Thoughts on Atheism

[Mohsen]

I could see how this could be your impression if your only contact with atheists was on discussion boards.

I guarantee that a significant percentage of the people you deal with on a daily basis are atheists, even if they aren't calling attention to it.

I was referring to the forum atheist so yes you would be correct, I have many friends who identify as atheist IRL and they couldn’t care less for what I believe and vice versa - our friendship is built on the usual things like common denominators!

Peace

 

[corynski]

Depends on what you define as “proof”. If your definition doesn’t expand beyond empiricism then I can’t prove it... however, if your definition considers more than just empiricism than we can talk - but first - define what you mean by “proof”.

Peace

Yes, I would expect proof to adhere to scientific standards, which is basically called empiricism I think, which requires corroboration of evidence, peer review, etc. Belief systems find this standard difficult to adhere to...... and in talking with a deity believer I find they most often have an individualistic perception of deity, and of course the deity of today is not the deity that might require me to kill my neighbor who is worshipping the moon, as the Bible does. Everything evolves, that is the structure of the universe apparently, otherwise, why would men re-create their gods continually?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I was referring to the forum atheist so yes you would be correct, I have many friends who identify as atheist IRL and they couldn’t care less for what I believe and vice versa - our friendship is built on the usual things like common denominators!

Peace

Forum atheists are also real-life atheists.

Do you understand how you have more than a bit of sampling bias going on?

"All Jim does is play baseball! Yes, I only see him for a few hours a week and I only see him at the baseball diamond, but I can only assume that when I'm not there, he's still always there, just playing baseball."

 

[Nakosis]

I’m wondering, are atheists people who haven’t found God yet?
I am guessing that some atheists become non atheists over time.
Just wondering, no actual knowledge.

Personally, I found God everywhere. I found with enough faith/belief in any theology, you could have an experience which confirms God's existence. However I was unable to validate these experiences. If I accepted them as they appeared to be, there was pretty much all the confirmation you needed to be a believer. If you actually wanted to support these experiences as a valid truth, there was nothing there.

Also, another wierd thought.
If atheists believe there is no God, wouldn’t they be better off than those who believe in a false god?

Especially if they are all false.

 

[Nakosis]

I'm going to share some thoughts on atheism in this thread. I expect it will throw up some unexpected responses because my views on atheism are NOT representative of many atheists on the forum. It may be useful nonetheless to share and see how things go.

There's no required doctrine for atheism other than lacking a belief in God so I suspect atheists come in many different flavors.

Myself, I just see atheism as a rejection of supernatural explanations. I don't accept the supernatural as a legitimate cause or source of anything.

 

[PureX]

You say choice is involved for you.
I don't argue against this...for you.
But it doesn't apply to me.
I can no more choose to believe in gods than
I could choose to believe in Santy Claus.

Of course you can choose. We all can. But to do so you will have to admit to your current bias, and that's what you think you can't do.

Because we don't have the prerequisite knowledge of god's existence or nature, both choices: faith and skepticism, are just a personal bias. Either one of us could change this bias if we wanted to. But we would have to recognize that they are a bias, first. A bias based on personal preference, and on our subjective interpretations of personal experiences.

 

[PureX]

No, it isn't. Atheists have plenty of beliefs; it's just none of those beliefs are in gods.

And they're all irrelevant to the topic of discussion.

Philosophocally, you got nothin'. Zero. Zippo. Zilch. Atheism is a philosophical vacuum according to your definition of it (unbelief). It asserts nothing, defends nothing, and offers nothing, conceptually, to dialogue or debate.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

And they're all irrelevant to the topic of discussion.

Philosophocally, you got nothin'. Zero. Zippo. Zilch. Atheism is a philosophical vacuum according to your definition of it (unbelief). It asserts nothing, defends nothing, and offers nothing, conceptually, to dialogue or debate.

You have it backwards: atheism isn't the starting point; it's the conclusion.

Atheism is one implication of skepticism. Now... if you want to talk about justifications for skepticism, we can do that.

Atheism may also be an implication of other belief systems I don't personally adhere to.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Western society has been profoundly shaped by Christianity, including atheistic ideologies like Secular Humanism.

