I don’t have a problem with atheists — each to his own comfort level — nonetheless, it is ridiculous for one of that inclination to get rattled to the extent that others of belief are denied their comfort. Atheism by definition is free from religion. Theists are free to believe as they see fit; atheists should look upon these " misguided" as pathetic but have the right to the "wrong" path. If, however, atheist take on the passion of "religion" in their belief that there is no God, they in reality are in the business of propagating their non-faith as feverishly as the old Marxist line. In this respect they are as trapped in "belief" as the rest of us pathetic old fools. They should therefore lobby for a limited currency series that states "In "God we do not trust," or a postage stamp that shows a black hole with the inscription "Godless."
Boobz--not to be obtuse--it isn't me. It's atheists. Goa's chart above shows a lot of the established views but there are atheists with strong convictions in every one of those directions with varying views of the others.
A lot of atheists I have met flat out reject anyone as truly an atheist if they waver on the point of being open-minded regarding a "Creator". Yes, open minded if evidence is presented but otherwise it must not only not be believed but not considered.
Whether any of you fall into that category or not, that is a large number of atheists feelings.
You are being obtuse … and it has nothing at all to do with atheists. This chart from “GoaFan77” is used by confused atheists who seem to need to explain themselves to theists and religious folk to help better group their prey. I don't do "groups" very well is all because it always involves someone else’s views and usually tries to involve me #^T#b$5!~!#.
Here are a few notables that have always appealed to me:
Of all religions, Christianity should without doubt, be the one to inspire tolerance the most … however from its inception to the present, they have proven themselves to be the most intolerant of all mankind? [Voltaire]
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Give a man religion and he will starve to death praying for a fish. [???]
Two hands working can accomplish much more than a thousand hands clasped in prayer, prayer just seems more productive to many than actually doing something. [???]
I wasn't talking about you Boobz--I was talking about atheists in general. I wasn't saying you were being obtuse, just stating I wasn't trying to be. I have no idea where you and Goa stand--other than what you've said. My point was just that most atheists I know fall in practice into what I said.
Sinperium; you cannot use the term "atheists in general ..." because it is meaningless. Beyond the point that atheists do not believe in any god ... which IS our only common point ... there is no general anything. Christians categorize everyone to deal with them in groups (thus your comment ... "I was talking about atheists in general" ... there is no such thing. The only thing a group of 100 atheists will have in common is that very same disbelief ... beyond that, we are just 100 different people with our own personal wants and desires. You cannot generalize people like that ... that is reserved for the Christians and other religions ... oh hell ... you are a Christian (pun intended) hahaha.
This just doesn't seem very difficult ... so why try and make it so? I do not believe in god and because of that, I don't believe in the religions spawned by the gods and because of that, I do not believe in the books of any particular religious calling which were all compiled to justify their specific barbarianisms. Now if many of the religious folk can read ... and they read the above ... then they KNOW what they are getting into beforehand ... just as I do. I cannot speak for the others.
That reflects how you feel about atheists and athesim but what many atheists say but it's not strictly true. Go to an organized publicly active chapter of the Freethinkers for a bit. I guarantee you it isn't as egalitarian as that.
Atheism has many common points--even if all atheists don't share them all. That how organized efforts by Freethinkers and the like come about.
And again--I'm not trying to make you do anything so you don't have to be offended by what I believe.
I've had atheists friends for years--I'm not talking out of my hat on this.
I think you may find this 2006 LifesiteNews article about a world famous atheist scientist who converted interesting...
From "Obnoxious Atheist" to Believer: Journey of World Famous Scientist who Cracked the Human GenomeBy John JalsevacBETHESDA, MD, June 12, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a world where the rate of scientific discovery outpaces anything ever dreamed of in any other era of human history, the idea that "science disproves God" is perhaps one of the commonest arguments now invoked against the existence of an omnipotent Deity... The full text of the story is available at: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jun/06061203.html
My big issue is that I don't see atheists as "my enemy" but that perspective does not seem to be shared with them--and that's sad.
