are you an atheist?

i think i might be an infidel.

My dad's a scientist and is a Christian. I also work for a scientific organization, and plenty of scientists are big church- and synagogue-goers. That doesn't exactly get into the heart of their personal beliefs though.

There are enough good reasons to go to church even if you aren't a die-hard believer. Plenty of worshippers are sharp enough to realize that their religious text might not be a reliable source, but they believe anyway or go to church for social or activist reasons.

Also I never get militant atheists knocking on my door suggesting that I might want to look further into the non-existence of a higher being and perhaps take away some literature.

-- Ned Trifle II, Wednesday, 21 May 2008 18:52 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

John Safran did that on telly, went to that mormon-rich place in the US and door-knocked selling atheism. Got loads of doors slammed in his face.

Came up in conversation with friend's ancient mad scientist dad (invented teasmade, also medical ultrasound guy) who pulled out the etymology (a gnosis) and pointed out that it was wisest to say you didn't know one way or the other, because until dead not sure and it's not like you can send an email at that point.

Friend's husband has a MD dad also, but this guy's a mega-Xtian and it's funny to listen to agnostic scientist say that belief in Xtianity is root of all his in-law's problems.

Psacal's Wager innit. Agnosticism's a cop-out though ultimately, have some damn convictions I say! Although I suppose you could have conviction that you just don't know.

I look at it this way. I live my life to the best of my abilities, I'm a pretty nice person (I like to think but really it's not up to me to judge - that's up to tombot - hoho I jest of course!). I try not to do evil (just like google!) and if there turns out to be a god and that wasn't enough, and instead of all that I could have just been a shit and sought salvation on my deathbed then I'm afraid that's no god that I want to believe in anyway. So, I'm an athiest not an agnostic.

I think the difference between militant atheists and militant religous types is that I never see an atheist standing in the street with a fucking loudhailer every fucking saturday while i'm trying to have a pleasant stroll around town telling me that if i don't change my ways i'm going to hell.

So true.

I stopped benig militant (about my atheism) cause everyone (including myself) considered me to be somewhat of a jerk when I kept saying there is no god.Of course all the others remain jerks cause they continue defending god but at least I can laugh about it now (mostly inwardly). ;-)

Honestly I don't give a shit anymore what anyone thinks. As long as we're happy and try to be "good" that's all that matters.

Nath OTM as ever. It was and is the good Dr. W!ld's conviction that he is but a humble hominid and it would be foolish to claim knowledge one couldn't actually have. My own atheism was at its most hardcore abt. 10 years ago but my beliefs come from wanting people to embrace personal responsibility instead of hiving it off to some imaginary friend.

Everybody needs something not to believe in

Also I never get militant atheists knocking on my door suggesting that I might want to look further into the non-existence of a higher being and perhaps take away some literature.

-- Ned Trifle II, Wednesday, 21 May 2008 18:52 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

John Safran did that on telly, went to that mormon-rich place in the US and door-knocked selling atheism. Got loads of doors slammed in his face.

-- Autumn Almanac, Wednesday, 21 May 2008 11:54 (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Everything Suzy and Nath say is true but just once I would love to do ^^^this!

What was his opening line?

"Hi there. Can I tell you about the depressing pointlessness of it all?"

What was his opening line?

-- Ned Trifle II, Wednesday, 21 May 2008 22:40 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fic56JN7aIw (about halfway through)

God is a fairy tale, but a good one.

^ a sentiment that is bad for business:
http://antiadvertisingagency.com/news/billboard-all-religions-are-fairy-tales

Hey, I said it's a good one!

Ned, trust me, it doesn't work. I have tried countless times (as a teenager and twentysth) to make people (not) see the light, but it didn't work.

I think I stopped thinking about religion (and atheism) cause it does my head in. :-( I don't like being a lazy atheist, tbh, but then again I don't have time to ponder it all anymore. So here I am with a fucked up mind that doesn't know how to draw a good system of what's good and what's bad. How do I make that up from scratch and not take cues from Catholicism (which is very tied to my upbringing, culture,...)? I mean, it's one thing not to believe in an existence of God, but that means you gotta disregard everything tied to religion and make your own value system.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm open for suggestions.