That must be why Christianity and secular humanism are so much alike, and why Christians like secular humanism so much:

• "Why stoning? There are many reasons. First, the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost...executions are community projects--not with spectators who watch a professional executioner do `his' duty, but rather with actual participants...That modern Christians never consider the possibility of the reintroduction of stoning for capital crimes indicates how thoroughly humanistic concepts of punishment have influenced the thinking of Christian." - Christian Dominionist Gary North bemoaning the influence that humanism has had on Christianity

As North admits, it's actually the other way around. Secular humanism is shaping Christianity, which is why Christianity in Western democracies looks so different from Islam in the countries in which Islam dominates. They're basically the same religion with a few doctrinal differences (virgin birth, hajj, etc.):

Spoiler: comparing Christianity and Islam

Christianity and Islam are very similar on paper. The differences are in the rendering, which reflects the history and the culture of the areas in which each is administered. The Christian West has been under the influence of the secular democracies that emerged from the rise of Enlightenment values and secular humanism, and has been dramatically influenced by its rational ethics.

Hence, Christians no longer execute people for homosexuality, adultery, witchcraft, fornication, apostasy, impiety, blasphemy, and other crimes against Yahweh, whereas Muslims are still free to kill such people.

But the very fact that they share all of those values even if they don't act on them the same way is evidence of their ideological similarity. The fact that they are not free to indulge those values in the West is not a result of Christian values or its church, but of the secular humanist influence in the West.

If you extract Christianity and Islam from their surrounding cultures, they appear very similar.

Christians and Muslims each revere a Semitic desert god, Yahweh and Allah, that is an angry, petty, vengeful, jealous, judgmental, capricious, pestilential, prudish, strongman that requires worship and submission.

Believers of both attend temples (Mosques or churches) and obey paternalistic, misogynisitic clergy.

Both religions embrace magical thinking, mythology, dogma, the supernatural, and ritual.

Each feature demons angels, prayer, an afterlife, a judgment, and a system of reward and punishment after death.

Each has its now centuries old holy book of internal contradictions, failed prophecies, and errors of history and science. I'm not as sure about the Qur'an, but it likely also contain vengeance, hatred, tribalism, violence, and failed morals that endorse slavery, rape, infanticide, and incest.

They each think they have the right to determine who should be allowed to to have sex with whom how, who should be able to marry whom, and what women must do regarding their bodies.

Both are patriarchal, authoritarian, misogynistic, sexually repressive, anhedonisitic, atheophobic, homophobic, antiscientiific, use psychological terrorism on their children, have violent histories featuring torture, genocide and terrorism, and demand obedience and submission.

Each consider faith a virtue and reason a problem.

Each has a history of opposing human rights and science.

Each advocates theocracy over democracy.

With all of these similarities - and that is a lot of parallels, most not found elsewhere - why should these two appear so differently where they are applied if not for the reason I just gave? The difference between America and the Middle East is not due to the differences in the holy books of Christianity and Islam

If you traded the ideologies out, and put Christianity in Saudi Arabia and Islam in America, the results would be the same: Christian Arabs cutting off hands and heads, pushing homosexuals off of Towers, doing honor killings, genital mutilation, suicide bombings, and flying buildings into airplanes, and Americans going door to door asking if you know Mohammed. America would still be a secular state with a Muslim majority forced to tolerate "infidels" thanks to humanist values, and Saudi would still be a brutal, intolerant theocracy, but a Christian one instead.

Christians also want to take credit for the US Constitution and science. They tell us how many of the early scientists and America's founding fathers were Christians). Yet we can see how much each of those have in common with their Christian counterparts, and how tirelessly many Christians work to undermine science and pierce the church-state wall.

The fact is that science (empiricism combined with rational skepticism), constitutional democracy with limited, transparent, and divided government guaranteeing person rights and freedoms, and the humanist worldview are all antithetical to Christianity and represent reactions and repudiation of faith based and authoritarian systems.

 

[Mohsen]

You have it backwards: atheism isn't the starting point; it's the conclusion.

Atheism is one implication of skepticism. Now... if you want to talk about justifications for skepticism, we can do that.

Atheism may also be an implication of other belief systems I don't personally adhere to.

So, can we talk about how skepticism led me to Islam? Or is that a no go here?

