are you an atheist?

On the other hand, many theists retreat very quickly into deism with their arguments. It's good to keep in mind the starting point of the theists position, though sometimes it seems like things are conflated because theist beliefs are often not clearly defined in the first place.

Are their stated beliefs ultimately what determine their political support, though?

Surely that's implicit within the anti-theist statements as well?

This time I will be even more explicit. I am not a theist.

Insofar as my knowledge of anything must ultimately be based on personal experience, and my experience cannot be construed in such a way as to include a god or gods, as I understand those terms, I would categorize myself as an atheist. I think the qualifications and clarifications I made in the preceding sentence are very important nuances that ought not to be cast aside, but when you sift it down to its essence, what I just said was: I am an atheist.

As an atheist myself, it ill-behooves me to make appeals to prejudice or categorical ad hominems against all atheists.

But the fact that I am an atheist, as I understand the term, does not align me with the sort of atheism widely expressed in this thread. I also identify myself as religious, with Zen Buddhism being the religion most nearly embodying my faith. As such, it annoys me that so many self-identified atheists, of which there are many in this thread, display so much ignorance of religion, and turn the mere fact of believing that a god or gods do or don't exist as the sine qua non of religion and a sort of Procrustean bed that all arguments about religious faith must be made to fit. According to this sort of atheist, a belief in diety is attended by a whole train of ills, by definition, and nothing can convince them otherwise, including evidence or testimony.

I will continue to point out this reductive tendency as based on pure ignorance and prejudice, which it is. Atheism is not a tribal identification and despite my own atheism I'm happy to call out atheists when they are being ignorant or prejudiced in this way.

I usually identify as "a skeptical person" because I think it says more about where I'm coming from.

Lol theists tho

"the mere fact of believing that a god or gods do or don't exist as the sine qua non of religion and a sort of Procrustean bed that all arguments about religious faith must be made to fit"
i think people here are uncomfortable, for example, with transcendental meditation, too, at least when it comes up with regards to David Lynch. I don't think the collective ilx discomfort with magical thinking rests solely on whether gods do or don't exist.

I would suggest that the collective ilx discomfort with magical thinking rests mainly on the exploitation of magical thinking for political ends which then injects magical thinking into the formation of social policy and justifications for wars. Magical thinking that confines any harm that it does to the individuals who employ it usually gets played on ilx for lols.

As such, it annoys me that so many self-identified atheists, of which there are many in this thread, display so much ignorance of religion, and turn the mere fact of believing that a god or gods do or don't exist as the sine qua non of religion and a sort of Procrustean bed that all arguments about religious faith must be made to fit. According to this sort of atheist, a belief in diety is attended by a whole train of ills, by definition, and nothing can convince them otherwise, including evidence or testimony.

A million kinds of strawmanning, at least regarding posters in this thread, going on here. But color me also shocked that a threat titled "Are you an atheist?" appears to center largely and inexplicably around the question of belief in a deity. Inexcusable ignorance, that.

ilx lols at david lynch??

The thread title does indeed promise a discussion of belief in diety. I'm not expressing any shock over that, Phil. So, what does a belief in diety imply, beyond a the simple fact of a belief in diety? Anything? My beef, such as it is, revolves around the answers to that question, as given in the prior 1570-and-change posts.

But you may feel free to answer that question, if you wish, so as to clarify your position.

lol deity

concise

It doesn't *necessarily* imply anything at all. It also doesn't just exist in a vacuum. Does that help?

xp well you did type "diety" like four times.

diety worms

diety? horrors!

This was linked from the Michael Robbins thread but could be relevant here as well:

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/book-reviews/he-who

Sample quote:

The central folly of scientism is the assumption that "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is a question for science--whose proper field is, after all, "something"--or, even more perniciously, that it isn't a question worth bothering about, isn't really a question at all.

Don't think science reckons it's not worth bothering with by any means. Science just realises we are far far far off having the theoretical tools or intellectual framework to properly deal with that question.

imho part of what establishes those theoretical tools + intellectual frameworks have historically been theology + discourses w/ infinity

I don't get this part at all (Robbins quoting Hart in the quoted paragraph):

Here he is on Dawkins’s vacuous concept of the “meme”:

'Genetic materials are propagated by physical transactions because they themselves are physical realities; at their level, no conscious acts need be present. Whatever else “memes” might be, however, if such things really did exist, they would most definitely be composed of intentional content and would exist only as objects of mental representation. They would not therefore be metaphorically “selected” by nature, in the way the units of biological evolution are said to be, but would literally be chosen (even if often a little passively) by a conscious mind.'

