can't have it both ways.
Wolfboy wrote:- By working in the black and whites of definitions you remove all factors such as size of the following of a certain set of beliefs; the christian has no more relevance than the man in a tin foil hat protecting his thoughts from the government.
I'm not sure what your suggesting here. Surely belief is belief. Whether it's in Ancient Aliens, Buddha or The Flying Spaghetti Monster the common factor is 'no proof'. As soon as proof is available then it ceases to be a belief.
In truth, Atheists annoy me. Probably because I can't grasp the argument for an opposition to faiths that isn't a faith itself. For me it's like a boxing match and the atheists are in the corner refusing to get in the ring. Thanks for taking the time to reply though, it's appreciated.
- yeah, I was rambling a bit with the part about size of following, it's just more about the lumping together all the different faiths.Wolfboy
- i_monk0
Some people have a hard time understanding the lack of something (a•theism = without god-belief) isn't the opposite of it, or another form of it. An empty shoe box isn't a style of shoe, but it also doesn't mean one wears the boxes.
(This really *shouldn't* be hard to grasp for most religious people because it is exactly the same relationship they have with belief in other gods. They don't sit around actively denying Brahma and Amaterasu-Ō-Mi-Kami and the rest; it never occurs to them to believe.)
Making it more difficult is the fact there are angry atheist turds, most of them between the ages of 13 and 20, who want an atheist symbol to wave on a flag, who pick fights with anything vaguely religious, who have substituted Neil DeGrasse-Tyson for Jesus and a dogmatic approach to science for scripture, and generally make the rest of us look like asses. They'd better be described as rabid Scientific-Materialists of some stripe.
- ESKEMA0
An atheist church is just ridiculous. those nuts should go fuck themselves with a burning spear.
I'm an atheist and I disapprove those fucktards, I put them in the same basket as Christians, Muslims, Jews and all the religious fuckers who shed blood in the name of their religion at some point. I don't have problems with people being spiritual or believing in whatever, but I have serious issues with them trying to put their views down my throat.
Religious people should behave more like buddhists, those motherfuckers know how to religion and I have respect for that.
Still, I don't believe in fairies.
- futuremongolian0
Atheists in general are rather tiresome. I don't believe in god either, but that fact doesn't shape my behaviour, nor do I feel the need to broadcast it.
- So you're not an atheist?********
- "I don't believe in god either" = "I am an atheist"i_monk
- "nor do I feel the need to broadcast it"
haha********
- So you're not an atheist?
- ********0
Dudes, get real. Agnosticism is the only natural resting place for the modern human of scientific thought.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agn…
Read these criticisms. They hardly even qualify as criticisms. It's almost like everyone else (atheists and theists) are like, "Well, yeah, sure, obviously agnosticism is the answer, but but but we believe this other thing” or “well, that’s just being lazy”.
ALSO GUYS: There are many types of agnosticism! I guarantee you'll find one that you like!!
Would you like to believe in god, but are smart enough to know it's unprovable? Agnostic Theism is for you!
Do you want to believe there is no god, and never was? Agnostic Atheism is great, too!
Don't give a shit one way or the other? Apathetic Agnosticism is your new best friend.
You can even choose whether you think the existence of god is knowable or unknowable at all! It's so perfect! No more reason to fight, we can all get along. It's the perfect religion, and it fits right in with science! Right along side! No longer do these things have to be one way or the other.
DEBATE OVER. DEBATE OVER. DEBATE OVER!
- < Fence Sitter.Morning_star
- except that there's no actual reason to believe gods exist except for hearsaymonospaced
- There you go with 'belief' again. There are a billion reasons to believe gods exist. You just won't except ones that can't be replicated in a lab.Morning_star
- replicated in a lab.Morning_star
- Yeah, mono. There are no scientific reason. But you're allowed to believe in these things if you like.********
- yes, of course you can believe, but WHY do you believe?monospaced
- I don't feel there's a compelling reason to believemonospaced
- Many people believe in things like horoscopes, fate, the kindness of strangers, etc. It's allowed, just don't preach & don't fight about it.********
- fight about it, or try to change science. The vast majority of believers don't interfere with science.********
- Unfortunately they do align themselves with organizations which do. And for that they should be scolded.********
- i_monk0
Agnostic atheism is not "believing there is no god and never was", that would be"gnostic atheism".
Agnostic atheism is the lack of belief in gods without claiming to know whether or not there are gods.
- Well, using gnosticism in a modern sense is more about wether it's knowable or unknowable, I think.********
- Although, wikipedia suggests a very different and old meaning for gnosticism.********
- Well, using gnosticism in a modern sense is more about wether it's knowable or unknowable, I think.
- ********0
"yes, of course you can believe, but WHY do you believe? I don't see any compelling reason to believe." -monospaced.
That's a fair argument. If you don't feel compelled, then don't even worry about it.
However, might I suggest (for the sake of argument) that often science and knowledge have seen major breakthroughs because someone had a leap of faith about how they thought the world to work. Heliocentrism, the theory of relativity, these things were leaps of faiths to some extent.
It's ok to have an imagination. Mythology and made up stories of life after death and angels and demons is fun and CAN be harmless. Unfortunately, over the centuries we've allowed a lot of evil people to pervert these stories and use them against the population as a means of controlling them. God is often used as a reason to go to war, but war is ALWAYS about power, never about God. The idea of "God" is used to shame people into acting a certain way. "God" is used to create fear and get people to do what you want them to do. It's a way of justifying nearly any shitty behaviour that you might have. And I agree, it's terrible. Let's do away with it.
Still, you don't need a reason to believe. Imagination and wonder are great things.
Now, let's all hold hands and sing a chorus of this classic with The Lord Rod.
- The anti-rod********
- by the way, those "leaps of faith" in science are called hypothesesmonospaced
- Imagination and wonder are absolutely essential, but gods still are a huge stretch to believe inmonospaced
- For sure, for sure. I didn't mean to equate sci hypothesis with mythology. But, imagination is there!********
- IN ROD WE TRUST********
- The anti-rod
- ukit20
Every argument for you make for religion, just substitute a religion that you don't like and see if it still holds up. Most of the time you will be guilty of exactly what you accuse the atheists of.
For instance, most people don't believe that a galactic alien dictator named Xenu colonized Earth and then mass murdered billions of his own alien citizens, the ghosts of which still haunt every person in the world. They don't need to go out and try to prove that this didn't happen, because it's just fucking ridiculous. That's the same logic that atheists apply to every religion. If people can't understand that argument, then I'm not sure this discussion will go anywhere (and it probably never will anyway :)
- GeorgesII0
^
your point is moot because I don't think anyone's believe is stupid,
believe it or not, I do not need to tell other people that they are stupid for believe cows are sacred to make myself feel better,- cows, trees, a black stone, etc,
you apply an atheist mindset to everything, it's normal everything looks skewedGeorgesII - I don't spend much time worrying about it in real life, I totally agree people are not stupid and can believe the most ridiculous thing and live the same life as anyone elseukit2
- just because you don't think it's stupid certainly doesn't make the point mootmonospaced
- and live the same life as anyone else.ukit2
- his point isn't moot as long as you believe other religious people think other religions are stupid, it becomes moot once you don't careGeorgesII
- you don't careGeorgesII
- All I'm saying is that they don't actually believe other religions. Tolerance and being nice is something different.ukit2
- cows, trees, a black stone, etc,
- monospaced0
1200FFS