Peace

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Most atheists think this is all there is and all there will be.

Atheists are mostly people who think that they need a reason to believe in a god and don't have one. Many of us remain agnostic regarding gods or aftelives. What we say is that there very well many be no gods or consciousness after bodily death, and that there is no evidence for these things, and therefore no reason to believe that such things exist.

There is no need to go further

I'm glad you admitted that your's and the atheist's worldview is a religion and based on faith, too.

Atheism is neither a religion nor a worldview, and what he commented on was belief, which is not synonymous with unjustified belief (religious-type faith).

Moreover, if humans did evolve, then we would have made guns to protect ourselves.

Humans most likely did evolve, and did make guns. How do you account for all of the transitional forms connecting chimp-like creatures to man?

there is a movement by atheists (liberals) to control guns, i.e. get rid of guns, which goes against Darwin's evolution.

Darwin's theory make no comment on guns or gun control. Man has entered a phase of cultural evolution. Giuns and gun laws derive from that.

Finally, the sceptism on creationists part is that atheists seem to believe they can create a universe or living things just by believing in it.

I have never seen an atheist make that claim.

Incidentally, rejecting an idea is not skepticismm. Skepticism is the attitude that ideas should be questioned, not be believed because of faith, authority, or tradition. Creationists' attitudes toward atheism is rejection based in faith, the opposite of skepticism.

 

[blü 2]

Again, not only do we know that creative intelligence exists, we ALSO know that it has the unique capacity to originate truly novel complex information systems, such as those which space/time matter/energy ultimately boil down to.

Not only do we know creative intelligence exists, but we know that it's a quality of physical things; and that the only place we know it exists in the universe is on the earth; and that, whether as brains or as self-educating computers, its origin is from humans.

This cannot be similarly demonstrated for spontaneous processes, which without any creative input, require an infinite regression of further spontaneous processes to determine their own.

What do you mean, 'spontaneous processes'? Uncaused things? The quantum world surrounds you with countless processes every second that are 'uncaused' in classical terms.

Just a couple of possible scenarios for ID

The religious notion of ID crashed and burnt at the Dover trial, and hasn't been rebuilt. The only evidence offered in support of it was 'irreducible complexity', championed by Behe, and all his purported examples were explained in evolutionary terms at the trial (blood cascade, immune system &c). Behe himself had admitted a few years earlier that his 'irreducible complexity' hypothesis didn't take exaptation into account; it hadn't done so by the time of the Dover trial (2005) and it hasn't done so as I write this (2017 Nov). That duck is dead.

 

[Revoltingest]

Of course you can choose. We all can. But to do so you will have to admit to your current bias, and that's what you think you can't do.

You presume to understand other people.
While your mind might be so flexible that you
could believe in fantasies, many of us cannot.
Are you so certain I'm wrong? Why? Proof?

Because we don't have the prerequisite knowledge of god's existence or nature, both choices: faith and skepticism, are just a personal bias. Either one of us could change this bias if we wanted to. But we would have to recognize that they are a bias, first. A bias based on personal preference, and on our subjective interpretations of personal experiences.

To have a bias does not mean that beliefs are a choice.

 

[blü 2]

Of course you can choose. We all can. But to do so you will have to admit to your current bias, and that's what you think you can't do.

Q: How do you choose to believe in magic and the supernatural when you have a reasonable understanding of the physics of reality, and a reasonable ability to analyze ideas?

A: By a satisfactory demonstration of the supernatural in objective reality.

Q: Why is there no such demonstration?

A: Because the supernatural is imaginary, with no corresponding phenomenon in objective reality.

Because we don't have the prerequisite knowledge of god's existence or nature

Not least because there's no coherent definition of 'god' useful to reasoned enquiry, so it's not even possible to have a sensible conversation about the god hypothesis, let alone an evidence-based one.

