Why Atheism Is A Religion

If Agnostic simply means without knowledge, then you might as well throw that word away entirely. And why would almost everyone be agnostic whether they are theist or not? If Agnostic simply means without knowledge, then everyone is Agnostic. What would it mean to be atheist or theist and not be agnostic, as we all lack the knowledge?

 

I am an atheist. I too neither believe in god nor believe that he definitely does not exist. I LACK BELIEF in him, which makes me an atheist and also makes you one.

You are also, clearly a lost cause, i'm going out.

Ta rah

 

You literally posted the wikipedia article about agnosticism earlier, so you know the answer to this. the reason some religious people are not agnostic is because they believe that the existence of God Is ultimately knowable and the evidence that they have is sufficient for them. You determine the quality of the evidence that you need to convince you as an individual.

I'm out.

 

If I am not hungry, that is equal to being full. If i like pizza, that is equal to not disliking pizza.

To call me an Atheist is simply incorrect. I am open-minded to the existence of God but I know that i don't know for certain. An Atheist is concluding that there is no God due to lack of evidence. I'm not making a conclusion.

 

You're still proving the scale. Here is the scale:

Atheist.....Agnostic Atheist......Agnostic.....Agnostic Theist......Theist.

This isn't hard to grasp.

 

I am open-minded to existence . The kindness of existence is that upon
request , a new experience will be confirmed as realistic . The experience
occurs and is confirmed relationally twice . Twice is nice , curiously .

As to the brutality of existence ? or indifference ? I wouldn't want to
actually experience such a confirmation . So I don't ask for that .

I have learned I may willful in these concerns .

 

Not necessarily. theism is based on faith and belief, not knowledge.

 

autophobe, I tip my hat to your persistence. I have been engaged in this manner of conversation with Chinacat since 2012 on a variety of inter-related topics. Unfortunately he is extremely undisciplined when it comes to language and logic, often refusing to use words in their technical sense or even in their commonly understood sense, and he has little learning in philosophy or science, yet chooses to debate these very topics with a surety which borders on egomaniacal. I personally have remedied the frustration I feel when engaging with his posts by finally choosing to block him a while ago. Though I still unfortunately catch snippets of his posts when others quote him, I find these tolerable and mostly provoke laughter.

I would just like to add that I am an atheist, and I do not know whether or not god exists. I am 100% open to evidence proving that god exists, just as I am 100% open to evidence that the NSA is spying on me, or that there is a bomb buried in my backyard. I am not taking a stance on the existence of god, unless you call "need more data" a stance. I think that certain gods, such as Zeus, or Yaweh, we can be dismissed on lack of evidence in the exact same way that we dismiss the existence of fairies and goblins; this does not mean that if tomorrow, we discovered the habitat of real, actual goblins, that I would have a dogmatic position held which would disuade me from considering real evidence.

It means that when there is a real lack of evidence for something, that is evidence enough to consider that something not true, or not yet true, and that this is a position which we hold in real life on a multiplicity of points.

I too have never in my life met an atheist who "believed" that there is no god, with all their might, the same way theists believe there is one.

I would also point out that theists often DO make knowledge claims and proof claims; it is only a subset of theists which rely on faith. Many, many religious people feel that they have real facts to back up their convictions. Of course those facts are extremely weak or non-existent, but they make that claim. So there are many Gnostic theists, that is, believers of a religious dogma who believe it based on what they consider to be credible evidence.

Anyways, let circus continue

 

At least just respond to me directly if you're going to participate in my posts, mention my name, and address my argument indirectly. It's not like you're not responding to me here. Enough of being a coward about it, don't you think?

As I already said, if there is truly zero difference between an Agnostic and an Atheist then what is there even a reason for having these different terms at all?

You can disagree all that you want, but the difference between an Agnostic and Atheist holds true. An Atheist makes a conclusion about whether God exists or not based on lack of evidence, and an Agnostic doesn't, or at the very least, this conclusion is simply that "I don't know" or "I can't know".

And when Religious people make claims that are usually based on subjective experience, it's no wonder that this is not good enough for the skeptic. Stubborn skepticism doesn't equal open-mindedness.

I would be willing to put money down that if most Atheists DID see evidence of the existence of God, they would only dismiss it as pseudo-Science, such as what has already happened to the Quantum Physicists and their argument for Non-Locality, even with data thrown right in the face of the "Show me the money!!!!" demand.

Act like I'm full of myself and misunderstand the concepts all that you want, but it's not really even a debate. A pure Agnostic doesn't make a conclusion about whether God exists or not, and a pure Atheist does.

From the website: An atheist believes that god(s) do not exist ("Strong Atheism") or does not believe in the existence of any known deities but does not explicitly assert there to be none ("Weak Atheism").

An agnostic believes it is impossible to know if god(s) exist ("Strong Agnosticism"), or believes that the answer may in principle be discovered, but is currently not known ("Weak Agnosticism"). Some agnostics feel that the answer is not important.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Agnostic_vs_Atheist

So to expand on the very obvious and not-challenging-to-understand scale that I was talking about, it would be...

Strong Atheism....(Weak) Atheism....Agnostic Atheism....Agnosticism (Strong....Weak)....Agnostic Theism...Theism

Here's another website: http://grammarist.com/usage/agnostic-atheist/

"An atheist lacks faith in God, believes there is no god, or lacks awareness of gods. An agnostic either believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a god or is noncommittal on the issue. The difference may seem small, but atheism and agnosticism are actually vastly different worldviews."