What’s astonishing isn’t that Dawkins can’t see that the meme is merely a metaphor, but that he doesn’t realize it’s a metaphor that presumes intelligent design.

How does he manage to bring intelligent design into it? I don't see the argument at all.

I think they've conflated intentionality w/ intelligent design.

this sentence makes me smile - A badger cannot understand differential equations, but that tells us something about badgers, not equations. - but I think it's wrong

Alien vs Badgers
Et tu, Bruce Lee?
I'll chop your socks into suey
said Woody to Soon-Yi
Game over, man, game over.

A+

I think the main thing frustrating me lately is how in debates about religion, Christians love to trot out that their beliefs cannot be disproven. An obvious point, to be sure, but a large part of the reason it is so is because they themselves have purposefully made it that way!

They'll tout the Bible as God-breathed (citing scripture from I think Timothy?), then when you point out some of the more serious discrepencies, such as the multiple ways Judas dies, differing accounts of the Crucifixion, etc, they always have some meta-explanation for it that they themselves invented. Many sects of Judaism were apocalyptic in nature around the time the religions split, and many Early Christians believed that the End Times were near in their lifetime. When the end times didn't come, the story changed - oh, he's coming back LATER! This "generation" will not pass didn't mean the literal generation! It meant the Jewish race (no matter that the Hebrew word used did not translate to "race" but "generation"). Or the other explanation - 1 minute to God is like a thousand years, etc, etc.

The other thing that bugs me is I have yet to see a good Christian explanation of why Jesus is indeed the Messiah, as he does not meet the definition as defined in the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament. The ancient Jews did not define the coming Messiah as a "suffering figure", the word actually meant "anointed one". He was supposed to be a great military leader that was supposed to overthrow Rome and return it to the Jews, and Jesus was an insurrectionist that was easily stifled and killed by the Romans. He was supposed to be a descendent of David which he technically could not have been as he was, according to Christians, not Joseph's natural born son. He was supposed to build the Third Temple and usher in an era of World Peace. Didn't happen and I always see the latter skirted around in discussions.

The common response I see that 'proves' he met the criteria of Messiah is Psalms and Isaiah. But most Old Testament scholars have pointed out the passage of "piercing hands and feet" is based on a mistranslation of the original Hebrew, which was "Like a lion, they are at my hands and feet". Isaiah was not referring to Jesus but the Jewish people. And most Biblical scholars contend that Psalms was a generic collection of Jewish folks describing their persecution, not a reference to a coming Messiah.

It seems airtight enough that I can only assume most of the people I talk to don't know about it, but some of the apologia crowd seems to have skirted the issue by saying "oh that other stuff? He'll do that the second time around.". Again, circular by their OWN DESIGN. We can't disprove it because it is continually redefined.

Oi...I think I'm reading too much about this lately.

no you're exactly right. "you can't disprove this thing that inherently unable to be proven, therefore it's true". people who use bad logic aren't logical enough to be aware of their own bad logic, it's maddening.

a good Christian explanation of why Jesus is indeed the Messiah

in terms of the OT, there isn't one. which is why Jews aren't Christians.

Why exactly is it maddening? What precedent causes you to expect something different?

when you see something clearly, can see why something is flawed or not, yet someone you're discussing it with is simply incapable of seeing the flaws...maddening. this is different from me wanting someone else to see things MY way; it's that they are incapable of following the logical paths that lead merely to the contemplation of "my way".

xp

Why exactly is it maddening?

The absence of logic as a methodology removes a particularly solid underpinning for successful communication between individuals, and a failure to communicate to another person what is extremely clear to you is a rich source of frustration. As you point out, it is illogical to try to adjust the thinking of someone who is incapable of understanding you, so it is wiser to adjust one's own expectations, which strategy is entirely in one's own power.

The contradictions and inconsistencies are entirely compatible with a conception of all-powerful omnipotent deity, who must be able to partake in both 'good' and 'bad' and a 'good/bad' sort of Schrodinger's cat-style duality. If you are yearning for logical consistency or insist on the value of narrative above all else then you are reading the Bible wrong, and have much in common with Creationists.

^^ This at least shows an understanding of what logical consistency is and an informed idea of where it is most applicable. I think Granny Dainger can appreciate a difference between a response of this nature and the sort of response that maddens him.

yep absolutely. Which is why I say I don't wish or expect all to arrive at the same conclusion as me ("my way"). There are good, logically sound ways to arrive at a belief in a supernatural creator; it's poorly thought-out, deeply flawed ones which show a near total lack of critical thinking skills that are maddening.

