Damn Atheists!!

[McBell]

So you can't identify a hole in my argument, and divert with an irrelevant question. Got it.

An irrelevant question you harp on by refusing to answer.
Yet claim to not understand how that very irrelevant question is a hole in your argument.

I have no problems with you sticking your head in the sand.

No, you don't get to define terms when there's ambiguity like in this thread.

Really?
And yet here you are redefining words in order to fit your agenda.

What makes it ok for you to redefine terms, but no one else?
Is it simply because it is YOUR agenda that is threatened?

 

[Ebionite]

An irrelevant question you harp on by refusing to answer.
Yet claim to not understand how that very irrelevant question is a hole in your argument.

No, I don't make that claim. It's up to you show relevance, and you can't. You fail.

 

[McBell]

No, I don't make that claim. It's up to you show relevance, and you can't. You fail.

Very well.
Fly on home and claim your victory.

 

[Willamena]

10 Questions Atheists CANNOT Answer

These are just the questions written out from the video.

1. Does science answer everything?

No. Science paints pictures.

2. Why do atheists care if people worship God?

Each will have their own reason.

3. Can nothing create something?

By definition, no.

4. How do you know that God doesn't exist?

Because things that exist are knowable.

5. What is the origin of life?

That's unknown.

6. Where does our morality come from?

The question makes no sense. Morality occurs in principle.

7. If you had evidence of God would you become a Christian?

No. Christianity would be my second last choice of religion.

8. Why are there no observable transitional forms in the present?

Only people who see none can answer that.

9. Do you live according to what you believe or what you lack in belief?

It's a sad person who lives by lacks.

10. If God exists will you not lose your soul when you die?

Doubtful. Nothing is ever truly lost.

 

[Willamena]

Very well.
Fly on home and claim your victory.

Isms are positive, so both atheism and theism describe something. The child that is held to be neither atheist nor theist is recognized as not having the cognitive capacity to adopt either ism, or have either ism applied to it.

 

[McBell]

Isms are positive, so both atheism and theism describe something. The child that is held to be neither atheist nor theist is recognized as not having the cognitive capacity to adopt either ism, or have either ism applied to it.

Theists deserve gold medals for the mental gymnastics they employ to keep infants from ever being atheists.

 

[Skwim]

They use the burden of proof thing quite often, and the foolproof rules of logic, and the scientific method as their shield against ever being questioned. Ridicule is a championed method. And of course ridicule involves contempt.

I don't mind being corrected in defiance. But the ridicule thing, and the one way street nature of a conversation is something I have zero patience for.

No human is a God that is a never, ever question me kinda person. It's hypocritical.

Now I am not Christian but I listen intently to civil discourse from any side. Ridicule and acting as a God above being questioned is monstrosity I don't entertain nor tolerate. They circumvent using their own reasoning, and their own thinking on the matter. Historically these are the people that oppress.

It's a cheap tactic to act as thought enforcers. It's pathetic character. And if I ever met it on the street I would be ready with a gun threat to back off. Because the people that do it are out to intimidate, and have no good intentions. It's like they are trying to hold court on a person.

A few pages on I got caught up in your problem with ridicule, burden of proof, the rules of logic, and the scientific method and started following your conversation back to here---I was wondering who had ridiculed you in the thread and how much. To my surprise it turns out to be atheist ridicule that happened somewhere in the past, and ridicule seemingly brought on by your discomfort with the methods they use to question claims you've made. Rather than simply nodding their head in agreement they actually want to discuss the claim, and do so by showing you where they think you've gone awry---I assume you know RF isn't a choir to preach to. So, having got a feel for the landscape of debate, which I assume happened elsewhere as well as here, why not try to understand why these people are doing what they do? Why not look into why burden of proof is important, and whom it applies to and why? Why not look into syllogistic logic so you too can better evaluate their arguments and maybe improve your own. Why not find out why the scientific method is such a powerful tool instead of seeing it as a "shield against ever being questioned." Personally, I believe any ridicule you may feel comes from a lack of understanding how others more effectively deal with issues. Improve your understanding and I think you'll lose the sense of ridicule you feel, and may even start enjoying the discussions and debates.

.

 

[exchemist]

Damn Scots what don't how to spell s***.

And Northeasterners. And others who adopt their usage (which is closer to the German) from time to time.

 

[Terry Sampson]

And Northeasterners

I initially said "Damn Brits", then remembered that you're originally from Edinburgh.

