Atheism as a philosophy, is beneficial to the theist!

[It Aint Necessarily So]

If you’re not a nihilist which philosophical foundation do you draw your atheism from?

Atheism derives directly from two beliefs, and is itself neither a belief nor a source for other beliefs. Atheism is the inevitable result of rational skepticism, or the belief that no claim should be accepted beyond what any available evidence supports, and that there iis insufficient evidence to accept any god claim or hold any god belief. It's that simple.

Consider avampirism and aleprechaunism, which are also neither beliefs nor the source of any belief, and which also are the result of only two beliefs each - a respect for rational skepticism, and the lack of sufficient supporting evidence for vampires and leprechauns.

You're probably an aleprechaunist, right? You are if you lack a belief in leprechauns. What is your aleprechaunism founded on? Nihilism? What beliefs derive from you non-belief in leprechauns?

being an avid atheist, which is literally soul-eroding:

You're projecting you own internal state onto the atheist. What you are telling others with a comment like that is how empty and insufferable life would be for you without your god belief, and that you assume that others must be the same as you would be without your faith.

You've been told repeatedly that that is not the case as common sense would attest. If the atheist had a deep yearning resulting from a lack of a god belief, he'd be searching for completeness and direction. Most of us are not. People that come to us with religion are routinely turned away.

Why do you suppose that is?

And if believers had found something special, it would be apparent and appealing.

Common sense will tell you that the atheist does not partake from that cup because he has no such thirst. This atheist couldn't be more content with his life. A lifetime of humanist values and methods has resulted in a life of love, friends, wonder, and gratitude.

What do you have to offer that can improve on that? The belief that the lack of a god belief being soul eroding? I've experienced life both inside and outside of religion. I know you're wrong first hand.

That's what results from faith based thinking. It allows you to believe false things that are not only insufficiently supported, but as in this case, contradicted by evidence, testimony, and common sense.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

go running to philosophical systems like humanism for it, which Christians first developed by the by.

Humanism is not an offshoot of Christianity. It is a rejection and repudiation of it.

Humanism has its roots in ancient Greece, where Thales (624 BC - 546 BC) first dared to remove gods from his thinking and replace faith based thinking with pure reason. He suggested that everything was a form of water, which was the only substance he knew of capable of existing as solid, liquid and gas, an early attempt to unify various aspects of nature and suggest a water based material monism. This has been the program of science since, which is also free of god beliefs. Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism (and light), a process that continued through to Einstein unifying both energy and mass and space and time.

What is significant was his willingness to try to explain the workings of nature without invoking the supernatural or appealing to the ancients and their dicta. The more profound implication was that man might be capable of understanding nature, which might operate according to comprehensible rules that he might discover.

That's the spirit of humanism. Man can do it. Man can understand his world, predict and at times control parts of it, and in so doing improve the human condition and that of the beasts, and that no gods will be helping us along the way.

This kind of thinking died with the rise of the Age of Faith and the Middle Ages, only to be reborn (renaissance in French) again over a millennium later in a great re-awakening (Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason). Here, the West began its rejection of the biblical model for government - kings, commandments, subjects - and replaced iit with the modern liberal, democratic state with limited, divided and transparent government and enumerated personal rights, something alien to Christianity.

The prominent Enlightenment intellect Diderot summarized this envisioned redirection of the Christian model nicely with this:

"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."

 

[Liu]

Atheism is the inevitable result of rational skepticism, or the belief that no claim should be accepted beyond what any available evidence supports, and that there iis insufficient evidence to accept any god claim or hold any god belief. It's that simple.

I disagree - agnosticism is the inevitable result of this. Atheism (or "strong atheism"), i.e. the firm conviction that there are no deities whatsoever, isn't.

But well, with the rest you wrote I'm on your side.

 

[LuisDantas]

Again the disbelief in a God or gods is not spontaneous nor does it exist by itself. No idea does...

You are contradicting yourself.

 

[Revoltingest]

Again the disbelief in a God or gods is not spontaneous nor does it exist by itself. No idea does...

Perhaps the only difference is in the wording.
My not believing in gods was spontaneous.
I was born not believing, & remained that way.
It only became an issue when believers objected.
Then I acquired the label, "atheist".

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Atheism is the inevitable result of rational skepticism, or the belief that no claim should be accepted beyond what any available evidence supports, and that there iis insufficient evidence to accept any god claim or hold any god belief. It's that simple.

I disagree - agnosticism is the inevitable result of this. Atheism (or "strong atheism"), i.e. the firm conviction that there are no deities whatsoever, isn't.

But well, with the rest you wrote I'm on your side.

We're in complete agreement then except about how we use the words atheist and agnostic, making this a semantic disagreement rather than a philosophical one.

To me, an atheist is anybody without a god belief, and an agnostic is anybody that does not claim to know that gods do or do not exist. I happen to be both - an agnostic atheist - or what you might call a weak atheist.

 

[Willamena]

Typically atheism (the weak flavor) isn't a philosophy, a belief, or anything
other than a perspective. But this perspective can be useful to anyone.
Try it on for size, & see how your own beliefs & other beliefs then look.
If one sees them all as not absolutely true, then perhaps rancorous
differences could vanish.

And what is a perspective?

 

[Revoltingest]

And what is a perspective?

A way of seeing things.
Examples....
A sense that gods exist
To have never believed

 

[Willamena]

Atheism derives directly from two beliefs, and is itself neither a belief nor a source for other beliefs.

