atheism a is religion?

His wording was that outside people's hearts there is no God--not that he doesn't believe in one, but that there is none. Why is it "harsh' to point out that he can't prove that? Compared with some of the stuff I've had to take lately--e.g.,that Christians, including me, are crazy and mentally ill--I'd say that statement was tame and within bounds of a lively discussion, calling it as I see it. I had no intention to insult Skizm. I'm one of his fans. I think he does a generally good job of argumentation, and I appreciate the sincerity and difficulty of his personal quest for truth. And no, I don't think I need to evaluate my standards of proof. If he can prove it, he needs to present the evidence and arguments. People have been arguing about this for centuries, and for anyone to think that anybody has come up with "proof" requires something more than an assertion to back it up.

 

Your interpretation of what I meant is true as is your statement that I cannot prove there is no god. When it comes right down to it, there will never be any proof for or against god. That right there is why we will eternally be locked into this debate. You will say that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence and I'll say that god is the exact same thing as purple elephants, unicorns, and santa claus. I mean if you're going to believe in god, you might as well go all the way and believe ALL the myths.

The way I've always viewed the universe, is that if I cannot prove there is no god, you cannot prove there is a god. God used to be pretty damn active in the past, where has it gone now? I'm 100% we will never, ever, find evidence for a god, or against a god. That lack of evidence though doesn't mean we need to subscribe to the belief though.

If you think about it, it doesn't matter what religion you're part of. However, I've had people say "Flying Spaghetti Monster? LOL! What a joke, unlike our almighty God!" See what's wrong with that statement? We have this mindstate that believing in one fairytale is somehow more valid than believing in another.

Mind you, when I refer to god(s) I'm refering to conventional omnipotent beings.

:troll:

 

Mind you that proving scientific validity of theory or claim is not the same thing as proving non-existence or existence based on no trace of evidence at all, so unless you are a troll on your own I don't get what the relevance of my quote in the context of your responce to Okiefreak was.

 

:troll:

 

Stops copies me!

 

Nope he doesn't have to prove it unless he is saying you should believe it, he is entitled to his beliefs as you are yours, your reasoning that people have treated you badly because of your beliefs is not a good excuse and should instead leave you open to not insulting others beliefs.

People have been discussing for centuries wether or not Skizm's atheism is the dogmatic kind? lets not get it twisted, thats what i was talking about when i said standard of proof.

 

He doesn't have to prove it if he's saying it's his opinion. (Hell, he doesn't "have" to prove anything under any circumstances on an anonymous site and in a free country. I can't force him to do it). But he didn't phrase his claim as an opinion. He said:"... on a cosmic level there is no god". There was no god outside of a person's personal subjective beliefs; at least that was my take on it, nd he submitted a post saying that was a correct interpretation. (He didn't bitch about it either; I admire that). And by saying that, of course, one could say he "insulted" my beliefs, since I had just argued the opposite. But I don't feel insulted. If he was offended, I apologize, but I haven't heard him complaining--just you. And I'm not reasoning that because people have treated me badly I can treat others badly. I'm saying that I think in a discussion forum like this, my statement was par for the course, political correctness is an inappropriate expectation, and your making an issue out of it is a bit thin skinned (but that's just my opinion). And I don't intend to discuss the point further. It's this kind of petty personal chickenshit that derails good discussions.[/Quote]

No, I don't think people have been talking about Skizm or his beliefs for centuries. They've been talking about the existence and nature of God, and as you probably are aware there are lots of folks who believe that (S)he is more than something in people's minds. As I see it, when a person says he's an atheist he can mean one of two things: (1) the "soft" version, e.g.: "I don't believe in God" or (slightly stronger) "I believe there is no God"; or (2) the "hard" kind, e.g.: "There is no God", "God does not exist". I perceived Skizm's statement to be embracing the hard kind, and I used the term "dogmatic" to describe it. In retrospect, I should have simply stated it the way I just did, which seemed a bit elaborate for the context but would have saved some time. And I object to your insult in suggesting that I'm "twisted" (just kidding).

Actually, I you and I might not eternally be locked into this debate, because we actually seem to agree. I've been arguing on this site for over a year that it's impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God, and that my belief is based on faith, defined as an educated bet which, by definition, could be wrong. I do the best I can on the basis of my own experience, judgment and the evidence available to me, and I continue to test this working hypothesis against new evidence and argument, such as these discussions. If you want to call God the Spaghetti Monster, that's your privilege.

He hangs out at WalMart a lot. I keep running into Him in the checkout lines.

"Conventional ominipotent beings"--do they have to have beards. Actually, I don't think of God as "omnipotent" in the traditional sense (See Hartshorne's Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes

 

If you assert something and if you have no proof or evidence to back it up then you have faith in such assertion and that, indeed, is a religious feeling.

Whether you believe in God, Darwin or your own capacity to draw a definite conclusion on matters beyond your knowledge and comprehension, the fundamental basis of such activity is in fact a religious feeling.

 

Actually we might not be eternally locked into this debate on that point. I've been arguing for months in these forums that God can't be proved or disproved, and that my solution is to make an educated bet on the basis of the evidence at hand plus my personal experience, reason, intuition and judgment. An atheist could use a similar approach and bet on a different horse.