Sinperium, If you insist on discussing this atheist nonsense … then take to my post, I am not going to just keep repeating myself on this ridiculous subject here. https://forums.joeuser.com/414656/page/1/#3052369
I'm just posting, not "insisting". You also don't have to read or respond. Nothing personal--we have just had a difference of experience. Should I deny my own to satisfy yours?
Sinperium has a point. The reason I think is because in years past Atheism was mostly restricted to private disbelief in God, but now it constitutes a predominant "Modern" worldview. A widespread segment of our culture is expressly atheistic, that is, it either rejects God ourtright or believes God exists, but lives as though He is not there.
Also, we can rightly say, "atheists in general" because Atheism is a central assumption of Communism, Socialism, modern philosophy and psychology and materialistic science.
I really don't care how or why Christians seem to need to attack people as a group, no logic there, so I just won't play until there is something a little more specific anyway. Or is it just too difficult to just say I am an atheist and you guys aren't ... and go on to something worth discussing?
PHILOSOPHY IS MADE UP OF QUESTIONS THAT MAY NEVER BE ANSWERED … BUT RELIGION IS MADE UP OF ANSWERS THAT MAY NEVER BE QUESTIONED.
The "New Atheism" is very different from the traditional atheism of earlier times--strikingly so in fact.
I'm not doubting you're one Boobz and that's fine.
Interesting though, "religious people" are all the same. How about we're individuals instead of the labels? It's a lot easier to talk then.
I do not view all or most Christians as anything besides misguided individuals perhaps. However, I do consider all Catholics (Muslims) as chipped from the same RCCC (?) mold so to speak. How people deal with religion on their own is their 'problem' as it was mine. Only I solved the equations well enough to convince me to take a stand for freedom and reason. We might as well just talk about "women or men in general", or "Jews or Muslims in general", or "religious folk in general", or "Catholics in general", or hell, why talk about any individual at all when we could just be general about things and have fun like this, hahaha. As stated before I often use “religion” when I really mean “RCC” … as depicted in this clip from a ‘strong atheist’ for sure. Not much general about him but this is my view of the RCC ... and it has little to do with religion.
Your women and men analogy is a good one. If you talk about them in an intrinsic sense, i.e., biological/anthropomorphically--then there isn't much of a "general" sense. Outside of that context though, "men" and "women" are quite often quite general terms in application. The same is true of atheism or Christianity or any other sort of belief system/organization.
And I don't view all or most atheists as anything besides misguided individuals perhaps.
Sorry--couldn't help that.
That's actually a really good point. In fact, there are atheist "churches that you can find in the phone book--if you live in the right area anyway and usually in big cities. Most prominent are "Freethinker" meetings or area websites (there are hundreds easily).
They provide not only discussion meetings but presentations of science as well as rebuttals and defenses/attacks for non-Atheists and occasionally get involved in local campaigns with billboards, commercials or court cases.
Not dissimilar from the "Christian Science reading rooms" in a lot of ways. Many new atheists enter there and go from their old belief system straight to the views of the group they hook up with.
Freethinker organizations are not religious institutions. They are non religious groups which provide a meeting place to exchange ideas and create "community". Although churches do provide community and a place to meet others they certainly do not have a monopoly on such things.
Atheists who go to Freethinker groups/events do not go there to change their "belief system" which starts the same and is only changed if they decide to become a theist. There is only one belief/disbelief involve and not some system as you erroneously believe.
Freethinking
One becomes an atheist by choosing to be an atheist...by choosing to deny belief in Almighty God.
But why do some make this choice?
Paul C. Vitz is a psychology professor at New York University. He writes in a Jan. 2000 New Oxford Review article, that it was Freud who inadvertently developed a rationale for understanding the rejection of God.
Vitz calls it the "defective father hypothesis" and says it is far from a universal explanation. In his essay on Leonardi da Vinci,
Freud writes that "psycho analysis which has taught us the intimate connection between the father complex and belief in God, has shown us that the personal god is logically nothing but an exalted father, and daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down."
