are you an atheist?

I'm too wishywashy to be that bald about it, like my ex is. He's of the "when you die you die, there is no soul, we're all atoms" persuasion, and I still have a smidge of "but what if...?" in me I guess. Not a god thing - more like a "hey how do we explain human thought and reason and collective unconcious and etc etc?" stuff.

Hahah also Kenan is otm.

i don't consider myself an atheist or a believer of a capital G God, more of in an abstract higher power of some sort

lol i am in college

i voted yes for the basis of this poll tho

I'm atheist and Ayn Rand is a great plonker.

Privately, I am completely hostile to the idea of religion. Dawkins-like. It's ludicrous, dangerous, and counter in every way to what I believe should be all of humanity's goal of calmly and productively sharing the planet. But I really try to keep all that under wraps. What good does it do to express it openly?

Not a god thing - more like a "hey how do we explain human thought and reason and collective unconcious and etc etc?" stuff.

I wonder about this all the time but adding God into the equation doesn't really solve much of anything!

you didn't have to kenan! it's a poll not an inquisition

=P

how do we explain non-human thought?

In some way that does not involve the interpolation of imagined deities.

how do we explain non-human thought?

heh... beg the question much?

for a while, i was all agnostic, then atheist, now i don't really care anymore. no one knows shit in the long run.

and anyone who does think they know, whether they be a christian fundie or militant atheist, irritates the snot out of me.

so i guess that makes me uber-agnostic?

i'll cop to being "non-theist" though.

Yeah, but the devout believe they DO know shit, that's what's dangerous about them! If everyone thought like you, it wouldn't be a problem.

that was four xposts

militant atheist

Unlike the xtian fundie, I kinda feel like the "militant atheist" is as much of a strawman as the "feminazi." Defending science and rational thought is not a form of dogma, and Oh god we have had this discussion SO. MANY. TIMES.

I see militant atheists as those people who insist on badgering the fuck out of religious people in the hope that they just stop being religious. Hence a valid term imo.

Where does this happen? And if anywhere, how is it bugging you?

I wouldn't even care about xtian fundies if not for the fact that they have controlled the government for the last eight years.

unless you mean those snooty pricks who want to teach evolution in school...

It doesn't bug me.

Where does it happen? The internet.

Yeah I hate it when the powerful badger the powerless.

Powerful Badger The Powerless: A new, self-contradictory superhero from Japan.

I'd describe myself as a non-militant atheist. We do exist.

WAHT? You mean you're not even armed?

xp It's already in my spazbook profile.

yeah how is dawkins not a scarecrow dancing as yr strawman? strawman? a good friend of mine trades his atheist tracts with the christian door knockers. which i think is pretty funny actually. he's really friendly about it.

I was a militant atheist once, but I sort of demobbed myself. Those who say that militant atheism is somewhat dogmatic and indicative of an authoritarian personality, no so far from a fundie, have a point.

xpost Well, I don't go around acting like Dawkins. I don't think he's wrong about much though, it's just that his approach is futile and even counter to his desired effect. Being the poster boy for angry anti-God scientists is a foolish thing to be, especially seeing as how "anti-God scientists" are not otherwise organized in any way.

I'm a militant agnostic - I don't know / can't prove anything and neither can anyone else.

There have been enough ppl on here who have quite aggressively knocked the likes of ANairn, Dee, and Kiwi to make me think militant/Dawkins style athieism is plenty prevalent.

I'm with Latebloomer tho I think - we Just Don't Know shit (even with science's best).

Yes, I'm inclined to agree.

I've never been militant, but I've had some rather heated arguments with fundies regarding the foundation (or lack thereof) of their beliefs. Usually in response to them querying my stance, which is very easily defensible.

Oh and Dawkins shits me to tears. Makes loads of very good points, then trashes them by getting all angry and wound-up.

we Just Don't Know shit (even with science's best)

But science's is not a way of making assumptions and declarations about the world, it's a way of examining it. A scientist knows that we don't know shit. That's what gets you into that game! You want to know more.

(x-x-post) However, against the idea that agnosticism is the most sensible standpoint, Dawkins considers this approach to be wishy-washy and hence dangerous. He thinks one should take a stand against the influence of bizarre beliefs on public policy, and not without good reason.

(I mean "game" loosely, of course -- it's far from play. Religion does not cure polio.)

xpost to kenan's early post. right, even if both extremes can be rude, the sticks they hit with are pretty different. there's a massive demographic of belligerent fundies. there's also a very large demographic of religious folks who aren't belligerent at all. the haters on both sides get a lot more press than the rest of us.

I don't think those who aggressively knocked those posters would do anything of the sort to someone IRL. it's a bit of a false positive.

Perhaps yr right there.

i'm not an atheist, but 75% of my friends are atheist. all quite nice, moral people. hell, a few of my atheist friends are bigger prudes than me. (and i'm a beer drinkin, noise rockin Deacon... don't ask me how on earth i got asked for that job in my church. the joke is certainly on me.) at least, for the most part, there's this larger cultural split that exists and so just as a believer here in ilx, i'm in the vast minority, that same thing carries over to the circles i know offline. for whatever reason, me and atheists have more in common than me and your average church goin fool.

i dislike fundies more than you guys do i would imagine. for me, way too much energy is wasted on fingerpointing. if christians collectively stopped oppressing eachother and everybody else, we could EASILY stop world hunger, put a major dent in world poverty, etc etc etc. but no...

it's enough to make you not believe. it really is.

DO IT. DO IT.

:( That's not what I want to see at all.

If more religious leaders were like msp...

Went with "atheist", though I'm more of a committed agnostic. Push comes to shove, though, the "there is no god" position seems just as silly & unjustifiable to me as the "God is LOVE!" position.

