When someone says, 'I'm an atheist', my reaction is pretty much, "so what"? I mean, it's not telling me anything, it's basically a statement in the negative. It doesn't tell me that the person is excercising some 'rationale' to reach that conclusion. It could just as easily be assumed that atheism is the default position for that individual when not thinking about the ideas at all.
To me the Atheists present a reasonable argument. It's like, one party has had spiritual experiences and believes
they're not delusions, or believe in blind worship. The other party has usually no spiritual experiences and thinks
it's delusion or a lie. Evilution is besides the point depending on you're belief.
You're worse off in their argument lost in monotheism which is vague in the realm of science.
Science was accepted prior to monotheism and the various religious organizations brutally taking
up the works of witches and alchemists as well as archaeostronomy being suppressed for nearly
a thousand years like science which went through the religious organizations before it before may
have been approved of, after centuries of people being executed and the previous studies and
knowledge being confiscated by the religious organizations.
Mankind's history is mortifying; spirituality is mostly an escape for most people.
Escape into Jesus if you need, Nobody believes in the wrath of God.
When someone says, 'I'm an atheist', my reaction is pretty much, "so what"? I mean, it's not telling me anything, it's basically a statement in the negative. It doesn't tell me that the person is excercising some 'rationale' to reach that conclusion. It could just as easily be assumed that atheism is the default position for that individual when not thinking about the ideas at all.
What? Oh, do try to be serious. Are you suggesting that if atheists really thought about all this "deep stuff" that they would find less reasons to be atheists? I became an atheist after looking into the eyes of god. I know, I know, human animals aren't supposed to be able to mingle with the boss, but that didn't seem to stop me when I was younger. I know it is hard to understand, but when I looked into those eyes, I saw something. What I saw made me realize what I was seeing. It's pretty simple, really. For the record, to this day, I still count it as one of my most splendid experiences, both the visitation and the resulting realization. It was a few grades beyond liberating...
When someone says, 'I'm an atheist', my reaction is pretty much, "so what"? I mean, it's not telling me anything, it's basically a statement in the negative. It doesn't tell me that the person is excercising some 'rationale' to reach that conclusion. It could just as easily be assumed that atheism is the default position for that individual when not thinking about the ideas at all.
Not sure if we'd mean it in the same fashion, but to some degree I agree with ya. I even made my own thread about it a while back, which was mostly self-indulgent ramble, with a point or two thrown in.
I'm gonna quote myself now. No, I don't need to, but I already admitted to being self-indulgent, so...
I think overall I'm as passionate about things as I ever was (ie. quite a bit less than angry atheism stereotypes would suggest...lol).
But being passionate about atheism seems a kinda strange notion to me now. Not just for me, but full stop.
So, I can see why people can be passionately anti-theist. Or passionately theistic. Passionately secular...humanistic...etc.
But atheism is just such an uninformative tag, ultimately.
I think it's just a case of age lending perspective. Atheism, for me, is not in any sense a reactionary position (in the way anti-theism is). Hence, no great passion. Neither is it a proactive position, in the manner of strong religious or political belief. Hence, no great passion.
What? Oh, do try to be serious. Are you suggesting that if atheists really thought about all this "deep stuff" that they would find less reasons to be atheists? I became an atheist after looking into the eyes of god. I know, I know, human animals aren't supposed to be able to mingle with the boss, but that didn't seem to stop me when I was younger. I know it is hard to understand, but when I looked into those eyes, I saw something. What I saw made me realize what I was seeing. It's pretty simple, really. For the record, to this day, I still count it as one of my most splendid experiences, both the visitation and the resulting realization. It was a few grades beyond liberating...
When someone says, 'I'm an atheist', my reaction is pretty much, "so what"? I mean, it's not telling me anything, it's basically a statement in the negative.
This is an extremely recent development. For a very long time the word meant not to worship the gods or impiety, a sense that lasted from ancient Greek to Milton and arguably after.
