defining the atheist life....

ThatOwlWoman said:
You did a good job of summing up how most atheists are about god/gods/religion -- no effect on their personal life one way or the other, basically "meh." It's just a handful who get militant about it, just like it's just a handful of extremists in Islam or Xtianity or___ who go around killing in the name of their deity.
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so you think guano is apt to kill someone in the name of atheism?.......I can see that......
 
PostmodernProphet said:
sorry....their morals are the very things they have chosen with their feeble imaginations.......what you are arguing is that their morals have led them to their morals....../shakes head.....
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Morals guide their behavior. If you think murder is morally wrong that belief does not have to come from religion.
 
There are two prime absolutes

Every rule has an exception

And its only known exception

Everything is a poison, it's simply a matter of dosage.
 
So saying something with absolute certainty is, IMHO, is the height of human arrogance.
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Ha, just whiped the floor with this schmuck not once but twice and without even thinking about it.

Douche bag. Commits his own crime with the same sentance he used to describe it.... sooo stupid....
 
Concart said:
I'm not sure what else you'd call it but I'm game. That whole 'more likely than not' is red herring for me. I know only a tiny fraction of all there is to know in heaven and earth. So saying something with absolute certainty is, IMHO, is the height of human arrogance. But I have not seen one occasion in which a culture invoked 'God' as the cause of some natural phenomenon, and it turns out they were right. Not once. Nope, God did not cause the thunder. A giant dragon eating the sun did not cause an eclipse. Human sacrifice to the Gods didn't stop volcanoes from erupting. My sliding scale is close enough to certain that atheist seems like the most appropriate description. I do not actively live my life based on my lack of belief. It makes no difference to one way or another. What I am even MORE certain of is that the God of the Bible doesn't exist. That petty, small anthropomorphized schmuck isn't a 'Supreme Being'.
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First, a note of agreement. The god of the Bible should more reasonably be called a schmuck than a Supreme Being. The god apparently invented by the ancient Hebrews is pathetic. I'd sooner choose Loki to worship.

That said, however, the use of the word "atheist" by someone who claims not to "believe" a god exists and/or not to "believe" it is more likely that no gods exist than that at least one does...makes no sense.

You do not have a "lack of 'belief'"...but rather have beliefs different from the beliefs of theists.
 
AProudLefty said:
It has to do with the definition.

"A-" means without. In this case it means "without belief of god/gods" and "without knowledge of god/gods".
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So...the word "amaze" in your considered opinion means "without a maze?"

It doesn't actually have to do with definition...it has to do with etymology.

According to many atheists, the word "atheist" is a result of the etymological "a" Greek for without...prefixing "theist" meaning person who believes in a god...and results in "without a belief in a god."

THEY ARE WRONG.

First of all, the word "atheist" came into the English language BEFORE "theist"...so atheist could not have derived that way.

The word "atheist" did derive from the Greek, but through the French. "A" without + "theos" a god...means BEING WITHOUT A GOD.

And for most of it life, atheist meant exactly that...being without a god.

But debating atheists realized there was value in pretending to be without beliefs...so they pretended the word meant what you are pretending it means.

I have never known a person who uses the word "atheist" as a descriptor who does not "believe" there are no gods or who does not "believe" it is more likely there are no gods than that there is at least one.

Agnostics are the true non-believers on the issue.

Descriptors suck.

Here is my position:

I do not know if any gods exist or not;
I see no reason to suspect gods CANNOT EXIST...that the existence of gods is impossible;
I see no reason to suspect that gods MUST EXIST...that gods are needed to explain existence;
I do not see enough unambiguous evidence upon which to base a meaningful guess in either direction...

...so I don't.


No need for a descriptor, but if one were applied, I doubt "atheist" would be considered more appropriate than "agnostic."

There is no active belief or knowledge.
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People who use atheist...do have an active belief.
 
Flash said:
Morals guide their behavior. If you think murder is morally wrong that belief does not have to come from religion.
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the whole point of the original comment was that atheists have no guidance in shaping their moral standards.......for you to argue that their moral standards give them that guidance merely shows you have no clue what the discussion is about........now go back outside and play until supper......
 
Frank Apisa said:
So...the word "amaze" in your considered opinion means "without a maze?"

It doesn't actually have to do with definition...it has to do with etymology.

According to many atheists, the word "atheist" is a result of the etymological "a" Greek for without...prefixing "theist" meaning person who believes in a god...and results in "without a belief in a god."

THEY ARE WRONG.

First of all, the word "atheist" came into the English language BEFORE "theist"...so atheist could not have derived that way.

The word "atheist" did derive from the Greek, but through the French. "A" without + "theos" a god...means BEING WITHOUT A GOD.

And for most of it life, atheist meant exactly that...being without a god.

But debating atheists realized there was value in pretending to be without beliefs...so they pretended the word meant what you are pretending it means.

I have never known a person who uses the word "atheist" as a descriptor who does not "believe" there are no gods or who does not "believe" it is more likely there are no gods than that there is at least one.

Agnostics are the true non-believers on the issue.

Descriptors suck.

Here is my position:

I do not know if any gods exist or not;
I see no reason to suspect gods CANNOT EXIST...that the existence of gods is impossible;
I see no reason to suspect that gods MUST EXIST...that gods are needed to explain existence;
I do not see enough unambiguous evidence upon which to base a meaningful guess in either direction...