So you could argue at best that the difference between belief in no God vs. non-belief in a God boils down to Strong Atheism vs. Weak Atheism...and as such, it's a gradual scale from here on out as you move into the Agnostic region, but Agnosticism itself isn't directly related to non-belief or belief in no God. It's only relevant to this when adding Atheism to the end of it, such as Agnostic Atheism.

The black and white theism/atheism argument is incorrect, and is mis-representing anyone who is Agnostic.

It's also revealing Atheism's obsession and reliance upon Religion for its own identity, and carries the tone of "Well, we don't see evidence, so, we know that we're correct in our disbelief/belief in no God."

Insisting that you either must believe or not believe and that this makes you either theist or atheist is ludicrous and reminds me of Christianity with its black and white view that you are either "saved" or not.

 

My position on spying is the same as your position on Catholicism, the only difference being that the issue of my being spied upon has the potential to be settled by evidence.

And you and Writer are trying to bullshit me about "well, Atheism could be open-minded if we just had the evidence", and here you are, without even realizing it, CONCLUDING that in regards to the existence of God, there's not even a potential to settle it with evidence. This is hardcore, firm belief on the matter, and I rest my case.

 

This addresses the spectrum idea, however it should be noted Richard Dawkins is considered an atheist through and through and I've never heard him deemed an Agnostic Atheist.

http://youtu.be/Y_jD-ki6b_Q

 

Oh yeah, the spiritual realms. Hell I exist in places that most people only dream.

 

Although i don't think every atheist or theist is a lot more frightened of the unknown than the average agnost or the openminded spiritual person who tries to keep everything that's not certain open, you are not that far off in your last sentence: it is indeed why a lot of people choose to hang on to a certain outlook/mindset and side or affiliate themselves with likeminded people, groups or label. But not solely because of fear methinks. Also (to point out the obvious ) not every spiritual path starts without a conviction (no problem) and not every spiritual path involves a deity or the search for one (or more ).

 

Seriously? I can't even count the number of times I've witnessed an atheist proclaim that there is no God.

I fundamentally disagree. Both are honest. Both are trying to get in touch with reality and a part of themselves. You are right about some atheists and theists when you say they are afraid, but not all. Some are simply explorers of avenues of thought.

Where fear and foolishness come into play is when we say that everyone should be the same in order to avoid any confusion. It is confusing to us that others are different from us. We try to figure out why they're different, and we try to exploit the reasons we see for their differences. Rarely do we realize what kind of a megalomaniac we would have to be in order to actually enjoy it if we got our way and everyone was the same. Diversity is the spice of life, and instead of worrying that, oh no, we might be wrong, we should all truly take a moment every time we get into these arguments to appreciate the fact that our opponents exist. Because we're not sociopaths. The truth is that we would really miss each other if any of us were to disappear.

There is either confusion or there is silence. While we are still thinking, there is no way to say that silence is a superior state to confusion. We learn new things from confusion, but silence is much more comfortable. It's silly for us all to aim for silence, though. We would just miss each other.

 

ALL human beings are ignorant deluded fools to various degrees. It's the nature of life and humanity. We interpolate and construct our individual worlds from limited sensory information, our imagination fills in the blanks. Our memories also get interpolated and distorted with time. The human mind plays tricks on us all the time, where we see and hear and imagine things that just were not there. The difference between us is some people actually believe too much of their imagined world. Atheism is an honest ignorance, " I do not believe as I have not seen any rational evidence". I am ignorant of anything that I do not know. That is far more intellectually honest and intrepid than believing in irrational fantasy Gods. There are scales of probability and levels of delusion and ignorance, some people are clearly farther from reality than others.

There is a real physical reality universe that we will only ever partially understand. That is the real truth. Some admit that they don't know or don't believe something that doesn't make any sense or appears to be actually dishonest and manipulative. That is a fairly mild and honest level of ignorance compared to someone of faith that believes crazy stories of violent Gods that anecdotes suggest were more apparent to ancient sand people. Or people that clearly dismiss and distort rational evidence to maintain fantasy delusions of transcendent spirituality and loving Gods that somehow created carnivores and diseases, but oh no, that's the devil or some bullshit.

 

Who are you to say how much is too much? It's up to you to decide for everyone what is and isn't possible and what is and isn't fruitful to believe in? I don't find your position to be intellectually honest at all. More like intellectually self-serving.

I don't feel like it's a contradiction at all to believe in a transcendent God that created meat eating dinosaurs. Obviously, such a God would be transcendent...of our ideas of pain and evil. I can't determine that, because I love my life so much and anything that hurts my life must be totally unfair, there couldn't possibly be a creative force behind everything. That's all you're really saying when you deny the existence of God based on the existence of pain: that death is cruel and unfair, therefore there can be no God. And to that I say "Get over yourself."

 

^
and your God fantasies are not self serving?

Get over yourself!

 

No you get over yourself!

 

Atheism is an honest ignorance, " I do not believe as I have not seen any rational evidence". I am ignorant of anything that I do not know.

And so to relate this to the Determinism thread, basically, even if God or Gods do exist, as long as you're not aware of it, it doesn't exist, just as I have been arguing.

There is a real physical reality universe that we will only ever partially understand. That is the real truth.

Not according to Quantum Mechanics.

 

To be fair, Einstein didn't like the uncertainty principle. "God does not play dice with the universe!" Still, most scientists accept quantum mechanic as the most accurate description of the sub-atomic world to date. A thorough understanding of these new laws by physicists Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley gave us the transistor, and ultimately developed into this device (computer) you are using now to defame science in favor of 'god'.