"Ye Gods infernal! hear us from the gloom
Of Venerable depths remote, unseen
Hear us, ye guardians of the stained tomb
Majestic Pluto- and thou, Stygian Queen,
On the dark bosom learning of Great Dis-
Thou reconciled Star of the Abyss.
Blood, not for you, unholy hands have pour'd
Ye heard the shriek of your insulted shrine
Barbarian blasphemies, and rites abhorr'd
Pollute the place that hath been long divine
Ye heard the shriek of your insulted shrine
Borne from its wounded breast an atheist cry
Hath pierced the upper and the nether sky."
from vol. II of John Gibson Lockhart's 1821 novel Valerius
The great atheist philosophers who contributed so much to culture, learning, philosophy, and more were quite clear that the position "atheist" was a deliberate stance. Hence Huxley's coining of the term "agnostic":
"The story of how Huxley came to invent the term 'agnostic' in 1869 is well known. Huxley's account in 'Agnosticism' emphasizes his embarrassment among members of the Metaphysical Society, which included many of the leading intellectual figures of the day, when he found himself metaphorically naked, without a label to describe his philosophical position. While most of the other members were '-ists of one sort or another', Huxley was a man ' without a rag of a label to cover himself with'. So he invented what he thought to be the 'appropriate title of " agnostic " ', which had come to him as 'suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic " of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant'."
Lightman, B. (2002). Huxley and scientific agnosticism: The strange history of a failed rhetorical strategy. The British Journal for the History of Science, 35(03), 271-289.
Only with the "new atheist", led by those who have in general done nothing but produce inferior works that are travesties compared to those of their forebears, have we found the rhetorical strategy largely bereft of logic or meaning that seeks to define atheism as a kind of default position, thereby side-stepping the need to produce the great intellectual works such as those by Nietzsche, Sartre, Freud, Marx, Feuerbach, etc.:
"Georgetown theologian John Haught (2008, xi) has commented that the new atheism is so theologically unchallenging. Its engagement with theology lies at about the same level of reflection on faith that one can find in contemporary creationist and fundamentalist literature. He states also that Their understanding of religious faith remains consistently at the same unscholarly level as the unreflective, superstitious, and literalist religiosity of those they criticize (2008, xiii). Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga (2007), in his critique of The God Delusion opined, You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside), many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class. To summarize, critics have pointed out the lack of philosophical and theological sophistication of the New Atheists, who they accuse of holding to an ill-informed conception of what religious beliefs really are. Furthermore, they accuse the new atheists of a self-serving, predatory selectiveness in choosing their battle partners."
Falcioni, R. C. (2010). "Is God a Hypothesis? The New Atheism, Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, and Philosophical Confusion" in A. Amarasingam (Ed.) Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal (Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Vol. 25). Brill.
It doesn't tell me that the person is excercising some 'rationale' to reach that conclusion.
It should. Atheism is a venerable philosophical an intellectual tradition that asserts a position on the nature of reality, morality, humanity, etc. There are absolutely still atheists of this type:
"atheism casts a wider net and rejects all belief in "spiritual beings," and to the extent that belief in spiritual beings is definitive of what it is for a belief-system to be religious, atheism rejects religion. Thus, it is not only a rejection of the central conceptions of Judeo-Christianity; it is, as well, a rejection of the religious beliefs of such African religions as those of the Dinka and the Nuer, the anthropomorphic gods of classical Greece and Rome, and the transcendental conceptions of Hinduism and Buddhism...To be atheists we need to deny the existence of God."
(italics in original; emphasis added)
Nielson, K. (2005). Atheism & Philosophy. Prometheus.
Nielson doesn't stand alone: Nicholas Everitt, William Rowe, Nick Trakakis, Robin Le Poidevin, and various others to varying degrees (e.g., Michael Martin or Antony Flew for most of his life) continue to treat atheism seriously (as opposed to Dawkins, Harris, Hitchen, Dennett, Stenger, Steele, etc.).
It could just as easily be assumed that atheism is the default position for that individual when not thinking about the ideas at all.