 

[Mohsen]

The goldfish bowl strikes back looool

 

[Baroodi]

(The like(parable) of those who took alliances other than Allah(God) is that of a female spider made a home(web net); But truly the filmiest of homes is that of a spider, if they know)
Noble Quran 29:41

all those who resorted to a religion other than God path are exemplified by the one who took refuge in a feeble home like the one made by a female spider, mechanically and socially. Stunning fact; now only recently scientists come to know that the female spider is the main maker of the web home, and this was indicated in the Quranic verse. Other fact, this home is socially feeble as well since the female kills the male soon after mating! what a disrupted house is this. The Quranic verse ends with(.... if they know). If they know these facts and what legless principles they resorted to, they will not do that.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Of course you can choose. We all can. But to do so you will have to admit to your current bias, and that's what you think you can't do.

Because we don't have the prerequisite knowledge of god's existence or nature, both choices: faith and skepticism, are just a personal bias. Either one of us could change this bias if we wanted to. But we would have to recognize that they are a bias, first. A bias based on personal preference, and on our subjective interpretations of personal experiences.

No, you are absolutely and completely wrong when it comes to the idea that one can choose what one believes. You simply cannot, and it is trivially easy to prove.

Choose to believe, I dare you, that gravity does not function when you have sufficient faith in God to prevent. When I say "choose to believe," I mean it in the way that you did when you said you can choose to believe.

Now, take the elevator up to the top of a tall building, and then weasel your way out onto to the roof. You know what's coming next -- go ahead and test your "belief." Is it really what you believe now? If it is, you will walk off the edge without the slightest fear.

I submit to you that with all the will in the world, you could not choose that belief -- and that consequently you could NEVER act on it.

In exactly the same way, I put it to you that the person who truly believes in the salvific power of Jesus could no more "choose" to "change his mind" than you could about gravity. Because if he could -- then he instantly makes a liar of himself when he said he truly believed.

Belief is (mostly) not a choice -- especially about extremely important matters. To think otherwise shows a really poor understanding of the workings of the human mind.

 

[Mohsen]

No, you are absolutely and completely wrong when it comes to the idea that one can choose what one believes. You simply cannot, and it is trivially easy to prove.

hmmm, this sounds interesting...

Choose to believe, I dare you, that gravity does not function when you have sufficient faith in God to prevent. When I say "choose to believe," I mean it in the way that you did when you said you can choose to believe.

Now, take the elevator up to the top of a tall building, and then weasel your way out onto to the roof. You know what's coming next -- go ahead and test your "belief." Is it really what you believe now? If it is, you will walk off the edge without the slightest fear.

I submit to you that with all the will in the world, you could not choose that belief -- and that consequently you could NEVER act on it.

...I'm bored now, this wasn't so well thought out a premise! A believer in God can make the very same argument against atheists - your premise is faulty, and duplicitous.

In exactly the same way, I put it to you that the person who truly believes in the salvific power of Jesus could no more "choose" to "change his mind" than you could about gravity. Because if he could -- then he instantly makes a liar of himself when he said he truly believed.

Christians have converted to Islam - and to atheism... that leaves you a little dry throated here!

Belief is (mostly) not a choice -- especially about extremely important matters. To think otherwise shows a really poor understanding of the workings of the human mind.

Belief is absolutely a choice. But a choice based on ones own rationale and skepticism among other things... like axioms!

peace

 

[Mohsen]

Forum atheists are also real-life atheists.

Do you understand how you have more than a bit of sampling bias going on?

"All Jim does is play baseball! Yes, I only see him for a few hours a week and I only see him at the baseball diamond, but I can only assume that when I'm not there, he's still always there, just playing baseball."

Although you was able to spot the sample bias which I made an hoohaa about - you failed to see the irony I was presenting, and presented it back to me? rich... very, very rich lol

Peace

 

[Mohsen]

Yes, I would expect proof to adhere to scientific standards, which is basically called empiricism I think, which requires corroboration of evidence, peer review, etc.

Yes, correct! So your bar for proof is simply, empirically established theory? Do you find this, satisfying?

Belief systems find this standard difficult to adhere to...... and in talking with a deity believer I find they most often have an individualistic perception of deity, and of course the deity of today is not the deity that might require me to kill my neighbor who is worshipping the moon, as the Bible does. Everything evolves, that is the structure of the universe apparently, otherwise, why would men re-create their gods continually?

I'm not sure if you realise this, but I'm a Muslim, and I don't believe in the New Testament Bible as a validated scripture.

My standard is the Qur'an and it encourages science - however, it doesn't just stop there in the search for truth:

Peace