And others who adopt their usage (which is closer to the German) from time to time.

German?? Dang! Color me enlightened. I had completely forgotten "scheiss".

 

[exchemist]

I initially said "Damn Brits", then remembered that you're originally from Edinburgh.

German?? Dang! Color me enlightened. I had completely forgotten "scheiss".

I am not really Scottish, even though I was born there. (Though I'll gladly become a Scotsman for the purposes of an EU passport if Scotland leave the Union.)

But when we lived in The Hague it became apparent that there is spectrum in some words, from the German to the Dutch to The English, and particularly the English as spoken along the Eastern side of England, near the North Sea. The Scots and Tynesiders speak of a "haar" meaning a sea fog. Yorkshire has lots of villages ending in -wick, cf. wijk in Dutch. The Germans for street is strasse, which becomes straat in Dutch, halfway to street, wasser becomes water in Dutch, just pronounced differently from the English, and so on.

 

[Windwalker]

It's a so-so list of questions. There are better ones that are less... well, maybe it's better to let the better questions speak for themselves:

The OP questions were low-hanging fruit questions. These are higher-hanging, and deserve more consideration. As I promised before that if nobody else answered these questions, I'd pick them up and answer them from a historical perspective from myself. After 7 pages of replies and no responses to this, I'll offer my thoughts to these now.

• Conceptions of god vary tremendously among different types of theism. Which ideas about god to you reject, and why? What does it mean to reject these conceptions of god?

For me, what made me begin to identify as atheist was the whole literalization of the anthropomorphic images of God coming out of the Christian mythos. I found these images of a God who got mad, kept tally sheets of who gets to go to heaven or be sent to hell, impossible and contradictory stories taken as factual history (Noah's Ark, for example). All these forced people to deny reason and science, as well as ethical and moral questions (sending people to hell forever for not believing in doctrines). I considered all this to be against truth itself, in the interest of selfish, self-preservation in the face of a their own existential fears.

To deny facts, to bury one's head in the sand in order to preserve one's beliefs, was to me a denial of the God they claimed to worship and believe in. Since I knew of no alternative, and since I considered that type of belief system to be against truth, I ended up taking a stand against it. I actively disbelieved it. Hence, I began identifying as an atheist.

What did it mean to reject these? Freedom. Freedom to reason. Freedom to explore. Freedom to choose. Freedom to love for no other reason than love itself.

• Conceptions of god typically relate to a culture's highest values or principles. What are your deeply held values or principles? Aren't these principles the functional equivalent of honoring gods?

My most deeply held values and beliefs, frankly come from the "baby" part of the Christian ethos, without the "bathwater" of mythic-literal beliefs. "Love your neighbor as yourself" captured the whole underlying basis for civil, and compassionate human society. To "love your neighbor as yourself", means you will do no harm to them. "Love works no ill", say the Bible.

Yet of course, what I experienced from the religion was not that at all. It was "we've got the truth, and God will send everyone to hell that doesn't believe like us. It's our job to convert them and get them to believe like we do, so God can save them". That is at its core, a contradiction to Love. Someone does not need to identify as a Christian, in order to recognize the moral truth and value of the 'golden rule' as a philosophy of life.

Are these the equivalent of honoring the gods which symbolize these? In essence, yes. I can understand this now of course. I can relate it to verses from the Bible which point right to this. It's not those who claim to believe in God, but those who actually do "the will of the Father", that are truly the children of God, or followers of Love.

I see that destroying the whole "belief in God" claim, as it can easily be said that atheists who love according to this principle, are more "children of God", than the self-righteous believers who cites the Bible all day long how right they are and how wrong everyone else is, and do not show actual love in their hearts for others, let alone in their actions. Some atheists are far better "Christians" than a whole lot of Christians are, if they actually live according the law of love in their life.

"Belief in God" as a theological idea, is truly unimportant. It's not what you say, but what you do. Compassion, not belief is what matters to the universe. Atheists can easily be more "children of God" by being truthful, sincere, honest, loving, compassionate, and forgiving, than all the "believers" in the world rolled up together who don't do any of those in their life. "True believerism" is an excuse, or an escape from being a loving human being.

• Conceptions of god are often conveyed in ways that embrace artful use of creative expression, but taking these expressions literally can be a problem and is often not intended. If you approached religious mythology as a creative exercise, how might your acceptance of gods change?