Really? Refusing to accept that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches you all the time is as silly believing there is one?

(simplified and pissed on for comic effect, obv.)

x-post to AA... ha! nice! wow, sunday mornings free...yeah... no more cheesy hymns...yeah... ah but the free donuts. nah. gonna stick with it for a while.

no shit

a paternalistic god is the obvious commonality.

Oh, sorry Hadrian, I think I was confusing some of your posts with agreeing with YMP's in a way that meant you were agreeing with the dismissal (re-opening the full thread makes my computer chug too much). I think you can argue for the similarity without being "like, whatever, shorthand" offensive, but it's still worth listening to someone who is obviously pretty offended by the conflations being made.

We're all just culturally appropriating Zoroastrianism.

^truth

this thread makes me embarrassed to be an atheist

xxp s'okay

"but you are 100% being culturally insensitive in a way that diminishes Judaism and Islam more than Xianity."

So does one need to be a religious scholar and constantly take the time to include every single religion in the discussion to not be culturally insensitive? Christianity is by far the dominant religion in my culture. I haven't diminished other religions, that's already been done for me.

It's often useful even necessary to conflate disparate and contradictory traditions for the purposes of talking about more than one small thing at once but it's definitely worth being mindful of what you're doing and that its p weird to conflate all the strands of any religion when you think about it

if you're going to take the time to actively slag off on a religion, or anything else really, it's good to at least know what you're talking about

Yes but the bar of "knowing what you're talking about" is set by religious people. I have zero interest in the intricacies of their silly beliefs. I don't need to know every little detail of juggaloism to form an opinion of it and mock it.

I mean you had me at "I'm positive their is/are supernatural being(s) that created the universe". It usually gets sillier and more bizarre from there, but I find the starting point worthy of being dismissed

*there

And mind you your point is the exact same one made by gun nuts

Find myself tapping the sign


I tried to flag one of silby’s posts but got an error message saying “where’s the lie tho”

― Garu you just posted flange (wins), Monday, 9 March 2020 08:39 (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Theres all sorts of fine distinctions within categories like "atheist" and "gentile" that will inevitably escape the ppl that use them but they're still useful, as ever the key q is what are the differences that make a difference

xp: Bearded guy on a throne goes back to Zoroastrian depictions of Ahura Mazda.
https://www.crystalinks.com/ZHoldingSunDisc.jpg

If anything, the Islamic prohibitions on depicting the divine are far more conducive to belief in modern life. Bearded guy is just fodder for Pythonesque mockery.

I don't need to know every little detail of juggaloism to form an opinion of it and mock it.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Sunday, August 2, 2020 4:48 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This would be a grave mistake, as juggalos are generally extremely dope and right about things.

Zeus was also a supreme male god who was often depicted as bearded and enthroned.

I'm not unfolding 2200 posts but I'm just going to say silby probably otm.

Everything was fine until we stopped worshipping the Löwenmensch figurine and the Venus of Willendorf.

In truth, if you were to unfold those 2200 posts and read them, mixed in among the zings and mutual incomprehension you'd find some very interesting and competent discussion of a subject that is rarely approached in that spirit.

I still worship Willendorf girl. Well no, but I do have the replica keychain.

This would be a grave mistake, as juggalos are generally extremely dope and right about things.

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit)

one might even say they are... 2 dope

https://i.ibb.co/Lp8r1Nw/FB-IMG-1607113210785.jpg

Thoughts? A friend I respect posted this but while I'm usually down with criticizing toxic masculinity, this feels more like "my atheism is more pure than your atheism", which doesn't make me feel comfortable.

I also don't know how much of atheism is one fluid conscious choice. I didn't leave the faith in one pronounced moment, I drifted over time and realized that I wasn't going to church, and despite me calling myself agnostic, that I actually felt confident that there was nothing out there. It wasn't a solid moment in time and my sentiment against religion became less passive the more toxic Christianity became in this country.

I'm probably overthinking it, though.

any attempt to generalise by race is doomed

These seem like extremely lazy generalizations to me.

There is a subcategory of 'euphoric', Dawkins-toting, Mountain Dew-drinking atheist neckbeards who definitely fit the bill, but these kinds of generalizations aren't exactly helpful, are they.

"don't have spoons"?

Is it a reference to this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory

Thanks.

wonder when Tumblr discourse will die. possibly never

I don’t know where that tumblr post is supposed to lead. Okay, it’s different?

I didn’t lose any faith, didn’t break from any kind of religion so ‘my atheism’ is different from anyone who did, regardless of ethnicity/gender/etc., right? So what am I supposed to do with that? (I mostly just don’t ever think about god, gods or atheism.)

If a group of non-believers got to that point because they were being more overtly oppressed by the hypocrisies and belief discrepancies in the bible, in the end all atheists are non-believers. There really isn't any value in dunking on r/atheist caricatures when what we all have in common is a rejection of the idea of deities/spirits. Those discrepancies in the teachings of any specific religion are covered within that common rejection despite anyone's personal experiences with them.

i'd say there really isn't any value in recognizing that all non-believers can tick a categorical when social reality is structured by shades of domination, but then i'd be doing a pale imitation of, say, noodle vague who is always so rich on these kinds of topics and much better than i am at countering silly hogwash while also being charitable.

this feels more like "my atheism is more pure than your atheism", which doesn't make me feel comfortable

you could try starting a hashtag #notallcishetwhitemaleatheists, but somehow I don't think it would sit well.

it's probably simplest to try to quiet your discomfort by telling yourself the chance is quite high that they will simply do that 'human thing' of holding two contradictory ideas at the same time, and what is absolutely true for them in one frame of mind will be replaced by a different, more flexible, truth at other times.