Or one could avoid logical contradictions an nonsensical phrasings such as "lack of belief" and recognize that there is nothing gained but much lost when one asserts that atheism is some default position and doesn't entail epistemic or ontological claims.
When someone says, 'I'm an atheist', my reaction is pretty much, "so what"? I mean, it's not telling me anything, it's basically a statement in the negative. It doesn't tell me that the person is excercising some 'rationale' to reach that conclusion. It could just as easily be assumed that atheism is the default position for that individual when not thinking about the ideas at all.
My instinctive reaction to this post is "So what?" too.
How many people just say to you out of the blue "I'm an atheist"? I don't see it being used outside some specific context already referencing religious beliefs or views. I also wouldn't expect it alone to be anything other than a statement to the negative, but no different to "I'm a vegetarian" or "I don't drive". Negative doesn't automatically mean bad.
There obviously will be some kind of rationale behind the statement when it is used, which could be expanded on if appropriate but no single statement can do that on its own. In this context, is it really any different to the statement "I believe in God"?
When someone says, 'I'm an atheist', my reaction is pretty much, "so what"? I mean, it's not telling me anything, it's basically a statement in the negative.
All the same, a claim of atheism does say that the specific person is giving up on claims of divine favor, support or alignment, at the very least. That is something, and does hint at a a slightly average chance of choosing rational explanations over supernatural ones, as well as higher odds of taking personal responsibility for his choices - which is to say, more solid ethics.
It doesn't tell me that the person is excercising some 'rationale' to reach that conclusion.
I have heard such claims before. It makes more sense than it looks like at first, particularly once one realizes that (most?) deities are very much human creations and explores the consequences.
Some people have actually engaged in the activity of creating personal deities and questioning their worth. I figure YmirGF did just that and then decided he had better ways of spending his time, but of course we have to ask him to know.
The first is those who are sick of religion and what it offers and had enough with it. This may be due that they were in the wrong religion.
The second is that who aren't convinced.
So whenever I encounter an atheist I try to figure out is he form the "religion divides people" or of the "I need evidence" type. That is what I am an atheist means to me
When someone says, 'I'm an atheist', my reaction is pretty much, "so what"? I mean, it's not telling me anything, it's basically a statement in the negative. It doesn't tell me that the person is excercising some 'rationale' to reach that conclusion. It could just as easily be assumed that atheism is the default position for that individual when not thinking about the ideas at all.
I don't disagree with this so much. It's not necessary to think deeply to reject god. That doesn't mean some have not thought very deeply to reach their position.
On the other hand, when someone tells me they are a theist it tells me they have failed to think critically. Either they did not bother to reflect or they failed to accept the the truth in deference to their fears and irrational needs.
I have heard such claims before. It makes more sense than it looks like at first, particularly once one realizes that (most?) deities are very much human creations and explores the consequences.
I promise to come back and add my experience, which is very pertinent here. But today I am taking a road trip. I do not want to give this a quick response.
On the other hand, when someone tells me they are a theist it tells me they have failed to think critically. Either they did not bother to reflect or they failed to accept the the truth in deference to their fears and irrational needs.
In other words, anyone who agrees with you on this one question, may not necessarily do so for rational or well thought out reasons, but if they hold the contrary position, they must be by default irrational and too scared to face the truth.
When someone says, 'I'm an atheist', my reaction is pretty much, "so what"? I mean, it's not telling me anything, it's basically a statement in the negative. It doesn't tell me that the person is excercising some 'rationale' to reach that conclusion. It could just as easily be assumed that atheism is the default position for that individual when not thinking about the ideas at all.
I deny the existence of a God who either punishes, or awards. I deny the existence of a God who intervenes into reality and who is able to interfere with our free will.
I deny the existence of a God who created all that exists in 7 days.
In other words, anyone who agrees with you on this one question, may not necessarily do so for rational or well thought out reasons, but if they hold the contrary position, they must be by default irrational and too scared to face the truth.