Freud makes the claim that once a child or youth is disappointed in or loses respect for his earthly father, belief in the Heavenly Father becomes impossible. Vitz' book, Faith of the Fatherless, covers 15 major historical atheists including Nietzshe, David Hume, Bertrand Russell, Sartre, Camus, Thomas Hobbes, Arthur Schopenhaurer, Voltaire, Samuel Butler, and H.G. Wells. He says in every case, there is a weak, dead or abusive father.
"Free thinker" ; "free thought" are nice sounding phrases that atheist sloganeers have played like a harp ever since the 19th century.
Whether you accept it or not, "free thought" is an absurdity, as thought is not free; it is subject to the law of thought. If 2 x 2 = 4, we are not free to say it equals 5. If right is right and wrong is wrong, one is not free to say that right is wrong or that wrong is right. Your thought is not free. What is free is your will, your power to reckon correctly or incorrectly, to do what you know to be right or wrong.
Now, if by 'free thought" you mean freedom of inquiry, of investigation to learn the truth of the matter studied, then no reasonable person would disagree. But the question of freedom of inquiry is not in the minds of advocates of "free thought". They mean "freedom" to deny God and the moral law as interpreted by true religion. That's what "free thought" has always been about.
"Free thinkers" invariably assume that the intellect of religious persons, especially Catholics, is enslaved because reason and Faith is the starting point of their study and acceptance of belief in the existence of God; where they claim to demand to be shown before believing.
When these "free thinkers" send their children to school, they do so with the command that their little ones do what they did, accept upon faith, upon the authority of their teachers, the belief that one plus one equals two, and two plus two equals four, and so forth and so on. By doing so, in later life, they were able to build a lemonade stand, sell x amount of lemonade for 50 cents a cup and determine how much they earned.
Are the minds of those children free? No...they are bound for life to the arithmetic they accepted from their teachers on faith.
But objection is raised from "free thinkers" when the same principle, the same process, is followed in the sphere of true religion.
Children are sent to Catholic schools where they learn to make proper religious and moral as well as material judgments. There they accept upon faith, through the authority of human and Divine teachers, belief in the one Eternal God, Later there comes to them the understanding that by logical reasoning from effect to cause, the mind ultimately comes to the First Cause, God. The religious child grows up believing that God made the world; whereas the "free thinking" child grows up to believe that the world or some primordial mist from which the world evolved came from nobody in the land of nowhere.
That depends on how literal as opposed to how accurate you want to be in defining "religious".
I've attended meetings myself.
Atheism used to be pretty easily defined as strictly a non-belief in God. It isn't that way anymore other than at the purely non-empirical level. It is a movement now as well.
I'll stick with Websters myself . If you wish to make up your own definitions at will to fit into some preconceived narrative that's up to you. In any case don't expect it to do anything but strip even more credibility from your fairy tales.
There certainly are various movements within the overall collective of atheists, however the collective is not a movement in itself. I guess your "us against the rest" mentality doesn't allow you to see the difference.
Troll. Nice. How about another?
Of course there are. 20th and 21st century (Modern) Atheism has many facets, many manifestations, components and types.
Atheists, at least the militant ones, are very seriously pushing, both behind the scene and up front in our face, a philosophico-political system which is expressly atheistic.
Modern Atheism wants man at the center, apex and origin of all values, morals, etc. Modern Atheism has man as his own ruler busy devising a philosophico-political system that is complete without God. They want a civilization without God.
Militant Atheists' main goal is to remove Almighty God and every vestige of authentic Christianity from all institutions and public life. For the most part, they have government, academia, the media and Hollywood working on their side. The only entity that is and has always been and will always be in their way of accomplishing this is the Catholic Church.
We are talking about what is true for the common good for society, are we not? Tell me, then, what's true or good about Atheisitic Communism and Godless Socialism?
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