No, I believe only in the more plausible, functional ones. In his book The Mind of God, physicist Paul Davies considers the various available explanations for the finely tuned complexity of our universe and the long list of "lucky accidents" and coincidences compiled by astrophysicists Brandon Carter, Bernard Carr and Martin Rees. The most serious alternative to the "designer universe" explanation seems to be multiple universes, or perhaps Lee Smolin's cosmological natural selection. I'd throw in Ervin Laszlow's Akashic Field Theory, which I regard as pseudoscience. The problem with all of them is that there's no more evidence for them than there is for Intelligent Design, they involve at least as many extravagant assumptions, and they explain a more limited range of features. Davies argues that Occam's razor favors design, but acknowledges that there is no "proof" for this explanatory preference. You may call the Designer the Spaghetti Monster, Santa, a unicorn, or whatever, but the entity that humans have generally associated with this function is God.

Ah, yes. That's a problem. Do you mean the Dude(s) in the Sky? Do they have beards? I'm influenced by process theology, and Hartshorne's view that God's omnipotence as traditionally understood is a theological mistake. I'd also dispute the notion that God is a "being". Tillich argues persuasively that God is the "Ground of Being." I can't go much farther than SBOT ("Something Big Out There"). My concept of God is consistent with Theism, Deism, Pantheism, or Panentheism). Panentheism is acceptable in the Orthodox tradition, and two of the writers who have influenced my thinking, Davies and Protestant theologian Marcus Borg, are panentheists. Einstein seemed to be a Pantheist as opposed to a panentheist). From a practical standpoint, I see no way of resolving this controversy nor any particular reason to do so.

I rely highly on intuition and experience, consistent with reason and available evidence, in making decisions. I've been greatly influence by William James (Varieties of Religious Experience) in viewing my spiritual beliefs personally, functionally, and experientially. From a personal and functional standpoint, "God" is a codeword for ultimate meaning, including Dewey's sum of human idealism. Does SBOT have these properties? I'm not sure. My thinking here has obviously been influenced by tradition and culture, but the God of Ultimate Meaning (GUM) is more important to me than SBOT. In this sense, God is at minimum an important concept.

From an experiential standpoint, God is for me the presence "in whom we live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28) When I'm having sex with a significant other, it never occurs to me to ask "how do I know this person exists?" My response is generally to go with it and maybe discuss it later--as long as my reason doesn't warn me of danger. Maybe it was the dopamine,the seratonin , the monoamine, etc. Whatever it is, I'm grateful. (I'll admit I set a low bar for religious experience. I remember being at a Rainbow Gathering (Woodstock-like hippie get together) in a beautiful national forest, the "cathedral of nature', as we say, with majestic mountain peaks, tall trees, a crystal blue lake-- and a young lady, stark naked in full view with her arms raised heavenward--and I said to myself "Yes, there is a God!")

 

I do not believe in omnipotent beings. I do believe in personal god(s) that dwell in your mind. Because understanding that they are your personal god(s) is what makes them real.

 

I was lurking about in a bookstore when I stumbled upon a book titled something like 'How to be atheist' and it was completely serious.

I can understand a book like 'Why I am atheist' or the like,

but to me, being atheist is simple not believing in God, Gods, or religion all together.
That is pretty clear, isn't it?

But I don't get all the fuss some atheists produce...

this book to me was about as useful as having a 'how to not tie your shoe' book.

A 'How to tie your shoe' book would be useful.
A book about not tying you shoe is just silly.

 

How does one be atheist? I'm so confused

 

There have had been atheist religions just like Communism or Nazi-Socialism... Nationalism and Football club fans...
So Atheism might be a religion...
Atheism has the same structure as an organized religion - so it is but a religion...

 

If being organized means something is a religion then your lunch-group is a religion.

We are a group of people that say the idea of an omnipotent force that directs things in a conscious manner and that has our best interest at heart is untrue.

There is no ultimate authority that is silently judging everything you do. Think about time. It is the only thing that we have no control over what-so-ever and probably never will. It encompasses everything in the universe, building planets up, and breaking them down. Guess what? Time doesn't give two flying fucks about what Brittney Spears did this weekend and it doesn't care if a group of people denounced some mythology.

 

A religion is a metaphysical and ethical belief system that contains an element of the supernatural, specifically deities although it can be argued that the karma and reincarnation of Buddhism puts it in the same category as religion, just not theism. A belief system grounded in reality and reason is called a philosophy. Atheism is neither. It is the lack of belief in deities. It is a rejection of theism, pure and simple. If an organization or club stands for anything other than lack of belief in deities it is no longer an atheist organization in the sense of the general term Atheism. There is only one universal commonality amongst atheists and that is the lack of belief in a God.

I think that it's difficult for theists to envision anyone not belonging to some sort of religion so they try to label the lack of one as one. Lest their realities crumble.

 

You guys got it all wrong.
It's not that atheist don't believe in god, it's that they believe there is no god.

A HUGE difference.

 

I guess if Atheism's a religion then better lay some of that tax free status on 'em...
Better yet lets just equalize shit a little and deny tax free status to any religious institution.

ZW

 

The latter is somewhat irrational and faith-based. Less so than theism but more so than the former. Atheists can fall into either category.

 

I consider the definition of an atheist as one who has exhausted all possible resources and has been able to prove that there is no God.