It's really not complicated to come up with a decent value system, surely? Be excellent to each other! <- seems to do the job.

i think there's still good in there, it's just been covered with people clamoring for power or using their religion as a front for their true intentions. karl rove and osama are just two recent examples.

mysticism is good, but the line has to be drawn as to how you share that mysticism. you can go to X, but going beyond that X goes from genuine care and concern... love... to violence, whether mental, physical or spiritual. you can't thrust the love of God onto somebody... that's essentially a form of rape!

it's unfortunate because many religions at their core tenets are about peace and love. and just like abusive parents, "love" can sometimes go really sour. we're just people associating ourselves with an ideal. "you will eat this oatmeal young man! [or else you'll be hungry and i'll be sad because i love you and will feel like a bad parent]" vs. "you will believe this stuff or you will go to hell! [and i love you and don't want to see that and will feel responsible.]" the sad part is... this survivalistic mode... it's very fatherly... "kill or be killed! be a man!" and sure, fatherliness is fine on some levels... but there is a more motherly way that probably is more appropriate. not "do or die!" but... "hey, can i help you?"

it's unfortunate because many religions at their core tenets are about peace and love.

Many? Not all of them?

What ones aren't?

Movementarianism, for example.`

What ones aren't?

i can't say and would rather not make that assumption. satanism perhaps?

I'm pretty sure even Satanists would claim to be in favour of love and peace.

plenty of reason to suppose "peace and love" is not "at the core" of many religions... but "at the core" is a pretty vague phrase.

xp uh wha?

satanism = do what thou wilt is the whole of the law.

im not an atheist. however judging by the associations that have accrued around the word, i think god might be. that's to say, if there is a god, or a higher consciousness/divine reality etc. it want us to live our lives in a rational, scientific, humanist-centred way. whatever religious ideas have suggested about the ways we should think, be, feel, act, absolutely none of them has had the success of rational-scientiific-humanism in answering every question one could put about how things are and how we should be. religious impulses may be behind some of the most notable achievements of mankind - a lot of art (perhaps creativity itself?), the beginnings and development of civillization, philosophy, science, technology, moral and ethical movements and reform, political change, immigration - and there's no point in denying that. however all that can retrospectively be explaineds without resort to religious explanations. so what place is there left for any sort of religiosity, and why am i not an atheist?
the role and province of religion has receded so drastically as to almost have nothing left to grip onto. ethics and morals? well perhaps.
i happen to think, yes, this is an area where, if it fits into progressive liberal humanism, religion can be relevant and useful.
obviously many religious people would sneer at that and protest that their bigotry is dictated by god, but they have a point; i am deriving the moral compass from outside religion, and saying, this is your true moral guide. art? ok this is one of those stumbling blocks for me, because while i find it possible to see how scientific and philosophical developments can be explained by human consciousness working its way forward, i find it very hard to understand how bach, mozart, beethoven wrote what they did without, er, help. prolonged inspiration and a kind of mega-computer like ability to keep in play enormously complex numbers in an incredible way. i don't get that at all, it's almost inhuman. naive i might be.
so i think it ends up at "ultimate questions". finally, that's one of the very few things that religion has a role in, and that may only be because science is in its infancy. and that's possibly the reason why i'm not an atheist.

what bach et al did is not objectively amazing. just a case of the human mind boggling at/being pleased by what other human minds have done.

well, if you mean it takes consciousness to be amazed at something, that can apply to natural marvels too, or indeed anything. if a tree falls in the forest etc.

v educational thread. i now know what a "loudhailer" is!

I'm an agnostic. Atheism strikes me as just as much folly as blind belief and bears a whiff of hypocrisy in its rejection of dogmatism with more dogmatism.

... if there is a god, or a higher consciousness/divine reality etc. it want us to live our lives in a rational, scientific, humanist-centred way

why evoke science yet skip the science altogether in this thought process? these are the kinds of human-animal (as in we're crazy-advanced animals) behaviors that over millions of years of evolution have proven to be the best way to survive. do unto others as you would have them do unto you equals better chance for survival and better quality of life all around. why does any sort of higher power even need to be evoked?

yes without a question cultural concepts of morality derive from evolution

I'm an agnostic. Atheism strikes me as just as much folly as blind belief and bears a whiff of hypocrisy in its rejection of dogmatism with more dogmatism.

And how is agnosticism any less dogmatic?

I don't necessarily think that atheism, by itself, is a "rejection of dogma" except to the extent that disbelief in deities entails simultaneously rejecting their associated rituals and what have you. People aren't atheists because they think the catechism or the Nicene Creed are bunk -- they're atheists because they don't believe gods exist.

At the same time, I'm not sure what's so dogmatic about saying, "Hey, on the available evidence, I'm pretty certain this Jehovah dude doesn't exist." Any more say than saying, "Hey, on the available evidence, I'm pretty sure objects attract each other with a force proportionate to their masses."

I know most of you hate Penn Jillette, and I only agree with him 50% of the time, but he did write something pretty great about being an atheist. To paraphrase, he said the not-believing-in-a-diety part is the cake walk... it's believing that humanity would benefit were it mostly atheist, and being ready to argue for that POV from all angles.