...so I don't.


No need for a descriptor, but if one were applied, I doubt "atheist" would be considered more appropriate than "agnostic."



People who use atheist...do have an active belief.
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Thanks for the clarification on linguistic history.

In the same way certain bible thumpers relish the thought of parading their "salvation" to the children of the damned (aka, the rest of us), I believe there is a small subset of anti Christian zealots who fully realize the word "atheist" has maximum annoying effect on bible thumpers.

Some of it depends on what is meant by the word "God" or Gods. An anthropomorphized literal interpretation of a Judeo-Christian God straight out of the Book of Job is obviously an easy target of ridicule. Even Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestants believe God is utterly incomprehensible and cannot be literally imagined in the human mind. More broadly, in world religious tradition, Gods, deities, spirits are just different faces humans put on a spiritual truth or higher reality underlying the universe.

I agree that agnosticism is the posture which most likely is reached through the exercise of reason. Unequivocal, definitive certainty that there either is, or is not a spiritual dimension, a higher reality to the universe is not the sort of posture which can be arrived at by reason. Reason and human cognition are going to fail us sometimes. We are not omniscient beings - we basically only have the brains of a souped-up chimpanzee.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
the whole point of the original comment was that atheists have no guidance in shaping their moral standards.......for you to argue that their moral standards give them that guidance merely shows you have no clue what the discussion is about........now go back outside and play until supper......
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Almost all people are raised with some sort of moral guidance. Whether that comes from a religion or from the culture into which they're born varies by society, and individual family. Religious ppl often make the same mistake you do of believing that those who don't adhere to a faith (usually the one that the religious person has) are without a moral compass. Almost every single one of us can point to an instance in their personal life where a so-called Christian (or other religious person) screwed them over, cheated on their spouse, lied, robbed, cheated, etc. It would be a mistake to then extrapolate from that and claim that all Christians (or whatever) are immoral. But that's what YOU are trying to do here -- claim that atheists are amoral simply by virtue of the fact that they aren't believers in a deity like you claim to be.
 
PMP can't be a decent person without a guidebook to tell him how to act. Even then, he is still obviously a horror of a person. If that's what his religion has crafted, I'll say no thanks and call it a day.
 
Concart said:
PMP can't be a decent person without a guidebook to tell him how to act. Even then, he is still obviously a horror of a person. If that's what his religion has crafted, I'll say no thanks and call it a day.
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Unfortunately you are right. Most of those here who loudly proclaim themselves Christians are poor representatives of that faith. If you were a moral being newly arrived here from another world and were looking over the banquet of religions on Earth, you would skip right by that one in favor of something else. On the other hand if you prefer your chosen faith to be a club that you can wield against others to show your alleged superiority, the Christianity of PMP, Stretch, Toxic, RB, etc. is for you. Same with the Buddhism of Dukka.
 
Cypress said:
Thanks for the clarification on linguistic history.

In the same way certain bible thumpers relish the thought of parading their "salvation" to the children of the damned (aka, the rest of us), I believe there is a small subset of anti Christian zealots who fully realize the word "atheist" has maximum annoying effect on bible thumpers.

Some of it depends on what is meant by the word "God" or Gods. An anthropomorphized literal interpretation of a Judeo-Christian God straight out of the Book of Job is obviously an easy target of ridicule. Even Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestants believe God is utterly incomprehensible and cannot be literally imagined in the human mind. More broadly, in world religious tradition, Gods, deities, spirits are just different faces humans put on a spiritual truth or higher reality underlying the universe.

I agree that agnosticism is the posture which most likely is reached through the exercise of reason. Unequivocal, definitive certainty that there either is, or is not a spiritual dimension, a higher reality to the universe is not the sort of posture which can be arrived at by reason. Reason and human cognition are going to fail us sometimes. We are not omniscient beings - we basically only have the brains of a souped-up chimpanzee.
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That explains our society of sociopaths. American exceptionalism has us putting kids in cages to deter asylum seekers when they could be in the fields making sure we don't run out of kale smoothies. One needs to escape Plato's cave to find a spiritual dimension.
 
Frank Apisa said:
First, a note of agreement. The god of the Bible should more reasonably be called a schmuck than a Supreme Being. The god apparently invented by the ancient Hebrews is pathetic. I'd sooner choose Loki to worship.

That said, however, the use of the word "atheist" by someone who claims not to "believe" a god exists and/or not to "believe" it is more likely that no gods exist than that at least one does...makes no sense.

You do not have a "lack of 'belief'"...but rather have beliefs different from the beliefs of theists.
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I am pretty certain I know my own mind better than you do. So I can state without equivocation that you are 100% incorrect about my belief. If you want to object to the term on a linguistic technicality, be my guest. Just don't pretend to know what I'm thinking, or tell me it makes no sense.
 
So, that being said, here is MY stance:

There is no scientific evidence that God exists. There has never been a proven supernatural explanation for any observable phenomenon, therefore God does not need to exist to explain anything in our natural world. Therefore I do not believe that God exists. I really don't care what label you want to apply to that position. The commonly accepted term is atheist. Any other guess as to what my position is would be a completely inaccurate guess.
 
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