I would kinda hope that an allpowerful supernatural deity could give rise to a book about itself that wasn't so prone to misinterpretation/misuse by its most special creations though.

Well the fluidity of the meaning is essential, otherwise we'd all be fundamentalists.

which gets at the meat of things...there's no 1 thing that "disproves" God or Allah etc...there's 1000s of little "hey wait a minute here" things that should make a person with good critical thinking skills be very very doubtful.

what's wrong with fundamentalists? why are they "wrong"?

think it might be that you view fundamentalists how I view vast majority of the religious

Probably because its impossibly hard to think critically about something you've genuinely come to believe is infinitely infallible, at least to any meaningful degree.

chicken/egg tho innit? I know plenty of people raised in very religious households, Catholic school and all that, yet at some point the "hey wait a minute here"s mounted up to the point where they're no longer believers.

Most vehement anti-Christians I know where raised in pretty religious households. Yet at some point they probably smoked a cigarette too.

They may even have cussed or listened to a rock n roll record album.

Being that there exist a number of sects within Christianity (and in regards to the Old Testament, also the Jewish faith) who all read the Bible a different way, I challenge the idea that there is a "right" way to read it, but moving on...

Nowhere did I describe how I read the Bible - my overarching point is that many Christians I have debated or seen in debate often fall back on the tired "get out of jail free" card of "You can't disprove what I believe!", disingenuously painting this inability of disproof as an attribute, when in reality, this inability to disprove is due to the circular nature of the faith itself, and the constant redefining of beliefs when things don't pan out as expected. Namely, many of them start out with the thesis that "Christianity is real", and shift their beliefs around that, rather than starting at neutral. Which to be fair, is to be expected with many of them, as pointed out above, for various reasons. However, there is nothing impressive about shooting an arrow and drawing a bullseye around it after the fact.

I think Biblical inerrancy is laughable and silly but I also think using it's error-prone nature as the singular source of disbelief in said religion is oversimplifying things. My reasons for being a nonbeliever were simple - I was a young Christian that for years tried to seek out this all-powerful deity. I was not the naive type that thought a bearded glowing figure would show up in my living room in an Elvis costume and say "whassup dogg". But most Christians I know would say things like "I FELT THE HOLY SPIRIT TODAY" or all kinds of physical phenomena that they attributed to an outside lifeforce. However, after years of trying, I felt and found nothing other than that which was in my own brain. So I gave up, and in addition, grew to dislike what was being taught and the central thesis of the faith itself. Recently, I have been revisiting my beliefs through extensive reading, but my opinion has merely softened, yet not changed (though my animosity at organized religion has certainly grown in recent years).

Moreso, I think while one can say contradictions don't 'disprove' the existence of a God, specific reliability errors in the Bible certain cast some doubt on the existence of THAT PARTICULAR version of God, or at least many of the key components shared by most of the believers of the faith. Inerrantists reflect only a portion of believers, but even more liberal Christians still believe Jesus was the Messiah, and that Heaven and Hell are real, even if they accept that large portions of the tome were written by man and are imperfect.

However, the discrepencies in the Hebrew definition of what a Messiah was and who Jesus was, simply put, do not make sense. It suggests that the God of the Old Testament said to his Chosen People, "Hey peeps, this is how things are, if any other false idols show up and tell you otherwise, please tell them to sod off", and then when Jesus did exactly that and was thusly seen as a heretic by the Jews, they were rebuked for following the instruction he himself gave them. Many Early Christians actually believed that the God of the Old and New Testament were two distinct and differing deities, the first being an 'evil' God that Jesus and the New Testament God rescued them from. (None of these made it into the canon, of course).

Could there be some kind of supreme deity? Yeah sure. But I think there probably is not. And I base that not on technicalities in a book but based on the fact that the world itself appears to be operating at random as if there is nothing behind the scenes to my eyes.

xxxxxxpost

so then I think tsorobodo's last point only applies to people who aren't very good critical thinkers to begin with.

xpost I did have a creepy dream at age 11 tho where I bribed God with a quarter and it started floating into the air

"there is nothing impressive about shooting an arrow and drawing a bullseye around it after the fact."

did you come up with this or is it a common saying? like it

common saying - I found it on a Rabbi's website while reading.

So is there room in here for any non-mainstream Christian "THAT PARTICULAR version of God" or is that too far outside the atheist bullseye?

always felt that if you're gonna pick n choose aspects of Xianity you can get down with, why not just go 1 step further, leave it all behind and create your own god that makes 100% sense to you

You sound like Jesus LOL