Because of the binary nature of truth, there are no alternatives.

 

[Willamena]

A way of seeing things.
Examples....
A sense that gods exist
To have never believed

Philosophy provides an explanation for why people believe in an ontological image that includes god(s)--a perspective--and equally it provides an explanation for the move away from belief in gods.

 

[Revoltingest]

Philosophy provides an explanation for why people believe in an ontological image that includes god(s)--a perspective--and equally it provides an explanation for the move away from belief in gods.

Our inborn perspectives guide us to beliefs &
non-beliefs, which then add to our perspectives.

 

[Willamena]

Our inborn perspectives guide us to beliefs &
non-beliefs, which then add to our perspectives.

That's a sound philosophy.

 

[Revoltingest]

That's a sound philosophy.

I blush with pride at this detente!

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Atheism derives directly from two beliefs, and is itself neither a belief nor a source for other beliefs. Atheism is the inevitable result of rational skepticism, or the belief that no claim should be accepted beyond what any available evidence supports, and that there is insufficient evidence to accept any god claim or hold any god belief. It's that simple.

Because of the binary nature of truth, there are no alternatives.

Because of deductive (syllogistic logic), there is only one conclusion possible.

If nothing should be believed without sufficient evidence
And a particular idea is insufficiently supported,
That idea should not be believed.​

Do you disagree?

 

[blü 2]

the philosophical principles of secular humanism are only that.

The same is true of any philosophy taken as a philosophy. We know from research, however, that certain moral tendencies arise from our evolution, our genetics ─ child nurture and protection, dislike of the one who harms, fairness and reciprocity, respect for authority, loyalty to the group and a sense of virtue or self-worth through self-denial.

The rest (and this is the primary territory of philosophies) are culturally derived: whether a dowry, a brideprice, or nothing is payable at a wedding, whether and when it's acceptable to fart, the binding nature of a contract to be performed in the future, and so on. Of course, various philosophies, not least Nietzsche's, openly sacrifice elements of our genetic morality in the pursuit of various other goals.

Not all atheists are humanists. Many of them are nihilist, and since atheism only means lack of belief in deities- presumably atheism is inherently nihilistic.

Given the genetic basis of our central morality, why would you suggest nihilism? It may be that nihilists tend to be atheists, but it doesn't follow that atheists tend to be nihilists.

I think it's a misapplication of atheist and humanist to say 'the philosophical principles of atheism is secular humanism'.

I think many atheists see things that way. Secular humanism is a fairly coherent unsupernatural worldview and moral code, or at least moral pointer.

But of course humanism can appeal to believers who think humans are or ought to be masters of their own destiny, and believers have as much to fear from other people's theocracies as nonbelievers do, so secular humanism is open to believers as well, though in the US and Europe, mostly in theory.

Many anti-theists especially are philosophical illiterates and/or don't really care about it.

True. And many believers have only the most superficial grasp of the religion they adhere to, and are both ignorant and uncurious about the application of the moral teachings of that religion to their lives. This doesn't automatically make them bad people, of course. 'Bad person' is usually a social judgment more than a philosophical one.

 

[Willamena]

Because of deductive (syllogistic logic), there is only one conclusion possible.

If nothing should be believed without sufficient evidence
And a particular idea is insufficiently supported,
That idea should not be believed.​

Do you disagree?

The premise is questionable. Should I believe it?

 

[Buddha Dharma]

And you are committing a serious mistake in presuming that atheism does not lead to morality - which, as a matter of fact, it often does.

I am not denying that an atheist can have morals. I'm denying bare atheism furnishes morals. I think if atheists acknowledged that, they would have to accept the limitations of atheism. Again, even that wouldn't be saying atheism is unideal or bad. That's ultimately a matter of perspective. I think it CAN BE bad. I think the same of theism.

The OP neither is an atheist nor commands a good working understanding of atheism.

Right and I was only critiquing him on that particular.

May you provide a link?

Origins of god/gods

I will draw your attention to how poorly constructed the OP's argument is. He isn't alone in the new atheist movement.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I am not denying that an atheist can have morals. I'm denying bare atheism furnishes morals.

How about bare theism? What morals does it furnish?

I think if atheists acknowledged that, they would have to accept the limitations of atheism.

Many if not most atheists do acknowledge that. They will be the first to tell you as I did earlier that atheism is nothing and is the source of nothing. My own words earlier on this thread:

Atheism derives directly from two beliefs, and is itself neither a belief nor a source for other beliefs. Atheism is the inevitable result of rational skepticism, or the belief that no claim should be accepted beyond what any available evidence supports, and that there iis insufficient evidence to accept any god claim or hold any god belief. It's that simple.
​

But there is no limit to atheism that follows from that. The atheist is free to adopt whatever ideology and methods for determining what is true and what is good are most appealing and productive.

For me, that is secular humanism, which I found to be a robust and complete orientation to life and living. Its metaphysics, epistemology, and moral theory have provided a solid foundation for navigating life intelligently and in an upright manner.

My secular humanist framework has led to a life of love, friendship, satisfaction, and self-respect.

I need nothing more from a worldview.

 

[LuisDantas]

Origins of god/gods

I will draw your attention to how poorly constructed the OP's argument is. He isn't alone in the new atheist movement.

There is no "new atheist movement". That is a make-believe label with no meaning.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I wish people would stop conflating nihilism and atheism. The two have nothing to do with each other. You can a theist and a nihilist, as well.