That is exactly what I have done. Thank you for raising these pointed, and very insightful questions. How I see these images of deity forms, or the image of God itself in our stories, our mythologies, is an expression of the highest aspirations of truth within ourselves. In essence, we create God, in order for us to believe in God, in order for us to become God. There is a great deal to unpack in understanding how this all works.

In other words, we hold forth a symbol of "Goodness" in order for us to attempt to transcend our lower selves as the dominant center of our lives, and become guided by our higher selves, which are more moral, compassionate, empathetic, and understanding, than the lower impulses of greed and self-interested desires.

When we understand that this is the nature, and power of symbolism, we can avail ourselves of this if we wish, without it being a violation of higher reason (ie, science denial). These is an actual rational reason to engage in symbolic rituals and forms. It goes beyond simply using reason alone, and engages the whole person, rather than only the logic calculating brain functions. It engages the wings of the heart through imagination. Excessive rationality, in this regard, can be just as much a form of escapism as true believerism is, as it does not engage the whole person either. Both are centered in the conceptual mind, which is only one aspect of our humanness.

In this context, engaging with symbolic reality is utterly supportable logically, reasonably, and rationally as this is how humans have learned as an effective path to transcend themselves. Of course, that's not to say it is the only way available, or that everyone who does this does grow spiritually in their humanity, but it certainly can be an effective path as humans have used these this way for eons. Symbols exist everywhere, and they do the same things, some for the purpose of selling you products in a consumerist society, others to help you find your soul.

I quit calling myself atheist because I realized that was only limited to understanding the mythic-literal interpretation of God was incompatible with higher reason, as you find in modern and postmodern societies. I believe in Goodness. Visualize that however you wish. And that Goodness exists in us and the whole world, when we can see our way to realize it in actual practice. The "children of God" are those who follow the law of love, regardless of how they believe about deities. That includes all humans, in all religions, or in no religions at all.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

that is exactly right. and ive seen this on other forums. some atheists think they are lawyers and put Christians who respect the Bible in an eternal witness chair. They don't like it the other way round. When they have to defend their non belief.

I'm quite surprised you say that, because as I've been reading so far, quite a few atheists answered the questions simply and truthfully, and without rancour. So what caused this mini rant? You don't like the honest answers?

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Well, you COULD be an agnostic.
As well as an atheist.
Of course, you could be an atheist BECAUSE you are an agnostic.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

No, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive, but there is a pretty big gap between them. The agnostic, in my view, has no way to decide whether there may or may not be Gods. It's an "I don't know" position. The atheist, on the other hand, generally supposes that it should be possible to know if gods exist, based on evidence, and they see none. That is not final proof, but it is enough to make it a decidable position. It doesn't say, "I don't know," but it also doesn't say, "I know for certain there are no gods." It just says, "for all practical purposes, I feel comfortable proceeding as if there were none."

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

You're conflating atheism with agnosticism. An infant has no such belief, but that doesn't make them an atheist.

Babies aren't agnostics. They are atheists.

Agnosticism isn't just some sort of middle ground between theism and atheism; it's the positive assertion that the existence or non-existence of gods is unknowable.

 

[Ebionite]

Babies aren't agnostics. They are atheists.

That's ridiculous. They don't have any religious beliefs. Atheism is all about the rejection of the deity or the idea of deity.

 

[ChristineM]

That's ridiculous. They don't have any religious beliefs. Atheism is all about the rejection of the deity or the idea of deity.

Atheism : disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

 

[Ebionite]

Atheism : disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

Cover for hypocrites. That expansive interpretation is not supported by the original meaning of the word.

 

[ChristineM]

Cover for hypocrites. That expansive interpretation is not supported by the original meaning of the word.

Nope, the dictionary definition of today

The original meaning is 5th century BC greek meaning without gods (note the plurality)

And we live in the 21st century and speak English.

Sorry the modern definition does not suit your ancient mindset but hey, life moves on

 

[Ebionite]

Nope, the dictionary definition of today

Dictionaries don't define language, they document it. Conflating denial with innocence is a way of providing cover for the irrationality of strong atheism.

 

[ChristineM]

Dictionaries don't define language, they document it. Conflating denial with innocence is a way of providing cover for the irrationality of strong atheism.

Consider it officially documented that atheism is disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods... Thanks for the agreement.

And people use them to educate themselves about language.

What is irrational about disbelief in gods when there is zero evidence for gods. On the contrary, given the lack of evidence it seems theism is the irrational stance.

Lets make this simple, a newborn child has no concept of god therefore they lack belief in god. What is your with that?