Yes, atheism is dogmatic. Any belief system is dogmatic.

And how is agnosticism any less dogmatic?

Good point. Maybe because I'm open to the possibility of being wrong?

I'm not sure what's so dogmatic about saying, "Hey, on the available evidence, I'm pretty certain this Jehovah dude doesn't exist."

The subtext of that statement, though, is, "I believe science trumps religion," which sounds pretty dogmatic.

why evoke science yet skip the science altogether in this thought process? these are the kinds of human-animal (as in we're crazy-advanced animals) behaviors that over millions of years of evolution have proven to be the best way to survive. do unto others as you would have them do unto you equals better chance for survival and better quality of life all around. why does any sort of higher power even need to be evoked?

it doesn't! this was pretty much the point of my post! i'm trying to show how the cognitive dissonance of religious belief vs rational-scientific-humanism would work, ie with extreme unease. you essentially would have a god saying 'leave me out of the picture, you've discovered a better way' or even 'this was the path i led you on over your history'. both are nutty. but at this stage religious belief is kind of nutty, if you think it all the way through.
nevertheless, i think a distinction between opinion and belief is helpful. i can not back up my belief by opinion, which should be rational and evidence-based.

I'm open to the possibility of being wrong too, but I'm still an atheist.

I'm an agnostic. Atheism strikes me as just as much folly as blind belief and bears a whiff of hypocrisy in its rejection of dogmatism with more dogmatism.

not believing in god is very different from blindly trusting christianity

How is atheism a "belief system?" Being an atheist doesn't necessarily imply anything else about what an individual believes about the way the universe works, despite its high correspondence with humanism, rationalism, etc. (I know atheists who are crazy woo-woo UFO & astrology freaks.)

I mean, what does "I am an atheist," by itself, tell you about a person in the same way that "I am a Catholic" or "I am a Seventh Day Adventist" does?

xpost The subtext of that statement, though, is, "I believe science trumps religion," which sounds pretty dogmatic.

Maybe, but I think there's more to it than that. It privileges evidence over . . . faith, I guess, which is a little more broad than "science trumps religion." (Which I think it does in terms of explaining How Stuff Works, but is irrelevant in terms of "what is dogma?" Is the theory of universal gravitation "dogmatic?"

xxpost Yep, it's a win win thing really

Science is by definition non- and even anti-dogmatic. People can cloak their dogma in scientific language, but that's not science.

I mean, what does "I am an atheist," by itself, tell you about a person in the same way that "I am a Catholic" or "I am a Seventh Day Adventist" does?

that he's right, obv ;-)

Maybe because I'm open to the possibility of being wrong?

So's anyone who's not stuffed with fluff -- but there I go being dogmatic again.

"I am an atheist" tells you as much about a person as "I am a theist" does

Problem with the Dawkins-style arguments are that they presuppose that scientific rationalism is the default position for evaluating the worth of all propositions. In other words, they're a scientific response to a religions argument.

And science and religion are not the same thing. They're two totally different ways of organizing truth and meaning. To dismiss religion from within the confines of a scientific construct is fine, but you have to accept that you're only speaking to/for other scientific thinkers.

By the same token, religious arguments against this or that scientific position (theory of evolution or whatever) may be convincing to members of the faithful, but they're essentially meaningless to scientific rationalists.

Now, I'm a scientific rationalist. I think god probably doesn't exist. It may be that some god-like something exists somewhere, but I don't see any good reason to suppose so. But, on the other hand, I'm not so intellectually arrogant to suppose that my way of conceptualizing reality/the universe is the ONLY valid way to do so. I'm willing to grant that there may be other avenues to the truth out there, and I'm perfectly happy to let people-who-are-not-me choose their own paths.

When they try to stick their grubby little god fingers in my social policy, I get pissed, but I don't see any point in calling them stupid or deluded. This is not "wishy-washy". It's an attempt to be as honest and as humble as possible about the limits of knowledge.

I mean, what does "I am an atheist," by itself, tell you about a person in the same way that "I am a Catholic" or "I am a Seventh Day Adventist" does?

You're biasing the answer by naming specific denominations. If your point is that there are lots of different kinds of atheists that are bound only by the fact that they don't believe in God, then I'd say there are lots of different kinds of believers (Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, voodoo spiritualists, etc.) that are bound only by the fact that they do. So what?

(Or what Curtis said.)

Curt1s otm. I voted no, because my opinion is 98% "I doubt it" and 2% "who gives a fuck." It just doesn't pass the "I don't believe in God" test.